There Will Be Phlogiston (19 page)

She shifted, opening to him, and he circled the
place she liked best, this thumb gliding over her, effortless as an
ice-skater. She allowed herself a breathy, unseemly moan, and
basked, lazy pleasure spiralling outwards from her unmentionable
regions—she really would have to ask Jones how they could be
mentioned but . . . oh . . . not now—to fill every part of her. Her
peak came upon her swiftly, though it was not really a peak, more a
kind of gathering of everything that had happened that night,
everything she had learned and felt and done, transmuted into a
kind of pure physical joy. She muffled her cries in Jones’s
shoulder and stayed there a little afterwards, pressed against him,
soaking up his heat, his solid strength, the realness of his body,
all breath and blood and skin and scars.

Hers.

Fuck.

“I love you,” she told him crisply. “And there’s no
need to make a fuss about it.”

His grin was quite ridiculous.

She gave him a stern look. “I don’t want it to give
you ideas above your station.”

“Unlikely.” He yawned and settled her against him.
“I’m exactly where I want to be.”

She was quiet awhile, watching him as he drifted
close to slumber. “I have been thinking.”

He started. “Huh. Whassumatter?”

“I have been thinking of configurations.”

“Con—what?”

“Configurations for the three of us. That we may
try. In the future.”

“Oh.” His eyes opened. “
Oh
.”

“I was thinking perhaps it would be entertaining if
Arkady were to fuck you and you were to fuck me. Or perhaps Arkady
could fuck you and you could pleasure me with your fingers or . . .
I understand sometimes at finishing school mouths were used, so you
could possibly oblige me in that fashion. Or Arkady and I could
both use our mouths on you. Or I have noticed that Arkady enjoys to
hold the bedrail when you enter him with particular vigour so it
occurred to me—although this could be a little too depraved—that
you could secure his hands to it while you laboured upon him. Do
you not think he would look beautiful that way?”

Jones was laughing, although Rosamond had no notion
why. Configurations struck her as being quite a serious matter.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, and yes, and yes.”

Well, that was good news. She settled down to
sleep.

She thought she was going to enjoy being ruined very
much indeed.

SNEAK
PEEK: PROSPERITY

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.

Ebook: ISBN: 978-1-62649-176-2

Paperback: ISBN: 978-1-62649-177-9

riptidepublishing.com/titles/prosperity

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

I 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.