The Clarity of Cold Steel

UPON ASH-DRIVEN WINDS I can taste the downfall of mankind in all its glory. Seventy feet below us, outside the city walls, a sea of walking dead clamber, their rotting claws raking into stone and grit, nails breaking off in the ferron-crete of the plague wall. From up here, nothing’s visible, only my imagination giving form to any of the scrabbling horrors below.

Scritch… Scritch… Scritch…

I don’t look down.

I gaze south out over the gothic vista of Knightsbridge, at the riot of jag-like steeples jutting up at irregular intervals like the back of some razor-backed beast. A lot of churches in Knightsbridge. A lot of old Victorians, too. A throwback to a bygone era, and good riddance.

The bloke that Johnny Shakespeare’s two steel-jacked knuckle merchants have dangling by the legs over the precipice is bawling like a sacrificial calf, his hands clamped together in fisted prayer as he begs and he begs and he begs and he begs. The man’s motivation incarnate, what with the long fall below him but no assurance of death on impact.

Various intellectuals vehemently estimate the dead are piled clambering some twenty feet deep at the base of the wall, but just try to find an intellectual with the stones proportional enough to hazard a proper measure. But they’re piled deep. A wriggling, scrabbling mass of bygone humanity with only the vestigial impulse to consume still sparking their brain boxes. You fall, you might just break most of the bones in your body. Then you’re alive and kicking and wishing you weren’t as they’re ripping your intestines out your asshole.

“Just wait here,” the wall warden orders us. His badge of office catches a stray ray of lamplight lost; it ricochets off somewhere better, somewhere far, somewhere not here. Forty meters beyond the heated negotiations, the wall warden’s partner stands, his back to us, a standard issue Suzuki frog-mouthed blunderbuss cradled in arm, minding the wall’s far intersection. To infer he or his partner are on the take would be something of an understatement.

One leg up on the parapet, Johnny Shakespeare, the Napoleon bloke from the dog fights, now stands like Washington crossing the Delaware, gazing nobly out over the coming dawn, a bicorn hat atop his powder-wigged crown as he cleans beneath his nails with the hook hand he’s famous for using with what is often referred to as psychotic-yet-masterful precision.

Johnny Shakespeare ain’t looking down at the dangling bloke, he’s managing his cuticles, and his voice is low, barely a murmur from where we are, but the light tone of his voice, the off-handed gesticulations of his empty hand and rhythm of the conversation from his end suggest he might be discussing the Quarkine Players recent opening of Purcell’s The Fairy-Queen. Johnny Shakespeare is notorious, amongst many, many, many other things, for his love of fine opera as well as his disdain for its counterpart. It’s rumored men, plural, have lost their lives for poor interpretations of Don Carlo.

I say nothing.

Sweet Sally says nothing.

It’d be impolite. Gauche. Suicidal. As such, we just watch from afar, greatcoats wrapped around us as Johnny Shakespeare flourishes with his hook hand and laughs out loud and horrible and jocular as though the chap on death’s door just made some outrageous joke. Perhaps he did.

In any case, Johnny Shakespeare merely steps back, nods to his knuckle merchants, and the two slab-like toughs simply let go. Fingers splay wide, grasping only air, and the bloke teeters back, screaming all the long way down. When he hits bottom, or near as he’s like to get to it, he still doesn’t stop screaming. Johnny Shakespeare leans over the edge, enthralled, hooked onto a great stone crenel as he peers down through a blaring white phosphorescent night-scope.

The man below’s still screaming.

One of the toughs asks Johnny Shakespeare something in a series of misshapen grunts. Johnny Shakespeare hangs yet over the precipice for another instant, shrugs, then leaps off the wall and lands with a pirate captain’s maddest flourish. He slams his night-scope shut with one hand, doffs his cap, and adjusts his powdered wig. “Couldn’t tell,” Johnny Shakespeare answers to his tough. “Maybe next time.”

The tough shrugs and grumbles, but Johnny Shakespeare’s already past him and strolling toward us. He does a little skip and hop, clicking his heels together then landing into a bow before Sweet Sally, his ridiculous bicorn hat doffed in a magnificent outward sweep as he snatches her mech hand and offers a peck on the back of it.

“Dear sweetest of ladies, it hath been too long since mine eyes hath laid upon thy loveliness.” He rises. He’s taller than I had thought, and at such close range, his seemingly ostentatious vestments, all corpse-gray velvet and gleaming brass buttons and epaulets, are threadbare and tarnished. His face, crisscrossed and peppered with schlager scars, is powdered a ghoulish white; his pupils are vertical snake slits, and his teeth are filed to points and reptilian sharp. His toughs gather behind him like the mounting tide, thick arms crossed over barrel chests, watching on in mute disapproval.

The wall wardens shift nervously.

Sweet Sally offers her own curtsy now, stiffly, woodenly, holding her train out to the side as she dips. “It has been far too long,” she ventures, though in truth, she sounds disingenuous to me.

The man below is still screaming bloody murder.

“Hmmm…? A tenor,” Johnny Shakespeare muses aloud, closing his eyes and listening to the shrill caustic trill, his forefinger licking along to some empty beat looping the horror into a song kenned only by him. The man is angular, spare, and moves as though he possesses joints unavailable to the mortal man, but he moves nonetheless with an insectile precision. He offers a glance to the wall warden who nods and vacates the premises, taking his partner with him. And then Johnny Shakespeare turns, cocks his head, regards me like an adder a chick. “Are you going to introduce us, my dear?”

Sweet Sally clears her throat. “Sure, Johnny.” She glances my way, her eyes wide in an unasked question, begging, imploring. She wanted me to use a pseudonym. An alias. I demurred. She insisted. I don’t give a shit if I die now, but I want it on my terms. “This is Mister Shakteel.”

“Shakteel…?” Johnny Shakespeare waggles his hook then sets it against his lips, trying to recall something. “Yes!” His eyes light up, and he purrs in delight, leaning in for a more toothsome take. “My dear,” his eyes narrow, “you did say Shakteel, did you not?”

“Avinash Shakteel,” I say, holding out a hand.

“Ah, yes-yes.” His hook goes to his chest in delight, and his eyes light up as he takes my hand, as his fingers slide softly, delicately encircling mine in a steel-cored velvet grip. “Hmmm… Someone has been looking for you.” He taps his hideous crimson lips with that hook hand. “He’s quite fetching, my dear. And just where have you been hiding him?” Then to me. “Nikunj is your relation?”

“Brother,” I say.

“I used to watch him fight in the blade pits on the west side of Malabar. He was incomparable. And I note a passing resemblance, I must say.” He holds up a hand in apology. “You’re far the more handsome, indeed, but he possesses the grace and singular air of menace of a panther on the prowl, whilst you, sadly…” He leaves the rest unfinished as he takes a turn around me, glances down at the small sword at my hip, leans in close, his breath on my neck. “And are you as adept as your brother in the use of such pointed pleasures?”

“I’m only good enough to know how inadequate I truly am.”

“Hmmm, aren’t we all…” Greedily, he fingers his protruding jaw, drooling as his voice lowers, husking along, “delicious. And where do you hail from, Mister Shakteel?”

“From all over,” I say. “Sepoy, originally. But I’ve been splitting time between Malabar and the Dirge as of late.”

“The Dirge? Hmmm. I’m afraid I’m not overly familiar with the west side. I’m sure you must toil in the employ of that tedious Canadian snake, Juniper Jack, no? Or one of the Kalighat Syndicates.”

“I’ve hobnobbed,” I say, “but I’m strictly freelance.”

“Freelance…?” He repeats the word in distaste, staring at my lips. “And if I were to query if your lance,” his gaze drifts down, slithering in coils of lascivious serpent across my person until it rests precisely where it’d be most uncomfortable, “were indeed free, or at the very least, for sale, what would you answer?” As an aside to Sweet Sally, “We’ll have to chat later, my dear.” Then his slit pupils are fixed back, unnervingly, on me.

“I’d have to pass.”

“Tedium…” He rolls his eyes, chuffs a laugh, and waves me off, raising an eyebrow Sweet Sally’s way. “And how is it that I might be of service to you this fine eve, my dear?”

“I want to get back in the game,” Sweet Sally ventures.

“Hmm… It was my understanding that you have never quite left the game,” Johnny Shakespeare says, hook and hand clasped behind his back, still eyeing me north and south as though I’m the prize stallion at auction. Well, he ain’t wrong there. “It was my understanding that you’ve been plying the Seep for over a year. Tsk. Tsk.” He strolls over to her and runs his rusty hook gently through her golden hair. “You could do so much better.”

“I know, Johnny. And I want to. I have to.”

“Eh?”

“My lungs are going, Johnny. I need a new set. Feel like I’m breathing through a straw. I’m getting on, too, and that’s no lie.”

“My dear—” Per gentlemanly protocol, Johnny Shakespeare raises his hand in objection.

“No,” Sweet Sally counters, “I am. And no silver-gilded poetics are gonna tarnish that fact. I need a score. A big one. Or I’m done for.”

“My dear, I could arrange it.”

She shakes her head. “I’m done owing people.”

“Then you wish to do so in my gainful employment once more?” He picks between his teeth with his hook. “Twenty percent?”

“No. I … I work for myself.” She holds up her hands. “Forgive me. I wish to remain,” she glances at me, “freelance.”

“Capitalism,” he sighs dramatically, “shall be the death of all of us.” He turns away and stares out between two great ferron-crete crenels, north out over the Grey Wastes and the Superstition Mountains beyond. As the ash wind rises, he places a hand upon his hat, closes his eyes, bares himself to the charnel gale.

“Please.” Sweet Sally slides up next to him, turns, points up to the three gear cities, the arcologies, grinding high above. “I just want you to get me topside.” She glances at me. “Us topside.”

“Yet, I thought you didn’t want to owe anyone.”

“Please, you can garnish my initial—”

“Impossible.” He crosses his arms, sets his jaw.

“But—”

“And if it were possible, why ever would I do that?” Johnny Shakespeare queries the gods, and his eyes light upon me once more. “You stated baldly you wish to remain freelance, so whatever would be in it for me?”

“I’d cover the cost.” I step in.

“Talk of money is so gauche.” He crosses his arms as though I were speaking some foreign language. “And covering costs?”

“I’d owe you,” I say. “Big time.”

“Ooh, a favor?” That piques his interest.

I nod. “A favor.”

His viper eyes narrow in consideration. “Big time…”

“It has to be fast,” I say.

“You can do it, can’t you?” Sweet Sally sidles in.

He grins, showing off all those needle-sharp eel teeth. “Of course, I can do it. Of course, I can get you up there, my dove. In this day and age, there’s ever a dearth of truly attractive women whose proclivities and moral latitudes are coin fed. Especially amongst the high lords. And if I remember correctly, Lord Cadbury has always kept you close to his heart.” He flicks a finger my way. “Nay, the trick is getting this one topside. Hmmm… and quickly.” He taps my shoulder with the tip of his hook. “You know how they feel about wogs. And a wanted felon wog at that.” He whips up his hooked appendage. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I say.

“Now, my dove …” he continues prowling along, “why not simply employ a less tanned fellow? Why, I have veritably half a dozen in mind I could rent you that would pose no such issue. And within this very hour.” He places a fist to his chest. “Boon fellows. You could be topside an hour after greylight. The first train skyward.”

Sweet Sally sets her jaw, shakes her head. “It has to be both of us and it has to be soon. Today. Tonight at latest.”

“Tonight?” He throws up his hands.” It simply cannot be done.” He paces away, whirls back. “Give me a week and I can forge documents, or construct some means of smuggling him—”

“You can do anything,” she counters.

His eyes light up as he stiffens erect with pride, that hook going to his heart like he’s about to gouge allegiance. “Hmmm… Perhaps I might at that. But then you must tell me something.”

“Something?” Sweet Sally hazards.

“Everything…” His tongue darts behind those needle teeth.

The man below has finally stopped screaming. Only the sound of wind coursing over the plague wall, whistling through the ferron-crete crenels, is audible now.

“Well, you see—” Sweet Sally starts.

“Hush,” his long mantis arm stretches out, swiftly, precisely, delicately, and he buttons her lip shut with one finger, “my dear.” His fingernail is a chipped sliver of jaundiced calcite. “You don’t wish to lie to me. Forgive me, you may wish it, indeed, but only in the short term, for in the long…?” He sets his jaw, shakes his head, a movement full of both villainy and sorrow. “Nay. I’m not so forgiving as I once was, when you and I once dallied upon rooftop vistas amidst an era of finer distinction.” He retracts that finger, that hand, that arm. “So proceed, my dear, but do so as though treading upon the thinnest of fissured ices, for there are dark shapes cruising beneath you and mercy is a thing unknown to them.”

Sweet Sally swallows, clears her throat.

I step in. “She’s doing this all for me.” Can’t let her take the brunt, not with this chap.

“Sally?” Johnny Shakespeare raises an eyebrow and chuffs a laugh. “You’d best get thine head screwed on straight, my boon lass. Stop thinking with your prick.” His hook goes to his chin as he studies me, eyes hungry, ravenous. “He is quite a catch, indeed, but business must be conducted with at least a sliver of decorum.”

I glance sidelong Sweet Sally’s way.

She patently ignores me, her eyes wide and focused for Johnny Shakespeare only. His two toughs loom behind him like mountains rising. “My dear, you understand that a fair deal of money might be made were either of us to turn this fellow over to the authorities? He publicly bloodied their collective nose, not to mention that Draegar business, which is one of the reasons he’s not currently squirming beneath a pile of ravenous dead. That and those eyes…”

“You wouldn’t, Johnny, I know you,” Sweet Sally pipes up.

“Don’t be so certain, my dear.” His eyes are on me. “Times are cinched tight all about. And though I look the part, I am no saint.”