City of Iron and Dust Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for City of Iron and Dust:

  Title Page

  Leave us a Review

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Let Me Tell You a Fairy Story

  1 Three Assholes Walk Into a Bar

  2 Old Dogs. New Tricks

  3 Enter the McGuffin

  4 Rebels with Causes

  5 Dusted

  6 Knull and Void

  7 And Away We Go

  8 Fight Night

  9 Making Plans Like They Matter

  10 Iron Fists and Lead Feet

  11 Making It Worse

  12 When the Bodies Hit the Floor

  13 That’s Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Me Into

  14 Of Romance and Rage

  15 Realizations and Repercussions

  16 And Then It All Goes to Shit

  17 Life is Always Fatal

  18 The View from Rock Bottom

  19 And They All Lived Happily Ever After

  20 Wasted Youth

  Epilogue: A Cinderella Story

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  Praise for

  City of Iron and Dust:

  “A fantastic book, full of wit and sharp humor, City of Iron and Dust careens through a modernized faerie at a breakneck pace, full of verve and unforgettable characters. Oakes spins a smart, electric, and sometimes snarky tale, showing that the beating heart of modern fantasy is alive and well.”—JOHN HORNOR JACOBS, author of A Lush and Seething Hell and The Incorruptibles

  “I truly wish there were more fantasies written with this verve and steel. I don’t think I’ve loved a book this hard in quite a while.”—T. FROHOCK, author of the Los Nefilim series

  “A wonderful mash-up fantasy with a dash of Carl Hiaasen, a mad scramble through a burning city for the ultimate prize. Fans of Daniel Polansky’s Low Town or Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs will enjoy this one.”—DJANGO WEXLER, author of Ashes of the Sun

  “A hard-boiled, phantasmagoric fable of blasted myths and desiccated dreams exploding into bloody revolution. Epic, intimate and one-of-a-kind!”—DALE LUCAS, author of The Fifth Ward series

  “City of Iron and Dust is a bloody, brutal and bold novel featuring all manner of fantastical creatures... but it’s really about being human. Oakes has crafted a tale that is as entertaining as it is wonderfully original.”—TIM LEBBON, author of Eden

  “Oakes delivers wit, grit, and magic in spades, all mixed together with a heap of heart-stopping action and relentless humor. Unforgettable.”—NATANIA BARRON, author of Queen of None

  “I was sold on this ‘grim for all the cynical reasons’ fantasy novel by J.P. Oakes with the six words of the first chapter title. Well, two of the words weren’t that important. The point is that Oakes knows we’re tired of all the heroic and earnest and uplifting tropes, and that what we really want is something nasty and funny and thrilling to read.”—MARK TEPPO, author of The Cold Empty

  “The Iron City is a singular dark fantasy creation that breathes with menace and decay. J.P. Oakes’ gallows humor and wit bring a sharp levity to the story that will leave you laughing, and then horrified at just what you were laughing about.”—PAUL JESSUP, author of The Silence That Binds

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  City of Iron and Dust

  Print edition ISBN: 9781789097108

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781789097115

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  www.titanbooks.com

  First edition: July 2021

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  © Jonathan Wood 2021. All rights reserved.

  Jonathan Wood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For Tami, Charlie, and Emma

  “The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped.”

  —J.G. Ballard

  Let Me Tell You a Fairy Story

  (or, It’s Not Epic if it Doesn’t Have a Prologue)

  Once upon a time there was the world that was. And you’ll hear that it was golden, and that it was beautiful, and that it was everything else that everyone always says it used to be. Specific examples, however, will not be provided.

  Once upon a time there was the world that was. And then it went away.

  The goblins came from the North. In the world that was, this was something that happened from time to time, and this attack, like the others, was looked upon with something like pity and something like dismay. A few troops were sent to dismiss the problem, as they usually were.

  But this was no longer the time that was. And the few troops were not victorious, and the goblins continued their march south.

  In the wake of this defeat, the fae flung around recriminations: this was the result of poor leadership; this was the fault of some sidhe’s agenda, or this brownie’s ineptitude; this was all somebody else’s fault. The goblins did not care, though. The goblins kept on marching. So, more troops were sent.

  And still this was not the time that was. This was new. This was a hundred goblin tribes sick of being relegated and subjugated finally united under the banner of one. And that one was Mab. And Mab swept the fae troops aside like so much dust collected at her feet.

  Then the war was on in earnest. And perhaps it was a war of good against evil. But perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it depended whose side you were on.

  But no matter whose side you were on, it was Mab who ended the war.

  They called it Mab’s Kiss. Three great fae forest cities gone so quickly their inhabitants didn’t have the time to scream. Magic more powerful than any the fae had left. And right alongside those cities, the fae’s willingness to fight disappeared too.

  And so, the unthinkable was thought, and the fae lost the war.

  The goblins built cities of cold iron then, of steel and glass. They encased those cities in great metal walls. Inside them, they cut down every tree. They herded the fae into slums and forced them into factories. They bent their heads beneath the twin burdens of labor and poverty.

  The fae cried out as it happened. Enclosed within these metropolises of iron, they reached out for their magic. But they felt nothing. They could do nothing. The great iron walls kept them cut off from the earth, and the trees, and all the magic they had once known. Their magic had been amputated.

  But as the fae writhed, so the goblins thrived. They innovated. They built shopping malls, and microwave ovens, and combustion engine
s. They invented guns, and subcultures that celebrated guns. They aired 24/7 news channels. They sold each other mortgages.

  And so, the world that was went away, and the world that is began. And in this new world, there was one city that rose far to the west. There was one city that gleamed bright across the stumps of a thousand felled trees. The Iron City.

  In this city, in this new world, there are five towers, one for each of the great Goblin Houses. And everyone in this city—goblin and fae alike—looks up at them and knows in their hearts that these houses are the axle upon which all their lives spin.

  Just because everybody believes a thing, though, does not mean that it is true. The end of the world that was should have proven that. Complacency, though, is such an easy sin.

  Rather, there is another tower upon which all should look. This one is not so great. This one is dirty, and squalid, and nothing more than the stunted aspirations of a desperate developer who went to an early grave. Atop this tower is a penthouse, which—despite its name—is as small and filthy as the tower to which it belongs.

  Inside, this penthouse is full of blood.

  This is closer to the truth. This is closer to the core of it all.

  Deeper into the apartment, beyond the still-cooling aftermath of violence, hidden away, still waiting to be found, is a package. It is a small thing, not even as big as a gym bag, and unassuming in the way such things often are.

  It is a package bound in plastic wrap and brown tape. It is a package full of white powder, and it is the axle that the Iron City spins upon tonight. And as it turns, it ushers in not the world that was, nor the world that is, but the world that is yet to be, and tonight not everyone is destined to live happily ever after…

  1

  Three Assholes Walk Into a Bar

  Jag

  A bar. A dive. A neon sign glitching on and off above a burst of yellow light seen through a smeared windowpane. A bouncer hulking in a doorway—the type with more knuckles than IQ points. Probably half-dryad by the look of him, although his mother certainly wasn’t one of the willow-tree sprites that get all the press. The smell of wet asphalt and cigarette smoke. Brownies, kobolds, and sidhe bundling past, wishing they had enough money to go in. But no one in this part of the Iron City is particularly liquid right now. They haven’t been for the past fifty years. Prospects don’t look great.

  Inside, a mad cram of bodies. Ruddy-faced kobolds. Sidhe in imperious shades of blue. Pixies scattered across the dance floor all the colors of a shattered rainbow. A shouting, clawing mass with one thing in mind: erasing the grind of the week with bad decisions, and the possibility to one day tell a story that starts with the phrase, “Don’t judge me, because I was obliterated at the time.”

  The fae of the Iron City are at their shift’s end. They are at their wits’ end. They don’t appreciate the rhyme, even though the band on the stage are milking it for all they’re worth. A pixie on vocals, her hair half-shaved, the other half bright as summer lilacs. She’s screeching and screaming, throwing all of her adolescent energy into every word. And it’s immature, and it’s mostly wrong, but there’s still a beauty to her passion that half the preening fae with their pints of fermented nectar can’t wait to tell her about.

  Behind her, a kobold has scavenged an old oak door from somewhere and is beating on it like it said something horrifying about his sister. He’s broad, and wearing a shirt to prove it, muscles emerging from the shaggy mane of red hair that obscures half his features.

  The slender sidhe violinist who accompanies them is perhaps hampered by her own ennui. Still, attitude counts for a lot on stage and her dead-eyed stare from above knife-blade sharp cheekbones makes up a lot of ground.

  The three of them have Jag transfixed.

  Jag does not belong here. Jag’s neatly coiffed and perfectly trimmed hair don’t belong. Her clothes with their perfect lines and elegant stitching don’t belong. And Jag’s race definitely does not belong.

  Jag is a goblin. She is obviously and painfully a goblin. She is green-skinned and sharp-featured. She has yellow eyes with slit pupils. She is long-fingered. And while she is taller and graced with more sidhe-like elegance than most of her kind, she is still, most undeniably, a goblin.

  Jag is an oppressor in a bar of the oppressed.

  Jag thinks she knows all this, of course. Jag believes she is wise to the possibilities and the dangers, but Jag is the heir of House Red Cap. Her father is Osmondo Red. Consequences have been, in her experience, things that happen to other goblins.

  The other reason no one in the bar is willing to cure Jag of her assumptions is Sil. Sil stands behind Jag’s chair. Sil with a sword strapped to her back, and scars on her face that the sweep of her white-blonde hair cannot quite obscure. Half-goblin, half-sidhe, every angle on her body seems to have been sharpened to a point. And while her skin is too green for the tastes of the fae around her, too pale for the goblins back home, she is more than prepared to take on anyone who wants to take it up with her.

  Sil

  Sil hears the music. She sees the encounter with the numinous it inspires in Jag. She finds it does nothing for her. To her, the notes are simply obfuscation, hiding mutters, muting angry words.

  What Sil does care about is intent. The way one gnome shifts his weight, the way another kobold stares. She cares about the purposeful movements that the fae try to dissemble. She cares about escape routes and high-priority targets.

  She has the whole bar charted by now, the route of every wooden tray of spiked milk and moss-stuffed taco catalogued. She sees everything except the thing that makes Jag grin and look round at her, and say, “It’s so beautiful!”

  She wonders if she ever did that. Ever turned and smiled and exclaimed in wonder. She can’t remember. When she looks back, her past is a mist she cannot penetrate. Only the lessons she was taught stand out. Islands of memory. Each beating distinct.

  She nods, though. She has been taught to agree with her half-sister. Another lesson drummed into her ribs. Her kidneys. The back of her skull.

  Jag turns back to the band, grinning. Sil checks to make sure that no one else has made a move. To make sure that Jag is safe.

  In the end, that is all she does, and can, care about.

  Knull

  Deeper into the bar, away from the stage, and through the press of onlookers, Knull is shifting his weight from foot to foot. He is made restless by his father’s pixie blood, made anxious by his mother’s brownie heritage.

  Every drug deal, Knull knows, is a fuck-up waiting to happen. It’s not that he’s a pessimist. It just that he knows the best-case scenario is that everyone goes home afterwards and makes themselves incrementally dumber.

  Knull also knows that every drug deal is a chance to make serious cash. Especially when the shit he’s selling has been cut three ways to Mourn’s Day, and is likely to only get the purchaser about as high as a three-day-old balloon. And that’s exactly what he’s going to sell to the pair of dull-eyed gnomes in front of him now. They aren’t regulars. They aren’t locals. That means they get the tourist special.

  “This?” Knull shakes his baggy of Dust at the pair. “You don’t want this.” He slips it back into his pocket. He points to the other baggies he’s spread out on the table.

  “Titania’s Revenge.” He picks up a bag of completely identical Dust. “It’s like being kissed on your frontal lobes.” He picks up another—its contents in absolutely no way different from the previous two bags. “Iron Blood. It’s got a bite, but it’ll be one hell of a night.”

  “Why,” says one of the two gnomes, “don’t we want the other bag?”

  Knull pats his pocket. “This? Serious customers only, mate.”

  The gnomes exchange a look. They are big, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal tattoos and biceps. Knull recognizes their guild brands: coal miners. No Dust, he thinks, will ever get them as high as their own sense of self-importance.

  “You think,” one gnome says, “that we ain’t
serious?”

  Knull pats his pocket one more time. “Midsommar Dreams? That’s dryads only, my friends. It’s not personal, just biology. This would screw you up so bad you wouldn’t know your own names for three days.”

  The gnomes exchange a look.

  “I want the Midsommar Dreams,” one says.

  This, Knull thinks, is like taking sap from a dryad. Except it’s taking money from idiots, which is potentially a whole lot easier.

  “I’m telling you, guys. It ain’t for sale.”

  One produces a fistful of coins. “You sure?”

  Then comes the pantomime of indecision. “Fine,” Knull says eventually, “but let me make sure you’re up for it first. My conscience and all.” He slips a finger into his pocket, into a baggie entirely dissimilar to the one that contains the so-called Midsommar Dreams, the one he’s been holding back in case one of his regulars shows up. He dips it directly into the pure shit.

  He pulls out a white-tipped finger. “Here,” he says, tapping the residue off onto a tiny sheet of rolling paper. “Rub that on your gums and don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

  Their eyes are as big as saucers. There is some shoving to get to the Dust first. The bigger one wins. His finger goes into the Dust, and then he works it around his mouth like he’s trying to unclog a drain.

  His eyes balloon.

  Knull has never seen the production of Dust, but he’s heard about it plenty. It is a tree resin, he has been told. The resin is ground down, and can be ingested in a variety of ways. Some like to snort it, others to eat it, while others like to heat it up and inject into the vein of their choosing. You can even smoke the stuff if you like.

  Users of Dust like to tell Knull that the specific method of ingestion varies the high they get, but from Knull’s perspective the end result is always the same. For just a moment, for just that fae, the Iron Wall goes away. For just a moment, they touch the world that was, the world that went away. For just a moment, magic is alive within their hearts.