The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004
It is hereby announced that as from the 31st day of Summer 1003 all use of conjurations, witchcrafts, sorceries and enchantments (including but not limited to the enacting of seances, the making of 4Tellings, the devising of calculations relating to preScientific prognostications, the use of crystals and wands, and the employment of scrying and other forms of divination) is declared illegal (on pain of being declared nonNix) within the frontiers of the ForthRight EXCEPT when said conjurations, witchcrafts, sorceries and enchantments are performed by psychics examined and licensed by the Ministry of Psychic Affairs.
– Decree 8989 relating to the Control and Licensing of Psychic and Occult Practices within the ForthRight: ForthRight Law Gazette, Summer 1003
Of all the seasons in the Demi-Monde, Vanka Maykov liked Winter the best. Oh, he hated the bitter, biting cold, he detested the ankle-deep snow, he abhorred the frosty winds and simply loathed the ice-treacherous pavements. But there were compensations, the principal ones being that during Winter it was permissible for him to wander through the streets of the Rookeries with the collar of his coat turned high, his fox-fur chapka pulled hard down on his head and a thick woollen sharf wrapped around his face. And dressed like that it was impossible for anyone to recognise him.
Which, when you had Comrade General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev and his bully-boys combing the ForthRight in search of you, was very handy.
Not that Vanka was too concerned that General Skobelev was on the lookout for him: in his opinion the General could look for him for as long as he liked. What Vanka was worried about was the General finding him. That and the small part of Vanka’s anatomy the General had promised to lop off if he did find the psychic.
Vanka had never really understood the emotion of vengefulness, and anyway, how was he to have known that the lady (lady, ha!) in question – Madam Alisha Petrovna Andreyeva – had been General Skobelev’s sister?
The General’s lust for revenge seemed totally ridiculous to Vanka. Why would anyone go to so much trouble just because of a woman? It wasn’t civilised. There were lots of women in the ForthRight and since the Troubles there were a damned sight more women than men. And despite the Party’s urging that they all follow the teachings of UnFunDaMentalism and disport themselves in a modest and ladylike manner, girls would be girls.
Or, as in Madam Andreyeva’s case, very naughty little girls.
At the end of the shadowed street, Vanka made an absentminded left turn into the shit-strewn alleyway that led to the Prancing Pig. He shuddered at the thought of being reduced to asking Burlesque Bandstand for help.
But when Vanka had escaped the General by sliding through the concealed door, out of the back window of his apartment in St Petersburg and down the fire escape, the quandary he faced was where to run to. And he had to run for it, he had to get out of Rodina while he still had the use of his legs.
He’d immediately corrected himself: while he still had his legs. The General’s boys were meant to be really handy with their hatchets.
It hadn’t been much of a stretch to decide to head for the Rookeries. Running to NoirVille was a no-no: Shaka and his gang of cut-throats hated Blanks with a vengeance, and anyway he didn’t fancy being buggered bandy by all the zadniks living there. And an equally unpleasant, if somewhat different, problem confronted him if he was to exit in the direction of the Coven: the Suffer-O-Gettes were so anti-men – well, anti-ordinary-men, Empress Wu had a soft spot for geniuses like Karl Marx and Pierre-Simon Laplace – that trying to hide there would necessitate him having to sing falsetto for the rest of his life. Letting those mad-cow LessBiens chop his bollocks off and turning him into a NoN did not appeal.
The Quartier Chaud had been a possibility. All he would have had to do was pinch a boat and scull across the Thames. His French was pretty good too. And it was over a year since he’d sold Godfrey de Bouillon that consignment of adulterated blood. That’s what had finally ruled the Quartier out: Godfrey de Bouillon never forgot and even wearing a mask like all the other CitiZens in the Quartier wouldn’t stop Vanka being recognised. De Bouillon was a mad, vicious bugger and without Madam Alisha Petrovna Andreyeva’s fortune to pay him off…
So the Rookeries were really the only place that Vanka could hide. His English was perfect and with the Rookeries being part of the ForthRight he didn’t need any new documents. He’d done business there too, so he had contacts. The problem Vanka had was blood.
He was sure that the Checkya monitored the Blood Banks, that they had cryptos hanging around noting who was doing what in the Transfusion Booths, trying to spot when transfers and withdrawals were made. And if the Checkya knew, then sure as eggs were eggs General Skobelev would know: someone as important as the General was bound to be able to access Checkya files. If Vanka couldn’t make withdrawals legitimately then he’d have to buy blood on the black market and that was expensive and dangerous, because the black market was run by Shaka’s Blood Brothers.
The other problem he had was that having skedaddled at such short notice all he had to his name was what he stood up in and what he’d squirrelled away in his safe-deposit box at the St Petersburg Blood Bank. Enough to keep him going for a month, tops. A month, that is, if Burlesque didn’t get greedy, didn’t get wind of just how desperate Vanka was for a place to lie low. If he did, then the price of the two shitty garret rooms Vanka now called home would rocket. Burlesque was a master at squeezing people dry. The bastard had really stiffed him on the blood trade they’d done at the end of Autumn.
The odd thing was that yesterday, when Vanka had shown up at the Prancing Pig pub – the dive that Burlesque used as the headquarters for his pub empire – the fat Anglo had been almost friendly, almost as though he was pleased to see Vanka.
Remarkable.
Vanka arrived outside the Pig, stepped over the frozen body of the drunk that was decorating the doorway, took a deep breath and pushed his way inside.
Burlesque Bandstand was sitting in his booth at the side of the pub, dolly-mop at his side, toying with a glass of twenty per cent Solution. He was wearing his usual hangdog expression, the dog in question being peculiarly mangy and flea-infested.
‘Afternoon, Burlesque, how’s things?’ Vanka said by way of a greeting.
Burlesque looked up from his examination of the hugely fat comic who was fiddling around with the megaphone on the stage and blinked in Vanka’s direction.
‘Hello, Wanker, glad to see the swelling’s going down. Yous look almost human.’
Thanks.
‘My name is pronounced Vanka,’ protested Vanka for the umpteenth time, moderately relieved that in the two days since he’d been beaten up by Skobelev’s boys he had, at last, regained the ability to talk without dribbling down his shirt front. ‘I was born and raised in Rodina.’
‘Vanka, Wanker, Spanker… it’s all the same between friends.’
Vanka grimaced at the thought of being classified as a ‘friend’ of Burlesque’s. Burlesque didn’t do friends, he did debtors.
Waving him into a seat, Burlesque turned his attention back towards the comic and Vanka was – unfortunately – obliged to do the same. It took only a few moments for him to decide that of all the truly diabolical variety acts that Burlesque put on at the Pig – which he laughingly called ‘entertainment’ – Maurice Merriment, the Monarch of Mirth, was perhaps the most dire.
The comedian wasn’t just bad: he’d left ‘bad’ behind several jokes ago and was now exploring that seldom visited and deathly unamusing hinterland that existed somewhere between ‘terrible’ and ‘fucking awful’. So bad that even the fifty-strong audience in the back room of the pub was becoming restless, which was quite remarkable given that Vanka was convinced two of them were dead, and the remainder so blasted by the adulterated Solution Burlesque sold that their relationship with the reality that was the Demi-Monde was tenuous at best. Only those with a truly outrageous death wish drank ‘Bandstand’s Best Blasting Solution’ and even then they did it with reluctance: no one wanted to go to the Spirit World with nary a tooth in their head.
Fortunately for Vanka’s sanity and Maurice Merriment’s continued good health (the audience was getting very restless), the manager of the Pig, the huge and uncompromising Blowback Trundler, strode onto the stage and grabbed the megaphone away from the comic. ‘Thank you, thank you and… thank you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for Horace Humour, the King of Comedy.’
‘It’s Maurice Merriment, the Monarch of Mirth.’ The comic’s protests were truncated as Blowback’s kick up the arse encouraged him to vacate the stage.
Burlesque Bandstand leant back in his chair and spread his hands contentedly over his ample stomach. The chair gave a protesting groan: Burlesque wasn’t so much round as blobby. ‘So whaddya fink, Wanker?’
‘Think about what?’
‘Abart Maurice-bleedin’-Merriment, ov course,’ said Burlesque, twitching his head towards the now empty stage.
Vanka looked at Burlesque for as long as he was able to stomach it. ‘What do you mean, what did I think? He was terrible, useless, arse-clenchingly bad. It was a uniquely awful performance.’
Burlesque beamed and nudged him in the ribs. Vanka winced: he was still very tender from the kicking Skobelev’s goons had administered. ‘Unique, eh? That’s good, ain’t it? To be unique’s good, ain’t it?’
‘The answer to that question, Burlesque, is both yes and no, or more accurately in the case of Maurice Merriment: no.’
‘So what do you fink ‘e’d ‘ave to do to improve ‘is act?’
‘I’m tempted to suggest suicide.’
Burlesque descended into a sulk: he hated to have his acts criticised. Finally though, after a slurp of Solution, he roused himself to continue the conversation. ‘I’m sorry you fink like that, Wanker. I arsked you ‘ere to get an appreciation ov the standard of artiste I ‘ave performing at the Pig.’
‘Yeah, Burlesque, I appreciate them all right. I appreciate that they’re shit. But I knew that already.’
‘I fort ‘e wos funny,’ observed the girl sitting to Burlesque’s right. Reluctantly Vanka turned his attention to Burlesque’s trollop de jour and studied the girl for the first time. Burlesque changed his tarts as often as he changed his socks – more often, decided Vanka, judging by the smell drifting up from under the table – and as the brasses he used and misused were always the most vacuous and stupid of doxies there was little point in engaging them in conversation. But as this one had deigned to express an opinion, Vanka felt obliged to reciprocate with a show of interest. She was just the type of girl that Burlesque preferred: blonde, with a body that looked as though it had been inflated to bursting and then viciously constrained around the neck, waist and ankles. It was like sitting across the table from a sexy blimp, a sexy blimp blessed with the most stupendously enormous tits Vanka had ever seen.
Knowing that his finances were as precarious as the grip the girl’s dress had on her tits, Vanka determined to be as pleasant as possible. He thrust out a hand in greeting. ‘I’m delighted to meet you. I’m Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Maykov, Licensed Psychic, but my friends call me Vanka.’
The girl’s eyes widened. ‘A psychical? Wot, like them seers and such everywun’s bin talkin’ abart? Well, chuffed to meet cha, Wanker; me name’s Sporting.’
An awful feeling of inevitability descended on Vanka. ‘I don’t suppose your surname is Chance by any… er, chance, is it?’
The girl’s dull eyes widened in amazement. ‘Gor blimey, ‘ow d’ya know that? Yeah, that’s me: Sportin’ Chance. You really are one ‘ell ov a psychical, ain’t cha, Wanker?’
Vanka just smiled a fatalistic smile.
Burlesque smiled too, which was a mistake. Burlesque’s face wasn’t built for smiling. The exertion of smiling caused his face to strain in a very odd way, making his potato of a nose twist in a most peculiar fashion and his piggy eyes become engulfed by his chubby cheeks. The best word Vanka had ever found to describe Burlesque’s appearance was ‘ugly’ but now, on closer inspection, he was veering towards amending this to ‘fucking ugly’.
But what he found most alarming was the way Burlesque’s thin, harsh lips pulled back to reveal his three remaining teeth, a consequence of his success in the entertainment business. There was a lot of competition in the entertainment business, competition that expressed itself in a very physical manner.
‘You wan’ anovver drink, Wanker?’ asked Burlesque, smacking his lips in anticipation of downing another glass of Solution.
Vanka eyed Burlesque suspiciously. For Burlesque to be buying drinks meant he wanted something. Burlesque never bought people drinks. By reputation he had the shortest arms and the deepest pockets of anyone in the Rookeries.
‘Yeah, I’ll have a double b-and-t.’
Burlesque scowled and then gave a reluctant wave to a scabrous waiter. When the blood and tonic had been served he leant towards Vanka in a conspiratorial sort of way. Vanka rather wished he hadn’t: the smell coming from his armpits was repellent.
‘So yous still in this psychical lark, Wanker?’ Burlesque asked casually.
‘Might be,’ answered Vanka cautiously. Whilst he was a Licensed Psychic, the way he had obtained said licence had been rather unconventional. Not wanting to trouble the busy-body officials of the Ministry of Psychic Affairs with having to squander their time examining and interviewing him, Vanka had negotiated his licence directly with the Chief Psychic Examiner. That he had possession of a set of daguerreotypes showing the Chief Psychic Examiner in congress with someone who most certainly wasn’t his wife had certainly helped the negotiations, as had the fact that that someone hadn’t even been of the same species as the Examiner’s wife.
‘Well, iffn you is, then I might ‘ave a job for you.’
Vanka suppressed a shudder. The prospect of having Burlesque Bandstand as an employer made Vanka’s teeth itch… the ones he had left anyway. Burlesque was, as far as Vanka was concerned, the foulest individual to walk the Demi-Monde, and as Burlesque lived and worked in the slums of Whitechapel the competition for that title was fierce. Burlesque might be the biggest impresario operating on the Rookeries’ ‘Blood, Grub, Shrub and Pub’ circuit but he was still a horrible, disgusting man… near-man.
But as Vanka was on the run and in four weeks would be destitute, he decided to put his aversions and olfactory prejudices against noisome and hydrophobic people like Burlesque to one side. Preferably the upwind side.
‘What’s the job?’
‘I’m trying to take the Prancing Pig upmarket, Wanker,’ said Burlesque, without a trace of irony in his voice.
For a moment Vanka was speechless: the association of the words ‘Pig’, ‘up’ and ‘market’ was at best risible and at worst worrying, possibly implying that Burlesque had relinquished his grip on any vestigial trace of sanity he might once have had. He looked around the pub. Even in the gloom it was easy to see that the back room of the Pig – the ‘Best Room’ as Burlesque insisted on calling it – was dirty, careworn and, if the brown tracks covering the top of the scarred and chipped table Vanka was sitting at were any indication, vermin-infested. It was difficult for him to imagine how much shit someone’s life would have to be in for them to consider the Pig ‘upmarket’.
‘Burlesque, believe me, the only way you’d be able to take this place upmarket is by the use of a steam-powered hoist. The Pig isn’t so much downmarket as subMantle.’ Vanka shook his head and took a sip of his freshly delivered drink. As he had anticipated, it was so watered down fish could live in it. ‘Anyway, why would you want to do that? I thought you had found your niche’ – he nodded towards the motley collection of individuals making up the customers of the Pig – ‘fleecing those of diminished intellect.’
‘Because some bugger is trying to kill me, Wanker,’ answered Burlesque with a rather overtheatrical look around the pub.
‘I’m not surprised, Burlesque: I’ve seen the acts you’ve been putting out.’
‘Nah, I’m serious, Wanker, I’ve had two pot-shots taken at me in the past week and I got this today.’ He delved into the inner recesses of his voluminous black coat – well, it was black now, originally, as best Vanka could tell, it had been light grey – and pulled out a grubby piece of paper. ‘Scared the shit outta me it did.’
Wishing he was still wearing his gloves, Vanka carefully unfolded the letter and read:
For Burlesque Bandstand
We know it was you who betrayed the Daemon.
You are a malevolent individual who is using his Houses of Infamy to promote the subjugation of women and to propagate hedonism and dissolute living amongst the working classes. If you don’t abandon your pernicious and misogynistic ways within the next two weeks we will execute you.
I am prepared to make you Suffer.
A Friend
Burlesque took a swig of his Solution. ‘It’s a poor world when a respectable businessman like wot I am ‘as to put up wiv bin threatened. Comes to somefink when an honest bloke like wot I am ‘as got to go around heeled.’ He pulled back the side of his frock coat to display the Webley revolver holstered on his belt.
Vanka gulped, ignoring the pain in his damaged jaw. He didn’t like violence. He didn’t even like the thought of violence. So he decided not to think about it and just shrugged his broad shoulders dismissively. Anyway, he saw threatening letters like this virtually every day, usually sent to him by aggrieved husbands. ‘What’s all this about a Daemon?’
‘Nuffink important,’ murmured Burlesque in an offhand manner as he gnawed at a fingernail that had already been bitten down to the quick.
Bloody liar.
‘Nothing important? Don’t come it, Burlesque, how can a Daemon be classified as nothing important?’
‘Look, Wanker, I can’t say nuffink abart it, okay? It’s confidential.’ Burlesque tapped the side of his nose.
‘But was it a real Daemon?’ Vanka persisted.
Burlesque took a quick gander around the pub. ‘Yus.’
Vanka looked at the fat man with something approaching admiration. Daemons – not that he believed in Daemons – were things only important people in the ForthRight got involved with.
‘Awful, ain’t it?’ whined Burlesque. ‘An’ it don’t make sense neither. Wot’s “misogynistic” mean, Wanker?’
‘It means you hate women.’
‘Well, that’s bollocks, ain’t it, Burlesque?’ scoffed Sporting. ‘Wot you an’ me wos doin’ this lunchtime…’
‘Never mind wot we wos doing,’ interrupted Burlesque, as ever worried that one of his wife’s cronies might overhear. ‘The important fing is that I’ve got to take it seriously, ain’t I, Wanker? It’s awful, ain’t it?’
Vanka nodded sympathetically. The word ‘Suffer’ was the clue. Presumably this indicated that the author was a Suffer-O-Gette and Suffer-O-Gettes had to be taken very seriously indeed. From what he’d heard there was a whole army of LessBien terrorists ready to die for the cause of women’s rights and take people like Burlesque with them as they did so.
Sensible of them.
‘More accurate than awful, Burlesque. I mean a man in your line of work is bound to accumulate a few enemies.’
Burlesque wouldn’t be consoled. ‘The Suffer-O-Gettes ‘ave got it in for me.’
‘So what are you planning to do?’
‘Like I said: I wanna move the Pig upmarket – knock the filthy comics and the pawno-contortionists and the donkeys on the head and introduce a bit ov tone to the Pig.’ Burlesque ignored Vanka’s derisive snort. ‘I was finking of ‘aving a sorry,’ he said quietly.