There Will Be Phlogiston Page 18

“A little light reading?”

  I thought I might as well get practiced with being ashamed. “I don’t have a fucking clue. I can’t e’en sign m’ name.”

  A longish sorta silence. I couldn’t even look at them.

  And then they was, “Better men than you couldn’t read or write.”

  ’Twas mebbe a harsh thing to say, but their voice was so gentlesome, and I liked it for an answer somehow. “Oh aye? Like who?”

  Another silence. “Genghis Khan?”

  I gaped. “That’s the best ye can do?”

  And then we was both laughing our heads off.

  ’Twas mighty strange, but I stopped finding them so eerie after that, and I grinned right at them, feeling kinda happy they was there.

  “May I . . . may I . . . sit down?”

  I realised—with a bolt of insight or whatever—that they was nervous. And so I stopped feeling like one sorta nitwit and started feeling like a different sort. Cos I guess it probably hadn’t made them feel all that good, me having a fit of the heebies when all they’d been doing was trying to be kind. And, really, nowt about them was worth screaming over.

  ’Twas just the glims what done it, specially after all that talk of aetherbeasts. But Byron Kae weren’t no kraken. And ’twasn’t like they weren’t comely neither. ’Twas just the strangeness of them was like sommat you’d catch only at the corner of your eye, the dazzle of light on water or diamond dust slipping through your fingers.

  “Course!” said I, quick as can be. And, trying to make amends, “Look, I’m sorry bout the freak out.”

  A faint flush of colour crept over the arch of their cheekbones, like a gleam of sunlight on a cloudsome day. “Please, don’t trouble yourself. I know many find the aethertouched . . . disconcerting.”

  “’Twas the shooting mainwise was the source o’ that.”

  They slipped into a chair in a ruffle of silks and fine taffetas, staring sorta bashfulwise at their rainbow-tipped fingers. “You’re very kind.”

  I still hadn’t made no progress on the he-she-whatever conundrum, and I was starting to think mebbe it didn’t matter. ’Twasn’t like I’d ever been all that concerned what folk kept betwixt their legs or beneath their petticoats before.

  “I ain’t being kind,” quoth I. “I’m being true. I got m’ own reputation to think of, y’know, and I ain’t no chicken heart. Takes sommat actually scary to scare me, not jus’ a person being a person.”

  “I’m . . . I’m so sorry about what happened to you. And so close to my ship. Had I known, I wouldn’t have let you fall.”

  “Nowt ye could have done bout it, mate. And, jus’ betwixt thee and me—” I flashed them another little smile “—I did sorta bob the fella.”

  They made a strange sound, then clapped hands to their lips with a little “Oh.” For a second I didn’t know what was wrong with them, but then I realised I’d made them laugh. Properly this time, and not by accident. ’Twas just about the only thing I’d achieved since I’d come to Prosperity.

  “Did you really?” they asked betwixt their fingers.

  “Aye. Plucked the prissy swinker like a pigeon.”

  They took their paws away to show a mouth what gleamed with the promise of smiles. “That was brave and foolish and somewhat marvellous. I wish . . . I wish I could have seen it.”

  ’Twas mebbe a stupid ol’ thing to be thinking, but what with kisses from Ruben and now this, I was starting to feel getting shot hadn’t been such a terrible plan after all. “Cheating,” I purred, and it weren’t too bad a rendering even if I say so myself, “is not gentlemanly.”

  Byron Kae shook their head, all the beads and feathers chinking private music. “He is not gentlemanly.”

  “Why you travelling with him, then? ’Tis your ship, ain’t it?”

  “Ruben is an old and very dear friend. I want to help him, and he . . . appears to want to help Milord.”

  “That don’t seem wise to me.”

  “No. But Ruben has never been wise.”

  Another longish sorta silence, not quite comfortable but not uncomfortable neither. Which kinda got me onto minding my manners. “I should say ta for the cabin. ’Tis yours, right?”

  “It’s quite all right. I’m more comfortable on deck anyway. The sky and I don’t like anything to come between us.”

  Even so, ’twas probably the nicest thing anybody had ever done for me. And suddenwise I started remembering lots of other stuff, like a cool hand on my brow, and having water when I needed it and—ah, bugger. “How much do I owe for the quack and the black coat?”

  “It really doesn’t matter.”

  I know it probably seems a bit queer for one of the filching crew to be so particular about his debts, but that’s the thing, right? I sharp and I steal, and I take what I damn well want, but I don’t owe nowt to nobody. I belong to me. “It matters to me. It matters sommat fierce.”

  So, after a moment or two, they told me.

  “Shite, ’tis daylight robbery.” Again, they gave that sorta whimsical lift of the brows. “Speaking from experience o’er here,” I added, to win a proper smile and getting it. “But I got some chink should pay my dues.”

  “Don’t you recall? I’m afraid you have become, um, separated from your assets.”

  Double bugger from both ends backwards. “Milord filched it, eh?”

  “Most likely.”

  I heaved out a sigh. Bobbed of my bobbed winnings. There ain’t no fucking justice. “Ain’t there nowt I can do to discharge the debt?” I wasn’t meaning nowt goatish by it, since meeting Ruben had kinda turned me off the comfort of strangers.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “Look, I ain’t got much in this world, but I got m’ pride.” Fact was, I’d been thinking pretty hardsome about how to get away from this rock since I’d been laid out. I hadn’t counted on having no blunt, but say what you will about Piccadilly, I ain’t nowt if not flexible. “I’d like to get back to civilisation before I gets m’nabs shot again—reckon you could see your way to letting me work the passage?” I reckoned it for a winning hand—’tis better to keep those as want to kill you right up front where you can see ’em, so couldn’t imagine a safer route to terra firma. And more time to flutter my lashes at Ruben couldn’t hurt neither. “It’s true, I ain’t got much experience, but I can turn m’ paws sharpish to pretty much anything. I wouldn’t give you cause to regret it.”

  “We’ll be prospecting first,” said Byron Kae slowly. “And the skies are dangerous at the moment.”

  “Yeah, but this is prob’ly the safest place there is, right? And I quite fancy playing cabin boy.” Since it weren’t like I had nowt to lose, I tried on the ol’ glitter and gleam. But they didn’t seem much impressed with my wiles, so I stopped before I looked anymore the fool.

  Another epic fucking silence. I was just about to try pleading cos I was damn near desperate and I didn’t fancy risking myself in Prosperity any time soon, when they said, “Well, all right. But you treat my Shadowless well, or you’ll find yourself cloud walking without a ship.”

  “I’ll treat her like a princess,” I promised in a rush of gratitude. “And it won’t be no hardship neither cos she’s the most beauteous lady I e’er seen on land or sky or anywhere else fer that matter.” Thing was, I weren’t even telling bouncers.

  Byron Kae went red as red as can be, ducking down their head as though they didn’t want me seeing. “Th-thank you. I . . . Thank you.” And then, as though they didn’t want me talking neither, they turned the book they was still holding so they could see the cover. “Interesting choice.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” I grumbled.

  “It’s the book that killed God.”

  “Somebody chuck it at Him?”

  Byron Kae smiled, fully and properly at last, bringing all the mysterious planes and angles of their face into a sorta harmony—not beautiful, not handsome, but lovely somehow. And I suddenly noticed that their glims weren’t black as tar or coal, but bla
ck like the night sky, like the eyes of Shadowless’s figurehead. And currents moved in them like ripples over the ocean, and colours, green and purple and silver all being somehow part of the black. And ’twas like multicoloured stars being born and living and fading away all in slivers of seconds. ’Twasn’t scary at all. ’Twas magical.

  “It’s called On the Origin of Species.” They took up my finger and moved it over the grand golden letters, like we was pinning them down together. Their skin was cool and smooth as water, but I didn’t mind it.

  “It won’t work.” I was feeling small again. “Words don’t like it when I try to read ’em. They run away. Dunno why. Reckon it might be punishment or whate’er fer all the bad stuff I do.”

  I’d tried; a bunch of times I tried. I even took myself to one of them Ragged Schools, but ’twas too disheartening to stag a bunch of fathead bantlings take to it like ducks to water with me all drowning in the shallows.

  “You’re not bad, Piccadilly. You just need to be patient.”

  “’Tis hard to be fucking patient when the words won’t stay cunting still.”

  The cool hand overlapping mine felt kinda soothing. “It’s all right.”

  I didn’t dare say nowt more for fear of making an even bigger bufflehead of myself, but it wasn’t all right. Not by a mile it wasn’t.

  Then Byron Kae stood up, and I thought I’d disgusted them by being a pissy, illiterate clod, but they was just going to the table where Miss Grey sat, and they came back with a couple of pieces of that special map-making paper. Then, they opened up On the Wossname of Species and tucked a piece betwixt the first page and the second.

  At first I didn’t know what they was playing at, but then I looked down and realised ’twas stopping the two pages of words from getting muddled with each other. And then they folded over the second piece of paper and tucked it under the first line. And the words all still bounced wherever they chose, but this way I could track them without having them get lost in each other.

  I gazed at Byron Kae like they was some kinda genius, cos they was. I’d never thought of doing anything like it.

  Byron Kae had gone a bit pinkish again. They cleared their throat and drew my finger over the symbols, helping them stay put, and said all careful and slow, “‘When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.’”

  My mouth plopped open. “You wha? No wonder I can’t do reading. It don’t make no fucking sense. That ain’t even like English.”

  “It’s not . . . it’s not . . .” Byron Kae seemed to be having trouble with their spoken words. They covered their mouth with a hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “N-no. Not at you. I’m just . . . laughing.”

  “’Tain’t funny!”

  “Perhaps we t-try another book?”

  We tried the samewise operation. “Essays and Reviews,” read Byron Kae, sounding out the letters slowly so I could follow ’em.

  “What’s the diff’rence ’twixt essay and review?” I asked, still feeling a bit peeved by the learned in general. ’Twas like they were doing it deliberate to keep folks out.

  “I have no idea. This essay or review is called ‘The Education of the World.’”

  “Well, that sounds promising, don’t it? I know what education is, I know what the world is. Reckon this un’s a winner.”

  The hand atop mine trembled slightly with what I suspected was laughing again. “‘In a world of mere phenomena, where all events are bound to one another by rigid law of cause and effect, it is possible to imagine the course of a long period bringing all things at the end of it into exactly the same relations as they occupied at the beginning.’”

  We ogled each other.

  After a bit, I said, “Is he saying that stuff goes round in circles?”

  “I believe so. In a world of mere phenomena.” They sounded pretty serious about it, but then I realised ’twas their way of making fun.

  I measured out the sentence, which was what you might call a hefty handful. “Don’t see why he couldn’t just’ve said that then. I used to think reading was some kinda wonder, but now I’m starting to think it’s all a bam.”

  “It does rather seem that way.”

  I was struck suddenwise by a thought. “You ain’t going to tell Ruben, right?”

  “That reading is, um, a bam? Well, I think he ought to know. As a philosopher and a theologian, he has rather devoted his life to the practice.”

  “No . . . ’bout me . . . and . . . y’know.”

  The air sorta shifted in the room, and I was sorry for it. I saw a cove once blowing glass, and if I was inclined towards religiousifying, which I ain’t, I might’ve said ’twas probably how the earth got made, bright-hued miracles spun out of matter. And I felt that mebbe Byron Kae was like that, strong and fragile at the same time, and I’d just mebbe shattered sommat.

  “Not if it’s what you want.”

  I nodded with much eagerness.

  “He wouldn’t think any less of you,” they murmured.

  “That ain’t the point.” Except it totally was.

  We staggered on some with the education of the world, and mebbe I started to see patterns in the sound of things, or mebbe I didn’t. ’Twas hard to tell, with the only thing going in circles being the book. Leastways, far as I could see.

  And I think I must’ve dropped off in the middle or sommat, cos when I woke up later, I found all the books neatly stacked next to the bunk, one of them even having a little piece of paper in it marking the place, proving that I, Piccadilly, was reading it.

  And I felt about ten feet tall.

  Want to read more of Prosperity?

  Visit riptidepublishing.com/titles/prosperity

  SNEAK PEEK: SHACKLES

  Dear Mr. Dickens,

  Since you was so kind as to publish my story in your magazine, lots of folks have been sending me lots of letters asking me about stuff what happened what I don’t know about. Seems like they want to know how a priest what got himself chucked out the church, and the Arch Rogue of Gaslight, being only the prissiest motherswinker whatever held a knife to your throat, wound up in what I reckon ye might call love, or as near as passes for it.

  Things is, I never did get the whirligigs to ask Ruben himself, but I done some asking round, and I think I got the shape of it.

  ’Cos it’s Ruben’s story, I tried to write it all proper and inkhornish like he’d like it, and Byron Kae has checked all the spellings for me, so you don’t have to ask that nice Mr. Collins this time.

  I ain’t so sure about the commas.

  Piccadilly

  Ebook: ISBN: 978-1-62649-226-4

  riptidepublishing.com/titles/shackles

  There were many stories about the crime prince of Gaslight.

  So many that Ruben Crowe, climbing the thousand stairs to the top of the Spire, half fancied he had been sent to meet a monster. But waiting in the iron-grey cell, his face turned into a stream of dusty moonlight, there was simply a man.

  Who twisted as the door grated open, chains clanking at his wrists and ankles.

  “It has been many years since I have seen the sky.” His voice was smoky sweet and as refined as any gentleman’s. “Tell me, do you think it beautiful?”

  Three days ago, Ruben had received a personal visit from the Bishop of Gaslight. This was somewhat surprising, for the last time they had met, the bishop had revoked Ruben’s licence. He had also professed himself disappointed.

  In truth, it had not been unexpected. Ruben Crowe, it was generally agreed, was a poor fit for the Church. When, after leaving Cambridge with first-class honours, he had announced his intention of taking orders, his father—the late Lord Iron—had declared that Ruben would be home by Candlemas. He, too, had professed himself disappointed.

  Ruben received the
bishop in the Citrine Drawing Room and served him Darjeeling first flush tea in translucent bone china. The sunlight that slipped through the arched windows paled in the savagely glittering splendour. As did the bishop.

  He reached for one of the fancies, a cunning spiral of air and sugar, flavoured with saffron and lavender and, at last, essayed a conventional enquiry into Ruben’s health and happiness. Dr. Jaedrian Forrest was a lean, gilded lion of a man and not usually uncertain of his words.

  Ruben gave assurances that he was quite well. He had just returned from the Stews. Dust had soiled the edges of his cuffs and clung to his hair. His fingers left rough, dark stains upon his teacup.

  “I understand,” remarked the bishop, “you have been visiting the malcontents in the Lower City.”

  “I wasn’t preaching.”

  “No, of course not. That was not my intended implication.”

  There was a long silence.

  Dr. Forrest leaned forwards in his chair and steepled his fingers. His episcopal rings flashed darker and deeper than the gemstones that encrusted the room.

  The motion was so startlingly familiar that Ruben’s heart shied like a roe deer. It was too easy to remember and easier still to forget. He could half imagine they were friends as they had used to be. The worldly bishop and the ardent young curate, ensconced together with tea, crumpets, and the debates of the day. And other pleasures, perhaps less easily reconciled with doctrine. Ruben knew too well the twist and arch of that silken, sinew-roped body. The chill pressure of those rings, warming like flesh beneath the weight of his palms.

  “Do you still believe,” asked the bishop, “that all souls can be saved?”

  Ruben did not hesitate. “Yes.”

  “No matter how iniquitous or unrepentant?”

  “Especially those.”

  “Hmm.”

  Ruben had little patience for what he had always termed “state room theology.” Church politics, in other words. So he watched the light skitter sharply across the surface of his tea, gold over gold, like Jaedrian’s eyes. And he felt, almost as if from nowhere, the soft stirring of loss, a restless and familiar longing for impossible things.