by Lee Bond
Miss Bliss wailed in silent alarm.
“Fuckin’ ‘ell, Taint, you are a cunt, you know that?” Chad ignored the blows as best he could. After all, it weren’t the first serious beating he’d taken from the Matron. He lay there, half on, half off the table, watching the robot’s face knit itself back together, all the parts and guts of the damn machine’s head flying through the air as if by magic.
“Language!” Mistress Taint said sharply, her mangled face twisting up with indignation. “Young master Chadsik, your father will be hearing about this, oh yes, he will.” Then she brought her arm down again. And again. And again.
Chad looked apologetically towards Miss Bliss, his lovely pale features already bruised and swollen and bleeding. Around broken teeth and feeling very far away, Chad wheezed out one final insult, “You, you grotty old cunt, can suck a dick.”
He were fucked, well and truly fucked.
***
“You cannot be serious!” Dominic all but shouted the words as soon as he was able; he’d spent the last fifteen minutes retching and doing his level best to not actually throw up. He was a Gearman for heaven’s sake. He’d come across a warren of cannibalistic gearheads once, and not too long ago at that! Kingsblood, but that had been one of the most revolting things in all of Arcade City to date; his comrades in what Chevy called ‘The Book Club Regulars’ had unanimously voted that little bit of horror the most frightening thing they’d ever heard of in their journeys, and they’d seen some relatively hair-raising stuff.
Of course, none of his friends in the Regulars were ‘old’ Gearmen, and if what Chevy had just told him was true, then ‘good’ blacksmiths were the closest thing to pure evil in The Dome’s history. Dom wiped bile from the corner of his mouth and looked at Chevy, who was pretending to feed Armand an invisible sugar cube. The traitorous horse was obliging the older Gearman by pretending to enjoy the nonexistent snack.
“I am serious, Dom, serious as anything.” Chevy patted the horse’s head when the little playacting was complete. Horses were programmed to be horses most of the time, and thus responded well to the things that Gearmen had been led to believe actual living horses liked. Thus, invisible sweetcubes.
“But that,” Dom sidestepped a dark patch of earth that Chevy insisted was where Quick Wit had bled out, “but that is disgusting! And … and … revolting!”
“Think about it for a moment.” Chevy waited until Dom rolled his fingers, then continued. “Our world, this Byzantine, twisted existence we live under King’s Will, is amazing, yes? You and I and the other fellas as wear the longcoat and the helmet well know that the outside world has nothing on the stuff that we use in here, yes? Things like Thumper’s hammer, or the wondrous longcoat we wear. Other things, too, yes? Like our horses, or your Book. Some of this stuff, like the prodigious tome strapped to your chest there, are provided to us by Matrons, crafted who knows where by who knows what. The pinnacle of Arcade City science, yeah? And so our gear, our equipment … all of that is manufactured for us by machines you will not find anywhere else, no matter how hard you look, or how long you take to do it. But our blacksmiths and tinkerers and artificers …”
Dom turned his eyes to where Wit had died. “Surely not all of them?”
“Well,” Chevy laughed, imagining a world where that were true, “no. Only the greatest. Men like Barnabas, some few of them as live in Ickford under her ‘rule’ … a few others. They come to the idea on their own. Not every blacksmith, not every tinkerer has the capacity to dream up a method, or even the skill to work with what is produced. No, no, only a handful each generation, lad. Nowt to fear.”
“But it’s so … so … foul. It seems to fly in the face of the King’s Will!”
“Were it against our King, those that did it would not be doing it for long.” Chevy remembered the first time he’d found out what it was that certain smiths did to bolster their skill and their tradecraft. It’d been quite by accident, and he’d killed the smith before being informed –rather drolly, in fact, by his section leader- that he’d technically broken the Law. That’d been what, near on … Chevy flushed. He were too old, and that were a fact. “And again, I say, think about. Consider Thumper’s hammer. You ever see it?”
“Aye, once.” Dom remembered thinking the gleaming bronze hammer had been wondrous, had felt a surge of pride at the sorts of things their King allowed. “Saw him and his old crew, Boxed-In Timmy and gang, do in a Big’un.”
“And the gearwork?”
“Aye, that too. Looked at it with Book. Fiendishly complex. At the time, Book said it was one of the most intricate pieces under The Dome.” The exploded diagrams of what went into Thumper’s hammer to make it do what it did were lodged in Dom’s mind. It’d been the first time he’d seen something like that in action, and he’d memorized as much of as possible.
“Then,” Chevy said indulgently, “ask yourself this; if the King prohibits the use of true machines anywhere but in his own forges, where in the world would certain smiths and tinkerers acquire microscopic and miniscule gears? Or them tiny wee springs? And them hydraulics and whatnot? Not a tinkerer alive could manufacture something that small. Use, certainly. That’s just a matter of plugging things together. But make? Whole different thing.”
Dominic ran a hand through his hair. It was all so … perverse. “How does he do it, then?”
“Not too sure. Never had a reason to really find out.” Chevy yawned, then shrugged. It’d been a while since he’d done the whole ‘investigation’ routine, even longer since he’d done it for an audience, and he’d been doin’ it for young Dom on a regular basis since they’d started hunting Specter. “Either some kind of acid, or fire. Those are usually the two main methods of getting all that metal out of dead gearhead. Drop them in, wait for all the messy organic stuff as makes us all alive to either dissolve or burn off, an’ then voila! A cornucopia of ready-made machine parts that no hand anywhere in Arcade City –probably even outside- could ever hope to make themselves.”
“Blacksmiths killing gearheads and wardogs to farm their bodies for parts to make fancy things for other gearheads and wardogs.” Dom shook his head. “It’s disgusting, and I’ve seen cannibalistic gearheads.”
“Oh, aye, the McCrery Clan. Their old Da were a vicious and cruel prick, but I tell you, he could play the fiddle like a dream.” Chevy swung himself onto Armand easily, then held out a hand for Dom. As the younger man clasped the proffered hand, a grin split his face from ear to ear. “Now be a lamb and try not to fall off.”
20. Workin’ for the Man
“When I allowed you to have Thumper’s hammer and Marc’s coat as payment for the positive deluge of gears I will eventually harvest,” Barnabas announced from his work desk, “I had no idea that you were going to dismantle the one and use the other. I somehow imagined it would be the other way around.”
Garth didn’t look up from the intricate machinery that had finally come to the last stages of assembly, no thanks to Barnabas; the old blacksmith had been a right pain in the ass for the last week, pestering him non-stop with questions concerning ‘what he thought he were going to build with such complicated parts and all when he were nowt but a sprog still when it come to smithing, hey, hey?’.
Thankfully, ever since that bloody night, Garth had come across a quick and dirty method of getting the old bastard to stop prying so intensely all the time; whenever the snowy-haired crank pushed too hard or started acting like he was just going to start poking and prodding into another man’s personal projects, a firm reminder of how awful that night had actually been for all parties was on his lips within seconds of the other man’s garrulous attempts at conning him.
Typically, that served to shut the man up for a few hours, silence for which Garth was enormously grateful; from the very moment he’d come down from the Kingsblood rush, things had not been … good. At all.
The disembodied ‘persona’ of Specter -that dark and deadly bastard he’d become in order to surv
ive Trinity’s machinations- was closer to the surface than ever. More than once already he’d caught himself listening to the Vicious Elixir hissing through him, imagining the sorts of things he could accomplish if only he were fully Ironed up …
Thus … the secret project. Born out of a pathetic desperation to gain some measure of control over the Kingsblood that ruled his life … hopefully what he was building would work. He didn’t know what else could be done to save Arcade City from the darkness within. With Barnabas repairing to his locked-down tents every evening at the same time like clockwork, muttering of headaches and weary old bones and a zillion other things, it hadn’t been too difficult to spend his evenings cobbling together something that would help with his … condition.
It was hard going, though; between Barnabas asking endless questions about the eventual form his design would take and his own efforts in remaining calm, it took every remaining ounce of willpower to push and prod the so-called ‘King’s Will’ into obeying his commands. It was tough –like trying to bend red hot slippery metal between sweat-slicked fingers- but the longer he worked at it, the easier things got, and the more probable it grew that his understanding of how to manipulate King’s Will more fully became. It was just a matter of finding the right connections inside his own mind.
Who knew? There might come a time when his mastery of smithing was perfect, at which time it’d take nothing more than his own willpower to … will … the black infection right out of his skin.
Garth held an image in his mind’s eye of what the revamped coat and hammer would do for him and he prayed he was –when all was said and done- right on the money. There’d be but one chance when the whole gizmo came together and if his calculations were off by even a smidge, well … splat! was probably the likeliest of the options available to him.
Barnabas’ lessons with the buzzknife had proven instrumental, which was infuriating; coming up with methods of shanghaiing what he needed past the considerable restraints put in place by King Blake’s ridiculous fascination with steampunk had been arduous and mentally taxing, but he’d persevered and the finish line was finally on the horizon.
Garth suppressed an evil grin as the DarkEye lens -following subtle physical cues- magnified a section of the clockwork array he was working on. It was hellaciously intricate, and the fact he’d even gotten as far as he had without the thing exploding into a zillion shards of brass and copper death-splinters had Barnabas’ old blacksmith panties in a tight bunch.
Were it not for DarkEye working more often than not right now … no. Garth shook his head. Best not to think about his new ‘condition’. Doing so riled Specter up more than was comfortable or safe.
Tweezing a cog no bigger than a whisper into place most cautiously, Garth replied, “You didn’t allow me shit. I took what I earned.”
Barnabas roared laughter and shot back. “Oh those poor old gearheads, murdered in the honest pursuit of their lives.”
The murder thing was a new tactic. Obviously, Barnabas was trying to piss him off.
Garth turned a few cogs in the area highlighted by DarkEye, nodding satisfaction when a whole section of his masterpiece spun and clicked as he’d hoped. “Those poor gearheads, rendered down into soupy flesh and rubbery bones, which you will eventually cut open with a filleting knife to watch the gears and cogs, springs and pistons pour out like a living piñata. However can you live with the guilt?”
Barnabas jolted like he’d been goosed, tried to smother a surge of anger rising on his face, then just laughed the situation away. Nickels was a tough customer, true enough, but he weren’t as cagey as he thought. The lad had obviously forgotten some of the wee nuggets he’d let drop about his personal life outside, or didn’t think what he’d said was all that important.
But King Barnabas Blake the One and Only knew better. True, he didn’t know precisely why Nickels was in Arcade City as of yet, but it was obvious his suspicions about the lad’s employer were spot on.
After seeing Specter burn through the Mental Marc’s gaggle, a vicious black wind puffing them out like candles in a gale, the King knew for certain there would have to be more tests –and not of the sort Nickels imagined, oh no- and much sooner than later. Trinity’s tool under The Dome was dangerous and all sorts of vicious and the interaction of Kingsblood and whatever else was under that man’s skin had Barnabas fairly fretting. It’d take some thinking on how best to evoke the hidden killer, but in the meantime, there was summat else to worry over.
Well, more than ‘summat’, truth be told. There was the oddity that the lad’s eye had become, a strangeness which Barnabas reckoned needed bringing up again, if only because it were –in terms of being, ah, right in your face-, well, right there in your face.
This new thing, this secretive, silent work the lad had started on … Barnabas didn’t much care for it. Nickels had taken to working with Iron far quicker than was comfortable and seemed to be picking things up on the fly that usually took smiths years to uncover and now there was naught to do but watch things much, much closer.
Oh, if only Garth weren’t innately tuned to King’s Will! Kingly peeking would most likely resolve all the answers in a flash, except it could also tweak the lad’s senses that summat otherworldly was happening. And that could very well tumble Trinity’s endgame sooner rather than later, and that was an occasion Barnabas didn’t want to deal with just then. There was still so much to deal with! On the off chance that Nickels was a weapon, Barnabas Blake didn’t –couldn’t- risk a confrontation that might very well leave him too depleted to deal with everything else on his overfull plate.
Aggravated that Garth was managing to keep his secrets so close to his chest and with the overall progress in finding out just what was inside the man that was causing his Kingsblood infection to behave as it never had before, Barnabas dropped his wrench and went over to see what Garth was working on. Better to risk arguments and hot tempers than this ridiculous hand-wringing from afar, hey?
Uncertain as to what Nickels planned on using the whole of Mental Marc’s coat for, Barnabas knew his unwilling apprentice was –or would be soon- nearly complete in his self-appointed task; Garth Nickels the Fish didn’t sleep, or if he did, it were less than an hour a night. The rest of the time –while he was occupied in hunting Erg down in quite possibly the least efficient method possible- the sounds of tools rumbling and grumbling on a near-constant basis aggravated Barnabas no end.
The King reminded himself to play it casual. Garth clammed up tighter than a Water Lady’s arsehole when he were pressured these days.
Changing his tactics before they even got under way, Barnabas plopped himself on a free edge of the table and gestured to Garth’s be-lensed eye. “Still hurt?”
“No.” Garth mumbled softly, still angry at … everything. Yeah, the night had been shitty and awful and all kinds of terrible and all that, but it hadn’t been until later, when he’d been more himself, that he’d noticed something somehow inexorably worse than the crawling metal tattoos covering his arms.
His eye. His eye was all sorts of wonky now, making him truly gearheaded in appearance, and it was bugging the living fuck out of him. It was an exposed nerve ending of itchy raw stress and it damn well karate chopped Dark Iron tattoos like Jet Li spin-kicking a five year old.
Barnabas smiled and nodded, motioning for the lad to be a little freer with his words. Since the … startling development, Garth was even more resistant to poking and prodding. Trinity pawn or some other agency, it were difficult to ignore that Nickels truly was put out by what were happening to him, so it were this strange new land of ‘discussion’ or nowt at all save an eventual argument.
“Not,” Garth resumed, putting aside ‘his’ screwdriver, “since I stopped fucking with it.”
“Mind if I take another look?” Barnabas produced a jeweler’s loop and popped it into an eye, amused at how he was mirroring Garth’s current predicament. “Now, as you say, you’ve stopped fucking with it, things migh
t’ve … receded a bit?”
Garth sighed morosely. A week ago -after helping Barnabas toss the corpses into the ‘melter’, as the grim blacksmith called it- the first thing he’d done –or tried to do- was remove the fucking hat.
Intent –in fact, hell-bent- on never wearing it again, he’d literally ripped the offensive felt top hat and lens from his head with the full intention of ruining it beyond all reasonable repair, eliciting a warbling cry of purest bedeviled outrage from Snoopy Pants the Blacksmith.
Well, Operation Fuck This Hat In It’s Ass had been met with limited success; the felt top hat had become completely ruined and the complicated machinery filling most of the tube-hat-thingummy utterly mangled, an act Barnabas continually referred to as ‘purest heartbreak and an act of heathen savagery the likes of which even the King Hisself had never seen before’.
And that was it. The … the rest of the hat? Not destroyed barely covered the topic.
The lens was fucking stuck fast, latched permanently atop the crudey-crude black orb that’d once been his goddamn quadronium eye, held in place with fibrous seams of Kingsblood grown right out of his motherfucking ocular orbit.
Garth was unashamed to admit he’d had himself quite the little hissy fit upon discovering it was basically bolted to his goddamn face. Said fit may have included lots of crying and woe-is-me-ing, and should the story ever be told again, there would be a noticeable absence of such, replaced with a far manlier version, quite possibly involving him striking a match across the solid glass fucking headlight so he could light a cigar. Or something.
The fact that since the discovery of its irrevocably unmovable presence on his face, the eye had proven somewhat useful was beside the point. All the way beside the point.
Fuck Kingsblood. Right in the nanotech eyeball. With a blowtorch. Because that’s what he’d like to do to the goddamn eye on his face.
