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

  Davram remembered all that, just as keenly as he remembered what he’d done next.

  He’d run.

  He, a Platinum Brigadier, had run. Had turned tail and run. The whole length of Arcade City, if he were true about it, though many of those details were a frantic blur; as a Brigadier, the powers given unto him by doing for the Platinum King were of a different variety than those of the King Himself, and in his panic, in his blind panic to be well quit of King Blake, he’d managed to evade that murderous monarch long enough to be dismissed.

  “And lo,” Dave the Bartender muttered miserably, heart aching so deeply that a black chasm seemed to rise up out of the ground and move through him, “Davram the Brigadier became Dave the Bartender, hiding in the furthest reaches of Arcade City, so far out of sight and out of mind that no one in the world recalls the former and only tolerates the latter. What a great, bollocking coward!”

  Misery now courting his mood like a long-lost lover, Davram snapped his fingers and Mortimer gave a wry wheeze of sound before disappearing back into the earth from which he’d risen.

  Dave climbed down from his cart, cast one longing look at the glassware nestled in their solid crates and found himself wondering if he’d survive the encounter within; his choice of plots for Kingspawn Pub had been intentional, based on some few small things he and the other Brigadiers had noticed about the Matrons during their time patrolling the City, but he was by no means certain of anything.

  Dave ran a hand lovingly against the door frame, pressing his will ever so slightly into the grains until he felt a click. Then he simply shouldered his way in to his pub.

  The first thing to be noticed was the overwhelming smell of fresh baked cookies. Against his will, the bartender’s head hung low on his neck and the most exasperated sigh he’d ever released came out of his mouth.

  Primrose.

  The worst of a bad lot. He’d rather deal with the King than Mad Old Primrose, she who were always nattering on about her garden and insisting on the pretense that she was a real old woman as opposed to a giant, clacking and clattering collection of metal pressed into the vague shape of a woman.

  “Cooeee, Master Bartender!” Primrose’s voice –coming from the kitchen- was full of bright promise and happy warmth, precisely the sort of voice you imagined coming from fairy tale witches scant seconds before she tried to cook you into an apple pie. “I do hope you do not mind, but I made myself to home in your wonderful establishment.”

  Dave moved cautiously into the bar proper, eyes focusing on the dozen or so trays full of cookies arranged ever so artfully atop nearly every single flat surface of the bar. She’d been waiting for quite some time, then, long enough to figure everything out, though, he reflected ruefully, the effort she must’ve expended to come in through the kitchen doors had undoubtedly tipped his hand straightaway.

  He should’ve intervened. Easier to fog the mind of a Gearman hunting for the disappearances of a few crews than to deal with the probing intellect behind the cracked Nanny AI. There was only one way a meeting with Primrose was going to end, and when that was over and done with, the jig –as the musicians who played in his pub from time to time were wont to say- would be all the way up.

  Dave genuflected properly. “No mind at all, Mistress Primrose. No mind at all. I do hope you found my little hobby to your liking?”

  Primrose burst through the door, carting a tray of cookies in each hand, and Dave’s heart leaped with a smidgeon of hope; her vast metal body betrayed no hint of the deep red lights just below the surface of her metal skin. There was hope yet that he could avoid … complications.

  Primrose put the two trays of delicious, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies down atop the bar and confronted her absentee host. “The calling of bar man is a good one, Master Bartender, a good one indeed. Why, in our wonderful city of Arcadia, there were many such establishments. Bartenders bring good cheer and warm tidings to those who cross the threshold. Though I confess, when I arrived to find this bar locked down tight as anything our grand City has ever seen, I was a bit taken aback.”

  Dave spread his palms wide, in apology. “When I travel, Mistress Primrose, I find it best to ensure that my patrons can find no ingress. Else when I return, I would find nothing but empty beer kegs and all of my fine spirits drained dry. You understand. As sole proprietor, I must protect my investment.”

  Primrose nodded understandingly, fine jets of steam hissing from vents in her neck. “Of course I do, Master Bartender. Please, do sit here with me at the bar so that I might talk to you on a closer level.”

  As he’d been waiting for it, Dave could hardly miss the glint of scarlet glinting behind the façade that was Primrose’s ever-shifting face. He drew a chair up from a nearby table, feigning weariness. “Again, Mistress, but I must apologize. The journey from Green Terrace has made me woefully tired. I fear the journey to bar top would be the end of me. I shall … I shall sit here for the time being, Mayhap my energy will return to me. But please, do tell; to what do I owe the pleasure of a Mistress under my fine roof? I can scarcely believe my eyes.”

  Oh, it was so easy, to fall back into the pandering, obsequious way of talking to those who carried out the King’s more venal commands. Whatever it was that gave the Mistresses their ability to think left them with the delusion that they were proper nobility. Being left in charge of Arcade City while their King wandered around doing who knew what had obviously left them worse off than ever.

  Primrose eyed Dave the Bartender thoughtfully. None of the Mistresses understood why their One and Only King had done for the Brigadiers as he had, and none could find any indication as to what they were supposed to do next; King Blake had killed his elite crew and disappeared into the night, just as Davram Silverhelm had done.

  They were all of them quite at a loss as to what they should do with this long thought dead Brigadier and it’d fallen to poor old Primrose to see what was what, hey? Test the lad’s mettle and so forth.

  “Green Terrace is quite far to the North, Master Bartender.” Primrose adjusted her smock and moved noisily around to the front of the bar, senses watching the seated Brigadier for any sign of panic, or attack, or anything. Nothing. No hint of worry. She’d quite forgotten how cool a customer a Brigadier could be. “Why travel so far?”

  Dave jerked a thumb towards the door. “Glassware, Mistress Primrose. When Specter did tear my joint down to the ground, a large volume of precious glass was broken in the process. Green Terrace has some of the finest glassblowers around.”

  “Plus,” Primrose added darkly, “The journey did give you a sort of vacation from your woes, did it not?”

  “It did indeed, Mistress.” Dave nodded his head in agreement. The faint red lights trickling out here and there through Primrose’s metallic skin grew a little richer, a little more intense. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company? As I said not just a moment ago, I can scarcely credit what I am seeing. A Mistress, so far out? It beggars this poor old man’s imagination to the breaking point.”

  Primrose let a smile break through her normally calm mask, displaying all the many and varied ‘teeth’ that hid just behind her ladylike lips. “I am well certain you know full well why I am come this far out, Master Silverhelm, well certain.”

  Dave burst out laughing at the old moniker his dear friend Sonnensfeld had gifted him with one particularly drunken evening. The Warrior Poet had done the same for all of them, and as was the way of things in Arcadia lo a hundred years ago, they’d all stuck, and so Davram Solan had become Davram Silverhelm overnight, and no amount of fussing could get anyone to call him aught else.

  Steam hissed noisily from several vents across Primrose’s face and neck, and the lights playing beneath pulsed.

  Dave waved a hand, as if he could wave off Mistress’ temper tantrum. “I meant no offence, Mistress Primrose, none at all. It’s just that I’ve not been called that in a terribly long time. It reminded me of better times.” He patted his pockets un
til he found the small flask he packed at all times.

  Grinning slyly at the Mistress, who watched and waited pensively, the ex-Brigadier gestured. A small cup, carved delicately from wood and covered in a finely crafted rose and ivy motif, bloomed up out of the wooden tabletop. Dave twiddled the flask full of ancient whiskey.

  “Now,” he said somewhat wistfully –the flask held the last of the whiskey that Sonnensfeld had brewed up-, “as I enjoy a nice tot of whiskey, please, illuminate for me why you are here.”

  “Won’t you have a cookie or two, Master Bartender?” Primrose asked gently, albeit in that specific way that all Mistresses possessed. “They’re ever so delicious and I made them all for you.”

  When Davram made no move to hasten as quickly as his feet would carry him to the nearest tray of cookies, Primrose’s haughty demeanor faltered for a moment. In all her years, she’d never seen anything like it. A panicky check with her sister Matrons found that they, too, had never experienced any difficulties using subharmonic commands. Quick as a wink, Mistress Gardenia –who was out and about visiting Estates along the inner circle- verified that her words were met with absolute adherence.

  Enchanting, oaky heat washed down his gullet, spreading subtle warmth through his nervous guts. None of them had ever battled a Nanny before. Not once. Certainly, when they were far enough away from Arcadia, the Brigadiers had spoken often about doing for one of the clanging Matrons. Alas, even with all the powers given unto them by Platinum Iron –so it’d been called then, though now everyone just called it purest Dark Iron- they’d never been entirely certain just how things would go.

  Dave rather feared he was going to find out, and sooner rather than later.

  “Please,” Dave cajoled as he poured more of the precious liquid into the cup, “humor me, Mistress.”

  Primrose nodded, even as a stab of worry cut through her thoughts; something strange was happening to the hidden world of Arcade City, odd power surges throbbed in The Dome, weird lights flickered high in the sky, and these things were dominating the assembled Matrons’ processing time. They were too busy to come.

  Her little difficulty in controlling one wayward Platinum Brigadier was going to have to be handled all on her own.

  “Very well, Master Bartender, I shall explain precisely why I am here.” Primrose rolled forward a bit, unmindful of a table full of cookies that went crashing to the floor as she nudged it. “There is a scourge rolling through Arcade City, a monstrosity going by the name of Specter. A foul and vicious beast, afflicted with the strangest sort of Dark Iron madness as we’ve never seen before. Two of our finest hunt the beast wearing a man’s flesh.”

  Dave raised his glass to the heavens. “Ah. Yes. Chevril Pointillier and Dominic Breton. Fine men. Wise men. And I dare say,” the ex-Brigadier slammed the shot down and the fire joined the heat in his belly, “you do them discourtesy by implying that there are others in their class. I assure you, there are not. What Dominic lacks in the age and experience, Gearmaster Chevril more than makes up in knowing damn near everything there is to know about everything.”

  Primrose watched Dave pour another dram in the glass he’d so rudely summoned up out of the table. What a wretched display of power. And yet … while Primrose had never liked the Brigadiers –secretly, she’d been more than ecstatic at their communal demise by her King’s hand- she … they … nevertheless … needed Davram Silverhelm to return to Arcadia, which was why, instead of severing his head from his body and planting said noggin in her garden alongside the other impertinent bulbs, she was being polite.

  “We were curious,” Primrose continued, “as to where and how this Specter had garnered so much Dark Iron so quickly, and so we determined to aid our valiant Gearmen in their quest by digging as deep as we could into the history of this place. Now, and I am sure this comes as no surprise to you, Master Bartender, we in Arcadia have long heard of Kingspawn Pub and all, but perhaps it will surprise you nevertheless that we failed to consider the implications behind such an establishment as this one persisting in this area.”

  Dave dipped his head. “Oh, aye, Mistress Primrose. This area is positively rotten with beasts of all kinds. Why, there is a Shaggy Man den not five miles from this very spot. I do like their howling late at night when I am feeling melancholy. Fits right in with me mood, of late, though I do think they are quite a bit sadder, baying for a thing that cannot hang in the sky without King’s Will lighting the way.” He thumped the table loudly to drive the point home. “And if I am not mistaken, a Widow’s Peak has been flitting about, looking for a place to build an aerie. If he does take the chance, rest assured I shall do for him in a most circumspect way. None shall be the wiser.”

  Primrose ignored the bartender’s mildly sozzled interruption with all the grace she could muster. “So, after informing Dominic and Chevril of what they are up against…”

  “Which is what?” Dave interrupted, a sly grin blossoming on his face when the dim lights that were the true intellect behind Primrose’s mind began gleaming the brightest red he’d ever personally seen. “Just what do you think Specter is, if not a man from the Outside?”

  Primrose tried to calm the boiling rage roiling through her and found she could not. The man had been goading her this whole time, almost as if he sought his death. Alas, Primrose thought to herself as she prepared, he shall inevitably be given what he seeks if he continues down this path. “A new and twisted form of Obsidian Golem, of course. His facility with Dark …”

  Davram Silverhelm tilted his head back and laughed once more, this time throwing a great deal of disdain and pure, spiteful mockery into it. He fixed his gaze onto the machine’s own beady, luminous red eyes. “Garth Nickels is no Golem, Nanny.” The red grew brighter still. “He is a man, from the Outside, pure and s… well, no. There is nothing simple about that man, but from the Outside he is. I know not what he is, but I know what he is not.”

  Primrose decided she would give the foolish Brigadier one last chance to do the wise thing. He’d run from his duty once before. Never mind that said duty had been to die at the hands of the King that’d raised him up from a foul gearhead into something wondrous, it’d been his duty.

  Davram Silverhelm would not shirk his responsibilities again. And if he did, well, the Matrons had gotten back to her at long last; they’d been operating fine this past hundred years without one of the luminary best, they would continue on as they had.

  Primrose cleared a throat that needed no clearing and addressed Davram in that special way once more. “You shall eat your cookies like a good little boy, Master Silverhelm, and then you shall come with me back to Arcadia, whereupon you shall fix your mess. All that is happening now is your fault, you bad little boy, and it is high time you …”

  Dave tipped the empty shot glass onto the table and rose, pushing the chair away as he rose. “Aye.” He nodded soberly, bitter that he’d not had time to appreciate the drink –and all its deleterious side effects- properly.

  “Aye.” Dave said again, firmly. “It is all my fault, and yet, somehow, I do not care. When King Barnabas Blake the One and Only descended from his roost on high and did for my companions, my loved ones, my brothers and sisters of the Platinum Brigade in the way he did, he destroyed every last shred of loyalty. The road, Mistress Primrose, to enlightenment in Arcade City is vicious, and brutal, and uncompromising. We who follow King’s Gauntlet know pain and suffering unlike anything a mere machine like yourself can comprehend. We are torn in half, and sewn back together again with clumsy Dark Iron threads. We lose ourselves, Nanny, we lose ourselves for long periods to the gnashing, whirring blades that churn through the dark spaces of this pocket-sized world of Blake’s, and when … if we are lucky enough to rise up out of that murk to stand before the gates of Arcadia, we understand what the King wants. And he ruined that. All the lads and lasses out there now in the wild places feel this, know it in their bones e’en if they are fresh and new to the Iron that binds us all. Mayhap I saw in
Garth Nickels a chance at revenge. I reckon I will never know. But I will not move from my bar, not for you, not for anything. And you can try your voice all you like, Nanny Primrose, but you shall not get me to budge against my will.”

  Dave watched, impressed, as Nanny Primrose clicked and clacked into the form that terrified all those who saw it; swollen from her almost-ladylike mannequin form to a clattering beast that blazed incarnadine red and bristled with all manner of weapons meant to cut, rip, rend and burn through metal bone and rough skin, Nanny Primrose in all her robotic rage was surely a thing to fear. “And shall I tell you why, before we have it, you maddened automaton?”

  “Do tell, Master Silverhelm.” Nanny’s voice hissed out from somewhere deep inside.

  “Because, this far from the center of Arcadia and with your King absent, your powers fail you.” Davram rolled his shoulders, and the platinum armor that’d been his to command at any time flexed from his skin in rippling waves that filled the air with the sound of two glasses clinking together. He jutted his chin outwards towards the bar. “Just there, in fact.”

  Nanny Primrose roared, a robotic eruption of mechanical rage that had the rafters rattling. She moved at terrific speed, tearing through wooden tables and chairs as if they weren’t even there.

  Davram Silverhelm caught two of the four arms coming his way in his gauntleted hands. Gnashing, whirring blades lanced out of the red pit where Primrose’s face used to be only to skitter uselessly against his mighty platinum helmet. “I think,” Davram said mirthfully, wrestling with Nanny, “I think I shall rename my bar, once it’s regrown from this little to do. What think you of … Matron’s Head Tavern?”