Making Plans Like They Matter
Bee
“This is fucked. It’s all so fucking fucked.”
Tharn is still shaking. He’s pacing, staring wildly about the shadowed factory. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Leave?” Harretta stares at Tharn. “We just took this place. We can’t abandon it now.”
The surviving members of the Fae Liberation Front are gathered about the pair. They all stand, stark as silhouettes in the middle of the factory floor. Their dead are still scattered around them.
Bee is sitting with his back to the crucible. He is watching them all. He is smelling blood and oil. He is trying to figure out what he thinks.
“This was an ambush!” Tharn shouts. “They knew we were going to be here!” He waves his arms wildly. “They know everything. The revolution is over. We have to go to ground.”
Harretta stalks toward Tharn. “Fae died for this, you coward! They paid for this with their lives while you hid in a bucket!” Bee isn’t sure if Harretta knows that she’s crying or not. He doesn’t know if she knows she’s still holding her gun as she screams into Tharn’s face. “And now you want to say that sacrifice is worth nothing?”
Tharn doesn’t back down, although Bee isn’t sure it’s courage that’s propping his friend up. “We’ll all die,” Tharn says, “if we stick to the plan.”
“You—!” Harretta shouts at the same time that Tharn goes to say, “They—”
Bee thinks he’s figured out what he thinks, though.
“Shut up, both of you.”
Eyes flick to him as he uses the machine gun to lever himself up off the ground. The gun is now a prop with power, he knows. He has bought himself some authority with it.
“Tharn’s right,” he says into the space between Tharn and Harretta’s rage. “This was an ambush. The goblins do know what we’re doing. Staying here is foolish.”
Harretta opens her mouth. He holds up a hand to forestall her. “Harretta’s right too. We can’t slink away,” he says. “We can’t let Jerrell’s life mean nothing. Or Colvin’s. Or Tabbat’s.” In the thirty seconds of respite since the last bullet rang out, Bee has had time to stare at the third body splayed out on the factory floor, has had time to think about all the times he and the brixie clashed, and collaborated, and laughed, and drank, and sang, and hoped, and feared. Has had time to feel nausea crawling up his esophagus like a beast trying to escape.
“We know the goblins knew we’d be here,” he says, “but we don’t know what else they know. We don’t know how they know it. We don’t know who else is in danger. But we can find out. The Red Caps are running right now. They’re maybe a block away. We can follow. We can warn the rest of the rebellion.”
The others stare at him.
“Follow them?” Tharn says. Bee still can’t hear the courage in his voice.
“We were told to stay here,” Harretta says.
Bee looks to Harretta. “Told to?” he asks her. “And here I was thinking we were rebels.”
She looks at him for a moment, chews her tongue. Then she shakes her head. Bee grins.
“To the vote?” she says.
It’s only one against, and even Tharn comes with them as they start to hunt.
Jag
Jag stares. And Jag stares. And Jag stares.
Sil is inside the paper mill. The paper mill that is not a paper mill anymore. Because now, the paper mill is a pile of rubble. It is clouds of dust and bursts of flame. Now, it is a ruin and it has ruined all the lives that were inside it.
Just now, it has ruined Jag’s life.
Jag doesn’t remember when she first met Sil. She doesn’t remember what they told her when they first introduced her to this older child with her white hair and strange pale green skin, and whether she was excited or afraid. She cannot remember a time before Sil at all. And they are not exactly close despite all her efforts. It’s impossible to get close to Sil, after what has been done to her. Sil cannot think of herself, Jag suspects, as someone, or even something, that others can approach. And yet she is always there. She has always been there, ever since Jag can remember. Sil is like a limb. The idea that she can be lost makes no sense to Jag.
And yet, also, the idea that Sil has survived this disaster. This detonation. This ruin…
She was the one who asked Sil to come along tonight. She was the one who sought Sil out. And perhaps that decision saved Jag’s own life, but, for Sil…
Jag takes two steps towards the paper mill—towards what’s left of it. She stops. She can’t get any closer to the consequences of her own decisions.
She has to be alive, Jag thinks. Thinking anything else has been unthinkable for so long. But what else can she think staring at this mess?
The back half of the paper mill is still standing. Pieces of it keep collapsing, tumbling down into the fires below.
Jag takes another step forward. She stops again.
What can she do?
And of course, the answer is nothing. Because that is the answer to her whole life. What does her father trust her with? Nothing. What does her mother care for beside staring obliviously into an alcohol-hazed future? Nothing. And so, Jag has rejected their lives, and their values, and has tried to embrace what the fae have brought to the Iron City. And here she is now, surrounded by the fae’s poverty, and their hatred of the goblins, and what have all her efforts bought her? Nothing. These fae don’t care that she has argued to her wealthy friends that they are overlooking a cultural goldmine. They don’t care that she has sabotaged the social standing of some debutante who was rude to a fae servant. Because what has that done for any of the fae living here in these slums? Nothing. It is all nothing. She amounts to nothing.
And now, here, the final culmination of all her attempts to help. Her plan to get Sil back in touch with her fae roots, to unlock her awareness of the potential of her mother’s heritage… it all ends in this, in Sil’s ending.
So, she stands, and she stares. And she stares. And she stares.
Sil does not emerge. She does not stand, shaking rubble and brick dust from her hair. She does not come to save Jag—neither from the fae nor from herself.
As the dust starts to settle, Jag does see shapes moving—silhouettes emerging from doorways; the locals come to see what has happened to their street, and their source of income. They have come to see what has been destroyed, and who has destroyed it. And they will find her, another goblin standing in the center of it all.
She cannot stay here. She can see, in her mind’s eye, Sil standing there and shouting at her to move.
It hurts, turning around. She is not just abandoning the safety and security of Sil, she is walking away from her hopes for what their relationship could have become, of the ally she had hoped to cultivate. She is leaving her half-sister behind.
She tries to keep Sil’s advice alive in her mind. Walk, she’d said. Don’t run. So, Jag walks. She keeps her head ducked, trying to hide her features. She is filthy as a kobold’s fingernails, and the dust and dirt mean she’s not obviously a goblin from a distance, but she’s not sure she can stand close scrutiny. Some fae stare at her from their shop doorways. A dryad calls out, asks if she’s alright. She keeps walking.
Others call too. “What happened?” asks a stout gnome wearing a wife-beater and boxer shorts. “What happened?” asks a sidhe wrapped tight in a lime-green robe, her hair in curlers. Jag keeps walking. She keeps on doing what Sil told her to do.
There’s a crowd at the end of the street. “What happened?” they ask as she tries to push past. She shrugs, mumbles. Someone grabs her shoulder. She shakes them off. Her heart is pounding. They are too close.
But then they let her pass. Perhaps they know somehow that she has already been through enough. Perhaps they worry she carries trouble with her. Perhaps they just don’t care about her when there is a whole disaster to care about just over her shoulder.
So, she stumbles down the street. She walks away. Leaves Sil behind. Her sister’s body twisted and broken beneath a ton of bricks.
Skart
Blocks away, the last of the Dust is burning through Skart’s system. He can feel the Iron Wall closing like a vise around him, slicing off his connection to the magic and beauty of the world. The last tenuous strands of the trail leading him to the thief stretch out before him, leading down the street. And there, at the end of it, is a small hobbling figure. At the end of it is Knull.
Skart knows exactly who Knull is. Everybody from Knife Bend to the Wallows who values their wallet knows who Knull is. A hustler, a con man, a dealer, a Dust-peddler, a waste of good oxygen, and a bloodstain waiting to happen. In many ways, Skart is surprised that the goblins haven’t swatted Knull yet. He supposes that for all his efforts, Knull has not yet flown close enough to those flames to get burned.
Not until tonight.
Knull, though, does not have the Dust with him. He is hobbling along, a makeshift splint strapped to one ankle—all indicators of a night of misadventure—but the large plastic-wrapped package is clearly absent. That means he has stashed it somewhere, or given it to someone, or sold it, or ingested half of it, or given it one of a thousand other fates. So Skart cannot simply flay him alive and take it back. He needs information.
Of course, he could flay Knull alive and take the information… And that, Skart thinks, is tempting.
Still, Skart has been tortured before. He knows getting the right information takes time. Time he doesn’t have. Even now he can see signs of the revolution leaking through the normality of the night. Too many fae are on the streets. There is too much energy buzzing among them. He can hear scuffles like thunderstorms on the horizon. There is the sound of everything slipping out of his carefully constructed control. It eats at him. It gnaws. But he needs the Dust.
“Knull!” he calls, hurrying to catch up, trying to think clearly through the last haze of the drug.
Knull spins, fists up. What he plans to do with them is beyond Skart.
“Hey!” Skart holds up his hands, palms out. No threat. “Hey.” He smiles.
“What you want?” Knull keeps his distance.
Skart knows Knull, but the problem is Knull knows Skart too. Skart has been a vocal antagonist of Knull’s supplier, Cotter, for years. That was what had given tonight’s plans much of their symmetry, what had made them so satisfying. Many a time Skart has mounted a soapbox and declared Dust an important weapon for social liberation, and decried those who see it only as a means of personal advancement. He has told fae not to buy from Cotter’s dealers. He has told fae not to buy from Knull.
Which all makes it feel a little awkward when he says, “I’m looking to buy some Dust.”
“From me?” Suspicion burns in Knull’s eyes like a fever.
Is there any way, Skart wonders, to make this sound believable?
Inspiration strikes. “Ironically,” he says, “from Cotter. I need bulk and I need it fast, and my usual supply has dried up.”
Knull, Skart knows, knows Cotter is dead. Knull knows that Skart knows that Cotter is dead. But for all this knowledge, Skart doesn’t have a clue what Knull is going to do next.
Knull hesitates. “You hate Cotter,” he says.
“I’m desperate,” Skart says. “The city is desperate. Tonight is desperate.” He’s warming to his theme. “I need to make a deal, and I need to make it now. I will make it with anyone.”
Too much? he wonders.
“How much?” Knull asks.
Maybe not.
“Thirty-eight pounds,” Skart says and immediately regrets it. It is too specific. He tries to shrug. “Give or take.”
“Yeah,” Knull says, blithe as a lamb. “I know a guy who can do that. Not Cotter, though. Someone else.”
Skart actually claps his hands. This is genuinely too easy. “Perfect,” he says. “You can bring it to me. I’ll give you the—”
“Half up front,” Knull says.
“What?” Skart stares at him.
Knull blinks. “The money,” he says, as if not sure something so painfully obvious can possibly be the source of confusion. “Half up front.”
And Skart genuinely hadn’t thought of that. He was never going to pay Cotter the back half of the Dust’s cost. He has Merrick’s fee to be sure, but the whole point of Merrick was that she was the vastly cheaper option. But he’s been so caught up in the night’s calamity the thought of Knull wanting to be paid has not entered his head once.
“But…” The pause is too long, too awkward. “But I’m not buying it from you,” he manages, which given the time, he thinks, is pretty good cover.
Knull blinks again. “Erm…” he says. “Finder’s fee.”
Improv, it seems, is not one of Knull’s skills.
Skart tries to decide how desperate he is. “How much up front?” he says.
Knull cocks his head to one side. He is practically salivating. His pupils are as wide as a Dust-head’s just as they OD.
“Street value…” he mutters. “Pure… Half up front…” He looks at Skart. He looks like he’s about to start laughing. “Million and a half golden gears.”
Skart almost punches him right there.
“Fuck you.” It’s out of Skart before he can get himself under control.
Knull shrugs. “You told me you were desperate.”
The little shit. How much can he pull together? “I’ll give you…” Skart does quick mental math. “Fifty thousand up front.”
Knull blinks again. There is low-balling, after all, and there is figuratively punching someone in the balls.
Then, abruptly, Knull’s demeanor changes. His swagger abandons him. He glances up and down the street, skittish.
“Nah,” he says. “Nah. I’m not here if you’re not serious.” He takes steps away, each one escalating the sense of panic rising in Skart’s chest. “I’m having you on, anyway,” he says. “I don’t know anyone.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Knull is spooked. Skart’s number wasn’t just insultingly low, it was scarily low. Suddenly, Knull thinks it’s a setup. He thinks Skart is just here trying to figure out how to roll him for the Dust. Which, in the end, is exactly what he’s doing.
Skart scrambles for lies. For a second time tonight, he washes up on the shore of the truth.
“I don’t have the money,” he says desperately. “Not up front. But I can get it.” He almost says You can trust me, but if there are any words more likely to set off Knull’s bullshit-meter then Skart doesn’t know what they are. “It’s for a cause,” he says instead. “It’s for the Fae Districts. It’s to liberate us. Once I have that Dust, I can make sure you get as many golden gears as you want.”
Which with the sort of power the Dust would fuel, he could actually do.
He won’t. But he could.
Knull looks at him, weighing him. He shakes his head. “Fuck off,” he says.
“There’s nothing?” Skart says. “Not an ounce of feeling in your heart for your fellow fae? There’s no one here you want to save?”
“Yeah there is,” Knull says. “That’s why I want three million golden gears.”
“You think too small.” Skart’s frustration can’t help but leak out between his gritted teeth.
“What?” Knull says. “You think I should ask for five?”
Skart is on the verge of resorting to violence when suddenly he pauses. He stares. Because just as suddenly, a group has appeared in the street. And they should not be here.
Knull sees Skart’s look, hesitates, then glances over his shoulder. His body goes rigid. “Oh shit,” he says. “Gobbos.”
A group of ten, hooded, dressed in black, armed. A commando group.
“Spriggans,” Skart says.
“What?” Knull is slowly stepping away.
“Yellow ribbons,” Skart says. He can see the insignia on their arms. “House Spriggan. They shouldn’t be here.”
Why are they here? And Skart knows it for a certainty now: he’s been away from the rebellion too long.
The pack of Spriggans turns, sees them. Skart grabs Knull’s arms.
“Let us,” he says, “continue negotiations elsewhere. Right now, we need to run.”
Knull looks down at his ankle. Skart gives him a sour smile.
“Try.”
Jag
Jag is still trying not to run. She’s getting worse at it.
Even as midnight approaches, the Fae Districts are buzzing. Fae stand around in small groups outside homes and stores chatting animatedly or drinking and staring, transistor radios playing dense rhythmic music. Pigeons and bats whirl in the sky. From time to time, armed groups bundle through intersections. The crowds watch them like foxes frozen by headlights. Occasionally sounds that may or may not be gunshots punctuate the night.
The temptation to find a payphone and call House Red is growing, but Jag remembers Sil’s warning. Sil plotted out a way home. A way to stay safe.
But did Sil plot out all the variables? Something, it is becoming clear, is happening. Jag doesn’t think anybody knows exactly what it is. She’s too scared to stop and ask. The moment, though, is building. The sense is pervading the city that events will be clear soon. And every fae in the Iron City seems to be desperate that no one else figures it out before they do.
“What happened?” they call to Jag. “What happened?” Over and over. “What happened?”
She wants to wipe the dust and dirt away. It draws every eye. But if she does… the green of her skin will be obvious. Then when an eye reaches her, it will be so much worse.
“Hey!” someone shouts to her. A gaggle of sidhe youth preening outside a corner store. “What happened?”
“Hey! Hey!” Shouts follow her. “Why you so unfriendly?”
She risks a look back. A few sidhe are wandering down the street after her.
Don’t run. Don’t run.
“What you do?” one says. “You do something? You bring trouble here?”
Don’t run. Don’t.
“You rude.”
“Think we should teach her some manners.”
Jag looks back again. The whole knot of youth has pulled away from the corner store, is following her.
Don’t run. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
Jag tries not to run.
She fails.
Bee
Bee presses himself tightly against the roof tiles. Scents of soot, stale rainwater, and mold fill his nostrils. His chest pistons up and down as he tries to regain his breath. His heart thunders, machine-gun loud.
They’ve been chasing the Red Cap goblins for ten blocks now—first racing to keep them in view, then furtively ducking behind chimneys, A/C units, and water towers, desperate to avoid another gun battle, desperate to not pick up more casualties.
Now, Bee has only a gutter to hide behind.
Tharn lies next to him. Bee wants to check that his friend’s head is back in the game. To make sure he’s mastered his fear, that he’s not a danger to everyone here. But Bee doesn’t dare. He can’t be overheard. The Red Caps are standing in the street almost directly below them.
One of the goblins talks into a radio handset. Bee can’t hear the words, just the tone. It doesn’t seem like anyone involved in the conversation is happy.
The Red Caps start running again. Bee and the others peel themselves off the rooftop and start running too. They try to keep the distance constant, try to stay quiet.
Tonight, the city below has a strange energy. Too many fae are out on the streets. Smoke is rising from factories that should lie quiet. Shouting echoes from faraway avenues and alleyways, distant and hollow. More gunshots than usual reverberate between the buildings. Bee thinks about the other groups sent out to claim the city in the name of revolution.
Twenty-one members of the Fae Liberation Front run across the rooftops of the Iron City now. There were twenty-four at the evening’s start. And Bee knows that revolution is a violent act. He’s read his theory. But what if, he wonders, Tharn was right? What if the revolution is over already? What if they’re already defeated?
The machine gun bounces and clatters against his hip. He both does and doesn’t want to have to use it again.
The goblins turn abruptly left, disappearing through a gap in a tall chain-link and green tarpaulin-covered fence into an empty lot and out of sight. Bee can see a fire escape ahead of them descending down into the space. He holds up a hand. The Fae Liberation Front stumbles to a halt.
“Why’d they go in there?” Harretta is panting hard.
“Am I a mind reader now?” Bee approaches the fire escape with a sense of trepidation, grinds to a halt five yards away.
Harretta knots her brows. “You OK?”
He doesn’t want to say he’s scared. Especially after his big-man act back at the factory. Tharn puts a hand on his shoulder. Perhaps, of all of them, he understands.
Together, they lower themselves, crawl forward. The smell of filthy roof tiles is becoming familiar.
Bee looks down on an undeveloped lot. Tall fences topped with razor wire isolate it. Security cameras peer into adjoining streets. It is an unfriendly space.
Tonight, it has become a little more so.
A series of blood-colored tents obscure the dirt and weeds. Goblins scurry between them, clad in back, eponymous berets clamped in place. There are tables full of guns and ammunition. Some goblins strip weapons, reassemble them; others examine clipboards and point with purpose.
Bee would love to pretend that this is some rich goblin camping expedition. He would love to pretend that it is innocent. He would love to pretend that he stayed back in the smelting factory where he was ordered to stay, or anything else that would mean he’s not perched precariously on the edge of a rooftop peering down on a House Red Cap mobile military command center.
He would love to pretend that Tharn isn’t right, and that the revolution isn’t utterly fucked.