Page 35 of The Iron Raven

With a couple exceptions, of course. The most notable was the queen we were on our way to see, right now. The princess I’d lost, who had chosen my greatest rival instead of me.

Nyx wasn’t Meghan. In fact, the two were so different it was laughable. But she was beautiful, dangerous, and the most intriguing faery I’d met in a long time. I wondered what would happen if I did kiss her. Would she put a knife to my throat? Stab me in the delicates? Or...would she return it?

Did I dare take that chance again?

A squeaking, clanking, jingling sound interrupted us before I could make a decision. Looking back, I saw the Tinkerer’s wagon coming toward us on its segmented insect legs, looking so much like a massive metal spider I nearly leaped over the railing to avoid it. As the wagon’s girth nearly took up the middle of the bridge, Nyx hopped smoothly onto a post, and I pressed myself back against the wood as the structure lurched by, hissing, smoking, and leaving a trail of oil behind it, and continued toward the Iron Realm.

“Sure, don’t mind us, we’ll just get out of your way, then,” I called after it, and glanced at Nyx. “Well, he was in an awful hurry. Maybe there’s a long-armed-faery soiree he can’t be late for. Or maybe he was avenging all those times I stepped on an ant nest.”

Nyx didn’t answer. She stood tall on the post, perfectly balanced with the wind ruffling her hair, staring after the wagon with a faintly awed look in her eyes.

“I can see the Iron Realm,” she murmured.

I smiled grimly, remembering the first time I’d been to the capital city of the Iron fey, and the feeling of amazement, excitement, and unease it brought. “Yeah,” I acknowledged, wondering how Nyx would react when she saw it up close and personal. “Almost there.”

Tinkerport, the hilariously named town on the other side of the bridge, was your first introduction to the Iron Realm once you crossed over from the wyldwood. As towns went, it wasn’t very large; while the grand capital of Mag Tuiredh was home to thousands of Iron fey (most of them gremlins, but still), Tinkerport had only a few hundred. But once you crossed the bridge and stepped onto the cobbled streets beyond the gates, your first thought probably went along the lines of,Toto, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.

Or maybe more accurately,holy shit.

That was the look on Nyx’s face as we stepped through the brass gates of Tinkerport and onto the main street through the center of town.

It was hard to describe Tinkerport. It was like a scatterbrained inventor took his entire collection of bits, bobs, and metal parts, upended it on the floor, and somehow made a city. Buildings lined the cobblestone roads, but not your regular stone, wood, and straw configurations. Walls glimmered in the fading moonlight, gears and cogs spun as they opened doors, weather panes twirled, and lengths of seemingly useless pipe stuck out at random intervals. Streetlamps sprouted right out of the ground, sometimes bent at odd angles or twisted around a tree, as if it had just grown that way. Steam hissed from vents and random pipes, curling into the air or drifting into the gutters, giving the town a hazy look.

Then, of course, there were the Iron fey. Hacker elves, cog dwarves, clockwork hounds, wire nymphs, and rust eaters were only a few of the creatures walking the roads or hovering in the shadows. And those were the faeries whose names I knew. Other, even stranger fey wandered the hazy streets. Despite their weirdness, they had one thing in common: they were all immediately recognizable as Iron fey. They had a name, and someone who knew them. Unlike Nyx, whom no one had a name for at all.

I had to give the Forgotten credit. Despite being surrounded by—quite literally—nightmares of the fey world, she remained remarkably calm. I remembered my first venture into the Iron Realm; it had involved a lot of exclamations likeeeeewandcreeeeeepyandoh-crap-get-it-away. This might’ve had something to do with the prevalence of bug-like things in the Iron Kingdom, but still. Just the fact that Nyx hadn’t gone for her weapons was impressive, though she had drawn deep into her cloak and tugged the hood up to cover her face.

“So, whadya think?” I asked, giving her a sideways look. “It’s your first trip to the Iron Realm... How are you going to describe it to everyone when you get home?”

“Shiny,” Nyx muttered, and I snorted a laugh. “Truthfully, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she went on, her voice sounding awed but trying not to let it show. “These fey...how can they exist? Is this what the humans dream of now?”

“Pretty much,” I told her. “The Iron fey came from mankind’s obsession with progress and technology. That’s why they’re so comfortable in the mortal world, and why they don’t Fade away when cut off from the Nevernever. Iron and the banal effects of nonbelief don’t have any effect on them.”

“I see.” Nyx observed the town, golden eyes taking everything in. “It doesn’t seem large enough for a court, however,” she mused. “I take it the Iron Queen does not reside here?”

“Sadly not.” I shook my head. “Meghan lives in the capital, Mag Tuiredh, which is still quite a ways from the border. Don’t worry, though. I don’t plan on hoofing it to Mag Tuiredh, not when there are other, much more convenient ways of travel through the Iron Realm.”

“Like the carriages? I saw a few of them earlier.”

“Ugh, definitely not.” I shuddered. “Did you not notice their wheels, or rather the lack of them? They have legs. Spider legs. I am not riding to Mag Tuiredh on the back of some creepy-ass spider wagon.” My skin itched, and I brushed at imaginary bugs crawling up my arms. “Seriously, whatisit with all the insect-themed rides in the Iron Realm? It’s like the world’s creepiest amusement park. Nope, no spider taxi to the capital.”

Nyx raised a brow in that amused way of hers but chose not to comment on my perfectly reasonable spider phobia. “Then what do you suggest?”

“I thought we’d take the train.”

Nyx furrowed her brow. “I am unfamiliar with this...train,” she said. “Is it like a carriage?”

“Oh, I could tell you,” I said, grinning. “But why ruin the surprise?” She frowned at me, and I stepped back. “Come on, it’s something you really need to see for yourself.”

The train station sat on the outskirts of Tinkerport, a raised wooden platform resting beside the railroad tracks that stretched away into the distance. When Meghan had become queen, one of the first things she did was build the extensive rail system so that it reached all corners of the Iron Realm. I’d ridden the train a couple times before, and I had to say, I wouldn’t mind having something like it in the wyldwood or Arcadia. Tromping through the wyldwood on foot, fighting weather and vegetation and everything that wanted to eat you, got so tedious sometimes.

Only a few Iron fey waited on the platform beside the railroad tracks, mostly siting on the benches scattered about. One spindly fellow, wearing a crooked top hat that was twice as tall as normal, perched on the very edge of the platform, gazing down the tracks for the engine that had yet to appear. I caught a few strange looks from the faeries waiting for the train; I supposed that even with easier access to the Iron Realm, not many traditional fey considered it a great vacation spot. And as Nyx and I seemed to be the only non-Iron faeries in the entire town, we kind of stood out. A trio of fey that sort of resembled gnomes, but with jaws like steel traps, eyed us from a corner of the platform, whispering among themselves.

“I’m starting to feel like a satyr in a redcap den,” Nyx murmured beside me, having also caught sight of our toothy observers. “I hope they don’t decide to cause trouble while we’re on this train.”

“Oh, I dunno.” I grinned, feeling the gleeful spitefulness stirring in me again. “It might be fun. They’d certainly find that they bit off more than they could chew.”

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather not have anything bitten off.”

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