There Will Be Phlogiston (20 page)

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.