There Will Be Phlogiston Page 20

  He pushed open the door to the Chicken and stepped over the threshold. He hadn’t known quite what to expect from a reputed den of iniquity, but inside it seemed merely unpleasant. Dank, smoky, and redolent with the aromas of sweat and stale beer.

  Conversation did not dwindle as he entered. Nobody dropped a glass. A few bullyboys glanced his way, sizing him up, but for the most part life went on.

  He moved carefully through the crowds, a hand resting lightly on his sword hilt. As he approached the bar, the man behind it reached under the counter for a bottle, uncorked it with his teeth, and splashed about a finger width of liquid into the bottom of a very dirty glass. Then he pointed to the chalkboard fixed to the wall behind him. All it said was “1d” in a barely legible scrawl.

  Ruben handed over a penny and the barman—or the bluffer, as he would have been called in the local dialect—slid the glass across the bar straight into Ruben’s slightly unwilling hand.

  He had little taste for gin, and even less for cheap gin possibly adulterated with rat poison. All the same, he lifted it to his lips and took a sip. It was about as bad as he had imagined.

  When his stomach had stopped roiling, and he had blinked the water from his eyes, he leaned across the bar. “I’m looking—”

  The barman jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the door at the far end of the room.

  And that seemed to be all the answer Ruben was going to get.

  He nodded his thanks, picked up the glass, and went through to the back room. Now people were watching him, and Ruben felt a prickle of anxiety run down his forearms and across the nape of his neck. Being able to take care of himself meant knowing when to be afraid.

  A sensible man would probably have turned, walked away, and never looked back. But Ruben had always been ruled by his passions.

  The room into which he stepped seemed to be little more than a converted cupboard, though Ruben suspected at least one of the walls was false, and he could also see a faint mismatch at the centre of the flagstones, suggesting the presence of a trapdoor. In a spill of dirty yellow candlelight, four sat at play around a battered table, and the only one to glance up from their cards as Ruben came in was a tall, loose-limbed woman at its head.

  She had swung her chair onto its back legs and was lolling in it like a lion taking its ease, one booted foot resting on the tabletop, her skirts rucked carelessly under her knee to reveal not only her entire ankle but a good deal of stocking too. She was handsome in a bold, vulgar way: square jawed and wide lipped. Her hands and forearms were covered by a writhing tangle of brightly coloured ink disappearing under the shabby green velvet of her gown.

  “Well, well, well—if ain’t Lord Iron hisself.” Her voice carried a veneer of Gaslight, but her vowels were southern. “You’d better be stopping right there, my duck. Not anuver step til you put down that toasting iron.”

  Ruben’s hand had flown so swiftly to his sword, he had barely been aware of it.

  “I think it would be unwise to do that,” he said mildly. “But I assure you, I mean you no harm.”

  She blinked, the cards slipping between her fingers to land beside her knee. “Oh, you assure me, d’you? Well then.” Her gaze flicked to one of the other players. “’Parently we’re assured. D’you feel assured, luvvie?”

  This man, too, put his cards down. “Well, I dunno, Nell. Don’t reckon we’re in the business o’ being assured just cos some swell says we are.”

  Ruben took a step backwards, only to discover someone had closed the door behind him.

  Nell yanked her skirts still higher, pulled a pistol from her garter, and levelled it at Ruben. “You ain’t calling no shots here. Now, drop the sticker and come sit down wif us.” She smirked. “Or d’you need some assurances.”

  Sighing, Ruben pulled his sword free and dropped it onto the floor. “Would they be worth anything?”

  “I ain’t no bravo, Ruben Crowe. I don’t crash a cull wifout cause. You going t’give me cause?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it.”

  “I heard tell you was a clean fella.”

  They jostled along to make a space for Ruben at the table, and he had no choice but to sit with them. Nell had her elbow braced next to her leg, the pistol still pointed, unwaveringly, at his heart.

  Oh God, he thought, too ruefully for it to be much of a prayer, I’m going to die.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Nell, they call me. Little Nell.” It did not strike Ruben as a likely descriptor. And perhaps it was a common thought for she shrugged and went on. “The name was given to me when I was just a kinchin. ’Tis sommat folks ne’er reckon on, ain’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, what isn’t?”

  Her eyes held his, flat and cold as the gun in her hand. “Ye grow.”

  And, in spite of himself, Ruben shivered. “And your friends?”

  “My friends?” she repeated. “Well, my culls, if it ain’t your lucky days. Lord Iron wishes for an introduction to your right respectable selves.”

  None of them seemed willing to meet his eyes. Or to speak to him at all. He thought it wasn’t so much fear as a kind of superstitious avoidance. As though he were a black cat or a ladder they preferred not to walk beneath.

  “See,” Nell went on, “the canting crew tend to get a might particular when it comes to fings could be put on a poster or told t’ the beck. But, err—” she gestured carelessly towards the others with her free hand “—this ’ere fine gentleman is one Jemmy Fellow, and this gentry mort ye can call Daisy Cutter, and this topping cove is Nob Thatcher.”

  The so-called Jemmy Fellow sniggered unpleasantly into his tankard. And Ruben knew he was being mocked, though the precise nature of it eluded him. Not that it mattered. His pride could be easily healed later.

  “Now, if we’re all done wif making civil whiskers—” Nell grinned at him, her incisors flashing gold “—what can I do for ye?”

  He was out of his depth. Too many people recently had seemed to know far more about him than he did about them. But he knew better than to show his uncertainty. “I was only looking for information. You know there will likely be consequences were you to hurt me.”

  “Are you threatening me? In m’own ken?”

  “Not at all. It was simply a . . . a point of information.”

  She huffed out a sigh. “Y’see what’s staring right at you? That’s the point o’ my gun. She’s called Stella. Her sister Fanny’s in m’other boot.”

  Ruben had never been introduced to ordnance before. He was not particularly enjoying the experience.

  “Trust me, Ruben, you don’t want to know ’em any better.”

  Sweat had gathered under his hat brim. “What do you want with me?”

  “I want you to pike off, and I reckon the sharpest way t’ see it ’appen is giving you what you came for. Chant says, you bin up t’ the top o’ the Spire.”

  He didn’t see why it was any business of Nell’s, but he supposed the presence of Stella made it her business. “I was sent there, yes.”

  “But now you’re sniffing abaht ’ere. Bit of a rum turn abaht, wouldn’t ye say?”

  And Ruben, at last, understood. This woman thought him Milord’s cat’s paw. Which meant . . . “You’re his . . . usurper.”

  “Successor, luvvie, falls more kindly on a lady’s lugs.”

  “I truly have no interest in the politics of your . . . of your operation. I am not—” for some reason he stumbled over the name and could not bring himself to utter it “—his agent.”

  Nell’s eyes, which were simply brownish, unremarkable, narrowed as she studied him. “Y’know sommat, I believe you. But it still don’t esplain what you’re looking for.”

  Ruben felt himself blush like a schoolboy. “I was looking for something that would help me understand him.”

  Laughter from around the table. He had truthfully not expected otherwise. But it still made him feel foolish.

  “Ain’t nowt to understand. He was the A
rch Rogue, til he weren’t.”

  “You betrayed him.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “Someone was going to. Just ’appened t’ be me.”

  “But they’ll kill him for what he’s done.”

  “And ’ow any people do you fink he’s killed? Tortured? Maimed?”

  “He’s still a man,” said Ruben sharply. “And he’s not beyond hope. Or redemption.”

  Ruben’s words spun in the silence like gold coins. Then Nell chuckled. “You sweet on ’is lordship, Preacher?”

  He tried not to cringe. What he’d felt, shoving the fragile, straining body of the erstwhile crime prince of Gaslight against the floor of his cell, had been far from sweet. “I have been tasked with saving his soul.”

  “Hypocrisy don’t look good on you.” Nell shrugged. “You’re not the first, Ruben. I reckon you won’t be the last. He’s got his ways, ain’t he? Ol’ Black Jack Callaghan would’ve pulled the stars down one by one if Milord had only asked ’im.”

  “Who was—”

  “Arch Rogue afore Milord. My bleeding eyes, you’re as green as a flat after a bubber of All Nations. I ne’er met the cove, but from the tellin’, Black Jack was a balls-the-wall baddun through ’n’ through. Though Milord twisted him rahnd his little finger like he was ribbons for a Mayday maiden.”

  Ruben thought of cold eyes and a voice of silk and a face to make devils weep with longing—and could believe it. “And he took over when Black Jack was caught?”

  “Lord love you, you don’t catch a cove like Black Jack. They’re still finding bits ’n’ pieces of ’im in the Humber. Compared wif what Milord did t’ him, what I done’s a kindness.”

  “Somehow I don’t get the feeling kindness figures much in your thinking.”

  “’Tis a luxury for ’em as can afford it. And I like a little luxury in m’life. Silk stockings ’n’ wine that ain’t been watered ’n’ being able t’ be kind when the occasion warrants. And there’s plenty’d see that poncy motherswinker dead.”

  “He will be dead. In less than a week.”

  She laughed, tossing nut-brown braids clear of her shoulders. “The Spire won’t hold ’im. But it’s a bit of a deterrent for them as ain’t too committed to snuffing him personal-like.”

  “You aren’t worried about him coming after you?”

  “’Tis a risk, but I don’t reckon he will. He knows he can’t be Arch Rogue no more so what’d be the point?”

  Ruben lifted a brow. “Personal vengeance?”

  “That ain’t his dance. He don’t do what’s personal. He does what’s necessary.”

  “It sounds almost like you admire him.”

  “Mebbe. He’s a queer cove, make no mistake, but he had a clean way abaht him. Ne’er went back on hisself, ne’er backed down, ne’er left aught t’ chance, paid up ’n’ paid well.”

  “I see,” said Ruben, at the same time thinking he probably didn’t.

  “Don’t go bobbing yourself, Ruben. He ain’t walking no road to Damascus wif you. E’en half-dead wif the dustlung, there ain’t no turning back for a man like that.”

  “A man like what? It sounds to me that he did dishonourable things in an honourable manner. We cannot always choose what life makes us.”

  “Oh, he chose. He knows wrong ’n’ right ’n’ the difference betwixt ’em, same as me. And dishonourable fings is dishonourable fings, don’t matter how you do ’em. Black Jack liked what he did t’ folks. Kept ’em in line. Milord didn’t and did it jus’ the same. Kept ’em in line e’en more. Y’flash?”

  And suddenly Ruben remembered those cold words: I do what is necessary.

  “Had enough, Preacher? A little hinformation goes a long way, don’t it?”

  “Truthfully, I feel no more illuminated than I did when I came here.”

  “Mebbe it’s cos you don’t know what you’re looking for. Mind you, neither does he. Y’make a pretty pair.”

  Ruben’s hands clenched on the tabletop. “I don’t understand how I’m supposed to help him.”

  Nell shrugged. “Mebbe you ain’t.”

  “I don’t believe that. I believe divine purpose drives our actions, most particularly when events takes us down paths we would not have previously contemplated.”

  “Ruben Crowe, you’re sitting where the sun don’t shine, talking to a woman who rules a court o’ vagabonds, murderers, and thieves.” She stretched out one of her arms so the candlelight twisted over her tattooed skin. “This is the story o’ my life. Written on my skin so it won’t belong to any bugger but me. It’s everyone I’ve e’er killed. Every act o’ violence. Every act o’ cruelty. Every hurt I’ve e’er endured. Every deed I’ve e’er done, good or ill or in-fucking-different. I’m twenny-one last time I reckoned it. And y’know sommat? It’s just some stuff I done. There ain’t no purpose.”

  “Someday you may look at it and feel otherwise.”

  She snorted.

  “It is, after all, a pattern of a kind. A rather beautiful one.”

  There was a long silence, and Ruben wondered if at last he had gone too far.

  But then she chuckled and slipped the pistol back into her garter. “Well, give fanks for the purpose behind your pretty glims cos I ain’t gonna cut ’em out. ’Tis a shame your inclinations don’t favour me ’n’ mine.”

  Ruben coloured a little. “I’m afraid they do not.”

  “All that fervour. I reckon you’d be a wild ride.”

  He had no idea how to answer that.

  Nell smirked and brought her chair crashing back onto its front legs. “Reckon we’re done ’ere, don’t you?”

  They were letting him go? Ruben was still too wary to feel much relief. Just bewilderment and a faint sense of dissatisfaction. He had come here for something, and he had quite spectacularly failed to either work out what it was or to get it. But he’d pushed his luck enough for one day. Possibly one lifetime. “Thank you for your time.” He rose carefully, keeping his hands where everyone could see them, for there was no need to get shot or knifed while he was making his escape. “One more question, if I may?”

  Nell gave him a slightly cold look. “S’pose I’ll indulge you.”

  “What . . . I mean . . . What manner of man is he?”

  “Ye what?”

  “Who is he? What are his passions, his pursuits?”

  “He was the crime prince o’ Gaslight, Ruben. He don’t have hobbies. Unless . . . knife work mebbe. I watched him strip the skin from a man once. ’Twas a fucking masterpiece.”

  Ruben swallowed. “There is more to a person than what they do.”

  “Not him. I flipped his ken, y’know, after the clappers took him. Nowt there but a bed to kip in and a chair t’ sit in.”

  “That’s it? The sum of everything known about him?”

  She shrugged. “He weren’t someone you knew. Or cared to.”

  Suddenly one of the others spoke up. The man Nell had called Jemmy Fellow. “He saw a bawd once a month. Same place, same time, same way. Apparently used to wipe his prick off after, like the bloke’s mouth was dirty.”

  Ruben had no idea what to do with that information, so he simply said, “Thank you.”

  “And,” added Daisy Cutter, “he ne’er touched a drop o’ liquor.”

  So the man bought oral sex from a prostitute once a month, didn’t like alcohol, and murdered people. Ruben was suddenly consumed by the oddest desire to laugh. At what or whom, he didn’t know.

  “Oh aye.” Nell nodded thoughtfully. “He liked that nasty smoky tea or what-ave-ye. Told you he was a queer ’un. Now, if that’s everyfing, you was about to pike it.”

  Ruben was, indeed, very ready to pike it. He bent slowly to retrieve his sword and slipped it into its scabbard. But just as he was reaching for the door handle, Nell’s voice made him turn back.

  “Oh, Preacher? Two more fings.”

  “Yes?” This time he was probably definitely dead.

  “If you still got questions need answering,
and you will, ducks, you will, you should mebbe go see Lord Silver. And if you come rahnd ’ere again, I’ll kill you m’self. Gottit?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  He didn’t run. That really would have been fatal. But he felt like it. And the feeling didn’t abate until he was standing in Lord Iron’s mansion, sealed behind its high metal gates.

  Want to read more of Shackles?

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  SNEAK PEEK: SQUAMOUS WITH A CHANCE OF RAIN

  Dear Dr. Howard,

  The enclosed comprises the complete personal correspondence of Patient #137 prior to her admittance to Bethlem Royal Hospital.

  It is my hope that these documents will provide valuable insight into the events immediately preceding her current episode and may, therefore, usefully inform your treatment of her.

  Since arrival, her behaviour has been characterised by long periods of docility, punctuated by outbursts of hysteria, in the grip of which she has seduced into deviant behaviour a nurse, a Quaker, and two representatives of the Fallen Women’s Society.

  She has also spoken in unknown, inhuman languages, inscribed the floor with malignant, ever-shifting runes, and revealed to the other inmates an infinite sky of alien constellations, much to the distress of the staff.

  I trust you will have greater success with her than we have.

  Yours sincerely,

  Dr. L. Phillips

  Ebook: ISBN: 978-1-62649-227-1

  riptidepublishing.com/titles/squamous

  My dearest Miriam,

  I write to congratulate you on your wedding and to send you all my very best hopes and wishes for your future happiness. From the portrait you so kindly enclosed with your last letter, I can certainly agree that Lord Bodgeringham possesses several qualities valuable in a husband: to wit, extensive facial hair, and a slightly confused expression. I am sure you will do very well with him and still better with his thirty thousand a year.

  I do, however, wonder if you will sometimes have occasion to recall that final summer we spent together at Miss Githers’s Finishing School. I confess I miss our walks, and I think of them often, particularly when the hour has grown late and I find myself awake, alone, and idle. I think most particularly of the delightful countryside in that part of the world, and the innocent pleasures it afforded, for as you know, I am ravishingly fond of landscapes. My thoughts dwell most especially upon that secret place, in those days known only to myself I’ll warrant, where two velvet-soft hills rose sweetly to enchant the viewer’s eye, and below them, a tender valley with a hidden cleft where I oftentimes did linger, plucking meadow flowers and other such girlish fancies.