There Will Be Phlogiston (24 page)

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.