In which our hero indulges a long-standing inclination—Rest is taken and plans are laid—Several conversations on edifying and revealing subjects—Lessons are learned, sometimes painfully—Further considerations of love, duty, morality, and the divine, supported by reference to scripture and otherwise—Some notes pertaining to the person of Mr. Ruben Crowe

hat was how we limped home to Prosperity, all of us in pieces one way or the other.

We was travelling slow and dipping lower and lower in the sky so ’twas looking like we might not make it, but such was the general lack of cheer on deck that nobody seemed to give a toss. Ruben ’specially was looking like he might prefer it if we dropped straight out the air.

Byron Kae was barely breathing, with a blue-ish sorta tinge to their lips I was sure couldn’t be good. But I kept my hand pressing down just as Ruben’d told me, though my fingers was getting all numb and chilled to the bone.

“When we dock, I’ll peg it straight for the quack,” I offered.

“We don’t need a doctor.” Miss Grey was staring at the horizon like she didn’t like it much, almost as pale as the captain. “We need that fucking harpoon out. And the captain needs to be resting, not keeping Shadowless aloft.”

’Twas pure poison, the way she spoke.

I’d’ve felt almost sorry for Milord if Byron Kae hadn’t been bleeding, and mebbe dying, in my lap. I hadn’t exactly ever been nuts on the prissy fucker, what with him shooting me and all, but right then, I kinda hated him. ’Twas a hot, helpless, self-righteous feeling, and I didn’t like having it for nobody.

I adjusted my hand, as though if I just pressed down right, it’d make a difference. Buffleheaded, but what else was there to do? Hope for the hopeless. Faith from the faithless. Whatever.

’Twas close to evening when we docked, Milord roping Shadowless to the town’s skyhooks til we was hanging in the air, ungainly, secured to one of the docking platforms like we was an everyday airlugger

Miss Grey stood, shaking out her skirts. “Ruben.” She sounded scary-calm. The kind of calm you get to when fury just ain’t enough no more. “Please escort your friend from the ship.”

“He’s not my friend.”

“I don’t care about the nature of your relationship. Remove him, before I throw him overboard.”

Milord was backing away. He didn’t precisely look worried, but he didn’t look relaxed neither. “I am perfectly capable of removing myself.”

“See him gone.”

There was this awkward moment when it seemed like Ruben mebbe wanted to bicker, but whatever it was he saw on Miss Grey’s face changed his mind for him. I guess she was probably blaming him a bit too, cos without Ruben, there wouldn’t have been no Milord, and then we wouldn’t have been cloudpanning on a filched claim, and Byron Kae wouldn’t have got hurt. And Ruben was probably blaming himself too for them exact same reasons.

I didn’t have that luxury. Cos without Milord, I wouldn’t be here at all. The best part of my whole fucking life sprung from the worst, a gift from the same malevolent, chiv-happy quean who’d come perilous close to killing me three times now.

Me, and somebody who was kind and true and didn’t fucking deserve it at all.

Ruben and Milord disappeared over the rail together, not touching, not speaking, not even looking at each other. I guess they went their separate ways soon as they hit land. I dunno what Ruben did, but I learned later Milord went to Albright’s and shot Jackson through the heart, making it three for three of the Albright brothers. Don’t reckon anyone was surprised, except mebbe Jackson.

But, whether he knew it or not, he was a loose end, and Milord hadn’t lived as long as he had by leaving folks alive as had a reason to kill him. Not counting the occasional ex-lover bearing a grudge bigger than death itself, but hopefully he only had the one of them. Although, knowing Milord, mebbe not. I couldn’t imagine he left many people with warm and charitable feelings.

Soon as they was gone, Miss Grey ran to the side and peered over. Mebbe I was a coward after all, cos I was glad it was her not me. I didn’t want to see what they’d done to Shadowless. “Dil, I’m going for help.” Fuck, I was Dil again. It must be bad. “Can you stay with the captain?”

“Yeah.” ’Twasn’t even in fucking question.

She came back and bent over Byron Kae a moment, smoothing the hair out of their face cos it was all stuck flat with sweat. “You must not die, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Or I will kill that man myself, and I know how you disapprove of such things.”

Then she hiked up her skirts, and started scrambling down the skyhook cable. So we was way past ladylike too.

Fuck, and all the fucks there was.

I lifted my paw a moment, trying to see what was what under there, but soon as I did, blood started spilling every which way over the deck. ’Twas reddish and bloodlike for the most part, but it had a sheen on it, which moved differentish, like oil on water. In any case, you didn’t have to be no apothecary to know that any sorta blood was better inside than out, so I quickwise covered the wound again.

Their eyes flickered, and they moaned, and I cursed myself for being a cack-handed nidgit.

“You . . . you heard Miss Grey, right, Captain? No fucking dying.”

A cold hand curled weakly round my wrist. “Dil, you need to go. I don’t know if I can . . .”

“I’m not leaving.”

They drew in this breath which sounded all kinds of wrong, too light and shallow, like the air wasn’t getting where ’twas supposed to be. A bead of shimmery blood gathered at the corner of their lips. “If I say go . . . promise me you will?”

“I ain’t promising no dumb-prick thing like that.”

“Dil.” They opened their eyes. The stars in the depths were all blurry like they’d all turned into comets. “If I tell you to cut the ropes, you get off my ship and you cut the ropes. Please.”

I shook myself free and took hold of their hand proper. “No way. You ain’t never let me fall, so I ain’t letting you fall neither. Sides, that’s not going to happen. Miss Grey’s getting help.”

“Yes but—”

“No but.”

Their eyes fell closed again, and their lips turned up into some ghost of a smile.

’Twas going to be such an evening, with a breeze blowing soft as warm breath. The setting sun was turning all the clouds to gold, and the light was pouring everywhere like honey, and dancing in circles on the edges of things like careless coins. As though even the ramshackle mess of Prosperity could’ve mebbe been Eldorado in a different life.

“You’re missing some good shit,” I whispered, giving their hand a little squeeze. I couldn’t tell if I was getting colder or they was getting warmer, and I didn’t know if that was good or not. “Look.”

They made a soft sound all full of pain, and Shadowless shuddered on the skyhooks, and I hurt with them. ’Tweren’t my place, but I did.

“No, come on, ’ave a look. It’s mighty bene.”

It seemed to be a struggle, but mebbe cos I’d asked them, they did. They opened their eyes. First we was just looking straightwise at each other, and I was so fucking glad for it, cos I was suddensome so kind of used to them and couldn’t bear the thought of the world going on without them in any sorta way at all. But then they was looking past me, into the setting sun, and when they spoke, their voice was slurry as though they were half-asleep. “‘And for an everlasting Roof . . . the Gambrels of the Sky.’ Sometimes beauty is the hardest thing to bear.”

“What’s a gambrel?”

“No clue.”

I didn’t know how ’twas I hadn’t first noticed Byron Kae was beautiful too. But their eyes had drifted closed again, and I didn’t know how to say it without sounding like a knob.

So I watched the sky instead, tears burning at the back of my eyes with all the terrible beauty of the world.

But as colours began to fade and the darkmans set in, I started to get fretsome cos Byron Kae was getting colder, and I could feel this stillness in Shadowless that I’d never felt in her before, and I didn’t know what it meant.

I leaned over them, put my mouth close against theirs, touching nowt but the ripple of their too-faint breath. “Please don’t leave me. I’ve seriously ’ad it with leaving and being left.”

First off I didn’t hear nowt, but then their fingers brushed up and down mine. “Tell me a story, Dil.”

“I ain’t exactly no Mr. Dickens o’er here. Not sure stories are my forte.”

They didn’t press me, cos they wouldn’t. But then I remembered I was supposed to be done with leaving, and leaving them in silence wasn’t no better.

So I did. Kinda slowly at first, cos it was hard to pin the words down. But I told them a story about me, one of the truest ones, and ’twas just for them.

In a little while, lights came bobbing through the darkness, and I perked up right speediwise cos ’twas Miss Grey, and Miss Alis, and a bunch of doxies, and Seth Silver, and some other fellas what I didn’t recognise, all trooping out to the docks with tools and cables and whatever else.

I was so fucking happy to stag them, I could’ve cried.

When Miss Grey clambered over the rail, she tried to get me to shove off (“rest now, Piccadilly” was what she actualwise said), but I wasn’t moving for nowt. Not until I knew Byron Kae was going to be . . . right as rain, as Ruben would’ve said.

If he’d been there.

If Milord hadn’t been pyscho.

Except it took longer than I thought it would, and I was tired. Tired, and cold, and scared, and bone-deep sad somehow, full of these aches, big and small, running over me like a bunch of sewer rats, gnawing at my fuddled ol’ heart.

Mebbe it would’ve been a thing worth watching otherwise, cos ’twas all hands on deck under Miss Grey’s direction. I think they had to build some sorta makeshift platform or sommat to get at the harpoon, and then they had to get it out, and that should’ve been the end, but ’twas the worst part cos it weren’t simple at all.

’Twas in too deep, so they had to dig. And I was glad all over again I couldn’t see what they was doing, cos even though Miss Grey was a litany of “Careful” and “No” and “Like that” and “I said careful,” I felt it in Shadowless. At least she wasn’t quiet no more, but she shivered, and ’twasn’t the right sort of shivering. Byron Kae was kinda bucking and gasping very softish, blood and sweat all clotting up under my hands. ’Twas horrible cos all I could do was hold them down, and tell them it was going to be okay, which was probably moonshine cos I didn’t have a clue.

And then came this bone-sawing tearing noise as the harpoon came free, and they arched right into my arms, and screamed like they had when it first hit.

I hugged them tight, and their eyes came open again, but they was smiling at me, so faintwise, but ’twas there.

“They got it out,” quoth I, totally useless cos ’twas obvious they had.

“Yes.”

We was still holding hands. I didn’t fancy letting go in case they slipped off into the sky or sommat. But in the same kinda way I knew how Shadowless was hurt, I knew they wouldn’t. Mebbe a strange little bit of belief to grow in the midst of all that blood and pain, but there it was, as strong and true as them what inspired it.

With my spare fin, I was carefulwise trying to peel fabric away from the wound. They didn’t want me to, but it weren’t no time for playing coy. Except when I got there, ’twas only gore and aether, skin as white as Shadowless’s sails, and a jagged black-red scar.

I kinda gasped a bit.

They pulled free and covered it with their hands.

“Don’t it hurt?” I asked.

“For a little while. It’s not my first.”

“It don’t look bad or nowt.”

“You’re hurt too.” Their fingers came up and brushed my jaw where some cunt had decided to lamp the young fucking hero with a pistol butt.

I winced cos that woke the memory, but where they was touching made a new one. “Ain’t so bad.”

“And exhausted.”

“You trying to tell me I look like a mingerish slubber degullion?”

“Never, Dil.” They was knackered too—their voice was fading back to whispers. “Never.”

So I eased them down onto the deck, and curled in next to them, being cautious not to jostle them or nowt. They fell asleep instantish, but I was stuck on the distant shores of just too fucking tired and wrecked, and couldn’t make it back to unconscious.

In a while, it got quiet again and the lights faded away so ’twas just us, and the sky, and Shadowless.

And then Miss Grey, coming aboard, looking like sommat what crawled out one of her own nightmares, with her all hair tangled, and her dress soaked in dust and aether. She didn’t say nowt, just lay down on Byron Kae’s other side, and put her head on their other shoulder.

We kinda watched each other a bit, breathing with Byron Kae, and with the ship. And that was when I knew it didn’t matter she didn’t like me much, cos we was together anyhow, all of us the same by starlight.

After that, ’twas quiet times. Not good like flying, but not bad neither. Just quiet.

Seth Silver, the flush fella what run the general store, was round a fair bit. Said he was supervising the repairs. But we reckoned he was mainwise supervising this carpenter he’d found—dark-eyed, curly-haired Spanish cove, fresh in town, name of Jesus. He said it different—like Hesus but with a cough—but we called him Jesus-like-the-Bible anywise. Cos it was funny and cos we really needed to laugh right then.

’Twasn’t long before them two was praying together pretty fervent, if you take my meaning. Seth’d close up shop and be there on the docks as the sun went down—and from the deck, I’d see them going hand in hand into the dark like they was having a lifetime together in a handful of days. Which is how it goes on the edges of things.

Byron Kae and me stayed close to Shadowless and each other. They was weak but getting better, which meant I was left in charge of our ol’ friend Oliver Twist. ’Twas slowsome going with me doing all the telling about how the ungrateful little shit was freaking out cos the kindly ol’ Jew was trying to teach him useful life skills, and stumbling over all the breakteeth words (though I will confess I got a fondness for them myself sometimes, as mebbe you’ve noticed and been impressed by), but we got on okay.

And we both missed Ruben, who still hadn’t come back, so the quiet was full of him. All these spaces where his singing and his laughing used to be. Mebbe he thought Miss Grey was going to stab him with a hair pin, but probably he was just guilty as fuck cos friends don’t nearly get friends killed.

Well. Not if you’re Ruben Crowe. Mebbe if you’re Milord or Piccadilly, and you ain’t had no proper practice.

In the end, I went looking for him. I wish I could’ve been able to say I done it for Byron Kae, but I did it for me. Cos mebbe now he didn’t only have glims for Milord, he’d see what was right in fucking front of him. I knew he had a fancy for me, with his smiles and his kisses and his being kind when he didn’t need to, but it weren’t never going to be more than idleness and likerousness with Milord all over him like poison ivy.

I reckoned I could be good for Ruben, which wasn’t a notion I’d ever had much opportunity to entertain before. ’Twas a nice idea, being a good you could give, and good you got back. If only I could get Ruben awake to it, istead of waiting and hoping for sommat that weren’t there, cos a waiting like that can eat your fucking heart out.

I asked casuallike round town, but even though he’d taken a room at the Grand Hotel, which was Prosperity’s seriously hyperbolised flophouse, nobody’d clapped peepers on him for a day or so. I tried his kip but ’twas all sloured up—locked tight—and heavy with the reek of liquor. Not what ye might call an edifying situation.

So then I got to thinking what a fella such as Ruben would do for solace, cos I didn’t think he was like to find much of it in bought warmth or the taste of oblivion. And once I got my noggin aboard that train, ’twas easy.

He’d be at the gospel shop.

I ain’t ever been nuts on churches cos I reckon self-righteousness got a smell, and it gets right up my conk. There’s more places in the world than I can count to make you feel small and crappy and dingable—ain’t no need whatsoever for one of them to have a licence for it. Still, of all the chapels I haven’t liked being in, Prosperity’s could take some sorta prize. From the moment I sidled inside, hoping not to get noticed by the black coat, or, y’know, any God what thought I wasn’t doing shit right, that grotty little steeple house gave me a raging case of the screaming heebies.

Mebbe ’twas just the neglect, but the air weren’t right somehow, and it tasted dusty-sweet when I tried to catch a breath. The windows were all grimed over so the light weren’t getting in proper, making everything dingy-dark and depressing as fuck. First thing I stagged was Ruben, slumped in one of the ratty ol’ pews, talking all deepsome to Father Giles.

“I’m lost,” he was saying. “I’m so lost.”

“We all are,” quoth the priest.

And Ruben nodded. “‘To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.’” He sighed, bowing his head, so the shadows of that place crawled all over him.

“None can be saved.” I couldn’t see much of the black coat, but his voice was scratches against my skin.

“But by the grace of God, I know, I know.” Ruben’s hand flapped a bit impatientish. “But what of love, Father?”

“What of love?”

“‘The love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ Doctrinal or not, heretical or not, I have long believed that worldly love is a reflection, a perfect microcosm, of divine love, and that our capacity to give and receive love brings us closer to God.”

Ruben was quiet for a bit. I guess they was looking soulfully into each other’s eyes or whatever it is believers do at times like this.

“But,” he went on at last, “if one loves . . . if I love evil . . . and there is no redemption, no salvation . . . then is it love? Or is it simply selfishness?” He shuffled a bit. “And carnality, which I will confess is a weakness of my nature. It cannot be any natural reflection of God’s love that permits cruelty and iniquity to continue and to . . . to flourish.”

Father Giles shook his head. “No. Perhaps the existence of such love offers a reflection not of God but of something . . . else.”

“You mean the Devil?” Ruben actually laughed, and it sounded so wrong in that wrong, wrong place, that I made the sign against evil just cos. “I don’t believe in the Devil. Nor in a fiery pit.”

“There is no fiery pit, Ruben.”

“Thank you. Some enlightened thought at last.”

“There is simply cold eternity.”

Ruben coughed. “As you say.”

And I kinda wanted to the shake the stupid bastard cos normal folks—even church uns—didn’t say shit like that, and I didn’t know why Ruben wasn’t telling him to go get fucked sideways with a rusty fork.

Father Giles stood, and he was like this extra bit of dark in the dark. “It is irrational to hold faith with the silence of a passively loving God, and deny the evidence of your heart, your eyes, and the world in which you live.”

Ruben’s head came up. “What do you mean?”

“If mortal love is a representation of divine love, does it not follow that hate, selfishness, greed, indifference, savagery are also cosmic reflections?”

“N-no, such things are manifestations of free will.”

“Then why not love as well, when you have said yourself it is no more a goodly force than anything else?”

“I don’t understand,” said Ruben all shaky and hug-needing, “what you’re telling me.”

Father Giles shrugged. “I’m telling you that you might as well hold a mirror to the sky. There is nothing to reflect. There is only what you see. Which is mankind, infinitely small, and petty, and cruel.”

I couldn’t stand it no more, not listening to that shit, nor being in that fucking place, so I pegged it. Cos if that was succour, it could suck it.

’Twas drizzling a bit outside, and blowing too, so Prosperity was juddering, but it didn’t freak me out like it used to. ’Twas nowt to being on an aethership, which was like riding the air itself.

The Abbey had a bit of a porch, so I tucked myself under it to wait for Ruben. Miss Alis was standing in the doorway, not wearing very much, and sucking on a massive cigar. I made the joke any bugger would’ve made, and she threatened my nutmegs with a blunt spoon, so then we just made civil whiskers as the rain plopped and splished and got all betwixt the joins of the main drag, making it shiny.

Finally the rain came on so hard that Miss Alis hoofed it back inside. Which was also when Ruben gave the gospel shop the laugh and came out, pulling down his hat and turning up his collar against the weather. He looked fucking miserable, and shaggable as sin, just like always, with that stubble-rough jaw and those innocent-knowing eyes of his.

I kind of gave him this pathetic little wave cos I was suddensome shy like a maid on her wedding day.

“How dost my buff?” I called, making merry like I hadn’t just listened to him break his heart.

For a second he looked so happy—just cos of the unexpected appearing of one Piccadilly, formerly of Gaslight—but then he got all sheepish. “How’s Byron Kae?”

“They’re coming along. Which is sommat you should have done days ago, by the way.”

He stuffed his hands deep into his pocket. “I know. But how can I face them? This is all my fault.”

“’S’not all your fault.” That made him smile a bit, but I wasn’t jesting. “For serious. ’Tis choices what everyone makes.”

“And if it weren’t for my choices, your lives wouldn’t have been in danger, and Byron Kae would never have been hurt.”

I leaned on the rickety rail, and the water from Ruben’s hat brim splashed onto my nose, icy cold. “It ain’t like Milord hides who he is. They knew what they was doing when they took him on board.”

Ruben sighed. “We . . . well, he mostly, needed to get out of England as quickly as possible. So I asked for Byron Kae’s help, and they gave it. All because I took advantage of a debt they think they owe me, when they don’t owe me anything.”

“Come on.” I hopped off the porch of the bawdy house cos it wasn’t exactly the place for conversation, and held out my hand.

He took it after a moment. He was always so warm, was Ruben Crowe. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Shadowless, so you can say sorry like the man I know you are.”

He flinched, but didn’t protest. And there we was, all over again, walking through the rain together. And this time no Milord to seize the goods.

“Y’know,” I said, “I reckon whate’er they done for you, was done in friendship, nowt more nor less than that.”

“I’ve done so little to deserve their friendship, Dil.”

I peeped up at him, all earnest and somber and in serious need of kissing, though I reckoned he probably wasn’t ready for me to try. “What’d you do then?”

“I told you. Nothing. Just . . . some words of kindness when they were young.”

“That ain’t nothing, Ruben. That’s everything.”

“It’s basic—” He made a frustrated gesture with the free paw. “The default. When someone is feeling frightened, or alone, or unsure, you want to make them . . . not feel like that.”

“If it’s the default, why ain’t everybody doing it then, eh?”

“You’ve just done it for me.” And then he brought my hand up and . . . kinda . . . actually kissed it. In this sort of careless, courtly way that made me feel like fucking honoured or sommat, and go all wet and melty and desperate deep inside.

I choked out this noise. Cos nobody’d ever done sommat like that for me. Though I didn’t reckon anyone else could. Not without it looking totally daft. And I nearly blurted out sommat about it being nowt, before I realised I’d be shooting my own point in the face.

So we rolled up to Shadowless in silence. Where Byron Kae was waiting.

It looked like a painful conversation what they had. I think Ruben mebbe cried. But though, once upon a time, I surely would’ve, I didn’t go listening in. ’Twasn’t mine, whatever they said to each other, so I didn’t take it.

When they was done, Byron Kae called us together, and we sat below deck, having coffee, which was kinda like old times, except everything was different now, and that made me sad for those fleeting, flying days we’d had, telling our stories, and being as free as five people could be.

But Byron Kae was too pale and leaning on a cane. And Ruben’s eyes were red, and now I saw him proper that sexy stubble of his was starting to look like the wrong kinda neglect. And Miss Grey kept shooting glim-daggers at him. And Shadowless, strung up on skyhooks, weren’t riding the wind like she used to.

And a space. Somehow there was still a fucking hurting space for a prissy motherswinker who had too much pride, and no kindness, and never told one fucking lie.

“We have two choices,” said Byron Kae, rainbows glinting in the ol’ tin mug they was holding betwixt their hands. “We get out of Prosperity, or we finish the job.”

I didn’t say nowt cos truth was, I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to be doing with myself. I wanted Ruben. And I wanted to stay on Shadowless. And I didn’t know how to have either of those things. Strange cos I’d lived a life of wanting, but for the first time ever ’twas more than merely more.

Anywise, it turned out, Ruben and Miss Grey had plenty to say, and they said it all loudly. Ruben thought no cos of what had happened last time, and Miss Grey thought no cos of what had happened last time and also cos sommat was wrong with the skies.

She stared out into the blue through a porthole—though ’twas grey right then—and her eyes darkened. “The krakens are restless, but it’s not a squall . . . it’s focused. And it’s building. I’ve only felt something like this once before, and that was a long time ago.” She paused. “In Cornwall.”

“There’s krakens in Cornwall?” I squeaked.

“There are krakens everywhere, Master Piccadilly.”

“Even if the skies were calm,” interrupted Ruben. “I couldn’t let you do it. You’ve done too much already, and I won’t lead you any further into danger.”

Byron Kae gave him this look. I’d never seen them look that way at anyone. It was softened by affection, but it was fierce too, and the stars in their eyes glittered so bright. “I’m an aethermancer, Ruben. I’ve been to the deepest parts of the sky, and I’ve danced in the aurora borealis. I’ve looked over the edge of the world and embraced eternity. I’m not afraid of a broken man who fears his own heart, and I will not leave him to die.”

I was quiet again, because weirdly, I’d gone all tingly like when I get touched by someone what seems to care.

“He’s not . . . I don’t . . .” Don’t think Ruben had a clue how to answer. “He won’t die. He’s like a snake. It doesn’t matter how you drop it, it’ll still find a way to twist round and bite you.”

Bitterness didn’t suit Ruben. He weren’t grained for it. But if nowt else, it showed how true he spoke, cos Milord had bitten hard and deep, and the wound was full of his poison.

“So,” said Byron Kae, softwise, “you propose we abandon him in Prosperity with no resources? You know he can’t return to England.”

“I propose he’s not our goddamned problem.” The words came out probably louder than Ruben intended, bouncing off the walls like bullets.

“Which still means leaving a dangerous criminal in desperate straits in a town where the only laws are strength, cunning, and sheer will. What he lacks in the first, he surely makes up for in the others.”

And Ruben just . . . crumpled. “Oh God. Oh God. Am I to bear responsibility for all his wrongdoing or potential wrongdoing now? Must I regret him, and my foolishness, for the rest of my days?”

“A recidivist is for life,” said Miss Grey sharply, “not just for Christmas.”

Ruben glared at her.

I could’ve said sommat comforting, but I didn’t, cos I didn’t want him feeling better about loving Milord.

I wanted him to stop.

Byron Kae put their hand on his arm. “I remember when you first brought him aboard, you carried him so tenderly, and I thought he could not be a monster, to be loved by you.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I don’t think it matters.”

“Yeah, it does,” I snapped. “He don’t deserve being loved by Ruben.”

They smiled at me, and it was sorta sad and sweet at the same time. “Love isn’t earned, Dil. It’s given.”

Ruben gave a sort of hollow groan. “I don’t know why I went looking for him in the first place. Obsession, some twisted sense of justice. I really did have some crackpot notion of turning him over to the authorities and restoring my family name.”

This weren’t like no tale he’d ever told before. ’Twas a raw thing, mebbe an ugly one, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it. But he spoke and I listened. We all did.

“But when I found him, alone, half-dead, in this filthy cellar worse than the prison where he’d left me, all the world his enemy . . . I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything except save him.”

“And who’s going to save you?” I asked.

He laughed, and it didn’t have no joy in it at all. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late for both of us.”

After a moment, Byron Kae got careful-like to their feet. “We’re agreed?”

Ruben shrugged. “He may not.”

“He has very few choices left. He will.”

They turned to me and Miss Grey. Before they could even open their mouth to speak, she cut in. “If you are about to give me the ‘this is not your flight’ speech, please spare me. There is nowhere I would rather be on land or sky than at your side. And yes—” she smoothed a stray tendril of hair back into her crazy-tight bun-thing “—it is highly probable we will all be devoured by krakens, but since they are coming to get me regardless, I see no disadvantage in meeting them halfway.”

“Dil—” began Byron Kae.

“I ain’t going neither. I mean,” I added, turning awkward, “unless you want me gone or whate’ver.”

“Never.”

And I guess being wanted for a quick trip through kraken-infested skies weren’t exactly the stuff dreams were made of, but ’twas sommat, right? ’Twas sommat. I stroked Shadowless, cos—truth was—we wanted each other. And that was rare enough to be right special.

I wasn’t sure how we was supposed to get a message to Milord, but it turned out Miss Grey knew where he was kipping cos Miss Alis had found him a ken what used to belong to one of the whores who’d flown off with an airship captain a few days back and not been heard of since. Pretty macabre way to get a roof over your head, but I couldn’t imagine Milord giving a fuck.

We arranged to meet up him on Shadowless.

I wasn’t sure he’d show, but he did. Mebbe he reckoned we’d come for him if he didn’t. Mebbe he thought we was going to throw him to the blue. It must’ve been going through his head. Would’ve been through mine. But he still turned up, neat as a pin, calm as you fucking please.

Like he had no fucking shame.

First thing he did when he came aboard was reach into his pocket, and I honestly reckoned he was going for a chiv or sommat, but it was just one of his fogles.

“You asked to see me?” quoth he, polishing away at his fucking pristine fingers.

That was when I realised he was doing a bang-up job of not looking at any of us while pretending he was.

Byron Kae laid down the law, just as we’d talked about. One trip, enough for him to retire on, and then we’d take him to France, or Italy, or wherever else he wanted, and if he put a finger where Byron Kae didn’t want it, he was stardust.

“What do you say?” they finished. “Can you agree to this?”

Milord inclined his head. “Certainly.”

“And we’re trusting him?” demanded Ruben. “After everything he’s done?”

I thought—I wasn’t sure—I saw Milord’s eyes waver, just for a second, Rubenwards. “I . . . I give you my word?”

“Is it worth anything?”

Milord looked so confused I had to remind myself really hard how much we all hated him. “I don’t know.”

“Enough.” That was Byron Kae, the stars what lived in their eyes flaring bright, and then vanishing, one by one, into darkness. “We have an accord. We leave tomorrow.”

So. ’Twas settled. We was flying straight for krakens a second fucking time.

Soon as the meeting was done, everybody binged off their separate ways, like arrows shot from a bunch of different bows. I guess Miss Grey went shagging, I dunno where Milord went, and Ruben I watched walking away til the mist closed round him. And for the first time in a long time, being on Shadowless weren’t enough.

I wanted sommat to hold tight to. Especially if this was going to be some kinda last chance. Truthfulwise, I wanted Ruben, but mebbe any body would do, as long as they was warm, and gave me sommat good to feel for a few minutes. Cos it’d been a while—far longer than I’m used to going, not that I’d had much chance to think of the ol’ arborvitae what with nearly getting et and shot and blowed up and dropped out of the sky and having a heart all full of Ruben. Someone should’ve warned me love wreaks ruination on your sex life. That shit ain’t in no books.

Byron Kae was standing in the prow, all bright, hair tangling in the wind. I did think about staying in, finishing Oliver with them, but I had this weird feeling inside. ’Twas a sort of restlessness—familiar—but tender too, like a bruise on the inside, and I was sorta afraid if somebody what knew me was nice to me, I’d start blubbering like a bantling.

So that was how I found myself in the Abbey, and that was how I spotted Ruben sitting in a corner there, looking for redemption or mebbe just oblivion at the bottom of a dirty glass.

The atmosphere was boisterous, which is what you want for a whorehouse standing betwixt you and a sky full of nowt. ’Twas much drinking and laughter and wares being flashed and lasses kicking up their skirts and lads rubbing up against each other in a pretty damn delectable fashion.

And even though he was his own private pile of misery, Ruben was still getting eyed up plenty cos, let’s face it, the fella was fucking gorgeous, and even in my trick-turning days I would’ve done him gratis. He weren’t paying much attention, but I guess he didn’t fancy being alone neither.

Which meant ’twas now or never for ol’ Piccadilly.

Truth be told, I wasn’t feeling mightsome sparklish, but what was my options? Walk a-fucking-way? No way. ’Twas like the fella was gift wrapped for me, and you don’t turn down presents cos you got the blues for no reason.

Over I went, sliding onto the seat opposite and flashing him my very best and flashiest smile. “What’s a sweet cove like you doing in a place like this?”

Ruben glanced up. “Don’t waste your time on me, Dil. I’m not good company at the moment.” His voice was whisky-rough—sexy with it, mind, but sad as fuck.

“Reckon that’s for me to judge, don’t you?”

He made a kind of wobbly gesture, could’ve meant anything. “It’s our last night on land. We might not come back at all. You should be enjoying yourself.” He dug around in his coat pocket and rolled a handful of yellow boys across the table at me. “Here. Have anyone you want. Have all of them.”

I’d never seen so much chink what was legally obtained. And, like the fucking sap-skull he’d made me, I shoved it back. “I don’t want anyone else. I want you. You know that.”

He gazed at me all tormented. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“What? Cos I’m not pyscho enough for you? That what lifts your sugar-stick?”

Dunno where that had come from. ’Twasn’t what I’d intended. Not at all. I was supposed to be charming him, not making him want to cudgel me.

“You don’t understand.” Yeah, now he’d gone cold. Couldn’t blame him.

“Sorry,” quoth I, contrite as could be, cos I was. And also having to think fast how to turn this back my way. “But I kinda don’t. I don’t understand why can’t you have sommat nice?” I flickered the ol’ lashes. “I’m very nice.”

“And what about you?”

“You trying to suggest it wouldn’t be nice for me?” I rubbed a hindpaw against the side of his knee under the table. “I reckon you underestimate your skills.”

He went a little bit pink, hard to see beneath the bronze of his skin, but ’twas there. “That’s absolutely not what I meant.”

“Y’know, not everything has to be about everything. Sometimes it’s just about now.”

That was a whole bag of clankers. Cos for me, it was everything. But everything had to start somewhere. And mebbe once he remembered how good it could be, how easy, if one of you wasn’t a murderous fuck, mebbe if he just let me show him . . . he’d be mine, and not Milord’s.

He was nodding slowly. “You might be right.”

“Sometimes there ain’t no good worth worrying ’bout except what two people can feel together. So what’dya say? Want to try that again?”

“Try what again?”

He must’ve made some what you might call serious inroads into the whisky bottle cos he wasn’t normally slow catching on.

I propped my chin in my hand and grinned and fluttered at him. “What’s a sweet cove like you doing in a place like this?”

“Oh. Right. Yes. Um . . .” He mustered this grin. ’Twas pathetic. “Waiting for a boy like you?”

I glared. “I dunno, mate. Are you? You don’t sound very sure.”

“Sorry.” He sighed and sorta seemed to shake himself. And now he made a proper effort, going all sultry for me which was funny and sweet at the same time, and hurt a bit cos he had to try so hard at it. “Waiting for a boy like you.”

And now I was the one what didn’t feel like playing. So I cut to the chase, trying to pretend I wasn’t. “I’m liking that answer. You kinda wanna mebbe take it upstairs?”

“The answer?”

“Yeah, I reckon I could treat it real nice. Make it feel pretty good about itself.”

I gave him a hopeful look, but he just frowned, and I realised I’d lost him again like I’d hooked an eel instead of a fish. “I don’t know, Dil. It isn’t feeling too good about itself right now.”

“All the more reason to give it a break.”

He started shaking his head, so I threw caution to the winds, jumped over the table and smacked my mouth into his. If I could just stop him talking, and thinking, I had a feeling nature would take it from there. And I was right.

Cos next thing I knew, I was tumbling all over his lap, his mouth taking mine, all rough and whisky-flavoured, til I was whimpering with the joy of it, and a touch of fright for it being so sudden.

And, even though I shouldn’t’ve been, I was remembering how he’d been with Milord, and how Milord had been with him, and I’d never been like that with anyone cos . . . it probably just ain’t in me. Then I realised, like you notice a knife in your gut, that it weren’t possible to have Ruben without Milord cos he was everywhere, in my memories and Ruben’s, in every touch and every kiss. And I knew right then, clear as fucking day, the only reason Ruben was with me now, and with me like this, wasn’t cos I was me. ’Twas cos I wasn’t Milord.

I knew, and I let him anyway. Cos I wanted, and this was close to getting, and I thought it was enough.

Right then it was. It really was.

He kissed me deep and hard and desperate, and ’twas just a bit overwhelming, that depth of passion and pain. What was it Byron Kae had said? Sommat about beauty being hard to bear. Which meant I was thinking about Milord again, and the terrible fucking courage it took for a man like that to love a man like Ruben. And mebbe I couldn’t throw myself into the same fire cos what you got to remember is devils was cast from angels first.

I would’ve pulled away, but then he went all gentle on me. Slow, like we wasn’t at the end of the world, and I wasn’t a sure thing. Truth is, I don’t normally get seduced. So I got no defences to being touched that way. Like I’m sommat worth winning.

“Dil?” Ruben pulled back, thumb playing lightly over the line of my cheek so as I could feel the soft scrape of the calluses on his skin. I turned my face to greet it, feeling indulged, claimed, cherished, and a bunch of other stupid shit I ought to know better about.

“Just thinking,” I said.

“I thought that was my job.”

“That so? What’s mine?”

“Feeling.”

He got me so pliant that when he slipped his other hand slysome betwixt my legs, I only sorta yelped, and then wriggled for more.

“Oi!” Miss Alis banged the bar top with a tankard. “Get a room, boys. They’re only a bob.”

Ruben looked into my glims, all deep and serious. I noticed suddensome pieces of gold and green floating in his eyes like the shimmer of ore in rock. “Well, what do you say, Dil?”

“Ain’t I already said yes?”

“But this time I’m asking.”

“How am I s’posed to make an informed decision with your hand right there?” I mumbled, pushing against his fingers which were circling like really fucking teasing vultures. Then he pushed this thumb into my mouth, and I parted for it without thinking. He stroked back and forth across my tongue, still gentle, so gentle, til I was closing my eyes and moaning at the back of my throat for him. “Holy shit,” I gasped when he slipped away. “Thou art wicked.”

“Is that yes?”

“Yes, fucking yes.”

How could it ever be anything else?

And then Ruben was catching the key Gap Tooth Alis threw over, and we was stumbling down a rickety corridor, which was shaking with the sounds of other folks going at it.

And thank God it weren’t too far cos I felt like I was gonna trip over my dong.

We tumbled into a room—just a room, whatever—and then Ruben had me shoved up against the back of the door and was kissing me all rough and reckless again, and this time, I had no cares about it. I was arching at his mouth and tipping up my hips so oft-times, even through the muddle of our garments, our cocks would rub one against the other.

Ruben was burning like one of them vengeful types of angels, and I was tearing at his shirt and waistcoat, dying for the glide of all that velveteen skin beneath my palms. But then he grabbed my wrists and pinned them against the door.

“I want to touch you,” quoth I, right against his mouth.

“I know,” he whispered, and I felt him grinning.

So I writhed under him til he gasped, though then he shoved his knee betwixt my legs and pressed sweetly upwards until I moaned. Breathless, I told him again that he was wicked—cos he was, he so was, the wickedest saint there ever was—and I was undone like Milord.

I shifted my hands against his, testing his strength and found I kinda liked it, the warmth of his skin pressed against mine (cos really, if I wanted to be free I could just culp him in the nads and scarper). Sommat I hadn’t known, watching Milord let Ruben do as he would, was how safe it felt, being powerless with Ruben. And how addictive, watching the flaring of his eyes and tasting the excitement on his breath as he took control. ’Twas like being the absolute centre of some private universe.

He pushed my hands together, one laid over the other, and held them above my head with his palm, and I’d never minded so little about being a shortarse than with Ruben looming over me. He dragged his lips down my jaw, silk and heat and a scrape of stubble, and I turned my head to let him nuzzle into the side of my neck, testing kinda carefulwise how it felt to be safe and helpless and horny as hell.

My eyes were closing on a crest of pleasure, body thrumming with the need for more. ’Twas the best thing ever, this wanting, knowing it’d be gratified. The question and the answer all wrapped up together, self-enclosed.

And then Ruben’s spare hand was dipping down to enwrap my cock through my kicks, rubbing up and down til the breath was stuttering out of me and I reckoned ’twas only the weight of his body resting against my trapped hands that was keeping me standing straight.

“Ruben,” I said, sorta urgent. “Ruben.”

He leaned in and opened his mouth over mine, sucking forth my velvet betwixt our sealed lips into all the sweet-warm-wet within. ’Twas like the nibs eating oysters but without all that salt and slimy shit, just my tongue tangling slick and deep with his, like two nimble rogues dancing through a star-speckled night.

And Ruben kissed me and touched me til I’d drunk down all his breaths and given all of mine and replaced them all with heated sighs and heart-shivering gasps. Til my panter was thudding against his and I was starting to twist and twine myself against him like a climbing rose. Til damn near everything had turned all hot and silksome and the image of Ruben was burned like sunglare behind my desire-hazed eyes.

And oh Ruben, Ruben.

Desirious music poured from betwixt his lips, soft and sweet and dark, like the secret places of the flesh, and it went trailing down my spine like feathers and fingers and trickled through my blood like I’d been at the ol’ blue ruin. Oh, the joy of pleasing Ruben Crowe. I could feel it all the way to my prick. And I was flying to pieces betwixt his mouth and his hands on the wild loveliness of wanting and being wanted.

When Ruben stopped, ’twas only to growl, “Spread your legs.”

And I did, letting him press me wide and vulnerable with his thighs, rewarded by his sharp breath and his fingers sliding inside my clothes, skin to skin bringing such a sound I’d have never imagined from my panting mouth.

His palm went skimming down the length of me and then dipped beneath to cradle the ol’ nutmegs while I danced my hips to his mischief and gasped and shuddered for him. And more again as his finger went slipping lightly against the crease of my arse.

“Ruben.” I squirmed.

His glims were gleaming wicked. “Something you want, Dil?”

“D-dunno,” I said, not being a total pushover. “Mebbe.”

The tip of his finger circled, breached, just a little, just a little. My head fell back against the door and next moment, Ruben’s tongue was trailing over my throat, strewing damp madness across my pleasure-sparking skin. “Well,” he murmured, “let me know if you think of anything.”

“You’re trying to kill me,” I wailed.

I was lost—just a triple-time heart, and a world of sighs and skin aflame with wanting, and a brain full of nowt but spangled skies and heaven’s light. Heaven. Or Hell. One of them two. Somewhere hot and fierce and beautiful and awful.

Ruben now put his lips to my ear, and I made a sound scarily like a sob. “How do you prefer it?”

“Don’t care as long as I get some afore m’ cock explodes.”

I felt cool air against my wrists as his hand lifted away, and then I was being whirled round in a giddy dance, almost stumbling over my own feet but saved by Ruben’s arms tight about me. And then he tossed me into the air, and I landed with a breathless squeak flat on my back on the bed. I pushed onto my elbows in time to see Ruben shedding his clothes, throwing his shirt over his head.

Boxing at Cambridge, eh? I must like write them a letter of sincere thanks for the body of Ruben Crowe. ’Twas all rugged and lived in, not bulky as such, but the muscles cording his arms and contouring his abdomen weren’t no show pieces neither. I wanted to send my tongue chasing sweatbeads all up and down those hills and valleys.

“Guh,” quoth I, following with a hungry gaze the arrow of dark hair that seemed divinely provided for the edification of tourists. Like it were saying, This way to the excellent cock. (Which currently seemed pretty happy with the sight of one Piccadilly.)

Ruben dispensed with my togs quicksome enough, dragging them off me with a bit of seam-tearing and button-popping, and then he came down atop me in a rush of warm, endless skin, his naked cock fetching up blissfully close to mine.

And for a few breathless moments, we was wrestling like naughty otters, sliding across each other, this way and that, slick on skin and sweat. Then, though, Ruben put his hand in the centre of my chest and pressed, his knees spreading beneath mine til I yielded to him.

As I told him, I ain’t fussed about how it comes, as long as it does, but there ain’t no denying you can feel a bit ridiculous all splayed out, specially when the ol’ wang is straining up towards heaven like the Tower of fucking Babel.

Smiling, Ruben bent his head and swiped his tongue over the tip, drinking down what had gathered there, and I arched up with a needy howl.

“Fuck, will you fucking fuck me, Ruben?”

Being in a bawdy house, there was a vial of oil on the table, and Ruben slicked up his fingers and pressed in, kind but insistent. ’Twas but a moment of stretch, and then it weren’t enough, not nearly enough.

“Don’t you fucking tease me.” I thrust against him as eagerly as though he was paying for it, except it weren’t no flummery.

He soothed me with a touch, murmuring soft sweet nonsense about taking care of me, and I quieted, believing. He stroked himself with rough, oil-slick strokes til his cock was glistening with it, and my impatience was expressing itself with an embarrassment of noises and shivers.

And then I was moving my legs even further apart, and Ruben came down onto an elbow, leaning in for a kiss, while his other hand was guiding his cock into me. I came up to catch at his mouth, velvet to velvet, swallowing with a touch of private smugness the frantic groan he made as he breached.

I was wanting it and prepared enough that there was only pressure and a yielding, both of them sweet and dark and perfect, like the burn of good whisky going down.

His cock moved with the same surety as his fingers, slow and steady, though at the last he drew back, hooked his hands beneath my thighs and thrust deep, bringing us both to such a glorious collision of intimate flesh that I tossed back my head and cried out in what mebbe Mr. Dickens (had he dared to write the good stuff) might’ve called a carnal glossolalia.

I tucked back my knees and Ruben let me go, bracing himself above me, the strain of bliss written clear across his face. And it felt fucking good, to be honest, knowing ’twas I who was bringing the pillars of his temples crashing down.He drew back slow and plunged deep afresh, dragging the breath out of me all ragged as his cock rubbed that particular place inside with ruthless precision. And again and again til I was incoherent on the beautiful lightning shearing through me, moisture leaking from my eyes and my cock alike.

I managed to cling onto just enough wherewithal to reach up to Ruben. I caught on my fingers the sweat dripping from the ends of his hair, touched the furrow upon his brow as he struggled with his own pleasure. I traced his collarbones, feeling the pulse thudding hard as a metalsmith’s hammer beneath the hot, damp skin, and sought out those lovely muscles what edge the top of the ribcage, cos they was standing out like the feathers on an angel’s wing. A deep desperate sound came out of Ruben, and I felt all the strength and power of him harnessed to me.

“A moment,” he mumbled, sitting on his heels, drawing himself out carefulwise, though my body felt like ’twas going to fight to the death to hold on to him. I made a plaintive sound, cos who fucking wouldn’t, but then he was drawing me after him so I was crouched across his thighs. ’Twas a moment of adjustment, but then he was driving up into me again and pulling my legs round him so that we was all knotted together in a tangle of limbs.

I put my hands behind so I didn’t go falling over and Ruben rocked us slowly, holding me tight against him, kissing me at intervals when I was capable of doing more than just taking his cock and drowning in his skin.

’Twasn’t like any swiving I’d done before. ’Twas so languorous, pleasure flowing over me in an endless, sweeping wave. And Ruben was everywhere, round me and in me and with me. I pressed my face into his neck, listening to the rhythms of his body, like he was Shadowless, and he touched my tangled hair and kissed my temple.

And just when I thought I couldn’t bear any more and mebbe I was going to start crying or sommat on the beauty of it and on knowing I couldn’t keep it, Ruben was untangling me, pressing me back onto the bed.

He pulled my legs against his shoulders, wrapped a hand round my cock and came into me again in an unbroken glide of perfect bliss. And I climaxed so hard, I thought mebbe I was going to die of it, a scream strangling at the back of my throat, starbursts behind my eyes, and my cock spilling so much seed I reckoned mebbe Ruben had fucked out my soul or whatever.

And then he thrust again and came too, his body shuddering in mine and over mine as though ’twas going to tear itself apart in pleasure, answering my cry with a heart-deep groan of his own.

For a shattered moment, he half collapsed against me, and then he pulled away, still breathing like a steam train leaving the station.

I just lay there in a boneless sprawl, full of Ruben in all the ways, not even able to move a single toe, totally fucked.

Ruben brought up the ewer from under the bed to clean us both off. I would’ve protested I could see to that myself, except I couldn’t. And when that was done, he crashed out next to me like a felled oak tree.

Threw an arm across his eyes like there was sommat in them he didn’t want me to see.

And cos I didn’t have a fucking clue what to say for myself, I just rolled into him and pretended like I’d nodded off. It must’ve happened for real though, cos later I woke up and a sort of pale light was creeping into the room which suggested dawn wouldn’t be far off.

Ruben had pulled the sheet over us and wrapped an arm about me, and I’d sorta climbed all over him while I was out of it, as though I wanted him to hold me as tight as he’d held Milord that night I’d seen them together.

But he hadn’t. He wasn’t. Which was when I knew it weren’t the same. And all I’d shown him with everything we’d done together was that he was in love with Milord, not Piccadilly.

I edged away, thinking I’d get away with sneaking off, but then I saw he was awake as well, the other arm tucked behind his head as he stared blankly at the gaudy room with its faded scarlet hangings and its pictures of satyrs and nymphs having it off.

Though when he realised I was moving about, he turned onto his side and dropped a kiss on the tip of my conk, which made me grin.

“Dil.” He sounded all soft and sad. “I . . . It’s . . .”

“’S’okay,” quoth I, forestalling potential awkward. “You can’t go helping who you fall in love with. I know you’d rather ’twas me, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind so much myself. But it ain’t so . . . that’s that.”

He rested a hand on my hip, smoothing over the skin there with a sort of effortless possessive touch that made me shudder and wake up inappropriately in some particular regions.

“I wish—”

“You ain’t going to break m’ poor little heart nor nowt, Ruben. And that was some top-quality clicketing what we had, don’t you reckon?”

I did need him to stop touching me, though—or it was going to break my poor little heart. Even when he wasn’t trying, my skin sung for Ruben. I suppose it’d been a pretty stupid thing to do, swiving with the fella you wished you could have permanent-like, but I didn’t regret it, not for the second of a second.

What I regretted was that it was all I fucking got. And all the reasons that was so.

That’s the thing about life, right? Some folks get born with everything, and the rest of us get born with nowt. And from that beginning even the smallest piece of sommat you want is precious. But I was starting to see you don’t always have to settle for pieces. That you can want the whole of the sky. Ruben smiled a bit, and I chased the shades of gold drifting through his eyes. “Well, thank you,” he murmured.

“Weren’t so shabby for me, y’know.” I wriggled off and started frisking urgentwise for my togs which was scattered to the four corners of the room, such had been Ruben’s enthusiasm for getting them off me. I was feeling pretty motivated to get them back on, I have to say.

But then I heard a sorta groan—the nonhappy sort—from the bed, and I turned to see Ruben dragging his hands though his hair. “How did it come to this?” he asked.

I wasn’t sure if that was what they called a rhetorical question, but I perched my arse on the edge of the bed anyway. I didn’t really want to be sitting there talking about the unfathomable mysteries of love or whatever with my wang hanging out, but it weren’t seeming like I had much choice in the matter.

Eventually Ruben glanced up again and with a wild and roving look. “I can’t. I just can’t. He’ll destroy me.”

And then his hands closed tight as a set of manacles round my upper arms, and he dragged me down atop him, slanting his lips over mine, sour with the taste of morning and desperation.

My brain went one way and my cock the other, cos there was sommat wondrous in the raw heat and rough skin and the scent of both of us mingled rising afresh from the disturbed sheets. I murmured, somewhere betwixt protest and surrender, and his mouth claimed that as well, his hands dragging upwards, branding my skin, leaving the searing memory of Ruben’s touch in their wake. And then they were clawed about the jut of my shoulder blades, like he was clinging on, pulling me to him, cock to cock and hip to hip.

I liked him frantic—I’d just have preferred it’d been for me.

I pulled back for breath “Say, Ruben, you wouldn’t be wishing I was some other cove?”

His fingers ghosted along my spine, sweet, so fucking sweet. I couldn’t help curving into them, purring at the back of my throat, as Ruben wrought his pleasure over my skin.

“I’m wishing I was some other cove.”

“I’m sorta nuts on you jus’ the way you are,” blurted out the idiot Piccadilly, high on being petted.

Knowing the lesson was one fucking thing. Learning it another. Cos Ruben could make sweet fuck-all look mighty bloody tempting.

“Then why don’t you stay awhile? After this trip. I hear the Americas are a land of opportunity for two resourceful gentlemen.”

But that sorta wrecked it. I’d been trying to pretend nowt was going on here but two bodies what wanted each other, but now I jerked back, not being so fond of castles in the sky. Sure, they look pretty enough, but they’re made of nowt but empty breath. Fucking insulting, really. “Oh yeah, like I’m going to swan around as the fair-weather fuck-toy of somebody in love with some other bugger.”

“Dil!”

Ruben’s eyes flew wide, and I realised I’d startled the crap out of him. Mebbe even pissed him off. Cos I’d gone and played the game too well, hadn’t I? How had Milord put it? Urchin with a heart of gold? With a side order of happy-go-lucky.

’Tis true I like my beds warm and I ain’t too fussy who’s warming them. But I’d just figured it’s a different fish kettle when you actually like somebody. And mebbe if he’d made his little offer a bunch of weeks ago, I’d have said hell to the yeah.

But things was different now.

Last night had been a piece of wonder, but I was done with enough. Fucking done.

And though I didn’t give two hoots about being respectable or buying a little cottage in the country, I hadn’t entirely given up all hope that mebbe, just mebbe, there’s somebody out there in the fucking vastness of the world for who I might be the first choice. The first and only choice.

Like Ruben and fucking Milord, who spun each other like a pair of compasses, but always ended pointing to each other. Though ideally a bit less fucking complicated, cos I’m a simple cove and if there’s more in heaven and earth than dreamed in my philosophy, that’s fine with me cos philosophy can get stuffed.

“It wouldn’t be like that,” he went on.

“Mebbe it would, mebbe it wouldn’t, but it ain’t no risk I fancy running.”

“Well, that’s your choice, of course,” he said, with a bit of the haughty.

I rolled away. I’d ruined the mood, but mebbe that was for the best as well. Without Ruben touching me, the chill of the room prickled sommat painful. “Aye. ’Tis.”

“I can make choices of my own, you know. I’m not in love beyond redemption.”

“What’s redemption got to do with it?” I started struggling into my clothes again.

And I was a bit surprised when Ruben started laughing. Not exactly in a happy way. But he stirred himself and started dressing too, and we went back to Shadowless together.

’Twasn’t exactly unawkward, but it weren’t totally awful either. I guess we were both pretty committed to it not being. Though as we came up to the docks, Ruben stopped and pulled me into his arms for a good ol’-fashioned hug. Damn softie.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel used, Dil. Nothing could be further from my intent.”

“I know that,” I muttered into the shabby ol’ brown duster that smelled of clear skies and Ruben Crowe. ’Twas typical really—even at his worst, he was still the best man I’d ever known.

“And if you change your mind . . .”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You will always be my friend, you know.”

Heh. ’Twas easy enough for him to say. The best man, but a bit daft sometimes. Guess it came with being so clever.

“P’rhaps.” I grinned up at him. “But you’d be bound to find some other dodgy character to go falling at your feet, making life complicated.”

Ruben flushed, looking all confused and conflicted. Morals, eh? Who’d have ’em?

The wound in Shadowless’s hull was nowt but a long scratch, the colour of a new scar. Poor lady, been in the wars. I stroked her lightly, so as she’d know it didn’t mar her beauty none. And it felt pretty damn good to jump aboard, as though sommat dragging me down had been took away.

We was still docked, of course, but no longer on skyhooks, so we was moving to our own measure, dancing to the music of the open sky. I breathed free.

Milord was standing idly against the rail, trying to pretend like he hadn’t been waiting. As we boarded together, he sneered, but his eyes was full of resignation, as though he couldn’t even muster the energy to hate us properly.

I wondered if Ruben was going to say sommat to him, but he just went below with barely a glance.

I was following when Milord’s hand closed round my arm. This was apparently my day for getting grabbed. Except Milord had his thumb right in the crevice of my elbow and was squeezing in a way what made blinding pain go shooting all the way down my forefin til my hand was burning and numb at the same time.

I was so shocked by it, I didn’t even think to yell. ’Twas some sorta cruel magic—putting somebody in agony from a single touch. I couldn’t see a fucking thing through a blur of tears, and I was trying to twist away, but he was clinging on for grim death, and the more I struggled, the more it hurt.

“Pleasant evening?” he purred.

“’Twasn’t bad.” ’Tis a strange feeling to absolutely hate somebody and pity them at the same time. Like when you’ve et sommat dodgy, and it wants to evacuate from both directions at once. “It didn’t mean nowt.”

He dragged me round and just sorta stared at me with his ice-pale, deadly glims. And then he let go—which was a special new sorta pain. My whole arm felt like ’twas screaming inside itself, hanging there helpless. “You have quite a facility for lies. Sufficient to convince Ruben, but not me.” His lips curled. “Poor Piccadilly.” Great. Least sympathetic thing I ever heard. He tapped my chest lightly. “Gold is a soft metal, is it not? You should take more care.”

I wondered if he’d been at Miss Grey’s supplies.

A wondering that pretty much exploded when he leaned forward and put his lips to mine. Just his lips. Nowt else.

“I can taste him on you,” he whispered.

So I bit the creepy motherswinker.

Didn’t stop him though. He laughed. And swiped his tongue across my mouth, supple as a cat chasing cream.

“What the shit is wrong with you?” I yelled, finally pushing him off.

He was still staring at my lips. “I used to be above the banalities of human wanting,” he said softly. “And now I am desperate with it.”

I made a run for it, before he could conceive of anywhere else about my person he might be inclined to try and find Ruben.

I kinda looked about for Byron Kae—just suddensome wanting to see rainbows—but there weren’t no sign of them at all.