There Will Be Phlogiston Read online

  You see, whenever the walls seemed too high or the sky too grey, I dreamed of airships. The week-long journey from Hong Kong to Gaslight had been perhaps the happiest time of my life. My father must have paid the captain well for his services, for I travelled in luxury. I didn’t realise at the time, but I think I even slept in his cabin. And the crew treated me well, but more than that, they accepted me without question. Spoke with me and laughed with me, answered all my questions, taught me how to sing their songs. I was terrified, in some respects. So many people essentially living in a confined space. But I was giddy as well, on the closeness and the freedom.

  Life is . . . People are . . . It’s different in the skies.

  I met women who were not wives, foreigners who were not servants. It was not always harmonious, and there were rivalries and vendettas and plain old human dislike, but there was something deeper to hold us together. A sense of community, I suppose, forged on the edges of things. There wasn’t much privacy, so I caught glimpses of things . . . I mean, not those sort of things, though there were plenty of them. It’s hard to explain. Connections between people, friends laughing together, intimacies as simple as two matelots holding hands by starlight.

  The ship was called the Valiant. Her captain was Edward Rackham.

  The same Rackham what—

  Yes.

  I was a little frightened of him at first. He wasn’t like the Celestials, or the fang-qi I had encountered at Headquarters House: stern military men mostly, harassed administrators, or cold-eyed representatives of the East India Company. Captain Rackham was tall, sable haired, and swarthy, not handsome precisely, but he had strong hands, a devilish smile, and a decided air of command—all of which rendered him extraordinarily compelling to someone who could recite The Corsair from memory.

  I was stricken with shyness, of course. And so full of juvenile longings it felt as though my whole body had turned traitor to itself. He could have taken any advantage he wished of me, and I would have welcomed it. But instead he gave me . . . he gave me his friendship. I don’t know how he had the patience, or what I did to deserve it, but it was a gift beyond price or imagining.

  I was so awkward, so uncertain, so entirely the inhabitant of a world I had built for myself from scraps and whispers, but Edward . . . Captain Rackham, I mean—

  You were friends, I reckon I’m awake to the notion you was probably on first name terms.

  Actually, the time came that I called him Ned, but it was later, quite a bit later. He was the first person to care about my world, and to want to show me his. And I loved his world, Dil. I loved it. The sky is a harsh mistress, but she’s wild and boundless and beautiful. There was little Edward did not know about airships and about flying, and he would teach me everything, though not that first journey.

  That journey he simply taught me happiness.

  When we made slip at Gaslight, I truly did not wish to leave the Valiant. But Edward is . . . was . . . a man who lived by his code, and I would not have asked him to compromise his honour or endanger his crew for my sake. Later I would inadvertently lead him to do both, but standing there on the docks that day, already chilled from the drizzle, my throat clogged with dust, I was determined to be brave and selfless and make this rough-gentle man proud of me.

  We’d spoken sometimes about the future that was waiting for me in England, but neither of us really knew what it might entail. Only that I’d be part of a noble family, and that it would surely bring me benefit.

  “But what if I don’t want to be?” I’d asked.

  He’d turned his face into the horizon. “Some things you don’t get to choose.”

  Lord Wolfram had sent his carriage to collect me, as his letter had indicated he would. I recognised it by the crest. But as I approached it, I heard boot heels clatter on the boards, and I turned, and Edward was behind me, and his arms came round me, and he hugged me tight. He was warm and strong, and he smelled of sweat and the sky, and it was the first time anyone had touched me like that. It was only for a moment or two, but I felt so safe, so completely held. An enclosure that did not limit or restrict me, but was spun around me, for me. Such simple sorcery, affection.

  Um, if you tighten your legs much farther, I will be too distracted to continue talking.

  Sorry. I just . . . I guess I just wanted you to know I got you.

  You do, Dil, you do.

  I wore that hug like armour round my heart all the time I was at Wolfram Hall. Months slipped into years, and I did eventually learn how to be who I was supposed to be, and do what I was expected to do. It never felt right. I was ashamed to hate it as I did, and to prove so unfit for a life that many, I’m sure, would have thought a blessing. The years looked like bars to me, and I started to wonder if Lord Wolfram was right after all—that I was weak, and wrong, and ungrateful.

  I think I was sixteen or seventeen, or thereabouts, when Lord Wolfram’s daughter came home and prepared to make her society debut. I did not think I would envy her the coming out ball, but suddenly that cold and empty house was full of light and laughter, even the stench of the roses was swept away on a rush of night air. It was wondrous, Dil. And, oh my, the dresses. So many colours and patterns, buttercup gold and sky blue for the younger ladies, and for the married ones, scarlet and emerald and indigo and burnished copper. I remember Lord Wolfram’s daughter was in ivory and pink silk taffeta. I didn’t want to be her—she was stuck greeting her guests until midnight—but I would have loved to dance, held again in someone’s arms. A private world of skin and silk and music, entire and perfect.

  I watched the revelry from the garden, safe in the shadows. But dreaming of impossibilities and remembering lost things brought little comfort just then, and I was overwhelmed by a grief to which I had thought myself grown accustomed. I retreated from the terrace, and into one of the bowers in the rose gardens, where all my father’s lessons unravelled, and I cried.

  I tried to stop, but I hadn’t allowed myself to weep in so long, I couldn’t. And perhaps because of that, it was ugly crying, harsh and only half-stifled in the dark. The worst of it was, it brought me little relief. I had just about run out of tears when I heard a polite, English cough, and I realised I was not, as I had thought, alone. Standing at a careful distance, somehow between accident and imposition (though I have no notion how one would manage such a thing in practice), was a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman attired in stark, black evening dress.

  I cringed beneath his scrutiny, wishing for my long-gone hair to hide behind, and then turned my head away for what little privacy it could afford me. “Sir, it is not polite to . . . to . . . intrude upon another’s distress.”

  To my horror, the gentleman came a little closer. “I would consider it infinitely worse to turn away. May I do anything to alleviate your sorrow?”

  ’Twas Ruben, weren’t it?

  Of course it was. Though at the time, he was just another stranger, and I told him to go away.

  “At least take my handkerchief.”

  A square of bright silk fluttered in front of me, and I was in such a vile state, swollen-eyed and sticky-cheeked, that I could not refuse it.

  The gentleman gave a graceful bow of the sort I was supposed to be able to perform myself and such as I’d seen the dancers in the ballroom offer their partners. Then turned away.

  Which was when an unbearable thought struck me. “Please,” I called out, “please don’t tell my father you saw me crying.”

  He paused. “Of course not.” He hesitated a moment, and then came back. “But, you know, there’s nothing wrong with crying. Unless you do it so liberally without a handkerchief. Then it’s rather ill-advised.”

  “Crying isn’t manly.”

  “Perhaps not, but it’s certainly human. I do it all the time. My name is Ruben, by the way. My father is Lord Iron.”

  I blew my nose into the handkerchief, and feeling I had already trespassed enough on his good will, tried to return the now-rather-scrumpled ball of fabric
to its owner.

  He smiled, which made his eyes crinkle. “Keep it; I insist.”

  “If you cry so much, are you very sad?” I asked him. I was feeling a little better now, and there was a warmth to this stranger’s manner that made me want to like him. And trust him. He wasn’t like the other guests, pristine in the glittering ballroom. Oh, he was dressed like them, but he was careless somehow, in all the exquisite tailoring that fit him perfectly, and not at all.

  “Sometimes. But I cry for other reasons as well. Over art, or because the world is beautiful, or occasionally even in pleasure. I find it hard to account it any sort of sin.”

  Perhaps because it had been a long time since someone had spoken to me as if I was their equal, and looked at me as though I was more than a problem to be solved or a misshape to be realigned, I blurted out, “I think I’m full of sins.”

  He smiled at me, very gently, and took a seat on the bench. I’m sure you can imagine how Ruben looked in the rose garden by moonlight.

  Mighty dimber, I reckon. You ever feel more than friendly towards him yourself?

  Strangely enough, no, though he’s a good man, and I love him dearly. There’s very little I wouldn’t do for him.

  Aye, figured that when you took up with some prissy motherswinker what he fancied.

  Do you miss him very much?

  Ol’ Milord? Like I miss crabs.

  Not Milord. Ruben.

  Y’know, I thought I would. I mean, I do. But you don’t begrudge a fella you care about getting what he wants.

  Even if it means you don’t get what you want?

  I used to think wanting was the inevitable consequence of not having. And Ruben was like the . . . the . . . apotheosis of having, to say nowt of being hot as mustard in the sack. But, truth is, wanting ain’t so simple a business, and I ain’t the same as what I used to be.

  Dil, I—

  Finish the story, eh? I’m kinda enjoying imagining Ruben with the roses.

  As you wish.

  “What sort of sins, dear-heart?” he wanted to know.

  His voice was velvet-soft, and his eyes steady on mine. He was so full of impossible certainties about himself and about the world, and I wanted so much to believe in him, this man who made weakness seem like strength. I told him everything. A garbled mess, I’m sure, for much of what I had managed to put together about the circumstances of my birth and childhood I didn’t understand until later. But I spoke of my father, and Captain Rackham, and myself: all the ways I was strange, and wrong, and not what I was supposed to be. And everything I knew I shouldn’t want, but did, and could not stop myself from wanting. How I wanted to dance in a beautiful dress, and be held in a man’s arms.

  “I don’t know what I am,” I finished, breathless and half-sick on confession, like the burn of a freshly lanced wound.

  “You’re you.” He made it sound so very simple. Perhaps in another context it would be. It had on the Valiant. “And there’s certainly no wrong in preferring men as other men do women.”

  “It . . . it is not common. And . . .” I recalled Claverslick’s switch “. . . I think neither moral nor biblical.”

  “It is my own preference, and I believe the Bible, like any other book, is subject to interpretation.”

  I gasped. “Is that not heresy?”

  “Some might—” he frowned “—some have thought so. I’m sorry, I meant to comfort you, not to frighten you.”

  “I don’t think I’m frightened.” How could I be, in the company of a man who would risk his own secrets to soothe a stranger’s fears? “But what do you mean?”

  “Well, our understanding of anything is shaped by its context: to draw literalities from a text that—however divine its inspiration—is ultimately historical, is not just foolish but harmful.” His hand moved absently to touch the collar of his shirt. “The Bible tells us both ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ and ‘Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed.’ It is perverse to pretend both passages are equally pertinent to modern life. For a start, I don’t have a field.”

  I laughed, and it had been so long that the sound of it surprised me. I must have lost the habit, because afterwards I had to catch my breath, and my mouth still tasted salty from my tears. “I do not believe in this Western god.” It felt wildly good to say it. It was a truth that travelled the length of my spine. Made me taller. As if, at last, I inhabited myself again. “In the land where I was born, there existed many beliefs and philosophies. Here there is only one, and it cares nothing for what is good, or what is true, or what is beautiful. It only cares to enforce what it thinks to be right, and crush all it thinks to be wrong.”

  Ruben’s eyes had gone a little wide, but he only said, “In which case, I am not sure I believe in this Western god, either.”

  “But are you not a Christian?”

  “Oh yes. But whatever you might have been taught, that does not mean one thing. Or always the same thing. A god who exists to condemn and control, who debases love, rather than exalts it?” His smile was back, and the crinkles, and the deep brackets around his mouth. “Why would I worship him?”

  I thought of fire and dark places. The switch against my skin. “Fear of punishment?”

  He was silent a moment. “You’ve studied Machiavelli, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. It had not engaged me, being full of war and bombast.

  “You recall what he wrote about fear and love?”

  Of course I recalled. I had learned my lessons well, having little choice in the matter. “He said ideally one should be both, but as it is hard to unite them in a single individual, it is safer to be feared.”

  “Yes. Exactly.” His approval warmed me like the too rarely seen sun. “Fear is a tight yoke. And love is a thread as slender as a single hair that can stretch across the whole world.”

  I offered him a smile. “I don’t think he put it quite like that.”

  “No, but it captures the sentiment. A sentiment which, in any case, I believe to be wrong. Fear is a poor way to motivate anyone.”

  “For the motivated, perhaps, but it offers consistent behaviour.”

  Ruben’s hand curled into a fist on the bench between us. “Ah, but it doesn’t. Fear makes people unpredictable. Whereas love . . .”

  “Is surely equally unpredictable? And Machiavelli would claim considerably more fragile a bond.”

  “Perhaps, but I believe there are things we do for love far beyond anything fear could demand.”

  His conviction was, in itself, rather captivating. But I was disinclined to accept something simply because I liked the idea of it. “You have seen this?”

  He threw back his head and laughed, such a rich, heedless sound. “I’m a priest. Believing in things you haven’t seen is part of the job description.”

  “You’re a priest?” I couldn’t keep the astonishment from my voice. He neither looked, nor spoke, nor acted like one.

  A momentary hesitation. “Well, I was. I mean, I still am. I’m not sure it’s a thing you just stop being. But I can’t . . . I can’t preach anymore.”

  I saw it then, the grief in him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t need church-sanctioned words to be of use to the world, do I? To do something good. Something that matters.”

  He hunched forward, chin in his palm, intent and at the same time strangely vulnerable—this naked need in him to live according to his beliefs. It made me feel tender towards him, not just for the time he had taken to comfort me, or for his truths and his kindness, but because it seemed a dangerous thing to me, his conviction of benevolence—divine or otherwise—at the heart of the world.

  “You did something good tonight,” I told him.

  “Oh, nonsense, I just—”

  But he was interrupted by footsteps and the click of a cane upon the terrace. “Ruben? Are you lurking out here?”

  I gasped and tried to pull myself deeper into the shadows.

  Ruben put a finger to
his lips, and then stood. “I’m not lurking, father. I’m taking the air.”

  “Well, stop taking it. I want you to dance with the Wolfram girl.”

  “I’ll gladly dance with her, my lord, but I won’t marry her.”

  Lord Iron, who I could not see, made a frustrated noise. “I indulged your last fancy. I will not indulge this one.”

  “Believe me—” Ruben sighed “—the reason I am unsuited to matrimony is far from fancy.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my brow, and then slid his mouth to my ear, all warm breath, rough lips, as he whispered, “I hope you find your dance.”

  I watched him as he walked away and vanished into the light.

  Want to read more of Cloudy Climes & Starless Skies?

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  SNEAK PEEK: LIBERTY

  The wars of the future will be fought not by men on horseback, not with lances or with cannon or with ships, but with weapons fashioned from the very stuff of creation.

  Scholars of military and international history have long held the destruction of the British Empire’s 4th Skyfleet above the pirate town of Liberty in 1866 to be the first recorded use of modern aetherweaponry and to constitute a turning point in international and interdimensional politics.

  The pertinent documents, declassified in 1958 and compiled here in a new edition, are not only an invaluable resource for the interested amateur, but also a fascinating tale in their own right, revealing as they do the story of Captain George England’s hitherto secret work for the Aethermantic Operations Executive, his infiltration of the now legendary aethership Shadowless, and his final confrontation with the historically controversial pioneer of militarised aethermancy, Samuel Hardinge.