About Liberty & Other Stories

 

For the delight and edification of discerning readers, we present diverse stories concerning the lives, histories, and adventures of the crew of the aethership Shadowless.

 

Lament! as an upstanding clergyman falls into the villainous clutches of a notorious criminal mastermind.

 

Question your sanity! as a dissolute governess confronts blasphemies from beyond creation.

Wonder! at the journey of the dashing skycaptain Byron Kae across sapphire oceans, through smog-choked streets, and to the depths of the sky itself.

 

Gasp! at an entirely true and accurately rendered tale of pirates, cavalrymen, aethermancers, scientists, and a power to unmake the world.

 

Plus, hitherto unseen extracts from the meticulous and illuminating journals of Mrs. Miranda Lovelace, rogue scientist and first of the aethermancers.

 

This collection contains:

Shackles (A Prosperity Story)

Squamous with a Chance of Rain (A Prosperity Story)

Cloudy Climes and Starless Skies (A Prosperity Story)

Liberty (A Prosperity Story)

Excerpt from Shackles

Chapter the First

 

 

There were many stories about the crime prince of Gaslight.

 

So many that Ruben Crowe, climbing the thousand stairs to the top of the Spire, half fancied he had been sent to meet a monster. But waiting in the iron-grey cell, his face turned into a stream of dusty moonlight, there was simply a man.

Who twisted as the door grated open, chains clanking at his wrists and ankles.

“It has been many years since I have seen the sky.” His voice was smoky sweet and as refined as any gentleman’s. “Tell me, do you think it beautiful?”

 

 

 

Three days ago, Ruben had received a personal visit from the Bishop of Gaslight. This was somewhat surprising, for the last time they had met, the bishop had revoked Ruben’s licence. He had also professed himself disappointed.

In truth, it had not been unexpected. Ruben Crowe, it was generally agreed, was a poor fit for the Church

. When, after leaving Cambridge with first-class honours, he had announced his intention of taking orders, his father—the late Lord Iron—had declared that Ruben would be home by Candlemas. He, too, had professed himself disappointed.

Ruben received the bishop in the Citrine Drawing Room and served him Darjeeling first flush tea in translucent bone china. The sunlight that slipped through the arched windows paled in the savagely glittering splendour. As did the bishop.

He reached for one of the fancies, a cunning spiral of air and sugar, flavoured with saffron and lavender and, at last, essayed a conventional enquiry into Ruben’s health and happiness. Dr. Jaedrian Forrest was a lean, gilded lion of a man and not usually uncertain of his words.

Ruben gave assurances that he was quite well. He had just returned from the Stews. Dust had soiled the edges of his cuffs and clung to his hair. His fingers left rough, dark stains upon his teacup.

“I understand,” remarked the bishop, “you have been visiting the malcontents in the Lower City.”

“I wasn’t preaching.”

“No, of course not. That was not my intended implication.”

There was a long silence.

Dr. Forrest leaned forwards in his chair and steepled his fingers. His episcopal rings flashed darker and deeper than the gemstones that encrusted the room.

The motion was so startlingly familiar that Ruben’s heart shied like a roe deer. It was too easy to remember and easier still to forget. He could half imagine they were friends as they had used to be. The worldly bishop and the ardent young curate, ensconced together with tea, crumpets, and the debates of the day. And other pleasures, perhaps less easily reconciled with doctrine. Ruben knew too well the twist and arch of that silken, sinew-roped body. The chill pressure of those rings, warming like flesh beneath the weight of his palms.

“Do you still believe,” asked the bishop, “that all souls can be saved?”

Ruben did not hesitate. “Yes.”

“No matter how iniquitous or unrepentant?”

“Especially those.”

“Hmm.”

Ruben had little patience for what he had always termed “state room theology.” Church politics, in other words. So he watched the light skitter sharply across the surface of his tea, gold over gold, like Jaedrian’s eyes. And he felt, almost as if from nowhere, the soft stirring of loss, a restless and familiar longing for impossible things.

He remembered his father’s funeral. The silver apathy of the rain and the moment he realised that now he could never earn Lord Iron’s approval. Like most of his youthful ambitions, it had always been something he believed he could do tomorrow.

“Ruben, have you heard of the crime prince of Gaslight?”

He glanced up in some bemusement. He was not the sort of man to concern himself with fables. “I’ve heard the stories, but they’re just stories.”

“They’re not stories. They caught the man.”

“They caught a man.”

The bishop’s tawny eyes held Ruben’s steadily. “The reality hardly matters any more. It’s what he represents.” There was a pause. “He burns in less than a week.”

Under the laws of England, a condemned criminal would die by fire in order that they might repent in the last moments of their life and thereby save their soul eternal torment. However, if the condemned made a full confession and showed penitence, he would merely be hanged. The state called this mercy. Ruben was not so certain. “You must send someone to him,” he said.

Dr. Forrest stared at his own interlaced fingers. “I did.”

“And? Wouldn’t he repent?”

“He killed the man.”

An eerie chime sounded through the room as Ruben’s fingers slipped on his teacup.

“You see my quandary,” murmured the bishop.

Ruben wouldn’t precisely have called it a quandary, but he nodded.

“I cannot in good conscience send a criminal to the stake who has not received every opportunity to confess. But, equally, I cannot send another man into danger.”

Ruben’s lips quirked wryly. “But you seem to be sending me?”

Dr. Forrest had the grace to blush. “I’m asking you.”

“You may recall,” said Ruben mildly, “that you revoked my licence. Even if I was willing, I would be unable.”

“I could provide a dispensation.”

“Could you now?”

The bishop pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. “Ruben, I—”

“Of course I’ll do it.”

“I feared you might,” sighed Jaedrian, looking suddenly both older and younger than his years.

“You knew I would.”

“Yes.” Another pause, and then with a touch of pleading: “But you will be careful, won’t you?”

Ruben did not answer, but across the gleaming table, their hands met and roughly, tightly entangled, as if they were still lovers.

 

 

About Alexis Hall

 

Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the 21st century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.

 

He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.

 

He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a 17th century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.

 

He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.

 

Connect with Alexis:

• Website: quicunquevult.com
• Blog: quicunquevult.com/blog
• Twitter: @quicunquevult
• Goodreads: goodreads.com/alexishall

 

 

Want more in the Prosperity universe? Get There Will be Phlogiston for FREE.

An instructive story in which vice receives its just reward.

 

Inspired by true and scandalous tales of the Gaslight aristocracy, we present the most moral and improving tale of Lady Rosamond Wolfram

.

Weep, reader, for the plight of our heroine as she descends into piteous ruin in the clutches of the notorious Phlogiston Baron, Anstruther Jones. Witness the horrors of feminine rebellion when this headstrong young lady defies her father, breaks an advantageous engagement, and slips into depravity with a social inferior. Before the last page is turned, you will have seen our heroine molested by carnival folk, snubbed at a dance, and drawn into a sinful ménage a trois by an unrepentant sodomite, the wicked and licentious Lord Mercury.

 

Reader, take heed. No aspect of our unfortunate heroine’s life, adventures, or conduct is at all admirable, desirable, exciting, thrilling, glamorous, or filled with heady passion and gay romance.

 

Get this free read now: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/there-will-be-phlogiston

 

 

Thanks for following the tour! You can win an ebook copy of a novel of your choice from Alexis Hall’s catalog, and a $10 Riptide gift certificate!

 

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Please put your email in the body of the comment, not just in email section of the comment form. Be sure to follow the whole tour, because the more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win the prize!