Author: Alexis Hall
Date: 2014-07-15T08:00:00+00:00
Description: A breathtaking tale of passion and adventure in the untamed skies! Prosperity, 1863: a lawless skytown where varlets, chancers, and ne'er-do-wells risk everything to chase a fortune in the clouds, and where a Gaslight guttersnipe named Piccadilly is about to cheat the wrong man. This mistake will endanger his life . . . and his heart. Thrill! As our hero battles dreadful kraken above Prosperity. Gasp! As the miracles of clockwork engineering allow a dead man to wreak his vengeance upon the living. Marvel! At the aerial escapades of the aethership, Shadowless. Beware! The licentious and unchris

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Prosperity

Copyright © 2014 by Alexis Hall

Cover Art by Simoné, http://www.dreamarian.com

Editors: Sarah Frantz

Layout and cover design: L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm

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ISBN: 978-1-62649-176-2

First edition

October, 2014

Also available in paperback:

ISBN: 978-1-62649-177-9

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A breathtaking tale of passion and adventure in the untamed skies!

Prosperity, 1863: a lawless skytown where varlets, chancers, and ne’er-do-wells risk everything to chase a fortune in the clouds, and where a Gaslight guttersnipe named Piccadilly is about to cheat the wrong man. This mistake will endanger his life . . . and his heart.

Thrill! As our hero battles dreadful krakens above Prosperity. Gasp! As the miracles of clockwork engineering allow a dead man to wreak his vengeance upon the living. Marvel! At the aerial escapades of the aethership, Shadowless.

Beware! The licentious and unchristian example set by the opium-addled navigatress, Miss Grey. Disapprove Strongly! Of the utter moral iniquity of the dastardly crime prince, Milord. Swoon! At the dashing skycaptain, Byron Kae. Swoon Again! At the tormented clergyman, Ruben Crowe.

This volume (available in print, and for the first time on mechanical book-reading devices) contains the complete original text of Piccadilly’s memoirs as first serialised in All the Year Round. Some passages may prove unsettling to unmarried gentlemen of a sensitive disposition.

For Mary Ann—who believed in this book when I didn’t.

Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.

—Heinrich Heine, “Lutetia; or, Paris,” Augsberg Gazette, 1842

About Prosperity

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Localisation Notes

Dear Reader

Acknowledgements

Also by Alexis Hall

About the Author

Enjoy this Book?

In which the reader is introduced to our hero, Piccadilly—Concerning his birth, parentage (or lack thereof), history, education (or lack thereof), charms, endowments, and virtues (or lack thereof)—Of the skymining town of Prosperity and our hero’s arrival therein—Descriptions of a game of cards and sundry persons of variable character and importance—The lamentable actions of an ungentlemanly gentleman—Some notes on the workings of skyhooks
ain’t never been one for truth-telling, and all that shite about what your father was called, and where you was squeezed yowling out your mother—but this ’ere tale ain’t your everyday moonshine.

See, it begins with a town called Prosperity.

It don’t really matter how I came to be there, cos back in them days, everybody was going. Way I heard it, the rush started cos of this one cull who got himself an airship and took to the skies over Gaslight. He went up there with pockets full of sweet fuck-all, and came down again with enough phlogiston to light up England for a year. Made him flusher than that Greek bugger what I read about.

And that’s when folks started buying up the sky, turning nowhere places like Prosperity into somewhere places. Leastways for the sorta folk who didn’t have nowt to stay put for, or had sommat to run from. And them as rather’d go clutching at dreams than turn their forepaws to honest graft.

When I first rolled into town, there weren’t much in the ol’ brain box except turning the usual tricks and running the usual rigs. Cos me being Gaslight gutterborn, I ain’t precisely grained for the straight and narrow. ’Twasn’t long afore I got settled in. Few days after making slip, I had five fat culls—meaning them as possessing more money than sense—chasing their own tails in hopeless pursuit of Judith in the game of three-card monte I was running from the street corner.

It didn’t make me no new friends, but I did get together enough chink for grub, and somewhere to kip that weren’t the ground or some stranger’s bed. Though I ain’t never stood in opposition to snuggling up with strangers.

Course, I’d also heard tattle of deep play at Albright’s Saloon, and I had the buy-in right there. I was hot for it, having always had sommat of an itch in my palms for the dealing of cards and, most particularly, for the winning at ’em by means both fair and foul.

Truth is, I like stealing more than I like having, and I like cheating more than I like playing. I know it ain’t honourable, but way I smoke it, any nick-ninny flat can get what he deserves, so the real trick is getting what you don't. And since by rights I should’ve probably been croaked in a gutter down in Gaslight or mouldering at the bottom of the Spire—which is where they put pilferers, bobtails, and tradesmen of fortune when they can catch ’em—I reckon whatever I can sharply lay paws on is as close to mine as makes no difference.

Though mebbe this is why I got more talent for getting than keeping.

And mebbe why I found myself in Prosperity to start with.

I tucked my blunt away for laters and slipped into shadows betwixt a couple of shacks to practice. I usually carry a deck or two about my scrawny person and a set of dispatchers—them being dice what throw crooked—cos you never can tell when you might need ’em. Give ol’ Piccadilly (’tis me, by way, your narrator) a deck of broads, and he’ll show you a dance to make your glims water.

I riffled and sprung and cut and false shuffled and false cut. I dealt from the top, from the bottom, from the middle, did my jogs and double lifts, flashed and flourished, glided and glimpsed, passed and palmed, and fair dazzled myself with my own brilliance. ’Twas a shame there weren’t nobody to see it. Like that tree what falls in a forest what them philosophers is always thinking about.

And when the sun was slinking o’er the horizon like a lover what ain’t too pleased with the view, I made for Albright’s. I squandered a ha’penny with the barkeep for panem and old pegg, that being hardtack and sommat he claimed was a Yorkshire type of cheese, what actually tasted more like old socks. Then, seeing as folks was assembling for play, I sauntered over casual-like to join the game.

Sitting at the table was one Ephram, brother of the Jackson Albright what owned the place. He was built like a bear with a great bristling beard on him such as could be useful for the burying of badgers.

And Gap Tooth Alis with hair so eye-bleeding red it must’ve come from a bottle bigger than Prosperity itself, and skirts so wide and ruffled ’twas a wonder she didn’t go floating off like a dirigible when the weather was blustersome.

And finally some la-di-da court card fresh off the boat, all dressed up in white linen like the fucking prince of Persia. He was sitting there nursing a cup of what the canting crew’d call catlap. Tea, y’know, bits of leaf and shit and what ’ave ye in hot water, such as drunk by fat ol’ spinsters and delicate maidlings what need a good seeing to. It looked all kinds of strange next to the rest of the empty bottles littering the tabletop.

Course, I flashed straight off this fella weren’t proper nib cos he was the nibbiest nib I’d ever stagged and nobody goes to that much effort to be who they really are. He looked the part, though, I’d give him that. Fact was, with those fancy duds and the missish ways, he would’ve looked a regular pigeon to be plucked, except there was sommat sharp about him, sharp and fragile and deadly like a glinting blade. I reckoned I’d seen pictures of angels what were less comely than he was, but there was nowt holy in him. ’Twas like seeing a wolf wrapped up in a man-skin, and all the pretty in the world couldn’t hide it.

He had this scar crossing his top lip, like a silver-coloured brand. And, looking into his glims, which were blue like somebody washed all the colour out of ’em til there was nowt left but ice, ’twas enough to send a shiver running through me. He was too gaunt and too pale, cheekbones standing out like they’d been carved. And when I gave him the cutty eye, being how one rogue beholds another, I got a peeperful of the chivs (blades, y’know) strapped to his forearms, as well as the six-shooters on each hip.

First off, none of them thought much of me rolling up, but once I paid the buy-in and acted like I didn’t have no clue, they soon perked up.

’Tis kinda its own sting, this face of mine, being so pretty-like, and my years so slender. I don’t reckon I seen more than mebbe eighteen full revolutions of the earth, but ’tis a costly mistake to underestimate ol’ Piccadilly cos I ain’t no greenhorn, no sir. Truth is, I ain’t never found a square concern—what ye might call an honest job—what with having a powerful disinclination for starving, but I done all the rackets before I turned to card sharping.

’Twas Miss Alis made the introductions, and I played along, even though I already knew what was what. First thing you scope out in a place like Prosperity—who runs the brothel, and the name of the biggest fella in town. “And this hoity-toity swinker’s known as Milord,” she finished, gesturing at the stranger.

Except he weren’t no stranger after all cos I knew the name already. Milord was what they called the crime prince of Gaslight. I’d never met the master of misrule myself, but any cove working the Stews—that being what them as lived above called the undercity—worked for Milord. The thief-keepers would tell the little uns and the kinchin coves: “You do yer job and you pay yer dues and you don’t get caught, or Milord will cut ye into ribbons.” He was supposed to be an artist with a knife—if you take artist to mean scary fucker.

Peeping across the table, I thought ’twas probably the same fella. If it hadn’t been for his eyes, I’d never have believed a dandy priss like that was running Gaslight. Except he weren’t running Gaslight. He was right here, right now. And, truthsomewise, I felt a bit wary about bobbing him cos you don’t go around trying to pull the teeth from tigers if you want to keep your fingers.

His lordship didn’t deign to speak, just flicked up a brow, swift as a striking snake. Chilled me right through, but Miss Alis grinned like he’d made a joke, and said with a slyish look, “How’s Saint Ruben? Ain’t clapped eyes on him since Shadowless made slip. Dimber cove like that—I gotta queue o’ pretty things would like to make him mighty happy.”

I faffed with my chips, acting as though I weren’t paying attention, though of course I was. Ol’ Milord wasn’t giving much away, but his cold glims got even colder, and finally he said all casual-like: “Ruben doesn’t care for happiness. It interferes with his rigid programme of guilt and self-righteousness.” You could’ve cut glass with his accent. And then he turned to me, pinning me with his attention like he’d thrown one of his chivs. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

“I don’t believe I told it.” I was being carefulwise as could be. “’Tis Piccadilly, though most prefer Dil for being as you might say less vocally challenging.”

“How singular,” observed the fucker calling hisnabs Milord.

I didn’t have the whirligigs to bring it up though.

Thing is, for a bunch of years, nobody bothered to call me anything except bratling or squeaker. But I had no intention of going through life wearing where I’d come from like a badge, so I’d reckoned if I wanted a name to call my own I was going to have to take it. There was this loony family man we called Ol’ Louse (cos he was a rogue’s companion, gettit?) what used to fence the swag, and he was always mumbling on about going to Piccadilly Circus one day. Being young and benish—daft headed—I got the notion Piccadilly was sommat kinda magical.

Course, when I finally got there, ’twas just a big ol’ crescent with a couple of roads all running together. Turned out circus was highfalutin for circle. How dingberrying pissed was I? But I kept the name anyways. ’Tis mine now.

Then Ephram growled, “Less jawing, more dealing.”

So we got to playing. Suppose I could have took it square, not bilked them, and mebbe done okay for myself, but there wouldn’t have been no fun in it. Besides, til I met Ruben (I’ll tell you about Ruben soonwise), I thought truth was for flats. When I said I was a cunning shaver, ’twasn’t just clankers and moonshine. I took it slow, not wanting to spook them, acted the chub and played booty—which is what you call it when you play to lose, but strategically-like. Once I got ’em lulled, I started skinning ’em, and quite the dance it was cos they weren’t no buffle-noddles. Made my little heart go pitter-patter, pitter-patter with all the wicked, naughty pleasure of it.

And the winning, when I got there, was some of the sweetest I’d ever tasted—not leastways cos by then Milord was looking like there was a spike stuffed up somewhere unspeakable. He knew he’d been bobbed, and bobbed soundly, but he didn’t know the how of it, and ’twas making him mad as a box of cats.

As for me, I couldn’t help crowing a bit, just to myself, cos I’d sat down with the crime prince of Gaslight and come out ahead.

As I reached for the pot, his hand shot out and caught mine, slamming us both onto the pile of chink in the middle of the table. I looked up and his glims were burning like blue flame. “You, young man,” quoth he, precise as cold water dropping down your back, “are a cheat.”

He flipped over the discards and my dealt hand. And, though he was like one hundred percent correct about the cheating, I’m a cheat with a talent for it, and there was nowt to be found to blow the gaff. Then he grabbed my wrist with an icy paw as though he expected broads to come tumbling out my sleeves.

And I confess that got the ol’ dander up a bit cos what kind of amateur did he think he was handling, eh? But I reckoned there was nowt to be gained, and probably quite a lot to be lost, by getting into a spat with a fellow like that. So I just dimpled at him, sweet as sweet, til he took himself away.

Though mebbe ’twasn’t only my charms what did it, cos right then he started coughing and coughing, and he had to get a pocket fogle to muffle it. And it weren’t no gentry cove’s ahem-ahem he had going on. ’Twas a rattling oyster-puking Gaslight cough, all dust and smoke and phlegm the colour of tar, and even a silk wiper couldn’t hide it.

He was bucket-kicking pale when he was done, but somehow he found breath to say, “The next time I see you, Piccadilly, and believe me, there will be next a time, I shall inscribe an object lesson on the folly of irritating me into your flesh.”

I didn’t feel much like laughing about it myself, but Gap Tooth Alis burst out with cackling. “Lost yer manners, Milord?”

He flushed all pinkish, which would’ve been kinda endearing somehow if I hadn’t believed every fucking word he’d just said. I was starting to think this hadn’t been the best idea I’d ever had, but I’d plenty practice with scarpering, and I reckoned mebbe Milord had better things to do with his time than go chasing a nobody all over Prosperity.

All being well, I’d be giving the place the laugh first thing in the morning.

I was just wondering if there was any way I could sorta give the coin back and, like, no hard feelings when Alis grinned at me. “Don’t think you’ll get much play in this town after that performance, Dilly lad, but I’d’ve coughed up double the blunt to see his nibship rattled. Ye got quite the set of bollocks there.”

Ah well. Too late. And no point fretting over it now. Horse was bolted, milk was spilt, Piccadilly was flush. I smirked. “I could make the introductions if you wanna get to know ’em better. Seems like I’m pretty equipped all suddensome.”

Rumour had it she weren’t no devotee of Master Thomas, but you can’t blame a cove for trying.

“I reckon any o’ my pretty things’d be glad to, sweetheart, but bring your bollocks near me and ye’ll be wearing ’em as a shappeau.”

Milord pulled out his fogle again and started cleaning the tips of his fingers in this idlesome way. Even though, far as I could stag, they was already clean. “He’ll wish he gave them to you in a presentation box by the time I’m done with him.” His voice was still all raw to nowt from the coughing, but it didn’t look like anything short of death was shutting him up. “Cheating is not gentlemanly.”

“And what the fuck would ye know ’bout that?” ’Twas Ephram, weighing in hard, like mebbe he had sommat personal at stake. “Reckon ye weren’t feeling mighty gentlemanly the day you trimmed m’ kin.”

“Morgan owed me.” Milord was as calm as you please even with Ephram breathing at him like a bull. “I simply collected on that debt.”

“That skyclaim weren’t his to spout.”

“Then you may take it up with a lawyer.” Milord gave this thin, gleaming smile with no mirth nor nowt in it, cos everybody knew there weren’t no law in Prosperity. “If you can find one, that is.”

I thought Ephram was mebbe going to lamp him one, cos he got all red and stompy, and Milord was just sorta sitting there, still smiling, like he wanted him to try it. But I guess Ephram thought better of it, and I couldn’t blame him. “This ain’t ’bout legality. You took what weren’t yours to take. And I’m gonna be reclaiming what’s rightfully mine, one way or t’other.”

It looked like it were all set to turn into an altercation of some duration, suggesting that now might be a good time for Piccadilly to bing it, so I gathered up the chink and did so right tantwivy—id est (as the inkhornes would say) really fucking fast.

I slipped onto the main street, pockets all heavy with my winnings. ’Twas chill and dark, stars hazy through the drifting cloud. From the bawdhouse, all bright-lit, came sounds of laughter and merrymaking, music and swiving, but my heart was swiftwise turning heavier than my pockets.

’Tis oft the way, I find, when the job is done. Cos I keep thinking sommat’s waiting on the other side. I dunno what, but I’m sure it’s there, just out of reach, like when I was a kinchin pressing my conk up against shop windows at Christmas.

But there’s nowt. There’s only silence. And the things you filch ain’t ever the things you want, and I reckon living itself is a filched business.

These sorta times, I fall to worrying. I start wondering if my winning streak is done for good and the gutter is pulling me back where I rightly belong, like mebbe there ain’t nowt waiting round the next corner except an eternity box and some worms having a party. Just the thinking of it makes my fingers itchy to feel broads slipping through ’em again, and if I think too long, and too hard, I’ll go looking for another game, one to lose this time, just so as it’s a choice.

Just so what I have, and what happens with it, is sommat what’s still mine.

I wandered haphazardish, trying to sell myself on the idea of getting a whore to give the ol’ arborvitae a good going over in celebration or whatever, but mainly being chilled and buffeted cos skytowns aren’t exactly the ideal location for a spot of promenading.

Prosperity’d been a refuelling rig before the rush, so ’twas even more rickety and tringum-trangum than most, and to this day, I don’t rightly think anyone meant to settle there permanent-like. I suppose some came and never scraped up the cash to get back. But then there was the others, like Gap Tooth Alis and Seth Silver and Jackson Albright and Father Giles and Kirkpatrick, who seemed to stop trying. Came to call this shaking rattling patchwork monster home. They probably did better for ’emselves selling guzzle and cunt to cloud-chasers than half the hopefuls with a skyclaim passing through. But some folk hit the big time, make no mistake, so the stories kept getting told, and the people kept coming, and Prosperity kept on growing.

Weren’t everyone what had the stomach for the place though—’tis one thing to understand the principle of sommat, another to live there day in, day out, to walk over them wobbly platforms with nowt but sky all round. There was rails, of course, supposed to be for safety, but truth was there weren’t no thinner edge betwixt somewhere and nowhere. Land was cheap cos it was whatever could get hauled up and strung up—wood and metal and scraps of this and that, all cobbled and riveted and bolted together, connected with ladders and bridges and bits of beam and what ’ave ye, sometimes not so careful-like, so that the blue would suddensome break beneath your forepaws like a big ol’ smile.

The docks was pretty solidsome, and the main drag with the Abbey and the saloon likewise, cos those was all commissioned and done proper. But the rest was anybody’s guess and anybody’s turf—anything what you could sling to a skyhook and call home. Life up here was a slip-sliding business, never the same betwixt one day and the next, and nobody counting what was lost.

Folks grew customed, cos folks always grow customed, to living with the swaying and the shifting, the cold, and the shriek of the wind through the skyhooks. And compared to the Stews of Gaslight, I don’t mind saying I found that bits-’n’-pieces town of sky and stars and makeshift dreams damn near close to paradise.

But there ain’t no place on earth ’tis wise to make a hobby of distraction, specially when you’ve just gone and bilked a crazy high-and-mighty motherswinker. Cos one minute I was walking along, counting stars and thinking coins, and the next I was pressed against a wall with a chiv against my throat. And Milord, of course, pinning me there, telling me again in a voice that made my skin crawl how cheating weren’t gentlemanly.

I tried not to squirm nor swallow cos I was frightened that even a teeny-tiny movement would split my skin beneath the blade. And I know cringing into the wall don’t seem precisely heroic-like, but I seen my share of violence; enough to know I ain’t so nuts upon it. And if that makes me a coward, leastways it makes me a walking, talking, still-breathing coward.

I could tell I’d do better trying to reason with a rattlesnake than Milord, but I had a go anyhow. Cos all I had to lose was breath and that was probably going to be in short supply soon enough. “Don’t reckon silencing a fella fer nowt is partic’larly gentlemanly either.”

I’d known before I come that there weren’t no law up in the skies. Truth is, that was sorta part of the appeal. But ’twas only at that moment, with Milord all hot and cold and sharp and about to really fucking kill me, that I properly understood what it meant when there weren’t nobody answerable to anyone or anything.

Even in the Stews there’s sommat. Chant was, Milord himself had done time in the Spire, though the details were what ye might call sketchy. But up in Prosperity, there weren’t no truth left but one, and the name of that homegrown godthing was greed. The greatest weakness of the human heart, Milord used to say. He’d kinda sneer round at us, and be all, “Learn to want nothing, and you shall have freedom.”

But I reckon there’s such a thing as having too much freedom. And there certainly ain’t no place freer than the edge of a blade.

Milord heaved a little sigh, like he was sorta regretting being put in the difficult position of crashing me. “No, but your actions have rendered it necessary. I assure you this is as much an imposition on me as it is on you.”

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
ext 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.

“He just needs tae rest.” The doc was looking as though he was as eager to get away from the asylum as I was. “Now, to the account.”

“I gots chink.” My voice came out all thin and weak as I tried to show where I’d stashed the swag. But my coat was in a tattered pile on the floor, and when the doc lifted it up to turn out the pockets, there was nowt there. Not even a clipped fucking copper. From across the room, Milord’s smile gleamed for a moment and vanished.

“Allow me, gentleman.” Suddenly I realised there’d been a hand upon my brow all this time, soft and cool, and I only noticed when it was gone.

The room was spinning all round again, and the pain was sorta making me feel fuddled and cropsick, and there was too many voices and too many folk and all of them seemed to be a bunch of crazies, so I didn’t figure nowt except a jingling of coins and this sudden swirl of colours so bright I thought I was going to shoot the cat or whatever all over the floor.

I shut my glims right tantwivy, and darkness came washing sweetly over the pain.

Ruben told me later I was in a fever for enough days they thought they’d have to get the priest back. I was dreaming of Gaslight mainwise, and the greasy dark of the Stews. Though one time I opened my eyes and saw the woman what I’d stagged before sitting on the edge of my bed with her sleeve rolled up to show a makeshift tourniquet, one end pulled tightly betwixt her teeth, while she was cheerfully shooting fuck-knew-what straight into the vein, easy as you please.

When she realised I was wakesome, she just pulled her sleeve down and stared at me with her pupil-shrunk eyes, saying, “Shall we trade dreams, Master Piccadilly?”

And I can remember her voice going on and on about some measureless city in the aether, wrapped in the loathsome rust of the ages where the greatest of the krakens lie dreaming.

Mebbe I was supposed to die, mebbe I wasn’t, but time was I became conscious of sommat real, and that was being thirsty, and it got worse and worse and worse, til it seemed like ’twas either die or get better, and, as chance or bloody-mindedness would have it, I got better.

Though when I opened my eyes proper, it kinda seemed like death mebbe would’ve been kinder. I felt weak and sore and kinda wrung out like an ol’ damp washing rag. And when I opened my lips to try and say sommat, all that happened was a sorta crappy croaking noise. Then a hand was holding a glass of water to my lips, and living suddenly seemed like a real sweet proposition cos nowt had ever tasted quite so fucking good.

I could’ve drunk oceans if I’d been let, and then I’d probably have been sick as a dog, but the stuff kept flowing all careful and patient like I was sommat special to be fussed over. My vision was fuzzy like my glims wasn’t used to looking no more, but while I was drinking, I could see sorta little rainbows reflected on the glass from the tips of the fingers holding it. And when I was done with the water, I peered up into eyes black as the ship I’d been yorking at forever ago.

And by black I don’t mean dark, I mean black, proper black; black like nowt so as even the pupils and the iris was lost. I ain’t proud of it, but I screamed the fucking place down cos that ain’t how eyes are supposed to be. ’Specially not when they’s attached to sommat sitting right close on the edge of your bed, and you’ve recentwise had some loony wench going on and on about monsters when you was trying to be asleep.

“Oh . . . oh, please . . . don’t . . . there’s nothing . . . I’m not . . . I don’t . . .” Voice was nice though, smooth and edgeless, sweet as honey. “Let me get Ruben.”

And there again was that swirl of bright colour, except this time, it sorta resolved itself into a right rum coat of patchwork velvet, wrapped round the oddest-looking creature I ever clapped eyes on.

I ain’t exactly what ye might call high ’n’ mighty, so most folks look tall to me, but this cove was tall and made up of angles and not particularly graceful with it. Put me in mind of one of ’em birds, all legs and wings, mebbe designed for being in the air not on the ground. They had one of them nowhere faces like mine, like they didn’t belong to nobody except themself, though they was all pale like lily flowers, which I most certainly ain’t. Hair to match the eyes, blacker than black, and tumbling all over the place, right the way down to their waist in bits of plaits and curls, woven with feathers and gold and silver chains and beads strung through it.

Footsteps sounded on the deck above and next thing I knew, the other fella—the one I remembered a bit too well—came bursting in.

Ruben Crowe, as I learned later, got chucked out of the church for believing the wrong things about the way God was supposed to work. I ain’t no theologian or whatever, but he did try to spin me a yarn about it once.

See, there was this book what claimed that instead of being made in the image of God, folks just sorta developed over time, and that made everybody get in a big tizzy over the meaning of the Bible. But here’s the thing about Ruben: he never had any doubts at all.

“God,” he told me, “lies not in the words of priests or the pages of the Bible. Supreme moral authority—God, if you wish—lies within the conscience of every individual.”

And that made me feel a bit bad cos I’m pretty damn sure there ain’t much God in me.

Ruben must’ve seen it cos he nudged the end of my conk with a fingertip (for a serious-sounding cove he ain’t half-cute sometimes). “Even in yours, Piccadilly. Transgressing against legality is not the same as transgressing against morality.”

Speaking of the almighty, God but them break-teeth words of his got me all hot and wrigglesome. I remember him leaning down for a kiss, rough and sweet, just like him, saying after, “God is good, Dil.” And hell to the yeah, quoth I, when my velvet wasn’t otherwise engaged in his smiling, wordful mouth.

But, really, ’tis no wonder he ain’t no churchman.

Even putting aside his taste for swiving (and his talent for it), I don’t reckon the bishops and what ’ave ye would like it much having him wandering round telling folk they was going to be all right and God loved them just the way they was. Cos if you ain’t scared of punishment, what’s to make you do right, not wrong?

Ruben thought sommat sexy and likerous about the inherent virtue of the divine in the human spirit. Which mebbe explained what he was doing hanging out in the low and lawless places of the world.

“What about ol’ Milord?” I’d asked.

And for that, he didn’t have no answer.

Right now, of course, I was lying there, not knowing none of it. Only that I’d just got the fright of my fucking life.

“I may have inadvertently startled our guest.” That was the queer nibs, very softwise, looking every which where but back at me. Mebbe . . . he’d . . . she’d . . . oh, I dunno . . . there weren’t no proper word for anyone so betwixt . . . Mebbe they’d thought I’d see their glims and freak out again. Mebbe they’d be right. Cos I was still staring right at them and couldn’t stop. What with one thing and another and getting fucking shot, I wasn’t exactly on my best form.

“I’m right bene.” ’Twas a lie.

“Byron Kae,” they said, which also wasn’t no answer to nowt.

“What’s one of them when it’s at home?”

“Well, it’s my name for a start. Excuse me.” And they lowered themselves into a proper rum bow, all florid and flourishful, which was probably meant to be mocking. Except it wasn’t. ’Twas the sorta thing you do when you’re embarrassed and trying to hide it, but you ain’t no good at hiding, nor much good at mocking neither.

That was when I first began to see their strangeness weren’t nowt at all. ’Twas other stuff what mattered about a person, and Byron Kae was pure as glass. I began to feel real bad for having made them feel they wasn’t right, but before I could say sommat, they’d gone, moving silent-like as ripples over the sea.

“Our captain. You’ll learn to understand them.” ’Twas the Ruben cove, calling me back from wherever I’d gone. He was looking all kinds of awkward standing there, hands tucked into the pockets of one of them long brownish duster things. But even so, I was glad to see him again. Memory had not told me clankers, and ’twas even more fun ogling now I wasn’t woozy with pain. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

I struggled up onto an elbow, which hurt a fair bit, but ’twasn’t nowt I couldn’t handle. “Reckon I’ve bin better. Where am I?”

“On Shadowless.”

“The what?”

He smiled. “The aethership.”

Oh. Oh. Oh. The ship of ships with her wild and dreaming eyes. That must’ve been why I couldn’t hear no engines nor feel no juddering. What a wonder, to be aboard. But I played it cool. “Yeah, I saw her from the docks.” The pieces was coming together again. “Afore your fuckwit friend shot me.”

“Yes, I’m so sorry about that. I mean, not that I can, or should, apologise on behalf of another man, but I’m sorry it happened.”

He took off his hat, all gentlemanly-like, and stood there squeezing at the brim for a bit before lowering himself into a chair.

While he was doing that, I glanced about, focusing for the first time on where I was. ’Twas a cabin shaped to the curve of the stern, all done out in honey-coloured wood with fittings of shiny brass and hangings of plum damask. I never imagined so much of the swell life could fit into such a dinky space. ’Twas sorta careful and beautiful at the same time, like somebody really loved their kip. And the whole back wall was a window, set with leaded glass in so many colours that the light came falling through like jewels.

I was snuggled up in a bed tucked into an alcove, so as your average landlubber wouldn’t go rolling out when the ship was moving. There was a couple of chairs, with a sort of fancy look to them and a desk and table all covered in papers and instruments. ’Twas proper piratical and plush as you like.

And cos Ruben was still sitting there looking sheepish over hanging out with a murderous psycho fuck, I piped up cheerfulwise: “It could’ve been worse, and this ain’t no bilge. Truth is, I ain’t e’er seen a ship to match her.”

Ruben smiled and the expression looked good on him. “She’s an aethership.”

“I thought they was jus’ a bag o’ moonshine.”

He looked a bit quizzical, like he was laughing at himself a bit but also sorta sincere in secret. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

A happy shiver ran over my skin. Truth is, I’m nuts on a learned fella. Always have been, though it’s not like I’d previouswise had much opportunity to indulge the inclination. I got plenty of the everyday sorta knowing, but the ol’ book learning, well, that’s sommat else, ain’t it?

I been getting through life taking whatever I needed and whatever I wanted, but words, they ain’t for filching. I know cos I’ve tried. Somebody has to give them to you, and nobody ever thought to do it for me. And the not having just made me want ’em even more.

But I didn’t want to take on, so just lifted up my brows and went “Oooh la la la,” and Ruben burst out laughing, though ’twas so deep and warm, I knew like instinctively he weren’t laughing at me.

“What’s that s’posed to mean then?” I asked when he was done. “You calling me some kinda bottlehead? ’Sides . . .”

I just can’t help myself. I just can’t.

’Twas the book learning what topped it. I might’ve stood a chance otherwise. Or mebbe not. I reckon mebbe there’s some part of Piccadilly designed specifically for the purpose of wanting Ruben Crowe, and there ain’t nowt I can do about it.

I flashed a little smile at him. I got a fine pair of dimples, and I know how to use them. “’Sides . . . ain’t it a bit forward to go round speculating ’bout a cove’s philosophy before you’ve e’en bin prop’ly introduced?”

Ruben went a little pinkish—which was so fucking adorable I just wanted to jump all over him and snog him senseless, banged-up fin be damned. “It would certainly be forward to go calling you a bottlehead.” Being amused made his voice roll over me like velvet and kisses. “I think it’s a generalised you, not a specific one.”

Wow, people saying shit I didn’t understand had never been more likerous. I guess it augured well for my recovery cos I felt some interested stirrings in a variety of interesting regions. “You mean you’re calling everyone a bottlehead?”

He was laughing again, and I was in some kinda heaven. Mebbe I should get shot more often, eh?

He leaned forward, all deep eyed and intent. “I just meant there is more to the world than rationality teaches us.”

“You don’t mean the Big Fella? You some sorta black coat?”

“I used to be.”

I gave him one of my best and wickedest looks. “Did they toss you out for tempting folks to sinful thinking?”

I thought ’twas a good line, but he was turning serious all over again, the darkness and the light dancing together like lovers in his eyes. “No,” he said carefulwise, “it was a matter of . . . morality I suppose.”

I weren’t that interested in mortality. “So . . . speakin o’ sin . . .” I snaked the hand that wasn’t bust out of the covers and let my fingers play against his knee.

“I don’t believe in sin.”

“That’s what ye might call a splendid convenience.”

“I believe in right and wrong.” He put his hand over mine to stop its little journey. ’Twas more than disappointing, but I could feel the deep lines furrowing his palms pressed against my skin like mebbe he was leaving a message behind: the patterns and promises of Ruben Crowe, his life and times. “And taking advantage of strangers is most certainly wrong.”

I pouted. “What if they want to be took advantage of?”

“Then they probably need reminding that they’ve been very sick and would most likely faint in the middle, which would be—” his lips twitched “—nonideal.”

Course, he was right, though I didn’t fancy thanking him for it. Truth was, even moving my good paw had made me come over dizzy, and I was grateful when he picked it up and tucked it back under in the warmth. My eyes was getting all heavy again, though I’d probably only been awake like twenty minutes. ’Twas rubbish.

“You need to rest, Piccadilly.”

I heaved a massive yawn. “’S Dil,” I mumbled.

I never did figure how he knew it to begin with. Mebbe Milord had told him—I’d overheard ’em fighting about me few times. Ruben being all, “You don’t just shoot people for no reason,” and Milord saying, “I had a reason,” and Ruben coming back with, “Being out of range of your knife is not a reason,” and Milord, a while later, “Do you wish me to apologise?” And then Ruben losing it and shouting, “I want you to care.” And then forever of silence before Milord was saying, soft and strange: “I am not a man fashioned for caring.” And, finalwise, footsteps leaving.

’Twas a business worth pondering when I didn’t have sommat better to do.

Even though I was sleepy, I managed to twinkle up at Ruben. “And ye haven’t said no yet, Preacher.”

I felt the lightest of touches against my hair. “So I haven’t.”

I was starting to reckon I hadn’t done so bad out of being shot. I wouldn’t’ve recommended it as a lifestyle choice, but I’d bed and board, a roof over my noddle, and—putting aside a crazy wench, a psycho what wanted to kill me, and the queerest of queer nibs—the promise of the sorta company I’d’ve been mighty glad to, y’know, keep.

Except it don’t pay to get too comfortable.

I knew that. ’Tis one of ’em lessons sommat about being human makes you learn a bunch of times. But I thought I’d already learned it good.

So it shouldn’t have been any shock at all for sommat to wake me in the middle of the night, and for the sommat to be Milord, sitting there all speckled in starlight from the window, twirling one of his chivs betwixt his fingers.

Except here’s the thing.

It’s always a fucking shock when some bugger wants to knife you.

A couple of physical reactions to this made their bid for freedom—scream from one end, sommat considerably less dignified from the other—but I managed to stop ’em. Cos while yelling might’ve brung some help, I’d probably be too sticked-in-the-face to properly appreciate it. And what with being kitten weak and woozy, and fucked in the arm region, I wasn’t in no good position to be putting up a fight.

Which just left trying to reason with him.

Ha-bloody-ha.

I lay still, and quiet as quiet could be, trying to breathe to the same rhythm as when I’d been blissfully clueless in the land of Nod. Mebbe he was just . . . I dunno . . . passing the time of day . . . night . . . and he’d pack up his scary fucking cutter and wander off again.

’Twas awful, locked in the dark, shamming sleep. Waiting every second for the cold benediction of steel.

I seen a fella get his throat slit once. Took him a second or two to notice. Took him a minute or two to die. But then the cove what done it weren’t no expert like Milord.

Chant was, he had this double cut, could crash someone in five seconds flat. If he was feeling merciful. ’Twas also said he could keep you alive for days if he fancied it. For weeks. Months. Knowing nowt but pain.

He was moving, quiet as only cats and rogues know how.

I cricked open a glim, just the tiniest fraction. He was nowt but a piece of dark, framed in silver. I heard the softest click as he put the chiv on the table.

Which mebbe should’ve been reassuring, but then he bent down and picked up a pillow what I’d probably tossed to the floor at some point during the night.

There was this sweet little moment when all I could think was, Ye’ve got to be fucking bamming me, but it passed away too quickwise, and then I was scared again, all prickles and nerves and sweat under his indifferent glims.

Dunno how long he stood there, watching, blatantly thinking about killing me. But it felt like for-fucking-ever.

Then he huffed out this sigh and tucked the pillow under my head, muttering, “Oh, go to sleep, Piccadilly.”

And he picked up his knife again, slid it into its holster with a swish, and glided away.

I never did figure out why he didn’t do it. ’Twasn’t the kinda question you asked. Even though it weren’t like no bugger else’s, Milord had his code, but it weren’t the type of code that’d draw the lines at killing some poor bastard in his kip while he was wounded. Probably he’d consider it . . . an efficient use of his time or sommat. Truthfully, I reckon now what held him back was Ruben, but I didn’t know that then.

The one what ye might call advantage of this little nocturnal adventure was it impressed upon me the necessity of getting better as a matter of some serious fucking urgency. I kept expecting Milord to come prowling in, having come up with some exciting new way to snuff me, but mainwise I just saw Ruben and the moon-touched mort I’d half-hoped was nowt but a fever dream.

Her bedside manner weren’t exactly what you might call reassuring, and most of the time she was off her fucking head, but I reckon they kept sending her along, what with women being the nurturing sex and all that. Though I don’t reckon she had a nurturing bone in her body.

She told me in one of her lucid whatevers that her name was Miss Grey, and she gave such a glare when I asked if Miss was what they’d said when they’d plopped her in the fount that I left it at that. I thought it mighty strange that she’d give a damn about being over familiar when she kept offering me opiates like she was my personal hedge quack.

Truth is, I done a bit of this and that in my time, when things ain’t been so great and a shadow of happiness seemed more important than food or warmth, but there comes a point when you choose to embrace illusion or chuck it, and I opted to chuck it. I seen what too much smoke can do to a cove—sorta hollows you out on empty dreams.

When Miss Grey weren’t getting ratted and lying cross my bed in a droop-glimmed pile of muslin, babbling about blasphemous horrors and squamous monstrosities and generally freaking me the fuck out, she’d sit for bleeding hours at the desk faffing on with all the fancy brass instruments and squiggling away on bits of paper, though half the time she weren’t even looking at what she was drawing.

It took the best part of a week before I plucked up courage to ask what she was actually doing.

She was such a pricklesome quim I thought she’d bite my noggin off for daring, but she put down the quill, and said, “I’m a cartographer, Master Piccadilly.” She’d been calling me that for days, though I’m master of precisely fuck all.

“What, maps and shit?”

“Yes. Indeed. Maps. And shit.” She had this way about her that could make a perfectly respectable cuss word sound filthy.

I’d filched the occasional map back in the day—usually fetched some decent blunt, specially the old uns with everything in the wrong places. Queer, ain’t it, the way that works? Like you’d think that would make ’em worth less. Ol’ Louse said it’s cos folks like to remember when they was dreaming different worlds.

“Let’s ’ave a gander then.”

For a moment, it looked like she was going to tell me to stuff it (except in a nib way), but then she picked up what she was working on and brought it over to me.

The paper unrolled across my knees with this kinda sensual crackling sound. ’Twas the expensive sort, the surface all fibrous like you was stroking sommat alive. But it weren’t like any map I’d ever clapped eyes on before.

’Twas all lines going this way and that, bit like latitudes and longitudes, I guess, except they was off in all directions and crisscrossing over each other like a crazy fishing net. And even though ’twas a flat bit of paper, sommat about the way she’d drawn ’em made it look like they was standing out somehow, as though you could put your paw right through ’em.

Here and there was neat little pictures of stuff all labelled up far too clean for someone being stoned all the time. I couldn’t read the writing, of course, but one of ’em was a higgledy-piggledy bunch of rocks all hanging on skyhooks.

“That Prosperity?”

She nodded.

“What’s the rest?”

“It’s the aether.”

I peered again at the nonsense lines. “How can you put on a map what ain’t there fer seeing?”

She looked at me. The pupils had all eaten her eyes up so just a tiny rim of greyish-blue was left. “But I do see it.”

“Oh aye?” I couldn’t help sounding a bit dubious cos ’twas clear the wench was jingle-brained. “What’s it like, then?”

“It is measureless and anchorless, a deep sea darkness illuminated only by a seeping, sickly starlight the colour of corruption.”

I was starting to wish I hadn’t asked. I spoke to Ruben about it later, what with him not being three gears short of an engine, cos I thought the aether was just what they called the air when you got up high. “Oh no, Dil,” quoth he. “Aether is a zero viscosity fluid permeating all of space. It interacts with real matter in a series of complex reactions as yet poorly understood by conventional science.”

Which didn’t make no more sense than what Miss Grey had said.

Right then, she was staring at nowt or rather she was staring at sommat I was fucking glad I couldn’t see.

“So, uh, what’s that for, then?” I stabbed a finger at a spot near Prosperity where there was a little drawing of a ship being all sorta devoured by writhing tentacles what were covered in eyes and dripping with slime.

She blinked herself back, looking at me like she’d forgotten who I was. Her eyes rolled round to the map. “Oh that,” she said in an empty, singsong voice. Her mouth turned up, though ’twasn’t like she was laughing. “There be dragons, Master Piccadilly. There be dragons.” And then she stood, shaking out her skirts. “Excuse me,” she went on, all ladylike. “But I need a whore. Or three.”

“Don’t s’pose they do delivery?”

But she’d already bogged off. ’Twas going to be a long day.

She later told me about this uncle of hers who’d gone prancing off to some lost tomb deep in the depths of a jungle already full of a bunch of folks who reckoned the jungle was not for prancing in. He managed to get out of there with this dodgy greenish glowing idol or sommat, and rather than sticking it in a museum so swells could go ooh and ahh at it, he kept it.

Which tells you just about everything about nib folk, really.

Cos ’tis the first thing a filching cove learns: shift the goods.

Anyway, he set the Thingamibob up in this special room in his house and started acting all batshit. Like painting the room black and green and drawing stars on the ceiling in silver paint except with the constellations being all wrong. And that weren’t even the maddest shit—apparently the poor ol’ bugger was shot with a shotgun for no apparent reason right there in his own kip by this whacked-out group of randoms, who nicked off with the idol.

But his diary got sent to Miss Grey, who was busy being a governess, and, truth be told, I couldn’t make head nor tail of the story after that. Sommat about ruined cities beyond the stars, and a bunch of evil trees down in Cornwall, I dunno. Then Bedlam, which weren’t so surprising, and Byron Kae busting her out of there, which must’ve been quite some adventure, and here she was, driftwood like the rest of us.

She claims the opium helps. But the whores are just for fun.

With batshit shit like that being the only entertainment for a sick-and-sorry-for-himself Piccadilly, I was starting to get right restless. The bruises were fading off, though my fin was still splinted up and hurt like you wouldn’t believe if I started waving it about. I ain’t very good at staying still and quiet when there ain’t no purpose to it. And make it double for when there’s something going on, cos I could hear all manner of noises coming from the deck above.

Ruben said they was fitting the last bits and pieces to the phlogiston grill, and then I remembered what Ephram’d said after the game, and I put two and two together and got four. Which is to say I reckoned one of them (most likely Milord) had a skyclaim.

Though, again, it made me wonder what he was doing chasing clouds instead of riding Gaslight like ’twas his personal clipped copper drab. Cos it ain’t true what they say about crime not paying—I reckon that’s just something they put about to stop everybody getting in on it.

But then I also reckon you probably don’t last very long as an arch-rogue when you’ve got a galloping case of dustlung.

“I can’t imagine anyone using an aethership for cloud-panning,” I said to Ruben the next time he stopped by for a visit.

He plonked himself down on the edge of the bed, smelling of clean sweat and the open sky. ’Twas so delicious, I wanted to lick it right from his skin til he tasted of nowt but him and me.

“It wasn’t the plan,” he admitted. “We were going to charter an airship when we arrived, and continue on alone. But since you’ve been hurt, three vessels have gone down and the skies are too dangerous for anything else.”

“Krakens?”

He just nodded.

“You don’t think that makes a good reason to mebbe not fucking go?”

That made him smile a bit, white teeth flashing in sun-touched skin, making me think of shit I ain’t never seen before, like fields of gold and pure-blue country skies. “Time is, unfortunately, a factor.” He stopped a moment. “It’s Milord’s claim.”

I wanted to ask how a cove like Ruben fell in with a cove like Milord, but I didn’t get the courage to ask. And I never did.

I got the notion it must’ve happened in Gaslight though, back when Milord was Prince of the Stews and Ruben was newly defrocked, or whatever they do in the Church of England, and looking for sommat to believe in. I ain’t got much of a taste for making shit up, but you hear plenty of stories down in Gaslight about Milord in them days before the city took his health.

If you didn’t know what was what, you’d probably think it strange that a bunch of hardened millers would dance to the tune of some prissy dandy ponce. Before him was Black Jack Callaghan, who was much more your regular sorta hackum. But Milord was sommat else. Cold, calculating will to power, coupled with the stomach to do what others wouldn’t, and a reputation for being ruthless and generous in pretty much equal measure. It made him good to work for and fatal to cross.

“You mean he’s going to snuff it if you ain’t quick?” I asked, not feeling all that sympathetic to his plight.

Ruben didn’t say nowt to that, just looked like he might be really sad, which made me even less friendly disposed towards ol’ Milord.

“He needs to get away from England,” he went on at last. “Somewhere warm—like France or Italy. It might be good for his health.” And the corners of his lips turned up like they was trying to be cynical, but there was too much hope in him for that, so ’twas just this little half-smile, sweet like a secret. “And put him beyond reach of all those who want to kill him.”

What a thing. What a marvel. To have Ruben Crowe at your side. Even though the world had nowt else for you except hatred.

I squirmed about grumpishly in the bed. “Can’t imagine how anyone came to such an intention. What’s your angle, Preacher?”

Another one of them endless silences. “I suppose we’re . . . friends? I know who he is, and what he is, and what he’s done, but I also think there’s good in him.”

Course Ruben had to think that cos if there weren’t, where was that God of his hiding?

“Naw, you jus’ hope there is,” quoth I.

But we was all hoping in our different ways. Mebbe that’s why I didn’t see then how Milord had struck him deep. Or mebbe I didn’t want to, just like Ruben. In any case, I was sick of talking about his lordship all the fucking time.

I readied the ol’ dimples. “There’s good in me, y’know. Lots and lots. I jus’ need saving from m’ life of privation and what ’ave ye.”

He tipped up his brows. “Is that so?”

“Aye, ’tis so. I just need showing the straight and narrow.” I fluttered my lashes at him, wriggling about under the sheets. “Well mebbe not the straight.”

“You’re incorrigible. What am I going to do with you?” He was shaking his head, but he was grinning too.

“I got some ideas. I could list ’em?”

“I think I could probably figure them out.”

“Oh, you do, eh?” If I’d been able to move properly, I’d have planted one on him right then, but I couldn’t reach so I just had to sit there, trying to look adorable. “Does it start with kissing?” I fluttered and wriggled and dimpled for all I was fucking worth, a shitty slow burn starting in my arm for my trouble, though ’twas nowt to the slow burn of Ruben dancing through my blood like fireflies.

Fucker stood up. “I have work to do, Dil.”

Well, way to make yournabs feel like a gutter doxy, Piccadilly.

But I guess I must’ve looked handfuls worth of miserable cos suddenly he was leaning over me, and his lips were sliding over mine, all rough and supple velvet, and I was clutching at his clothes with my non-duff hand and sighing wild pleasure against his mouth. Cos ’twas lovely, lovely, lovely. He tasted so clean and right and perfect, like the bluest, widest sky, like air and water and everything you need to keep living. And the stubble on his jaw was scraping so sweetly against the edges of my mouth, like it wanted to make sure I wouldn’t forget nowt later.

But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t forget til the day I fucking died. It’ll be the last thing I hold before the darkness comes. Kissing Ruben Crow.

Sommat he’d given me, not sommat I’d taken.

He was holding himself so carefulwise cos he didn’t want to go crushing my arm, but right then I didn’t give a damn about anything except getting more Ruben. My skin was all alight with hungers for his, and I wanted to wrap myself round and round him like ivy climbing a wall. I guessed it’d been a while since he’d done much preaching cos he was all hard muscle and strength, and I could feel beneath my fingers the thundering of his heart like a whole herd of horses running across wide-open plains.

I weren’t exactly nuts on him pulling away, but he did, leaving me dizzy with wanting, and moaning softly for the loss of him.

“Well, Dil,” he said with his voice gone all growly.

I looked up at him through my lashes. “Stay a bit.”

He swallowed. “I’m needed on deck.”

I wanted to point out he was needed down here (most particularly down here), but I didn’t want to look any more pathetic. Though considering I was throwing myself at him like he was victuals and I was starving, mebbe that airlugger had already sailed.

I’d been in bed for what felt like forever. ’Twas a wonder the ol’ arborvitae hadn’t dropped off with lack of use.

“But I’m bored,” I whined. And then panicked. “I mean, I don’t just want to . . . y’know . . . cos I’m bored . . .”

He laughed. “So you say.” He tweaked the tips of my locs, letting them twist all playful betwixt his fingers. “Poor Dil. Of course you’re bored. I’ll think of something.”

I got all excited about that promise til he came by later with a stack of books and then buggered off again.

Talk about the way to break a cove’s heart.

I shifted through them, clearly his own little collection, the leather being worn though with love, not neglect. I traced the symbols with a fingertip and a sigh. ’Twas another piece of proof that the Rubens of this world weren’t for the Piccadillys.

A warmish kinda scent was rising from the leather, dusty but sweeter, and I got to thinking mebbe that was the smell of words. I turned over a cover and the pages crackled like they was laughing at me. I’d never seen so many black squiggles all pressed up together, the ones behind bleeding into the ones in front, and the more I yorked, the more they swirled about and jumped hither and thither, swapping places like they was dancing a reel.

I didn’t have to be fucking able to read them to know what they was saying. They was saying, “We ain’t for you, Piccadilly, and we’ll never be for you, so ha-ha-ha. In the gutter you was born, and in the gutter you’ll stay, cos you ain’t worth nowt to no one, and you can look up all you like, but you ain’t never getting your feet out the shit.”

And suddenly I felt beyond wretched, and angry as well, for everything I wanted and couldn’t have. And kinda sick and sorta jealous of Ruben even though I liked him so fucking much. Cos he had so much of everything, he didn’t stop to think that mebbe other folk didn’t.

I grabbed up one of the books and threw it, hard as I could, against the cabin wall.

Didn’t do much good, though. Just made a softish noise so as I felt like a fucking barbarian piece-of-shit idiot.

Then I realised I was going to have to go get it before Ruben came back, and the thought of trying to walk all that way over the tiny cabin made my arm feel like mebbe it would’ve preferred getting cut off. Though ’tis not like you walk on your forepaws so fuck knew what that was supposed to be about.

Even my own damn arm was acting like a nidgit.

And on top of that, I found myself thinking that I’d have to tell the truth to Ruben cos he was going to be all, How’d ye like them books, Dil? (only posh), and since I didn’t even know what they was called, I didn’t have no clue how I was going to blag my way out of trouble. And then he’d know, and he’d probably be right sweet about it, but there ain’t nowt nice about ignorance.

And I wanted him to want me, like I wanted him. Not just have him be kind or whatever.

I brought my knees up to my chest and pressed my face into them for a bit of a self-pity party, except then the cabin door opened and I jerked up, wide-eyed. in case ’twas Ruben coming back.

But ’twas Byron Kae, queer as ever, with the wind stirring through their coat til it fanned out behind them like a crazy rainbow.

“Trying to breach my boat, Piccadilly?”

They sauntered inside, kinda graceful-not-graceful, rolling somehow with the swaying of the ship, right to where I’d tossed the book, and picked it up, glancing at the frontispiece. Up went the brows over the black eyes.

“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 black 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.

In which our hero Piccadilly attends a funeral and very nearly instigates his own—A consideration of the etiquette for the giving and receiving of gifts and of the finer principles of the ethic of reciprocity—Another game of cards ends in an ungentlemanly fashion—Of unmentionables best left unmentioned—Several acts of violence, some of them warranted—Additional notes on the nature of love and its perils
he next few days, I started making an effort to get out of bed, walking a little bit further and getting a little bit stronger every time I did. I ain’t proud to admit it, but I stripped that ken like I was looking for the crown jewels. I didn’t filch nowt, though, cross my heart, cos I got a code too. I just wanted to know shit cos any family man worth his salt’ll tell you that knowing is the basis of nobbing—to wit having a fucking clue so as to prosper in an unfuckgiving world.

I didn’t find much. Just lots of Miss Grey’s befuddlesome maps, and technical instruments of then-obscure purpose. Weird brass quadrant things, astrolabes, compasses, octants, and sextants and however-many-you-fancy-ants. And I reckoned Byron Kae for a bit of a dandy cos all I found in their skychests was clothes. Mainwise the sorta stuff I’d seen them in, but all wrapped up carefulwise in tissue paper at the bottom was frocks what’d make a debutante cry green tears just to imagine ’em. Some had so many flounces it made my glims go funny just for looking. There was one all made of feathers, but they was like no feathers you’d think was possible, all turquoise and emerald and gold, like they was looking right at you. I guess there weren’t much call for togs like that on an airship, but I couldn’t imagine Byron Kae nowhere else neither. Not shy and savage in some gilded ballroom on the arm of some swell.

One of the drawers in the desk was slour’d up, so I jiggered it open with one of Miss Grey’s hairpins. ’Twas basically dead cargo: just papers what would’ve taken me forever to read. I did try though, putting good stuff to bad purposes, cos that’s what I do. I found sommat all inkhorney and highfalutin written sameways as “The Education of the World” what looked like some kinda medical paper. “Delusions of Monsters and Phallic” sommat or other. It didn’t make no sense.

I asked Ruben what it meant, but he just got all red, and changed the subject. I know now, though. Phallic: of or pertaining to the wang. Though I still ain’t sure what it had to do with seeing krakens.

The rest was just papers stuffed in a battered old file. Sommat was stamped on the front. Classified. And WO. Inside was lots and lots of words from The Journals of Miranda Lovelace. ’Twas seriously hard-core boring.

As I was shoving everything back in the drawer, sommat caught, so I got a hand in there and had an extra rummage, finalwise plucking out this miniature in a flaky golden frame. ’Twas a dimber cove, haughty-like, with shifty eyes.

Byron Kae told me later he was their dad. He was in the navy, which was what brought him halfway over the world to Byron Kae’s mother. They still remembered watching with her for the sails, til one day the horizon was empty. I thought it kinda strange that would teach you any sorta love for ships, but Byron Kae just smiled.

We’d talk like this, sitting in the prow, Byron Kae’s hair streaming over the figurehead, with the stars and all the colours of the aether running through it, and me snuggled betwixt their legs cos you’re never scared of falling, or scared of nowt, when you’re with them. They didn’t touch me often back then, but mebbe ’twas one of the nights when they did, cool fingertips leaving little points of light all across my forearms til I felt like I was made of sky.

They said they’d spent their whole childhood waiting for their dad—whoever he was—to come back and take them away to some magical place where they fit. When I asked if they’d ever found it, they laughed, the sound turning the air to music, and said yes, they had, and this was it, and it had nowt to do with him at all.

That was a long time later though. After Prosperity fell.

After flipping my gracious host’s home, what I’d been invited into and mostly cared for in, and not being rendered comatose by it, I thought mebbe I was well enough to brave being on deck.

And, fuck, yeah. So fucking nice to see an open sky again, I can’t even begin to describe it.

’Twas all hands and chaos up there, though, with Prosperity folks running this way and that still trying to set up the phlogiston grill and the turbine to turn it. And though I knew ’twas just for temporary, I still felt a bit sad to see it all there cos all that metal looked kinda ugly somehow when Shadowless was so fine.

Ruben was overseeing everything, making sure nobody was going to do any harm, but Byron Kae still didn’t look very happy about it, and I couldn’t blame them. If Shadowless was mine, I wouldn’t let anybody touch her who didn’t love her like I did.

Truth is, even with an aethership, cloudpanning weren’t going to be no cakewalk. I heard ’twas sommat about Gaslight smoke in the sky, making the clouds all thick with phlogiston, but just a thimbleful of the condensed stuff could blow you to kingdom come. To say nowt of the aethercurrents up there, and the things what live in them.

Since I was going to be making myself useful, Ruben told me how it was all supposed to work. He used a bunch of breakteeth words, and got all glowy-glimmed and excitable like he always did when he was talking sommat learned, which made it kinda hard to pay attention to what he was actually saying. Way I understood it, though, the turbines drew the caloric out of the wires on the grill, making ’em get what Ruben called supercooled, condensing the phlogiston when it came into contact with ’em, so you could collect the stuff in special flasks, and hopefully not get yourself all blowed up. ’Twas more to it, of course, being all full of science and shit, but at least it weren’t no world of mere phenomena headfuckery.

Rest of the time, I rambled all over Shadowless, trying to get to know her a bit. Byron Kae taught me this and that, but truth was, she belonged to them, through and through, shifting like the winds with their moods. And the more time I spent with both of them, the more I felt like . . . well . . . the more it felt like home. Something I didn’t exactly have much experience with feeling. Guess it was pretty queer to find it on a ship of all places. Or mebbe not.

I still got knackered pretty quickwise, which was inclined to put me in crabsome humour, but the time slipped away so nicely I was kinda half-wishing we never had to leave. Though the longer we waited in dock, the more restless Byron Kae got. I’d stag them high in the crow’s nest with their hair all tangling and jangling in the wind, or pacing the deck with their boot heels clicking, or else sprawled out across the topsail like a cat in a tree. I never saw them so much as set a foot wrong, never mind fall.

The others had their habits too, slipping off to town for one reason or another, while I watched and sometimes sneaked about after ’em, when I had the energy and inclination, trying to learn what made ’em tick. Milord went to find himself a game to lose—not that I reckoned he intended to lose, but he always did, cos he was the worst sharper I ever met. ’Twasn’t that he couldn’t. His long tricksome fingers were as suited to the quick dealing of cards as they were to the wielding of knives, but my guess was, the psycho fuck thought even the vagaries of chance would bend to his will if he just kept trying to make ’em. Ruben usually went to church or for a dram of whisky, never straying too far cos trouble followed Milord and so did Ruben. Miss Grey, though—ha! Straight to the Abbey for Miss High-in-the-Instep, right to Gap Tooth Alis. And, with her poppy-glazed eyes unflinching, “I shall take six of your most adroit bawds if you please, Miss Alis.”

I am shitting ye not.

Me, I didn’t have no chink nor inclinations, so I stayed with Byron Kae, limping through “The Education of the Thingy,” til one day they rocked up with a smile and a little package wrapped in velvet and tied off with a gold-coloured ribbon like the ones running through their hair.

I’d been resting, but I perked up to see them come into the cabin. “What’s this?”

Byron Kae twirled their fingers together. “It’s for you.” They’d gone all flushsome. ’Twas an oddly endearing habit, though I never knew what I did to deserve it.

“Y’ mean . . . like a present?” quoth I, flummoxed cos this was new territory.

“Yes,” they said quickly. “Exactly like a present.”

“Should I, like, open it?”

“Probably a good idea, otherwise I shall simply have given you a square of velvet.”

I fiddled with the ribbons, but I couldn’t get the knot undone what with only having one functional arm, so they had to help, and our fingers all got knotted together, and ’twas all a bit ridiculous, but it didn’t seem to matter cos we was both sorta giggling about it. And finally I parted the velvet to find a couple of books, both sized to fit a pocket and pretty battered, but ’twas the first present I’d ever got and the first books I’d ever owned.

Though ’twasn’t like Prosperity was overbrimming in high culture, so I couldn’t bear thinking how much Byron Kae had likely coughed up for them. I mean, they probably got trimmed, but I didn’t like to say cos that ain’t how you go greeting a gift.

Course, that left the question of how you did go greeting a gift.

“Uh— Uh . . .” I was so confuzzled, I even forgot to be cute about it. “I . . . I dunno how to say thanks prop’ly. I mean I ain’t got nowt to give you back.”

“Maybe a gift is in the giving?”

“Sounds like bunk to me, mate.”

“It’s selfishly motivated.” They put a hand to their brow, all theatrical-like, making me smile. “I simply can’t bear to hear any more about the education of the world.”

I put my fingers to the lettering on the cover and started sounding out the words. “O-Olllli . . .”

“That’s right.”

“Oli . . . vrrr. T-Twee . . .”

“Twi.”

“Oliverrr Twissst.” Byron Kae smiled at me and, somehow, that got me even more of a fluster. “In the lingo ‘oliver’ is what we call the moon,” I offered, still not really knowing how to say thank you without mebbe clicketing. Once I wouldn’t’ve stalled for a moment, but I didn’t exactly fancy it, not with a heart full of Ruben.

So I looked at the other book instead, but there didn’t seem to be any writing to guide me. Opening it up, there still weren’t, just a thrum of blank pages. Peering up with cheeky all over me, I said: “This un seems duff.”

More smiles, sweet like fresh rain. They was so sweet, really, when you learned to see it. “There’s no point reading without writing. You can practice in it. Then write in it, if you like.”

I gave a sudden sorta little squeak. “Will you show me ‘Piccadilly’?”

“Yes, of course.” Byron Kae plucked up Miss Grey’s quill and ink and fixed the nib and did the charming faff what folk do when they’re preparing writing. And then looped a bunch of symbols all over the first page.

“Is that . . . me?” Mebbe Ol’ Louse hadn’t been as loony as I’d though. Mebbe ’twas sommat magical in the word after all.

“Yes, that’s how you write ‘Piccadilly.’”

’Twas one big loop, two loops together, and one long loop, the other shapes snuggled up together all neat in the middle. “’Tis bene grand,” quoth I, well pleased. “Now do ‘Byron Kae’!”

They tossed a quizzical sorta look my way, since in the excitement, I’d started giving orders like I was Rear Admiral of the World. But then they smiled and drew more letters for me.

“I’ll practice like every day or sommat,” I promised. “Sooo . . . you wanna have some Oliver or whate’er?”

“Oh, yes . . . if . . . if you do.”

I shuffled over on the bunk and Byron Kae sorta eased theirself onto the edge, which was how we’d took to being.

Byron Kae is one of them ruffly sorta folks, and I sometimes think ’tis a wonder they ain’t eight miles wide with all the layers they’re sporting. I never seen them without the rainbow coat but the rest seems to lie with the winds of chance: silk scarves and floofy shirts, flying petticoats and billowing trousers, lace cravats and heavy buckled belts, interesting waistcoaty things with boning running up and down them, all of them the brightest colours dyes can manage, in velvet and silk and wool and leather.

Occasionwise, I did find myself sorta wondering what they looked like underneath. Sleek as Shadowless, I reckoned, with all their hair falling about them, shadows and glitter, and the gleam of skin underneath.

Anyway, somehow or the other, I got myself nested in all the fluff, not wanting to crease any of Byron Kae’s fancy duds but equally enjoying being close with them. ’Twas like back when I was young enough to believe friendship weren’t no passing thing.

“Chapter One,” they read. “‘Treats of the place where Oliver Twist was born and of the circumstances attending his birth.’”

I tucked my head against their shoulder. “Oh ay. That’s mightsome handy, ain’t it? Helping you not to get lost in the book.”

“No danger of going round in circles here. You want to try?”

I prepared the Reading Finger. “A-mong o-th-rrr pu-blic bu-buiiiildingss in a kur-kur . . .”

“Soft c.”

“Right. Cert-tain toowwn, wh-ich for ma-ny rea-sons it will be prud . . .”

“Proo.”

“Proood-dent to reef-f-f-rain from . . . holy shit.”

“Sound it out.”

“But it goes on for like ever! Men-men-t-t-”

“Shu, remember?”

“Menshu-ning and t’wh-ich . . . wait a minute, why ain’t he menshunin’ it?”

“Because it’s prudent.”

“He going to trash it?”

“Most likely.”

And so we went on, day to day. Slow, but ’twas faster than I’d ever read before. And though I was totally onside with this Oliver cove wanting more, I reckoned he was going about it in a pretty nidgit way.

We’d barely escaped from the town it weren’t proodent to menshun (ha), when the work was done, and Ruben said he was heading into Prosperity to get Milord and Miss Grey, cos he hadn’t left the gaming tables for three days and she hadn’t left the Abbey.

Since I was getting stronger and I wanted to sorta casually drop Mr. Dickens into the conversation so Ruben would be all admiring, I offered to tag along too.

“You coming?” I asked Byron Kae.

They kinda glanced betwixt Ruben and me—I guess I was hustled up pretty close to him cos, well, yeah—and shook their head.

Ruben just grinned and gave me a little push towards the rail. “The captain is most comfortable on Shadowless.”

As we swung down onto the docks, he warned me that folks playing with Milord over long periods of time tended not to be the happiest sorts.

“Don’t s’pose it’s cos he’s doubling the blunt what he nicked?” I suggested.

“It’s more likely he’s lost almost everything he owns and just won’t let go.”

“That bugger’s the sorest loser I e’er met.” I rubbed at my shoulder which was still bearing a grudge.

Ruben grinned. “That he is.”

’Twas a grey morning in Prosperity, as though a cloud had come along and swallowed the whole town down. A pale, heavy sorta mist was hanging about everywhere with this silvery rain coming down through it at a slant like it weren’t never going to stop falling. The wind was steadyish, pushing the rain straight into your face and keening through the skyhooks like a banshee. And over it all was the deep sad tolling of the town bell.

Queerest thing about rain in Prosperity, it didn’t smell like it did nowhere else. Mebbe cos there weren’t no earth, or sommat. ’Twas so empty and pure somehow, like the sky.

People was coming out from behind their doors, huddled neath umbrellas and gathering into little clumps. The general store was closed for business and even the doc had put aside the bottle for a bit. I stagged Miss Grey, arm-in-arm with Gap Tooth Alis leaving the Abbey, walking so close together that their skirts all intertwined like lascivious bodies. And there was Ephram Albright wearing a hat about two storeys high, though ’twas shabby as the rest of him. And Father Giles in his black coat, looking bent over by the weight of the wind and the rain.

A sort of unintended procession formed, moving all higgledy-piggledy towards the edge of town.

“Service for the lost,” Ruben whispered, pulling his coat round me to protect me from the worst of the weather, and making it so we fell into step with the rest of them. “The Amelia went down yesterday. Somewhere around 54-58-41 by 1-36-49.”

I ain’t never been much for churchgoing, but I couldn’t say no without looking a right git. Also Ruben’s coat was all warmsome and cosy, and I sorta nuzzled into him, which mebbe wasn’t the right respectful thing to do when folks was dead, but not nuzzling Ruben wasn’t going to bring ’em back.

We was a ragtag bunch, make no mistake about that. A scant handful, beset by the rain, standing there with our heads bowed and water streaming down our faces and streaking over our hair like the tears of nobody. Though looking at the grey horizon, I could just see the graceful spires of Shadowless’s masts and a glimmer of wild colour what was Byron Kae up in the crow’s nest watching with us.

There weren’t no cemetery in Prosperity cos they didn’t have no way to bury nobody. I dunno how it started, but there was this spot by one of the main skyhooks what folks must have designated. ’Twas specially blustersome and shaky there cos ’twas right near the edge, and even with the barriers, it kinda felt like the sky was creeping up on you from everywhere. Instead of gravestones, just bits of wood and metal and carved what ’ave ye were lashed to the skyhook or strung up separate, getting tossed about by the wind, and pissed on by the rain. I didn’t want to waste an opportunity for reading, but there weren’t all that much to read. Some of ’em had names on ’em, the rest was just dates, or scratches, or Known but to God.

Father Giles cleared his throat. “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The wind then took up a fair ol’ howling, snatching the words away as he said them.

A few people mumbled halfheartedly, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

And then Father Giles said sommat else about God except all I heard was “. . . but all the wicked He will destroy.” And then sommat about the crew of the Amelia and did anybody know anything about ’em and then a long silence and a shuffling of feet til finally one of Alis’s boys piped up:

“I fucked three of them. Thomas, Emily, and . . . can’t ’member t’other.”

Ephram growled, “John Harper owes me three bob.”

And Seth Silver, what run the store, offered, “The captain bought a chamber pot from my shop.”

And that was kinda that.

The doxy had a fogle what one of ’em had left behind—Emily, probably, cos ’twas quite fine, and edged with lace, and had an embroidered E. He cast that into the wind and it hung there for a moment, like a thread of white nowt til the sky et it.

Then Father Giles started speaking again and this time I could hear him clear enough, the voice rolling out of him like thunder even over the wind and the rain and the skyhooks. And what he said was: “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

And while he was speaking he seemed taller somehow, as though he didn’t feel the rain beating against him no more, nor the cold rough fingers of the wind tearing at him. And his black coat was standing out so vivid, ’twas almost like he stood betwixt the world and the sky, dark as a shadow but solid.

“And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.”

And the sky itself was churning like a storm was coming, with spears of greenish light breaking against the clouds. I looked round to see if anybody else thought ’twas a queer thing to be saying at a service for the lost, but everyone had their best devout faces on, and didn’t seem to notice nowt.

’Tis a difficult business, grieving for folks you didn’t give a fuck over.

So I thought mebbe I was just being fanciful cos Father Giles had gone all small and quiet again: “Orasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the souls of the crew of the Amelia, we therefore commit their bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Seas and Skies shall give up their dead.”

And then we sang “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” with our voices being all crap and reedy. And the whole thing was pretty crap, to be honest, and you could tell everybody felt rubbish about it, cos a bunch of folks had been lost to the deepskies, with nowt really to mark either the living or the dying. Except mebbe God. Though ’twas hard to stand on the edge of the world staring into the face of the void and believe in anything except the rain pissing in your face.

Then Miss Grey was gliding to the edge, with the wind battering away her wide skirts and pulling the pins out of her hair.

Ruben started forward and so did Gap Tooth Alis, both of them probably thinking she was probably going to go toppling right over cos the barrier was kinda flimsy looking, and already had bits missing here and there.

But all she did was spit over the brink. And we ain’t talking no ladylike pew pew here. We’re talking a proper ol’ hock of I-don’t-know-what flying straight over the edge like a bullet.

And after that, everybody was doing it, expectorating into the void like we was telling the sky fuck you.

When we was all done with that, Miss Grey said in her dream-struck voice: “‘Out of the depths, the storm’s abysms—Who knows whence? Death’s waves, Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tattered sail.’”

It seemed a better kinda eulogy somehow than hoping for mercy.

Finally ’twas all over, and people started drifting off.

“Miss Grey,” called Ruben. “We’re ready to sail.”

“Very well.” She smoothed her flying hair. “I will attend directly, but there’s something I must, ah, see to first.”

Miss Alis cackled. “Aye. ’Tis me.”

And they made for the Abbey, Miss Grey pulling Gap Tooth Alis along by the hand like they was going on a picnic (though reckon I knew what they was going to be eating).

Ruben huffed out an impatient sorta sigh, but I reckoned they had the right idea. I was about to suggest some ways we could pass the time while we was waiting, when I stagged Father Giles was still standing right there, looking out to the sky. The rain drizzled through his hair and soaked through his togs, but ’twas like he didn’t even feel it.

So, of course, Ruben went over, taking me wit him cos I wasn’t leaving the shelter of his coat for nowt on God’s grey earth. He lightly touched the fella on the arm, murmuring in that lover-sweet voice of his, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

Father Giles turned and heaved out a sigh so soft ’twas stillborn in the wind. “I’ve been here too long.” I thought he meant standing in the rain, which was a sentiment I could surely get behind, but no. “I fear for the lost, the living, and the dead.”

“There is no sin in doubt.” Typical Ruben.

“I see that yours is a humanitarian faith.” Though didn’t sound like it comforted the preacher any.

“I could not love a God who was not good.”

“But would you believe in Him?” The following silence was broke only by the pitter-pattering of the rain. Then, “Here in Prosperity, it is more difficult to believe in love. Look over the edge. What do you see?”

Ruben got a bit closer to the fence and peered over, and I did too, clinging onto the edges of his coat so the wind didn’t go casting me to nowhere. The grey rose up like a big yawning mouth. Ruben weren’t speaking, so I thought I’d better answer for him. “Nowt.”

“Now look into the distance. What do you see?”

Still seemed to be my cue. “Nowt.”

Father Giles nodded sadly. “Yet down there are incalculable lives. Increasingly, I ask myself: how can they not be as meaningless as sand?”

Ruben turned away from the void. “But we are mortal. Our love is not infinite.”

“Here there is little comfort in contemplating the infinite. It is cold, bleak, and starless.” And with that, the priest pulled his coat tighter round him and shuffled off looking mebbe a hundred and six, though he couldn’t really have been more than a decade older than Ruben.

Ruben had a sorta stricken look as he watched him go. He don’t take well to not being able to save folks—I knew it even that day in the rain. And now I know I never needed saving. I just wanted somebody to try.

I stood quiet, thinking to myself how strange it was that I’d gone along for years without really wondering about any of this religious wank, and yet here I was in Prosperity, where even the law turned away, and ’twas like I was wading hip deep through the stuff.

Or mebbe ’twas Ruben.

There were nowt preachy in him, but sommat about the way he had of thinking about shit made you want to start thinking similarwise. I’d never met a cove like him before. There’s plenty of folks with a hunger in ’em to change the world—folks like Milord—but Ruben just strode through it, making it just the smallest bit better for his being alive. ’Twas not the sorta thing what gets said about heroes, but ’twas its own kinda magic.

I snuggled a bit deeper into his coat, pushing myself against his body, feeling the heat of him soaking into me, like life defying the rain. I ain’t really good with deep words and shit but I got some talents for physical comfort.

“I ain’t got no copper,” I tried.

“Hmm?”

“For your thoughts. So you’re going to have to give ’em up fer free.”

He laughed and played with my damp hair. “I was just thinking, I can imagine no greater horror than an indifferent infinity.”

“Well, don’t imagine it, then. Duh.”

“Oh, Dil.” His voice got rough, just the way I liked it. “You make everything so simple. I wish—”

I never did find out what he wished cos he kissed me instead. The rain dripped off his hat brim and got betwixt our mouths, making him cold and hot at once.

Eventually we got moving again, though I could’ve stood a good bit more of the kissing. The rain and the wind was picking up like ’twas trying to get the energy for a proper storm, so we hurried fast as we could over the juddering platforms of the main drag to Albright’s, bursting through the swing doors in a spray of wet.

There was nobody there except the four at table and Jackson at the bar running a dirty ol’ rag over and over an even dirtier glass. But ’twas carnage in the corner, with bottles and chips spread wide, a haphazard pile of chink topped by Milord’s silver pocket watch, and a couple of six shooters with nicely carved handles to ’em.

The air was thick with stale smoke, and the smell of folk losing.

Milord was sitting, back to the wall just as he had when I’d fleeced him, and to say he looked like death would’ve been to cheek death. The pallor had settled on him heavy somehow, and the sweat was standing out on his brow, each speck glinting like malicious little peepers. Speaking of which, his were rimmed all round pinkish. Though it didn’t dim them any, just made them flare even more fierce. But the shaking hand that held the cards looked like it could barely support the weight of five bits of paper. A cough eased betwixt his tightly sealed lips.

Mebbe it should’ve been pitiable to see a cove so reduced, but embers can burn just as well as flames.

When we came in, Jackson gave Ruben the look of a whipped dog. “Three days,” he said. “Three days!”

Ruben went stomping across the room, rain jumping off him like ’twas suddenly frightened to stay.

Milord glanced up from his broads with his perfect, eye-unreaching smile. “Ah, my dear, Ruben. Do join—”

Ruben thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of paper money, which he sent scattering across the table, as though ’twas a doxy what hadn’t pleased him. Then he grabbed up the guns and the watch and thrust them at Milord. Next thing I knew, he was grabbing Milord too, jerking him to his feet so hard and fast he almost went stumbling straight into Ruben’s arms.

Milord seemed like he was wanted to try struggling but had realised how fucking undignified it’d be. So he glared up at Ruben, his wrists sorta writhing helpessly where they was held, and snapped out, “I have had men killed for less.”

“Don’t waste your breath on threats you don’t mean.” Ruben’s growl, which weren’t so likerous now, drowned out the complaint. “You’re done here.”

I spared a sigh for the blunt on the table. Some of that—probably most of it—was rightly mine, since I’d nicked it first.

Hanging from Ruben’s hand like a half-drowned tibby, Milord nevertheless surveyed the rest of ’em with this look of lordly disdain. “I believe I shall say goodnight, gentlemen.”

It didn’t seem like the time to tell him ’twas the middle of the lightmans.

One of the culls weren’t having it, though. I reckoned him for an airman. He had that ragged, transitory look about him, prick-eared, bracket faced, and beady eyed, with a wind rash over his cheeks, and a half-arsed sorrel coloured beard straggling down his chin.

“Thee’ll finish the game,” quoth he. “Mighty opportune, is’t not, that thy Alexandrian wouldst intervene when thou art all in after thy nightlong handfuls of nought?”

Milord reached back and flipped his cards to show a royal flush, his smile glittering like his eyes. But just as he was letting Ruben pull him away, Sorrel stood up so fast, his chair went skittering out from under him and crashed onto the floor.

“Thee’ll finish the game.” His hand shot out like he was going to grab Milord.

Except he didn’t get the chance.

Milord’s was out of Ruben’s grip in a flash, which made me wonder what sorta strange game he’d been playing earlier, letting Ruben drag him about like that. His fingers wrapped round Sorrel’s wrist, fast as snakes, bearing him down. Next thing I heard was a crunch. And there was a bowie knife pinning Sorrel’s hand right to the table, the hilt quivering a bit in the slow-gathering blood.

The silence was kinda terrible just then.

Even Sorrel had stopped making a fuss and was yorking at his own hand like he couldn’t get down with the notion a knife was sticking out of it.

And then Milord was leaving again, this time pulling Ruben along behind him, boot heels rat-a-tatting on the floor.

I didn’t know what else to do but follow them.

Outside the rain was still coming down, relentless drizzle like it was trying to wear everything away with apathy. Ruben and Milord weren’t touching each other no more, mebbe cos Ruben was worried he was going to be stabbed as well, cos I would’ve been. Milord started trembling straight off, the water soaking through his poncy suit and gilding his pale hair all silver like mist and moonlight.

Ruben pulled off his coat and tossed it over Milord’s shoulders, saying: “Was that really necessary?”

“I would not have done it, if it were not.”

Milord seemed to be hesitating about whether he ought to be taking the coat. It brushed a little against the ground behind him. If it had been me, it would’ve trailed. But how sweet it would’ve been, wrapped up in Ruben and all that warmth. It probably even smelled of him a bit.

But Milord was dying of dustlung, so I supposed he needed it more than me.

After a moment, he settled into the coat, hands coming up to draw it tight round him in a way that made him look fragile—which was fucking weird considering I’d just seen him knife some poor bugger to the table.

“It is not as though,” quoth he, “I have ever made an entertainment of violence.”

We began walking back towards the docks. I remembered pretty clear scampering this way with Milord trying to cut me into ribbons. Though I also remembered the disinterested way he’d gone about it.

’Twasn’t very comforting, but you could say this about ol’ Milord: he weren’t no liar. Just a chiv-wielding crimelord with no morals to speak of, and not a shred of conscience to give him pause.

“Not an entertainment, just a lifestyle.” Ruben sounded sad.

I flicked my glims betwixt them. I reckon they’d forgot I even existed. I reckon they’d forgot the whole world existed.

Milord’s lips went twitching upwards, though ’twas no happy smile. “I was going to pursue a career as a sanctimonious prick, but unfortunately, I was not born with your advantages.”

It seemed to me Milord must’ve been deliberately trying to rile Ruben cos he had no reason to say sommat like that otherwise. But if it bothered him or pissed him off, Ruben weren’t showing it. “And where has it left you? What has it got you?” He sighed. “Your health is ruined, you have no money, no friends, nothing.”

“Money is a means to an end, and I have neither use for nor interest in—” I dunno how Milord did it but somehow he got them little speech quotes what you see in books into his voice “—‘friends.’”

I felt a chill go racing through me, and it had nowt to do with the rain.

Thing is, I ain’t doing so good for friends neither. And them I’ve had don’t exactly constitute a marvellous record for not dropping Piccadilly in the sir reverence. Getting sold out, fucked over, or left behind is just a fact of life. So what Milord was saying made sense to me.

Though mebbe it’s just human nature to go round looking for something to trust in, even if it does turn out bad in the end. I reckon Ruben would call it faith.

But I couldn’t tell whether Milord had the right of it or the wrong of it. Whether I was the dufflehead for keeping trying, or he was for not trying at all. I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like, living without needing nowt from no one.

Nice in some ways, mebbe, and not so nice in others.

Ruben had that stricken look again. The one that just makes you want to cuddle him. “I . . . Milord . . . I . . .”

Milord cut him off. “Anyway, I do have something. I have something of inestimable value nobody else has.”

Trotting along, ignored, behind them, I waited with bated breath, wondering what it could be. Treasure map mebbe?

“What’s that?” Ruben asked the question for me.

“A sanctimonious prick who won’t stop following me around.”

Oh.

That was when I realised what was going on betwixt ’em two. And it made my poor little panter go plummeting straight to my boots cos though they was pretending ’twas nowt, ’twas blatantly there.

Sommat so twisted and so strong, they weren’t never getting free from it.

And though I was thinking mainwise self-pitying thoughts, I spared a few for Ruben too, flinging off the black only to run straight into the arms of Ol’ Scratch.

Then I felt a wary prickling running over my skin and without thinking darted off the main street into the shadows at the side of the quack shack. ’Tis something you learn pretty quickwise down in the Stews, to trust yourself.

And I’d been right cos there were three cudgelliers coming down the street, and even the rain had gone silent with their passing. Gaslight folk—I knew them from the wraps they wore, black so as the dust didn’t show, just your regular bunch of neighbourly shitheads, ready to crash their own granny for a bob.

Except leading them was something the likes of which I’d never seen before nor ever want to again.

I supposed once upon a time it’d been a man, but now ’twas just a brass corpse animated by the darkest science I’d never imagined possible. ’Twas taller than your average fella and wearing a coat flung over its shoulders but hanging open to reveal a naked torso, crisscrossed with sewn-up scars and metal rivets to hold it all together. The skin—what was left—was the colour of chalk and grave moss.

And over the place where its heart should be was a click-click-clicking wheel of brass and steel held in place by wires buried deep in the dead flesh like silver worms.

The face was similarish partwise brass, partwise preserved skin, all misshaped from the jagged scars covering it, neither the sewing nor the soldering being all that delicately performed. It had a mane of black hair, spilling over the mess and down the brass shoulders, lustrous as though it were mocking.

Everything else was tarnished metal, spliced direct to what used to be the ruined bits of a person. And ’twas lurching forward on articulated brass legs fitted on a pair of springs.

Ruben and Milord had come to a dead stop in the middle of the street, Ruben’s hand protectively at Milord’s elbow, though what he thought he was going to do against a clockwork monster was anybody’s guess.

And there weren’t no stirring anywhere. Not a sound. Not a fucking thing.

The monster came on with its queer rolling gait, sorta fast and graceless and wrong all at once. It stopped before Milord, who was looking as calm as though this sorta thing happened to him all the time. Mebbe it did.

“William.” The monster had a voice of metal scraping against metal. But the accent was Gaslight through and through. “I bin waiting a long time fer this.”

Milord arched up a brow. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” And then, with a flicker of irritation what struck me as practically suicidal, “And you may have me confused with someone else. Those who wish to converse with me call me Milord.”

It tilted its head in a whirring of gears. “How quickly ye forgit. You killed me, William.”

Milord reached for one of them pristine white fogles he seems to never run out of, and dragged it slowly over his already clean hands. “That hardly narrows it down.”

“I was yer first.”

“Well, that explains why I didn’t do a better job of it. I’ve made rather a policy of ensuring those I kill remain dead.”

The monster extended its arm with a clinking and a clanking, its hand reaching forward like mebbe ’twas going to strike Milord down or sommat, but all it did was brush against the scar on his upper lip with a curving brass claw. It could’ve probably ripped the skin off his bones in a shower of blood and rust, but Milord didn’t even flinch.

“To think you made messes outta me and all ye got was this.”

Milord’s lashes swept over his eyes, his voice sounding almost tender as he turned his face for a moment straight into the monster’s touch. “The world would be a cruel place indeed if we got what we deserved, Jack.”

I pressed my good paw to my mouth lest a noise escape cos this was surely Jack Callaghan, known as the Black for the colour of his heart. The last crimelord of Gaslight, before Milord came along and took it from him. ’Twas true his body had never been found, though enough pieces of it had for most to conclude he’d surrendered his breathing privileges.

“I’d’ve given it to ye,” said all that was left of Black Jack Callaghan. “I’d’ve given everything to ye.”

Milord pulled back, whatever softness had been in him banished like it had never been there at all. “I didn’t want it given to me. I wanted to take it.”

There was a fucking endless silence. And then Black Jack nodded and his bully-ruffians were reaching for their barking irons. “And now I’ll see ye crashed for it.”

Course then came a scuffle from Ruben and before anyone could do a damn thing, he’d shoved Milord behind him and was standing there, staring straight down the muzzles of three guns.

Milord’s fingers scrabbled frantic at Ruben’s arms and he was hissing at him to get the fuck out of the way, but Ruben weren’t budging.

I was frozen in the shadows, wanting to run forward and throw myself betwixt Ruben and a hail of bullets but not quite having the necessary courage.

Or the necessary stupid. ’Tis sometimes hard to tell the difference.

“Walk away.” There weren’t even a quaver in Ruben’s voice. Like he really believed some millers with guns was just going to slink off cos he told them to do it. Mebbe ’twas cos he didn’t know who Black Jack Callaghan was. You would be better off slitting your own throat than cross him, alive or dead.

“Don’t.” One little word from Milord, but a whole lot of begging in it. “Ruben.”

Black Jack stagged Ruben with a strange sorta expression on his crooked face and then turned back to Milord: “Finally found something worth wanting, eh? I’ll enjoy taking it from ye.” He lifted his hand—all creaking in the rain—to give the firing signal.

’Twas a strange moment, the world sorta slowing down like it hadn’t bothered when I’d been the one about to bite it. Ruben looking straight into the black eyes of death and Milord struggling with him and three guns coming up in unison and a sudden break in the cloud sending a shaft of light skittering over Black Jack’s arcing fingers.

And yours truly wanting to do everything and able to do nowt.

Sweet fuck all except watch the best person I’d ever met die for the worst.

And to what end, eh? What fucking end? Cos once they’d riddled Ruben with lead, they was going to do the same to Milord anyway.

And then, the door to the Abbey went slamming open and Miss Grey’s voice rang out across the street. “What is the meaning of this?”

Everyone sorta froze with, like, grained chivalry or whatever. I suppose it didn’t feel quite the thing to shoot the shit out of someone with a woman standing right there.

Standing right there in her corset and boots and stockings and some like seriously frilly unmentionables. I didn’t know where to look and neither did anyone else. Or rather they did know and they were looking right hard and samewise pretending they wasn’t.

She put her hands on her hips. “I am trying,” she said betwixt gritted teeth, “to fuck.”

Then two shots rang out, sharp and loud and as close upon the other as lovers in the throes of ecstasy, and two of the ruffians dropped dead in the street, fast as blinking, as though God had snapped his fingers, and that were that.

But ’twasn’t God, ’twas Milord, reaching round Ruben with a sixer in each unshaking hand.

The last fella whirled on him, but Miss Grey pulled a derringer out of her stocking top and dropped him just as fast, the bullet striking him right betwixt the eyes.

I seen plenty death before, through greed, hunger, and violence, but never so swift and sudden.

I pressed myself against the rain-slick wall, feeling the cold and the wet seeping through my clothes deep into my skin, as another salvo went off.

’Twas Milord, of course, discharging everything he had straight at Black Jack, firing so fast that you couldn’t tell where one shot ended and the next began. The sound went rattling off the buildings like thunder from a clear sky but Black Jack just sorta stood there with his arms raised up as though inviting folks to take potshots at him, with the bullets plinking against metal and falling to the ground, as powerless as if Milord had only thrown them.

Miss Grey gave a soft yip of surprise and retreated inside the Abbey.

And when ’twas over and Milord was out of bullets, Black Jack reached out and just sorta batted Ruben away, sending him flying through the air like an ol’ rag. He crashed into the makeshift wall of Seth’s shop, the whole thing shuddering ’neath the impact, slithered down it, and landed in a tangled heap on the street.

Mebbe Milord’s head turned that way, mebbe it didn’t—you couldn’t tell cos then Black Jack had him by the throat and was yanking him to eye level, his feet leaving the ground helplessly. Milord put his hands over the hand that was chokin’ him, but it seemed instinct more than anything. He weren’t struggling. Mebbe he couldn’t. I mean, the breath don’t come easy to him even when he ain’t being shook about by a monster bearing a pretty serious grudge.

Except all I could think of was getting to Ruben, except I was too chickenshit to risk leaving the shadows. And then it hit me. The roofs, right?

I ain’t being no braggadocia to say I climb like the prince of cats, cos ’twas simply the safest way to get round the Stews.

’Twas hard going cos of the rain making everything slippy as a whore’s notch, but I managed to scrabble atop the doctor’s shack, hoping Black Jack was too busy with his murdering to pay attention to little ol’ me. And from there I leapt to the Abbey, throwing myself flat as I landed in case of the noise, cos getting closer to Ruben meant getting closer to the guy who was probably going to snuff me right tantwivy if he noticed I was there.

I was racking up some new bruises to replace the buggers what were fading and my shoulder didn’t like it much, but at least it didn’t cop out. Trying to stay as quietsome as I could, I crawled across the roof and peered over the edge.

Down below, Black Jack was wearing what might’ve been a smile on his blackened lips and had lowered his arm so Milord was crumpled breathless on the street. Guess it weren’t going to be the quick sorta killing.

Though when Black Jack yanked him up again, Milord had a chiv in his other paw and was lashing out wildly with it. Mostly, the attacks just deflected off the metal but every now and again he’d land a hit somewhere on the neck or the face or the torso, splitting open skin like the rind on a rotten fruit.

Brackish liquid, the colour and texture of oil, came spattering down onto Milord’s white suit from the wounds, but it didn’t seem to stop Black Jack any. He just laughed and covered the knife with his other hand, squeezing Milord’s fingers til he cried out and the blade slipped free.

“Oi!” ’Twas a shout from one of the upper windows of the Abbey. I twisted sideways just in time to stag Gap Tooth Alis, with her skirts hiked up to the thighs, crouched on the window ledge with a rusty ol’ repeating rifle so big she had to be compensating for sommat with it. “Oi! Don’t think much of yer taste, Milord. That is the ugliest motherswiving whoresget I e’er did see.”

Milord got dropped. He made the sorta sound you make when you’re too hurt to even groan about it. His hand scrabbled for the knife, but his fingers were twitching like a spider with all broken legs and soon stopped moving.

Black Jack half turned towards Alis, spreading his metal-gleaming arms wide like some kind of sacrificial saint. “I looked better afore he killed me, sweeting.”

“Then mebbe ye should take a fucking hint.”

Alis fired the rifle, and it went off with such a boom that it nearly threw me off the damn roof, It sent her flying arse over elbows backwards through the window in a whirl of scarlet. The shot took ol’ Black Jack square in the torso, ripping most of what was left of the flesh off him in a shower of the same tar black gore that’d covered Milord. Except all it showed was the workings underneath—great big dials and wheels embedded in a preserved mass of tissue and wiring. Even from this distance, I could feel the sting of embalming fluid in my nose and throat, making my eyes water.

I think by now we was all awake to the notion you probably couldn’t kill the dead.

Milord pushed himself up again, got about halfway to his hands and knees, and keeled over. “Just git on wi’ it,” he wheezed, his accent wandering all over the place, north even of Gaslight.

William the country boy, eh? ’Twould almost’ve been funny.

Except now, of course, fucking Ruben was stirring. And if he woke up, he was surely going to start trying to get himself killed again. I’d never seen folks so eager to jump the queue for death before.

I could see the scene playing out so clear ’twas like ’twas actually happening. Ruben going on about the hollowness or whatever of vengeance. As though Black Jack was just going to go “Gosh, yer totally right, let’s sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ t’gether.”

The fella was already dead, living on clockwork time. Life wasn’t exactly overflowing with opportunities for him to find personal fulfilment and inner peace before the last tick of his man-made heart—

And that was when I knew how to stop him. How to save Ruben.

I acted before I could properly think about it and talk myself out of it, taking a running jump from the roof straight onto Black Jack’s back. I wrapped arms and legs round him lest I go sliding off, and he gave a sorta roar and reared back like a surprised horse. Can’t say I blamed him—’tis not every day I go round jumping on people. His arms thrashed the air, but of course they weren’t flexible enough to reach back and pluck me off. So he was reduced to trying to shake me away like a troublesome fly.

As for me, I just groped round to the front of him, my hand slipping through slime and over metal, til I found the heart and started tearing the wires out, one by one.

Course soon as I touched the first, Black Jack twigged what was going on and started tossing about like a Bedlamite on a bad day. ’Twould surely have looked pretty comical except for the fact ’twas fucking dangerous, and I was like at any minute to be trampled to the ground—and then it’d be all we therefore commit his horribly mangled and smashed up and once so dimber body to the deep.

I couldn’t really see what I was doing either, so I was working on touch alone, ganking out whatever wires my desperate fingers found. I didn’t know how many there were or how many I’d done.

And suddenly Black Jack stopped dead (poor choice of words there, Dil), and I thought I’d won, except it turned out he was only preparing to crash backwards into the nearest wall. Whatever it had been, some ramshackle lean-to for a cove long gone, it tumbled over like ’twas nowt but pamphlet paper, and mebbe that was the only thing that stopped me getting crushed to pieces.

Though from the way Black Jack was casting about, it seemed he was going to try it again right tantwivy.

I weren’t sure whether to stay at it in the hope I pulled the wires out before he figured how to kill me, or cut my losses and run for safety like a scaredy tibby. Though mebbe I’d pissed him off enough he’d kill me anyway. ’Twas a dilemma, make no mistake—though it seemed like the odds were favouring death.

Except suddenly Ruben was there, ducking under those flailing great hands and weighing in with his fists in such a surprisingly competent sorta manner, it looked like he’d had training in the fine ol’ art of punching the shit out of sommat. Course there wasn’t much hope of achieving much playing at swellsome fisticuffs with Black Jack, but ’twas a distraction.

And that was all I needed to yank out the final few wires.

A great shudder ran all the way through him, so deep I felt it to my bones and then . . . nowt.

Silence. Stillness. Like smothering a gas lamp.

I realised I was clinging on so damn hard the muscles in my arms and legs were shaking with the strain of it. And my shoulder had gone past painful and out the other side into really fucking painful.

I heard the pattering of rain on metal.

I dared to slip open a glim—only just now discovering they’d been tightly closed.

And then Ruben, with a shiner to beat all shiners and an overall likerous bashed up look to him (not that I think bashing folk up is generalwise likerous), was holding out a hand to help me down. I felt sorta wobbly as I landed back on terra firma and didn’t really know what to say cos I’d just ripped the heart out of a clockwork zombie and that ain’t no everyday happening.

Folk were slowsome coming to peep out their windows and open their doors, a gathering of whispers as they stagged the three dead bodies and the broken brasswork what used to be Black Jack Callaghan. All them bits and pieces was probably worth a bit, and I reckoned I had dibs, but I didn’t have the stomach for it.

Fact was, the ol’ victualling office felt very like it wanted to mebbe crawl out of my throat and thrash about on the ground.

And then Ruben swept me against him. He smelled of blood and rain and sweat, and he was sticky with all of them, but right then nowt seemed to matter except I was alive and he was alive and he was holding me so tight, so tight and safe.

Speaking of alive, so apparently was Milord. Fella was like one of them fleas you keep squashing but they keep coming back. Mebbe he was just too pissy to roll over and snuff it. Dragging each breath in with what seemed like sheer bloody-mindedness, he was back on his own two feet and pushing the sodden hair out of his glims with the edge of his hand. The fingers weren’t looking too good but mebbe he was too fucked up to feel it proper.

“I think,” he said, coming towards us like a man grimly determined to walk, “now would be an excellent time to depart this pissant little town.”

We stared at him.

“You ain’t e’en going to say thank you?” I asked. Not so much for me cos I hadn’t done it for him. But Ruben had.

Ruben had been willing to die for him.

“Gratitude is nothing but—”

Ruben punched him.

Milord hit the ground, graceless and—for once—quiet.

We was silent a moment. Ruben was frowning like he wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing or a wrong un.

“You got some mightsome skill with that, Preacher,” quoth I.

“Mmm, I boxed for Cambridge.”

“Ain’t you s’posed to like turn the other cheek or whate’er?”

Ruben shrugged, then hoisted Milord over his shoulder like sommat he was taking out to the ding heap. “Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed; much more the wicked and the sinner.” And then he grinned and I grinned back, cos I’d never imagined it’d be okay to use the Bible for, like, fun.

Passing the Abbey, he shouted up: “Miss Alis. Are you all right?”

Her face appeared at the window, grinning broadly and framed by the red cloud of her hair. “I got plenty of padding, darlin. And I always wanted to fire that ol’ bugger. ’Twas me dad’s. He bought it for shootin’ walruses, but we ain’t got no walruses. Bit of a queer un, me dad, now I think on’t.”

“Can you tell Miss Grey to join us at her leisure?”

The door to the Abbey creaked open and out came Miss Grey, fully togged and demure as you please. “I am here, Mr. Crowe. And I am glad you were unharmed.”

We staggered back to Shadowless to find Byron Kae waiting for us on deck, the wind ruffling through the colours of their coat, making them stream like Mayday ribbons. They looked even paler than usual. “I heard shots.”

“We’re fine.” Ruben swung aboard with Milord.

“’Twas just a lover’s tiff,” I offered, jumping after them. “Milord’s ex what he’d murdered rocked up to return the favour.”

Byron Kae regarded Milord’s battered and still unconscious body without much concern. “Is he all right?”

“Oh aye, ’twas friendly fire took him out.” I couldn’t help grinning over that one, and thinking how Byron Kae would smile and hide their laughing when I told them the full story later.

“I think,” interrupted Ruben, “I would like to put a good mile of clear sky between us and that pile of corpses.”

Byron Kae inclined their head. “It’s done.”

In which our hero bears witness to an unlikely conjunction, and nearly inspires one of his own—Further disquisition on the aethership Shadowless and on the pleasures of flying with her—Concerning the nature of transience and belonging—Tales are shared, not always willingly—Consolation is offered and spurned—Some notes on the origins and practice of aethermancy
first felt it like a stirring of wind what wasn’t there, lifting the tresses of Byron Kae’s hair and whispering through the feathers and jingling the gold. I’d never been on a moving aethership before, so I’d half thought it’d be like an airship, but it weren’t at all.

Not at all.

You can feel the power on an airship, but it feels like borrowed power, power the world is going to snatch back at any moment.

Shadowless was silent as silk, just somehow slipping through the air like she was meant to be there, and you could still feel the power, but ’twas the power of a big cat running, not the noisesome power of turbines turning.

’Twas all kinds of beautiful, and I couldn’t help rushing off to the prow to see the world go flying by.

I lost track of time, leaning with my arms round the horse’s neck, feeling all the pleasure of motion running first through Shadowless and then through me. We went faster and higher than your everyday airship til I could see nowt but sky in every direction.

It didn’t feel empty, though. Not to me. Just endless.

’Twas nice having no landmarks to pull you about. Everything up here was horizon. Without limits. I felt worlds away from gutters and turning tricks and sharping and being hungry and cold and letterless. Worlds away from guns and death and clockwork men.

’Twas good. ’Twas all good.

Though I could feel a bone-deep, hot sorta ache starting  in my shoulder I could’ve done without. Suppose you shouldn’t go climbing about like a drunk monkey on a busted fin and expect not to notice after. But I still didn’t fancy moving. ’Twas too peaceful, too perfect, standing there in the silver air.

And I only really came back when Miss Grey showed up next to me. I took one look at her pupil-swallowed eyes—yeah, she was fuddled. “Milord and Ruben are arguing again. It is harshing my buzz.”

She swung herself lightly onto the edge of the ship, skirts tucked carefully round her so she wasn’t going to flash no ankle, and leaned right back, holding on to precisely nowt. The wind tweaked the pins out of her hair and scattered them over the clouds til it all came tumbling down in a tangle. She tilted back her head against the darkish river of the flying strands and watched the passing horizons.

“Uh . . . careful, yeah?”

She laughed and kicked out her legs, this time showing quite a bit more than ankle. “The captain won’t let me fall.”

We was quiet a bit.

I felt a doof asking, but I couldn’t quite stop myself. And I tried to gammon it by sounding totally nonchalant. “Sooo . . . what’re they fighting bout?”

“Oh, the usual, the usual.” ’Twasn’t what ye might call a helpful answer. And I must’ve sorta scowled cos she added gaily, “Why he is who he is. Why he can’t be someone else. Why he can’t pretend to be someone else. I don’t know. I don’t understand them. And I don’t care.”

“Why, uh, like why is he the way he is?”

“He was deeply hurt at a formative time in his life.”

“What? Fer serious?”

She must’ve been hopped up on happy cos she was laughing again. Or mebbe ’twas flying. Mebbe she just liked flying. “No, of course not.”

“You sound like you sorta like him,” I grumbled.

“I don’t really like anyone except the captain. It’s difficult when you have monsters in your head. But I respect Milord’s honesty.”

I spat off the side to show what I thought of that. And then remembered who I was talking with and begged her pardon for it. But I didn’t feel like standing around anymore with a sore shoulder and Miss Grey being high as a fucking kite. “I’m going to go down fer a bit.”

“Master Piccadilly,” she said, as I turned to leave. “We are all the playground of angels and demons.”

“You’re off yer fucking head.” I stomped off.

Her laughter followed me, hanging on the air like the coils of her hair. Lunar fucking wench.

I told myself I wasn’t trying to snoop on what Milord and Ruben were fighting about, but I was.

Course I fucking was.

Truth was, I wasn’t quite ready to let go of Ruben, not without knowing what was going on betwixt them two. ’Twas sorta incomprehensible to me, the whole mess. Though from the way they was carrying on, mebbe ’twas incomprehensible to them too.

As I came down the stairs, I could hear overlapping voices coming from the foc’s’cle. I pressed myself against the dividing wall and carefulwise peeped round.

Milord, in his shirtsleeves, was sitting on a travelling trunk, splinting his fingers, and Ruben was standing propped against a bunk with his arms folded. They both looked all kinds of beat up, Ruben with his shiner and Milord with a necklace of bruises circling his throat and a great big one gleaming purple against the side of his jaw.

For the moment conversation appeared to have dropped off.

Ruben pushed himself away and started pacing about like an angry bear and, after a moment or two, Milord stood as well, just watching him with his cold, pale eyes. Finally, he moved to intercept, and they stood there, close as breath, caught betwixt pushing to and pulling against.

“Ruben . . .” And mebbe ’twas cos Milord had got his throat all fucked up, but it came out strange and soft and rough and close to pleading.

And suddenly he just went to his knees right there on the floor, no grace nor care nor nowt, folding his hands, splinted fingers and all, behind his back, one wrist neatly crossed over the other, staring at Ruben with this helpless, naked kinda look I could never have imagined in six months of Sundays.

And Ruben was staring right back at him, just the same. And both of them just staring and staring, as though they couldn’t stop and mebbe hated each other for it.

Then came this clunk and that were Ruben’s belt hitting the deck, and I swallowed hard against a little sound of my own cos his kicks were half undone and he was taking the ol’ wossname in hand, and ’twas as fine as the rest of him.

And I would’ve liked to touch it too, mebbe taste it and listen to him groan.

Except I wasn’t there. Milord was fucking there.

And Ruben was slipping his beautiful cock against Milord’s lips, against that silver scar, and they still hadn’t stopped looking at each other, though they was barely touching and still almost fully dressed.

I’d never seen nowt like it in all my days, and I couldn’t stop yorking though it made me feel a plumb’s worth of filthy and twice as wretched. I knew I should’ve scarpered as speedwise as my legs could take me, but I couldn’t . . . I just couldn’t.

Ruben’s fingers were brushing softly against Milord’s moon-pale hair, so tenderly ’twas like he was giving benediction. Except mebbe that was like some different kinda signal, cos Milord parted his lips, and I could see his tongue gliding over the head of Ruben’s cock, and ’twas mebbe the hottest damn thing ever cos he seemed so transfixed somehow, all the ice in him transmuted into purest fire.

’Specially for Ruben Crowe.

Ruben’s breath came hissing out, and I could feel an echo upon my own lips, and his eyes were half-closed in sommat that could just as like be pain as pleasure. And Milord must’ve been waiting for it cos then he was pulling him deeper, all the way to the hilt, with no artifice, just a kinda bare and urgent need to take it. And Ruben was bucking his hips so hard it’d make a blower flinch, but not Milord, who just knelt there, with tears gathering at the corners of his glims, and took it like ’twas some sorta gift he was getting.

Mebbe this was what Ruben saw what no bugger else did. The absolute trust of a man who didn’t trust, laid there at his feet.

Milord didn’t even shift his hands, though I could see the fingers knotting against each other. But ’twas like this was how he wanted it, or mebbe how he needed it, cos there was sommat desperate and confused about him, like he didn’t believe it neither.

And I was thinking mebbe the reason he was so committed to pissing Ruben off the rest of the time was cos I’d never seen anybody so frantic to please some other fella. And mebbe it scared him shitless, cos it would me. Compared to this, the way I felt about Ruben was nowt at all.

I wanted him, wanted him bad, mebbe loved him a little bit cos he was a cove easy to love, but what was pale wanting to this stark and utter need?

Course while I was thinking and thinking and telling myself to get the fuck away, ’twas still all going on. Ruben’s head was thrown back and his lips were moving like he was praying to sommat depraved, like he was a man fucking himself down the throat of oblivion.

And I was wondering what was going through his brain but mebbe ’twas nowt at all. Mebbe ’twas just a hot wet mouth moving on him and Milord kneeling at his feet, caring about nowt but Ruben’s pleasure.

Though Milord hadn’t exactly got the short end of the stick neither cos he was unravelling fast down there. He’d spread his knees, and I could see the outline of his cock straining against them fancy duds of his. And when he got breath for it, he kept making these muffled sounds, soft and eager, begging without words.

He weren’t exactly looking dimber with Ruben using him so ruthless-like—his hair all tangled from Ruben’s fingers, and water streaking down his cheeks and pooling round his lips, and I was pretty damn sure it weren’t gentlemanly. Oh, but it was sommat kinda perfect seeing him with everything torn away except whatever this was. Love mebbe. Not the sort they write about. Not the pretty sort that redeems your wicked ways and lets you live happily ever after. Not the sort that keeps you warm at night. But the burning kind, raw and ugly and true.

I knew this scene weren’t meant for me, but mebbe that’s why I kept watching and took it anyway—cos that’s what a filching cove does, right? Or mebbe I just wanted to have sommat what Ruben wanted. Even if it hurt a bit. Hurt a lot.

Ruben was shuddering, and then he twisted his fingers even tighter in Milord’s hair and yanked him away, his other hand going to cover himself.

“Ah fuck,” he muttered, all ragged and broken.

His prick was glistening with Milord’s spit and his own pearly joy and ’twas sorta obscene and beautiful to see the first gatherings of pleasure dripping betwixt his fingers.

But then Milord unfolded his wrists and grabbed Ruben by the hips and pulled him back. One of his hands covered Ruben’s, and I suddenly thought that was the most I’d really seen them touch each other. Milord ducked his head and caught the rest of Ruben’s climax in his mouth, and over his lips, and yeah across his shirt and waistcoat too. So much for the dandy.

“Ah fuck,” said Ruben again, wide-eyed and panting and kinda aghast like he couldn’t believe what he’d done.

Milord didn’t look much better. He was shaking all over, and when he let go of Ruben, he just sorta fell forward onto his hands and knees and stayed there like a puppet with its strings cut, the breath heaving out of him in unsteady gasps.

In a moment, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, common as you like. Sweat gleamed in his hair, and you could see the tears standing out on his lashes, and his lips were all bruised and swollen, still shining with the remnants of Ruben.

I don’t think I’d ever seen a fella so wrecked, nor so lovely in it. ’Twas like he’d forgotten everything, even having a pocket fogle or a hand to touch his cock with.

The air was like heavy somehow with the sweet-salty scent of them being together.

I took a step or so backwards, in case Ruben was going to leave or sommat, but he just reeled against the nearest wall and then slithered down it, staring at Milord all gasping and ruined on the floor like ’twas the most beautiful thing in the world. I didn’t even like Milord and it kinda was. The deepest of all his secrets spilled in one great passion.

Neither of them was saying anything, and I didn’t know how Milord was standing it, cos he looked like he might die if he didn’t get touched.

And then suddenly Ruben was behind him, pulling Milord back against his body so he knelt betwixt his legs. He pressed his face to the nape of Milord’s neck and whispered sommat I didn’t catch. He didn’t wait for an answer though, just reached down and fumbled with the buttons on Milord’s trousers.

It weren’t sommat I ever wanted—seeing Milord some way what didn’t make me hate him—but I guess ’twas the price I paid for stealing a piece of Ruben. The man was fucking exquisite, battered, half-naked, all undone, so completely powerless against wanting Ruben. Just like ol’ Piccadilly. As Ruben shoved his trousers down, his cock rose up, urgent and straining, though dimber too, from this halo of golden hair, like it belonged to a profane angel.

I would’ve expected from what I’d just seen that Ruben might be rough with him, but no. He wrapped his hand round him, and ’twas tender. So slow it must’ve been the sweetest kinda torture.

Milord was falling into Ruben’s body, head resting against his shoulder, water-glittering lashes fluttering, and the moment Ruben touched his cock, he cried out so sharp and loud and heedless ’twas a wonder the whole damn boat didn’t hear him.

And when he did, Ruben shivered as though ’twas his cock being touched all over again.

Milord twisted this way and that, exposing his throat like he was waiting for swift execution or sommat, hips thrusting shameless as a whore to Ruben’s touch. He was breathing fast and quick and frantic, tears gathering fresh in his eyes, though he didn’t do anything to make Ruben move faster or harder or whatever else he needed to get off. Fact was, he just lifted his hands and hooked them round Ruben’s neck, clinging to him, helpless all over again. Surrendered.

I could hardly breathe myself looking at them like that. Like some sorta tableau. What’s that word I learned recentish? Juxtaposition. Yeah.

Ruben’s arms were locked tight round Milord, holding him like he was some kinda captured war prize, hand moving a bit faster on his cock, like mebbe he wanted to reward Milord for yielding himself, though the motion was still lazy and luxurious as a Sunday afternoon, thumb rolling languorouslike over the head, gathering up the gleaming drops forming there.

And Ruben was whispering in his ear again—what was he sayin?—his teeth nipping sweetly at Milord’s earlobe. Mebbe he wanted Milord to say sommat back, but I didn’t reckon he was likely capable of it.

Besides, there was nowt Milord’s mouth could say that his body wasn’t already saying for him. I ain’t never seen anyone so abandoned to someone else, and so lost in them, so careless of dignity or shame.

Milord spread his thighs in the cradle of Ruben’s, hips canting after his hand, panting and moaning, graceless and unabashed. ’Twas amazing somehow, and unimaginable, that this would be inside him. And I knew why ’twas consuming Ruben, cos how could it not?

Though to be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be Ruben with Milord falling to pieces in my lap or Milord tormented for Ruben’s gratification. In either case, there weren’t no room for Piccadilly.

Suddenly, for the first time since it’d begun, Milord spoke, the words falling out of him, the swell accent so far gone ’twas like it’d never been there at all. He sounded worse than me. And all he was saying was Ruben’s name, over and over again, til Ruben’s touch turned ruthless, like he was hunting down Milord’s pleasure, arm still pinning him tight and teeth digging into the skin of his neck.

Then ’twas all over, and Milord was trembling and half-sobbing as he came. And when he was done, Ruben plucked the folded fogle from Milord’s top pocket and cleaned both his hand and Milord’s prick.

Milord was the first to move. He looked flushed and dazed and sated and awkward all at once as he untangled himself from Ruben’s arms and pushed himself to his feet, tugging at his kicks with clumsy fingers. He took a few staggering steps across the room and promptly folded up again, landing in a crumpled heap back in Ruben’s lap.

There was a longish messy kinda silence, and then Ruben was laughing.

Milord’s face was a bit like when I’d bobbed him, sorta helpless and furious, mebbe a bit with himself, and like he wanted to give somebody a good murdering. “I do not appreciate being the subject of your amusement, Crowe,” he snapped, nibbed to the nines again. ’Twas strange how quickly he went back to being himself. Or his other self. Or whatever.

But Ruben was still laughing as he got to his feet, taking Milord with him like he weighed nowt at all.

It was the last thing I was expecting, but somehow, Milord allowed it, even going so far as to push his face into the space where Ruben’s neck met his shoulder like he were a tame sorta person, and not the deadliest motherswiver I ever met.

Too much. All of a suddensome, I’d seen too fucking much.

Even after yorking like a sick fuck at everything that went before, ’twas this what broke me. The intimacy of it. Trust.

My cue to pike off, so I did.

’Twas a wonder I could walk at all, cos the ol’ wang felt hard enough to drill through the fucking walls. Truth was, I was making for my cabin with the intention of taking myself in hand and giving it what-for. I didn’t reckon I’d enjoy it much, but it needed doing.

But when I came staggering round the port ladder I ran, as it were literal-wise, slap bang straight into Byron Kae theirnabs. Which was abso-fucking-lootely perfect.

I must’ve been a right state, blatantish priapic, as the inkhornes call it, and all ragged and flustered. And feeling damn near to unloveable cos there ain’t nowt like stagging two other fellas getting all wrapped up together, specially when you’d’ve liked one of them to be wrapped around you, to make being on your lonesome in the world come crashing over you like the sky falling.

I muttered sommat about wanting to be ’scused and tried to slip past them, when suddenly an arm was pressing me against the bulkhead, which was a shock and a half, lemme say, cos I long since reckoned Byron Kae was made up of shadow and aether.

Strangest thing, though, was where I was touching, the ship was warm as flesh, and I could feel sommat pulsing through it like energy flowing in a body or the rhythm of a beating heart. And before I really knew what else was what, the pressure had eased off and two cool hands were resting on either side of my face, so sweet against the sick, lonely burning in my blood.

I heard a soft noise, a sorta murmur, sorta sigh, realising slightly late ’twas me.

Up so close, the mysteries of Byron Kae’s face seemed perfect somehow, like they didn’t need no unwrapping nor no answering. And I could see so many stars dancing in the blackness of their eyes ’twas like I was looking straight into the deepest, wildest places of the universe.

I reached out with a trembling finger and traced over the sharp line of their cheekbone. Austerity and sensuality—I reckon that’s called a paradox. And beneath my finger followed a flush of colour, pale as a rose-and-silver dawn. A fluttering of lashes and a parting of the lips. A cresting of heat cross my mouth mingling with my own breath like a tangling of hands and bodies.

And just as sudden, I was let go and the rest of the breath I’d been holding whooshed right out of me, sounding ludicrous loud as though I’d shouted or sommat.

Byron Kae’s flush had deepened to an all-over bright and awkward red. And then they pegged it so fast ’twas like their feet never touched the ground.

I dived into my cabin, fell onto the bed, and even though my shoulder was like fuck no, jacked myself off like a man drowning. As predicted, ’twas a sticky and unsatisfying sorta pleasure. But ’twas enough.

And I fell to sleep straight after, which was a small kinda mercy.

When I stirred, ’twas the middle of the darkmans, which just goes to show that fighting with a clockwork zombie,watching two blokes get off without you, and then not getting kissed can really throw off your internal rhythms or whatever.

Except now, of course, I couldn’t nod back off.

Kept thinking of those culls dropping dead in the street, and Milord kneeling at Ruben’s feet sucking his cock, and Byron Kae’s eyes shining into mine. And all them kept mixing up together til I felt sick on them—not helped by the dull fire throbbing in my shoulder.

My mind seemed sorta resolved to torture me cos it kept throwing images of Milord and Ruben at me. Like mebbe what they’d done after I’d binged off, naked together, Milord all wrapped round Ruben, marble pale against his sun-loved bronze, like the serpent round Eve, strength to strength, Milord’s indomitable will and Ruben’s unwavering virtue, each surrendered to the other in pleasure.

I wouldn’t have reckoned myself for a masochist, but even when I closed my eyes tight I still saw them. Every which fucking way, biting and scratching and slow as the rising sun, Milord unravelled and begging, all the pride and power in him given over to Ruben, and Ruben lost in it like a pilgrim on the road to Damascus.

In the end, I got out of bed, hoping to escape myself up on deck. Anything except lie there and think about it over and over and over a-fucking-gain. I couldn’t help cast a stupid look into the foc’s’cle as I crept up the stairs.

’Twas the oddest sight, though truthfully not entirely without charm—Milord and Ruben were lying together in the middle of the floor, as though they’d fallen where they’d fucked, with a blanket flung haphazard over them, just enough for decency. Ruben was covered in bruises from the afternoon and a collection of other marks I reckoned came later. Milord was sprawled across him in the absolute abandon of oblivion, legs tangled with Ruben’s and head pillowed against his chest. Ruben had both arms wrapped round him, holding him so tight twas like he didn’t want him to get away.

’Twas how I’d want to sleep with Ruben too. And Milord looked shocking young with his eyes closed, and the cruelty smoothed away.

With a bit of a sigh, I slipped onto the deck, and suddenwise it didn’t seem so bad. The open sky felt like relief somehow, as though sommat had been pressing down on me and now it weren’t.

Dilberries, I’ve wanted things I couldn’t have before. It don’t kill you.

Then I heard the music. I ain’t got much culture so I can’t describe it proper, but I guess ’twas a sound a bit like the concertinas some of the wandersome canting crew would play round the fires some nights. Except they played for jigging, and this was the sort playing that just happens, like telling its own story somehow. The notes went rippling up and down like waves, falling into each other, but without getting lost. ’Twas lovely, tender and sombre, majestic and playful all at once.

’Twas coming from the prow, so there I went, and there was Byron Kae laying across the horse’s back, legs stretched out in front of them, sea boots crossed at the ankle, skirts rucked out the way to show the petticoats underneath. And their hair streaming out in the wind and tangling up with the horse’s mane so as you couldn’t tell which was which anymore. Betwixt their hands they had a sort of instrument, one of them ones what you squish together and then pull apart, black as onyx and decorated with tiny silver stars.

Miss Grey was sitting tucked against the place where the two sides of Shadowless came together, the stem of an opium pipe betwixt her fingers, coils of grey smoke rising from her lips and disappearing into the sky.

As I came over, the music ceased and I felt bad about it.

“Am I getting in the way?” I asked.

Byron Kae shook their head. “Not at all.”

And they shifted over to make a little space for me to creep into, which I did, balanced betwixt one upraised knee and what looked like a bloody long drop to nowhere. Though I found I wasn’t afraid of falling. Not with Byron Kae being there, like Miss Grey had said.

“Do you oft sit out ’ere?”

“Only when heaven and hell are in conjuction,” responded Miss Grey. She seemed to be in a sorta languid, sleepy humour.

“I do.” That was Byron Kae.

After the rain, the night felt fresh and new and ’twas clear enough to show the stars, gleaming down so bright ’twas almost as though you could reach up and pluck one down for keeping. You can’t see the stars from Gaslight. Well, mebbe you can from one of the towers of the Upper City. But in the Stews, all the darkmans are dark and for that matter the lightmans are dark too cos of the smoke and dust.

“How,” I heard myself wondering, “how’d you become an aethermancer?”

Byron Kae moved their fingers over the instrument and a few notes came spiralling out of it like ribbons of starlight. For a moment, I thought they wasn’t going to answer, but then they smiled. “You sail your ship to the deepest part of the deepest skies and look out over the rim of the world.”

“And what happens?”

Miss Grey blew out a coil of yellow-grey smoke. “Usually you never come back.”

“But if you do you’re an aethermancer?”

Byron Kae nodded.

“What’s it like?”

Dreamishly they whispered, “It’s beautiful, Piccadilly.”

“What’s out there?”

“Eternity.”

I thought about it for a minute. ’Twas probably a crass sorta question, but I wanted to know. “Is that what made you . . . y’know . . . like you are?”

“I’ve always been like I am.”

’Twas one of those answers what didn’t seem to make no sense, except then it did. “So how come you came back if a bunch of folks don’t?”

They shrugged. “I don’t know. I suspect some people simply find freedom at the boundaries of things.”

“And the rest,” added Miss Grey cheerfully, unleashing another mist of sweet-smelling smoke, “go mad with terror.”

I pressed a bit closer to Byron Kae, sorta nuzzling into the feeling of being warm and held, and Shadowless shivered sweetly, a nowhere-wind rippling the edges of her sails. “Guess I won’t be peeping over no edges of the world. Seems a bit of a risk, all things considered.”

Fingers brushed my neck, light as the passing clouds, fleet as rainbows. “If you ever want to go, I’ll take you.”

“That’s one way of cutting down the passenger manifest, I s’pose.” I flashed the ol’ dimples to show I was funning, but then I thought about it. “Don’t reckon I fancy being an aethermancer, no offence nor nowt, but ’twould be exciting to see the deep skies. Is it, like, obligatory that you have to look o’er?”

“No.”

“Well, I might jus’ take you up on it one day.”

Though I didn’t mean it. Not cos I didn’t want to go (cos who wouldn’t, eh?) but cos I didn’t really think they’d want to take me.

’Twas a few days or so to get to the skyclaim cos we travelled by Miss Grey’s directions. I reckoned she was probably just running us round in circles or sommat, but apparently the skies was restless, which meant we had to go carefulwise.

I won’t lie, even with a minor case of heartache, ’twas a good time.

Learning what Shadowless needed kept me busy enough so I weren’t too fretful, and I never grew sick of having the open sky all round us. To help with the ol’ fin I took to scaling the rigging a bunch of times a day. I never got even close to being as quick nor easeful as Byron Kae, but I don’t reckon I was no lubber neither.

The reading was coming along, and I started practicing with lettering too. And everybody taught me bits and pieces of whatever to pass the time, except I couldn’t make head nor tail of Miss Grey’s maps. Though mebbe ’twas the way she explained ’em.

’Twas a queerness for ol’ Piccadilly, the whole business of travelling with folks in that sorta way. ’Twas the nature of the life I’d lived that coves came and went—mainwise went, cos I ain’t never been one for sticking round myself. I didn’t expect no different now, but I don’t reckon I’d ever been happier to be still. I never knew before the power of people to become habits somehow.

And I sure as hell did build up some habits that trip. Byron Kae playing their music, or the sound of their voice under mine as I staggered through them never-ending sentences Mr. Dickens liked so fucking much. And Miss Grey and Ruben arguing all the time over who was going to do the cooking, and Ruben always losing cos Miss Grey couldn’t cook for shite. And Milord coughing and puking over the side and snarling that they ought to fuck off to anyone who went over there to try and help—even if ’twas Ruben. And the scent of opium always heavy-sweet, and the rustle of Miss Grey’s dresses as she glided about Shadowless, as sure-footed as Byron Kae. And Ruben singing while he shaved. And sometimes stumbling across him and Milord clinched up against the masthead, snogging like two drowning men fighting for air. And when he didn’t think anybody noticed, Milord’s eyes on Ruben with a look of naked wanting I recognised cos I felt just the same.

In the evenings when the winds weren’t too blowsome, we’d sit about on deck playing cards for whatever we could lay paws upon which weren’t much. Sometimes with Byron Kae lying nearby plucking strange sweet music from the instrument I’d seen them with that first night on Shadowless—’twas called a Bandoneón they said. Since we ran out of nuts and then out of biscuits, mebbe cos Ruben kept eating them when we was supposed to be betting with them, we ended up playing for yarns.

Since I’d been banned from ferreting, I did my share of losing, so I told them all about Gaslight and some of the capers what I did and why I called myself Piccadilly. The easy stuff.

And Miss Grey told us about her batshit ol’ uncle with his idol and the journal what made her start seeing monsters. And how she’d ended up on the streets in London, half-nuts, with no references and got took up by a sly cat called Florence Ward, who set her up as a sorta medium—though that didn’t end so well when all Miss Grey ever saw was folk getting devoured by horrors from beyond the sky.

She shrugged. “She just wanted to use me, but I was in love. And where did it get me? Hooked on opium and committed to Bedlam. There’s a moral in there somewhere.”

“That love is a dangerous weakness?” offered Milord.

“I think it is more that one should not confuse physical crisis with love. Even several physical crises. In breathless, mindless, screaming succession.” She sighed happily.

“How’d you get out of the loon bin?” I wanted to know.

“Oh, that’s rather curious.” She put aside the cards and folded her hands up all primsome. “A learned doctor wrote a paper on me. He was a most peculiar fellow. He kept asking if I had been violated, and when I told him that no, I had not, he wanted to know if I had inappropriate fantasies, such as . . . did I sometimes desire to be tied up or flogged.”

We all didn’t know where to look. Milord was meant to be shuffling, but the cards sorta spurted betwixt his fingers and went all over the table.

“And when I said that I did not,” she went on calmwise, “he looked so disappointed that I confessed to my sapphism in an effort to console him. That made him terribly excited and he published a paper about how my early traumatic experiences with the male organ had nurtured in me a derangement that manifested in paranoid delusions about tentacled monstrosities from beyond space and time.” She smiled her batshit smile. “You can surely imagine what a great relief it was to me when Byron Kae sought me out and assured me that there actually are tentacled monstrosities from beyond space and time that have absolutely nothing to do with phalluses.”

Ruben told us stories about being at Cambridge and punting on the river—a punt being a badly designed sorta boat from what he was saying—and his deep velvet voice painted pictures of golden light and green grass and the dazzle of sunlight on water as clear as glass. And falling in and out of love with ridiculous young swells. And student pranks like putting toppers on the steeples of King’s College Chapel or putting a goat in the master’s bedroom and nearly getting sent down for it—Cambridge apparently being the sorta place where they’re always sending you off in all directions. ’Twas such a ridiculously charmed life he lived—no wonder he believed in the divine benevolence of whatever.

And ’twas no wonder I wanted to believe in Ruben.

Ol’ Milord, despite being the most reckless player I ever met, somehow contrived not to lose. Til, that is, I caught him dealing from the bottom and called turnip. He looked right crabbed about it too, but I was getting used to his cold glances. ’Twasn’t like he was going to shoot me again. Mebbe. So this led to a great deal of jocularity at his expense, which only made him glare even harder.

“I do not have any stories.”

There was certainly a whole bunch of stories about him. And mebbe we should’ve let it go, but the stars were bright as smiles and the atmosphere out on deck was sorta festival, and he’d been a bit mellower than usual over the past few days so we’d half-forgotten what manner of fella he was. Somehow we took to teasing him and suggesting things he could tell us, like what ’twas like running Gaslight or where he’d been born or how he’d come to power, til he slammed his hand on the table, and we like shut up tantwivy.

“Very well. Here is your story. And I wish you joy of it.” He paused for a moment, glims sweeping over us, showing nowt but ice and malice. “Once upon a time there lived a man who noblewomen liked to fuck. He worked as a groundsman on a grand country estate, and they would come to him in the stables or in his cottage, and he would please them in whatever way they wished.”

The words came from him sharp as chivs and the silence that fell round them was fucking awkward. We knew straightaway we’d pushed him too far.

“And one day,” he continued, “one of these women deposited with the man a child, the unfortunate by-product of one of many hay-tossed couplings. So the child grew up, between the worlds of servant and master, invisible and irrelevant. Invisible and irrelevant, that is, until one day he is walking the corridors of the great house and a fine gentleman stops him. ‘How old are you?’ is what the fine gentleman wants to know.”

Ruben put out a hand, like he was going to touch him or mebbe tell him he didn’t have to say a damn thing if he didn’t want, but Milord shook him off and went on speaking.

“He touches the boy’s cheek, turning his head this way and that, entranced. The boy looks away as though he’s shy, but he’s not shy. What he feels is something else entirely. ‘I’m sixteen,’ the boy tells him.”

“Were you?” asked Ruben, very softly.

But all he got for his trouble was one of Milord’s sneery looks. “Until this moment, eyes have slid away from the boy as though he is nothing, as though he doesn’t exist. He might as well not exist. He is not his father. He knows nothing of his mother. But now there are people who look at him. He feels their attention snag upon him as though he is a hook. Finally, he is someone.”

Milord pulled out his fancy wiper—white silk, just like always—and started idly polishing his nails.

“This is why he let the fine gentleman catch him in the corridor. This is why he lied about his age. This is why he let himself be touched. The fine gentleman whispered in the boy’s ear what he wanted, and the boy did it. The boy did everything the fine gentleman asked. Later the boy leaves home, carrying this gentleman’s name with him like a piece of gold. He will go to Gaslight, and the man will barely remember him—until the boy confesses to the lie of his age. And the fine gentleman will turn pale and pay the boy enough coins that he need never touch another fine gentleman again.”

Scrape scrape scrape went the hankie cleaning what didn’t need no cleaning.

“But it is in the grand country house, on his hands and knees, that the boy understands. It is his first taste of power.”

After that Milord stood and sauntered off, and we stopped telling stories. He was still standing there, looking out over the darkening sky as the moon rose full and gleamed over his white suit and his silver-gold hair. Truth was, I reckoned we had scary much in common, being nowhere folks with a wanting hunger inside. Though I hated the idea I might be like him.

Perhaps that was what made me go to him.

“Ain’t no shame in turning tricks, y’know.” I propped myself against the rail beside him.

He turned a look of searing contempt my way. “I do not, and have never, turned tricks. I do what is necessary.”

Oh aye, that word again. “I just meant we wasn’t going to think less of you nor nowt. ’Twas his wrong, not yours.”

“I don’t care what you think of me, Piccadilly.”

“But you care bout Ruben, right?

Sommat flickered in his eyes. “A temporary aberration.”

“Bet he don’t understand even half the shit you done. He probably thinks he does, but he don’t.”

“I cannot even begin to express,” he sighed, “how deeply I despise your urchin-with-a-heart-of-gold act.”

I kinda flinched back from him, remembering suddenly he was the worst fucking person I ever met, and thinking that I should never have come over. “Well, what’s the alternative? Be like you?”

His lips twitched into a horrid sorta smile. “I reckon ye lack the whirligigs.” He slid into the lingo like he was born to it, and then straight back into the swell. “Now, if you will excuse me. I’m going below.” He paused. “And don’t talk to me again.”

In which our hero is subjected to the indignities of honest labour—Concerning skymining and its attendant dangers, both material and otherworldly—Reflections on the ubiquity of greed as it pertains to love, tea, and the promise of wealth—Sundry actions and their consequences—Yet more ungentlemanly behaviour, and some unladylike—Alliances are forged and loyalties tested—Some further notes of instructive and moral interest
he next day, we sailed into the claim and ’twas all hands on deck from then onwards.

Ruben rolled out a sheet of black metal attached to some sorta thermometer and we hithered and thithered chasing clouds, trying to find a good one. It took us about another half day to hit phlogiston, and then we had to crank up the turbines, which were so noise-making, it felt like we was waking krakens all the way to the Americas.

I spent my time below deck mostly, listening to Miss Grey’s footsteps pacing back and forth above me while she muttered about stirrings in the aether, which weren’t what you might call precisely good for the nerves. ’Twas hot down there from the caloric coming off the grill and I could feel the sweat gathering beneath my clothes, prickling over my brow, and occasionally stinging right into my glims.

Ruben called breaktime at what I suposed must’ve been noonish, but ’twas hard to tell through the clouds. Everything was drowned in grey, harsh though—not soft—with the sun glare searing through the mist and a sorta wet heat hanging in the air, slapping against exposed skin. The water had gone brackish and warmish and didn’t really do much quenching, and the grub was similiarwise soggy. All my senses felt bunged up, like a head cold made of warm.

’Twas some comfort to see Milord looking all sticky—shirtsleeves rolled up to display slender forearms, streaked with muck, and hair all wetted into clinging curls.

“Honest labour,” he announced, being the first to speak and in some strange sorta way the least oppressed, “is for flats.”

And I was so surprised, I burst out laughing, the sound ricocheting all over the place and then getting swallowed up by the clouds.

Ruben, who looked good in perspiration, gleaming and strong, took the battered brown hat from his head and dropped it onto Milord’s. “And now you look the part, you prissy ponce.”

’Twas exactly what I would’ve called Milord, but from Ruben it sounded like the warmest caress. Enough to make you wish to get called a prissy ponce.

Milord just sneered, but he kept the hat.

Suddensome, a deep flash of light sorta boomed through the clouds, lighting up the silver grey with an interior glow, orange as gas-flames.

“That’s the number on our dance card.” Ruben leapt to his feet and pulled Milord up with him. They ran for the grill, and I went and jumped back down below. I’d left it all set up safe as houses, but I was still just in time to stag the first few drops of condensed phlogiston come drip-drip-dripping off the grill, guided through the tangle of tubes to the containers.

’Twas just as Ruben had said it’d be, though it took some finessing to make sure nowt overspilled, and once the flow got going, I had to change the flasks pretty swiftishly.

’Tweren’t exactly hard work, but I reckoned ’twas like the squarest day’s labour I’d ever done in my whole life. And Milord had it bang to rights: ’twas for flats.

The more the hours seeped away, the more the heat and the wet and the silence and the great big Oi krakens, nom here flashing cloud started to weigh on us. ’Twas as if we all remembered at the same time that what we was doing weren’t no picnic in the park.

Phlogiston ain’t stable when you faff with it, and from what I gather, the aether don’t like being faffed with neither. So activity draws the attention of things you don’t want paying attention. Which meant I suddenwise found myself thinking of the ol’ Amelia, wondering what happened to pull them out of the sky. Did they go down screaming or praying, or did it all happen in the blink of some immortal monster’s eye, like the dead fellas we left full of bullets back in Prosperity?

Thing is, I ain’t no white liver, but this was different. ’Twasn’t like the usual rig, which is like waiting out for the perfect moment, holding steady, and then acting sharp. This was a slow, creeping worry, gathering round us like the fucking mist. And when we called it for the day, we ate in silence and told no stories nor played no games. Even Miss Grey had laid off the crack and was just sitting by the prow staring out into the night with haunted glims, all rimmed with dark circles.

I was far more knackered than what I’d done merited. Though when I rolled into bed, I barely slept, feeling every shift of Shadowless on the wind like mebbe ’twas the last thing I’d ever feel.

The next day passed much the same only a bit worse.

The sky round us had roiled into a sort of stifling grey-green haze, and Miss Grey had even stopped pacing. It took a bit to find a cloud as good as the first one, and the more we back-and-forthed over the claim, the grimmer things seemed to get.

And, truth was, I could’ve damn near pissed myself when a shadow came swooping out of nowhere. But it turned out only to be another prospector heading back to Prosperity, who gave us fair hail, threw up a skyhook, and pulled alongside to exchange news.

’Twas the Valiant, not the worst looking airlugger I’d ever beheld, and her captain was a grey-grizzled cove called Rackham, with a sort of retired navy look to him, strong and stern and wind-weathered.

The fella with the skyclaim was some nib what hired Rackham and, from the looks of it, weren’t too thrilled to be heading back to port, nor to be stopping to give the time of day to us.

Byron Kae came swinging down from the crow’s nest, reaching out across the gap to shake hands. ’Twas all very respectful and all, and it seemed like they was already acquainted or whatever. A gang plank went down betwixt the ships and Byron Kae went gliding over it, seeming not to mind nor notice that the rest of the crew were yorking at them so hard ’twas a wonder their glims didn’t fall out.

With a slightly shy smile and a flare of mischief, they called out: “Ahoy, old man.”

And the hoary fella grinned ear to ear and pulled them into a hug.

The rest of the talk was mainwise technical, and I didn’t get much of it, though you didn’t have to be no airman to pick up the note of warning in the cove’s voice.

“I don’t like it, Captain,” he said, with a significant look. “There’s heavy weather rolling in from nowhere.”

Byron Kae nodded. “We’ll be heading back soon.”

“See that you do.”

Then the nib—Viscount Arlington, I think they said—came sauntering over and made a fuss about time wasting and how ’twas an outrage anyway that they was running back to Prosperity with tail betwixt legs cos of nursery flimflam.

Everybody ignored him, as was right and proper what with him being a total knob.

When the Valiant chugged off and Byron Kae came back to Shadowless, they said sharp as I’d ever heard them say anything, “Shut it all down.”

And cos we weren’t knobs with death wishes, we got to it right tantwivy. Though by the time everything was quiet and dismantled and I’d made sure all the flasks was secure and not going to bang into each other and explode or some shit like that, the darkmans was settling in.

“Y’know,” quoth I, coming up next to Byron Kae who was standing on deck next to Miss Grey, both of them looking into the gathering shadows, “when he said sommat bout heavy weather rolling in from nowhere, that means krakens, right?”

“Yes.”

I liked that they weren’t trying to sugarcoat it nor nowt.

“How close?” Byron Kae for Miss Grey.

“Not close but restless.” She put her hand on their arm. ’Twas the first time I’d ever seen her touch someone voluntarily what wasn’t a girl whore. “I feel them stirring in their dreaming slumbers. There . . . there are voices . . . whispering in alien tongues, calling to them.”

A wind sorta picked up, but it didn’t come from anywhere, and it weren’t going nowhere neither. ’Twas just like some vast stirring, hot and stale, and ancient.

Miss Grey’s glims had gone all to pupil, and for once, I didn’t reckon it was the crack. “One is waking. It watches with myriad, self-luminating eyes, twisting in the fetid iridescence of its own vapour.” Her voice had gone kinda queer too. ’Twas still hers, but in it, or behind it, there was sommat . . . else. “Amorphous and boundless, I see it now . . . a tenebrous mass of tentacles writhing in blasphemous loathing as it wakes . . . it wakes . . . oh it wakes!”

She clenched her fists and pressed her knuckles into her glims so hard it must’ve been hurting.

Byron Kae took her gently by the wrists and stopped her. She made a soft choking noise but then, somehow, calmed a bit. “Do we run?” they asked.

A bit of silence, as Miss Grey tucked a stray bit of hair back into her bun and cleared her throat, like she hadn’t just been completewise batshit.“No. We wait it out.”

“For serious?” I squeaked, not feeling massively nuts on the notion of sitting round waiting to get et by a kraken.

Byron Kae just nodded. “As Jane says.”

“And in the meantime,” added Miss Grey, “I am going to incapacitate myself with opium. Wake me up as we are being lost in time and space.”

And thus began a deeply rubbish night.

’Twas silent running so we couldn’t even light a gaslamp or heat up water for a cup of tea, which Milord said was like the nadir of his life—for a cove who kicked off his career by sucking some bloke off and then blackmailing him, that struck me as some pretty intense hyperbole.

And none of us what weren’t stoned felt like going down below cos even though the night was wicked cold compared to the wet heat that had wrapped us all day, ’twas still somehow stifling down there. Byron Kae was up in the crow’s nest, and Ruben had gone into this kinda endearing frenzy of checking shit, so Miss Grey, Milord, and me sat round the mast, huddled in blankets, while above us the mist swallowed up the sky.

’Twas kinda like Gaslight all over again cos you couldn’t see nowt but black and the stars seemed like some impossible shit invented by a bunch of poets with nowt better to do. ’Twas the deepest darkest darkness, and it sunk through the skin like chivs and hung heavy upon the eyelids.

“What,” I whispered, “what happens if we get found?”

Milord could even make his voice sneer when he fancied it. “Then we get dead.”

So that were that.

By about midnight, Ruben had run out of things he could poke, inspect, or fiddle about with. He hunkered down, settling closest to Milord, just like always, which made me feel the cold that bit extra.

“Everyone all right?”

“Yeah.” I was scared of how my voice would be in that heavy silence, but it weren’t so bad.

Miss Grey, true to her word, was out of it. I didn’t know what she’d took, but I was starting to wish I’d asked for a hit. Unconscious was definitely the closest to all right we were likely to get around here.

Milord’s eyelashes flickered silvery in the dark. “The lack of tea is grotesquely uncivilised.” Which made the prospect of getting et by horrible monsters what exactly? Mildly inconvenient?

Ruben’s duster rustled as he fished about inside it. Sommat gleamed, bright as a lost star, and he pulled out this weird flasky thing.

I had no idea what it was, but Milord gave a gasp. Kinda like one of his sex gasps, which was not sommat I ought to have been able to recognise.

“Here.” Ruben handed it over. “Your favourite.”

“Oh Ruben. Ruben.” Mebbe he’d forgot I was there, as usual, or the darkness and the dread was its own special shelter, but he sounded practically delirious. I guess if it’d been anyone else, I’d have called it joy. Mebbe even affection. “I . . . I . . .” Whatever it was, he ran out of it right quick. “I thank you,” he finished in his prissiest voice.

I couldn’t quite see what was going on with the flask, but suddenwise, the air was full of a warmish ashy smell, and I recognised the nasty cat lap Milord was always drinking when he could get it. Typical, really, of the sorta cove he was, treating as precious sommat what any normal person’d be recoiling from.

I flapped my fin about, trying to get the reek out my nose. Probably we didn’t have to worry about krakens no more. One sniff, and they’d go flying off the other way, eyes watering. If they had eyes.

But Milord had brought the flask right up to his face, and was inhaling the steam. He made another one of his likerous naked noises, all bliss and softness.

“Do feel free to share that with the rest of us.” That was Ruben, kinda dryly for Ruben.

“What? No!” A sudden shift in the gloom as Milord pulled away, curling round the flask. I suspected ’twas all instinct. “You gave it to me. It’s mine.”

Ruben sighed and gave me this look, like he was trying to say sorry.

I just shrugged. If he’d done sommat for me, I didn’t reckon I’d act much different.

So Milord got his tea, and the rest of us got fuck all, and the waiting went on, and on, and fucking on.

I started to stretch out on the deck, but that just made the cold go crawling all over me and gave me the sorta of fears you’re supposed to grow out of—like worrying that sommat monstrous is going to creep up and bite your feet off in the dark.

When I was a bantling, I used to reckon ’twas the crocodiles what everybody said lived in the Gaslight sewers. ’Twas not a happy direction for my thoughts to go, cos from there I got to remembering about Gaslight nights, as cold and dark as this one, except without the possibility of krakens in the aether popping by to do some devouring.

And suddenwise, I felt far more miserable than a cove facing possible devourment surely should. Cos ’twasn’t so much the likelihood of that came pressing down like a great hand, but the prospect of everything else. I got to thinking about the way the world is vast and we’re all alone in it. I mean, yeah, folks come and go and sometimes walk a way at your side, but that’s just geography.

And I remembered Father Giles, worn to nowt by the wind and the rain, standing looking over the edge of Prosperity. I ain’t given much thought to the existence of the Almighty cos He clearly ain’t given much thought to the existence of Piccadilly, but He seemed to be keeping mighty quiet these days. Sitting there, with nowt but dark and silence and empty thoughts, the idea of somebody giving a fuck seemed a bit ridiculous. As did the notion of the opposite, Ol’ Nick or whatever. Cos what use was good and evil against all that nowt?

Shivering, I pressed myself against the side of Shadowless, surprised to find a trace of warmth lingering somehow as though she remembered the sun—which, just then, I’d somehow forgot. I put my cheek to the smooth . . . well . . . I didn’t know what it was, not wood, not metal. And there again was that faint running pulse of power I’d felt when Byron Kae had pressed me up to the wall, and kinda kissed-me-not-kissed-me.

I closed my glims against the darkness, listening to the beating heart of Shadowless, breathing with her through the long, cold night.

I didn’t exactly nod off, but a stirring of heat through Shadowless roused me, and when I peeled open my eyes, the world was grey again and starting to warm up. I felt heavy and stiff—like my whole body had overdosed on Spanish fly. I moved with a stifled groan. Ow, fucking ow. Next time we had to hide from a kraken, I was going to fucking bed.

By the mast, Ruben was also stirring, and he looked about as shitty as I did, drawn and shadow eyed. Milord, though, was curled into him, fast asleep. Fuck me, say what you like about him, but he is one bull-bollocked motherswinker. Ruben shifting woke him, and he pulled himself up, and yawned like a fucking cat.

“Did we get devoured?”

Ruben managed a creaky sorta smile. “I’m thinking . . . no.”

“Well, what an anticlimax.”

And Ruben yanked the brim of the hat Milord was still wearing down over his face by way of answer.

I shielded my eyes from the sky glare to peer up to the crow’s nest where Byron Kae was still standing and mebbe had been all night long. They lifted a hand in some sorta salute and then, swift as light slipping over water, Shadowless was flying for home, cutting the clouds to silver ribbons in her wake.

And just like that—even with the promise of waking monsters in the aether—we was back in Yay we ain’t dead celebratory humour. Milord sauntered off to change his clothes and shave or whatever, and Ruben started heating a tin pot of coffee in the galley—the stuff tasted like tar and shit, but this morning ’twas a mouthful of pure beauty.

And so you can probably imagine we wasn’t what you might call prepared when another ship—must’ve been skyhooked on silent running too—suddenwise surged out the cloud bank, and hoyed a harpoon right at us.

’Twas only cos of being an aethership that we didn’t take a direct broadside.

And even so, Byron Kae spun us round so hard and fast that I went stumbling into Shadowless’s side, coffee leaping out my cup and splattering across the empty sky like a stain, before falling away to nowt.

I tossed the rest overboard before I got scalded and threw myself to the deck as another harpoon went whistling by. Really fucking carefulwise I poked my head up and tried to stag what was going on, and why some random cunts was shooting at us for no fucking reason. Mainwise what I saw was a rusted metal hull of some wretched tug looming over us, and all I could hear was the thundering of the engines and running feet rattling.

And in the gaps betwixt, culls shouting stuff like “Fire” and “Full speed.”

“What in God’s name?” That was Ruben, pounding up the stairs, followed by Milord, tugging on his coat, and Miss Grey, swaying a bit and carrying one of her brass macguffins.

“Stay down.” Miss Grey wasn’t quite shouting cos, y’know, it ain’t ladylike, but she was still making herself heard somehow.

Shadowless rocked to port and I made a grab for sommat—anything—but just ended up rolling til I fetched up finally against the mast, which I got my arms round.

Another harpoon clattered harmless to the deck, trailing its rope.

I was getting bruises on my bruises with all this bouncing round like chink in a bag.

“Scramble, gentlemen.” Miss Grey again, and I noticed she hadn’t ducked down herself. She was like fucking fearless. Or off her tits. “Clear the harpoons, if you please.”

I grabbed for the one near me. ’Twas a brutal thing, with a hooked metal end for gouging, and I was fair sickened with the thought of it tearing through Shadowless. I spun it away like it deserved.

Ruben, half-crouching and staggering a bit with Shadowless’s rocking, ran over to another and did likewise, hoisting it into the air so hard I heard it go clanking off the other ship.

“Pirates?” That was Milord, also clinging to Shadowless as she twisted serpentine through the sky.

And right then a harpoon skimmed past near enough to give the prissy fuck the closest shave of his life, but he jerked back just in time, and it thudded into the mast with a sound like a knife carving flesh. Shadowless sorta shuddered beneath us, and upon the wind, I swear to anything you fucking like I heard a noise like somebody crying out in pain.

I scrabbled to my feet, except then Shadowless banked again and flew me straight off them.

All I wanted to do was get over to the damned harpoon, but even as I got back up again, another one clattered nearby. As I hurled it overboard, I saw Milord struggling with the embedded thing, except he lacked the strength and grip with his splinted-up fingers. Ruben was trying to reach him, but ’twas no use with the motion of the ship flinging us about.

“Many harpoons,” called out Miss Grey. “Handle them.”

Even from this distance I could see the blood gathering on Milord’s cuffs from where he’d ripped his palms open against the wood. He let go of the harpoon shaft and the next thing I saw, he’d levelled them twin sixers.

Two sharp retorts, echoing against the clouds, two death screams, and then another voice shouting “Man the launchers! Now!”

Though I would’ve thought the other captain was probably encountering some reluctance on that front after what happened to the other fellas.

Ruben grabbed for my hand, bruising hard, and we was pegging it up the ship together, tumbling against the mast, both of us tugging at the harpoon, the shaft already wet with sweat and Milord’s blood. As harpoons started coming again, we yanked it free, and Ruben cast it away like it was a poisonous snake or sommat.

Miss Grey, who still didn’t seem all that bothered about the harpoons flying every which way, nor the wild motion of the ship, picked up her skirts and strode to the stern. Putting the brass tube to an eye, she said, “It’s not pirates. I do believe that’s Ephram Albright.”

“What?” Ruben roared, lifting his head a moment and then pulling it down again lest it get speared. “What have you done?” ’Twas obvious who that question was directed at.

“Nothing.” The gathering wind pulled the word from Milord’s lips like it didn’t believe him. “He seems to be labouring under the false impression that I won the skyclaim from his brother unfairly.”

I waited for him to say more, to justify himself or sommat, cos winning is winning and that’s the way it goes, but nowt else came.

Nowt except the whoosh of another harpoon. But this one fell short by enough airspace to fill a sigh of relief.

“It is no matter, gentlemen.” Miss Grey was calm as water. “He will never catch an aethership.”

And ’twas true. Unpeeling sticky hands from the mast, I turned to look behind, and the tug was getting smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter. We was out running it easy, and the harpoons were falling into the sky harmless as rain.

Dunno how I heard it over everything else, and so far away, but I did. ’Twas Byron Kae, and all they said was, “No.”

A fresh shadow rose up from the face of the deep, drenching the deck in dark, and there was a split second of foreboding broken only by the banshee wail of a harpoon cutting the air.

I’m never going to forget the sound of the impact til my dying day. Never. A raw splintering, shattering of wood and flesh and aether as the metal-tipped harpoon ripped into the hull and the deck heaved. And Shadowless shuddered wild and desperate like a broke-backed steed, pinned.

And then . . . and then . . . Byron Kae fell from the crow’s nest. Like an albatross, turning over and over in the air in a pinwheel of feathers and rainbow velvet.

“Captain!” Miss Grey’s voice lifted into a shriek.

Ruben came running forward and somehow—somehow—caught them, both bodies hitting the deck, Ruben going down under the multihued flurry of Byron Kae.

’Twas surely loud with the second tug looming over us, fired-up engines growling, and Ruben’s feet crossing the deck, and the harpoon tearing up Shadowless and this and that and everything else . . . but I was frozen in stillness and silence, seeing nowt but that falling figure.

Byron Kae, what gave me lettering and nonkisses and promises mebbe they was going to keep, sovereign of the skies, dethroned by a shaft of wood and a piece of iron.

’Twas only when I realised we were spinning, helpless and free-falling, that I properly heard what Miss Grey was barking at me: “The skyhooks. Now, Dil.”

This was what it took to get her to call me sommat other than Master Piccadilly?

Milord was already halfway down the starboard side, firing them up, even with the stomach-churning listing of the ship.

Dazed, I moved port, numbed fingers scrabbling with the mechanisms, somehow managing to work them.

And slowly, slowly, with a terrible sound like a wounded beast, we stabilised, though we was still circling helpless, a strung up puppet with an arbitrary puppet master. And by the time I reached the last one, I found myself staring straight into the eye of a gun.

I lifted my hands real carefulwise, and I was prodded back along the deck.

Culls-for-hire, armed and swaggering, were coming down gangplanks and swinging over on ropes, first from the ship what took us down, and then from the other one as it pulled alongside, firing off its own set of skyhooks.

They herded us into a miserable circle. Ruben was kneeling with Byron Kae, and Miss Grey was standing protectively over them, chin all pointy and defiant. Milord was being stripped of weapons, which was turning out to take a while. He seemed to have a lot of steel tucked about him for a slender fella.

I crouched down next to Ruben. Ruben had his hand pressed tight over a deep wound to Byron Kae’s midriff, as though he wanted to hold the blood inside by sheer determination. It didn’t look like ’twas working so good though, cos claret was leaking fast from betwixt Ruben’s fingers.

“How are they?” I wanted to know, cos Byron Kae was chalk pale and didn’t seem to be even breathing.

But then a brandished shooter indicated that me staying alive was kinda dependent on me shutting up. So I did.

I guess I should’ve been shit scared and on some level I surely was. But it had all been so fast and so horrifying, I didn’t really have time for feeling nowt. ’Twas probably for the best. Meant I was going to get snuffed out with some kinda dignity.

Shadowless was silent. I realised then that though she weren’t noisy like airships, she had a sort of rhythm to her—like when you can feel a lover breathing next to you through the darkmans.

Next thing, the airmen parted, and Ephram Albright was stomping towards us, heeled by some scrawny piss-stain I reckoned to be his brother, Morgan.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Miss Grey, without even a quiver. “I’m sure you do not need me to remind you that skyjacking is a hanging offence.”

’Twas Morgan who answered, after he’d first spit chewing tobacco onto the deck at his feet. “There ain’t no law in these parts, lady.”

“You are quite correct. So understand this: without recourse to conventional justice, I will have no compunction in exacting my own. And, believe me, when I am done with you, death itself will seem the sweetest imaginable mercy.”

Morgan turned to his lads. “Feisty wench, ain’t she?”

Then Ephram stepped forward, mebbe not liking the nature of the conversation cos Morgan was not precisely showing himself to advantage here. I mean, I ain’t got no book learning, but one thing I do know is calling morts “feisty wenches” when they threaten to kill you is not the best way to keep your dick.

“I’m just taking what’s mine,” he growled. “M’ family’s claim.”

“Ephram,” said Ruben, “I thought you were an honourable man.”

He shrugged. “And so did I. But ain’t no use ’aving honour when all about you do without.” His jerked a thumb towards Milord. “Think on yer friend there and imagine the situation being arsey-versy. Don’t reckon he’d be mightsome keen to let them as crossed him slip away into the blue neither.”

“Milord would not murder without cause,” insisted Ruben, which just goes to show how fucking clueless good people can be sometimes.

“Cause got nowt to do with innocence, Preacher.”

Ruben gazed pleadingly at Milord. “Won’t you tell him?”

Dunno what I would’ve done in Milord’s place. Probably humbug my head off for a chance of saving my skin, and everyone else’s. Said pretty much whatever to stop Ruben staring at me with that kinda helpless, hopeless, needing-to-believe look on his face. So mebbe that made Milord the better man, or the worse, cos he wouldn’t play the liar for nobody or nowt, just bowed his head, and murmured: “I have always done what is necessary. And that will never change.”

And Ruben closed his eyes like his soul was dying cos after that, there weren’t no pretending betwixt them two anymore.

I could’ve told him forever ago there weren’t no good in ol’ Milord. Just will and hunger and being alone. And having too much pride to deny what he was.

Ephram stuck his thumbs through his belt loops. “’Tis easy enough to imagine m’ cuntsucker kin losing Pa’s claim in a game of chance. But I ain’t no gull to hold true a deal made betwixt an idiot and the Devil.”

Some cull came running out to say they’d found our phlogiston stocks, and Ephram ordered them brought to Morgan’s ship. For all it took us getting ’em, didn’t take long to get ’em nicked. But I didn’t give a flying fuck about the goods right then cos I’d seen Byron Kae’s eyelashes flicker—which meant they was going to live, right, if only we could contrive a way out of this fine ol’ mess.

I snuck glances here and there, trying to find sommat I could do, but we was surrounded and powerless and it sucked to high heaven.

When they was done stinging us, Morgan turned to Miss Grey. “Y’know, fine piece like you, it ain’t no life and no fit ending neither—ye could come with me. I’d take care of you. Real good care.” And he leered boobwards in a manner I’m sure no woman would’ve been able to resist.

She blinked. “Forgive me, I am but a weak and feeble creature, and my intellect is therefore lacking. I need to have this properly clarified. Put into simple terms. I can either be killed with my friends, or go with you?”

“Aye.”

“My dear man, I believe you must be a missionary of the angels. Never has cessation of all bodily function seemed so enticing a prospect.”

“Yeah . . . uh . . . what?”

“I’d rather die, you repulsive piece of human effluvium.”

“She’s saying no, cockstain,” I offered, being a helpful sort, and got a pistol whipping for my trouble.

I was kinda beyond caring really—’twas a dull, blunt sorta pain, rusty like the taste of the blood filling my mouth.

“Enough, Morgan,” growled Ephram. “Cut your ropes and your damn harpoon and go.”

Morgan weasled off with his crew, leaving us with Ephram and his cudgelliers to face . . . dying . . . I guess. ’Twas sorta ironic that I’d spent all last night fretting about monsters from beyond the skies and here we were being kicked upstairs (or mebbe downstairs for Milord and me) in the most everyday fashion possible.

“Ephram,” Ruben tried again. “You have what you came for. There is no need to compound theft with murder.”

But Ephram just shook his noggin. “I regret you being involved in this, Ruben Crowe. I know ye for a decent cove. But I ain’t got no choice.”

“We always have a choice. Without choice there can be no morality. That is why we have free will and a conscience to teach us what is right and what is wrong. What does your conscience tell you now?”

“Oh, I ain’t making no pretence bout that. But I gotta do it, Ruben. Or I’m dead myself. Look to them whose company ye keep. You heard what he said, same as I did.”

Then sommat stirred in the rigging, a nowhere wind, bringing with it currents of lost places and the dreams of the dead gods.

Miss Grey walked slowly through the airmen, with her dress rustling around her, and not one bugger did one thing to stop her. When she reached the rail, she just stood there a moment, hands clasping it lightly, as she stared out at the deep.

“It is not the crimelord you need to fear.”

Then she turned, her eyes gone sickly green-black and vaporous, and her hair flying out wild like the tendrils of some fucked up flower.

And a storm, carrying with it the stench of untold ages, dead flesh, and broken dreams, rose from nowhere, tearing at skin and clothes and knocking the ships about on their skyhooks as if ’twas some giant beast clouting us with great big paws.

The sky sundered like rot-corrupted skin, black-greenish cracks spreading out from a wound in the clouds. And then a shape, or more rightly a misshape, being vile and vast and possessing far too many tentacles, stirred slowly, outlined behind the sky like the shadow from a magic lantern and beginning to force its way through.

And Miss Grey was laughing and calling out fuck knew what in some harsh alien lingo, reaching to the shattering sky with outstretched clawing fingers, pulling the goddamn, fucking monster right towards us.

People was too busy screaming and going mad with panic to get on with killing us cos everybody knew what was going down now.

’Twas the nightmare you’d always hoped was just moonshine.

A kraken was coming. Miss Grey had invited it to tea and cakes.

Ephram was shouting, “To the ship!” and running, stumbling in haste and fear and with the rocking.

Some folk were jumping into the sky rather than stay and face what was coming.

Miss Grey had gone to her knees next to Byron Kae, touching their face with gentle fingers. “Wake up, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Please. We need you. A little power, just a little power. Get us back to Prosperity. I know you can.” She leaned over them and kissed their brow, tender as a sister.

Shadowless shivered.

Miss Grey glanced up. “Cut the skyhooks. Do it now.”

Milord reached down and tossed me one of his flick-blade chivs. I fumbled, but grabbed it. “We’ll fall out of the sky,” he said, matter-of-fact.

“Better than kraken bait. Go.”

We went.

Ephram’s tug had already done theirs and was reeling slowly round, buffeted by the unnatural squall. Whatever crew had got left behind were throwing themselves after, some of them scrabbling to safety, but most of them plummeting to nowhere, lost and screaming.

Across Shadowless, Milord caught my eye and nodded.

Together then, we put our knives to the last ties and severed them. And Shadowless dropped out of the sky like a stone.

The deck coming up knocked the wind out of me, and then I was spinning with the ship, far too fast, with nowt to hold onto. I just had time to think, Well this must be it, when . . . we stopped with a yank so hard it felt like it wanted to pull my stomach out through my throat. What little air I’d got came gagging back out, and I could hear Milord making similarwise unhappy noises from a few feet away, and coughing so hard it sounded like he was bringing up a lung.

“The wheel.” Miss Grey’s voice dragged me to my feet.

But Milord, fogle to lips, was already there, swinging Shadowless round in the sorta tight circle only an aethership can manage. And then we was climbing, riding the storm.

From above came a terrible noise of splintering wood, shattering metal, and dying men. I looked up just in time to see an immense, eye-studded tentacle, dripping with some kinda noxious ooze, wrapping itself round Ephram’s ship—like one ’em lovers what you’d rather forget in the morning.

And slowly it started drawing the whole damn tug towards the fetid, vaporous crack in the clouds. A hail of broken pieces (some of them pieces being people pieces, I’m sure) came spilling down. I rolled into the lee of the quarter deck, lest I get conked on the head by sommat I really didn’t like thinking about being hit with.

“We would benefit from more speed,” called out Milord. “Or the shrapnel will surely knock us from the sky.”

Shadowless surged forward like an exhausted horse, staggering through the blue. I felt the effort in her every shiver, beautiful brave lady with her beautiful brave captain.

And when I next dared look up, I couldn’t see nowt but a pool of darkness like spilled ink, the clouds closing over it.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. For whatever reason, by whatever grace, the kraken had bogged off.

Not really trusting in my ability to stand, I crawled down the ship to Ruben, Miss Grey, and Byron Kae.

“My sweet hero,” she was saying, stroking their face. “Now just get us home.”

Their eyes fluttered open, a faint smile struggling onto their pale lips. “You called a kraken. That was entirely the opposite of sane.”

Miss Grey smiled in a way that was also, to be honest, entirely the opposite of sane. “Nobody fucks with us.”

“Nobody,” agreed Byron Kae so soft I barely heard them. And then they fell back against Ruben.

“Besides,” Miss Grey added primly, “it was only a little one. I knew what I was doing.” She looked up and called out to Milord. “Turn us round. Take us back to Prosperity. The captain needs to rest or we are done for.”

“Will they be okay?” I asked, pawing a bit at Miss Grey.

She shook me off. “I very much hope so, Master Piccadilly.” Ah, things was back to normal. “But the sooner we make slip at Prosperity and remove the harpoon, the better.” She frowned. Shadowless was still on course for Not Prosperity. “Milord? Did you hear me? Turn. The. Ship. Around.”

A slight pause.

Milord’s voice drifted down from the helm, cold as a morning in January. “I’m afraid I must first take care of business.”

Now an even longer pause. I don’t think we quite believed what we was hearing.

“We can’t,” I said. “We gotta go back. Cos Byron Kae ain’t doing so well ’ere.”

“Quite,” added Miss Grey. “Surely a mind as practical as yours must recognise that if our captain dies, we shall fall out of the sky and be unable to conduct any business at all ever again.”

“It is a risk I am prepared to take.”

She stood. “I am not prepared to take it. As Acting Captain of the Shadowless, I order you to turn this ship around immediately.”

Milord said nowt. I guess ’twould’ve been redundant cos he clearly wasn’t going to listen to us.

“Dil.” ’Twas Ruben. “I need you take this cloth and apply pressure here.”

“They ain’t going to die, right?” I slithered in under Byron Kae, supporting them as best I could. At Ruben’s count of three, we swapped hands, blood pooling beneath us, cooling and sticky. Was that a good sign? Or a bad one? I could feel Byron Kae breathing, but ’twas fast and shallow. I pressed like I was told. I pressed for all I was worth.

Miss Grey chewed on her lip. “I don’t know how much strength they have left. We need to get back.” I don’t know if I was meant to hear the next bit cos she dropped her voice real low. “Make him, Ruben. You have to make him stop.”

He nodded. But he hadn’t took two paces across the deck before Milord drew his sixer and pointed it straight at him. “Do not,” he said, over the click of the bullet slipping into the chamber, “put me in a position that will oblige me to do something I will truly regret.”

“Then, for God’s sake, don’t do it.” Ruben’s voice echoed in the aether, full of passion and pleading.

But he’d also stopped. Cos in his place, I wouldn’t have trusted Milord not to shoot me neither.

“Don’t make me.” The gun didn’t waver.

What would’ve been right useful just about now, I thought, was one of his debilitating coughing fits.

“Don’t do this.” Milord opened his mouth but Ruben kept on talking. “And don’t tell me it’s necessary.”

Milord’s smile glinted, mirthless. “I will not countenance the continued existence of Morgan Albright.”

“We can chase him to the ends of the sky. But not now.”

Ruben took another step forward.

“My last warning.”

Ruben stopped again. “You would really do this? Sacrifice Byron Kae. For what? Your pride? For petty vengeance?”

“They are all I know and all I have.”

“You know me. You have me.”

“No, Ruben.” Milord’s eyes shimmered silvery. “You only want what you think I am, what you believe I have the capacity to be.” He paused, slipping on his speech for the first time I ever heard him. “I . . . I do . . . You are . . . you have become central to me. But in your morality I am simply . . . uninterested. And I will not pretend I am other than I am to earn your pleasure.”

“Then fuck morality. Don’t do it because it’s right. Do it for me. Do it for us. If I’m central. I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Turn the ship around.”

’Twas a scene more horrifying than all the krakens in the aether, watching them destroy each other in simple words.

Mebbe Milord would’ve done it, mebbe he wouldn’t, but then Ruben stepped forward and Milord shot him. Winged his arm. Blood flaring like a flag beneath his white shirt. “Not another step. P-please.”

Ruben slapped his palm over the wound. I was glad I couldn’t see his face.

“Ruben. Enough.” ’Twas Miss Grey. “I will not have you die for this.”

“I don’t believe—” started Ruben.

“This is not a poker game. Come back. It is bad enough to gamble with one life, let alone two.”

Like a waking dreamer, Ruben came stumbling back.

“Thank you,” said Milord. Strangely, he sounded like he meant it.

“Fuck you.” Miss Grey set about binding Ruben’s arm with strips torn from her petticoats.

In a bit, seconds or lifetimes, I dunno, Milord called out: “Miss Grey. I would like to use your optical device.”

“I dropped it.”

“Then find it. And throw it up to me.”

“Or you’ll shoot me?”

“Do not tempt me.”

I pointed her to where I thought it might’ve rolled during the fuss, and she scrabbled after it, hoying it up to Milord as instructed. With the hand that didn’t hold the gun, and his knee braced against the wheel, he snatched the tube from the air and held it to his eye.

I looked to the horizon—the best I could make out was a blackish smudge moving away from us.

“I hope,” muttered Miss Grey betwixt her teeth, “he does not get us all killed. It would be too irritating after all we have gone through.”

Ruben was sitting with his head in his hands. “He won’t,” he answered, in a hollow sorta voice. “He never does anything without calculating its consequences.”

The smudge was growing, the edges getting slowly sharper til it became a shape. A ship shape (no pun intended). Course they weren’t expecting us, so they didn’t notice we was there til we was already well within range.

I didn’t dare move in case I did sommat bad to Byron Kae, so I didn’t really see what happened.

All I heard was scurrying on deck, a few shouts of “What the fuck” and “Look lively” and “Man the turrets,” but Milord had the eye glass in one hand and his gun in the other.

“My recommendation,” he murmured, “is that you all hold on tight.”

We tucked ourselves round Byron Kae, pressing low to the deck.

They got off a couple of harpoons, but then Milord levelled the iron, aimed up, like he wanted to shoot down the sun or something, and fired.

Bang. Then nowt.

Milord dropped the tube and spun the wheel, dragging us round hard and fast.

“What—” I didn’t get a chance to finish the question.

“The phlogiston,” said Ruben. “They left the phlogiston on deck.”

I turned to look, and the ship just exploded with a sound that shook the whole world, lighting up the sky with the glare of fire and blood.

Screaming, then silence.

A wave of heat and energy rocked us and chunks of red-hot metal and shit knows what else came flying by. ’Twas a wonder we didn’t get hit, but I guess Milord had—as Ruben said he would—calculated it right.

Soon as we was clear of the blast radius, Ruben was on his feet and running down the ship, screaming at Milord like ’twas his turn to go batshit. “Are you going to shoot me now? Are you?” And when Milord dropped the gun, he broke into: “Get away from the wheel, get the fuck away from the wheel.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Miss Grey. “I do so wish I was hammered.”

Milord stepped away, but then Ruben was grabbing him and shaking him, and Milord was just kinda taking it like when they was kissing or having at it, which wasn’t a comparison I should’ve been able to make, but there it was.

Despite having nearly died about six times in a row today alone, this was so horribly embarrassing, I was sorta wishing mebbe I had snuffed it. And we was adrift, though leastwise heading the right way this time, but neither me nor Miss Grey wanted to go up there and sort it out.

“Ruben,” whispered Milord helplessly. “Oh, Ruben.”

“How could you? What the fuck?”

Ruben had stopped attacking him—was just holding him, one hand twisted in his hair, and Milord’s head was tipped back, throat exposed, pale and fragile, like an invitation to violence.

“I know you want me to be sorry, but I’m not. I’m not.” Milord’s frozen calm was cracking down the middle. “Given the same set of circumstances, I would do it again.”

“God damn you,” yelled Ruben. “God fucking damn you. I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

He let go so abruptly that Milord sorta crumpled down Ruben’s body, his knees hitting the deck so hard it must’ve fucking hurt. He fell forward onto his wrists like some sorta unintended supplicant. “I don’t know. How could I? Nothing in my life has prepared me for . . . for you.”

Miss Grey cleared her throat. “What fine weather for this time of year, do you not think, Master Piccadilly?”

“Jolly spiffing,” I returned. “Wouldst you perchance ’ave another fogle to press to the wound of our dying friend?”

“I believe I can accommodate that request.”

Milord had lifted his head and was looking up at Ruben. “If this is so,” he was saying, his voice shattered glass, “if it is true what you say. That you love me. Then love me . . . love me for me. For all the ways I am not worthy of you.”

Dunno what I’d have done, if I’d been Ruben. Truth is, I reckon most of us go through life begging folk to love us, one way or another. It’s just I can’t imagine having the bollocks, or the need, to say it direct.

For a moment, Ruben just sorta stared, one hand on the wheel, the other hanging there like it didn’t know whether to reach out or pull away.

I didn’t like Milord cos, basically, the fucker was about as likeable as tapeworm, even putting aside the fact he’d tried to kill me a bunch of times. But I still wanted Ruben to say yes. For the sake of everybody who got nowt, and ain’t worthy.

“Get the fuck away from me,” he snarled.

In which our hero indulges a long-standing inclination—Rest is taken and plans are laid—Several conversations on edifying and revealing subjects—Lessons are learned, sometimes painfully—Further considerations of love, duty, morality, and the divine, supported by reference to scripture and otherwise—Some notes pertaining to the person of Mr. Ruben Crowe
hat was how we limped home to Prosperity, all of us in pieces one way or the other.

We was travelling slow and dipping lower and lower in the sky so ’twas looking like we might not make it, but such was the general lack of cheer on deck that nobody seemed to give a toss. Ruben ’specially was looking like he might prefer it if we dropped straight out the air.

Byron Kae was barely breathing, with a blue-ish sorta tinge to their lips I was sure couldn’t be good. But I kept my hand pressing down just as Ruben’d told me, though my fingers was getting all numb and chilled to the bone.

“When we dock, I’ll peg it straight for the quack,” I offered.

“We don’t need a doctor.” Miss Grey was staring at the horizon like she didn’t like it much, almost as pale as the captain. “We need that fucking harpoon out. And the captain needs to be resting, not keeping Shadowless aloft.”

’Twas pure poison, the way she spoke.

I’d’ve felt almost sorry for Milord if Byron Kae hadn’t been bleeding, and mebbe dying, in my lap. I hadn’t exactly ever been nuts on the prissy fucker, what with him shooting me and all, but right then, I kinda hated him. ’Twas a hot, helpless, self-righteous feeling, and I didn’t like having it for nobody.

I adjusted my hand, as though if I just pressed down right, it’d make a difference. Buffleheaded, but what else was there to do? Hope for the hopeless. Faith from the faithless. Whatever.

’Twas close to evening when we docked, Milord roping Shadowless to the town’s skyhooks til we was hanging in the air, ungainly, secured to one of the docking platforms like we was an everyday airlugger

Miss Grey stood, shaking out her skirts. “Ruben.” She sounded scary-calm. The kind of calm you get to when fury just ain’t enough no more. “Please escort your friend from the ship.”

“He’s not my friend.”

“I don’t care about the nature of your relationship. Remove him, before I throw him overboard.”

Milord was backing away. He didn’t precisely look worried, but he didn’t look relaxed neither. “I am perfectly capable of removing myself.”

“See him gone.”

There was this awkward moment when it seemed like Ruben mebbe wanted to bicker, but whatever it was he saw on Miss Grey’s face changed his mind for him. I guess she was probably blaming him a bit too, cos without Ruben, there wouldn’t have been no Milord, and then we wouldn’t have been cloudpanning on a filched claim, and Byron Kae wouldn’t have got hurt. And Ruben was probably blaming himself too for them exact same reasons.

I didn’t have that luxury. Cos without Milord, I wouldn’t be here at all. The best part of my whole fucking life sprung from the worst, a gift from the same malevolent, chiv-happy quean who’d come perilous close to killing me three times now.

Me, and somebody who was kind and true and didn’t fucking deserve it at all.

Ruben and Milord disappeared over the rail together, not touching, not speaking, not even looking at each other. I guess they went their separate ways soon as they hit land. I dunno what Ruben did, but I learned later Milord went to Albright’s and shot Jackson through the heart, making it three for three of the Albright brothers. Don’t reckon anyone was surprised, except mebbe Jackson.

But, whether he knew it or not, he was a loose end, and Milord hadn’t lived as long as he had by leaving folks alive as had a reason to kill him. Not counting the occasional ex-lover bearing a grudge bigger than death itself, but hopefully he only had the one of them. Although, knowing Milord, mebbe not. I couldn’t imagine he left many people with warm and charitable feelings.

Soon as they was gone, Miss Grey ran to the side and peered over. Mebbe I was a coward after all, cos I was glad it was her not me. I didn’t want to see what they’d done to Shadowless. “Dil, I’m going for help.” Fuck, I was Dil again. It must be bad. “Can you stay with the captain?”

“Yeah.” ’Twasn’t even in fucking question.

She came back and bent over Byron Kae a moment, smoothing the hair out of their face cos it was all stuck flat with sweat. “You must not die, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Or I will kill that man myself, and I know how you disapprove of such things.”

Then she hiked up her skirts, and started scrambling down the skyhook cable. So we was way past ladylike too.

Fuck, and all the fucks there was.

I lifted my paw a moment, trying to see what was what under there, but soon as I did, blood started spilling every which way over the deck. ’Twas reddish and bloodlike for the most part, but it had a sheen on it, which moved differentish, like oil on water. In any case, you didn’t have to be no apothecary to know that any sorta blood was better inside than out, so I quickwise covered the wound again.

Their eyes flickered, and they moaned, and I cursed myself for being a cack-handed nidgit.

“You . . . you heard Miss Grey, right, Captain? No fucking dying.”

A cold hand curled weakly round my wrist. “Dil, you need to go. I don’t know if I can . . .”

“I’m not leaving.”

They drew in this breath which sounded all kinds of wrong, too light and shallow, like the air wasn’t getting where ’twas supposed to be. A bead of shimmery blood gathered at the corner of their lips. “If I say go . . . promise me you will?”

“I ain’t promising no dumb-prick thing like that.”

“Dil.” They opened their eyes. The stars in the depths were all blurry like they’d all turned into comets. “If I tell you to cut the ropes, you get off my ship and you cut the ropes. Please.”

I shook myself free and took hold of their hand proper. “No way. You ain’t never let me fall, so I ain’t letting you fall neither. Sides, that’s not going to happen. Miss Grey’s getting help.”

“Yes but—”

“No but.”

Their eyes fell closed again, and their lips turned up into some ghost of a smile.

’Twas going to be such an evening, with a breeze blowing soft as warm breath. The setting sun was turning all the clouds to gold, and the light was pouring everywhere like honey, and dancing in circles on the edges of things like careless coins. As though even the ramshackle mess of Prosperity could’ve mebbe been Eldorado in a different life.

“You’re missing some good shit,” I whispered, giving their hand a little squeeze. I couldn’t tell if I was getting colder or they was getting warmer, and I didn’t know if that was good or not. “Look.”

They made a soft sound all full of pain, and Shadowless shuddered on the skyhooks, and I hurt with them. ’Tweren’t my place, but I did.

“No, come on, ’ave a look. It’s mighty bene.”

It seemed to be a struggle, but mebbe cos I’d asked them, they did. They opened their eyes. First we was just looking straightwise at each other, and I was so fucking glad for it, cos I was suddensome so kind of used to them and couldn’t bear the thought of the world going on without them in any sorta way at all. But then they was looking past me, into the setting sun, and when they spoke, their voice was slurry as though they were half-asleep. “‘And for an everlasting Roof . . . the Gambrels of the Sky.’ Sometimes beauty is the hardest thing to bear.”

“What’s a gambrel?”

“No clue.”

I didn’t know how ’twas I hadn’t first noticed Byron Kae was beautiful too. But their eyes had drifted closed again, and I didn’t know how to say it without sounding like a knob.

So I watched the sky instead, tears burning at the back of my eyes with all the terrible beauty of the world.

But as colours began to fade and the darkmans set in, I started to get fretsome cos Byron Kae was getting colder, and I could feel this stillness in Shadowless that I’d never felt in her before, and I didn’t know what it meant.

I leaned over them, put my mouth close against theirs, touching nowt but the ripple of their too-faint breath. “Please don’t leave me. I’ve seriously ’ad it with leaving and being left.”

First off I didn’t hear nowt, but then their fingers brushed up and down mine. “Tell me a story, Dil.”

“I ain’t exactly no Mr. Dickens o’er here. Not sure stories are my forte.”

They didn’t press me, cos they wouldn’t. But then I remembered I was supposed to be done with leaving, and leaving them in silence wasn’t no better.

So I did. Kinda slowly at first, cos it was hard to pin the words down. But I told them a story about me, one of the truest ones, and ’twas just for them.

In a little while, lights came bobbing through the darkness, and I perked up right speediwise cos ’twas Miss Grey, and Miss Alis, and a bunch of doxies, and Seth Silver, and some other fellas what I didn’t recognise, all trooping out to the docks with tools and cables and whatever else.

I was so fucking happy to stag them, I could’ve cried.

When Miss Grey clambered over the rail, she tried to get me to shove off (“rest now, Piccadilly” was what she actualwise said), but I wasn’t moving for nowt. Not until I knew Byron Kae was going to be . . . right as rain, as Ruben would’ve said.

If he’d been there.

If Milord hadn’t been pyscho.

Except it took longer than I thought it would, and I was tired. Tired, and cold, and scared, and bone-deep sad somehow, full of these aches, big and small, running over me like a bunch of sewer rats, gnawing at my fuddled ol’ heart.

Mebbe it would’ve been a thing worth watching otherwise, cos ’twas all hands on deck under Miss Grey’s direction. I think they had to build some sorta makeshift platform or sommat to get at the harpoon, and then they had to get it out, and that should’ve been the end, but ’twas the worst part cos it weren’t simple at all.

’Twas in too deep, so they had to dig. And I was glad all over again I couldn’t see what they was doing, cos even though Miss Grey was a litany of “Careful” and “No” and “Like that” and “I said careful,” I felt it in Shadowless. At least she wasn’t quiet no more, but she shivered, and ’twasn’t the right sort of shivering. Byron Kae was kinda bucking and gasping very softish, blood and sweat all clotting up under my hands. ’Twas horrible cos all I could do was hold them down, and tell them it was going to be okay, which was probably moonshine cos I didn’t have a clue.

And then came this bone-sawing tearing noise as the harpoon came free, and they arched right into my arms, and screamed like they had when it first hit.

I hugged them tight, and their eyes came open again, but they was smiling at me, so faintwise, but ’twas there.

“They got it out,” quoth I, totally useless cos ’twas obvious they had.

“Yes.”

We was still holding hands. I didn’t fancy letting go in case they slipped off into the sky or sommat. But in the same kinda way I knew how Shadowless was hurt, I knew they wouldn’t. Mebbe a strange little bit of belief to grow in the midst of all that blood and pain, but there it was, as strong and true as them what inspired it.

With my spare fin, I was carefulwise trying to peel fabric away from the wound. They didn’t want me to, but it weren’t no time for playing coy. Except when I got there, ’twas only gore and aether, skin as white as Shadowless’s sails, and a jagged black-red scar.

I kinda gasped a bit.

They pulled free and covered it with their hands.

“Don’t it hurt?” I asked.

“For a little while. It’s not my first.”

“It don’t look bad or nowt.”

“You’re hurt too.” Their fingers came up and brushed my jaw where some cunt had decided to lamp the young fucking hero with a pistol butt.

I winced cos that woke the memory, but where they was touching made a new one. “Ain’t so bad.”

“And exhausted.”

“You trying to tell me I look like a mingerish slubber degullion?”

“Never, Dil.” They was knackered too—their voice was fading back to whispers. “Never.”

So I eased them down onto the deck, and curled in next to them, being cautious not to jostle them or nowt. They fell asleep instantish, but I was stuck on the distant shores of just too fucking tired and wrecked, and couldn’t make it back to unconscious.

In a while, it got quiet again and the lights faded away so ’twas just us, and the sky, and Shadowless.

And then Miss Grey, coming aboard, looking like sommat what crawled out one of her own nightmares, with her all hair tangled, and her dress soaked in dust and aether. She didn’t say nowt, just lay down on Byron Kae’s other side, and put her head on their other shoulder.

We kinda watched each other a bit, breathing with Byron Kae, and with the ship. And that was when I knew it didn’t matter she didn’t like me much, cos we was together anyhow, all of us the same by starlight.

After that, ’twas quiet times. Not good like flying, but not bad neither. Just quiet.

Seth Silver, the flush fella what run the general store, was round a fair bit. Said he was supervising the repairs. But we reckoned he was mainwise supervising this carpenter he’d found—dark-eyed, curly-haired Spanish cove, fresh in town, name of Jesus. He said it different—like Hesus but with a cough—but we called him Jesus-like-the-Bible anywise. Cos it was funny and cos we really needed to laugh right then.

’Twasn’t long before them two was praying together pretty fervent, if you take my meaning. Seth’d close up shop and be there on the docks as the sun went down—and from the deck, I’d see them going hand in hand into the dark like they was having a lifetime together in a handful of days. Which is how it goes on the edges of things.

Byron Kae and me stayed close to Shadowless and each other. They was weak but getting better, which meant I was left in charge of our ol’ friend Oliver Twist. ’Twas slowsome going with me doing all the telling about how the ungrateful little shit was freaking out cos the kindly ol’ Jew was trying to teach him useful life skills, and stumbling over all the breakteeth words (though I will confess I got a fondness for them myself sometimes, as mebbe you’ve noticed and been impressed by), but we got on okay.

And we both missed Ruben, who still hadn’t come back, so the quiet was full of him. All these spaces where his singing and his laughing used to be. Mebbe he thought Miss Grey was going to stab him with a hair pin, but probably he was just guilty as fuck cos friends don’t nearly get friends killed.

Well. Not if you’re Ruben Crowe. Mebbe if you’re Milord or Piccadilly, and you ain’t had no proper practice.

In the end, I went looking for him. I wish I could’ve been able to say I done it for Byron Kae, but I did it for me. Cos mebbe now he didn’t only have glims for Milord, he’d see what was right in fucking front of him. I knew he had a fancy for me, with his smiles and his kisses and his being kind when he didn’t need to, but it weren’t never going to be more than idleness and likerousness with Milord all over him like poison ivy.

I reckoned I could be good for Ruben, which wasn’t a notion I’d ever had much opportunity to entertain before. ’Twas a nice idea, being a good you could give, and good you got back. If only I could get Ruben awake to it, istead of waiting and hoping for sommat that weren’t there, cos a waiting like that can eat your fucking heart out.

I asked casuallike round town, but even though he’d taken a room at the Grand Hotel, which was Prosperity’s seriously hyperbolised flophouse, nobody’d clapped peepers on him for a day or so. I tried his kip but ’twas all sloured up—locked tight—and heavy with the reek of liquor. Not what ye might call an edifying situation.

So then I got to thinking what a fella such as Ruben would do for solace, cos I didn’t think he was like to find much of it in bought warmth or the taste of oblivion. And once I got my noggin aboard that train, ’twas easy.

He’d be at the gospel shop.

I ain’t ever been nuts on churches cos I reckon self-righteousness got a smell, and it gets right up my conk. There’s more places in the world than I can count to make you feel small and crappy and dingable—ain’t no need whatsoever for one of them to have a licence for it. Still, of all the chapels I haven’t liked being in, Prosperity’s could take some sorta prize. From the moment I sidled inside, hoping not to get noticed by the black coat, or, y’know, any God what thought I wasn’t doing shit right, that grotty little steeple house gave me a raging case of the screaming heebies.

Mebbe ’twas just the neglect, but the air weren’t right somehow, and it tasted dusty-sweet when I tried to catch a breath. The windows were all grimed over so the light weren’t getting in proper, making everything dingy-dark and depressing as fuck. First thing I stagged was Ruben, slumped in one of the ratty ol’ pews, talking all deepsome to Father Giles.

“I’m lost,” he was saying. “I’m so lost.”

“We all are,” quoth the priest.

And Ruben nodded. “‘To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.’” He sighed, bowing his head, so the shadows of that place crawled all over him.

“None can be saved.” I couldn’t see much of the black coat, but his voice was scratches against my skin.

“But by the grace of God, I know, I know.” Ruben’s hand flapped a bit impatientish. “But what of love, Father?”

“What of love?”

“‘The love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ Doctrinal or not, heretical or not, I have long believed that worldly love is a reflection, a perfect microcosm, of divine love, and that our capacity to give and receive love brings us closer to God.”

Ruben was quiet for a bit. I guess they was looking soulfully into each other’s eyes or whatever it is believers do at times like this.

“But,” he went on at last, “if one loves . . . if I love evil . . . and there is no redemption, no salvation . . . then is it love? Or is it simply selfishness?” He shuffled a bit. “And carnality, which I will confess is a weakness of my nature. It cannot be any natural reflection of God’s love that permits cruelty and iniquity to continue and to . . . to flourish.”

Father Giles shook his head. “No. Perhaps the existence of such love offers a reflection not of God but of something . . . else.”

“You mean the Devil?” Ruben actually laughed, and it sounded so wrong in that wrong, wrong place, that I made the sign against evil just cos. “I don’t believe in the Devil. Nor in a fiery pit.”

“There is no fiery pit, Ruben.”

“Thank you. Some enlightened thought at last.”

“There is simply cold eternity.”

Ruben coughed. “As you say.”

And I kinda wanted to the shake the stupid bastard cos normal folks—even church uns—didn’t say shit like that, and I didn’t know why Ruben wasn’t telling him to go get fucked sideways with a rusty fork.

Father Giles stood, and he was like this extra bit of dark in the dark. “It is irrational to hold faith with the silence of a passively loving God, and deny the evidence of your heart, your eyes, and the world in which you live.”

Ruben’s head came up. “What do you mean?”

“If mortal love is a representation of divine love, does it not follow that hate, selfishness, greed, indifference, savagery are also cosmic reflections?”

“N-no, such things are manifestations of free will.”

“Then why not love as well, when you have said yourself it is no more a goodly force than anything else?”

“I don’t understand,” said Ruben all shaky and hug-needing, “what you’re telling me.”

Father Giles shrugged. “I’m telling you that you might as well hold a mirror to the sky. There is nothing to reflect. There is only what you see. Which is mankind, infinitely small, and petty, and cruel.”

I couldn’t stand it no more, not listening to that shit, nor being in that fucking place, so I pegged it. Cos if that was succour, it could suck it.

’Twas drizzling a bit outside, and blowing too, so Prosperity was juddering, but it didn’t freak me out like it used to. ’Twas nowt to being on an aethership, which was like riding the air itself.

The Abbey had a bit of a porch, so I tucked myself under it to wait for Ruben. Miss Alis was standing in the doorway, not wearing very much, and sucking on a massive cigar. I made the joke any bugger would’ve made, and she threatened my nutmegs with a blunt spoon, so then we just made civil whiskers as the rain plopped and splished and got all betwixt the joins of the main drag, making it shiny.

Finally the rain came on so hard that Miss Alis hoofed it back inside. Which was also when Ruben gave the gospel shop the laugh and came out, pulling down his hat and turning up his collar against the weather. He looked fucking miserable, and shaggable as sin, just like always, with that stubble-rough jaw and those innocent-knowing eyes of his.

I kind of gave him this pathetic little wave cos I was suddensome shy like a maid on her wedding day.

“How dost my buff?” I called, making merry like I hadn’t just listened to him break his heart.

For a second he looked so happy—just cos of the unexpected appearing of one Piccadilly, formerly of Gaslight—but then he got all sheepish. “How’s Byron Kae?”

“They’re coming along. Which is sommat you should have done days ago, by the way.”

He stuffed his hands deep into his pocket. “I know. But how can I face them? This is all my fault.”

“’S’not all your fault.” That made him smile a bit, but I wasn’t jesting. “For serious. ’Tis choices what everyone makes.”

“And if it weren’t for my choices, your lives wouldn’t have been in danger, and Byron Kae would never have been hurt.”

I leaned on the rickety rail, and the water from Ruben’s hat brim splashed onto my nose, icy cold. “It ain’t like Milord hides who he is. They knew what they was doing when they took him on board.”

Ruben sighed. “We . . . well, he mostly, needed to get out of England as quickly as possible. So I asked for Byron Kae’s help, and they gave it. All because I took advantage of a debt they think they owe me, when they don’t owe me anything.”

“Come on.” I hopped off the porch of the bawdy house cos it wasn’t exactly the place for conversation, and held out my hand.

He took it after a moment. He was always so warm, was Ruben Crowe. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Shadowless, so you can say sorry like the man I know you are.”

He flinched, but didn’t protest. And there we was, all over again, walking through the rain together. And this time no Milord to seize the goods.

“Y’know,” I said, “I reckon whate’er they done for you, was done in friendship, nowt more nor less than that.”

“I’ve done so little to deserve their friendship, Dil.”

I peeped up at him, all earnest and somber and in serious need of kissing, though I reckoned he probably wasn’t ready for me to try. “What’d you do then?”

“I told you. Nothing. Just . . . some words of kindness when they were young.”

“That ain’t nothing, Ruben. That’s everything.”

“It’s basic—” He made a frustrated gesture with the free paw. “The default. When someone is feeling frightened, or alone, or unsure, you want to make them . . . not feel like that.”

“If it’s the default, why ain’t everybody doing it then, eh?”

“You’ve just done it for me.” And then he brought my hand up and . . . kinda . . . actually kissed it. In this sort of careless, courtly way that made me feel like fucking honoured or sommat, and go all wet and melty and desperate deep inside.

I choked out this noise. Cos nobody’d ever done sommat like that for me. Though I didn’t reckon anyone else could. Not without it looking totally daft. And I nearly blurted out sommat about it being nowt, before I realised I’d be shooting my own point in the face.

So we rolled up to Shadowless in silence. Where Byron Kae was waiting.

It looked like a painful conversation what they had. I think Ruben mebbe cried. But though, once upon a time, I surely would’ve, I didn’t go listening in. ’Twasn’t mine, whatever they said to each other, so I didn’t take it.

When they was done, Byron Kae called us together, and we sat below deck, having coffee, which was kinda like old times, except everything was different now, and that made me sad for those fleeting, flying days we’d had, telling our stories, and being as free as five people could be.

But Byron Kae was too pale and leaning on a cane. And Ruben’s eyes were red, and now I saw him proper that sexy stubble of his was starting to look like the wrong kinda neglect. And Miss Grey kept shooting glim-daggers at him. And Shadowless, strung up on skyhooks, weren’t riding the wind like she used to.

And a space. Somehow there was still a fucking hurting space for a prissy motherswinker who had too much pride, and no kindness, and never told one fucking lie.

“We have two choices,” said Byron Kae, rainbows glinting in the ol’ tin mug they was holding betwixt their hands. “We get out of Prosperity, or we finish the job.”

I didn’t say nowt cos truth was, I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to be doing with myself. I wanted Ruben. And I wanted to stay on Shadowless. And I didn’t know how to have either of those things. Strange cos I’d lived a life of wanting, but for the first time ever ’twas more than merely more.

Anywise, it turned out, Ruben and Miss Grey had plenty to say, and they said it all loudly. Ruben thought no cos of what had happened last time, and Miss Grey thought no cos of what had happened last time and also cos sommat was wrong with the skies.

She stared out into the blue through a porthole—though ’twas grey right then—and her eyes darkened. “The krakens are restless, but it’s not a squall . . . it’s focused. And it’s building. I’ve only felt something like this once before, and that was a long time ago.” She paused. “In Cornwall.”

“There’s krakens in Cornwall?” I squeaked.

“There are krakens everywhere, Master Piccadilly.”

“Even if the skies were calm,” interrupted Ruben. “I couldn’t let you do it. You’ve done too much already, and I won’t lead you any further into danger.”

Byron Kae gave him this look. I’d never seen them look that way at anyone. It was softened by affection, but it was fierce too, and the stars in their eyes glittered so bright. “I’m an aethermancer, Ruben. I’ve been to the deepest parts of the sky, and I’ve danced in the aurora borealis. I’ve looked over the edge of the world and embraced eternity. I’m not afraid of a broken man who fears his own heart, and I will not leave him to die.”

I was quiet again, because weirdly, I’d gone all tingly like when I get touched by someone what seems to care.

“He’s not . . . I don’t . . .” Don’t think Ruben had a clue how to answer. “He won’t die. He’s like a snake. It doesn’t matter how you drop it, it’ll still find a way to twist round and bite you.”

Bitterness didn’t suit Ruben. He weren’t grained for it. But if nowt else, it showed how true he spoke, cos Milord had bitten hard and deep, and the wound was full of his poison.

“So,” said Byron Kae, softwise, “you propose we abandon him in Prosperity with no resources? You know he can’t return to England.”

“I propose he’s not our goddamned problem.” The words came out probably louder than Ruben intended, bouncing off the walls like bullets.

“Which still means leaving a dangerous criminal in desperate straits in a town where the only laws are strength, cunning, and sheer will. What he lacks in the first, he surely makes up for in the others.”

And Ruben just . . . crumpled. “Oh God. Oh God. Am I to bear responsibility for all his wrongdoing or potential wrongdoing now? Must I regret him, and my foolishness, for the rest of my days?”

“A recidivist is for life,” said Miss Grey sharply, “not just for Christmas.”

Ruben glared at her.

I could’ve said sommat comforting, but I didn’t, cos I didn’t want him feeling better about loving Milord.

I wanted him to stop.

Byron Kae put their hand on his arm. “I remember when you first brought him aboard, you carried him so tenderly, and I thought he could not be a monster, to be loved by you.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I don’t think it matters.”

“Yeah, it does,” I snapped. “He don’t deserve being loved by Ruben.”

They smiled at me, and it was sorta sad and sweet at the same time. “Love isn’t earned, Dil. It’s given.”

Ruben gave a sort of hollow groan. “I don’t know why I went looking for him in the first place. Obsession, some twisted sense of justice. I really did have some crackpot notion of turning him over to the authorities and restoring my family name.”

This weren’t like no tale he’d ever told before. ’Twas a raw thing, mebbe an ugly one, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it. But he spoke and I listened. We all did.

“But when I found him, alone, half-dead, in this filthy cellar worse than the prison where he’d left me, all the world his enemy . . . I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything except save him.”

“And who’s going to save you?” I asked.

He laughed, and it didn’t have no joy in it at all. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late for both of us.”

After a moment, Byron Kae got careful-like to their feet. “We’re agreed?”

Ruben shrugged. “He may not.”

“He has very few choices left. He will.”

They turned to me and Miss Grey. Before they could even open their mouth to speak, she cut in. “If you are about to give me the ‘this is not your flight’ speech, please spare me. There is nowhere I would rather be on land or sky than at your side. And yes—” she smoothed a stray tendril of hair back into her crazy-tight bun-thing “—it is highly probable we will all be devoured by krakens, but since they are coming to get me regardless, I see no disadvantage in meeting them halfway.”

“Dil—” began Byron Kae.

“I ain’t going neither. I mean,” I added, turning awkward, “unless you want me gone or whate’ver.”

“Never.”

And I guess being wanted for a quick trip through kraken-infested skies weren’t exactly the stuff dreams were made of, but ’twas sommat, right? ’Twas sommat. I stroked Shadowless, cos—truth was—we wanted each other. And that was rare enough to be right special.

I wasn’t sure how we was supposed to get a message to Milord, but it turned out Miss Grey knew where he was kipping cos Miss Alis had found him a ken what used to belong to one of the whores who’d flown off with an airship captain a few days back and not been heard of since. Pretty macabre way to get a roof over your head, but I couldn’t imagine Milord giving a fuck.

We arranged to meet up him on Shadowless.

I wasn’t sure he’d show, but he did. Mebbe he reckoned we’d come for him if he didn’t. Mebbe he thought we was going to throw him to the blue. It must’ve been going through his head. Would’ve been through mine. But he still turned up, neat as a pin, calm as you fucking please.

Like he had no fucking shame.

First thing he did when he came aboard was reach into his pocket, and I honestly reckoned he was going for a chiv or sommat, but it was just one of his fogles.

“You asked to see me?” quoth he, polishing away at his fucking pristine fingers.

That was when I realised he was doing a bang-up job of not looking at any of us while pretending he was.

Byron Kae laid down the law, just as we’d talked about. One trip, enough for him to retire on, and then we’d take him to France, or Italy, or wherever else he wanted, and if he put a finger where Byron Kae didn’t want it, he was stardust.

“What do you say?” they finished. “Can you agree to this?”

Milord inclined his head. “Certainly.”

“And we’re trusting him?” demanded Ruben. “After everything he’s done?”

I thought—I wasn’t sure—I saw Milord’s eyes waver, just for a second, Rubenwards. “I . . . I give you my word?”

“Is it worth anything?”

Milord looked so confused I had to remind myself really hard how much we all hated him. “I don’t know.”

“Enough.” That was Byron Kae, the stars what lived in their eyes flaring bright, and then vanishing, one by one, into darkness. “We have an accord. We leave tomorrow.”

So. ’Twas settled. We was flying straight for krakens a second fucking time.

Soon as the meeting was done, everybody binged off their separate ways, like arrows shot from a bunch of different bows. I guess Miss Grey went shagging, I dunno where Milord went, and Ruben I watched walking away til the mist closed round him. And for the first time in a long time, being on Shadowless weren’t enough.

I wanted sommat to hold tight to. Especially if this was going to be some kinda last chance. Truthfulwise, I wanted Ruben, but mebbe any body would do, as long as they was warm, and gave me sommat good to feel for a few minutes. Cos it’d been a while—far longer than I’m used to going, not that I’d had much chance to think of the ol’ arborvitae what with nearly getting et and shot and blowed up and dropped out of the sky and having a heart all full of Ruben. Someone should’ve warned me love wreaks ruination on your sex life. That shit ain’t in no books.

Byron Kae was standing in the prow, all bright, hair tangling in the wind. I did think about staying in, finishing Oliver with them, but I had this weird feeling inside. ’Twas a sort of restlessness—familiar—but tender too, like a bruise on the inside, and I was sorta afraid if somebody what knew me was nice to me, I’d start blubbering like a bantling.

So that was how I found myself in the Abbey, and that was how I spotted Ruben sitting in a corner there, looking for redemption or mebbe just oblivion at the bottom of a dirty glass.

The atmosphere was boisterous, which is what you want for a whorehouse standing betwixt you and a sky full of nowt. ’Twas much drinking and laughter and wares being flashed and lasses kicking up their skirts and lads rubbing up against each other in a pretty damn delectable fashion.

And even though he was his own private pile of misery, Ruben was still getting eyed up plenty cos, let’s face it, the fella was fucking gorgeous, and even in my trick-turning days I would’ve done him gratis. He weren’t paying much attention, but I guess he didn’t fancy being alone neither.

Which meant ’twas now or never for ol’ Piccadilly.

Truth be told, I wasn’t feeling mightsome sparklish, but what was my options? Walk a-fucking-way? No way. ’Twas like the fella was gift wrapped for me, and you don’t turn down presents cos you got the blues for no reason.

Over I went, sliding onto the seat opposite and flashing him my very best and flashiest smile. “What’s a sweet cove like you doing in a place like this?”

Ruben glanced up. “Don’t waste your time on me, Dil. I’m not good company at the moment.” His voice was whisky-rough—sexy with it, mind, but sad as fuck.

“Reckon that’s for me to judge, don’t you?”

He made a kind of wobbly gesture, could’ve meant anything. “It’s our last night on land. We might not come back at all. You should be enjoying yourself.” He dug around in his coat pocket and rolled a handful of yellow boys across the table at me. “Here. Have anyone you want. Have all of them.”

I’d never seen so much chink what was legally obtained. And, like the fucking sap-skull he’d made me, I shoved it back. “I don’t want anyone else. I want you. You know that.”

He gazed at me all tormented. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“What? Cos I’m not pyscho enough for you? That what lifts your sugar-stick?”

Dunno where that had come from. ’Twasn’t what I’d intended. Not at all. I was supposed to be charming him, not making him want to cudgel me.

“You don’t understand.” Yeah, now he’d gone cold. Couldn’t blame him.

“Sorry,” quoth I, contrite as could be, cos I was. And also having to think fast how to turn this back my way. “But I kinda don’t. I don’t understand why can’t you have sommat nice?” I flickered the ol’ lashes. “I’m very nice.”

“And what about you?”

“You trying to suggest it wouldn’t be nice for me?” I rubbed a hindpaw against the side of his knee under the table. “I reckon you underestimate your skills.”

He went a little bit pink, hard to see beneath the bronze of his skin, but ’twas there. “That’s absolutely not what I meant.”

“Y’know, not everything has to be about everything. Sometimes it’s just about now.”

That was a whole bag of clankers. Cos for me, it was everything. But everything had to start somewhere. And mebbe once he remembered how good it could be, how easy, if one of you wasn’t a murderous fuck, mebbe if he just let me show him . . . he’d be mine, and not Milord’s.

He was nodding slowly. “You might be right.”

“Sometimes there ain’t no good worth worrying ’bout except what two people can feel together. So what’dya say? Want to try that again?”

“Try what again?”

He must’ve made some what you might call serious inroads into the whisky bottle cos he wasn’t normally slow catching on.

I propped my chin in my hand and grinned and fluttered at him. “What’s a sweet cove like you doing in a place like this?”

“Oh. Right. Yes. Um . . .” He mustered this grin. ’Twas pathetic. “Waiting for a boy like you?”

I glared. “I dunno, mate. Are you? You don’t sound very sure.”

“Sorry.” He sighed and sorta seemed to shake himself. And now he made a proper effort, going all sultry for me which was funny and sweet at the same time, and hurt a bit cos he had to try so hard at it. “Waiting for a boy like you.”

And now I was the one what didn’t feel like playing. So I cut to the chase, trying to pretend I wasn’t. “I’m liking that answer. You kinda wanna mebbe take it upstairs?”

“The answer?”

“Yeah, I reckon I could treat it real nice. Make it feel pretty good about itself.”

I gave him a hopeful look, but he just frowned, and I realised I’d lost him again like I’d hooked an eel instead of a fish. “I don’t know, Dil. It isn’t feeling too good about itself right now.”

“All the more reason to give it a break.”

He started shaking his head, so I threw caution to the winds, jumped over the table and smacked my mouth into his. If I could just stop him talking, and thinking, I had a feeling nature would take it from there. And I was right.

Cos next thing I knew, I was tumbling all over his lap, his mouth taking mine, all rough and whisky-flavoured, til I was whimpering with the joy of it, and a touch of fright for it being so sudden.

And, even though I shouldn’t’ve been, I was remembering how he’d been with Milord, and how Milord had been with him, and I’d never been like that with anyone cos . . . it probably just ain’t in me. Then I realised, like you notice a knife in your gut, that it weren’t possible to have Ruben without Milord cos he was everywhere, in my memories and Ruben’s, in every touch and every kiss. And I knew right then, clear as fucking day, the only reason Ruben was with me now, and with me like this, wasn’t cos I was me. ’Twas cos I wasn’t Milord.

I knew, and I let him anyway. Cos I wanted, and this was close to getting, and I thought it was enough.

Right then it was. It really was.

He kissed me deep and hard and desperate, and ’twas just a bit overwhelming, that depth of passion and pain. What was it Byron Kae had said? Sommat about beauty being hard to bear. Which meant I was thinking about Milord again, and the terrible fucking courage it took for a man like that to love a man like Ruben. And mebbe I couldn’t throw myself into the same fire cos what you got to remember is devils was cast from angels first.

I would’ve pulled away, but then he went all gentle on me. Slow, like we wasn’t at the end of the world, and I wasn’t a sure thing. Truth is, I don’t normally get seduced. So I got no defences to being touched that way. Like I’m sommat worth winning.

“Dil?” Ruben pulled back, thumb playing lightly over the line of my cheek so as I could feel the soft scrape of the calluses on his skin. I turned my face to greet it, feeling indulged, claimed, cherished, and a bunch of other stupid shit I ought to know better about.

“Just thinking,” I said.

“I thought that was my job.”

“That so? What’s mine?”

“Feeling.”

He got me so pliant that when he slipped his other hand slysome betwixt my legs, I only sorta yelped, and then wriggled for more.

“Oi!” Miss Alis banged the bar top with a tankard. “Get a room, boys. They’re only a bob.”

Ruben looked into my glims, all deep and serious. I noticed suddensome pieces of gold and green floating in his eyes like the shimmer of ore in rock. “Well, what do you say, Dil?”

“Ain’t I already said yes?”

“But this time I’m asking.”

“How am I s’posed to make an informed decision with your hand right there?” I mumbled, pushing against his fingers which were circling like really fucking teasing vultures. Then he pushed this thumb into my mouth, and I parted for it without thinking. He stroked back and forth across my tongue, still gentle, so gentle, til I was closing my eyes and moaning at the back of my throat for him. “Holy shit,” I gasped when he slipped away. “Thou art wicked.”

“Is that yes?”

“Yes, fucking yes.”

How could it ever be anything else?

And then Ruben was catching the key Gap Tooth Alis threw over, and we was stumbling down a rickety corridor, which was shaking with the sounds of other folks going at it.

And thank God it weren’t too far cos I felt like I was gonna trip over my dong.

We tumbled into a room—just a room, whatever—and then Ruben had me shoved up against the back of the door and was kissing me all rough and reckless again, and this time, I had no cares about it. I was arching at his mouth and tipping up my hips so oft-times, even through the muddle of our garments, our cocks would rub one against the other.

Ruben was burning like one of them vengeful types of angels, and I was tearing at his shirt and waistcoat, dying for the glide of all that velveteen skin beneath my palms. But then he grabbed my wrists and pinned them against the door.

“I want to touch you,” quoth I, right against his mouth.

“I know,” he whispered, and I felt him grinning.

So I writhed under him til he gasped, though then he shoved his knee betwixt my legs and pressed sweetly upwards until I moaned. Breathless, I told him again that he was wicked—cos he was, he so was, the wickedest saint there ever was—and I was undone like Milord.

I shifted my hands against his, testing his strength and found I kinda liked it, the warmth of his skin pressed against mine (cos really, if I wanted to be free I could just culp him in the nads and scarper). Sommat I hadn’t known, watching Milord let Ruben do as he would, was how safe it felt, being powerless with Ruben. And how addictive, watching the flaring of his eyes and tasting the excitement on his breath as he took control. ’Twas like being the absolute centre of some private universe.

He pushed my hands together, one laid over the other, and held them above my head with his palm, and I’d never minded so little about being a shortarse than with Ruben looming over me. He dragged his lips down my jaw, silk and heat and a scrape of stubble, and I turned my head to let him nuzzle into the side of my neck, testing kinda carefulwise how it felt to be safe and helpless and horny as hell.

My eyes were closing on a crest of pleasure, body thrumming with the need for more. ’Twas the best thing ever, this wanting, knowing it’d be gratified. The question and the answer all wrapped up together, self-enclosed.

And then Ruben’s spare hand was dipping down to enwrap my cock through my kicks, rubbing up and down til the breath was stuttering out of me and I reckoned ’twas only the weight of his body resting against my trapped hands that was keeping me standing straight.

“Ruben,” I said, sorta urgent. “Ruben.”

He leaned in and opened his mouth over mine, sucking forth my velvet betwixt our sealed lips into all the sweet-warm-wet within. ’Twas like the nibs eating oysters but without all that salt and slimy shit, just my tongue tangling slick and deep with his, like two nimble rogues dancing through a star-speckled night.

And Ruben kissed me and touched me til I’d drunk down all his breaths and given all of mine and replaced them all with heated sighs and heart-shivering gasps. Til my panter was thudding against his and I was starting to twist and twine myself against him like a climbing rose. Til damn near everything had turned all hot and silksome and the image of Ruben was burned like sunglare behind my desire-hazed eyes.

And oh Ruben, Ruben.

Desirious music poured from betwixt his lips, soft and sweet and dark, like the secret places of the flesh, and it went trailing down my spine like feathers and fingers and trickled through my blood like I’d been at the ol’ blue ruin. Oh, the joy of pleasing Ruben Crowe. I could feel it all the way to my prick. And I was flying to pieces betwixt his mouth and his hands on the wild loveliness of wanting and being wanted.

When Ruben stopped, ’twas only to growl, “Spread your legs.”

And I did, letting him press me wide and vulnerable with his thighs, rewarded by his sharp breath and his fingers sliding inside my clothes, skin to skin bringing such a sound I’d have never imagined from my panting mouth.

His palm went skimming down the length of me and then dipped beneath to cradle the ol’ nutmegs while I danced my hips to his mischief and gasped and shuddered for him. And more again as his finger went slipping lightly against the crease of my arse.

“Ruben.” I squirmed.

His glims were gleaming wicked. “Something you want, Dil?”

“D-dunno,” I said, not being a total pushover. “Mebbe.”

The tip of his finger circled, breached, just a little, just a little. My head fell back against the door and next moment, Ruben’s tongue was trailing over my throat, strewing damp madness across my pleasure-sparking skin. “Well,” he murmured, “let me know if you think of anything.”

“You’re trying to kill me,” I wailed.

I was lost—just a triple-time heart, and a world of sighs and skin aflame with wanting, and a brain full of nowt but spangled skies and heaven’s light. Heaven. Or Hell. One of them two. Somewhere hot and fierce and beautiful and awful.

Ruben now put his lips to my ear, and I made a sound scarily like a sob. “How do you prefer it?”

“Don’t care as long as I get some afore m’ cock explodes.”

I felt cool air against my wrists as his hand lifted away, and then I was being whirled round in a giddy dance, almost stumbling over my own feet but saved by Ruben’s arms tight about me. And then he tossed me into the air, and I landed with a breathless squeak flat on my back on the bed. I pushed onto my elbows in time to see Ruben shedding his clothes, throwing his shirt over his head.

Boxing at Cambridge, eh? I must like write them a letter of sincere thanks for the body of Ruben Crowe. ’Twas all rugged and lived in, not bulky as such, but the muscles cording his arms and contouring his abdomen weren’t no show pieces neither. I wanted to send my tongue chasing sweatbeads all up and down those hills and valleys.

“Guh,” quoth I, following with a hungry gaze the arrow of dark hair that seemed divinely provided for the edification of tourists. Like it were saying, This way to the excellent cock. (Which currently seemed pretty happy with the sight of one Piccadilly.)

Ruben dispensed with my togs quicksome enough, dragging them off me with a bit of seam-tearing and button-popping, and then he came down atop me in a rush of warm, endless skin, his naked cock fetching up blissfully close to mine.

And for a few breathless moments, we was wrestling like naughty otters, sliding across each other, this way and that, slick on skin and sweat. Then, though, Ruben put his hand in the centre of my chest and pressed, his knees spreading beneath mine til I yielded to him.

As I told him, I ain’t fussed about how it comes, as long as it does, but there ain’t no denying you can feel a bit ridiculous all splayed out, specially when the ol’ wang is straining up towards heaven like the Tower of fucking Babel.

Smiling, Ruben bent his head and swiped his tongue over the tip, drinking down what had gathered there, and I arched up with a needy howl.

“Fuck, will you fucking fuck me, Ruben?”

Being in a bawdy house, there was a vial of oil on the table, and Ruben slicked up his fingers and pressed in, kind but insistent. ’Twas but a moment of stretch, and then it weren’t enough, not nearly enough.

“Don’t you fucking tease me.” I thrust against him as eagerly as though he was paying for it, except it weren’t no flummery.

He soothed me with a touch, murmuring soft sweet nonsense about taking care of me, and I quieted, believing. He stroked himself with rough, oil-slick strokes til his cock was glistening with it, and my impatience was expressing itself with an embarrassment of noises and shivers.

And then I was moving my legs even further apart, and Ruben came down onto an elbow, leaning in for a kiss, while his other hand was guiding his cock into me. I came up to catch at his mouth, velvet to velvet, swallowing with a touch of private smugness the frantic groan he made as he breached.

I was wanting it and prepared enough that there was only pressure and a yielding, both of them sweet and dark and perfect, like the burn of good whisky going down.

His cock moved with the same surety as his fingers, slow and steady, though at the last he drew back, hooked his hands beneath my thighs and thrust deep, bringing us both to such a glorious collision of intimate flesh that I tossed back my head and cried out in what mebbe Mr. Dickens (had he dared to write the good stuff) might’ve called a carnal glossolalia.

I tucked back my knees and Ruben let me go, bracing himself above me, the strain of bliss written clear across his face. And it felt fucking good, to be honest, knowing ’twas I who was bringing the pillars of his temples crashing down.He drew back slow and plunged deep afresh, dragging the breath out of me all ragged as his cock rubbed that particular place inside with ruthless precision. And again and again til I was incoherent on the beautiful lightning shearing through me, moisture leaking from my eyes and my cock alike.

I managed to cling onto just enough wherewithal to reach up to Ruben. I caught on my fingers the sweat dripping from the ends of his hair, touched the furrow upon his brow as he struggled with his own pleasure. I traced his collarbones, feeling the pulse thudding hard as a metalsmith’s hammer beneath the hot, damp skin, and sought out those lovely muscles what edge the top of the ribcage, cos they was standing out like the feathers on an angel’s wing. A deep desperate sound came out of Ruben, and I felt all the strength and power of him harnessed to me.

“A moment,” he mumbled, sitting on his heels, drawing himself out carefulwise, though my body felt like ’twas going to fight to the death to hold on to him. I made a plaintive sound, cos who fucking wouldn’t, but then he was drawing me after him so I was crouched across his thighs. ’Twas a moment of adjustment, but then he was driving up into me again and pulling my legs round him so that we was all knotted together in a tangle of limbs.

I put my hands behind so I didn’t go falling over and Ruben rocked us slowly, holding me tight against him, kissing me at intervals when I was capable of doing more than just taking his cock and drowning in his skin.

’Twasn’t like any swiving I’d done before. ’Twas so languorous, pleasure flowing over me in an endless, sweeping wave. And Ruben was everywhere, round me and in me and with me. I pressed my face into his neck, listening to the rhythms of his body, like he was Shadowless, and he touched my tangled hair and kissed my temple.

And just when I thought I couldn’t bear any more and mebbe I was going to start crying or sommat on the beauty of it and on knowing I couldn’t keep it, Ruben was untangling me, pressing me back onto the bed.

He pulled my legs against his shoulders, wrapped a hand round my cock and came into me again in an unbroken glide of perfect bliss. And I climaxed so hard, I thought mebbe I was going to die of it, a scream strangling at the back of my throat, starbursts behind my eyes, and my cock spilling so much seed I reckoned mebbe Ruben had fucked out my soul or whatever.

And then he thrust again and came too, his body shuddering in mine and over mine as though ’twas going to tear itself apart in pleasure, answering my cry with a heart-deep groan of his own.

For a shattered moment, he half collapsed against me, and then he pulled away, still breathing like a steam train leaving the station.

I just lay there in a boneless sprawl, full of Ruben in all the ways, not even able to move a single toe, totally fucked.

Ruben brought up the ewer from under the bed to clean us both off. I would’ve protested I could see to that myself, except I couldn’t. And when that was done, he crashed out next to me like a felled oak tree.

Threw an arm across his eyes like there was sommat in them he didn’t want me to see.

And cos I didn’t have a fucking clue what to say for myself, I just rolled into him and pretended like I’d nodded off. It must’ve happened for real though, cos later I woke up and a sort of pale light was creeping into the room which suggested dawn wouldn’t be far off.

Ruben had pulled the sheet over us and wrapped an arm about me, and I’d sorta climbed all over him while I was out of it, as though I wanted him to hold me as tight as he’d held Milord that night I’d seen them together.

But he hadn’t. He wasn’t. Which was when I knew it weren’t the same. And all I’d shown him with everything we’d done together was that he was in love with Milord, not Piccadilly.

I edged away, thinking I’d get away with sneaking off, but then I saw he was awake as well, the other arm tucked behind his head as he stared blankly at the gaudy room with its faded scarlet hangings and its pictures of satyrs and nymphs having it off.

Though when he realised I was moving about, he turned onto his side and dropped a kiss on the tip of my conk, which made me grin.

“Dil.” He sounded all soft and sad. “I . . . It’s . . .”

“’S’okay,” quoth I, forestalling potential awkward. “You can’t go helping who you fall in love with. I know you’d rather ’twas me, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind so much myself. But it ain’t so . . . that’s that.”

He rested a hand on my hip, smoothing over the skin there with a sort of effortless possessive touch that made me shudder and wake up inappropriately in some particular regions.

“I wish—”

“You ain’t going to break m’ poor little heart nor nowt, Ruben. And that was some top-quality clicketing what we had, don’t you reckon?”

I did need him to stop touching me, though—or it was going to break my poor little heart. Even when he wasn’t trying, my skin sung for Ruben. I suppose it’d been a pretty stupid thing to do, swiving with the fella you wished you could have permanent-like, but I didn’t regret it, not for the second of a second.

What I regretted was that it was all I fucking got. And all the reasons that was so.

That’s the thing about life, right? Some folks get born with everything, and the rest of us get born with nowt. And from that beginning even the smallest piece of sommat you want is precious. But I was starting to see you don’t always have to settle for pieces. That you can want the whole of the sky. Ruben smiled a bit, and I chased the shades of gold drifting through his eyes. “Well, thank you,” he murmured.

“Weren’t so shabby for me, y’know.” I wriggled off and started frisking urgentwise for my togs which was scattered to the four corners of the room, such had been Ruben’s enthusiasm for getting them off me. I was feeling pretty motivated to get them back on, I have to say.

But then I heard a sorta groan—the nonhappy sort—from the bed, and I turned to see Ruben dragging his hands though his hair. “How did it come to this?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure if that was what they called a rhetorical question, but I perched my arse on the edge of the bed anyway. I didn’t really want to be sitting there talking about the unfathomable mysteries of love or whatever with my wang hanging out, but it weren’t seeming like I had much choice in the matter.

Eventually Ruben glanced up again and with a wild and roving look. “I can’t. I just can’t. He’ll destroy me.”

And then his hands closed tight as a set of manacles round my upper arms, and he dragged me down atop him, slanting his lips over mine, sour with the taste of morning and desperation.

My brain went one way and my cock the other, cos there was sommat wondrous in the raw heat and rough skin and the scent of both of us mingled rising afresh from the disturbed sheets. I murmured, somewhere betwixt protest and surrender, and his mouth claimed that as well, his hands dragging upwards, branding my skin, leaving the searing memory of Ruben’s touch in their wake. And then they were clawed about the jut of my shoulder blades, like he was clinging on, pulling me to him, cock to cock and hip to hip.

I liked him frantic—I’d just have preferred it’d been for me.

I pulled back for breath “Say, Ruben, you wouldn’t be wishing I was some other cove?”

His fingers ghosted along my spine, sweet, so fucking sweet. I couldn’t help curving into them, purring at the back of my throat, as Ruben wrought his pleasure over my skin.

“I’m wishing I was some other cove.”

“I’m sorta nuts on you jus’ the way you are,” blurted out the idiot Piccadilly, high on being petted.

Knowing the lesson was one fucking thing. Learning it another. Cos Ruben could make sweet fuck-all look mighty bloody tempting.

“Then why don’t you stay awhile? After this trip. I hear the Americas are a land of opportunity for two resourceful gentlemen.”

But that sorta wrecked it. I’d been trying to pretend nowt was going on here but two bodies what wanted each other, but now I jerked back, not being so fond of castles in the sky. Sure, they look pretty enough, but they’re made of nowt but empty breath. Fucking insulting, really. “Oh yeah, like I’m going to swan around as the fair-weather fuck-toy of somebody in love with some other bugger.”

“Dil!”

Ruben’s eyes flew wide, and I realised I’d startled the crap out of him. Mebbe even pissed him off. Cos I’d gone and played the game too well, hadn’t I? How had Milord put it? Urchin with a heart of gold? With a side order of happy-go-lucky.

’Tis true I like my beds warm and I ain’t too fussy who’s warming them. But I’d just figured it’s a different fish kettle when you actually like somebody. And mebbe if he’d made his little offer a bunch of weeks ago, I’d have said hell to the yeah.

But things was different now.

Last night had been a piece of wonder, but I was done with enough. Fucking done.

And though I didn’t give two hoots about being respectable or buying a little cottage in the country, I hadn’t entirely given up all hope that mebbe, just mebbe, there’s somebody out there in the fucking vastness of the world for who I might be the first choice. The first and only choice.

Like Ruben and fucking Milord, who spun each other like a pair of compasses, but always ended pointing to each other. Though ideally a bit less fucking complicated, cos I’m a simple cove and if there’s more in heaven and earth than dreamed in my philosophy, that’s fine with me cos philosophy can get stuffed.

“It wouldn’t be like that,” he went on.

“Mebbe it would, mebbe it wouldn’t, but it ain’t no risk I fancy running.”

“Well, that’s your choice, of course,” he said, with a bit of the haughty.

I rolled away. I’d ruined the mood, but mebbe that was for the best as well. Without Ruben touching me, the chill of the room prickled sommat painful. “Aye. ’Tis.”

“I can make choices of my own, you know. I’m not in love beyond redemption.”

“What’s redemption got to do with it?” I started struggling into my clothes again.

And I was a bit surprised when Ruben started laughing. Not exactly in a happy way. But he stirred himself and started dressing too, and we went back to Shadowless together.

’Twasn’t exactly unawkward, but it weren’t totally awful either. I guess we were both pretty committed to it not being. Though as we came up to the docks, Ruben stopped and pulled me into his arms for a good ol’-fashioned hug. Damn softie.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel used, Dil. Nothing could be further from my intent.”

“I know that,” I muttered into the shabby ol’ brown duster that smelled of clear skies and Ruben Crowe. ’Twas typical really—even at his worst, he was still the best man I’d ever known.

“And if you change your mind . . .”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You will always be my friend, you know.”

Heh. ’Twas easy enough for him to say. The best man, but a bit daft sometimes. Guess it came with being so clever.

“P’rhaps.” I grinned up at him. “But you’d be bound to find some other dodgy character to go falling at your feet, making life complicated.”

Ruben flushed, looking all confused and conflicted. Morals, eh? Who’d have ’em?

The wound in Shadowless’s hull was nowt but a long scratch, the colour of a new scar. Poor lady, been in the wars. I stroked her lightly, so as she’d know it didn’t mar her beauty none. And it felt pretty damn good to jump aboard, as though sommat dragging me down had been took away.

We was still docked, of course, but no longer on skyhooks, so we was moving to our own measure, dancing to the music of the open sky. I breathed free.

Milord was standing idly against the rail, trying to pretend like he hadn’t been waiting. As we boarded together, he sneered, but his eyes was full of resignation, as though he couldn’t even muster the energy to hate us properly.

I wondered if Ruben was going to say sommat to him, but he just went below with barely a glance.

I was following when Milord’s hand closed round my arm. This was apparently my day for getting grabbed. Except Milord had his thumb right in the crevice of my elbow and was squeezing in a way what made blinding pain go shooting all the way down my forefin til my hand was burning and numb at the same time.

I was so shocked by it, I didn’t even think to yell. ’Twas some sorta cruel magic—putting somebody in agony from a single touch. I couldn’t see a fucking thing through a blur of tears, and I was trying to twist away, but he was clinging on for grim death, and the more I struggled, the more it hurt.

“Pleasant evening?” he purred.

“’Twasn’t bad.” ’Tis a strange feeling to absolutely hate somebody and pity them at the same time. Like when you’ve et sommat dodgy, and it wants to evacuate from both directions at once. “It didn’t mean nowt.”

He dragged me round and just sorta stared at me with his ice-pale, deadly glims. And then he let go—which was a special new sorta pain. My whole arm felt like ’twas screaming inside itself, hanging there helpless. “You have quite a facility for lies. Sufficient to convince Ruben, but not me.” His lips curled. “Poor Piccadilly.” Great. Least sympathetic thing I ever heard. He tapped my chest lightly. “Gold is a soft metal, is it not? You should take more care.”

I wondered if he’d been at Miss Grey’s supplies.

A wondering that pretty much exploded when he leaned forward and put his lips to mine. Just his lips. Nowt else.

“I can taste him on you,” he whispered.

So I bit the creepy motherswinker.

Didn’t stop him though. He laughed. And swiped his tongue across my mouth, supple as a cat chasing cream.

“What the shit is wrong with you?” I yelled, finally pushing him off.

He was still staring at my lips. “I used to be above the banalities of human wanting,” he said softly. “And now I am desperate with it.”

I made a run for it, before he could conceive of anywhere else about my person he might be inclined to try and find Ruben.

I kinda looked about for Byron Kae—just suddensome wanting to see rainbows—but there weren’t no sign of them at all.

In which our hero learns there are fates worse than honest labour—Several events of a disturbing and unexpected nature—Bold acts are performed by persons both likely and unlikely—The true circumstances surrounding the infamous destruction of the skymining town of Prosperity are, at last, elucidated in comprehensive and shocking detail—Some further notes on skyhooks
his second journey weren’t like the last. ’Twas silent running mostly, and nobody talked very much at all. Miss Grey and Byron Kae were mainwise focused on us not getting et cos the skies was ominous, thick and rough, and swirled the colour of gangrene setting into a wound. There weren’t even no time for Mr. Dickens, nor light to read him by.

While Ruben weren’t per as they se avoiding ol’ Piccadilly, he did a fucking impressive job of never happening to be near me, which was specialwise impressive when you consider the confined quarters where we was operating. Milord, though, in some twist of irony and cruelty, was every-fucking-where, watching me with his pale, hungry eyes, like I’d bobbed him a second time. Which mebbe I wouldn’t’ve minded so much if I had, but I’d given it my best shot, and I’d taken nowt from him.

’Twas almost—almost—some sorta relief the night he stepped out the shadows, quiet as cats, and pressed me to the wall with a chiv to my throat, our glims meeting over a blade like they had all them weeks ago.

“I will kill you before I let you take him.”

I was suddensome too fucking tired to be scared of him. “Oh fuck off.” I reached up and knocked his paw away, and I guess he must’ve let me cos I didn’t get cut.

Pushing past him, I made for the deck and the open sky, where he didn’t have no power, but his voice stopped me. Barely more than a whisper, “What do I do?”

I stopped. Sighed. I didn’t want to look back. His eyes had been so wild and empty. “Tried saying sorry?”

“That would imply regret.”

“Then . . . swinking lie.”

“It is not one of my vices, Piccadilly.”

A little nick chilled my throat, to match the other one he’d given me. Dunno why, but I turned, and crouched on the stairs, about halfway betwixt the above and the below. Milord was just a piece of pale in the dark, staring up at me. “You’ve lied before.”

“Only once. It was necessary.”

“Ain’t this?”

He didn’t say nowt for ages. Then, “To me, yes. But I cannot lie to him.”

“Then you’re fucked.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He nodded, seeming pretty resigned to the idea. “And what about you?”

“Yeah, me too.”

He made a queerish kinda noise what raised all the hairs on my arms, and then I realised he was laughing. ’Twasn’t sommat I’d ever reckoned he knew how to do, and by the sound of it, mebbe he didn’t.

Then he came slowly up the stairs after me, and my little moment of not being scared binged off right tantwivy cos he was still Milord, and he still had a fucking knife, and he was getting far too fucking close, and everytime the fella got near me, he was either snogging me or stabbing me, and I wasn’t sure which of ’em was worse.

This time he just sat down, and we stayed there awhile, saying absolutely nowt as the darkmans got darker, and Ruben slept alone.

A fine bunch of dickheads we made, all wanting, and not getting, and not knowing how to get.

But that weren’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that I almost wanted Ruben and Milord to be shagging again, having their weird little happiness, cos then it could’ve all been like they was before, and I missed that with such deep missing, it hurt more than anything. More than not having Ruben.

It’d only been a handful of days, nowt that should matter in the span of a lifetime, but to quote some other fella, them handful of days had been the best of fucking times. And now they was gone, and they weren’t never coming back. Mebbe I was never going to lie in the prow with Byron Kae again, and have them tell me all the names of the stars.

Third or fourth night—I was losing count out there—’twas when I properly realised how much I missed them. Catching them all shimmery out of the corner of my glims. Hearing their music in the darkmans. Reading with them, and talking with them, and just sorta having them . . . there. Cos, truthfully, there ain’t no comfort like the comfort of someone else’s warmth. ’Tis the friendliest thing I know.

And mebbe I’d lost it, along with Ruben.

They was up in the crow’s nest, watching the horizon, so I climbed up after them. ’Twas shaky going, what with the rough skies, but I weren’t even a little bit scared of falling. Not on Shadowless.

Course, once I arrived, I felt a bit of a numpty cos I didn’t know what to say. Hey, don’t suppose you’re avoiding me or sommat cos I was making the beast with two backs with Ruben Crowe.

But talk about getting above youself. Being sad cos of me and Ruben—such as we was, this queer tangle of good and bad and unbearable all at the same time—kinda presupposed stuff I didn’t reckon I’d done nowt to deserve from anybody.

“Uh,” quoth I. “Is . . . are . . . don’t you like me no more?”

“Oh Dil.” They took my hand, surrounding me with rainbows. “Of course I do. I . . . I . . . want you to have everything you want.”

Queerest thing of all was, right then, with the wind and the sky and Byron Kae, I didn’t have a clue what the fuck I wanted anymore.

When we got to the claim, ’twas three solid days of dreary labour, chasing cloud after cloud and making sure we didn’t draw the attention of anything what might be stirring restless in the aether.

I hadn’t liked honest labour much the first time round, but without the comfort of comradeship, it had absolutely bugger all to recommend it. ’Twas hour after hour of sitting in a hole, in the hot and the dark, perilous near to sommat explosive. In my head, I was calling it the arse of Satan, down there, but there was nobody to laugh with me over it, or lean down every now and then to share a smile, or a word, and check I wasn’t exploded.

Ruben and Milord kept having fights about everything—from, like, where we put the ship, to what clouds we tried first, to the angle of the fucking phlogiston grill—and ’twas obvious to everyone except them that they wasn’t fighting about that stuff at all. But ’twas the only time they talked to each other or met each other’s eyes. So no wonder. I’d’ve felt sorry for ’em if I wasn’t so miserable. And if everything wasn’t so fucking wrecked.

But finally we was heading back to Prosperity, and I could’ve danced for joy to know this whole rig was ending.

Milord would fuck off to the continent to live the rest of his likely short life in a luxury most would probably think ill deserved. And Ruben would go to the Americas and mebbe do sommat amazing—though most likely he wouldn’t do nowt except make the world a small bit better for whoever he met.

And as for me? Well. Byron Kae had promised to give me safe passage to London, so I guess ’twas back to the gutters and mebbe turning tricks and the ol’ game. Course, they’d also said they’d take me to the deep skies, but I’d seen so little of them I wasn’t sure they meant it anymore.

And though I was glad the journey of silence and misery was done with, there was a heaviness in my heart to think of going back to earth and living the way I used to live. I guess nowt changes except ourselves, and I didn’t feel fit for roguery no more.

I didn’t know who to blame for it. Ruben probably, who was so convinced that life was good. Or Miss Grey being so fucking fearless though she lived with monsters every day. Mebbe even Milord, psycho though he was, for taking whatever he wanted and never backing down. And Byron Kae. For giving me letters and showing me freedom. For the kiss they hadn’t took. For the open skies and the bright stars. For Shadowless, Shadowless the ship of ships that dreams were made of.

There. The plain ol’ truth of the matter. The Piccadilly who arrived at Prosperity weren’t the same Piccadilly what was going to have to leave it.

Though as it turned out, there weren’t no Prosperity to come back to, let alone leave.

The first indication we got that sommat was seriously wrong was when Miss Grey, who was standing in the prow, fell to her knees screaming. Byron Kae was at her side in an instant, while the rest of us came running, but we couldn’t calm her, nor get sense out of her neither.

She just went on screaming and screaming, tearing at her hair til all the pins came flying out, and scratching at her own arms til she was drawing blood, and I felt a little bit nuts myself just watching her.

Byron Kae had their arms wrapped round her, tugging at her wrists to stop her hurting herself, murmuring soft nowts that didn’t seem to make a hap’orth of difference. “Jane, my dear Jane. It’s all right.”

“Too late,” she was whispering. “Too late.”

Her head fell back against them, and her eyes had gone a sickly formless black, and she started babbling in a tongue that weren’t of this world nor the next, tears as thick as tar slicking down her cheeks.

And then she shook herself free, knockin’ Byron Kae back to the deck, spinning in the prow to face us, hair and skirts all flying out as though hands were grabbing at them. She spread her arms wide and opened her lips and a voice with nowt human in it, a voice as cold and alien as the endless sky, came pouring out. And all it said was this: “Behold oblivion.”

Then she was laughing, the sorta laugh that sounds closer to shrieking.

And we saw the sky up ahead was rippling black as an oil slick gashed with phosphorescent green and ’twas creeping outwards in all directions, cracking the silver-grey clouds like fractures in glass.

“What the shitting fuck is that?” cried Milord, nibby accent falling over.

Byron Kae was scrambling back to their feet. “A gateway.”

We were close enough now that I could see the stirring in the aether and things were sorta pulling themselves through, ripping the edges of the sky. Horrible things. Amorphous shapes with too many pulpy proboscises and too many luminous eyes, even occasional sight of which was enough to make the soul flinch and shiver as though finding itself suddensome alone on the precipice of a vast and cruel infinity.

And entangled about Prosperity itself, like a lover with far too many tentacles, was the liveliest fucking awfulness of all.

’Twas a kraken, full-grown and ancient, with the aether bubbling in iridescent fumes from its skin. ’Twas a bloated, malignant monstrosity, pockmarked and rusted from ages spent slumbering beyond the skies. It had two glaring fetid pools for eyes and huge clawed hindfeet and vestigial wings extending from its back, stretched taut and membranous and through which you could see a vast and formless void spread with a field of ruined stars.

Locked in its terrible embrace, the whole of Prosperity was shaking on the skyhooks, flaking pieces the size of houses, while the land and buildings juddered this way and that, sometimes collapsing all together in a hail of dust and timbers. And every so often one of them horrific tentacles would reach down and sorta pluck away part of the ground or a ship from the dock like a fat cove with a chicken leg. The air was filled with screaming and crashing and the wail of shearing metal.

“Oh my God,” said Ruben, in the way you say it when you really ain’t taking the Lord’s name in vain.

“I don’t suppose—” Milord had got control of his voice again “—that anyone would be amenable to the suggestion that we turn around and fly rapidly in the opposite direction.”

“We have to help them.” ’Twas Ruben. Obviously.

“We have to try.” And that was Byron Kae.

And then we was picking up speed, the clouds scudding past in a blur as the darkness rose up and swallowed us. Things were reaching for us from the aether, but Shadowless was too swift and too sly, darting this way and that betwixt the crashing tentacles and twisting prehensile appendages.

“Is it too much to ask,” snapped Milord, “for some sort of plan before we hurl ourselves into the gaping maw of certain death?”

At that moment sommat came sweeping overhead and crashed into the top of the mizzenmast, shattering it into splinters. Byron Kae staggered but righted themselves, and the rest of us scattered to avoid the falling pieces.

“We need to get as many people off Prosperity as we can,” shouted Ruben.

Miss Grey was crouched in the prow, eyes still sulphurous, but at least she wasn’t talking in no otherworldly voices now. “We need to close the gate.”

“You’re all completely fucking hopeless.” Milord made a sort of wild gesture of exasperation that would’ve been comical some other time, and dashed below deck.

I wouldn’t’ve thought him a cove to run from anything, even horrors from beyond. But mebbe he was just pissed off we was being noble instead of sensible. Truth was, I could sorta see his point. ’Twas no guarantee we’d be able to do anything for the folks of Prosperity even if we got there.

“Who would do this?” called out Ruben. “Who would wake a kraken?”

Miss Grey shrugged. “The mad? The desperate? The lost?”

“Could’ve been just ’bout any bugger in Prosperity, then,” quoth I.

“Hah!” Against all the odds, Miss Grey actually smiled. She tossed me her optical device. “Eyes peeled, Master Piccadilly.”

I threw a salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Ruben, help the captain. Strike the sails.”

We went for it.

’Twas good to have sommat to do rather than just watch horrible shit happen. I put the wosserscope to my glim and recoiled from an up close and personal insight into a sort of suckered orifice what opened and shut a bit like a mouth (if you was being polite). And that was when I saw—

“’Tis the Valiant!”

They was trying to leave the collapsing dock, though they was struggling to get enough power to bear them with the skyhooks being largely out of order.

The docks were falling apart, chunks of ’em being ripped off by the big-arse kraken humping Prosperity. But they was still swarming with folks, shoving past each other and trampling each other down, trying to reach the Valiant even though ’twas clear she was sailing well past her weight with the refugees already huddled on her deck. Folks was throwing themselves at her sides, rocking her even more, and the crew was having to push them back over, sending them screaming into the sky to get grabbed up by tentacles and dragged into the aether.

Through the glass, I could see Captain Rackham at the wheel and his quartermaster shouting orders, while the crew what weren’t holding back the masses were running back and forth across the deck, cranking up the engines and powering the turbines.

I didn’t think they was going to make it, but I didn’t know how we was supposed to help them.

Then the power kicked in, and they swung sluggish from the docks like a wounded man staggering down the street, just as the whole platform collapsed, pulled apart like yarn by the kraken, and all them folks went plunging to their doom, one way or another.

“Just hold on, old man, I’m coming.” At my side, Byron Kae was deathly pale, sweat standing out upon their brow.

A tentacle came rearing up and crashed into the side of the Valiant, sending it into a helpless spin, scattering folk like skittles across the skies. And then another, from the other direction, careless as a cat playing with a mouse.

“Altitude. Now.” ’Twas Milord. I hadn’t heard him come back, but there he was, the crazy fucker, with a flask of phlogiston in each slightly trembling hand. His lips twisted. “Carefully.”

We climbed, we soared, swooping betwixt the monster’s tentacles like a shooting star through the night.

“You’re insane,” said Miss Grey. “You can’t blow up a kraken.”

“Then I’ll settle for merely ruining its day. Everybody down.”

Milord leaned over the side and dropped first one flask then the other.

I was too busy hitting the deck to really see what happened, but from the boom sommat got hit and from the noise it made, it didn’t like it very much.

The blast sent us wheeling off course and the air was filled with a searing putrescent smoke smelling like nowt you could imagine.

As soon as I dared to move, I ran to the rail where Milord was busily puking into his hankie. Down below, the kraken was on fire and thrashing about in some kinda paroxysm of rage and agony, and then, from the chaos and the smoke and the shadows, emerged the Valiant.

A ragged cheer went up from the deck, and I waved like a nutter cos ’twas the best fucking thing I’d ever seen. Captain Rackham saluted Byron Kae, and they chugged for freedom and clear skies.

We was heroes!

And just then, a fresh fissure split across the sky, forking like lightning and spilling the same corrupted dark as the others, and a writhing pustulous mass of greyish-green tentacles snatched up the Valiant.

The hull buckled, collapsing in on itself with a human-sounding scream.

Milord pushed himself upright, as though he was going to run for another flask, but then a third kraken reached out through the aether with a sorta sinuous clawed hand encrusted round with blinking lightless eyes, and betwixt the two of them, they tore the Valiant in twain, strewing the sky with broken metal and corpses.

Byron Kae screamed til their throat wouldn’t let them no more. And somehow the silence after was worse.

I wanted to go to them, but there weren’t no time for grief, nor comfort. There weren’t no time for nowt, except fear.

“May I reiterate,” murmured Milord, “the efficacy of running the fuck away?”

Ruben spun round, looming over him. “No, you may fucking not.”

’Twas the first they’d looked at or spoken to each other properwise in days. Mebbe I’d run mad with terror and despair cos I almost felt like laughing.

Milord stared up at Ruben, same as he did when he was on his knees, desperate and unable—unwanting—to conceal it. “Given what we have just witnessed, and even assuming there is anyone left alive down there, we would not be affecting a rescue, so much as offering a short-term predemise relocation service. This is foolishness. It is unnecessary.”

“Only to you . . . William.”

“That is not my name.” Milord actually grabbed Ruben’s arm. Given the way Ruben was looking at him, I’d have sooner cuddled one of the krakens. “And I see no value in you dying for empty principle.”

Ruben yanked his arm free and came striding to the side where I was still huddled, watching the monsters churning up the blue. “There’s nothing empty about believing in something other than yourself.”

“Well . . . well . . .” Milord’s voice had gone kinda tight, and a bit too high, like mebbe he was going to cry. ’Twas the oddest thing. “I believe in competence. And I believe trying to save anyone from a collapsing town surrounded by krakens directly underneath the portal through which they are entering our reality is fucking stupid. A rescue, by definition, is not a rescue if everybody dies.”

“We go on,” said Byron Kae, their voice nowt but tatters.

And Shadowless surged forward through the aether-tainted sky towards Prosperity.

There weren’t no docks left so we made slip by the shaking crumbling main street. Everything lay shattered—the shacks and tents and lean-tos, where folks made their homes, the Abbey, Albright’s, Seth’s store, the doc’s place, everything. Nowt but dust and ruination, all wrapped within the rusted, rubbery embrace of those vast, repulsive tentacles. Bodies littered the ground like discarded junk.

Ruben and Miss Grey were already jumping down, shouting for survivors, voices echoing thin and hollow through the devastation. I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed ’em, scrabbling over the shuddering ground.

True to form (that weren’t funny, just then), Miss Grey bundled up her skirts and went running for the Abbey, tearing at the fallen timbers with her bare hands.

“’Fraid we’re closed fer business, darling.” Gap Tooth Alis stepped out of the protection of a self-made barricade, leaning on that ol’ repeater of hers. She was drenched in dust from head to foot and her dress was splashed with blood, but somehow she managed a grin.

Miss Grey stopped scrabbling and turned with a look of wild and wavering delight. “For fuck’s sake, stop quipping and get on the fucking ship.”

“Lemme get m’ things.” Alis stuck her fingers in her mouth and gave a sharp, high-pitched whistle, and all at once people began crawling from spaces in the wreckage.

’Tweren’t many. But there were some. There were some. Whores and chancers and wastrels and criminals and vagabonds, some of them wounded, some of them dying, staggered towards Shadowless as Prosperity was pulled apart round them. ’Twas a slow, wretched business, and there weren’t much use for a small-ish, slightly shaky Piccadilly.

I stationed myself back on the ship, lending my forefin occasionally to help folk aboard. Looking round at them gathered and them still to come, ’twas barely enough to keep a brothel in business.

“’Tis that loony godfucker,” said Miss Alis, hoisting herself over the rail. “Locked himself in the ol’ church with the bodies of them folks you was so kind as to shoot and leave on the maindrag.”

“Then he must be stopped,” said Miss Grey.

Ruben was still rounding up survivors, digging them out of the wreckage and checking the bodies of the fallen in case they could be saved. The fella was tireless, driven—carrying the bloody and the battered back to Shadowless when they couldn’t walk for themselves.

“There’s no time.” ’Twas Byron Kae, still managing nowt more than a whisper, dried tears glistening upon their cheeks. “We have to leave, or we’ll meet the same fate as the Valiant. We’ve done all we can.”

A mumble of enthusiasm from the clustered survivors—and, honestly, from yours truly—for the run-the-fuck-away plan.

Miss Grey caught at Byron Kae’s arm. “We can’t just leave.”

“Why?” asked somebody. “Why the fuck not?”

“Yeah,” came another voice. “Fuck Prosperity. Hate the fucking place. Let it get et.”

Miss Grey made a tense little gesture like she fancied punching someone. “The rift is only partially open, which means it can still be closed. If we leave, and the ritual is completed, then there will be a permanent doorway between our world and the aether.”

“I can see why that would be a bad thing,” said Miss Alis. “What I don’t see is why it’s our problem, and what I definitely don’t see is why we should be sacrificing our lives for it.”

“You’ve seen what a kraken can do. Imagine ten of them. Imagine twenty.”

Miss Alis pulled a face. “Again, very bad. Again, not our problem.”

“It has to be someone’s problem!” cried Miss Grey.

“Right now,” said Byron Kae. “Lives, and saving them, is our problem. We are the only way for these people to get off Prosperity. I’m not leaving them to die.”

For a moment, Miss Grey was quiet. Then she folded her hands in front of her. “You are quite correct. Get everyone to safety. I will close the rift. I have some knowledge of these matters, so I am most likely the best person to manage it. And, if all else fails, a bullet to the madman’s head may prove useful.”

But Byron Kae shook their head. “No, Jane. I’m not leaving you to die either. There’s no certainty you’ll be able to reach the priest, let alone stop him.”

“But there’s a chance, and we must do something.”

“Please don’t throw your life away on a chance. Is there any other way to close the rift?”

“Perhaps.” Miss Grey frowned. “If we were to fly close to it, I could contrive something.”

“Um,” put in Miss Alis, “you’ll be putting us ashore first, right?”

They shared an end-of-days kinda glance. “You know,” quoth Miss Grey. “I find your pragmatic self-interest most alluring.”

Miss Alis nodded. “Being alive. ’Tis a big turn on for a lot of folk.”

The town was shaking real bad now. Byron Kae leaned over the rail and called Ruben and the last of the stragglers aboard. “We need to get these people to safety—”

I heaved a big sigh of relief cos mebbe we wasn’t going to die horribly after all.

“—and then Jane and I will try to seal the gate.”

Ruben swung himself onto the deck. “I’m coming with you.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

I think mebbe I was the only one to hear Milord muttering under his breath, but he was muttering for the both of us. Ruben did love his doomed, daft-arse causes. Milord was probably remembering when he’d been one of ’em.

“Perhaps,” offered Miss Grey, “we can discuss which of us shall sacrifice our lives when we are not already in imminent danger of losing them.”

’Twas a good plan.

Except, then, out of the corner of my glims, I saw Milord jumping to the street. The deck was crowded, so nobody else stagged him go.

“What you doing?” I called after him.

He rolled his eyes. “Something unnecessary.” And he took off, scrabbling over the debris and stumbling with the rocking of the town.

A queer ol’ business—that we all might end up owing our lives to someone like that, but I didn’t reckon he was doing it for us. If he was doing it for anyone, he was doing it for Ruben, but that didn’t seem likely neither. Milord weren’t exactly the romantic type, nor the type to change.

But with losing the only thing he’d ever wanted, I guess he’d run out of reasons to stop dying.

Prosperity groaned and trembled as the kraken tightened round it, and Milord went down beneath a shower of dust and masonry. And still nobody watching but me. Mebbe I should’ve done more to stop him, but he wouldn’t have listened. And if I’d have said sommat, would any bugger have stopped him? Would Ruben? Naw. Ruben would’ve gone with him. And then they’d both have snuffed it.

I felt the aether stirring round us as Shadowless prepared for flight.

Milord had dug his way out of the rocks, and was trying to stand, except then the whole town tilted and knocked him to his hands and knees again. So he crawled through the dust, slow as fucking slow could be, while the world fell down around him.

Fucking swiving swinking cunting fuck fuck fuck.

I turned away from the rail. Miss Grey and Byron Kae were in the prow, bracing each other as Shadowless rocked. Ruben was tending to some cull with smashed-up shanks, up to his elbows in blood. I didn’t care about nobody else, but there they was anyway, huddled on the deck, some of them silent, some of them praying, most of them staring up at the aether-torn sky, all full of monsters.

So we made it back to England, what then? What the fuck then, for ol’ Piccadilly?

I thought of Ruben, the way he’d held me while we was at it, joined and entwined, so fucking ridiculously romantic, rocking ourselves to pleasure, with heart beating next to heart. And then I thought of starlight nights and sunstruck days, and a world without edges or boundaries or limits.

And then I looked back at Prosperity getting shook apart, piece by piece. I couldn’t see Milord no more. ’Twould surely be no coming back. But, the truth was, I’d also run out of reasons to stop dying cos there weren’t no life for me without Shadowless. I might’ve once been nowt but a filching cove, but Byron Kae had given me the sky before I even had sense enough to want it. ’Twas the most precious fucking gift any guttersnipe could wish for.

And now I was going to give it back.

I took in a deep breath, savouring it, since breathing probably wouldn’t be much of an option later, and jumped for land, the second before Shadowless took to the skies. Last thing I heard was Byron Kae shouting my name with their torn-up voice.

I rolled onto my back and lifted my hand in farewell, swallowing a sorta lump in my throat cos, yeah, this was it. ’Twas too late now. They’d gone. And Godspeed to them—or whatever.

Then I went after Milord.

I found him about halfway up the main drag, just a pile of white, unmoving, on the ground. I thought he might’ve already copped it, but he lifted his head as I crouched down beside him, wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, and gave me the usual sneer. Guess he thought I was an idiot for coming after him. Guess he was right.

There weren’t no need to say nowt. We understood each other well enough. Truthfulwise, we always had.

I hauled him up, and he wheezed, and swore a blue streak in that countryplace accent of his, and then we staggered towards the church together.

’Twas an uncertain journey, to say the least.

Coupla times the ground buckled, knocking us both off our feet, and on one occasion ’twas only by instinct I avoided getting conked on the head by a falling piece of fuck knew what. Fresh cracks kept opening beneath us, running together like rivers until the whole of the right side of the street, with all the shattered houses, broke off and went spiralling downwards. Prosperity tilted on the skyhooks and I had to grab onto what remained of the Abbey—and Milord had to grab onto me—to stop us both going sliding right off the edge.

But still we kept at it, lurching along and clinging to each other desperately lest we fly screaming and flailing into the void.

Piccadilly: 18?? – 1863. Most Pointless Fucking Death Ever.

I was bruised, breathless, and incredibly fucking relieved when we finally made it to that pissy little chapel.

Except once I pushed against the door and we tumbled in, I wasn’t all that relieved no more.

The bodies of the folks we’d killed before were heaped up over by the pulpit, seeming pretty desecrated. ’Twas a slightly sick feeling when I realised they was probably what was causing the smell last time I’d been here with Ruben.

Except I’d had other shit to worry about then. And I had other shit to worry about now.

Cos Father Giles was kinda the main event, being mostly naked and daubed in blood, and standing in the middle of a circle drawn in blood on the floor. Must’ve taken ages.

I couldn’t make head nor tail of the symbols (even being able to read)—they seemed obscene and evil somehow, horrible despite being just pictures on the floor. The chapel roof had been blowed off and a sort of column of greenish-brackish light radiated upwards from where Father Giles was chanting and waving his arms, all the way to the heart of the aether-leaking fissures in the sky. And the room was full of strange voices whispering and chanting with him even though he was the only one there.

It probably don’t need saying, but he looked batshit. And having met Miss Grey, I got a pretty high batshit tolerance.

And Milord and me was just standing there, hand in hand, gaping at him like kids at Sunday School as he turned to face us, screaming all this loony shit about how there weren’t no God, just krakens, so we should all give ourselves over to the monsters and fucked-up shit like that.

I’ve got to admit, he was sorta scaring the crap out of me even before he picked up a fucking massive knife and started coming down the aisle towards us.

“‘And it was given unto him,’” he shrieked, “‘to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear.’”

Milord let me go, and for a moment, I really thought he was going to shove me onto the machete as some sort of distraction. Or just to get me out of his way. But instead, he stepped in front of me, sighed, and raised one of his sixers in a rock-steady hand. “You seem,” he said to Father Giles, “to be labouring under the misapprehension that I give a fuck.” And then he shot him right betwixt the eyes.

And then all at once there was a noise of thunder.

The light show went away, which was probably a good thing. But the krakens sounded immensely pissed off, which probably wasn’t.

I looked to the sky, which was churning like my stomach, and saw the cracks starting to seal themselves up, the things coming out of them being somehow sucked, struggling, back to the aether. Though from the way Prosperity buckled and trembled, it didn’t sound like the big un was all that inclined to bugger off til it’d finished with its devouring.

The walls of the chapel creaked and groaned round us, and I reckoned ’twas going to come down soonish.

Milord let the gun fall from his hand and dropped to his knees, head bowed. I thought mebbe he was praying or sommat, but no, he was just coughing and swearing. I wished I had a fogle for him. He liked that sorta thing.

“What do you think,” he asked, breathless and hoarse. “Is it a good day to die?”

“Ain’t never a good day to die,” quoth I.

He pitched forward onto one paw, another cough rattling out of him, spattering blood and black bile onto the floor. “Job’s done, Piccadilly, and so I am.”

“No, you ain’t.” And I held out my hand again. For a moment, I thought he was going to spit in it or sommat, but then wearily, as though ’twas more effort not to, he took it. He was as clammy as the fella on the pale prancer. I pulled him to his feet and he staggered, so I caught him round the waist. He was brittle, like a bird, cold and burning.

“Have you failed to notice,” he wheezed, “that we’re on an island about to fall out of the sky. I believe escape may prove beyond even your plucky ingenuity.”

“I’ll think of sommat. Come on.”

We got back out on the street, Milord’s breathing ringing so harsh and desperate in my ears that I thought if I let go, he might fall to the ground and not get up again.

I assessed the situation. ’Tweren’t great.

Nearly everything had collapsed or was in the process of collapsing, and the ground was riven with great big crevices, the deepest of which showed heart-clenchin glimpses of sky. The kraken was pulling Prosperity to pieces, and we was right in the middle of it with no way out.

The earth rolled under our feet, cresting into waves and dipping into furrows, til ’twas like being a crumb tossed about in wrinkling sheets. I dragged Milord aside before we got thrown off the edge of town, pulling him towards what seemed most solid.

’Twas hard going, cos the ground kept shaking and we kept having to avoid flying debris and jump over pits.

Then Milord stumbled and wouldn’t get up again, coughs rattling out of him.

“For fuck’s sake,” he gasped, as I tried to haul him up. “Just let me die with some fucking dignity. Go away.”

“Is that you-speak for ‘Run, Piccadilly, save yerself’?” I asked, knowing it would piss him off.

“Fuck you.”

So I got him moving again, though we was practically crawling now, and I was starting to feel more than a bit winded myself. Also I still hadn’t thought of nowt, so mebbe Milord had a point. We was just running for the sake of it. No miracle was coming. No rescue. No daring escape from the jaws (and tentacles) of death.

And then with a terrible screeching, one of the skyhooks sheared right through, leaving Prosperity dangling partially untethered in the sky.

The whole town was tilting and suddenly we was rolling and sliding—along with everything else—down a slope to fuck all. I yelled out, buffeted by flying wood and fuck knows what else, hand torn from Milord’s as I started falling.

Assuming I survived, I was going to be nowt but bruises (yet again)—and that was probably my last coherent thought as I realised I couldn’t stop myself. I kicked with my feet and grabbed for anything that passed, but ’twas no use. Gravity weren’t playing nice. A piece of timber knocked the breath out of me, and my eyes filled up with the waiting emptiness, sky and sky and sky. Mebbe if I was real lucky I wouldn’t get et, I’d just fall . . .

My feet went swinging out over nowhere, and then Milord’s hand hooked down from above and grabbed my arm. I was so shocked and jolted that ’twas instinct alone that made me reach up to his wrist.

He was braced behind a pile of wreckage that had tangled itself into a sorta accidental barricade, and I pulled myself painfully up to join him. To give him credit, he didn’t even flinch, just gritted his teeth and dug in and let me climb. I fell down beside him, sweaty and panting, bruised and bleeding—in short, looking near as bad as he did.

“Well,” he drawled, mocking to the last, “what now, Piccadilly?”

I guessed still being able to be sarcastic at me was a good enough reason for him to save my life. Or mebbe he didn’t want to die alone. I know I didn’t.

Prosperity was swinging about wildly, the remaining skyhooks shrieking with the strain, as the kraken continued tearing off bits and pieces here and there. When the opposing hook went, as ’twas surely going to—any minute now, in fact—the town would swing vertical and we’d be left with no way of holding on.

“I reckon we’re doomed,” quoth I.

Milord nodded. ’Twas an accident of the way we’d landed and the nature of the space we was in, but it almost felt like he was holding me. I rested my head against his shoulder, and he didn’t shake me off. ’Twasn’t any kinda death I would’ve imagined, but then what was?

“This is quite vexing,” he murmured. “I had rather intended to leave more of a mark upon the world. Now it seems as though the world will leave a mark upon me.”

A joke? From Milord? Who’d’ve thunk it. “Is that what you wanted?”

He snorted. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted forced me to make a ridiculous gesture, and then flew off in an aethership without me.”

“Why?” I asked. “Was you expecting him to stop you?”

Milord shook his head.

“So what did you want?”

“I wanted . . . I wanted . . .” The tiniest bit of colour streaked over his cheeks. “I prefer that he live thinking well of me, than die thinking ill of me.”

I grinned up at him. “We doing last confessions, then?”

“I have no conscience to clear. And I dislike the idea that I was created by anyone other than myself.” His pale lashes fluttered. “Do you seek absolution, Piccadilly?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Naw. I’m okay. Done plenty of dodgy shit in m’ time, but it don’t weigh heavy. Truthfully it’s all been a bit disappointing.”

Milord laughed softly. “Ain’t it the truth?”

The kraken squeezed, Prosperity shifted, and the broken skyhook danced with the motion like a fishing line with nowt to hook onto . . . holy shit.

“I got a crazy plan,” I said.

“My crazy plan was get squashed by a town, so please—be my guest.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“What’ve you got to lose?”

“The habit of a lifetime.”

I reached for his hand afresh and pulled him with me towards the edge of the falling-down world. The kraken roared and thrashed, and the second skyhook snapped with a crack like the biggest bullet ever fired.

The ground was gone, tipped like a seesaw coming down, the force of it throwing us into the air like we was nowt at all.

“Jump!” I yelled, for all the good it likely did.

And I grabbed for the trailing cord of the skyhook, somehow gettin my fingers round the broken-end piece which would once’ve been fixed to the town. For a few seconds we dangled, helpless as Prosperity, and then began hauling ourselves up onto the most stable bit of metal remaining.

And there we clung, me wrapped for grim life round the cord and Milord wrapped round me while the skyhook danced and jerked, swinging us back and forth on a pendulum of horror, betwixt vast and unspeakable tentacles and ruined Prosperity teetering in the sky, raining an almost constant stream of detritus and crap.

Milord’s face was pressed into my back like he didn’t want to clap eyes on nowt. “Well,” he muttered, “this is definitely an improvement. Congratulations.”

And then it happened.

The last skyhooks gave out, one then the other, and Prosperity just . . . shattered into bits. Dropped out the sky, while the kraken writhed round it, snatching up vast chunks and crushing them to dust.

And we were knocked all over the damn place—and I will confess to a fair bit of screaming coming from one Piccadilly as we arced out, flying wide and wild through the tide of deadly shrapnel. We was going so fast, the air was sorta shrieking past us and the fury of the motion was flaying the skin from my palms in a roar of red-hot agony. ’Twas really only terror that kept me hanging on.

But then, oh then, seeming out of nowhere, came Shadowless, swift and sleek as a hawk in flight, surging through the aether beneath us. And sweet as sweet, people calling out our names.

I’d never been so glad to fall.

We dropped to the deck, rolling over each other in a fine ol’ mess, but taking no particular additional harm from it. I lay dazed, disbelieving, staring at nowt, and listening to the rush of feet round us and the busy shouts of folks saving our arses.

“Vent the phlogiston!” Miss Grey’s voice cut over the din. “And fire!”

The deep boom of that ol’ rifle going off. The thump of Miss Alis falling over after. Someday I reckoned she was going to learn to brace it.

“Full speed!”

And then the whole sky caught fire and the the kraken howled, and Shadowless rocked to and fro as the monster churned up the aether in its pain and fury. If they even feel shit like that. Smoke and smoke and the smell of death and ashes. And the shadow of it pulling back into the void, the final gash in the sky sealing up haphazard like a badly sewn wound.

They’d only gone and blowed up a kraken, and me too knackered to see it.

And they’d come back for us . . . they’d come back . . .

“You fucking idiots,” snarled Milord, sitting up. “You complete fucking idiots.”

“Dil?” ’Twas Byron Kae leaning over me, gently uncoiling my wrecked hands, light fingers against my palms cool as fresh water.

“M’okay.”

Cos I was, right? Ruin was behind us, and light ahead, a glimmer of blue sky, bright as a jewel. But I didn’t know what it meant, that careless loveliness. Mebbe nowt at all.

I looked round at the ragged survivors. ’Twas sommat, right?

Ruben and Milord were clinging together, bodies and mouths and hands, like they wanted to climb inside each other.

“Get a room!” yelled Miss Alis. “Oh, wait, there ain’t one.”

And a few us remembered how to laugh.

“I still can’t believe you did that,” whispered Ruben, touching Milord’s face as though he was re-learning who he was.

“Neither can I. And for the record, it will never happen again. It was an experience with little to recommend it.”

“But it was good. You did something good.”

Milord pulled out of his arms, sneering. “I did not do it to be good. I did not do it for atonement. I did not do it for morality. I did not do it for your puerile God. And—” he wheeled on the rest of us, his voice climbing, cracked and hoarse “—I didn’t do it for you lot either. Live, die, fuck, or kill each other, I don’t care.”

’Twasn’t much to be said to that. Miss Alis rested her head on Miss Grey’s shoulder. “He’s a charmer, this un. Great notion, risking all our lives, going back fer ’im.”

“It wasn’t for him,” said Miss Grey.

Which meant . . .

’Twas a thought too big and bright for my brain just then. And Byron Kae wouldn’t look at me.

Milord did the best storming off you can do when you’re stuck on the deck of a flying ship. And Ruben followed, wrapped arms round him from behind like Milord was sommat fragile and precious. “I don’t care why you did it. Only that you did.”

Milord hung his head. “I did it for—”

“I don’t care.” Ruben turned him within the circle he’d made for him.

And if Milord ever finished his sentence ’twas lost in kissing.

“Is it going to be like this the whole way back?” asked Miss Alis.

“I fear so,” returned Miss Grey.

In which we bid farewell to our hero and matters are concluded in a wholly proper and satisfactory manner
e learned later about Gaslight. The bits of Prosperity the kraken didn’t get travelled miles, some of ’em dropping safely into the sea. But one of ’em crashed straight down onto Gaslight like the judgement of Heaven—right on the Golden Crescent, though the devastation rippled much further and turned the whole nib district into a great big crater, tearing all the way down to the Stews.

Ironic thing was that the undercity was kinda protected, so though they reckon plenty of folk were killed down there—mainwise from the chaos above—’tweren’t nowt compared to the death count in the upper city. Which last I heard, they was still counting.

I’m sorry, of course, for the loss of life, but Gaslight was a crappy place, and I can’t confess to feeling all that sorry for it getting a big hole through the middle of it.

I ain’t been back—mebbe I will one day—but I like to imagine light pouring down on all them who’d lived without it, golden summer creeping through the dark and twisting streets, and mebbe the occasional gutter rat looking up and being able to stag a star or two to teach him how to dream.

We made slip in London, which was kinda in uproar cos of Prosperity falling, dropped off our passengers quietwise, and took to the skies again. The only one what stuck round was Gap Tooth Alis, and ’twas nice to have her company since Milord and Ruben was too busy clicketing for courtesies.

Course, we’d kinda vented Milord’s retirement plan at the kraken, but we took them to the continent anyway. Ruben had monies and means for making it, being such an educated fella. We left them near Milan. Milord said that though he still didn’t give a fuck about us, he didn’t give so little of a fuck that he’d shoot us on sight if we ever came back to visit.

We ain’t yet. Mebbe someday. When I can face Ruben without wanting.

I dunno how long Milord is like to live with the dustlung, but they say sun and warm air helps and he’s such a stubborn fucker, I don’t reckon on him dying til he’s good and ready.

I imagine him in his shirtsleeves, drinking tea on the terrace of some white-walled villa, with a view of some Italian village and mebbe the distant blue sparkle of the sea. I perfume the air with magnolia for him, make it real nice and pretty. He don’t deserve it, but I like to think of him enjoying it anyway.

No idea what Milord thinks about when he ain’t plotting how to wring other shit he don’t deserve from the world that wanted to overlook him. But I can picture Ruben coming back from the village, sleeves rolled up, book under his arm, that ol’ battered hat of his shading his brow. And I reckon Milord feels as close to content as a cove like him is capable of feeling.

’Twas strange to be flying without ’em. I missed ’em. Byron Kae pointed out now I had letters, I could write to them, but my words ain’t nibby enough for Ruben. I wouldn’t dare show him my sprawling script and crappy spelling.

Suppose that was another way Milord was braver than me—he dared show who he was to Ruben.

Truth is, I keep waiting for Byron Kae to put me off somewhere, but it don’t seem to come up somehow. And I’m glad cos I can’t think of anywhere I want to be except on Shadowless.

Seems of late, I’ve developed a bit of distaste for walls and roofs and being surrounded and grounded. And I dream sometimes, though I wish I didn’t, of some ancient city beyond the skies where the krakens lie slumbering. I spend some of my nights running through rust-choked ruins that aeons of aetherflow have turned into an endless maze of broken walls and half-smoothed stone the colour of the skies that swallowed Prosperity. Tends to wake me screaming.

And when I can’t get back to sleep, Byron Kae comes and touches my sweat-damp hair with their cool hands til I can breathe again.

I keep thinking about how they came back for me. How to them, I’m more than an entire shipful of folk.

And I keep thinking about that kiss they didn’t take.

Like mebbe I could give it to them, and how much I’d like to. I reckon they’d taste of stars.

When we was done with Oliver Twist—which I thought started pretty promising but ended with a real disappointment—they found me sommat by this cove Wilkie Collins who should give Mr. Dickens some lessons in writing a good story, cos we’re reading a serialised thing called The Woman in White, and it’s fucking awesome. For serious.

Gap Tooth Alis is happy to keep flying with us awhile, but she says she’s a business woman and you can’t really run a good brothel from a place what keeps moving. I pointed out you could do deliveries, but I don’t think Byron Kae was too thrilled with the notion of having a permanent crew of doxies to take round with us.

Course, Miss Grey and Miss Alis have their thing (which I do confess I like to think on when I’m fetching private mettle, if y’know what I mean), but then, as Miss Alis says, she ain’t exactly a one-woman whore, to which Miss Grey always answers that she ain’t a one-whore woman. Miss Alis has heard of this place called Hawaii they found a while back which she reckons is likely missing a decent bawdyhouse. So that’s probably our next destination.

And after that, I dunno. I been taking the time to finish off this journal, make it neat as I can, which ain’t very cos I’m crap with writing and it’s been to hell and back (heh, like me).

I ain’t quite sure what to do with it, to be honest, cos I’m about to run out of pages, and I reckon what’s comin next is a whole new story, though mebbe not the sort you go writing down. I don’t mind the not knowing cos there’s such a lot of it that it don’t seem worth getting fussed over.

’Tis enough to feel Shadowless, and see the sky, and know that Byron Kae is waiting.

Thanks to recent advances in trans-dimensional publishing, it is increasingly probable that readers of this text will be ordinarily resident in universes other than the primary (International Dimensional Sequencing Number #0000). It is our experience that the minor differences in history, technology, and the immutable laws of nature between dimensions can cause some confusion among readers. We therefore present a helpful summary of disparities between the primary universe (IDSN #0000) and the universe for which this text has been localised (IDSN #2471).

1. The poems “I Dwell in Possibility” and “Or from that Sea of Time”—neither of which are attested in your universe prior to 1876—were both published in IDSN #0000 on dates closer to their original composition.

2. Through a combination of divergent physical laws and the ignorance of your scientific establishment, several technologies—including phlogiston mining, skytown construction, and aetheric manipulation—were not developed to their fullest extent in your reality, to the detriment of your people and their culture.

3. Similarly, the vacuum flask, invented in your world by Sir James Dewar in 1892, was created in IDSN #0000 by Mr. Ernest Whipple in 1854, and originally marketed under the name Whipple’s Void-Reinforced Thermonic Storage Device.

4. Finally, it is our understanding that in your universe, the vast ruck and run of humanity live their lives in blissful ignorance of the devouring monstrosities that lie in wait beyond the stars. May G-d have mercy on you.

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With thanks, as ever, to my wonderful editor, Sarah Frantz, and to my long-suffering partner, who is somehow still with me. My deepest gratitude to Mary Ann Rivers for persuading me not to give up on this book, and for showing me how it could be saved. And, finally, a huge heap of love and appreciation for the kindness of Brona Little and Julio Alexi Genao.

Glitterland

Glitterland: Aftermath (Free download)

Sand and Ruin and Gold

Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator

Iron & Velvet

Shadows & Dreams

Coming Soon

Liberty, and Other Stories (Prosperity series)

Waiting for the Flood (March 2015)

For Real (June 2015)

Pansies (September 2015)

Looking for Group (November 2015)

Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the twenty-first century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle, but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.

He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them. He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a seventeenth-century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.

He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.

Website: quicunquevult.com

Twitter: @quicunquevult

Goodreads: goodreads.com/alexishall

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