Chapter 5 - Day Ten (Lunes)

THE OBSCURES, AT once the most homely and the most alien bailiwick of them all. The light was never good as, of course, it was obscured (and mostly by the Grails). For much the same reason the Lluvia rain did not come so greatly here, slanting sideways where it could but with the holey umbrella of the Grails it was no worse than an Irish morning. Yet rain there was, and from the flues within the ballon posts blew the heat diverted here from elsewhere, so it was hot too. The Obscures was also called that because of the fogs that lived there, so that wet and warm mist enjoyed the day. The great bulk of the Grails could only be seen as the moon in an eclipse against the daylight of the opening to the Looms high, high above. A visitor might have been forgiven for thinking he stood in some place between the worlds, or that the bailiwick was some lonely town, remote, and with the rain and fog deadening sound so much that nothing could be heard of the greater Parquet beyond.

It was not a day to take themselves to labour, and so the citizens closed themselves off from other bailiwicks. They rarely went out at night, and now went about their business here briskly, in groups, with only the toads in their monstrous coats and boots happy in their work, handcarts cluttered with their hereditary tools, Trengrove and Sablet, made, and the pandy of Jack Handy protecting everyone, as long as everyone was rightly ensconced in the local tabernas, here so like the British public houses. Wet, and hot, fog thick and sound deadened, only fools and ruffians were abroad on this day of medusa and snails. Such medusa coloured the fog with a water-colour light. The ballon encouraged by the flues seemed brighter than normal, and waiting at the limits of the Obscures enterprising souls offered their service as link boys, bright lanterns evident, and regarded with suspicion by anyone with any sense. They stood hopeful for travellers, away from the gutta (one of the easier of the Troges terms to translate) that ordinarily a haha for the visitor ran now with the rainfall that, too filthy here for the cisterns, instead took the unwanted water away, and below, to spouts over William Lane. William Lane was, as ever, just fucking delighted by such beneficence.

Of all the bailiwicks the Obscures was the most familiar, the most like home, where here the buildings, the streets, the houses, lanes and even roofs were those of a crowded northern Europe. Not the streets of society and the swells, nor too those of the rookery and slum, but the ordinaries, the workaday, the everywhere. Once the site of the great boletus farms, those were tucked away now, unseen behind the town that had risen here. As was most everything in the Obscures where the light was ever bad, as often was the air, in the cloying mist now made thicker by the rain’s fog.

Most of the shops were to be found along two rows and a single square. Other, less salubrious establishments, waited and whispered off such lit and travelled ways but in all of Parquet nowhere were so many shops, and certainly not so gathered. Marked by their pea green sign, Sablets boasted two properties, one for le commun, and the other for les curieux. They were marked thusly, and like every shop here today both were open early. Those that laboured elsewhere (and there were many for people in the Obscures were typically skilled, talented, even regarded by their patron) went to their task early, if at all. Today was not a day for labour. The shops that would normally not open till long after luncheon has unhitched the blinds and thrown back the shutters. There was custom to be had, and today that would all be early.

ooOOoo

PACKETS AND PARCELS, a hundred tiny drawers and two dozen large, Sablet Le Commun was familiar to Baxter Nettles. He grinned. It had something of the apothecaries, something of the hardware store, and a lot to do with an outfitters, and the smells were all those of varnish and flour, oil, and old leather. It was early as he saw no reason to stay longer than he ought, and had taken advice to cut down from the Looms on the newly opened volito, across the Grails and down, descending with the daylight. On the quiet he was a wealthy feller, and wealth meant a stinking bushman was a charming eccentric and not some terrible vagabond. He took an aniseed twist from a jar, and a small onion from a barrel of many that he then ate like an apple. There were shovels and picks, there were nails, saws, and tools anyone might find aboard ship. There was a chained rack of ship axes and cutlasses, hangers and backswords. There were hats, and half bolts of linen, no silk. Ribbon and pepper, lanterns, candles, boots, gaiters, rope and tackle. There was an elephant foot boasting umbrellas, walking sticks, gun-rests, and a brass dioptra on a folding cradle. There was soap, there was netting, there were bottles under rosy glass, and there was a young woman who’s striped jersey did nothing to make her look any less waspish than her expression already suggested. Her black button eyes stared at Baxter, who had gone round the shop twice before noticing her. He snatched off his hat, “G’day, miss, back from the Verde and it was suggested I swing on by.”

Her pinched little mouth relaxed into a tight little smile that crinkled her eyes. “Monsieur…” she welcomed him. A tiny fish striped exactly in the same manner as her hid behind her coiled hair and stared at the customer, doubtless the first of many today.

“Yip, see a lot of what I’m wanting here. Any telescopes?”

“But of course,” she produced from below the counter a box holding a half dozen.

“Aw, this place is a cracker.”

“Tea, monsieur?”

“Rude not to, lady,” he beamed.

ooOOoo

GREAT RACKS OF hats and not a one likely to survive the rain, which clearly had come with the sole purpose of not allowing Lady Victoria to enjoy the enormously fetching example with the three curling feathers that she just knew would mark her as being the most admirable woman in town. She posed in the mirror in hat and bloomers, then kicked through the closet for something more suitable. Soon and she was in the tub shrinking the scaled britches to her legs. She had always liked to shock society with her daring flirtation with trousers, here that would mean nothing and so she these simply not to look ridiculous when wet. Wherever here was. It was not Beau’s, or so Victoria thought, although that vision was curled up like a cat in a bed nearby. They had arrived not long before with Beau asking if the resident, a rather dashing fellow with just the right touch of grey to the temples, might like to go away for a bit as they were tired, and wanted his wine. Something to which the handsome chap had agreed, and was now wherever people went when they were not with Beau. That delicious dribble of man or womanhood had made only one criticism, which was that Victoria did not have the wrist to escort him/her, meaning a fashionable sort of sword. There was just that sort of unfashionable sort of sword on the wall, Victoria saw, which is the direction she jumped when the door downstairs rudely crashed open.

ooOOoo

WASHED OF HIS hearty sweat from his morning exercises, sat in a chair clearly too small for him, holding a cup, a saucer, and a cake all about the same, Cornelius Atkins was a giant. This was the Demimonde, and which over the years had been improved upon as wealth followed success, and success after strife. The Demimonde had been here before Maddi Lanterne had become the Jack. It had indeed been a centre for the fighting that had overthrown M. Compable (that had ruled the Grails since the Vagues Revolution). Here and its owner, Mme. Danseuse, having sided with Maddi, was now one of her two closest confidentes. It was said not there was not one bawd, bobtail or dollymop in the Grails that did not pay obedience to Mme. Danseuse, and even the cortigiana worked only with her permission. And all in all, with the statuary and the papered walls, the delicate furnishings and the beautiful ballon fittings, it was rather lovely.

It was early, and Reiney thought it had been polite for the Atkins brothers to come when otherwise the house would have been busy. Although not tonight, when it would be, and rarely, closed. The Madame herself was in bed, and did not deal with the help anyway. “It is simple enough work,” she explained in good English. “You would be oiled, costumed, and remain still throughout the evening and night. In the event of ladies or gentlemen acting in a manner considered unwelcome then with as little harm to them as is permissible you would escort them from the premises.”

“I see,” said William, of Cornelius, who knew better than to interrupt his brother. “That seems easy enough.”

“If either the Madame, M. Botte, or Mademoiselle Lanterne wish further services, then they are expected. If your brother lays a finger on the workers, it will go ill for them. Truly ill, because as you have no doubt perceived, Mademoiselle Lanterne is apt to become irritable if the Demimonde is inconvenienced.”

“I assure you, we would not want that,” William smiled winningly, then asked, “As an aside, where might one shop for hats in this charming place?”

ooOOoo

THE HOUSEHOLD WAS quiet for whilst the count had gone to the ball his drudge and serviente had taken the opportunity to enjoy their own entertainment. Here too there had been dancing, and music. There had been too much drinking and at least one fight. Now with the count departed for the Obscures and the simpler home he preferred Valeriya Tolstoy was alone with Marta and Vitaly in the kitchens of the house in the Looms. They sat amongst broken crockery and the spoils of revelry. Two were asleep on the floor, snails had emerged to feast and there was no one to sweep the spiders away. Marta guarded a treasured samova, whilst Vitaly nursed his head. Both served Shakhanov. Marta had been born here, Vitaly given up by the sea nearly twenty years before. Both were religious, but neither had any time for the Orthodox of the Obscures, which surprised her.

“Tutoring? Maybe,” they spoke English as despite her heritage Marta’s Russian was very bad. “Somewhat beneath you, I would have thought?”

Valeriya disputed that. She could not help being of the quality, but she was a common soldier and a nurse. The peasants that made up much of the Motherland were ignorant, little more than slaves. She was used to straddling two worlds, had travelled, and now was here, drinking strong tea in tall glasses with a woman that had never known a day being less than a man, and a soldier that had not fought in ten years and who still dressed for a saddle that had no horse.

“There are doubtless wayward children of good name, children that need to be taught rather than go gamine, I will see who there is, if you would like me to?” suggested Marta. With a yawn, Valeriya stood. Suddenly she felt the efforts of the night just gone sweep upon her. She spoke to herself almost idly in Russian, of what she planned, only to notice how her words had caught at Vitaly.

“What is it?” she snapped. She apologised instantly, she didn’t have the knack for ordering anyone around. More politely she asked the same thing again, and to a sharp look shared between the two, both sworn to Count Osman Shakhanov.

ooOOoo

“SIR?”

It seemed that Selly was doing rather well for himself. With a parcel taller than himself now lent for the moment against the door jam, Mouse asked if he could visit with his friend?

The fellow that had opened the door looked with bulging eyes at the young man, his wide mouth thinning at the very thought. He said. “I am very much afraid that the master is engaged in important matters of sleep. It is important that the master engages in such a sleep, else he will be positively irritated come his afternoon snooze. I think it best not to disturb him as he has an important appointment this early evening with his post-supper nap. Might I ask what your business is with him?”

Mouse would have protested, might have worried about his friend, but it all sounded very likely. So he took the bottle he had brought from within his coat and asked that it be passed on with his compliments.

ooOOoo

THE ARCHITECTURE HAD not changed an inch yet now criss-crossing the Looms here were clear pathways amidst the larger thoroughfares. Water ran in shallow sheets between, gurgling in the rain to vanish down lanes and alleys that by such light were revealed to be all part of the complex system of flues that a clever eye could discern almost everywhere in Parquet. Clouds turned in a helix above the taller towers and beautiful vanes that could be seen above the bailiwick, somewhat set aside and out of sight otherwise beyond the larger houses, and here that of the Marchesa Liber. Much of the downpour was deflected by a series of gossamer canopies, angular but otherwise reminiscent of a butterfly wing bleached of colour (if not design). Making the best of the clothing they had borrowed, hair slicked into place and toe caps brushed hard against the rear of his trouser leg, Lord Blyth Penprase raised a hand to attract the eye of the milicio that stood on the far side of the gate. With his best beaming smile he tipped a finger to his hat brim and asked if the lady of the house was receiving?

The milicio though had eyes only for the Jackson Monday. She frowned, her mouth giving it the prune as she tried to recall the face until startled by her own sudden recollection she jumped smartly to open the gate. “Madre de Dios, but surely you are dead?”

“Pardon, ma’am, but that’s just a confusion,” Monday’s deep voice rumbled.

Blyth eyed the milicio. Their ceremonials were black, and though they wore the same in their fashionables (the dolmen jackets, the pelisse) here that meant stiffened surcoats and brimmed hats, black feathered, marked with the symbol of a fierce, almost draconic cockerel head wreathed by serpents. The rapier was sheathed, and the complex looking wande grande did not impress. Another milicio nearby watched them both suspiciously, and that one perhaps shared Blyth’s disdain for guns, for certainly he carried none. Blyth poured some oil on the confusion, “The Marchese might have left word, miss?” he gave their names.

The second milicio nodded at this, but even with the gate open they were searched, politely, and relieved of their weapons. Monday sniffed the air, his nose wrinkled but his face otherwise held an expression of interest. In the gardens they spied three more of the milicio. The tall house was set within an acre that enjoyed bark pathways and several stark, white trees without leaves but draped with a number of pale snakes. The door was manned by a figure that topped even Monday by a head. That doorman was in tight black livery, again with the cockerel and the snakes. Beads ran rings under his visible skin but his eyes? His eyes were blank, entirely blank without pupil or retina, and when he stepped aside to let the door open he hissed softly at them as they went by.

ooOOoo

THINKING TO DUPLICATE the benefit of sleep with both eyes shut, Alasdair gave up after three hours of fitful rest. It was too quiet, it smelled all wrong and even the air seemed lank, thin, like a soup too often watered for too many bowls. He was alone in the little tower for everyone else had departed back to their homes, to resupply, or to take their pay and throw it on the nearest fire like the wastrel sasanachs they all were. Rain dropped in rivers on the roof, which would have comforted many a Scot far from home, but Alasdair had made it half a life’s work to journey away from the cold mist and wretched weather of dear auld Scotland.

“Awch, well,” he stood. If he was going to be wet he was going to be wet somewhere better than here. It was nice to visit the city he was sure, but he wouldnae wish to live here. He scratched, he yawned. Ballocks to the lot of it, he turned towards the Murus wall again. He was offski.

ooOOoo

BEHIND THE HOUSE and round the next corner, Beau knocked politely at the door to be admitted by a handsome maid with very small eyes and very large hands. Apologising sweetly, they were soon sat at a table to a decent breakfast whilst the maid fussed over them, fetching them dressing gowns into which they modestly changed whilst she saw to their wet clothing. Victoria kept the britches as the britches weren’t going anywhere. Nor too the sabre, that she cleaned on the muslin of a pudding set aside and ready to steam. She said, “That doesn’t happen often!”

Beau Legrand begged to differ. It happened all the time, “It gets quite tiresome really. We should be safe enough here anyway. That was rather different,” s/he changed the subject. “The thing with the balcony?”

Colouring slightly, Victoria waved it away. She simply was not used to jumping off high things and had never swung from a rope in her life. Which was a pity, but for now she had hung and dropped and then let Beau fall on her before they made their escape. The balcony had been no great trial, it was as if houses here were used to people making hasty retreats from bedchambers.

“You really should get as nicer sword though, they don’t allow anything else in the milicio.”

“I don’t have a care to join a milicio!”

“Yes, all that fighting and wearing amazing clothes would really go against your morning, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d need a patron…” Victoria sulked, but Beau could not be that. She had no wealth, no status, she was just as she was, utterly fantastic.

“Oh, I know the right sort of people.”

Victoria rallied, “I had thought…”

“Silly of you. Thinking? The very idea. They’ll never take you seriously with a blade if you go around thinking.”

Pursing her lips Victoria tried to imagine breaking Beau’s nose, but the image simply would not come. It was after all such a very pretty nose. Breakfast arrived, soon their clothes would be dry, and then unless all the gods themselves formed a brass band and ordered her to take up the post of second horn Victoria was going to sleep the sleep of the well bloodied, breakfasted, and better still - booted, hero of the morning.

ooOOoo

SABLET LES CURIEUX was an altogether different affair, a place of glass cabinets, of displays, of upright shelves and lit cases. The floor was cork, the window to the street managed to both advert to the contents whilst concealing them, and the door only opened at all when a boy on a stool sat beside it worked a lever behind a brief little curtain. Pride of place when to a dancer, androgynous, of something smooth and alike to marble. There were faint lines at the joins that perhaps concealed springs and hinges but like a statue the wonderful sculpture was frozen poised arabesque. Cages held spiders, a ring-tailed monkey, several glass wrens. On display were things that might have been compasses, helmets and face covers, masks of wood and masks of copper. Balls and pokers, rings, and a great deal of tools whose use was hard to determine. From the ceiling was suspended the skeleton of some giant, flying lizard. In a tank a rather sad like mergirl six inches in height looked out through the murky saltwater. There were tubes in racks, there were ballon of every size, there were three books and two long handled pistole wande in a case that were superlatively expensive (and only for those rosey enough for such artistic weapons). Thunder could dimly be heard from brass bottles, unless perhaps by the curling ear trumpets that sat with the stacks of eyeglasses, monocles, and broad single visor bands. There were instruments, and there was a cabinet closed with three locks visible and at least as many beside. A young man in green dusted whilst an older man, his hair artfully arranged to sweep over a balding head, stood like some muted fop in purple and a monstrous cravat.

Baxter entered the shop with a bag over shoulder that he had had to add to his pile in order to carry his stack of purchased parcels. He grinned to see Sergeant Landless already there and already, something not said about him, skint. There was an ordinary fellow that had also been a passenger on the Thelassa and a small woman in at least a dozen skirts that had not. He went to the counter and the older man, rapped on the wood, and said as he had been suggested to, “Two ignis, and is there a ball of nox to be had?”

The once-fop turned in a haze of Hungary water to fetch the items asked for. It pleased him to have a direct customer; there were altogether too many browsers around at the moment who simply knew nothing about absolutely everything.

Naifs!

“Monsieur has been the verde?” the man, Clochard, observed smoothly.

“Yip, speaking of which. Got me some crocus, any use?”

“Monsieur might do better with the parfumer? Two doors down.”

“Aw, top bloke,” Baxter scratched behind one ear, finding a grub that, recognising, he bit in two. The sour bit he dropped into one of his many pockets. “Tell you what, is there anything you’d recommend?”

“Ah, monsieur!” Clochard was delighted.

“That’s me, pal. Mr Mon-sewer.”

ooOOoo

FROM THE WINDOW and the girl in the rain had waved at Valeriya. Weary still she turned about and hurried down the stairs, taking a coat from many by the door and retrieving her shapka hat, before hurrying out before the girl vanished. The child had been a wretch, though her wave had been cheeky enough, and Valeriya was not one to see any child suffer. Already the girl had fled, and with a curse at her own good heart the Tolstoy followed. There was laughter, teasing, and in pursuit came Valeriya. The rain did not concern her, fierce it might be but it was only the little sister to the true storms, the zameerzat of home, and it’s petulance moved her no more than a bride’s sulking. She spied the girl, barefoot, face half hidden, dart into a lane and calling to her Valeriya strove to catch up. Momentarily she paused when she recognised where they were. She was really familiar with nowhere here, but she knew this place. Loosening her blade in its sheath, taking a breath, Valeriya followed.

ooOOoo

LONG USED TO the puckered sores that ran along his pizzle like the suckers of a withered octopus, for some days now Landless had found more, about his neck and now along the lower left side of his mouth. Concealed as they might be by his magnificent beauties, still it was with some panic that he banged on the counter of the parfumer, fumbling with what coins remained before slapping the lot in front of the amused little woman.

“Cinnabar,” he made it sound offhand. It was possible to go to source, and he had even come upon a flock of Cinnabelle’s who had lightly mocked the upright, but in his search for the most direct source it had been suggested that here was quickest, and so here he had come through the rain, and the fog, and already with a plan to set back again without what he sensed to be a sack full of the sort of trouble he did not need. He had his own fascinating troubles enough, and did not need a list.

“Ah, the good sargento has the pox?”

“Keep it down, love,” Landless felt his nose for it itched something horribly. In the verde he had dreamed of it falling off, and now he had the dreadful idea that it had been premonition as much as nightmarish fancy. “Is there… any?”

“Si, mon sargento. Vive la revolution!”

“Vive indeed, my pretty. Now about my cock?”

“Wotcha, Arthur,” Baxter leant over Landless. “Crickey, what’s wrong with your old feller?”

The shopgirl fetched up a small packet, pre-measured, and placed it on the counter.

“Nice,” Baxter grinned. “A dose for a dose, eh? I knew a man in Argh Creek, it came right off in his hand.”

“How much?” squeaked Sergeant Landless.

“The packet holds a dose, sargento. It may work, or you may, as they say, panic and rob a blind man to buy more. It will, however, slow the process a little if not entirely?”

“How… much?”

“Is 75/-.”

“Is forty, don’t be an Irishman on me,” Landless gave her the glare. He was not some wet behind the ears trooper on his first day out of barracks. He knew markets, and every good sergeant knew the price of powder to the gram and arrack to the ounce.”

“Maybe, is sixty?”

“Fifty, and we shakes on it now.”

“Fifty, but I don’t want to touch that poxy ‘and, mon sergeanto.”

Landless pointed at the collection of worn coins on the counter then made to tip the powder in the packet down his throat. He was luck that the shopgirl gasped, giggled, and explained that it needed to be blown up the orifice. She gave him a tin straw on the house, as long as he did not do it here. It was only a short straw, which Landless felt he had drawn here, and if ever he needed a Mufi it was now. Bloody corporals, always elsewhere when a man needed a friend to blow powder up his todger.

Hang about...

The bell rang so loud at the departure of the sergeant that it fell from its hook. Baxter Nettles watched him go, nodded, grinned, and patted the bag he had brought with him. He had harpy-crocus to sell and looking at the range of bottle arrayed behind the counter reckoned he might be up for a little trade.

ooOOoo

THE CALYPSO ROAD led everywhere even if often it ventured by nowhere, and young enough for a missed night’s sleep to mean less than promises to orphans Jed Euston unbolted the very small door only to be greeted by a storm. Momentarily he wondered if he had come to the right place at all, but there was no going back when there was a way forward, and youth was ever in a present that rarely had a past. There was plenty of rain, and Jed did not fear rain, he just preferred it when it did the decent and went from up to down, only interrupted for a breather on a roof before dripping on its way. This stuff was in the air, it was the visible part of the wind, and the wind ran here and there, excitable and curious, as if everything was new and everything had to be seen. It was harder to see much further than his arse, but he saw a man and a woman dart out from the shanty below, one hooded, and the other fumbling desperately for a hood of his own.

Fingering the weighty fabric, the glass eyes, the ties within, Jed thanked him for his generosity with a gesture that might have been polite, that might have been grateful, but more likely still was neither at all.

“Ai!” the man looked around desperately, but Jed was already gone, and the location of the storm hood a mystery.

ooOOoo

TALL, WITH A narrow head, his hair a wild yellow halo, M. Sun had to seat himself to see eye to eye with the first visitor of the day. He wore his smile sardonically, his clever hands opening a decanter and pouring two small as he made his guest welcome. The shop was small, if tall, crowded, if neat, and all with rapier in parts and in whole. There was always exactly the space needed for a customer, if never any more. Pietro Piccini accepted one glass, noting the smoothness of the gesture that delivered it to him. He sniffed the glass, he raised an appreciative eyebrow. Murta, Sardinian, usually too sweet for his palette but now a welcome gesture. He toasted M. Sun.

“As you can see, signore,” the voice was very quiet. “It is common for the blade to be made of many. Each part precise al cliente. Today and we deal only in the steel, in metal, and many from the wider world. Mostly, such swords are not well matched. For everyone has a particular fit, a certain taglia, uno stile, si?”

“Si,” Il Maestro respected expertise. He inclined his head politely. It all made perfect sense to him, and was no different to correct tailoring. Here, and that was for the blade. The right rapier for the right person, that fitted, that was right, solo cosi rosey, si? Si!

“This one, as you can feel, is taglia e stile Piccini. For you. The blade was once used by D’Alembord, though it was given up by the sea and closed in an evidence chest. The guard is older, Toledo, an archaic design but it serves the slight twist you give to the point by habit. The hilt and pommel are from your, aha, New World. There is blood in them. The e’ per Piccini. You should wear it… unusually, low I’m sure, doubtless it will become fashionable,” M. Sun clapped together his hands.

“It was put together here?” Pietro Piccini could be charming when he wished, sensing as he did some barrier, some propriety of trust or manners, he let his tongue smooth away any unpleasantness. He flattered, he understood, he pressed his fingers together in the manner of a prayer, he sighed.

“I will see,” M. Sun promised, and took from a pedestal Pietro had missed on entering, a ledger.

ooOOoo

CLOSE, SO FAMILIAR to him, the cut and cram of the buildings might have been in the old town of any decent city if not for how well swept it all was. Doubtless the further one probed into the bailiwick the greater would be the webs, the bad air, and the… snails… but the Cutbush was on one of the proper streets and from what Sam could make out the main streets were cleaner than the local magistrate when the peelers raided the brothel.

The medusa clustered to the ballon light, and the Cutbush was well lit in the fog so that he pushed open the door to a porch that saw boots and coats, before a second door and that sort of thing said a lot about where to keep one’s hands. Which Sam always did, and usually in his pockets. Inside and it was too warm, too early, and the ceiling was too low so that he was forced to stoop a little as he took a cup of grappa and sat on a settle out of the way of the men playing bonesticks and the women talking business in low, thickly accented French.

ooOOoo

“SCUSI,” THE DAPPER little Italian made no effort to move and waited with an eye upon the rags worn by the commodore and his brute. Notably shorter than either man he let the overly polite Sir William bid him by, before leaving them for the fog and the hooded lantern that opened the moment he was clear of them, and in whose company he disappeared from sight.

“Odd fellow, dago of course,” the commodore allowed. He was not a man that scared easily, and so he had been scared not at all in the fog that had beset them since entering the Obscures, and in which they had been lost for an hour or more.

“He was not showing proper respect!”

“Belay that talk there, cox’n,” finally here and Sir William was apt to adopt a more graceful mien. Ganjku had been sure they had been followed, and twice had even been so bold as to direct the commodore down an alleyway and once into a web of spiders so thick it had taken stout blows of their blades to free them both. Now and he entered, brushing himself down, he inspected the shop and enjoyed for a moment the feeling of a proper roof, a civilised window, and the offer of an overstuffed chair for his troubles. Everywhere he looked there were rapier, often in part, some whole, in racks and trays, and an assortment of fripperies that doubtless had some benefit or another. He said, “Looking for a sword, haha!”

M. Sun has anticipated as much. He nodded and taking up his decanter offered Sir William a polite sherry.

“A proper blade mark you, a killing sword, not one these damn ninnypickies for pinking a fop over an affair of a lace kerchief!”

“A blade that is being of power, rich in magic,” added Ganjku.

Sir William blinked, “Steady on, cox’n,” he whispered. He allowed himself a faint other-ranks-lower-deck-still-salt-of-the-earth look with his host. M. Sun returned a small smile, patted the commodore on his hand and pursed his lips to explain.

“I see,” he began. “However, this establishment does not provide for… brutality.”

“We require many weapons,” Ganjku was keen to make himself understood. He did not like M. Sun at all. “Also, wandes. Local guns. I have not found a shop that will supplying us for them. We are making an army, and soon we shall be fighting the moon.”

“Not Monsieur Moon,” Sir William added quickly.

“Gentlemen, you have us mistaken. We supply the right blade, for the right patron. Each is selected, it is the sword they require if not perhaps that which they want. We do not supply to the… ruffianly, the sojar. Wande are not to be had either, you are not milicio, you are certainly not picaroon. But if I might be so bold?”

Ganjku took a step forward ready to strike M. Sun for his rudeness. Sir William coughed lightly, saying, “Cox’n, secure the door for us.”

“Sah,” the goorkha snapped to attention. Before he went however he rounded once more on their host, demanding that he show more respect, “I was being Regimental Sergeant Major and have many medals from the Queen-Empress.”

“Oh dear, really?”

“Cox’n, be about it, smartly now,” the commodore had no wish to have his goorkha attack M. Sun. It would have been terribly impolite. He accepted another glass of sherry as the goorkha stamped off to close the curtain before throwing the bolt across the door.

ooOOoo

THE HOOD MADE things considerably better, overlarge for him anyway the cowl reached nearly to his waist and banged about Jed as he struggled through the rain. The largest gathering were along the shore and similarly hooded. Through the green glass of the fisheye lenses over his eyes he counted a dozen before he ran out of numbers, and there were many dozen beside all hauling at the wretches given up by the sea and the wreckage that had come with them. With half-covered bowls over their heads Chinee ringed the rescuers loosely, facing outward, and the nearest not five paces from where Jed crouched now looking, watching, and flexing his sticky little fingers as if the rain might cause them to rust.

He wished Miqi was here. His friend had been caught up after the ball and dragged home to her mother. Today was not a day when she was allowed out to play. The storm ran at him, over him, then mischievously dragged him back with it so that Jed staggered three, four paces and that was enough for the nearest of the Chinee to spy him as a shape, to call out, but only after striking a fighting pose with one of the great, curved blades they probably thought of as swords. Inside the bowl the man wore he mouthed words, but the meaning was lost in the wind even if Jed had cared what they were. In reply he gestured rudely, then stilled. The eyes of the Chinee were not on Jed at all, they were fixed on a point behind him. “Zounderkite,” Jed cursed himself for an idiot.

Behind him words cut the storm, “Oinc, oinc…”

ooOOoo

THE TABERNA HAD a box placed pride of place and on which Mickey Finn sat and spoke of his memories to his visitor, “It was a holy place, father.”

“That would be Ireland, Michael,” Father Kael agreed. “The Holy Land. Where Jesus was born into this world. Bless you, Michael. It was indeed a Holy Place,” he pressed his hands together in a brief prayer.

Mickey waited, but he was not a patient man, “Where I grew, father. Craic Tarbh, near the Wicklow. Very holy. There was an angel, father.”

“An angel, Michael?” Kael’s bright eyes caught hold of Mickey’s. The bird claw of his hand grasped at the beast’s wrist, but could not encircle it. Kael had an affinity with angels.

“An angel, father. And a holy tree. Grown from the staff of St. Patrick himself. And every morning this great tree showed where in the night an angel had had a poo in it’s branches.”

Father Kael Meagher crossed himself, and fell upon his bony knees in reverence to the tale. “And today Satan’s servant shall burn, Michael! Shall burn to save his wretched soul. But first Michael, first and he shall be put to the question!”

Nodding, Mickey patted the chest, “Would he have to answer that question, father?”

“In boils, in burns, and with his black soul, Michael!”

“That’s grand, but not with words, father?”

The priest was not so swept up in the wings of his faith that he failed to see the colouring about Mickey’s collar. He said, “What is it you have done, Michael?”

“Ah right, now then, I may have proper fucked his jaw, father.”

“Bring him to the place of judgement, Michael. Bring him there and if God’s Hammer has taken the words from his foul mouth then that surely was God’s justice.”

“That’s grand, father. God made me do it. That’s just treacle.”

“The Hammer of God has figuratively broken Satan’s jaw!”

“I figurated him so fucking hard father he’ll choke on soup!” For Mickey was not a man that had the time for long words. He scratched at his pizzle. There had been blood in his piss an hour ago used as he was to whole warty mess of it even he had blanched at the sight of the old familiar buboes weeping worse still.

ooOOoo

ABOVE THE DOOR there was a sign, no different to many found in England, that bore the faded portrait of a young man against a background of swords and cannons. Named for William II of the Netherlands the Looms taberna had been opened by a successful Hollander, who had proven less successful here, and which now lay in the possession of the Gilfallens. It was Alby (for Alban) Gilfallen who opened up at the knocking of those back from the Verde, and to their cheers as they bulled inside against the Lluvia rain. They called this place The Young Frog and it was unusual in the Looms where there were few tabernas, especially ones like this with the low ceiling and the smoke-fogged walls. Several birds perked up at the opening, the nearest (Sgt. Todgers) noticed, nested in a clutter of bottles and whose long, needle beak could have touched the bottom of every one. His guns were in the Albert, his cutlass was on the table, but one look at the magnificent beard and no one doubted it was rosey. “Tea,” he banged on the table. “Soldiers, strong as my oath, sweet as dead kitties,” he returned the looks of his companions, who considered it very odd that a sojar was turning down good drink. “As you were,” Todgers glowered those glances away.

ooOOoo

A HUNDRED WRECKS made the Caelum, a hundred ships in pieces and never a one even halfway whole to make a mess of a palace that crossed much of the upper slope and its outer wall of timbers never dry. Hydra plants might have made it beautiful, instead they gave it a sickly, blotched appearance beneath the unkempt and uneven roofs that were entirely hidden below birds nests, and what birds nest made and became as the decades went by. The sound of the birds was terrible, and made the hair of the roof over the sickly face of the palace seem to crawl and jump with lice. Only in stumps and the occasional awkward tower did the Caelum rise above a single storey, here at least, though it was said that it dribbled down the further slope and into caves below. Where the Looms made by the Troges was artful, gracious even if worn, this was something built by man, and over some years, growing as broken ships were given up by the sea. Built by man, but not by men that knew how to build, clearly. It stank, the smell driven outwards from the Looms where it could offend no one but the birds. And they were clearly not offended.

There were many doors, but only one gate. An attempt had been made at a square or courtyard before that gate. During the Vagues Revolution picaroon and milicio had fought desperately here. Saint Isabella Tesoro had been executed here, at her own insistence. Saccas had fallen here. In his hat and his cloak, his curls and his majesty the statue of Amaro Pargo looked above anyone that crossed that square. Not one streak of bird shit decorated him.

There was a bell, on a pull, that Chen rang. Deadened by the rain it had a lonely, funereal tone. He held an umbrella over his princess. The gate opened reluctantly. The Milicio Re’al eyed them with evident disgust.

The three men were old, bow-legged, and hateful. They wore frayed blue coats with red frogging, bicorns twice as large as they ought to be with tricolour cockades that occupied half the hat’s front. They had horrid whiskers and sour mouths, their shirts were filthy, their clogs were stained, their muskets rattled and their breath when they spoke came from hell. “Aristo!” one snarled.

“Step back, good guardsmen,” Shouzang easily maintained her decorum, though one of the milicio eyed her hungrily. “Step back, I am here with permission, you may not,” she recalled what she had learned, “Interfere with the quality either to seek court or temple.”

“Mal aristo, devil, taker of bread! Vive le revolution!”

“Vive!” cheered his two.

“Hurrah pour Citizen Drouais, vive le Comite Parquet!”

“Vive, vive we say!”

Chen said something in a low voice to Shouzang, who with a small nod drew her sword, still sheathed, and held it before them. The three men recoiled, one hissed, in small steps they backed into the wet shadows, to lurk, and unfortunately for one to cough. The princess smoothly returned the sword to its place high on her waist and under its sash. Her nose a little higher she swept inside.

ooOOoo

THE BLOOD ON the apron was untouched by the rain. The great legs were filthy, the arms fish-meat pale, and the face was that of a pig, smooth and old, with a crackled glaze and one broken ear. There was rough rope for a belt, and primitively hung there were knives and long bodkins, all thin from use like the meat cleaver held in one hand whose edge was concave from sharpening. The other hand held a rope, thinner that that round the waist. The rain concerned this great beast not at all. Jed stumbled backwards so quickly he almost fell. The pigman reeked of confidence, of power, of an all-empowering duty. Jed was reminded of a crusher back home. That peeler had walked the worst of the rookeries with a gold watch chain, fob-heavy and valuable and it had never been filched, not once. The sword-bayonet in Jed’s hand was laughable. The pigman stretched out a hand for it, made to pluck it from the boy who instead took to his heels, not thinking to dance towards the Chinee but away from then all and the Devil take the lot of ‘em!

Oinc, oinc.

Jed made it nearly twenty yards before there was another, and this one worse. Thinner, but otherwise dressed just the same. The fingers of one hand had been screwed to scissor blade and shears. The other hand, horribly gaunt, had a tangled net. The scissorman snatched at Jed and only barely missed him as the boy ducked back. He saw other shapes now, oinc oinc, oinc oinc!

Scarcely could Jed believe he was being cornered on a beach, and by great horrid lumps such as these. He would have wept, but he hadn’t cried since he was a baby. His tears had long since been spent by Mother London, and shaken by his own feelings of fear Jed cursed himself for a fool again, skittered out of the reach of the scissorman. Fumbling in his bag, and finding the first thing that would serve, he twisted the silvery ball and banged it hard.

The sound was of a complete reel of bells, heard from the church tower, and all released in one great cacophony that beat at the ear, thub, so that the rain was swept momentarily away. Jed, prepared, had burrowed down into the ground forearms pressed and locked either side of his head. He felt the sand shudder and go outwards behind the great bellow of sound, but he could hear nothing save for a single high note that pressed on his eyes as he rolled over to see the scissorman and two pigmen, momentarily, floored.

Jed ran so fast he almost caught the diminishing horror of sound he had released, if he was a rabbit then he was damn well a quick one.

ooOOoo

BOTTLES HAD BEEN sunk and cups had been broken, and Josiah Todgers polished off the last of what was not chicken, but something like chicken, that had been cooked with figs and raisins in a glazed pot and which had been the best meal he had had in months. Everyone was drunk. Il Margo was singing, everyone but Sgt Todgers and the amused old lady with one arm and the short, grey hair. This was Marlene Switzer and she was paying the bill. Indeed, if you were a sojar now in Parquet then the Switzer paid most of the bills, especially those concerned with being paid at all. “Ma’am,” he had not stopped sitting to attention since she had joined them.

It seemed damnably odd still that a woman held all the contracts for sojar work. If it did not come from her, then you were just a bandit chancing life in the Verde. She was the sole Condottieri, and if Rolf Bara and Barbosa were the only Hawkwood that still left her in charge, a fact neither man disputed. Yet she seemed so little, quite gentle in fact, and for a while now he had been telling her his service history, strangely eager to impress, and thus please her. She was intrigued by the talk of his smithy, wondered at his choice of Port Mercy, and when on noticing the hour Josiah stood, apologising, telling her he had to be about his business the Switzer shuffled out a small carte d’visite should he and any other sojaring naif care to call together for tea in the Looms in the near future.

By habit the redoubtable sergeant stamped a foot and snapped off a perfect salute. Then hurried out. The rain he had heard made travel down the Needs impossible, the Sceironian Way dangerous, and that left the expense of the volito.

ooOOoo

THE ROUGH WOOING in the Arks had been named for England’s attempt to force the young Mary Queen of Scots to marry Edward Tudor (and thus take the country by matrimony). It was a good name for a taberna, though its proprietor Adam Beattie would have it called a howf, or a bar at worst, he having nothing to do with the Spanish, and only the French because of the Auld Alliance. He made and served an ale that was as bitter as his temper and had never been within fighting distance of any hops. Also, he cooked. Mostly he had a rare talent for the sort of bastard broth that made something from anything, the cauldron never quite empty and the fire never quite out beneath it. Beattie’s Brothe never ran out and never had to be started, but that was not all he cooked. As now when he placed a dish of smoked fish and crisped moss before the Jack, Caleb Dycker, and backed off respectfully, for all that he was an English bastard.

All of the Rough Wooing was occupied by Dyckers eating brown seaweed bread and the brothe, laughing and settled with their weskits half opened and passing the pisspot the other way to the ale jugs, when Mickey Finn walked in. He crossed the room, kicked out the chair opposite Dycker, and sat heavily after tossing a bag of coins on the table between them. The Jack ignored him completely. “Been a busy week, it has,” Mickey bent back on the chair, exuding threat. “Shipwrecked, learning my way about Australia so I am. Had to knock a few down, but that’s the way of it, am I right? And there’s the cut, from me turf.”

There was a respect there for Mickey, he was mugwump and it showed. He had not been dragged out, or beaten for his rudeness. Others might have tried to charm their way into a conversation, but not Mickey. “Listen now, Dycker, for I’ll be saying this only the once,” he bent forward, teeth bared, great hands spread on the table as he rose to lean over the Jack. “We can be allies, or we can be enemies. Now then, I’m a naif but I’m also a Finn. I can be your mugwump, or I’m dying in this room so I am, and taking you,” Mickey lifted one hand to thrust a filthy finger at Dycker, “with me.”

Caleb Dycker was not as large as Michael Finn, but he was not far off. There was more fat, easily as much muscle, all wrapped in a spotless shirt, a silver dressed weskit, and braces of glittering sharkskin. Almost bald, the head tilted only enough for the cold, dead little pink eyes there to fasten on Mickey’s. Mickey said, “Ah shite,” and then the knife Dycker had been eating with was slammed through his visitor’s hand so hard that it jutted two inches below the table beneath.

“Kill this Irish filth for me,” said the Jack of the Arks.

ooOOoo

HE HATED THE rain, and the feeling was reciprocated. It was coming down quicker than Robley’s trousers in the presence of another officer’s wife and by the gods that was a memory of a last ditch stand against the Sword Eunochs of Kali that Cornelius Coffin would be happy to forget. Grumpy, he banged on the door, and when an eye-level wicket opened to see who it was that wanted to let the weather in he cursed them blue as his toes until it was thrown open. The Milicio Re’al glared at their latest visitor with the loathing every soldier had ever felt for anyone that let the cold air into a nice warm billet.

Raising a fist to ear-height, Coffin said, “Bon-joor camarades, vive Citizen Drouais, any damn arsitos inside? Jay swee the new aristo booter, sill voo play?”

They shuffled hurriedly out of the way of such an important person as the new aristo-booter! “Vive Parquet!” they cried, utterly failing in their attempt to smarten themselves up, but the corporal in him appreciated the effort.

“Vive, vive, also this bottle of brandy given up by the sea not two weeks ago. I’ll just ‘ave a shufti, if that’s all toot bon?”

Stuck on gate duty and already twitchy at being bullied by another damn aristo the milicio here smartly accepted the proffered bottle.

“Not got any barking irons I can borrow have you boys?”

“Quoi?”

He had noticed that the milicio here all had actual muskets, genuine froggy stocky, bent bayonets and everything. “Barkers, pistols?” he explained. They dug around and did produce an ancient horse pistol that rattled when it was loaded, but Coffin did not care. “Vive!” he tapped a temple with his hook.

“Vive!”

“Kushti.”

ooOOoo

HE WOULD HAVE preferred rice flowers, but however rudely cultivated the rough little blooms with their long stalks would most likely do the same job, or so Chen hoped. Amongst them a green bronze bowl could be seen, half filled with coins that had grown into one another so that the more recent lay like petals amongst the buckets of wild plants and grasses. He dropped a coin into the company of those already there, and teasing a thread from his shirt hem bound the stalks into a bundle that he handed to his mistress. Sheltered from the rain not so much by the porch as the edge of the guano field that coated it, he bade Princess Shouzang light the bundle from the fish oil lamp that hung to one side of the arch.

The Caelum was a confusion within. As open to the elements as it was enclosed to the world (and they had only skirted the interior). Passing knocks, and creaks, distant laughter and closer sounds of crying. The rain in places had worked its way through the guano to drip filthily into puddles on floors that were never even, often bare, worn and weary heartwood. The Caelum had been raised about the temples she had come here to see. Like a siegeworks that dwarfed the city it besieged. Ugly, fetid, jealous of the fine coralline temple that managed to be both open to the sky and sheltered from the rain. Shouzang dabbed the air with the herb smoke, and then more forcefully behind them as Chen moved on. There were ghosts here, old ghosts, and they would not follow them further.

ooOOoo

WITH HIS FREE hand Mickey tipped the table over and managed to stamp on it once before he took a cudgel right in the kidneys and another across his shoulders, then head. He bellowed as he stamped on the table again until it broke, but by now blows were cracking into him. Driven to his knees he had to roar to reach out, grab at feet, and pull them down so that there was momentarily a spill that gave him just the time to yank the broken wood away from his hand, and then the knife as he got at least one good kick into the nearest of the Dycker’s. Free at last, Mickey had at Caleb, catching him one hard in the chest in return for Dycker giving him a clout about the ear, then Mickey was down, dragged back and had to kick like a scalded English boy on his first day of school. Up and he smashed the face of the nearest Dycker, got a foot in the stomach of another, and threw off an arm that had laced his neck. Then a fierce one got him right under the ribs and Mickey Finn doubled just long enough for too many hand to get him, to drag him back, so that he was held tight as two virgins no matter that he spat, and cursed, and tried to kick and throw them off.

A woman with a dead eye and an apple swelling that side of her face caught at Mickey’s shirt and tore it open, then cut free the filthy kerchief. Her heavy knife touched his ear, “Last words, bog-trotter?”

He appreciated that. She was a grand woman to offer, and he laughed at his fate, Mickey Finn did not spit in her eye, that was not the way of a true Irish hero. He jerked his chin higher, for why make her saw away at him like a pig? He worked free a loose tooth, he hacked at the blood from his smashed nose, he said, “There’s two bits in me weskit pocket, darlin’, do me a haircut to go with the shave.”

“Kill him,” said Dycker, with less care than he had shown when choosing his meal.

ooOOoo

IT WAS NOT so much draughty as downright windy, and the air that blew was positively ancestral. Nothing was refreshed, the stink was just moved about the place in gusts so that the lopsided corridor smelled of terrible kitchens when Coffin buttonholed the servant in the outsize coat and the mismatched clogs. It might have been an impressive coat, Coffin had seen less decoratives on generals, but it was old, and patched, where it had been patched at all, and the servant had his wig tied on with string. “Bon-joor, parlay the Queen’s fucking English?”

“Oui,” said the servant, “Do you?”

Coffin liked that. “Good man, I’m looking for the gardens?”

“We have many gardens. Also, a lion.”

That was impressive. “Not those gardens,” he named those he sought.

The servant raised impressive eyebrows and put down the cloche he had been carrying on the floor. It slid two feet before, with a bang, whatever had been inside escaped. Neither man chose to comment on it. Instead, the servant held out a hand and Coffin, who was always keen to maintain the fine old tradition of bribery and backhanders, slipped him a few salis for the trouble. Rotten it might be here, but Coffin’s keen instincts told him that this was not a place to get lost. He had passed a number of doors and steadfastly deferred on the temptation to open even one of them. Round the last corner there had been two vultures, and in his long service in India he had learned the hard way to steer clear of vultures such as those, vultures with eyebrows. Hand on his borrowed pistol well inside the specially deep pockets he preferred, Coffin indicated with his hook that the servant should lead and he would follow.

ooOOoo

YET TO SLEEP but recently sponge cleaned in a little place Celebrente had introduced him to, Major the Lord Robley was (for the moment only) replete. The Looms was just the sort of place where a chap such as he should be, Robley firmly believed. Unlike so many Freds his military career had been spent almost entirely in India, sent with the Loamshires to assist John Company. Such was an unpopular posting with the gold ropes and dancing shoes of Whitehall, and his brother officers had to a man been there until scandal blew over back home. He had always had a knack for finding the right sort of places, and Estudier was perfect for his needs. It was known more widely as Bishops, for it was the refectory of the daring little school sponsored by the Opium Bishop and where the old girls and even boys ate. And they ate well, on tiny courses. Though supposedly private it was not private enough for the celebrated Major Robley and the influential Celebrente.

Robley was perhaps in love. Or at least, so he supposed. And if Celebrente was a cortigiana, an influence-peddler that was paid handsomely as a companion, then he was hardly a jealous man given that he himself was apt to wander. Surprisingly, he found the power of women here not at all disagreeable. Good luck to ‘em, he thought and all power to their wicked eyes. His bum had been slapped a number of times at the ball and by god hadn’t he forced a horsewhip himself upon any number of bibis back in India?

In his new uniform, rakishly worn, cleaned to within an inch of many a hard sponge, he toasted Celebrente, proud of what a damned fine couple they were and enjoying the thought of what a tattle they would have made in dreary, dull old London. He had questions of course. Let the likes of obtuse sergeants and cocky corporals seek their intelligence on their bellies like impudent worms, he was a lord and an officer beside, and he sought his answers in the bottom of a wine bottle.

They had danced and earlier he had passed a few hands with a borrowed deck, both of which saw his purse rattling. Something he intended to rectify by blowing it all on the best the house had to offer.

ooOOoo

“AH, NOT AGAIN,” Caleb Dycker pressed at the mark with his thumb, rubbing with his spit at the blood to see if the mark was true. He bent forward so that the wild eye of Mickey Finn could not fail to see him, no matter where the milky orb of the other did wander. “How long has you had that, whoreson?”

“Me mark? Always,” said Mickey. The funny star, three points up one down had been there since birth.

“That’s a beast right there,” the woman with the knife said sharply to Dycker.

“Ain’t it though? Right well then, listen to me beast, you is a naif, so take this as a telling. Few gets another go, but let’s see what it is this beast does. You want to speak with this man again, you wave a flag and you comes steady, and you don’t make my eye. I will gut you, boy. I will make you sausages. And I will take them as you champion, and we shall make cripples of all of them. You understand of course, boy? Has to be standards…”

Oddly, Mickey did.

“Teach him a bit of a lesson,” Dycker ordered. “Then send him home, to soft pillers and scented sheets. Have his mummy tuck him in, like a good little beast.”

“Dycker,” they all agreed. Mickey was dragged off and this time he did not fight them. Time to take his medicine. He laughed at them, laughed at what they thought they could do to him. He would show them what Irishmen were made of!

ooOOoo

CLOSE TO MERIWEATHER’S and Mouse locked the door behind him, immediately shuddering in the storm and running for the shelter of the taberna. He hammered on the door until able to point out it was he, whereupon he was let in to a scene of angry recrimination. Daylight and the shutters were closed tight. There were pistols on the tables, muskets too, and Captain Meriweather far from his usual affable self had spittle in his beard and was waving at the crowded room with a gun decorated with inlaid mermaids. Mouse did not like guns at the best of times, and so went very small.

“Me? I had to go up and swear to Jiangshi that I plotted not against the Leather! Me!” it was clearly outrageous, but it was not the Jack and his wife that Meriweather reserved for his ire. “Pair of bastards, I knew they were bad salt. That commodore, a captain of captains, and we knows what the Royal Navy does to pirates, eh? It makes them dance, my beauties. It makes them dance the foremost jig. And his cabin boy? Looks like a witch, tiger-striped, we all know what the means?” Some did not, and so Meriweather told them. A spy. A spy for the moon. Come here to rob them all, and take them as slaves. It was not the happiest of returns.

ooOOoo

MADE OF SHIPS it remained a ship, however land bound and however many thousand steps up from the sea. Not the breezy poop and cabins of the ship’s officers, nor even the passenger deck such as he had haunted on the Thelassa, but the bowels, the wet arse of every ship, still above the bilges (but not by much). The decking floor gave a little under his boots so that he left the faintest impression and a brief puddle with every step. The footprints would be gone well before the hour, but then so might he.

ooOOoo

THERE WAS A crowd, silent, despite the rain which in the Arks was very bad. In truth much of it was wash from the Loom Falls which had gone from a simple flow to a waterfall that, finding the Needs, ran down its winding streets and raised yards, to wash through the Arks which (subtly changing) could never reliably know where the little rivers would go. It was, without any doubt, Satan’s work. Wood and worthy flammables had been gathered quickly enough, the Arks had just undergone a night of cleansing and stores of each had long been laid in, and remarkably for once not all used. But the wet made the fire impossible, Satan’s work, yet Father Meagher was not so easily beaten.

Face drawn, his frail frame enlivened by the energy of his proven faith, the ragged scarecrow that he was grinned in the way only a true believer could when facing every hardship, for every hardship was a test. His foul wives protected him with brooms, for Satan had sent Beelzebub’s snails and Moloch’s spiders to him again in the night, and knees bloody from prayer Father Meagher had not slept. He did not tremble in the rain, he instead welcomed it, palms uppermost, taking comfort from the test. He stopped only when he came to the witch, Ambrose, still bound to the stake whose ironwood had doubtless once been an important support for a building of which only it now remained.

“Witch…”

Ambrose did not reply. Ambrose could not reply, because Ambrose as well as being beaten had had his jaw broken in at least three places. His face was a rictus of pain, and he twitched when a knife was taken to his clothes. There were many there to watch this. They stood in a crescent behind Father Meagher, they littered the windows above, and they crammed in the lanes and walkways higher up that overlooked the scene.

“Witch, thou shalt repeat after me, so you shall. Say now, pater noster, qui es in caelis…” said Kael, but Ambrose could not. The priest nodded, “Witch!” he declared, and perhaps half the crowd cheered, of the remainder a half dozen only glared gleefully at Ambrose, one of whom scanned the crowd carefully. In the rain of the Lluvia he had found his way back to the Arks, but it would not last and he wanted to drag back the shitfinger that had done for him only a few days before when it ceased entirely. That man touched the back of his head, assuring himself that for now it passed for whole. It was very dark back there, as was to be expected when some backstabbing whore’s-wipe had bloomed his head not a half mile from here.

ooOOoo

The rain was painful, hitting her like a bath upturned and with more in line so that she shrieked, sat up, and fought against it to stand with what remained of her drowned dignity. It had been raining off and on for days, or at least to her experience, and she had had quite enough of it. Queen Astrid Beans drew her sword and waved at the sky, but the sky did not care.

“Careful, miss,” said the same evil corporal that had been such an oik only the day before. He smiled his hungry smile.

Much to his surprise, she pushed the sword back into the loop of her bag. “Bugger orf,” she said. Then when he and his would not, Queen Beans turned her back on them all and stalked away daring them to damn well follow, and damn well follow all but the nasty corporal would not!

“Get her!” he ordered. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

These were not kindly men and caring women. They had scores to settle with the whole world, and this bit of it especially. Still though, that was Astrid Beans. “What if she tells me mum?” asked one vile oaf.

“Fuckin’ hell,” swore Badger, He threw his hands in the air in disgust.

ooOOoo

NAKED, AMBROSE JERKED in fear when the mark to the left of his breast was sharply prodded. Father Meagher had a hot ember fetched from a covered pot kept for the purpose and pressed against it, but it did not smoulder. He nodded, “Witch!” he declared, and this time all those looking groaned, but no one cheered. “Witch, witch, witch, witch, witch!” he let Satan’s rain spill from the brim of his hat into his cupped hands, blessed it, and flung it in Ambrose’s face, where it stung him so greatly he jerked aside no matter the pain that it brought from his jaw. Father Meagher panted. He shook, in all his years of faith had his faith never been so rewarded. He had come here for a trial, but no witness had been brought. So he tested Ambrose, he tested the witch, tested him in the manner impossible unless in such a way, the witch helpless, the testing observed. Kael reached for his bible, but he had lost that in his deliverance to this place.

“There is Satan here, he walks amongst you,” Kael knew this absolutely and for such a gaunt figure his voice was powerful, reaching even through the rain to even the furthest onlooker. “He is with you, he is here so he is, and his chosen people the English are his loyal servants! Trust not the English for they are the Devil’s spawn. And this, this witch, is just one of many,” there were cries, shouts of dismay, but no one doubted him. “Satan walks amongst us even now, and no one will speak for this man?”

One would. One did, “Cut him down,” one voice demanded.

ooOOoo

THEY HAD ENJOYED considerably worse digs, and recently too. Indeed, their digs were almost palatial when compared to the ditch, patched tent, or leaky wagon that was the circus life that for so long had been theirs. Too wet to perform (even William, quite the best barker, had to admit defeat) the brothers, suitably rested, had eaten bouillabaisse from huge glass bowls and stood now under the extended awning of Le Nouveau Parisien, but which was more basely called Stripey Norman’s. Cornelius could really see where once a real effort had been made with the frontage, with effortless curls and curves in the Troges style, but which now had faded, splintered, and been repainted so many times whole details were obscured. The green windows were packed with hats, common hats, workaday hats, and special hats. It was impossible to see past the hats in the window, and the three wide steps that lead to the door were packed with picaroon.

For the most part young men and women, their shirts were dirty, their britches worn, their boots low at the heel, scuffed, and holey. They had rings in their ears, and their hair, what could be seen, was wild. The rapiers that most wore were in a better state. The wande-pistole that perhaps half had about them less so. But their hats were immaculate, even when old, and it was clear that when a picaroon found just the right hat that was them till death. The hats were ornamented, most with shells, all with a long needle, some with several. Two had bolero masks on the band, some had feathers, one a finger bone. Cornelius was sure that the ornaments were not mere artifice, but each meant something. What that was he could not even begin to imagine.

The loudest spoke up, “I’ll fight you to enter,” though not to the cheers and jeers he was expecting.

Cornelius bent down to face the picaroon, and said very softly, “Move.”

They all did, shuffling sideways, with no few digs and smirks. William grinned, he rather liked them. They were one step from beggars but were revered in principle (if less so in person) by Parquet. These were the spiritual heirs to the piracy on which the state was founded, or had been, before a revolution on whose side they had fought and which still they did so when meeting a pack of milicio. It was a performance, a way of life, a calling, and he had to admire that. Where they really any different from the circus turn? The spirit was much the same, and so thinking he followed Cornelius into the shop.

ooOOoo

THERE WERE TWO dozen of them. Big men, surly men, the sort of weasel-men that took strength from other men, and the nasty, cold eyed men that just hated everyone and so for the moment were with those that hated something specific. Not a one had been born here, and they were Arks men, with no hope of being anything other and so fiercely proud of what it was they were. And what they were, were Roaring Boys. They hated this place, they hated it for its wrongness. They hated nieces, and hectors, mollies, the quality, they hated picaroons and they hated the pandies. They hated not because they had always had nothing, but because in many cases, and in the wider world, Kael saw, they had been something. They hated the church, and they hated Father Meagher, these men that had been ship captains, aldermen, that had been colonels, or great sways in the rookeries. One had been a magistrate, one had been a squire, and there were others that had been greater still but would not speak of it. Kael saw this, saw what others that had gossiped of them had not, and he understood them, and he in turn hated them for it. There were men of God there too, he was sure, and one of them, the boldest, had once called himself bishop. That man John Hickham.

“Release Ambrose,” Hickham demanded, to the rumble of the Roaring Boys. His face was grey stubble, his hair a patched thatch. He had a good voice, and a strong heart, but he had planted his banner whether he knew it or not.

So Father Kael said, “No.” And Father Kael said, “Sinners,” and then he said full to Hickham, “Apostate!”

The foul wives were knocked down by the Roaring Boys, and Father Kael when he called to God to strike them down, was instead thrown to the ground and treated to the boots. But God did not answer, or if he did then he moved in very mysterious ways. With a dragging foot, and a broken arm, and with ribs cracked and blood running from ears and arse came God’s answer from the crowd. If God moved at all then he had sent a beast.

ooOOoo

IT WAS WIDELY acknowledged that the best shops were to be found in the Obscures, or rather the craftsmen and tinkers that filled them with produce. Fewer and more specific were to be found in the Grails, and this one had been in a number of hands over many decades, the result of which crammed all about them now. The current owner, the milliner they called Stripey Norman, played up to it in a suit of broad red, green, and yellow. In his space within the groaning stacks he worked leather with a small flat iron, that he replaced on a rack, over a flame, when he spied his new customers. He was delighted for the younger picaroon loved to haunt his shop but they were notoriously penueous. His face dropped when he read the Atkins brothers in a better light.

“Size six, high crown, bent brim to one side? Red… brown, russet, clearly,” he was English, or at least a Cornishman, which was close.

“Sir, we are fellows of the circus.”

“Yes, quite, so you will need a domino for that. Your smaller chum that is, for you sir are no picaroon!”

“Well, nor…” William made to speak.

“...I am not, indeed.” It was rather hot in the shop. He saw about the place and peeking from Stripey Norman’s sleeve a great many froglets. Since the milliner ignored them, Cornelius thought it best to do the same. If he noticed the interruption, Stripey Normal did not react to it. Instead he was already halfway up the second closet pile, the whole contents of the shop seeming to sway towards them as he did so. He returned with a hat, as described, and which did fit William perfectly. Cornelius snapped the brim, and bent down when the shopkeeper wished to attach the half-size domino. Satisfied, Stripey Norman bade them each a good evening, and thanked Cornelius for not hitting him.

“I never…” but sometimes, he knew, he just had that effect on people. William had already left, was already babbling with the youths outside. So it fell to Cornelius to say, “...Is there a bill?”

“Really? Well, that is surprising. Eighty salis, sir.”

It was William that normally did for the monger, but he was busy, and so Cornelius a little ashamed for having bullied the man, albeit unknowingly, agreed. Only adding, “I shall bring the money round when my brother has it.”

“If you would, if you would,” for Stripey Norman was already back in the world of hat.

ooOOoo

WELL OFF THE shopping street and deep within the Obscures were the Stilte, an enclosed lane of four houses, as a whole walled, and entered by an arch over which an old sign hung wetly declaring something in what might have been Dutch. That arch boasted a man and a woman on guard, both with an orange sash about one shoulder and rusted breastplates, huddled about a lantern that reached their knees and over which a dozen or so tiny medusa had been drawn towards and added to the light. It was quiet. Terribly, awfully quiet. The houses by their shape in the fog had the bulging appearance of a man rich enough to drink himself to death and the habit to see to it.

Hidden, his own shadows brought with him, one man watched it all. He was not alone but to all his efforts now he sought to change that.

ooOOoo

THEY HAD TO be there, they had to see it end, to make sure it ended at all and Mulciber had taken three long steps towards the violence before it had stilled with the appearance of Mickey Finn. Rarely had he or Archie seen a man so beaten, and neither of them were strangers to such sights. It was a wonder Mickey could walk at all, yet he did, with a cracked smile, and as the crowds hushed it was to strain to hear him as he went by Father Meagher, to come to where John Hickham stood, aghast and clearly surprised at the sight.

“Come all you heroes, wherever you be,” Mickey softly sang, “That walk by the land, or do sail by the sea. Come hear the words of well dying man, Be sure and by blood shall you remember them.”

Hickham recoiled, but Mickey caught him up by the lapels. Before the Roaring Boys could set upon him, he spilled the pair of them to the ground, he on top, and spitting and spraying blood with every word screamed into Hickham’s face, “Leave him be, kill the witch, leave him be, kill the witch!” head sawing back and forth whilst Hickham bellowed back, but in fear. “Kill the witch!” Mickey’s one good eye blazed, he hawked and let a lump of his lung drop on Hickham’s face. “Leave him be, leave him be, leave him be!”

“Leave him be!” Hickham squealed.

“Grand of you!”

“Jesus…” Archie, watching, shook his head. They stared as Mickey Finn rolled off, managing a laugh. They saw the Roaring Boys pick up Hickhan, and make their exit. Then the wretched Father Meagher was on his feet, and ordered Ambrose laid down. At his order all those watching found a rock of coralline, a piece of timber, anything. They took turns to press Ambrose, to crush him, to bury him, and Mulciber took Archie away when there was no longer any doubt that the witch-apparent was dead.

ooOOoo

AT LEAST SIX good hours in a camp bed and a late breakfast of kedgeree, devilled fish livers and an awful lot of good, burned doorsteps of seaweed and sourdough bread and Charles Bullen felt fit to take on the world, no matter that he was wetter than that fateful night not two weeks ago when he had been shipwrecked. The yard was sloped, cambered, entirely built to cope with the rain (though he had been told it was worse outside the Delves). He stood, the overlong and frustratingly flexible sword in one hand, the other on his hip. He was masked, a gambeson had been buckled about chest and leading arm. He barely managed to block Black Bob’s light thrust only to struggle as the grinning bear of a man seemed to wrap his rapier about Bullen’s so that Charles danced away, much to his cursing. Forward, stamp, forward, always forward, step in, step in, master the blade. Black Bob made it seem deceptively easy but much to Charles’ own surprise he was getting the hang of it. Or at least, mostly the top of the blade went where he wanted it to go.

“To have elan, you must have the blade,” said Black Bob. “This is the Italian style, it is attack, forward, always forward! Mark your man, notice only your man!”

Privately Charles had thought it would be somewhat vulnerable to multiple enemies, but sensing the thought Black Bob had told him that the Italian style had one all-important facet to it; alone was the duello, in battle one fought side by side.

“Gentlemen,” Herr Doktor Puffendorf, his face hidden by the short, stiffened fish leather brim of his cap clapped his hands for their attention.

“Quite so!” Black Bob, no drier than Charles swept his rapier into the salute. He grinned savagely. The rain was warm and the two men steamed.

“Zer little man is returned,” Herr Doktor had been asked to report when Mufi had reappeared, and therefore that they were ready to go. Wherever it was that they were to go.

“Keep it, keep it,” Black Bob insisted of Charles when he made to return the rapier. Then as they walked back inside, “Good man, Corporal Thamake. Damn good man. Couldn’t go anywhere without Corporal Thamake now could we, eh?”

Charles Bullen was willing to agree to whatever Black Bob had to say. He knew officers like Black Bob, it would all be bloody glory or glorious death and damn the eyes of anyone that said different. He took the offered change of shirt, and then a larger bundle of coat, hat, and other things too. There was tea by the bucket, and all at last seemed to make sense. Charles had no idea what was going on, but someone senior did. All then did indeed make sense at last.

ooOOoo

HE WOKE, AN hours sleep hardly enough, the sheets damp about him as he picked his way naked across the rugs in search of a chamberpot. The room was enormous, the old bed just the same, covered in throws and lace as if rather than being changed cleaner ones were just thrown on top each week. Two great windows stood closed to the world and a civet cat watched Blyth as he pissed mightily and with considerable satisfaction. Back in the bed Mawu too stirred, and he turned to see her eyeing him with a smile that too suggested a cat, if he was the mouse. He jumped back in to join her. Gods, but she was a magnificent woman! Fashionably rounded but without the waxy youth of her older, fellow members of the quality true, long legs that he stroked happily with the back of one hand, but unsure if he had it in him for yet another tumble.

“I had better be seeing us out in the house,” she teased him. “Else Hanger’ll be ‘ere thinking you up to no good.”

“Your milicio capitan?”

“Aye, my Hangbe.”

Blyth took up the chance to stop his caresses and asked after water for a wash. The air was thick with their scents and he doubted he smelled now any better. Besides, he had seen this Hanger when they had first entered the house. Not a big fellow, but with sharp, smart eyes and a clear devotion to Mawu. Blyth knew a killer when he saw one, and Hanger was that, albeit one that observed the niceties of civilised society. He would probably have let Blyth find his trousers before dropping him dead, should he ever prove to be a threat. Which thought flushed him of any immediate desire more effectively than simple exhaustion.

ooOOoo

EVENING, AND FASHIONABLY rumpled in the clothes brought to him. Pale silk and linen, and a cane of the same colour and Selwyn waited patiently whilst Codfish inspected the coat and collar with bone tweezers to clean him of the early vermin. Each of the picks popped as they were plucked until his serviento satisfied, Selly was escorted to the door. It was raining. “Oh dear, oh dear, it all looks so terribly tiresome. Rain, Codfish, it makes everything so wet.”

But the valet had thought ahead, and outside the door stood a sedan chair right where a short canopy (erected for the occasion) ended. A full glass was presented and Selly deigned to make the effort to raise it to his lips. It was all just so terribly tiresome. “Is it far, Codfish?”

“No sir, I took the liberty of having it moved to a place closer than the edge of William Lane. I explained that you had great matters to ponder and pondering is never best done near to William Lane.”

“Short sentences, Codfish.”

“Sir.”

ooOOoo

IF HE DID not much like towns, then he certainly had no love for cities, and this was something of the first and two of the other. He certainly did not care to be here long after dark. The shop closed, he knocked and was admitted, expected as he was.

ooOOoo

IT WAS DARK outside and the rain seemed to have slackened. Monday had dreamed himself back aboard The Thelassa, the sounds of the wind and the creaking of the house conspiring to send him to a place of darkness and the slave stink of the convict deck once more. Nonetheless he awoke refreshed, and to find good clothes laid out for him. He admired himself in the mirror, the archaic boots and baggy britches. The heavy shirt and long weskit suited him very well he thought. He turned quickly about when he saw in the same reflection that he was not alone, for perched on a stool, legs drawn up under herself, was a girl in a cotton shift, her hair bound high under a rich scarf, her fingers running wooden beads between her fingers as she eyed him with only passing interest.

ooOOoo

TEATRO FOLK WERE not morning folk. Both the best and the worst of them had access to great cavernous rooms of costumes so that the line between their own clothes and those of the teatro was always to some degree rather bendy. Meticulous Browne thought he looked rather fetching, and certainly preened at anything even half reflective so that in his daring striped topcoat, red topper, and gloriously generous cravat he might have been a fop save that he had washed, kept the pancake for his performance, and in comparison was not so much over the top but instead was, to Meti’s mind, right where the top should be. The rain fell straight down upon the Grails in waves, as if shaken from some great awning in the sky. The visitors to the Grails either the very best, or on their very best, there was a thriving service labour and so for two salis the great Meticulous crossed the bailiwick under the protection of a colossal umbrella held by one wan girl whose appearance clearly belied her strength. In this he was better set than the bedraggled pair that almost walked into him coming the other way, one a great bear of a man and of whom Meti’s trained eye for competition recognised as being the Man Titan Cornelius Atkins. His brother, the rain pulling at the brim of his daring hat, managed to share the brolly as if coming upon a doorway.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Meti touched his own brim. “A bracing sort of a day?”

“Bracing? A slight drizzle,” allowed William Atkins, shivering slightly.

“Get out of the rain,” outside and the rich boom of the strongman warned his little brother of the shove about to come. “We must get indoors.”

“We must be upon our way,” William agreed smoothly.

Meti touched a hand to his pocketbook, buttoned and sewn against the fish. It was not that he did not trust fellow performers, he just knew that few of them could ever act against their nature. “I wish you well of the day, sir.”

“Get out of the rain,” now a growl, “It ain’t safe.”

The pair hurried off leaving Meti to wave away a fly that had come in out of the wet. Strangely he could not remember flies, wasps, or other nasty insects since coming here. A sedan chair swayed by, the boots of the second bearer splashing him as it hurried past.

ooOOoo

IT WAS A key-and-a-half, a bastard-key, long as his forearm and topped with four jutting blades that together formed the complex cuts for quite the most ludicrous lock he suspected he was ever likely to see. Archie blinked, no, that was optimistic at best. The key clutched to his chest he hurried through the Obscures only to pull up short at the whispered words he almost tripped upon in his path. It did not matter that he spoke scarce a word of it, the tone and intent were unmistakable. Unmistakable but facing the other way. Wherever one stood within a fog it would be as if you were in some clearing and that too was the case here. To Archie’s right and the fog was thicker, he could see how it darkened and not to the shape of building, arch, flue or statue. A darkness that moved, if subtly, and which stretched out a languid limb softly towards him. Mulciber caught his friend about the shoulders, breaking the moment.

“Qui est la?” a voice called out.

Mulciber whispered, “Let me speak to them.”

Archie nodded, pushing the key under his coat and keeping close to his friend.

ooOOoo

THERE WERE NO performances this night, the matinees had provided only thin crowds and had acted as valuable rehearsals in a community that simply expected its acteurs to know their roles. As it was the Cirque de la Vie, for four nights only, occupied a tiny backstreet teatro marked only by a faded sign that declared itself to be the Caverna.

“This is the place,” William tapped on the board. It had little in common with the grand teatro in the centre of the bailiwick, and indeed other than a door to one side of what was otherwise a squat tenement marked with the notice there was nothing to indicate it was a teatro at all. The door was not open, and neither would it to William’s urging. Cornelius grunted, but deciding that they might have to pay for any damage instead urged his brother to keep an eye out for milicio or pandy. Digging about in William’s bag he retrieved what he was looking for, bent down, and within five minutes the lock clicked open. The door closed behind them both, and the lessening rain soon covered up any obvious sign of their having been there at all.

ooOOoo

THE VIVEMENT WERE were a curling line of tenements on the very edge of the Grails, whose many open arches might have appeared strange at other times but with the rain made perfect sense now. The rain striking the Grails was funnelled, flued, or just ran off it in streams seen and unseen and here together so that it gurgled through the arches and into the darkness below. The tenement was chipped, its plaster was as missing as it was not, but the pantile roof was in good repair, and every window was shuttered against the strange weather. Meti paid off his brolly at the door marked with the first ten of the listed chambre, ducked inside and chose the second of the four doors on this floor. There were crabs about the stairs, clicking their claws at the interruption, and Meti ignored them as he knocked three times and waited for an answer.

“Merde!” he heard from the other side, then a rattle of bolts and the door was thrown open to an astonished, “By Harry, come in dear boy, enter, enter!”

ooOOoo

“WHERE HAVE YOU been, cox’n?” Sir William demanded to know. The goorkha had expressed a need to be upon some business of his own and left the commodore alone, in the Obscures until he came upon the Cutbush. As the hours had passed the commodore had grown testy, and was on the point of making his own way back to Port Mercy when Ganjku finally appeared, offering an apology so formerly, that Sir William contented himself with a gruff word and an order that they were to leave immediately.

It had been hoped that Mr Hellmor would have found them also, but the commodore recognised that the chap, decent as he was, had Important Matters of Duty to see to first, and such that surely were a higher priority than bluff old Naval officers such as himself. “Very well, I do not appreciate travelling by dark but needs most clearly must.”

“It was being of the utmost importance, sir.”

“Clearly so, cox’n. Clearly so!”

ooOOoo

HIS UNIFORM HAD broken. Not that it was a proper uniform anyway of course, the Pensioner Guards had worn dark blue tunics and trousers, and their hats had been kepis but whatever the uniform there was, Sergeant Arthur Landless had always worn it with pride. He was bathed, but his boots had lost their shine, and the creases had fallen out. All this was mysterious to the worried soldier since he and young Mufi had always enjoyed an effortless spit and polish no matter the dire scrapes and filthy jungles they had ventured into. He stroked his magnificent whiskers, satisfied that they at least would never see his martial pride wanting. He was not alone in the volito, having fallen in with a pair of Tesoro milicio venturing to the Looms and who, though not in their ceremonials, had more braid and glitter than a charge of the light dragoons. Landless was not fooled, they might look like Windsor chocolate-box boys but they were a pair of hard bastards despite the earings and scented moustaches.

“Good of you, boys,” he wallowed in the comradeship of the old swaddy. “Nice to be milicio, eh? That’s me too soon,” he winked.

“May non, you are a soldier, eh?” it was too much to identify any accent in particular.

“I am, boys. I am. Once when the Maharaja of Bakavaas had me with h’an h’elepant…”

“No,” the other interrupted. “You are a sojar, not a milicio.”

“Not yet, not yet. The Penprase Milicio. New it is, I’ll have meself drilled and smartened up or it’s jankers for me for a week! I won’t put up with any of my nonsense you shall see!”

The two milicio looked at one another. They had paid for Arthur’s ride and now thought themselves to be in the presence of a madman. Naif, tch…

“Problem, boys?” Arthur bristled, fox-eyed and bold as boiled buttocks.

There were no new milicio. There would be no new milicio. There could be no new milicio, besides which if the milicio knew anything better than how to unlatch a ladies window it was the gossip of the quality. “Lord Penprase,” explained the second, “that danced with the Marchesa Liber?”

“Did he, did he by Rati’s saucy priesthood? That sounds like him,” Sergeant Landless approved. Blyth was a proper gentleman. A rogue, an adventurer, the sort who’d wrap himself in the flag and die to the last man (after having sent a reliable sergeant off to carry word of his heroic death up the due chain of command). Not the mad, toffee-arsed sort that gave his life for Queen and Country taking twenty shots to the back the first time he commanded the company to give fire.

“...has her own milicio,” his companions had still been talking. “And you would need a proper sword too.”

“Got one, secure in the Albert, says so in the regulations.”

“Like this,” the milicio patted his pig-sticker. Like a bloody needle it was, sharp, and thin, and no good for anything but sewing up a wound. Landless snorted. It weren’t proper soldiering. Not like he had done with Barbosa.

The volitio had risen rapidly in the increased downpour of the Loom Falls, and juddered violently as it came to a halt, caught momentarily in clamps that topped a pier and onto which everyone hurriedly dashed to depart to.

ooOOoo

AWARE OF A good trot, splashing, and then at last a certain amount of stairs when the knock came of the door Selly sighed at the efforts expected of him, and opened the door himself before exiting into the room in which the sedan chair had brought him. It was not a day for outdoors.

Ringed by an upper gallery, furnished in wood and brass, a chair had been set for him and the bearers that had brought him here were warned to wait without. This, it seemed, was the auction house though he appeared to be early. “Am I expected to wait for other patrons?” he asked of the short man in the tight hat that grinned at him from the far side of a long table.

“Expect as you would expect,” said the cheery fellow.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Selly managed a faint rolling of the eyes. “One hopes there are to be no riddles? Tiresome things, riddles. They convince the uneducated of intelligence they do not expect.”

“The Sphinx will not be joining us tonight.”

“Very droll.”

His host gave Selly an old-fashioned sort of look, before answering, “Oh, I see, Quite so, aha ha.”

Candles were lit and covered with lamp glass. Drapes were drawn. Symbols were thus revealed.

“Oh dear,” said Selly. He so hoped this would not take long, there were cartes to play and even with his rather pedestrian deck he had hopes for the evening.

ooOOoo

THERE WERE FOUR of them, four that they could see anyway. Dark, the last of the fog that had beset the city-state had come to the Obscures where it was still welcome. With the last of the Lluvia hours upon them, there were those that knew better than others what that meant, and so kept a careful watch on strangers. Ganjku had been lost half the day, he was still sopping wet, and he disliked the ruffians that asked so many damn questions.

“This is Commodore Van Keppel of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, and you will show him the bally respect he so deserves!”

“Il ressemble a une witch,” one of the ruffians said to his companions, ignoring Ganjku completely.

“I say there,” Sir William stepped forward.

Clubs were raised, nasty round rods with balltops. Ganjku surged forward and knocked the closest to the ground. Sir William let out an oath and ordered there to be peace, but the two nearest of the ruffians were already on the goorkja, who jerked out his cavalry sword, swiped aside the first and skewered the second. That man fell, screaming, blood jetting up and over Ganjku who cut his sword at the others to keep them back. Quickly turned his blade about and swiped it over his enemy’s neck. There was more blood, less screaming, and then none of either.

“Are you insense?” a woman amongst them yelled. “During la Lluvia?”

“Jorges?” the braver of those ruffians present bellowed.

Sir William drew his own sword and hurried forward to back Ganjku, although the goorkha had already seized upon the second man that had come at him, and with a scream half took his head from shoulders with a single huge blow. The remainder scattered, and blood sheathed the goorkha made to follow them.

“As you were, cox’n!” Sir William bellowed, and the goorkha, disciplined, slammed to the attention. “Good God, sir! We must leave, and we must leave now.”

“I was not starting the fight, sir. I was defending only.”

“To the death, cox’n?”

“Goorkha only fight to the death, sir!”

“Come along, Ganjku. I hope nothing comes of this, by the Lord Harry I don’t!” with which he lead the unrepentant goorkha away.

ooOOoo

THE STREETS REMAINED emptied by the rain and now in a borrowed coat and tricorn Blyth walked in step with a smaller man, dressed much the same, both there to make sure nothing happened to him, or that he happened to anyone else. Capitan Hanger was not at all convinced by Blyth. He trusted the Marchesa, but even in regard to the members of his own milicio he only truly trusted those that had died for her. He kept his own council on the matter of the milicio, as Mawu wanted to see Blyth in its colours. Certainly Blyth had the history for it, most of the milicio that had come from the wider world had been military officers and, or, gentlemen. One of the milicio ordinaire, those that were not the capitan, had been a German ritter, another a Polish major from their lancers. Even the woman that he had first encountered at the gate had been the daughter of a Spanish marquess.

They slowed when they came close to the odd little station that served the Volito.

Sergeant Landless marched smartly through the doors, snapping to before Lord Blyth, and knowing a Jack Pudding in the dark, at twelve paces, with a bag on his head, turned with a stamp and a smarter salute still to the shorter man beside him. “Sah!” he shouted.

“At ease, sergeant,” then to Capitan Hangbe. “I don’t suppose there might be somewhere the good sergeant might stay?”

“I do not know him,” answered Hanger.

“Even so…”

Hanger gave Blyth a very long look. “There is a shed, I suppose. You will be responsible for his actions, yes?”

Blyth was, it seemed, and really wasn’t very sure how he felt about that.

ooOOoo

“UN MONSTRE!!”

“Good day, gentlemen,” Mulciber tipped his hat with one gloved hand over the bag that covered his head. There were five ruffians, oafs really, locals with cudgels and one with a rust-spotted half-pike. He felt Archie tug on his sleeve, reluctantly allowing the smaller man to be seen around the mountain of Mulciber. It was doubtless for the best, Archie was such a humble little fellow but people generally reacted better to him than the… monstre, that fate, or the gods, had made of him.

“As my friend allowed, gentlemen. A good day, I wonder, might we ask directions of you?” The oafs were out protecting their street. It was not a good time to be abroad in the Lluvia fog, but there was talk of witches in the Arks and the pissy third-hand drizzle of the rain had soured everyone’s mood. “You ‘ave an address? Visiting a friend, oui?” one of the fellows managed to mangle his own Welsh accent with the French. Like most men they had all been given up by the sea, however long ago that might have been.

“We have property now, here, and in just payment,” taking a chance he showed the key.

The men went together in hasty parliament before breaking apart, and with one offering to show them the way, for “It can be fierce horrid out tonight. Sort of night the old Principessa is abroad, oui?”

“Oui,” said Mulciber and Archie together. It seemed the thing to do.

ooOOoo

“PICKED OVER WITH worms,” said the corporal, still in the uniform of the pensioner-guards but with a chain about his neck and a backsword, two pistols, and a cavalry carbine tipped with a pigsticker bayonet on one shoulder. He was not alone, a half dozen others were spread about the edge of Port Mercy and all, like him, were sodden, frayed, and stinking.

Above them Jed hissed. Looking down he recognised most. The corporal was that evil bastard Badger from the Thelassa. Two of the others were guards, cronies of the man. He spied two he recognised as having been amongst the passengers, a hard faced bitch called Lally, and the wet-fingered once-teacher Golightly (who had always been so kindly towards the boys, and who Jed and the lad Cawber had blackened his eyes for his trouble). They were being watched too, he saw now, but had no more of an idea of that than they had of Jed himself. If it had just been Badger then Jed might have made a go at it, for he hated the man. His free hand dug around in his bag of tricks, but he waited.

ooOOoo

ONE ARM TUCKED behind his back, enjoying the rain as he did, the well-travelled fellow in the sensible storm coat and sou’wester hummed as he crossed to where the oafs bickered. Watching him, Mouse recognised him. It was Mr. Hudson, one of the grand gents back on the ship, friend of the captain, wherever he was to be found now. And Hudson called now to where others waited, and who with some griping approached and then followed the important man to pass by Mouse and in a line troop on away from the town and into the space between it and the vitro sands. They carried no lantern and so were soon lost in the rain, and besides which Mouse’s ears had gone up, and twitched, aware now that he was being watched.

ooOOoo

2. RUE BOULANGER turned out to be the second house in the street that locally they just called the Boos. At times this saw a misinformed traveller for the Boos had no taberna, only a small cafe that alongside its coffin specialised in small, sticky buns that whilst delicious were best not worried about as to their ingredients. Certainly there were no snails in the Boos, a benefit that was outweighed by the smell for there was therefore nothing to take away the soil and spoil of the life therein. Otherwise there was a sense of lost grandeur here, where the houses were tall, dark, and from 3 to the last at 7 had once been a rather over-garlanded warehouse for the mushrooms that now were worked and stored more securely elsewhere. 1 and 2 were the same building, divided vertically, of three storeys and jutting floors, sharp roofs and very tall doors. The windows were shuttered, the plant pots were dead, the roof and chimneys were blackened by the years. So close to the boleti yards and the heartwood cliff (that marked the end of Delves but for the old seam mines) the roof was within touching distance of the Delves ceiling. The only rain that fell here was that condensed from that ceiling, which was all but invisible, as was the roof, even on a good day and so today they had to take it on trust from their guide.

With a heavy sleeve Mulciber rubbed at a brass plaque affixed beneath the bell pull. “Vidocq avec La Bete,” he read aloud. “Lay gency dee detective des quatre mystery?”

“L’agence de Detective des Quatre Mysteres,” their guide corrected him. Then translated, “The Four Mysteries Detective Agency. They died two or three years back. Bad business. The solved things for people, oui? There’s still the hounds that track people, and break them for pay, but they ain’t quite the same.”

“Is this our next employ?” wondered Archie.

But Mulciber did not think so. After a moment’s consideration he said, “I think that the Sisters have given us this.”

“All of it? Golly, that is generous!”

“You would think so wouldn’t you?” said Mulciber, for whom time would tell. He watched as Archie fitted the great key in its hole, that turned smoothly and without protest but to the sound of five great clunks as the locks disengaged.

ooOOoo

DARK BY THE time the Loxley rose he had long suspected that daylight was for farm workers and not for someone of his class and breeding. New clothes had been laid out for him beside the bed, boasting many buttons, no few ribbons, and all obviously those worn by one that had taken on the patronage of the Viscontessa. Maude was doubtless preparing himself for his entrance and so Loxley took his time in a little personal attention before ringing the bell that was a part of the bedstead for someone to bring him breakfast and see to the wiping. The room was not the most lavish, but it would do, it would do very well for now and certainly it was a step up from whatever frightful hammocks the oiks he had been washed up here with were making do with in that damn Mercy place.

Two maids appeared, both hearty women with arms like a Grenadier’s thighs and in the neck to floor dress of the house, inevitably lined with rows of buttons to denote their station. There was a single large egg, a bowl of scalding coffin, and a damp stick in case he needed it. The lidded bowl containing the day’s snails was removed and a spider as big as Loxley’s head was coaxed down and out the door. The maids completed the rooms turning over in a whirl, departing with a squeeze so as not to trouble Mme Tribus who stood now still as new steel in the doorway. Tribus all laced together and with her doll face unreadable might have watched as Potty helped his lord dress, or noticed not a thing, it was so cursedly difficult to read the damnable thing.

“What ho, nursey, busy night what-what?”

There was the usual pause before an answer. The voice when it came was that of a giggling young woman, one Loxley hoped she would not miss as it ill suited the rather stern automata, all lacing, buttons, and bustle. It said, “Tonight, no. Tomorrow you have duties.”

Loxley winked, so he should bloody well hope. He slapped his thigh once Potty had secured him inside the tighter-than-tight scaled trousers. He jerked his hips experimentally, no problem there! The household was not large by European standards. Though there were but four maids they differed each day. Prudent, who buttled, was a villainous beast, and he had learned that outside the house a number of factors and agents worked tirelessly. The house was not a place of business. Under stairs and Potty had told Loxley were a scurry of many more servants, especially about the kitchens, but the lord had no reason to go there.

As well as Mme Tribus, there was also Mechant and Beeswax, and these three made up the trusted inner circle of the household. There was doubtless more but Loxley’s attention had already wavered on his way to the door, leaving Potty still dribbling words into the night behind him. The lord bussed Mme Tribus on one cold cheek, slapped her bum, and vaulted down the stairs after life back into his fingers.

ooOOoo

THE FIRE HAD been laid and covered and caught in a moment so that with sailcloth hung tight on three sides the old forge soon warmed away the rain and fog with steam and dripping of its own. His uniform hung to dry and his weapons cleaned and set aside, Josiah Todgers in clean long underwear, mufti britches and braces waited for the kettle to boil. His hammock was strung, the ground had been packed down again, and after the wearisome journey here down the Volito, down the Grails steps and across the Arks it was good to be back home. And he had had worse billets than this one; every recent night for example.

The worst of the channelled waters had been there before him on his way back, but still it had been a wet journey with the route transformed by the more visible flues and gutters. No one had troubled him, indeed if the Grails had been quiet and the Arks noisy, it had been noisy well away from the road that ran along its bottom and into the cloaca. The cloaca that had been marvellously dry, comforting after the hour or three before it, and then the short walk here. The night outside was green tinted, and because he was an old hand at this sort of thing Josiah fetched up more mugs after the water boiled and served up a spoon of rough tea into his own. “You can be coming in now, if that’s your wish,” he said aloud.

“Cor, thanks mister,” Mouse and Jed shivered their way into the warm forge. “You’re a sharp gent, and no mistake!”

In no way was that the case. Josiah had said the same thing three times so far in the last hour, just in case. He would tell the young man and the lad that once they had a mug of char and left their rotten shoes by the opening.

ooOOoo

IT HAD TAKEN Potty all day to sweep clean the yard, and much against his best wishes he had even managed to secure a tub that held a single rose bush. It had taken some guile and some nifty footwork on his part but there it was, tall as a very small tree and ravishingly in bloom. As if the work had all been his own, which it had been, as Potty laboured for his master and to his master’s glory and benefit, Lord Loxley handed his new coat to the lad and bent his knees to the jeers of three picaroon sat on the step nearby. In a proper shirt that would have put a bedspread to shame, Loxley bent his rapier, making a stance on the wet ground, sheltered by his personal servant from the rain with a parasol that took three to hold, and two of them paid for their efforts.

La Frustra watched all this blankly. In her worn and lucky jerkin, skirts and mouldering green hat she did not look much. Even her sword looked cheap. Loxley was about to say so when she walked up to him, only for him to swat frantically at the tin spike as it refused to stop pointing at his eye!

“This,” said La Frustra, “is the certo.”

“Yes, dammitall, stop pointing it at me!” he backed off but the point followed. He tried a bind but her sword just twitched and kept on advancing. He ran backwards, the rain fell upon him, only to find the damn point right there still. He made to return an attack, but the point was there first and, annoyed, he made to cut over it and thrust, only to stumble as it took out one eye. Or did not, though he recoiled, as instead his shirt parted along one side and just, just, avoided doing the same to his handsome tummy.

“Il certo, il certo!” La Frustra insisted. “Now you!”

Loxley did so only her to take him forte to foible, open him wide, and then boff him painfully on the nose.

“Non, non! If you do it wrong, you give it all away. Now then, again, il certo, il certo!” Loxley did, even when he called for Potty to do if for him he got another thump. The harder he tried the worse it became, and the bloody woman boxing his hooter did not help either. Which was the point, he finally saw, this was the Italian style and it was not about acting the fool but winning.

“You must put aside all distraction,” La Frustra ordered him. “All, here, with the blade. No distractions!”

Which Loxley feared would not be easy. His whole life was about distractions, he was made of distractions, distractions were all he had! “Mummy,” he whimpered quietly, but returned to the practise. La Frustra was a damned, horrid bully but he feared stopping more than he did continuing.

ooOOoo

THE LOOMS WERE no less bright by night than day, not here along the parade and where some of the grandest houses could be found. No milicio watched those here, not where only the great patron had their homes. Milicio would have been better, he had decided in the day. Milicio might shoot you, but it was scanalatura, and an intruder might writhe and scream, but be taken captive. Here and the homes were those of women and men that had risen from nothing, and those that guarded them had no scanalatura, just the ways and means to vanish an intruder (and the better class of oaf to see to it).

The houses of the quality did not cluster, and those had different guardians, seen or otherwise. Here and the whole row were of the great patrons and the houses were made to deter thieves rather than killers. Judging by what he had seen violence was uncommon and with little recent threat from sneaking killers it was possible that there were none. Lax, would be the word. That he had heard of people called assasinio suggested either that they were a myth, talked up, incompetent, or just too proficient to worry at. It occured that that sort of threat was just the sort of thing to need milicio against, but again, there were no milicio taking post here. Thugs yes, milicio no. The stolen daylight was no friend to those with the spine to sneak, but sneak he did.

ooOOoo

“NO, NINO TONTO! Again!”

But Pietro had already taken the four rapid steps with the third already behind the blade, arms straight to make a single line across the shoulders to his outflung arm. Once more the point was swatted aside, but he had been quick, damnably quick! He did not curse, he mastered his growing frustration, not one day had gone by without his practising with the sword since his arrival and there was an elation in this, one that again he quashed so as to adopt the frozen expression, as if passing cartes at the jug, giving nothing away. The rain was appalling but drenched, the footing treacherous, he knew in truth he only fought himself (and that was someone he had to respect).

ooOOoo

WITH HER MOP and her spider catch, her basket of oils and scrubbadubs, Mrs Awful crossed the lanes of the Obscures. It had been quite sometime since he had laboured to keep house at the four mysteries, but it pleased her to think of how she might tut at the state of the furnishings, the colour of the grates, and taint of the ballon. A pair of proper gentleman had come and taken up the reins of the old business, of which she approved. Already across the Obscures, and soon to the Grails, the Arks and even William Lane the news would spread and unfortunates, unforgettables, knaves, the terrified, and the befuddled too would make this same journey as she. And they would be polite, and they would wait their turn, or Mrs Awful would know the reason why. Mr Mulciber and Mr Boffin were gentlemen, and if not gentlemen then respectable citizens, which was the next best thing.

ooOOoo

THE RAIN ONLY feebly pattered on the roof of the little shed now, and inside Sergeant Landless made do with the camp bed, lantern, plate of supper, blankets, pillow, stool, and plate of biscuits brought for him. Originally he was to have slept on a sack amongst the cuttings, roundly guarded by the milicio, for Lord Blyth had barely got his feet under the table and he was already infiltrating soldiers into the grounds. But that sort of thing would never do for an old hand like Arthur Landless, who accepted half the blood and garlic sausage handed him by La Coiffeur from her post outside. She had a pot of coffin, a good coat, and the ceremonial hat to keep off the dying drizzle. It was late, the last of the day before morning, and tomorrow there would be little to show that the Lluvia had come at all. If he stepped outside the shed before Blythe fetched him, then La Coiffeur would live up to her milicio name and cut him. She had a heavy sort of knife for that, since the scanalatura cost good coin and there was a patch of nicely-turned earth in the snail beds where he could then sleep, and forever.

Landless did not mind. It was a cosy shed. It smelled of dark earth and tomato plants, it was warm, and the company worth watching. He turned away to tug at Little Arthur, knowing that if it did not get seen to soon then bits of him would start falling off.

“Bon nuit, petit sergeant,” said Coiffeur from her post.

And a good night to you, wished Sergeant Arthur Landless.

ooOOoo

IT SMELLED THE air. There was a faint trace, the merest tint. It had followed its prey, always pulled towards it, so that the ship had been wrecked in a sudden fog and a salty rain. It looked about the town, upwards to the cliffs, back towards the harbour. It did not know where it was, and that did not matter. It could not be put off. It could not be turned aside. Here, somewhere, was the prey. Here, somewhere, was that who was hunted.

So, and our heroes dark and heroes hearty begin to find their places in this strange land it is not for them to simply bleed into the soul of Parquet, but to be more, to be better, to be known, to be celebrated! Even Juno cannot know where the days to come will take them, as the curtain rises and they the players take their places. Who then will play the lead, and who will hold the spears, and will those spears stay clean, or sheath themselves in the blood of their peers?

Allors, mes amis! Vive les naif!

Whomsoever that is, that remains a naif, and for how much longer?