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

  Again, pleasurable thrills of curiosity percolated through Queen Agnethea. “A favor, hey? What sort?”

  “’tis for him to ask.” Barnabas saw Garth come to a decision, and jerked his chin. “He comes. Keep what’s ‘twixt us ‘twixt us ‘til I am gone or I shall see what I can muster as it relates to my disagreeable nature, hey?” The King grinned craftily as Nickels the armored outsider strode up to them. “Well? Do you be well-pleased at the Queen’s arrangements?”

  Garth nodded, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his long cloak. “Yeppers. It’d take more than Ocean’s Eleven to get in there.”

  “Who is this Ocean and these Eleven of his?” Agnethea demanded urgently.

  No one would dare!

  “The lad comes up with the most outrageous sayings, my Queen. ‘tis outsider nonsense, stuff he makes up to amuse that mind of his.” Barnabas doffed his cap to them both, so eager to leave their combined presence it took all he possessed to keep from teleporting away. “Now, if you please. I needs must take my leave, as business does call.”

  “Business?” Garth demanded irately. “We goddamn well just got here! How the fuck can you have business! We fucking took a fucking month to get here, man, and now you’re just gonna wander off?”

  Though the gesture was purely theatrical given the nature of at least one of the men, Agnethea signaled the security guards standing just behind her with a quick snap of her fan, warning them that this was her kind of situation. They stayed where they were and she stepped between Garth and Barnabas, who were literally getting ready to square off against one another. She noted with a mischievous grin that dear old Barnabas was fighting mightily to prevent a Kingly smiting, which piqued her curiosity in ways she hadn’t felt in quite some time.

  Smiling prettily at Garth, she rapped the man in his burly chest with the fan, then turned the smile into a pout. “Gentlemen,” she interrupted brightly, “have you forgotten that I am Queen of Ickford?”

  Barnabas opened his mouth to hotly decry such a bold-faced, devilish lie but slammed it shut. If there was any way to assassinate Agnethea, any way at all, he would do it.

  Fan still ‘holding’ the angry Nickels at bay, Agnethea resumed. “And as Queen, I have a million pressing things that require my attention. It is one of many downsides to being a ruler. You may resume your argument once I am safely away. It certainly looks as though you two have been traveling together for too long.” She looked sideways at Garth. “Mayhap a day or two of alone time will do wonders for your friendship.”

  Garth snorted derisively and disagreeable laughter spat from Barnabas.

  Agnethea held their gazes through the veil for a few seconds longer. Oh, whatever it was about Nickels that had their temperamental and powerful King at bay was a prize worth looking at, if only for the fact that Barnabas was treating her with a bare minimum of hospitality, something he hadn’t done in a very long time.

  “Barnabas?” Agnethea held out a hand and the Blacksmith King somewhat reluctantly handed over the papers he’d been working on. The ‘Queen’ of Ickford read over them with practiced ease. The man was toting considerably more metal than the last time he’d come this way, nearly fifty years ago. Agnethea stifled a snicker. Poor gearheads, poor wardogs. Out there killing Big Kings, never knowing that their true King followed behind them, harvesting when the mood struck.

  Such grim irony.

  She kept reading. Barnabas’ lists were always meticulous, down to the last microscopic spring or screw. They didn’t need to be. No one ever stole from her…

  “This…” Agnethea made a face. “This is impressive. You have twenty-five gallons of unused Dark Iron? That … that …” The Obsidian Golem tried to do the math of trade and services rendered to provide the blacksmith … any blacksmith … with that amount of crudey-crude. After doing all the work required to get that amount.

  Garth thrust his papers at Agnethea. It’d taken about ten seconds. Whatever fiddly bits of Ironed metal he had left after building his armor and guns didn’t matter. Barnabas –the deceitful fuck- could have them as the shittiest consolation prize known to Mankind. “Before you read this, Lady Agnethea,” he was an idiot, his mouth was doing that thing where it took control of everything he said and sometimes thought and that was bullshit because he was in love with Naoko, “I need to be one hundred percent certain that you are utterly trustworthy and that anything I put in these vaults will be insured for the total amount.”

  Then, because he hadn’t forgiven or forgotten about Barnabas’ sudden announcement that he had to go and bugger off for a few days, Garth scowled at the prick.

  Agnethea produced a calligraphy pen from a pocket and scrawled her name across the bottom. She folded Barnabas’ claim sheet and put it delicately away, then turned to Garth. Everything about the man screamed … something. In her eleven thousand years of tortured life stuck under The Dome of Gears, dealing with Barnabas’ endless attempts to have her killed or hooked on Iron or whatever his fiendish, devious Kingly mind could come up, never had she stood so close to someone who radiated such danger.

  It came to her in a flash, what it was that she was sensing, and it nearly took her breath away.

  Garth Nickels was a roiling ball of chaos and rage, a seething cauldron of vehemence. He was worse than any gearhead stuffed to the gills so badly with Dark Iron that they sometimes wept inky black tears.

  And he was controlling it. The effort it had to be taking.

  A quick look at Barnabas showed he was staring at her flatly, daring her to do or say anything outside the little charade he’d invited her to play. She gave him a minute nod. She would play things his way for now, but only just; by the man’s own words, he had things to do and she knew for certain that whatever it was, he wouldn’t be in Ickford for longer than it took for him to disappear in a puff of black smoke.

  This, then, this strange o’erpowering furnace of Kingsblood Rage, did this have summat to do with the favor Nickels sought? Why, an ancient Queen’s mind fairly swam with notions as to what such a favor would receive by way of compensation.

  “Absolutely.” Agnethea nodded again, throwing in one of her warmest smiles. She wanted to smack her forehead against the nearest wall, even the Biting Wall: she was an Obsidian Golem! There was nowt any mortal man could offer. “Whatever you claim you have, I can cover.”

  Then Agnethea took the list. It was two items long. Eighty pounds of assorted metal gewgaws. Though she’d never seen that word before, it slotted into her lexicon instantly. Then her veiled eyes fell on the second item and her jaw fell open. It snapped shut quickly, of course, but even her guards had seen the surprise.

  No. The shock.

  “I shall … I shall need to see this. For verification.” Agnethea pointed at Barnabas, ready for Garth’s argument. “I have known Barnabas for a long while, and though there is no love lost between us, I have come to trust him enough to know he would not lie about his belongings. But this … people have come to me before with large deposits that were not there, have engineered break-ins with Ironed-up fools, and come back demanding reparation. Though you seem to be the sort of man who would not lie, many things are not as they same.”

  Garth rolled his eyes and pulled back the tarp covering the cube he’d stowed his Dark Iron container in. “Sixty-one gallons of crudey-crude, Mistress Agnethea. As promised.”

  Agnethea ran a hand across the top of the brass canister, fingertips tracing the inlaid gears. Cool to the touch, as always. As ever. Were someone the Iron hungered for to touch the same spot as her, the brass and copper would grow warm to the touch as the crudey-crude, that woeful Vicious Elixir, tried to burrow it’s way through.

  The Obsidian Golem remembered her two encounters with Dark Iron. She cared not to dwell on it, so she shoved it down deep inside. She turned to Nickels. So many secrets. “I have seen many things in my time, Mister Nickels, but never have I seen a hundred gallon Dark Iron container before.” She laughed, flicking her fan to cove
r her mouth. “That is to say, I have never seen one brought to me by a man before.”

  Garth scowled. There was something going on under the surface, here, something he was missing and it’d been bugging him since the beginning. It had started with Barnabas’ bizarrely weird and patently false attitude towards Agnethea and had only gotten worse with his fucking aggravating attraction to someone who was –to put a fine point on it- goddamn weird.

  The tiny slip of a woman with hair so blonde it seemed like white fire, with skin so pale it seemed like snow did not stink of Iron. Internal heat did not radiate from her like it did from any other gearhead. If she was not a gearhead –as he’d automatically assumed, since Meechy had obviously been similar to Nicked Jimmy or even Mental Marc, and he’d been terrified of the entire concept of Golems- then what was she? How did she maintain control of Ickford? How did she control gearheads?

  Both Agnethea and Barnabas exchanged a glance. Seeing the gears turn in Garth’s mind was worrisome, yes indeed. The man looked like he could figure anything out at all when he stood that way.

  Agnethea rapped Garth on the chest once more with her fan. “Impressive it is, Mister Nickels, and I shall indeed cover your loss, should such a thing transpire. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to see about the running of Ickford. If I am away for too long, she begins to boil over. Boys, if you would see to these men?”

  Barnabas and Garth both stepped out of the way to allow Agnethea’s vault guards access to the metal cubes. They stood by the side of the road and watched the procession in silence, unanimously agreeing that they would hold their tongues in their heads until everything was safely stowed and the ‘Queen’s’ men were back at their posts.

  The moment the heavy vault door slammed shut and the bolts clanked noisily into place, Barnabas turned to Garth. He needed to oversee the transformation of the Suits and the powering up of The Dome, and the sooner, the better; everything was stuck in a holding pattern right now, and unlike the CyberPriests –who’d been instantly consumed by The Dome’s needs- each Suit needed to be wired directly into key nodal points inside The Dome’s structure. Every second counted. If there were any more delays, Suits could start overloading.

  “I know this is not what we agreed upon, laddie, and for that I am deeply sorry.” Barnabas hoped he sounded apologetic. He was so put off by dealing with Agnethea and the Suits and everything that was happening all at once that he honestly had no clue how he sounded. “But I for real and for true have a thing that needs tending to.”

  Garth stared at the doorway through which Agnethea had passed. “No,” he said faintly, “she was right. A day or two away from each other is just what the doctor ordered. You go and do your thing. I’ll … I’ll wander around Ickford. Get a feel for the place. If it’s as unique as you say …”

  Garth was an exasperating sort. It was entirely possible he wasn’t aware of his perpetual contrariness. Some side effect of strange Iron toxicity?

  Barnabas shook his head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Nickels stay alive long enough for him to be killed by the two Kings that Barnabas still planned on summoning down atop Ickford. Hastily, Barnabas grabbed hold of Garth’s elbow before the other man got too far away; still staring at the doorway through which Agnethea had returned to her sick world, Garth had started angling himself towards the public doors.

  Garth felt the tiniest hint of pressure around his metal-encased elbow and for the briefest of seconds, it was almost like the mechanics went wobbly; the smallest of hiccups in the pistons, a quick spasm in the endless click-click-clicking that he’d learned to tune out. He looked back and glared at Barnabas, who let go with a flinch.

  Dark Iron hungered after the flesh. That was all that was.

  “I don’t like being touched, dude.” Garth rubbed the elbow. The gears were turning over properly now and the hitch in the pistons was gone. “Especially by a dude I’m having trust issues with.”

  “Well now, hey, hain’t we all having issues of trust these days?” Barnabas demanded with a sardonic grin. The timing of the Enforcers’ arrival was absolutely bollocks. It was almost as if the universe was messing with him somehow. Garth could not spend time alone with Agnethea. The chemistry between the two had been mutual and nauseating. Agnethea knew some of his secrets –the least of which him being King- and there was no doubt in King Barnabas Blake’s mind that the horrible devil shrew would tell the lad all she could to sour the relationship further.

  But there was nothing that could be done about it. He needed to deal with the Suits, needed to wire them into The Dome. If … if the worst happened and the idiot before him, eyes lingering once again over the blackened metal walls of Ickford, wound up siding with Agnethea –something Barnabas didn’t think could happen- well, it wouldn’t be ideal.

  Less than ideal was the idiot getting killed while he was away. Barnabas motioned for Garth to come in close. Another round of people looking to make or lose their fortunes within Ickford’s walls were trundling up the well-worn path and what he had to say needed privacy.

  Garth followed Barnabas warily. “What’s up? Didn’t you,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “say you had some guy you had to see about some thing?”

  “I do indeed, Master Nickels, I do indeed, but I also have a sworn duty to assist you in the removal of your Dark Iron.” Barnabas whispered. “And thus, I have this to say; when your eyes fall upon someone truly afflicted with Vicious Elixir, the hostility and revulsion radiates from you like a sickness.”

  “So?” Garth was perplexed. He was certain –certain- Barnabas had no true desire to help him with his problem, but there was the Barnabas-equivalent of concern in the blacksmith’s voice. “None of the gearheads we met on the road seemed to care?”

  Barnabas shook his head. Exasperating wasn’t even the right word. “On the road, gearheads are weary. Oftentimes we come across them after a fight. Unlike you, master Kingkiller, others find the task depletes them. They either did not see the looks you give, or did not care, or simply put up with it because they saw you as a blacksmith under my tutelage. Other than Mental Marc, nary a one would consider harming one who works with Dark Iron.”

  “Hah.” Memories of killing most of Marc’s crew were murky, a stop-action movie filmed with a crudey-crude lens. Garth did know that doing Thumper and the rest while under Dark Iron Specter had been easy as pie. Not to mention all the damage he’d done in the bar. While he wasn’t proud of all the violence he’d perpetrated, it was undeniable that he was better than most in Arcade City.

  Garth flexed a metal-encased arm. His suit was superlative and provided him with the exact same skillset as Specter, except without all the blackened rage and incomprehensible need to hurt. There would be no problems.

  Barnabas shook his head again, this time even more angrily. “You do not get it.” The King pointed a finger trembling with rage at Ickford. “This place was not meant to be. The King engineered this world to keep gearheads apart as much as possible. At least out here, in the furthest ring. Ickford attracts the most-Ironed like flies to shit, my son, like flies to shit. You’ve met a very good representation of the most-Ironed, hey? Blokes like Nicked Jimmy, Mental Marcus, other. They are all hunger and greed and anger and all the worst things a person can be, and ‘neath it all, Dark Iron, fanning those flames higher and higher until there’s naught left in them.

  When they get to that point, Nickels, they’re meant to move inward, to kill smaller and tougher Kings to get purer Iron. The Iron settles in their blood, washes out a bit of the rage. And so on and so forth, ‘til they reach Arcadia, and are ready to do battle with the King that roosts there. But with Ickford,” Barnabas spat, hawking into the dirt, “they don’t bother. They kill Kings to purchase the idle pleasures to be found within. They don’t bother trying. Killing the Big Kings takes no real skill save patience and even the most crudey-crude stuffed buffoon has that amply. Inside Ickford, at any given time, there are eight to fifteen solidly Ironed c
rews like Nicked Jimmy’s, Nickels. Stinking of hot metal, reeking of oil, buzzing and humming to the gears that turn and burn in their organs. They don’t need traveling blacksmiths, they buy from Agnethea or Havilland Harvard or Twisted Mickel. They will take one look at you with your sneers and your grimaces and they’ll do for you in the street like a mongrel.”

  “Awwww.” Garth mocked Barnabas outwardly, but inwardly, the Kin’kithal had to admit he’d missed the entire problem the blacksmith was bringing up. He clapped a hand on Barnabas’ shoulder and stared deep into the man’s eyes. “I promise you, Barnabas, I will do my level best to stay out of trouble. I’ll keep my moods and opinions to myself.”

  Barnabas issued a curt nod. “See that you do. It may be tougher than you think. Though you got them arms pulling the Iron out of your arms and neck to fuel the gears, the crudey-crude is still in you, even if only for a few seconds now and then.”

  Garth made an ‘x’ on his chest then flipped Barnabas a scout salute. “On my honor, dad, I won’t make any faces or spit in anyone’s food. I’ll be a good boy. Maybe I’ll find Agnethea sooner rather than later and I can start brokering for her help.”

  Barnabas flashed Garth an indulgent smile to cover the sour expression that nearly blossomed on his face. “That would be just fine. Now. I’ve tarried here long enough giving you warnings I should’ve never needed. ‘twill be hard tracking my friend down. By your leave.”

  Garth watched Barnabas shove through the crowd, shouting nonsense about who he was and how he deserved to move to the head of the line, had no one seen him talking personally with Agnethea? The ex-Specter laughed when Barnabas line of threats and promises turned to warnings about how disrespectful gearheads would find themselves on the short end of the stick should they find themselves in dire need of a traveling blacksmith, and the sea of bodies parted.