I found him crouched on the rooftop above Mahogany Hall. He gave me a soft smile in greeting. I squatted down beside him.
“I finally died,” I said. “Don’t give me that look. I wasn’t dead for very long.” I reached inside my great coat and took out a cigarette case. Intricate, ratwork silver, nicked from the pocket of a swell young dandy. “Bloody spider venom. It didn’t hurt too badly. I wasn’t even hurt badly and I was still dead.”
My assassin exhaled slowly, his sharp profile silhouetted by the gas-lamps below. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Truly, I am.”
I pulled out a cigarette and fumbled with the match. Again and again, the wind blew it out. “You’ve died loads of times. I don’t even know.”
Peter looked at me with his sad, serious eyes. His eyes were so pale, they glinted in the night. “I came down here to get away from the sun. But you, you value your freedom. You value it more than anything.” He tilted his head, thoughtfully, and lay his hand on my arm.
I sucked in my breath. It felt like he had stuck his fingers around in a wound. I remembered the many things that I would never see again—all the places I had known before my life in the Neath. All the cities I had never been to, and would never go to now. I would never again see the sun rise, and never again watch it set. Even the life I had once discarded without a second thought. I couldn’t help but mourn at the finality of that too.
He put his arm around me and drew me against his chest. There was a rifle scar over his heart. I couldn’t feel it through his clothes, but I knew it was there. “I’m sorry I said that,” he murmured. “It is only so bad the first time.”
“It means that I can’t ever go back.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
“I had no plans to go back. Not soon, anyway. But now I don’t even have a choice in the matter. I feel as if I’ve lost the universe.”
“Yes,” he said again.
He reached for my hand. “Let me help you with that.” He shielded the match between his cupped hands. I took a long, stiff drag, and felt my lungs expand with harshness. I held it in until I could not hold it any longer, then exhaled slowly, in a low drawn-out breath. We watched the smoke dissipate into the cold night.
“I’m glad you came back,” he said, finally.
“Everything was unfinished. All my memories floated before me, and I was desperate with longing.” And you, I thought. And you. But it would do you no good to know.
We crouched together in silence, watching the street below. There was a symphonic opening tonight, with a better dressed crowd than usual. I pictured myself amongst them, emptying their pockets for a profitable night.
“It looks to be a good show,” I said.
“I agree,” he said. “I like watching you work.”
“You don’t have to stay.”
“I enjoy the music too. I can only stand it when I hear it from afar.”
I took another drag from my cigarette. From our vantage point, the gas-lamps of London looked like fat, fallen stars. Backlit by the moonish light, the rope paths of the the Flit stretched like above us like spiderwebs. I saw a hidden smile dance at the corner of his lips.
“You know,” I said, “I’ve never attended a show from the rooftops before.”
“When my health finally lets up, I’d like to take you to a proper show. But not even the Duchess’ box can beat this sort of view.” He smiled fully now, his teeth a sliver in the shadows. “Would you care to join me?”
That night, I stayed with Peter atop Mahogany Hall, until the final echoes of the last curtain call. It really was the best view in the house. All of London was our stage—ramshackle, lost, unrepentant, and proud. Defiantly daring to thrive underground. The Unterzee lay at the at the edge of my sight, black as pitch against an invisible horizon. It was strangely comforting that in the far and ceaseless darkness, vast and and infinite, beyond thought, past memory, there still stretched countless shores, and whole continents of mysteries.
Hand in hand, we sat like two children, and drank in the pleasure of each other’s company. The music was syncopated to the pounding of our hearts. Faint but audible melodies drifted up from below, vibrating through the ceiling beams until we felt it in our bones.
edited by Rowan Dusang on 3/28/2013