Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5) Read online

  “Information.” Dom nodded. It made sense. Most of it. He knew –just as he knew that Chevy felt the same- that Garth Nickels had come from Outside, but the Matrons … without their King ruling over them properly, the poor metal minds … just weren’t as capable. Large portions of why Arcade City were the way they were could be laid at their clacking feet. Best then to accept their decision on the face of it and then be about their business as they saw fit when they were well certain Primrose was gone for good.

  ‘twould only be a day or before that certainty rose, hey?

  Primrose smiled and nodded once more. “Just so, Master Dominic, just so. And thus, the crucible.”

  Neither Dom nor Chevy had been willing to pay the now-fully built crucible any mind whatsoever. Both men knew what it’s presence here represented, and were … nervous. Few things came from a crucible built by a Matron, and all of them were dangerous.

  Given what the Gearmen knew about how the Matrons viewed Specter, odds were they could guess to within a few degrees what was being built inside.

  Chevy gestured to the black cubed forge. “What grows within, Mistress?”

  “Augments, boys, for your splashguns.” Primrose adopted a very serious tone. “The best of the worst, to deal with both Specter and Agnethea. The two of them together offer dangers that cannot be ignored. You ask what grows inside? Modified weapon magazines and enhanced tracking and targeting modules.”

  “I’m assuming,” Dom licked his lips nervously, “that they are modified Gearhunter pieces?”

  Primrose turned a glittering eye towards young Dominic Breton. “Indeed they are, my boy, indeed they are. The most powerful weapons available inside Arcade City, geared to hunt down rogue Gearmen, recalibrated and reconfigured to deal with an even direr menace.”

  “Those can shoot through permanently forged King’s Will, Mistress.” Chevy remembered the last time he’d had to hunt a rogue Gearman. Old Master Winkins, it’d been, well over five hundred years done and down in the dirt. An errant shot from the Geargun had blasted through one of the last of the ancient buildings, a solid and fortified building built –if legend was true- by the King himself.

  That building, fully ten thousand years old, had disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  Chevril licked his lips nervously. And the Matrons had gone and made them more powerful.

  “Why yes, Master Chevril, they can indeed.” Primrose said this brightly. Then, because it was time to be moving on, she spoke with utmost gravity. “So when you find your quarry down there in foul Ickford, the Matrons would ask ever-so-politely that you refrain from turning honest citizens lulled into darkness by Agnethea into greasy atoms and that, for preference, you try to destroy as little of the city as possible. We Matrons intend on taking it down to the ground ourselves, so we might prevent such a thing from happening again.”

  Both Dom and Chevy nodded, speaking in unison. “Yes, Mistress Primrose.”

  “Oh my!” Primrose looked to the heavens. “Would you look at the time? I must be going. The crucible will be done by morning, boys. Best to build yourselves a fire and keep an eye out for those who might come to see what’s going on this way! Whilst you wait for your new toys, I should hope that the two of you consider how frightfully rude you were today, you,” she cast an imperious gaze at Dominic, who shifted like a naughty five year old, “with your inappropriate outburst and you,” Chevril blanched at the sight of her, “with your old swears. When all is said and done, lads, we three shall meet to discuss appropriate penance. Until then.”

  “Until then, Mistress.” Chevril sighed miserably when Mistress Primrose vanished in a wavering swathe of manipulated King’s Will. “Crikey, we’re in for it, Dominic.”

  The Book Club Regular ran a nervous hand across the solid matte black top of the crucible. “What’s more powerful than Railhunter equipment?”

  “Nowt.” Chevy motioned for his horse to return to him. It took several tries before the stupid animal understood. “Nowt at all. In the last thousand years, the Matrons have only released this Kingtech three times, each to me and me alone. Deadly powerful, mate. Rips through our armor like it were paper. Most other things, too.”

  “Reading about Winkins,” Dom said, trying to peer through the grill in the front of the portable forge and failing to see anything but hot flames, “is standard material for Book Club Regulars. But what’s growing inside is more powerful than all that, Primrose did say that.”

  Chevy stared unseeingly at the crucible, mind running to possible future events. Horse stood beside him, nuzzling at a gauntleted hand. “These hain’t Gearkillers, Dom. These here, these’re like as not to be Kingkillers. That’s wot. Them Nannies, they’re afraid our man Specter is some kind of King replacement. And where our old King did have himself the occasional moment of temperament, this new lad? Well! Like as not them Matrons are fearful Nickels the Fish has arrived to clean house, hey? ”

  Dom laughed. “Impossible.”

  Chevy turned to look at Ickford, hands rooting through Horse’s saddlebags in search of the last of the sweet treats he’d picked for the journey over a month ago. The morrow looked to be a right miserable pain in the arse and he reckoned he’d be well lucky to have another hard candy this whole year. “Like as not, Dom, Primrose made it painfully clear our man has Kingly levels of smithing talent at his command. I encourage you to watch the footage of that battle, lad, watch it and ply that Bookly brain of yours to sussing out the gravity of it all. For even with this new tech, I warrant any encounter we have with Specter will be a fight for our lives.”

  3. Side Quests are Total Bullshit

  Although he’d only been in Ickford a few hours, Garth couldn’t shake the feeling that the post-apocalyptic nightmare town would provide more answers about the King and His purpose than anywhere other than Arcadia itself: the fact that it existed at all was perfect indication of that. Everywhere he looked, everything he saw … if ever there was a place that defied the King, it was Ickford.

  So why was it here? The ‘city’ had thrown the monarch’s ‘wondrous’ scheme of forcing gearheads inwards to some greater destiny into complete shambles, had twisted and perverted the whole outer ring of the City into a crooked mockery of something he’d spent thousands of years getting right.

  And at the center of it all? Agnethea. An Obsidian Golem. Garth remembered taking her hand in his gauntleted one, remembered wondering why someone as beautiful as her should cover her eyes, the scent of her skin, the cast of her skin …

  “Fuck is wrong with me?” Garth shouted angrily at himself, startling a pack of gearheads littering around a lamp post. He glared at them. They glared back until one realized that he showed no fear. They shouted a few obscenities before wandering off to find themselves another post to lean on.

  Idle Eric watched Split Steve’s crew wander away down the promenade, passing a huge flask of Dark Iron betwixt themselves, desperate from a drippy-drop even though it would tear through his gullet like a clawed whirlwind. “How’d you do that, mate?”

  Garth tried to shove Agnethea out of his mind, but those bee-stung lips of hers refused to budge. “What?” Garth followed the smaller man’s gaze. “Oh. Them. They’re like dogs. Show no fear and they won’t bite. You should know that, my wee gearhead.”

  Eric bristled at that so much he missed a landing and was forced to jump twice as high to land properly. When his abused feet struck earth, he flashed Garth a false smile; the ‘wee’ gearhead needed the foolish blacksmith completely at ease or else all would be lost. “Where to now, squire? We seen The Spinner, we took a walk ‘round a few of the whorehouses but you din’t take no sup there … what say you we find a place to toss down for the night?”

  Garth was no stranger to whorehouses. It was a place you visited as a Specter. Any place where you could buy flesh for goods and services was a place where most of the levels of power intersected, for good or for ill. He loved him a good whorehouse; in no time at all, you could learn which gove
rnment official was in with the local mob, which mobster wanted out of the game, which politician liked little boys or girls or Offworlders. Everything you learned in a whorehouse could be turned to your advantage.

  Except in Ickford. Ickfordian whorehouses were Bosch paintings come to life, only –and this brought a grimace to Garth’s lips- only worse. Stick a horny, rage-fueled mostly-immortal gearhead into a room with a man or woman that could take your worst punishment and dole out their own in kind was a thing no being should be forced to witness.

  “Oh, aye,” Eric caught his new friend’s grimace and chuckled, “grim, them as find comfort in those places. ‘course, we only strolled by gearhead joints. We could nip ‘round a soft palace, if you like?”

  Garth shook his head to clear it of both ‘hard palaces’ and Agnethea’s hauntingly alluring face. The latter dislodged quite nicely, but the former hung around. Fine. Whatever. You could be attracted to other people when you were in a committed, monogamous relationship. It happened all the time. It was just a matter of staying strong.

  “Well, what then, hey?” Eric knew he was pushing the mark, as it were, but he couldn’t it. All the other new players in town had absolutely nothing of value to him, nothing at all. Garth here, clad in his ill-hidden Geared Armor … well, now Idle Eric thought on it, he were well surprised none of the other crews in town had come at the man.

  Garth continued strolling down the street in silence for a while longer. Idle Eric was a problem in that he was going to be hard to shake off. The wee gearhead –Garth snickered at the phrase- was desperate to stay close.

  Only problem was, Garth knew that if he was going to be able to find out the hows and whys of Ickford’s continued existence as well as the truth behind Obsidian Golems, Idle Eric couldn’t be anywhere near him, because there’d be little hope of gaining any Intel on anything worthwhile with the little dick around.

  “Well, that’s the thing, Idle Eric.” Garth said as earnestly as he could.

  “Oh?” Eric fumed. He was losing the mark. What could he do? “What’s that, then?”

  The trick was to be truthful within the lie. “See, thing is, I’ve got some work to do on one of my guns here, and I was hoping to get a look at … Tinker Square.” Wasn’t that the truth? He’d been hating on his shotgun from the moment he’d finished putting it together. The design was all wrong.

  A square full of Tinkers, though … there’d bound to be some choice pieces laying about the place. In addition to fixing the hated shotgun, it should be easy enough to get some of those old boys gossiping about what went on and where things went down. His time with Barnabas had told him that not only were smiths a gearhead’s main source of repairs and augments, they were the premier way of getting news across the City and back.

  Eric’s eyes strayed to the armor-clad man’s broad back, and to the weapons locked into place there. The long gun was of a design he’d personally never seen before, but that didn’t mean much. Since coming to Ickford some fifteen years ago, Eric hadn’t set foot outside but once, and that’d only been to say goodbye to his dear old dead mum as she passed away; for all he knew, the fancy long gun with its needless scrollwork and artistic engravings wasn’t even that good a gun.

  The same went with the other one. Eric wasn’t personally familiar with the other design, but he’d heard of it; some gearheads called ‘em ‘shootguns’, and they weren’t for Kings at all, but for people.

  “Oh, aye, that’s a thing we can do, right enough, squire.” Eric angled himself towards Tinker Square with a quick hop, tugging on the hem of Garth’s long coat when he landed. “This way, this way.”

  “Problem is,” Garth read the signs attached to the buildings along the road the wee gearhead had set themselves down, “blacksmiths aren’t … friendly.”

  Eric rolled his eyes at that. “Too right, mate. Why, our own Twisted Mickel is a right bastard if you set him on edge. This one time, not too long ago, a gearhead from all the way up north? Said the wrong thing he did, only no one knows what, as our Mickel took the man’s head right off ‘is body with this giant scissor-thing. Snippety snip. Got it mounted on the all somewhere. Worst part is, right, worst part is, bloke’s still alive, in’t he? Got the body stowed somewhere on premises, does our Mickel. Has to trim the … trim stuff off the bottom of the head and the top of the neck every few hours, he does, else … well, the gearhead would ‘ave a neck twelve feet long, wouldn’t he?”

  Garth burst out laughing. Gerome the Giraffe-Necked Gearhead. Only in Arcade City could something like that even remotely be true. Or be so fucking funny.

  He made a mental note to avoid ‘our’ Twisted Mickel at all costs. He turned somberly to Idle Eric, crouched down so the poor hopping gearhead wouldn’t have to jump about –it also made lying to the weirdo that much easier, because Garth was finding it distinctly difficult to lie to someone who was doing such a damn fine grasshopper impression- and explained a little more fully, keeping it fresh in his mind that he really needed to be alone.

  “Look. I came with Barnabas to check out the competition.” As lies went, it wasn’t bad. Made a great deal of sense, and would make even more sense to someone who was a natural-born liar. “We’re thinking about setting up shop, see, and if I’m seen in the company of anyone from Ickford, well, that’ll set off alarm bells all over the place, won’t it? If I’m just a lone, eager-to-learn smith hanging around the shops, well, then I’m a guy looking for work, right?”

  Idle Eric licked his lips nervously. Could he do for Garth right here in the streets, all on his own? He had his buzzers, they were well within reach. Could he swipe through the man’s exposed neck? Mayhap take the top of his skull off with a buzzing snickety-snack? Split Steve and gang walking away filled his mind. He couldn’t take the risk, no, no he couldn’t.

  Eric licked his lips again. “Oh, aye, I do see the point, there, now you bring it up, friend.”

  Garth smiled, clapped a hand on Idle Eric’s diminutive shoulder. Time to set the bait. “But … that don’t mean we need to part ways, now does it? I mean, there’s an awful lot of Ickford to see, am I right? Who better to show me the sights than Ickford’s own Idle Eric?”

  Eric looked around, suddenly conscious of his own mortality; it’d been a perishingly long time since he’d had any proper crudey-crude slide down his gullet and now the two of them were talking one on one real sincere-like, the wee gearhead wondered how he’d missed the aura of violence coming off the other man. He was off his game in a big way, it seemed and Eric knew if he confronted Garth, he’d come out the poorer. There were a queer look in the man’s brilliant blue eye, not to mention there were the off-putting weirdness of seeing yourself reflected back at you from an orb of darkness night.

  Eric didn’t like the man’s eyes, oh no, he did not.

  This was an out, as embarrassing as it was. The game wasn’t over, oh no, not by a longshot, just changed; instead of trying to befriend Garth to make things easier, well, they were just going to have to steal the suit of Geared Armor and that was that.

  “Too right, squire, too right indeed, hey?” Eric nodded firmly, up and down, up and down. He caught a look from a few folk passing by and returned one of his own. That was how it was in Ickford. Everyone had a game, the players knew each other, knew better than to play against the players. It were respect, it were. “What did you have in mind, then?”

  Garth stood. “Well, I was thinking, like I said, about doing some looking down Tinker Square way, finding a place to crash for the night, then meeting up with you tomorrow midmorning? We could grab a bite to eat and go from there?”

  The temptation to follow through with Garth’s suggestion was powerful. Eric and his crew hadn’t done a straight up robbery-style game in a long while because it involved an awful lot more risk, terribly so when you were dealing with gearheads and the like. Granted, Garth was no gearhead, but … the suit. It didn’t take no genius nor even someone capable of thinking in a straight line to figure out what
the suit was for or what it could do.

  The repressed violence washing out of Garth changed Eric’s mind. There was no way in Arcade City he was going to meet with the Geared-up man tomorrow morning, or any other morning, for that matter of fact. Moving forward, it were going to be long distance surveillance, almost like they were clocking a King, and then when night fell, they‘d fall on Nickels like locusts. Sure, some of ‘em might get done for –actually, Eric realized, it were well more than ‘might’, but that were a fair price- and the armor might get a bit banged about, but blokes like Mickel and Havilland claimed they could do anything at all with anything at all.

  Eric stuck his hand out. Garth took the proffered hand in his own and the two men shook. “That’s settled then. Now. Whereabouts is Tinker Alley from here?”

  Eric took their location in, so flustered by their strange conversation he’d quite forgotten the route they’d taken through Ickford. Ah. Yes. Hooper Street down Cricket Avenue. He brightened. “Oh, you is in luck, squire. Come on this way, this way then.”

  The two men pushed their way through the steady stream of gearheads and regular folk, making for a dingy, ill-lit alley. Over his shoulder, well aware his guest believed he were being set up, Eric spoke, “Now, this hain’t your usual Ickfordian travel route, hey? Cuts across a few … territories, see? Now, you strike me…”

  A wet slapping sound reached the oddly short gearhead’s ears and the small man stopped where he was, throwing a trembling hand in the air to halt all progress. Garth, intrigued by the sound, nearly bowled Eric over.

  “What’s the deal?” Garth demanded. If this was his prelude to robbery, no wonder Eric had fallen on tough times.