There Will Be Phlogiston (22 page)

Next 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.