The Gods Of Gotham Read Free Page A

of currency.
    “Two shillings makes two bits, so I’ll take that pair and wish you welcome. I’m Timothy Wilde. I don’t pour shallow, and I don’t water the merchandise.”
    “Thankee,” he said, reaching for the jug.
    There were dark treacle stains at the underarms of his tattered shirt due to the last molasses barrel he’d gammed from being too high, I saw next. So my latest customer was a sugar thief. Interesting.
    That’s a typical saloon keeper’s trick: I notice a great many things about people. A fine city barman I’d be if I couldn’t spot the difference between a Sligo dock rat with a career in contraband molasses and the local alderman’s son asking after the same jug of spirits. Barmen are considerably better paid when they’re sharp, and I was saving all the coin I could lay hands on. For something too crucial to even be called
important.
    “I’d change professions, if I were you.”
    The bright black sparrow’s eyes turned to slits.
    “Molasses sales,” I explained. “When the product isn’t yours, locals take exception.” One of his elbows shifted, growing more fluttery by the second. “You’ve a ladle, I suppose, and sneak fromthe market casks when their owners are making change? All right, just quit the syrups and talk to the newsboys. They make a good wage too, and don’t catch beatings when the molasses sellers have learned their sly little faces.”
    The boy ran off with a nod like a spasm, clutching the sweating jug under his wing. He left me feeling pretty wise, and neighborly to boot.
    “It’s useless to counsel these creatures,” Hopstill intoned from the end of the bar, sipping his morning cup of gin. “He’d have been better off drowned on the way over.”
    Hopstill is a London man by birth, and not very republican. His face is equine and drooping, his cheeks vaguely yellow. That’s due to the brimstone for the fireworks. He works as a lightning-maker, sealed away in a garret creating pretty explosions for theatricals at Niblo’s Gardens. Doesn’t care for children, Hopstill. I don’t mind them a bit, admiring candor the way I do. Hopstill doesn’t care for Irish folk either. That’s common enough practice, though. It doesn’t seem sporting to me, blaming the Irish for eagerly taking the lowest, filthiest work when the lowest, filthiest work is all they’re ever offered, but then fairness isn’t high on the list of our city’s priorities. And the lowest, filthiest work is getting pretty hard to come by these days, as the main of it’s already been snapped up by their kin.
    “You read the
Herald
,” I said, fighting not to be annoyed. “Forty thousands of emigrants since last January and you want them all to join the light-fingered gentry? Advising them is only common sense. I’d sooner work than steal, myself, but sooner steal than starve.”
    “A fool’s exercise,” Hopstill scoffed, pushing his palm through the sheaves of grey straw that pass for his hair. “
You
read the
Herald
. That rank patch of mud is on the brink of civil war. And now I hear tell from London that their potatoes have started rotting. Did you hear about that? Just
rotting
, blighted as a plague of ancient Egypt. Notthat anyone’s surprised. You won’t catch
me
associating with a race that’s so thoroughly called down the wrath of God.”
    I blinked. But then, I had often been shocked by the sage opinions bar guests had gifted me regarding the members of the Catholic church, the only breathing examples they’d ever seen being the Irish variety. Bar guests who were otherwise—for all appearances—perfectly sane.
First thing the priests do with the novice nuns is sodomize them, and the priests as do thoroughest work rise up the ranks, that’s the system—they aren’t even fully ordained until their first rape is done with. Why, Tim, I thought you savvied the pope lived off the flesh of aborted fetuses; it’s common enough knowledge. I said no way in hell, is what, the very