“Ah, Ruben, Ruben, please.”

Milord’s wrists were beneath Ruben’s hands, his legs about his hips, his head thrown back to bare his throat to Ruben’s teeth.

He was a man of moonlight and steel, and Ruben was falling, falling into his body, like falling into fire.

And now Milord was laughing, the chains nothing but silver tears on his forearms, his teeth gleaming like knives.

When Ruben leaned down to kiss him, he moaned and twisted, pulling Ruben into the most intimate spaces of his flesh.

Then came the knife, driven deep into Ruben’s heart.

He startled awake on dampened sheets, gasping, sickened, and still faintly aroused, tearing at the bedcovers, and pressing a hand to his chest as though to banish imagined pain. Slowly the shapes in the darkness resolved themselves into familiar ones. Safe. He was safe, in Lord Iron’s mansion, and Milord was in prison far away.

He sat on the edge of the bed, naked and shaking a little, and put his head in his hands.

I would like to know why the sky is beautiful.

He could not go back.

It is my most particular favourite type of dried leaves in hot water.

He could not go back.

Ruben had few High Church leanings. His prayers were personal, almost instinctive, a kind of wordless reaching, but tonight he feared to open his heart in case terrible truths would come slithering out like snakes. So he sat there, in the dark, with St. Augustine echoing endlessly through his thoughts: da mihi castitatem et continentiam.

He had never wished for such things before. But then, he had never felt like this before.

The Bible was fairly explicit on the Christian virtue of loving the sinner, but Ruben did not think this included wanting to make the beast with two backs with the sinner until you were both breathless with ecstasy.

He was no closer to guiding the man towards repentance than he had been at the beginning of the week. Worse, he had barely tried. Instead he had brought him tea. Swooned over his loveliness. Spoken to him about aesthetic philosophy. Nothing that would bring him a swift death instead of an agonising one, which was—to Ruben’s mind—the whole reason he was there.

Officially, he was supposed to be returning a lost lamb to the fold before he was publicly executed. But for him, repentance was private not public—a problem for the hereafter. It was not his place to assess authenticity. Ruben was simply there to save a man from torment, even if that torment was supposed to be a mercy that gave a man longer to repent and longer for the Lord to save his soul from Hell.

Ruben did not believe in Hell in any traditional sense: fires and demons and torture without end. Free will was after all the freedom to turn away from God. And he did not care if Milord was sorry for what he’d done. Even the idea of it, on the wrong side of dawn, seemed juvenile. If there was goodness in him, even the most meagre spark, then God would find it. He had made him after all. Apparently in the image of His most beautiful and unfortunate angel.

He just didn’t want Milord to burn. He had seen men die that way. He remembered the screaming. And, of all the things, the bitter reek of hair as it ignited.

He didn’t want Milord to hang either, to dance and die before condemning eyes, but at least it would be quick.

It wasn’t unreasonable to think such things. It was compassionate. Charitable. Repentance, forgiveness, the alleviation of suffering—all very Christian, very biblical.

But this was personal. Ruben’s wishes were all for Milord. Not for his soul, but for the man himself. That he might . . . what? Drink tea? Surrender his pristine body to Ruben’s caresses? Continue his life of cruelty, depravity, and vice, flouting without check or penitence all temporal and spiritual laws?

What was wrong with Ruben’s soul that he could desire such a thing? And why? For the basest of physical needs? Because pity moved him and fascination held him?

Because when he looked at Milord, it was hard for him to see evil. He saw pride and strength and a ruthless will to power. He saw curiosity and cleverness and a certain animal cunning. He saw fear and fragility and so much of an entirely untouched selfhood it made him ache.

He groaned.

He was fucked. Utterly fucked.

And he could not go back.

He could do nothing for Milord. And nothing for himself.

He crawled back into bed and tried to sleep. He woke early, and the hours crawled past. Did Milord think of him? Wonder at his absence? Would he care? Or did he simply stand beneath his window and wait to find beauty in the sky?

Frantic, Ruben nearly went to Jaedrian. But what could the bishop do? Remind him of his duty, of his faith, of the truth of Milord’s character. The problem was, it was all too abstract. It was impossible for him to reconcile the pale gentleman in his chains with the monster who had apparently ruled the Stews.

Ruben’s life was too sheltered. He had witnessed so little suffering, save what he tried in small ways to alleviate. No doubt Milord’s victims would see him differently. Perhaps Ruben should spend more time in the Stews. But the misery there was abstract too, the causes social and personal and political, impossible to untangle from each other.

And then he remembered something Nell had said about Lord Silver, though it was hard to imagine what association he might have with the crime prince of Gaslight. Ruben did not move much in society—people were too apt to try and get him to marry their daughters, a situation likely intolerable to all—but he was familiar enough with the city’s leading families to know that Lord Silver was reclusive in the extreme. Indeed, if the gossip mongers were to be believed (not that gossip mongers ever were to be believed), the name was cursed. The current Lord Silver was a mere cousin, the rightful heir having vanished in some mysterious tragedy a few years back.

Ruben called for his coat and hat and made his way up the hill. The day shone around him, diamond pure, as he walked briskly through the leafy boulevards of the Golden Quarter.

Lord Silver’s estate was set back from the main thoroughfare, its once well-tended grounds grown wild and twisted. The house itself had fallen somewhat to neglect, its ornate facades tarnished, its fashionably arched windows sealed up with grime. In the courtyard stood a long-dry fountain which had for its centrepiece an elaborate orrery. The arms had presumably been designed to turn with the water flow, but they were rusted into place and thick with lichen.

Ruben climbed the steps to the front door, and finding no knocker, struck it boldly with the head of his cane.

The only response he got was an irritated coo from the pigeon roosting beneath one of the crumbling pediments.

So he knocked again, and then again, until eventually his hammering attracted the attention of a servant from within.

“Lord Silver is not at home to guests.”

It was too dark inside, and Ruben’s eyes struggled to adjust. The figure in front of him was a blur of flesh and metal. “Can you tell him Rube—Lord Iron wishes an audience?”

“Lord Silver is not at home to guests.”

“Please. It’s important.”

“Lord Silver is not at home to guests.”

Ruben squinted at the servant. Its eyes were flat grey discs like dirty shillings. An automaton. He pushed past it and into the house.

“Lord Silver is not at home to guests.”

The gloom enclosed him, sticky and stifling and hot, far too hot, for the time of year.

“Lord Silver?” he called out.

It was hard to breathe. The air was heavy with dust, and the whole place smelled sweet and stale, like flowers left to wither in their vase. In the distance, he could hear the whirring and clicking of automatons, the turning of gears sheathed in skin.

“Lord Silver?”

He pressed deeper into that terrible darkness, the everyday processes of his body resonating too loudly in his ears: the rasp of every inhalation, the thump of his heart, the rush of blood through his veins.

Theseus, he thought wryly, would have come better prepared.

Eventually he came to a door under which he could see a gathering of pale light. It seeped over the shadow-smothered floor like a bloodstain.

He knocked, enquired again for Lord Silver, and—still receiving no answer—pushed inside. He was briefly dazzled, but his overriding impression was of a heat so intense as to be almost intolerable. It crawled over him, heavy like some living beast, enveloping him in a shroud of sweat that plastered his clothes to his skin. Salt-sharp moisture dripped down his face from beneath his hat brim. His hair felt absolutely sodden.

“Who is that?” The voice was refined, but terribly thin, rough with disuse. “It is not today. I have counted. Today is not my day. The payment is not ready. Please. It is not today.”

“I’m not here about the payment.”

Ruben took a step forwards, pushing through the heat. Other than a single chair set before the fireplace, the room was unfurnished. A bare floor, walls of peeling silk, the floor-to-ceiling windows covered by thick curtains, cloth of silver faded grey.

Of the man in the chair, Ruben could see little. Just the barest outline of a profile, and a cane that supported one slightly shaking hand. If hand it could be called. It was good work, delicate, articulated, and wrought of the finest silver. The join where it met the ragged red skin of the forearm was a neat, glistening line. But the skill of the artificer could do nothing to disguise the artificiality of their creation, or the twisted brutality of that glittering metal claw.

Some part of Ruben recoiled on instinct. He had seen fleshgrafting before, and rarely to benign purpose.

The man in the chair shifted weakly, restlessly, and half turned where he sat. “Why are you here? I do not know you.”

Ruben stared helplessly. Lord Silver must have been his match in years, but he looked much older. His long, lank hair was threaded through with white, his eyes lustreless, his face devoid of animation or hope. His skin was a network of thin, silver scars, as intricate as old lace. They writhed where the firelight touched them, transforming the man’s features to monstrous patchwork.

“I’m Ruben Crowe. Lord Iron’s so—Lord Iron. I hoped to speak to you.”

“I am not at home to visitors.”

“I had hoped to speak to you about the man they call Milord.”

Lord Silver’s hand clenched convulsively upon his cane. “I know nothing . . . nothing.”

Ruben mastered himself, his pity and his revulsion, and the sickly intersection between them where pity became a kind of revulsion and revulsion became a kind of pity. He crossed the room to the chair and the shattered creature who huddled in it, and dropped to his knees in the firelight. “They have him,” he said gently, “locked in the Spire. He can’t hurt you now.”

Lord Silver’s empty eyes roved agitatedly over Ruben’s face. “The Spire cannot hold him. He is the Devil.”

“He’s just a man, my lord. But what has he done to you?”

The metal hand twitched with an involuntary tremor that ran through Lord Silver’s whole body. “I gave him my soul. And for what? Baubles and vanities and empty rooms.”

The man was clearly half-mad, and Ruben had no idea how to reach him. Or if there was anything left to reach. “I don’t understand. What power can he possibly hold over you? You are a Lord of the Realm. He is the prince of rogues.”

“I went to him. To the alehouse where he sat at cards. And I made a deal with him.”

Ruben could hardly catch a breath this close to the fire. He pulled off his hat, and wiped some of the perspiration from his brow with his coat sleeve. “What kind of deal?”

“I wanted what Lord Silver had, so Milord gave it to me. The title, the house, the wealth.” Lord Silver was shivering uncontrollably. “In return for gold and future favours, he gave me everything. Everything but the signet ring, which is my cousin’s still, though they will not find his body. Not unless Milord wills it. He has the man who killed him too. And this shell they now have named Lord Silver.”

“From what I have heard,” began Ruben, though his mouth felt coated with copper and bile and the taste of his own sweat, “Milord is, in his way, honourable. He would not betray you if it was not . . . was not . . .” Ruben had to swallow, half-sickened “. . . necessary.”

Lord Silver made a strange noise, partway between a sob and a laugh. “I betrayed him. I reneged. I told him I would give him nothing. I th-thought once I had the power and the n-name, he could not touch me.” His other hand, ghost pale, seeming almost transparent, crisscrossed with scars and grey-blue veins, drifted to his face and then back to the arm of his chair. “I was wrong.”

“Oh God.”

“At n-night. He came at night. Killed the household. All of them. The footmen and kitchen maids, the cook, my valet, the butler, the housekeeper, the b-boy who cleaned the knives and boots. There was b-blood. So much blood.”

“Oh my God.”

“M-my doing. All that d-death. Not his. Not his. I m-made him do it. I made it necessary.”

“No.” Ruben’s cry rang out in the room, queer and frantic. “It was not you. It was him. He held the knife, he did it, he murdered them.”

“But he would not have done it,” said Lord Silver, in a brittle singsong, “he would not have done it but for me.”

“He could have chosen not to.”

“He did what was necessary. Only what was necessary.”

Ruben leaned forwards, sweating, trying not to vomit.

“They brought me to him here. It used to be a library. There was a Tintorini hanging over the fireplace.” He pointed at the blank wall with his trembling, still-human hand. “I r-remember he asked me if I thought it was beautiful. He said he did not understand art. He was all in white like an angel.”

Ruben shuddered helplessly. The worst of it was how wistful the man sounded.

“Th-then they tied me to a chair, and he s-sat down opposite, one leg crossed over the other. H-he looked s-so pale and so harmless like one of those g-gilded boys from the Crescent, and he said, ‘Is this Monday? I don’t like Mondays.’ I didn’t truly believe he c-could hurt me. I was a lord n-now. Who was he?”

Lord Silver’s eyes stared blankly, through Ruben into the past.

“I r-remember he had a handkerchief in his breast pocket, w-white silk, and he kept running it over his hands, over and over, a-although he had the b-best-kept hands I’d ever seen. He s-sighed and said this was all so terribly vulgar, and he was irritated that I h-had put him to it. I just struggled, hopeless and foolish, and t-told him to let me go. He looked up from his perfect fingernails and asked me . . . He said quite gently, ‘Have you mistaken me for a quicunque vult?’ I th-think that was when I first knew to be afraid.”

Lord Silver’s metal hand twitched open and closed, the claws leaving deep gouges in the arm of his chair. “And when I did not answer, f-for my mouth was t-too dry for speech, he asked again, and I stammered out some nonsense, and then he struck me, openhanded, as though I was not a man. It humiliated me more than it hurt me, but it still stung. I had n-never been t-touched in violence before. It drove my lip onto the edge of my teeth. And he sighed again.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Ruben helplessly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Then he m-made me look at him. His touch was so cold, like ice. ‘Let me put it another way, dear boy. Are you labouring under the misapprehension that I am a whore to be fucked for your pleasure?’ I protested, and t-tried to reason with him, or p-perhaps to plead, but he stood. He took out his handkerchief again and cleaned his hands. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I have your blood on my handkerchief. How vexing.’ And I . . . I s-said I was sorry for it, but he did not answer, reaching instead for one of the cases he had brought. He lifted one onto his knee and opened it and inside . . .”

His voice failed, and he began to shake.

“You need not tell me,” Ruben told him hastily. But it was for himself he said it.

“I r-remember his hands, his perfect hands, moving s-so lightly, so easily among such t-terrible things. ‘Pilliwinks,’ he said, ‘you might call a local favourite. Brutal but effective. Ah, but have you seen one of these? From the East, I believe. It has a rather fanciful name. How was it translated? “Flower of Anguish.”’ He lifted the object, p-pressing something in the base that caused it to blossom into metal spines. I . . . screamed. ‘Of course,’ he went on, p-paying me no heed at all, ‘not everything need be quite so imaginative to fulfil its purpose. I myself favour simplicity.’ And he put the case aside and picked up a second.”

Lord Silver was silent for a long time. Ruben half wished he would never speak again.

“It was full of knives. G-gleaming, beautiful knives. He f-favoured silver filigree and mother-of-pearl. He picked one up and held it to the gas lamp so the flame fell across the edge of the blade like shadow. Th-then he . . . then he . . . he sat upon my lap like a lover, s-so close that I t-tasted his breath, smelled the night in his hair. He was c-cold, as cold as his knives. Always so cold when he touched me. And then . . . then he cut me.”

Ruben made a soft, wordless, choking sound.

“It t-took him hours. I screamed and wept and trembled, and he’d . . . simply wait. And . . . and afterwards, he cleaned my wounds and sewed them up again. And th-the next night, he came and did it all again. Th-there is no part of me that is not his. The f-final day, I don’t know when it was, he came to me, and sat by my side and explained to me wh-what a bind I’d put him in. ‘We had a deal,’ he said, and I c-could see how unhappy I’d made him. ‘It is not gentlemanly to renege on a debt of honour.’ And I b-begged, I begged him to let me pay my dues, but he said it was t-too late. N-not enough. I was s-so sorry for what I’d done. S-so sorry. I said I would d-double it, triple it, I said I would pay him every month, and I wept and I pleaded with him and f-finally he was merciful. He agreed. I have given him everything. All the wealth. All the power. He has used my name as th-though it were his own.”

Suddenly he looked straight at Ruben, and Ruben could hardly bear to hold his gaze. “But that still left the matter of what I owed him. He has a distaste for violence, and I had disrupted his schedule. So when he . . . when he put the knife in my hand . . . it felt like he felt, smooth and cool like . . . like his skin . . . and I cut off my finger for him. But it was n-not enough so I cut off the others. And th-that was not enough but I . . . was . . . the pain . . . but he helped me . . . he held me steady . . . he guided me, and I cut off my hand. And I th-thanked him for his kindness.”

Moisture had gathered at the edges of Lord Silver’s eyes. “He knows he can trust me now. I will not make him h-hurt me again. I will not make him hurt me again. I will not . . . I will not . . .” Ruben feared he had lost the man to the past, but finally his murmuring ceased and his trembling subsided. “Before he left . . . he t-touched me . . . on the cheek where he had first begun to cut. There was no pain . . . though I sometimes . . . sometimes . . . in my skin there is the memory of knives. He was so g-gentle with me then. He said, ‘You know, Lord Silver, the only thing worse than not getting what you want, is getting it.’”