London Steam

The Shadows of Kenfig

Seth Maitland knew for a fact that had the moon not been new, Dr. Poindexter Fitzhugh would have died. Not even a scrap of moonlight filtered through the Perspicillum that was Galileo Observatory’s Club for Gentlemen’s signature attraction. From their tables, diners and card players, drunks and singers, whores and celebrants could gaze upward through the crystal and brass dome and see the night sky, thousands of times magnified. That night, the sky was a spray of diamonds across black velvet, no planetary or lunar brightness to distract from the parade of stars. Toward the southern end of the room, the veriest cusp of Saturn’s famed rings still peeked over the horizon.

On nights when the moon was full, or even half full, Seth couldn’t have hoped to enter the Observatory without descending into the madness that was in the call of his blood, buried deep within his bones.

Rumor had it that the good doctor had his left eye clawed from its socket in a life-or-death battle against the gwr of the Kenfig Barrows and had replaced it with this prosthetic of his own design, said to give him better sight than a normal man. Seth marveled that Dr. Fitzhugh’s eyepiece wasn’t banned by the club, so stringent were they about the possibility of progress-cheats. Truly, a remarkable advancement, and yet the cicada sounds of the whirring gears from inside his monocle was almost enough, on its own, to drive Seth into rage.

Seth wasn’t the only one so affected. Even if the prosthetic didn’t give Fitzhugh the ability to see through the back of the cards held by other players, the doctor had been winning steadily all night. The incessant click of shifting gears every time the doctor moved his head could try the patience of even the most placid of men. Lord Tildren, rake and rumored fortune hunter, to Seth’s left, was going to have to visit a dentist if he kept grinding his teeth so audibly.

Seth ignored the siren’s call of anger that stirred in his chest. He held it fast with silver chains of will, forged in his own driving need for the doctor’s storied intellect. Fitzhugh was London’s foremost expert on the gwr, or werewolf in the vernacular. It was vital that Seth proceed with extreme caution; getting the information he needed, and the mere fact that he needed it, could bring him down.

Seth glanced at his cards; this hand was rubbish, but he was the only one privy to that information. He certainly wasn’t going to get a glimpse of that legendary lore with this hand. But there was time. Seth allowed himself a brief, mysterious smile.

“Two for me,” Jester said, tossing in a few coins. The gentleman thief’s stash had dwindled to a pitifully small pile of coins. No one knew exactly how Jester had wrested a membership from Lucille Avenarius, the club’s owner; some said he’d stolen one, but if that were true, he would probably have had a tussle-up with the Runners. Other rumors were more colorful; Jester might have been Lucille’s unacknowledged brother. Jester had been losing steadily all night, but this did not deter the criminal mastermind from his customary good humor. As the story went, Jester had enough in stolen funds to fill the entire card-hall.

Farnsworth, Earl Leveret, who was dealing—there hadn’t been room for him to sit to cards with them as a player, but for the company, he’d offered his services as dealer—slid Jester two cards with a quick flick of his fingers. Farnsworth had never done an honest day’s labor in his life, and had the lily-white, smooth hands to prove it. Jester lifted his cards and tucked them into his hand without seeming to look at them. Tildren lowered his jaw, stared briefly at the dealer with a sneer. The undercurrent tension was thick, although Seth couldn’t quite put his finger on the subtleties.

“Is that to me?” Cordelia Davenport trilled. She was an American, loud and brassy and displaying entirely inappropriate amounts of cleavage. Her nasal-colonial accent grated almost as much as Fitzhugh’s infernal device. She still held onto perhaps two pounds worth of florins, but that was entirely due to Jester and Tildren’s obsession with the red-headed woman’s pale flesh and sordid charms. Seth wagered himself a pound that she’d leave the establishment in the company of one or the other. Perhaps both.

That was an intriguing thought, but Seth refused to dwell on it. He had more important things to do this night.

* * * *

It was Lydia—his older sister, married and with two young sons—who had known Seth for what he was, long before he admitted to himself that the sight of a woman’s bare throat did nothing for him. The scent of perfume did not lead him to fantasies. Seth would much rather rest his gaze on a pair of muscled shoulders, on the slim hips of a horseman, on the thick, masculine calf enclosed in boots than the expanse of cleavage on display in every ballroom. Only his sister had noticed.