There Will Be Phlogiston Page 15

  I reckoned it really weren’t. I tried to sound sommat like normal, but it came out all whimpersome: “’Twas only bamming a bit.”

  His lip curled, the scar pulling his mouth a bit crooked. “Has anything you have ever heard about me suggested I might possess . . . a sense of humour?”

  It hadn’t.

  “I am not a man to be crossed, Piccadilly.”

  I couldn’t think about nowt but the knife to my throat. I’d been in sticky situations before, but none to match this one. I’d never felt so sure I was going to be hurt, never so sure I was dingable—sommat to be discarded. ’Twasn’t even like he was a sadistic type, going to get some kinda power-rush sick thrill out of doing the deed. He looked bored, like he was settling his accounts book and mebbe putting ol’ Piccadilly in the outgoing column.

  And I couldn’t have told you why, but somehow that was worse. I seen folks driven to do all kinds of desperate things in the name of this and that and the other, or simply for the privilege of living from one day to the next, but this was the coldest fucking act I’d ever witnessed.

  “I reckon I’m awake to the fact.” A trickle of blood or sweat or fuck knew what glided under my collar, but I didn’t dare look to see what it was in case ’twas the last thing I ever saw. “P’rhaps you could chalk it up to lesson learned, and we could go our separate ways friendsome-like? How ’bouts I see m’ way to returning the blunt to, like, sweeten the deal?”

  “Money is not one of my motivations.”

  ’Twas sommat right ironic in that—cos it made him the only fucker in Prosperity for who it weren’t. Problem was, I didn’t have a fucking clue what his motivations might’ve been, otherwise I’d have offered them. I’d have dropped to my knees right then and given him the best cocksucking of his life, but something told me that probably wasn’t one of his motivations neither.

  So I just closed my glims and prepared to fold on this losing hand called The Life and Tragically Limited Times of Piccadilly of Gaslight, cos I didn’t want my last sight to be Milord, sneering away like I was some insect what had dirtied his boots by dying on them.

  They say your life flashes in front of your eyes before you snuff it, and mine sorta did. Bits and pieces of memory cos, y’know, it ain’t all been rotten. Shame there weren’t more of the good stuff though. Could’ve done with less of the cold and the hunger and the stinging smoke of the Stews. And more of the drinking and revelling and clicketing. Aye, much more of that. I tried to cling to some of it cos I ain’t never been warmer than when there’s been some other body twisted next to mine, paid or paying or gratis, lad or lass, it’s all good to ol’ Piccadilly.

  Wish I could’ve kept feeling like that, but it always slides away like a win at the tables.

  Just a bright moment, mebbe a few bright moments, and then nowt to show for it.

  “Make it quick, yeah?”

  Right then, a cough that seemed to come out of nowhere doubled him over, and the knife went spinning out of his paw. Ol’ Oliver (being the moon to the nibfolk), shining down betwixt the pale stars, gleamed on the edge of the blade, alongside a ribbon of shadow that was probably a bit of blood previouswise belonging to yours truly. And since I always been a cove to carpe the fucking diem, I culped Milord somewhere no fella should culp another, and he dropped like he was made of nowt but air and malice.

  He landed on his knees in the dirt, gasping like he was dying, blackish kinda blood frothing on his lips and splashing on the backs of his hands. And y’know sommat? I didn’t give a flying fuck. Bugger had tried to kill me, and I ain’t no good wossname Samaritan.

  In fact—

  I pounced on his chiv. Got my fingers tight in his hair and yanked his head back. He was too weak and breathless even to struggle. Just fell against me like he didn’t give a single fuck. Like he wanted me to do it. The light painted silver all down his shuddering throat.

  I tried to like psyche myself up to it. But, truth be told, I ain’t never done . . . that before. I never quite fancied it somehow. But I had the principle down, and it should’ve been pretty simple. Except my hands wouldn’t quit shaking.

  “Look, look—” my breath came out all wrong and shuddery “—how ’bout I don’t and you don’t and we like call it evens. What say ye to that?”

  He turned his eyes up to mine. Same colour as the moonlight. “I would say . . . fuck you.”

  ’Twas the act of an absolute bottlehead, but I dropped the knife and pegged it.

  Helter-skelter through Prosperity, heading for the docks cos I reckoned it’d be easier to hide there, thoughts flying back and forth as I went bobbing and weaving thisaway thataway, leaping over crates and past ropes and cables, and kinda internally kicking myself for having wussed out on solving sommat that’d turn into a pretty seriouswise problem if Milord was inclined to put Snuffing out Piccadilly above Getting sharpish to the nearest quack.

  Plan was this: find a nook to slip into, wait til the lightmans, and book passage as far-as-fucking-away from this great floating rock of nutters and psychos as my winnings could get me. Course I could’ve stowed away, which was how I’d got to Prosperity in the first instance, but I reckoned I’d run through my rightfully allotted share of serendipity for this lifetime (and mebbe the next).

  And, to be straight with you, I ain’t exactly nuts on airships. Never mind all the nasties out there in the aether—they’re ugly clunking beasts, lumbering through the clouds like donkeys with a serious case of flatulence. People who ain’t travelled on them wouldn’t believe the noise or the juddering. Always feels to me like you’re two seconds from dropping clean out the sky, and actually, if one of them engines packs up or one of them turbines stops turning, you probably are. Which ain’t the most consoling thought when you’re stuck on one.

  Milord didn’t seem nowhere close, so I cast my glims over the assembled vessels, wondering which one of ’em would be least rattlesome and smellsome and get me back to London in the same number of pieces as I arrived in Prosperity having.

  And then I yorked a prime article, a ship of ships, the like of which dreams were surely made on. She was black, with fittings of silver, except ’twas a kinda black beyond the everyday, as though it’d swallowed down all the other colours in the world and they was swimming about inside it like rainbow fish.

  ’Twas also the first time I’d ever laid ogles on one of them airluggers and thought her beautiful. She was sleek and slim, fitted with tall sails like an ol’-fashioned sailing ship. And though all the other buckets was chained to Prosperity’s skyhooks to keep them moored, she held herself in the air easy as an angel, aethercurrents stirring her sails like the wind through a lady’s hair.

  At her prow was a figurehead carved into the shape of a prancer, glistening black like the rest, front hooves reaching forward as though ’twas galloping over the clouds and the mane flying out behind til it joined with the body of the ship. ’Twas the most lifelike piece of work I’d ever clapped peepers on, and I half thought she was mebbe looking right at me with eyes like the night sky, all black and silver with stars.

  I could see a swirl of symbols running over her side, and not for the first time in my life, I felt the lack of schooling, cos I dear wanted to know what to call a purest pure like her.

  ’Twas before Byron Kae taught me lettering and how to sound out the shapes of words even though sometimes they go dancing away from me. But since I know a bunch of shit now I didn’t back then, I’ll tell you everything, so you don’t have to feel like all-a-mort like poor ol’ Piccadilly, so far out of his depth, he was drowning.

  M’lady’s name is Shadowless, cos she’s the fastest ship in the sky. And she ain’t no everyday airship. She’s an aethership, meaning she don’t need engines nor turbines nor nowt but an aethermancer and the stars to guide her.

  But, right then, I was just standing there, gaping at the ship, all calf-eyed and wondering if I could mebbe sneak aboard. Or pay my way all square and legitimate-like. I’d’ve given far more than
chink to fly betwixt the clouds on a ship like that. She made my heart feel like a piece of coal turned glowy side up.

  Except then this prickling ran all the way down my spine. You don’t stay living—and you certainly don’t stay pretty—if you don’t got instincts, and mine was telling me this weren’t nowt bene.

  I spun round.

  And there was Milord picking his way towards me, pale as bones in the moonlight, with eyes like death, and a gun in his hand.

  I didn’t stop to do anymore thinking, just leapt for one of the cables leading up to a skyhook and started hauling myself up it, hand over hand, as quick as if Ol’ Scratch was on my tail, which, knowing what I did about Milord, he probably was. ’Twas fucking scary, cos though the hook was sturdy enough to hold the town, ’twas still swaying about all over the place. My hands were getting burned raw, but I was damned if I was slowing or stopping, not til I’d put a mile or more of sky betwixt me and Milord’s chivs.

  I’d never been this close to a skyhook before, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood to get all awestruck over the wonders of modern science and what ’ave ye. Ruben told me ’twas only phase boundaries and surface tension betwixt one bit of sky and the next what stopped it all falling down. ’Twas a good job I didn’t know that then, or I’d probably have preferred standing around getting shot to clambering up the thing.

  In fact, further I got from the ground, the less I fancied thinking about it, but looking up weren’t exactly no happy picnic neither. ’Twas just the cable stretching swayfully up up up into the darkmans, and a wavy glimmer where it split like a seriously buggered parasol into all these little lines and cables what was stuck into the top of the stratosphere.

  I hauled myself onto one of the docking platforms, breath rattling out of me rough and hot as fire, but that was nowt to the relief of having stalled off his lordship. I cast a hasty glance down to see what he was up to. There was a glint of light over his extended hand and the gun he held in it, and it took me a too-long second to realise what was happening.

  First came the sound, cracking through the darkness louder than it had any right to be for sommat so small and faraway.

  Then pain in my shoulder, jagged-bright like the way lightning cuts through clouds.

  And all I can remember is being confused where it had come from and how it could be hurting so bad.

  And then the air was rushing past me, stars smearing over the sky.

  And a voice from nowhere was shouting out, “What the hell are you doing?”

  And there was just long enough for me to be down with the notion I was falling when it was over.

  And then great big handfuls of nowt.

  In which our hero Piccadilly spends a lot of time in bed—Concerning the aethership Shadowless and her crew—Introductions to an opium-addled governess and her peculiar dreams, a mysterious captain with a passion for rainbows, and an extremely unorthodox clergyman—Piccadilly’s exertions upon the aforementioned clergyman—Considerations of morality, theology, philosophy, and literacy—Some notes on the aether and the monsters that dwell therein

  Next thing I knew was pain and pain and more pain and not being able to move my arm, nor my fingers, nor the rest of me. And then I couldn’t breathe neither, and mebbe I was trying to thrash around, and mebbe I was crying out, cos suddenly I felt a coolish touch against my brow and some stranger’s voice was coming over me all softly-like: “Hush. Try not to move.”

  And then came a different voice, all deep and rich and special like spiced wine in winter: “You’re safe now, Piccadilly.”

  I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been safe, but ’twas a warming notion.

  Slowly, I pushed back my glim-closers and found myself at the centre of a ring of faces. Some of them I recognised from my time in town—the ol’ black coat, name of Father Giles, and the local quack, a sawney fella called Kirkpatrick. And I wasn’t what you might call wildly thrilled to stag either of them right now, cos having a need for both a doctor and a priest suggested pretty strongsome that all weren’t bright and bene with Piccadilly. The rest of them was strangers though, and all blurred together into a kinda face noise, so I wasn’t real sure what I was looking at.

  My mouth felt like a cow’d took a shit in it. I licked my lips, trying to remember how to say things. “W-what’s he doing ’ere?” I tried to point at the priest, but even my non-duff hand just went flump.

  “He was cheaper than the doctor.” I’d’ve known that voice anywhere anyhow. Cold and sharp and nasty. And right now I gave a good ol’ yell at hearing it so close.

  I got my head up, and sure enough, there he was. Milord. Sitting cool as you like across the room, cleaning what looked to be my blood off his chiv with another one of his white silk fogles.

  “You shitting shot me, you cuntsucking quean,” I spluttered, anger overriding survival instinct.

  Father Giles gave this little hop, clearly not thinking much of my lingo, but Milord didn’t even look up, just faffed on with the fogle. “It was an accident,” quoth he, mildsome as a woolbird.

  “How in the name o’ the profane canst thou shoot someone in the shoulder, and say ’tis a dilberrying accident?”

  His eyes met mine, clink clink like twin bullets finding their mark. “I was aiming for your heart.”

  “That’s enough.” That weren’t no shouting voice, but it made everyone stow it anyway. I recognised the sound from before, and now my glims had cleared enough, I got to clap ’em on the face of the fella speaking.

  And, truth be told, I don’t reckon I ever seen a face formed to make me like it more. ’Tweren’t about beauty nor nowt like that, but I could’ve looked forever and never got bored. A squaresome kinda jaw, rough with stubble, dark eyes, hair similiarwise, falling this way and that across a likewise squaresome kinda brow. Nose what looked like it’d mebbe been broken, so ’twas flattened like one of them golden great cat beasts I seen in a picture book once.

  ’Twas not at all the time for me to be carrying on like a lovesick jade, what with being shot and surrounded by loons and having a priest staring down like he was preparing to rebuke my sins and send me off to a warmer place, but I been a son of Mercury all my life and wanting is what I do, and I know it ain’t never no rational thing.

  I wish I had the words to write properwise about Ruben Crowe cos even from that first moment, not even knowing who he was, there was sommat about him I liked a good deal more than anything I’d ever liked before. Being a sharper and all, I hadn’t had much truck with truth—fact was, I was nowt but moonshine and clankers from nose to toes—but, oh, Ruben was full of true things. Like he was some ol’ knight in some ol’ tale; the sort of tale I only dreamed about knowing before Byron Kae taught me how to read ’em. Except there ain’t no dragons left for Ruben to fight, leastways not the outside sort.

  Anyways, ’twas a bit of a blow to meet the finest man I’d ever met when I was giddy with pain and scared shitless lest I was going to lose a forefin—cos some thief I’d be without a goddamn arm. Nowt but a maundering beggar, and I ain’t ever stooped that low in all my fucking life.

  “Is m’ arm like totally buggered?” I asked in the smallest of small voices, feeling about a hundred miles of pathetic.

  “I foond the bullet,” piped up the quack. He was shorter than me, blatantwise sozzled, and previous to now I’d have not took a bet on him being able to find his arse with both hands and a map. “And I set the bone.”

  “Amputation would have been cheaper.” Fucking Milord. “And in Gaslight I would have taken far worse than an arm for stealing from me.”

  “You’re not in Gaslight anymore,” snapped the fella I’d later know was Ruben.

  Milord huffed out a quiet sorta sigh. “A fact I am in very little danger of forgetting.”

  Once, when I was feeling particularly brave, or mebbe a bit bird-witted, I asked Milord if he missed it. Gaslight. Cos he was the only one there what knew the ol’ place like I did.

  And for once he didn�
��t offer to gut me if I didn’t stow it. Instead, his eyes got sorta dreamsome. “I miss the power. People who had never even seen the Stews knew my name and knew to fear it.”

  ’Twas sorta sunset happening round us, while we was talking, setting the deep grey skyhaze all aflame with streaks of pink and purple and orange, almost too bright to look on. “I don’t miss nowt,” I told him. “I don’t reckon all the power in the world could make up fer not being able to see the sky.”

  “That’s because you’re a fool. And powerless.”

  I pointed at the wild horizon. “But don’t that count fer sommat?”

  He looked like he hadn’t even noticed ’twas there. “What use is that?”

  “’Tis beautiful.”

  The scar twitched at the edge of his lip. “I have no use for beauty, Piccadilly.”

  But I knew he was lying cos I’d seen the way he looked at Ruben.

  Course, that was later. Right now, I was fucked up and bedbound, and didn’t know either of ’em from Adam. While they was bickering back and forth, I made a grab for Ruben’s hand. “Don’t let him cut off m’ arm.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” That was for Milord. For me, a squeeze of rough, strong fingers. “Nobody is going to hurt you. I promise. You’re going to be as right as rain.”

  Right as rain, hah. Who says that? Who says that and means it? But betwixt some fucker wanting to slice off my arm for kicks and some other fucker promising the moon on a string, I was going with the second fella.

  “Perhaps he should take some laudanum.” ’Twas a woman’s voice what spoke this time, almost as posh as Milord, though trying a good bit less hard to be. I turned my head to get a look.

  Nowt special over there, just some gentry mollisher all muffled up in grey from neck to floor like she were afraid exposure to air or other people’s glims was going to burn the skin right off her. No-colour hair twisted up tight into one of them plaited buns and chalk pale cheeks and brownish eyes with a tell-tale glazed-over look to them such as I’ve seen on only the most committed opium eaters.