In which our hero is subjected to the indignities of honest labour—Concerning skymining and its attendant dangers, both material and otherworldly—Reflections on the ubiquity of greed as it pertains to love, tea, and the promise of wealth—Sundry actions and their consequences—Yet more ungentlemanly behaviour, and some unladylike—Alliances are forged and loyalties tested—Some further notes of instructive and moral interest

he next day, we sailed into the claim and ’twas all hands on deck from then onwards.

Ruben rolled out a sheet of black metal attached to some sorta thermometer and we hithered and thithered chasing clouds, trying to find a good one. It took us about another half day to hit phlogiston, and then we had to crank up the turbines, which were so noise-making, it felt like we was waking krakens all the way to the Americas.

I spent my time below deck mostly, listening to Miss Grey’s footsteps pacing back and forth above me while she muttered about stirrings in the aether, which weren’t what you might call precisely good for the nerves. ’Twas hot down there from the caloric coming off the grill and I could feel the sweat gathering beneath my clothes, prickling over my brow, and occasionally stinging right into my glims.

Ruben called breaktime at what I suposed must’ve been noonish, but ’twas hard to tell through the clouds. Everything was drowned in grey, harsh though—not soft—with the sun glare searing through the mist and a sorta wet heat hanging in the air, slapping against exposed skin. The water had gone brackish and warmish and didn’t really do much quenching, and the grub was similiarwise soggy. All my senses felt bunged up, like a head cold made of warm.

’Twas some comfort to see Milord looking all sticky—shirtsleeves rolled up to display slender forearms, streaked with muck, and hair all wetted into clinging curls.

“Honest labour,” he announced, being the first to speak and in some strange sorta way the least oppressed, “is for flats.”

And I was so surprised, I burst out laughing, the sound ricocheting all over the place and then getting swallowed up by the clouds.

Ruben, who looked good in perspiration, gleaming and strong, took the battered brown hat from his head and dropped it onto Milord’s. “And now you look the part, you prissy ponce.”

’Twas exactly what I would’ve called Milord, but from Ruben it sounded like the warmest caress. Enough to make you wish to get called a prissy ponce.

Milord just sneered, but he kept the hat.

Suddensome, a deep flash of light sorta boomed through the clouds, lighting up the silver grey with an interior glow, orange as gas-flames.

“That’s the number on our dance card.” Ruben leapt to his feet and pulled Milord up with him. They ran for the grill, and I went and jumped back down below. I’d left it all set up safe as houses, but I was still just in time to stag the first few drops of condensed phlogiston come drip-drip-dripping off the grill, guided through the tangle of tubes to the containers.

’Twas just as Ruben had said it’d be, though it took some finessing to make sure nowt overspilled, and once the flow got going, I had to change the flasks pretty swiftishly.

’Tweren’t exactly hard work, but I reckoned ’twas like the squarest day’s labour I’d ever done in my whole life. And Milord had it bang to rights: ’twas for flats.

The more the hours seeped away, the more the heat and the wet and the silence and the great big Oi krakens, nom here flashing cloud started to weigh on us. ’Twas as if we all remembered at the same time that what we was doing weren’t no picnic in the park.

Phlogiston ain’t stable when you faff with it, and from what I gather, the aether don’t like being faffed with neither. So activity draws the attention of things you don’t want paying attention. Which meant I suddenwise found myself thinking of the ol’ Amelia, wondering what happened to pull them out of the sky. Did they go down screaming or praying, or did it all happen in the blink of some immortal monster’s eye, like the dead fellas we left full of bullets back in Prosperity?

Thing is, I ain’t no white liver, but this was different. ’Twasn’t like the usual rig, which is like waiting out for the perfect moment, holding steady, and then acting sharp. This was a slow, creeping worry, gathering round us like the fucking mist. And when we called it for the day, we ate in silence and told no stories nor played no games. Even Miss Grey had laid off the crack and was just sitting by the prow staring out into the night with haunted glims, all rimmed with dark circles.

I was far more knackered than what I’d done merited. Though when I rolled into bed, I barely slept, feeling every shift of Shadowless on the wind like mebbe ’twas the last thing I’d ever feel.

The next day passed much the same only a bit worse.

The sky round us had roiled into a sort of stifling grey-green haze, and Miss Grey had even stopped pacing. It took a bit to find a cloud as good as the first one, and the more we back-and-forthed over the claim, the grimmer things seemed to get.

And, truth was, I could’ve damn near pissed myself when a shadow came swooping out of nowhere. But it turned out only to be another prospector heading back to Prosperity, who gave us fair hail, threw up a skyhook, and pulled alongside to exchange news.

’Twas the Valiant, not the worst looking airlugger I’d ever beheld, and her captain was a grey-grizzled cove called Rackham, with a sort of retired navy look to him, strong and stern and wind-weathered.

The fella with the skyclaim was some nib what hired Rackham and, from the looks of it, weren’t too thrilled to be heading back to port, nor to be stopping to give the time of day to us.

Byron Kae came swinging down from the crow’s nest, reaching out across the gap to shake hands. ’Twas all very respectful and all, and it seemed like they was already acquainted or whatever. A gang plank went down betwixt the ships and Byron Kae went gliding over it, seeming not to mind nor notice that the rest of the crew were yorking at them so hard ’twas a wonder their glims didn’t fall out.

With a slightly shy smile and a flare of mischief, they called out: “Ahoy, old man.”

And the hoary fella grinned ear to ear and pulled them into a hug.

The rest of the talk was mainwise technical, and I didn’t get much of it, though you didn’t have to be no airman to pick up the note of warning in the cove’s voice.

“I don’t like it, Captain,” he said, with a significant look. “There’s heavy weather rolling in from nowhere.”

Byron Kae nodded. “We’ll be heading back soon.”

“See that you do.”

Then the nib—Viscount Arlington, I think they said—came sauntering over and made a fuss about time wasting and how ’twas an outrage anyway that they was running back to Prosperity with tail betwixt legs cos of nursery flimflam.

Everybody ignored him, as was right and proper what with him being a total knob.

When the Valiant chugged off and Byron Kae came back to Shadowless, they said sharp as I’d ever heard them say anything, “Shut it all down.”

And cos we weren’t knobs with death wishes, we got to it right tantwivy. Though by the time everything was quiet and dismantled and I’d made sure all the flasks was secure and not going to bang into each other and explode or some shit like that, the darkmans was settling in.

“Y’know,” quoth I, coming up next to Byron Kae who was standing on deck next to Miss Grey, both of them looking into the gathering shadows, “when he said sommat bout heavy weather rolling in from nowhere, that means krakens, right?”

“Yes.”

I liked that they weren’t trying to sugarcoat it nor nowt.

“How close?” Byron Kae for Miss Grey.

“Not close but restless.” She put her hand on their arm. ’Twas the first time I’d ever seen her touch someone voluntarily what wasn’t a girl whore. “I feel them stirring in their dreaming slumbers. There . . . there are voices . . . whispering in alien tongues, calling to them.”

A wind sorta picked up, but it didn’t come from anywhere, and it weren’t going nowhere neither. ’Twas just like some vast stirring, hot and stale, and ancient.

Miss Grey’s glims had gone all to pupil, and for once, I didn’t reckon it was the crack. “One is waking. It watches with myriad, self-luminating eyes, twisting in the fetid iridescence of its own vapour.” Her voice had gone kinda queer too. ’Twas still hers, but in it, or behind it, there was sommat . . . else. “Amorphous and boundless, I see it now . . . a tenebrous mass of tentacles writhing in blasphemous loathing as it wakes . . . it wakes . . . oh it wakes!”

She clenched her fists and pressed her knuckles into her glims so hard it must’ve been hurting.

Byron Kae took her gently by the wrists and stopped her. She made a soft choking noise but then, somehow, calmed a bit. “Do we run?” they asked.

A bit of silence, as Miss Grey tucked a stray bit of hair back into her bun and cleared her throat, like she hadn’t just been completewise batshit.“No. We wait it out.”

“For serious?” I squeaked, not feeling massively nuts on the notion of sitting round waiting to get et by a kraken.

Byron Kae just nodded. “As Jane says.”

“And in the meantime,” added Miss Grey, “I am going to incapacitate myself with opium. Wake me up as we are being lost in time and space.”

And thus began a deeply rubbish night.

’Twas silent running so we couldn’t even light a gaslamp or heat up water for a cup of tea, which Milord said was like the nadir of his life—for a cove who kicked off his career by sucking some bloke off and then blackmailing him, that struck me as some pretty intense hyperbole.

And none of us what weren’t stoned felt like going down below cos even though the night was wicked cold compared to the wet heat that had wrapped us all day, ’twas still somehow stifling down there. Byron Kae was up in the crow’s nest, and Ruben had gone into this kinda endearing frenzy of checking shit, so Miss Grey, Milord, and me sat round the mast, huddled in blankets, while above us the mist swallowed up the sky.

’Twas kinda like Gaslight all over again cos you couldn’t see nowt but black and the stars seemed like some impossible shit invented by a bunch of poets with nowt better to do. ’Twas the deepest darkest darkness, and it sunk through the skin like chivs and hung heavy upon the eyelids.

“What,” I whispered, “what happens if we get found?”

Milord could even make his voice sneer when he fancied it. “Then we get dead.”

So that were that.

By about midnight, Ruben had run out of things he could poke, inspect, or fiddle about with. He hunkered down, settling closest to Milord, just like always, which made me feel the cold that bit extra.

“Everyone all right?”

“Yeah.” I was scared of how my voice would be in that heavy silence, but it weren’t so bad.

Miss Grey, true to her word, was out of it. I didn’t know what she’d took, but I was starting to wish I’d asked for a hit. Unconscious was definitely the closest to all right we were likely to get around here.

Milord’s eyelashes flickered silvery in the dark. “The lack of tea is grotesquely uncivilised.” Which made the prospect of getting et by horrible monsters what exactly? Mildly inconvenient?

Ruben’s duster rustled as he fished about inside it. Sommat gleamed, bright as a lost star, and he pulled out this weird flasky thing.

I had no idea what it was, but Milord gave a gasp. Kinda like one of his sex gasps, which was not sommat I ought to have been able to recognise.

“Here.” Ruben handed it over. “Your favourite.”

“Oh Ruben. Ruben.” Mebbe he’d forgot I was there, as usual, or the darkness and the dread was its own special shelter, but he sounded practically delirious. I guess if it’d been anyone else, I’d have called it joy. Mebbe even affection. “I . . . I . . .” Whatever it was, he ran out of it right quick. “I thank you,” he finished in his prissiest voice.

I couldn’t quite see what was going on with the flask, but suddenwise, the air was full of a warmish ashy smell, and I recognised the nasty cat lap Milord was always drinking when he could get it. Typical, really, of the sorta cove he was, treating as precious sommat what any normal person’d be recoiling from.

I flapped my fin about, trying to get the reek out my nose. Probably we didn’t have to worry about krakens no more. One sniff, and they’d go flying off the other way, eyes watering. If they had eyes.

But Milord had brought the flask right up to his face, and was inhaling the steam. He made another one of his likerous naked noises, all bliss and softness.

“Do feel free to share that with the rest of us.” That was Ruben, kinda dryly for Ruben.

“What? No!” A sudden shift in the gloom as Milord pulled away, curling round the flask. I suspected ’twas all instinct. “You gave it to me. It’s mine.”

Ruben sighed and gave me this look, like he was trying to say sorry.

I just shrugged. If he’d done sommat for me, I didn’t reckon I’d act much different.

So Milord got his tea, and the rest of us got fuck all, and the waiting went on, and on, and fucking on.

I started to stretch out on the deck, but that just made the cold go crawling all over me and gave me the sorta of fears you’re supposed to grow out of—like worrying that sommat monstrous is going to creep up and bite your feet off in the dark.

When I was a bantling, I used to reckon ’twas the crocodiles what everybody said lived in the Gaslight sewers. ’Twas not a happy direction for my thoughts to go, cos from there I got to remembering about Gaslight nights, as cold and dark as this one, except without the possibility of krakens in the aether popping by to do some devouring.

And suddenwise, I felt far more miserable than a cove facing possible devourment surely should. Cos ’twasn’t so much the likelihood of that came pressing down like a great hand, but the prospect of everything else. I got to thinking about the way the world is vast and we’re all alone in it. I mean, yeah, folks come and go and sometimes walk a way at your side, but that’s just geography.

And I remembered Father Giles, worn to nowt by the wind and the rain, standing looking over the edge of Prosperity. I ain’t given much thought to the existence of the Almighty cos He clearly ain’t given much thought to the existence of Piccadilly, but He seemed to be keeping mighty quiet these days. Sitting there, with nowt but dark and silence and empty thoughts, the idea of somebody giving a fuck seemed a bit ridiculous. As did the notion of the opposite, Ol’ Nick or whatever. Cos what use was good and evil against all that nowt?

Shivering, I pressed myself against the side of Shadowless, surprised to find a trace of warmth lingering somehow as though she remembered the sun—which, just then, I’d somehow forgot. I put my cheek to the smooth . . . well . . . I didn’t know what it was, not wood, not metal. And there again was that faint running pulse of power I’d felt when Byron Kae had pressed me up to the wall, and kinda kissed-me-not-kissed-me.

I closed my glims against the darkness, listening to the beating heart of Shadowless, breathing with her through the long, cold night.

I didn’t exactly nod off, but a stirring of heat through Shadowless roused me, and when I peeled open my eyes, the world was grey again and starting to warm up. I felt heavy and stiff—like my whole body had overdosed on Spanish fly. I moved with a stifled groan. Ow, fucking ow. Next time we had to hide from a kraken, I was going to fucking bed.

By the mast, Ruben was also stirring, and he looked about as shitty as I did, drawn and shadow eyed. Milord, though, was curled into him, fast asleep. Fuck me, say what you like about him, but he is one bull-bollocked motherswinker. Ruben shifting woke him, and he pulled himself up, and yawned like a fucking cat.

“Did we get devoured?”

Ruben managed a creaky sorta smile. “I’m thinking . . . no.”

“Well, what an anticlimax.”

And Ruben yanked the brim of the hat Milord was still wearing down over his face by way of answer.

I shielded my eyes from the sky glare to peer up to the crow’s nest where Byron Kae was still standing and mebbe had been all night long. They lifted a hand in some sorta salute and then, swift as light slipping over water, Shadowless was flying for home, cutting the clouds to silver ribbons in her wake.

And just like that—even with the promise of waking monsters in the aether—we was back in Yay we ain’t dead celebratory humour. Milord sauntered off to change his clothes and shave or whatever, and Ruben started heating a tin pot of coffee in the galley—the stuff tasted like tar and shit, but this morning ’twas a mouthful of pure beauty.

And so you can probably imagine we wasn’t what you might call prepared when another ship—must’ve been skyhooked on silent running too—suddenwise surged out the cloud bank, and hoyed a harpoon right at us.

’Twas only cos of being an aethership that we didn’t take a direct broadside.

And even so, Byron Kae spun us round so hard and fast that I went stumbling into Shadowless’s side, coffee leaping out my cup and splattering across the empty sky like a stain, before falling away to nowt.

I tossed the rest overboard before I got scalded and threw myself to the deck as another harpoon went whistling by. Really fucking carefulwise I poked my head up and tried to stag what was going on, and why some random cunts was shooting at us for no fucking reason. Mainwise what I saw was a rusted metal hull of some wretched tug looming over us, and all I could hear was the thundering of the engines and running feet rattling.

And in the gaps betwixt, culls shouting stuff like “Fire” and “Full speed.”

“What in God’s name?” That was Ruben, pounding up the stairs, followed by Milord, tugging on his coat, and Miss Grey, swaying a bit and carrying one of her brass macguffins.

“Stay down.” Miss Grey wasn’t quite shouting cos, y’know, it ain’t ladylike, but she was still making herself heard somehow.

Shadowless rocked to port and I made a grab for sommat—anything—but just ended up rolling til I fetched up finally against the mast, which I got my arms round.

Another harpoon clattered harmless to the deck, trailing its rope.

I was getting bruises on my bruises with all this bouncing round like chink in a bag.

“Scramble, gentlemen.” Miss Grey again, and I noticed she hadn’t ducked down herself. She was like fucking fearless. Or off her tits. “Clear the harpoons, if you please.”

I grabbed for the one near me. ’Twas a brutal thing, with a hooked metal end for gouging, and I was fair sickened with the thought of it tearing through Shadowless. I spun it away like it deserved.

Ruben, half-crouching and staggering a bit with Shadowless’s rocking, ran over to another and did likewise, hoisting it into the air so hard I heard it go clanking off the other ship.

“Pirates?” That was Milord, also clinging to Shadowless as she twisted serpentine through the sky.

And right then a harpoon skimmed past near enough to give the prissy fuck the closest shave of his life, but he jerked back just in time, and it thudded into the mast with a sound like a knife carving flesh. Shadowless sorta shuddered beneath us, and upon the wind, I swear to anything you fucking like I heard a noise like somebody crying out in pain.

I scrabbled to my feet, except then Shadowless banked again and flew me straight off them.

All I wanted to do was get over to the damned harpoon, but even as I got back up again, another one clattered nearby. As I hurled it overboard, I saw Milord struggling with the embedded thing, except he lacked the strength and grip with his splinted-up fingers. Ruben was trying to reach him, but ’twas no use with the motion of the ship flinging us about.

“Many harpoons,” called out Miss Grey. “Handle them.”

Even from this distance I could see the blood gathering on Milord’s cuffs from where he’d ripped his palms open against the wood. He let go of the harpoon shaft and the next thing I saw, he’d levelled them twin sixers.

Two sharp retorts, echoing against the clouds, two death screams, and then another voice shouting “Man the launchers! Now!”

Though I would’ve thought the other captain was probably encountering some reluctance on that front after what happened to the other fellas.

Ruben grabbed for my hand, bruising hard, and we was pegging it up the ship together, tumbling against the mast, both of us tugging at the harpoon, the shaft already wet with sweat and Milord’s blood. As harpoons started coming again, we yanked it free, and Ruben cast it away like it was a poisonous snake or sommat.

Miss Grey, who still didn’t seem all that bothered about the harpoons flying every which way, nor the wild motion of the ship, picked up her skirts and strode to the stern. Putting the brass tube to an eye, she said, “It’s not pirates. I do believe that’s Ephram Albright.”

“What?” Ruben roared, lifting his head a moment and then pulling it down again lest it get speared. “What have you done?” ’Twas obvious who that question was directed at.

“Nothing.” The gathering wind pulled the word from Milord’s lips like it didn’t believe him. “He seems to be labouring under the false impression that I won the skyclaim from his brother unfairly.”

I waited for him to say more, to justify himself or sommat, cos winning is winning and that’s the way it goes, but nowt else came.

Nowt except the whoosh of another harpoon. But this one fell short by enough airspace to fill a sigh of relief.

“It is no matter, gentlemen.” Miss Grey was calm as water. “He will never catch an aethership.”

And ’twas true. Unpeeling sticky hands from the mast, I turned to look behind, and the tug was getting smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter. We was out running it easy, and the harpoons were falling into the sky harmless as rain.

Dunno how I heard it over everything else, and so far away, but I did. ’Twas Byron Kae, and all they said was, “No.”

A fresh shadow rose up from the face of the deep, drenching the deck in dark, and there was a split second of foreboding broken only by the banshee wail of a harpoon cutting the air.

I’m never going to forget the sound of the impact til my dying day. Never. A raw splintering, shattering of wood and flesh and aether as the metal-tipped harpoon ripped into the hull and the deck heaved. And Shadowless shuddered wild and desperate like a broke-backed steed, pinned.

And then . . . and then . . . Byron Kae fell from the crow’s nest. Like an albatross, turning over and over in the air in a pinwheel of feathers and rainbow velvet.

“Captain!” Miss Grey’s voice lifted into a shriek.

Ruben came running forward and somehow—somehow—caught them, both bodies hitting the deck, Ruben going down under the multihued flurry of Byron Kae.

’Twas surely loud with the second tug looming over us, fired-up engines growling, and Ruben’s feet crossing the deck, and the harpoon tearing up Shadowless and this and that and everything else . . . but I was frozen in stillness and silence, seeing nowt but that falling figure.

Byron Kae, what gave me lettering and nonkisses and promises mebbe they was going to keep, sovereign of the skies, dethroned by a shaft of wood and a piece of iron.

’Twas only when I realised we were spinning, helpless and free-falling, that I properly heard what Miss Grey was barking at me: “The skyhooks. Now, Dil.”

This was what it took to get her to call me sommat other than Master Piccadilly?

Milord was already halfway down the starboard side, firing them up, even with the stomach-churning listing of the ship.

Dazed, I moved port, numbed fingers scrabbling with the mechanisms, somehow managing to work them.

And slowly, slowly, with a terrible sound like a wounded beast, we stabilised, though we was still circling helpless, a strung up puppet with an arbitrary puppet master. And by the time I reached the last one, I found myself staring straight into the eye of a gun.

I lifted my hands real carefulwise, and I was prodded back along the deck.

Culls-for-hire, armed and swaggering, were coming down gangplanks and swinging over on ropes, first from the ship what took us down, and then from the other one as it pulled alongside, firing off its own set of skyhooks.

They herded us into a miserable circle. Ruben was kneeling with Byron Kae, and Miss Grey was standing protectively over them, chin all pointy and defiant. Milord was being stripped of weapons, which was turning out to take a while. He seemed to have a lot of steel tucked about him for a slender fella.

I crouched down next to Ruben. Ruben had his hand pressed tight over a deep wound to Byron Kae’s midriff, as though he wanted to hold the blood inside by sheer determination. It didn’t look like ’twas working so good though, cos claret was leaking fast from betwixt Ruben’s fingers.

“How are they?” I wanted to know, cos Byron Kae was chalk pale and didn’t seem to be even breathing.

But then a brandished shooter indicated that me staying alive was kinda dependent on me shutting up. So I did.

I guess I should’ve been shit scared and on some level I surely was. But it had all been so fast and so horrifying, I didn’t really have time for feeling nowt. ’Twas probably for the best. Meant I was going to get snuffed out with some kinda dignity.

Shadowless was silent. I realised then that though she weren’t noisy like airships, she had a sort of rhythm to her—like when you can feel a lover breathing next to you through the darkmans.

Next thing, the airmen parted, and Ephram Albright was stomping towards us, heeled by some scrawny piss-stain I reckoned to be his brother, Morgan.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Miss Grey, without even a quiver. “I’m sure you do not need me to remind you that skyjacking is a hanging offence.”

’Twas Morgan who answered, after he’d first spit chewing tobacco onto the deck at his feet. “There ain’t no law in these parts, lady.”

“You are quite correct. So understand this: without recourse to conventional justice, I will have no compunction in exacting my own. And, believe me, when I am done with you, death itself will seem the sweetest imaginable mercy.”

Morgan turned to his lads. “Feisty wench, ain’t she?”

Then Ephram stepped forward, mebbe not liking the nature of the conversation cos Morgan was not precisely showing himself to advantage here. I mean, I ain’t got no book learning, but one thing I do know is calling morts “feisty wenches” when they threaten to kill you is not the best way to keep your dick.

“I’m just taking what’s mine,” he growled. “M’ family’s claim.”

“Ephram,” said Ruben, “I thought you were an honourable man.”

He shrugged. “And so did I. But ain’t no use ’aving honour when all about you do without.” His jerked a thumb towards Milord. “Think on yer friend there and imagine the situation being arsey-versy. Don’t reckon he’d be mightsome keen to let them as crossed him slip away into the blue neither.”

“Milord would not murder without cause,” insisted Ruben, which just goes to show how fucking clueless good people can be sometimes.

“Cause got nowt to do with innocence, Preacher.”

Ruben gazed pleadingly at Milord. “Won’t you tell him?”

Dunno what I would’ve done in Milord’s place. Probably humbug my head off for a chance of saving my skin, and everyone else’s. Said pretty much whatever to stop Ruben staring at me with that kinda helpless, hopeless, needing-to-believe look on his face. So mebbe that made Milord the better man, or the worse, cos he wouldn’t play the liar for nobody or nowt, just bowed his head, and murmured: “I have always done what is necessary. And that will never change.”

And Ruben closed his eyes like his soul was dying cos after that, there weren’t no pretending betwixt them two anymore.

I could’ve told him forever ago there weren’t no good in ol’ Milord. Just will and hunger and being alone. And having too much pride to deny what he was.

Ephram stuck his thumbs through his belt loops. “’Tis easy enough to imagine m’ cuntsucker kin losing Pa’s claim in a game of chance. But I ain’t no gull to hold true a deal made betwixt an idiot and the Devil.”

Some cull came running out to say they’d found our phlogiston stocks, and Ephram ordered them brought to Morgan’s ship. For all it took us getting ’em, didn’t take long to get ’em nicked. But I didn’t give a flying fuck about the goods right then cos I’d seen Byron Kae’s eyelashes flicker—which meant they was going to live, right, if only we could contrive a way out of this fine ol’ mess.

I snuck glances here and there, trying to find sommat I could do, but we was surrounded and powerless and it sucked to high heaven.

When they was done stinging us, Morgan turned to Miss Grey. “Y’know, fine piece like you, it ain’t no life and no fit ending neither—ye could come with me. I’d take care of you. Real good care.” And he leered boobwards in a manner I’m sure no woman would’ve been able to resist.

She blinked. “Forgive me, I am but a weak and feeble creature, and my intellect is therefore lacking. I need to have this properly clarified. Put into simple terms. I can either be killed with my friends, or go with you?”

“Aye.”

“My dear man, I believe you must be a missionary of the angels. Never has cessation of all bodily function seemed so enticing a prospect.”

“Yeah . . . uh . . . what?”

“I’d rather die, you repulsive piece of human effluvium.”

“She’s saying no, cockstain,” I offered, being a helpful sort, and got a pistol whipping for my trouble.

I was kinda beyond caring really—’twas a dull, blunt sorta pain, rusty like the taste of the blood filling my mouth.

“Enough, Morgan,” growled Ephram. “Cut your ropes and your damn harpoon and go.”

Morgan weasled off with his crew, leaving us with Ephram and his cudgelliers to face . . . dying . . . I guess. ’Twas sorta ironic that I’d spent all last night fretting about monsters from beyond the skies and here we were being kicked upstairs (or mebbe downstairs for Milord and me) in the most everyday fashion possible.

“Ephram,” Ruben tried again. “You have what you came for. There is no need to compound theft with murder.”

But Ephram just shook his noggin. “I regret you being involved in this, Ruben Crowe. I know ye for a decent cove. But I ain’t got no choice.”

“We always have a choice. Without choice there can be no morality. That is why we have free will and a conscience to teach us what is right and what is wrong. What does your conscience tell you now?”

“Oh, I ain’t making no pretence bout that. But I gotta do it, Ruben. Or I’m dead myself. Look to them whose company ye keep. You heard what he said, same as I did.”

Then sommat stirred in the rigging, a nowhere wind, bringing with it currents of lost places and the dreams of the dead gods.

Miss Grey walked slowly through the airmen, with her dress rustling around her, and not one bugger did one thing to stop her. When she reached the rail, she just stood there a moment, hands clasping it lightly, as she stared out at the deep.

“It is not the crimelord you need to fear.”

Then she turned, her eyes gone sickly green-black and vaporous, and her hair flying out wild like the tendrils of some fucked up flower.

And a storm, carrying with it the stench of untold ages, dead flesh, and broken dreams, rose from nowhere, tearing at skin and clothes and knocking the ships about on their skyhooks as if ’twas some giant beast clouting us with great big paws.

The sky sundered like rot-corrupted skin, black-greenish cracks spreading out from a wound in the clouds. And then a shape, or more rightly a misshape, being vile and vast and possessing far too many tentacles, stirred slowly, outlined behind the sky like the shadow from a magic lantern and beginning to force its way through.

And Miss Grey was laughing and calling out fuck knew what in some harsh alien lingo, reaching to the shattering sky with outstretched clawing fingers, pulling the goddamn, fucking monster right towards us.

People was too busy screaming and going mad with panic to get on with killing us cos everybody knew what was going down now.

’Twas the nightmare you’d always hoped was just moonshine.

A kraken was coming. Miss Grey had invited it to tea and cakes.

Ephram was shouting, “To the ship!” and running, stumbling in haste and fear and with the rocking.

Some folk were jumping into the sky rather than stay and face what was coming.

Miss Grey had gone to her knees next to Byron Kae, touching their face with gentle fingers. “Wake up, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Please. We need you. A little power, just a little power. Get us back to Prosperity. I know you can.” She leaned over them and kissed their brow, tender as a sister.

Shadowless shivered.

Miss Grey glanced up. “Cut the skyhooks. Do it now.”

Milord reached down and tossed me one of his flick-blade chivs. I fumbled, but grabbed it. “We’ll fall out of the sky,” he said, matter-of-fact.

“Better than kraken bait. Go.”

We went.

Ephram’s tug had already done theirs and was reeling slowly round, buffeted by the unnatural squall. Whatever crew had got left behind were throwing themselves after, some of them scrabbling to safety, but most of them plummeting to nowhere, lost and screaming.

Across Shadowless, Milord caught my eye and nodded.

Together then, we put our knives to the last ties and severed them. And Shadowless dropped out of the sky like a stone.

The deck coming up knocked the wind out of me, and then I was spinning with the ship, far too fast, with nowt to hold onto. I just had time to think, Well this must be it, when . . . we stopped with a yank so hard it felt like it wanted to pull my stomach out through my throat. What little air I’d got came gagging back out, and I could hear Milord making similarwise unhappy noises from a few feet away, and coughing so hard it sounded like he was bringing up a lung.

“The wheel.” Miss Grey’s voice dragged me to my feet.

But Milord, fogle to lips, was already there, swinging Shadowless round in the sorta tight circle only an aethership can manage. And then we was climbing, riding the storm.

From above came a terrible noise of splintering wood, shattering metal, and dying men. I looked up just in time to see an immense, eye-studded tentacle, dripping with some kinda noxious ooze, wrapping itself round Ephram’s ship—like one ’em lovers what you’d rather forget in the morning.

And slowly it started drawing the whole damn tug towards the fetid, vaporous crack in the clouds. A hail of broken pieces (some of them pieces being people pieces, I’m sure) came spilling down. I rolled into the lee of the quarter deck, lest I get conked on the head by sommat I really didn’t like thinking about being hit with.

“We would benefit from more speed,” called out Milord. “Or the shrapnel will surely knock us from the sky.”

Shadowless surged forward like an exhausted horse, staggering through the blue. I felt the effort in her every shiver, beautiful brave lady with her beautiful brave captain.

And when I next dared look up, I couldn’t see nowt but a pool of darkness like spilled ink, the clouds closing over it.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. For whatever reason, by whatever grace, the kraken had bogged off.

Not really trusting in my ability to stand, I crawled down the ship to Ruben, Miss Grey, and Byron Kae.

“My sweet hero,” she was saying, stroking their face. “Now just get us home.”

Their eyes fluttered open, a faint smile struggling onto their pale lips. “You called a kraken. That was entirely the opposite of sane.”

Miss Grey smiled in a way that was also, to be honest, entirely the opposite of sane. “Nobody fucks with us.”

“Nobody,” agreed Byron Kae so soft I barely heard them. And then they fell back against Ruben.

“Besides,” Miss Grey added primly, “it was only a little one. I knew what I was doing.” She looked up and called out to Milord. “Turn us round. Take us back to Prosperity. The captain needs to rest or we are done for.”

“Will they be okay?” I asked, pawing a bit at Miss Grey.

She shook me off. “I very much hope so, Master Piccadilly.” Ah, things was back to normal. “But the sooner we make slip at Prosperity and remove the harpoon, the better.” She frowned. Shadowless was still on course for Not Prosperity. “Milord? Did you hear me? Turn. The. Ship. Around.”

A slight pause.

Milord’s voice drifted down from the helm, cold as a morning in January. “I’m afraid I must first take care of business.”

Now an even longer pause. I don’t think we quite believed what we was hearing.

“We can’t,” I said. “We gotta go back. Cos Byron Kae ain’t doing so well ’ere.”

“Quite,” added Miss Grey. “Surely a mind as practical as yours must recognise that if our captain dies, we shall fall out of the sky and be unable to conduct any business at all ever again.”

“It is a risk I am prepared to take.”

She stood. “I am not prepared to take it. As Acting Captain of the Shadowless, I order you to turn this ship around immediately.”

Milord said nowt. I guess ’twould’ve been redundant cos he clearly wasn’t going to listen to us.

“Dil.” ’Twas Ruben. “I need you take this cloth and apply pressure here.”

“They ain’t going to die, right?” I slithered in under Byron Kae, supporting them as best I could. At Ruben’s count of three, we swapped hands, blood pooling beneath us, cooling and sticky. Was that a good sign? Or a bad one? I could feel Byron Kae breathing, but ’twas fast and shallow. I pressed like I was told. I pressed for all I was worth.

Miss Grey chewed on her lip. “I don’t know how much strength they have left. We need to get back.” I don’t know if I was meant to hear the next bit cos she dropped her voice real low. “Make him, Ruben. You have to make him stop.”

He nodded. But he hadn’t took two paces across the deck before Milord drew his sixer and pointed it straight at him. “Do not,” he said, over the click of the bullet slipping into the chamber, “put me in a position that will oblige me to do something I will truly regret.”

“Then, for God’s sake, don’t do it.” Ruben’s voice echoed in the aether, full of passion and pleading.

But he’d also stopped. Cos in his place, I wouldn’t have trusted Milord not to shoot me neither.

“Don’t make me.” The gun didn’t waver.

What would’ve been right useful just about now, I thought, was one of his debilitating coughing fits.

“Don’t do this.” Milord opened his mouth but Ruben kept on talking. “And don’t tell me it’s necessary.”

Milord’s smile glinted, mirthless. “I will not countenance the continued existence of Morgan Albright.”

“We can chase him to the ends of the sky. But not now.”

Ruben took another step forward.

“My last warning.”

Ruben stopped again. “You would really do this? Sacrifice Byron Kae. For what? Your pride? For petty vengeance?”

“They are all I know and all I have.”

“You know me. You have me.”

“No, Ruben.” Milord’s eyes shimmered silvery. “You only want what you think I am, what you believe I have the capacity to be.” He paused, slipping on his speech for the first time I ever heard him. “I . . . I do . . . You are . . . you have become central to me. But in your morality I am simply . . . uninterested. And I will not pretend I am other than I am to earn your pleasure.”

“Then fuck morality. Don’t do it because it’s right. Do it for me. Do it for us. If I’m central. I’m asking you. I’m begging you. Turn the ship around.”

’Twas a scene more horrifying than all the krakens in the aether, watching them destroy each other in simple words.

Mebbe Milord would’ve done it, mebbe he wouldn’t, but then Ruben stepped forward and Milord shot him. Winged his arm. Blood flaring like a flag beneath his white shirt. “Not another step. P-please.”

Ruben slapped his palm over the wound. I was glad I couldn’t see his face.

“Ruben. Enough.” ’Twas Miss Grey. “I will not have you die for this.”

“I don’t believe—” started Ruben.

“This is not a poker game. Come back. It is bad enough to gamble with one life, let alone two.”

Like a waking dreamer, Ruben came stumbling back.

“Thank you,” said Milord. Strangely, he sounded like he meant it.

“Fuck you.” Miss Grey set about binding Ruben’s arm with strips torn from her petticoats.

In a bit, seconds or lifetimes, I dunno, Milord called out: “Miss Grey. I would like to use your optical device.”

“I dropped it.”

“Then find it. And throw it up to me.”

“Or you’ll shoot me?”

“Do not tempt me.”

I pointed her to where I thought it might’ve rolled during the fuss, and she scrabbled after it, hoying it up to Milord as instructed. With the hand that didn’t hold the gun, and his knee braced against the wheel, he snatched the tube from the air and held it to his eye.

I looked to the horizon—the best I could make out was a blackish smudge moving away from us.

“I hope,” muttered Miss Grey betwixt her teeth, “he does not get us all killed. It would be too irritating after all we have gone through.”

Ruben was sitting with his head in his hands. “He won’t,” he answered, in a hollow sorta voice. “He never does anything without calculating its consequences.”

The smudge was growing, the edges getting slowly sharper til it became a shape. A ship shape (no pun intended). Course they weren’t expecting us, so they didn’t notice we was there til we was already well within range.

I didn’t dare move in case I did sommat bad to Byron Kae, so I didn’t really see what happened.

All I heard was scurrying on deck, a few shouts of “What the fuck” and “Look lively” and “Man the turrets,” but Milord had the eye glass in one hand and his gun in the other.

“My recommendation,” he murmured, “is that you all hold on tight.”

We tucked ourselves round Byron Kae, pressing low to the deck.

They got off a couple of harpoons, but then Milord levelled the iron, aimed up, like he wanted to shoot down the sun or something, and fired.

Bang. Then nowt.

Milord dropped the tube and spun the wheel, dragging us round hard and fast.

“What—” I didn’t get a chance to finish the question.

“The phlogiston,” said Ruben. “They left the phlogiston on deck.”

I turned to look, and the ship just exploded with a sound that shook the whole world, lighting up the sky with the glare of fire and blood.

Screaming, then silence.

A wave of heat and energy rocked us and chunks of red-hot metal and shit knows what else came flying by. ’Twas a wonder we didn’t get hit, but I guess Milord had—as Ruben said he would—calculated it right.

Soon as we was clear of the blast radius, Ruben was on his feet and running down the ship, screaming at Milord like ’twas his turn to go batshit. “Are you going to shoot me now? Are you?” And when Milord dropped the gun, he broke into: “Get away from the wheel, get the fuck away from the wheel.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Miss Grey. “I do so wish I was hammered.”

Milord stepped away, but then Ruben was grabbing him and shaking him, and Milord was just kinda taking it like when they was kissing or having at it, which wasn’t a comparison I should’ve been able to make, but there it was.

Despite having nearly died about six times in a row today alone, this was so horribly embarrassing, I was sorta wishing mebbe I had snuffed it. And we was adrift, though leastwise heading the right way this time, but neither me nor Miss Grey wanted to go up there and sort it out.

“Ruben,” whispered Milord helplessly. “Oh, Ruben.”

“How could you? What the fuck?”

Ruben had stopped attacking him—was just holding him, one hand twisted in his hair, and Milord’s head was tipped back, throat exposed, pale and fragile, like an invitation to violence.

“I know you want me to be sorry, but I’m not. I’m not.” Milord’s frozen calm was cracking down the middle. “Given the same set of circumstances, I would do it again.”

“God damn you,” yelled Ruben. “God fucking damn you. I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

He let go so abruptly that Milord sorta crumpled down Ruben’s body, his knees hitting the deck so hard it must’ve fucking hurt. He fell forward onto his wrists like some sorta unintended supplicant. “I don’t know. How could I? Nothing in my life has prepared me for . . . for you.”

Miss Grey cleared her throat. “What fine weather for this time of year, do you not think, Master Piccadilly?”

“Jolly spiffing,” I returned. “Wouldst you perchance ’ave another fogle to press to the wound of our dying friend?”

“I believe I can accommodate that request.”

Milord had lifted his head and was looking up at Ruben. “If this is so,” he was saying, his voice shattered glass, “if it is true what you say. That you love me. Then love me . . . love me for me. For all the ways I am not worthy of you.”

Dunno what I’d have done, if I’d been Ruben. Truth is, I reckon most of us go through life begging folk to love us, one way or another. It’s just I can’t imagine having the bollocks, or the need, to say it direct.

For a moment, Ruben just sorta stared, one hand on the wheel, the other hanging there like it didn’t know whether to reach out or pull away.

I didn’t like Milord cos, basically, the fucker was about as likeable as tapeworm, even putting aside the fact he’d tried to kill me a bunch of times. But I still wanted Ruben to say yes. For the sake of everybody who got nowt, and ain’t worthy.

“Get the fuck away from me,” he snarled.