There Will Be Phlogiston (21 page)

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