A PREVIEW OF

THE BLACKPOWDER DELIVERANCE

CHAPTER ONE

THE CRESWELL CALL

1

Fen went nine calls before he had to hurt somebody. Nine wasn’t bad, not working for Harlow. 

What happened was, this ship chandler name of Verding Creswell—Turgid Verd, people called the guy sometimes, on account of that fat face, those jowls—had done some shit that made Harlow mad enough to hurt him. Fen didn’t ask Harlow what Verding did. He knew better. But Fen did ask her how far he needed to take things, hoping privately it wouldn’t be far at all, like maybe just a slap or two upside the chops. This was in Harlow’s drinking house, upstairs in the office, a little bit after dark. She was sitting at her desk rolling a cigarette. The bottle of whiskey she’d started earlier in the day was almost gone. Muffled music came through the closed door, some hot two-fiddle number that had the folks here in the drousie clapping their hands and stomping their feet. You could feel it in the floorboards.

Harlow thought about it. Fen’s question. “Don’t kill him. And don’t break anything that’ll stop him from working. But hurt him.”

A thin flush of dread washed over Fen, hearing that, but mostly he just felt a tired acceptance. Shit was what it was. “What about his store?”

“Leave it alone. Says the wrong thing if we trash it.”

It seemed to Fen that beating the guy didn’t exactly say something right, but of course he didn’t tell Harlow so. He nodded instead. Sweat ran down his neck in a slow itchy bead. He wanted to scratch it but he felt Kind watching him, sizing him with that smirk, Kind leaning by the doorway that went out to the balcony, the doors open for the air but not much because of the rain. He was Harlow’s favorite prick, a debtor she’d bought up at the market six or seven years back. Guy didn’t live up to his name so much. He’d killed people. Fen’s old boss for sure and maybe a couple others, you believed his stories.

Harlow lit her cigarette with the lamp flame and slipped the chimney back into its collar. The tines scraped on the glass. “It’s almost an hour until he closes up,” she said. “He doesn’t know you work for me, don’t mention my name. You remember the address?”

“Corner of Graver’s and Madoc,” Fen said.

“Good. Now go on and fuck off.”

Fen did just that. On his way out he heard Kind tell Harlow he’d work the till while Fen was out. Downstairs at the bar Fen wedged himself into a spot between a pair of thick-shouldered dockworkers and waved at Cockburn for a couple whiskeys. Heavy ones. Fen put the drinks away one right after the other and tilted his head back, taking a breath, letting it out in a shaky sigh. Through blurry eyes he saw the long stained-glass light hanging over the bar. A few of the panes were missing (and more than a few chipped and cracked) but the colors were deep and rich. Harlow had all the lamps inside it lit tonight. Wicks up and bright.

Cockburn poured another, leaning in close so he wouldn’t have to shout over the crowd, the music, him asking, “So what’d she want?” 

“I have to go make a call.”

“Who’s got the till?”

“Kind. Theaks isn’t in for another half hour.”

You could see how the answer scared him. Kind didn’t like Fen, but he was a shit to Burnie. Nothing Fen could do about it. “Sorry. I’ll be back when I can. Leave that bottle?”

Burnie nodded mournfully, told Fen good luck, and went to draw a mug for a drayman just bellied-up and still wet from the rain. Fen looked down at his glass and sloshed the whiskey around. He told himself he was lucky. All he had to do was hurt somebody. And he’d gone nine calls before he had to even do that. 

Working for Harlow, no. That wasn’t so bad.

2

He corked the bottle and took it with him as he worked his way through the barroom, side-stepping between tables full of people laughing and talking and singing along to the music, Fen coughing in the orange haze of coal oil and cigar smoke, his throat still tender from the whiskey. He found a spot to stand by the big window that looked onto the street. Wiped away a circle of steam. He figured he’d wait a minute, see if the rain let up. Given his luck tonight he was sure it wouldn’t. But it did. 

He took Allanathy Boulevard down to Graver’s Lane and Graver’s to the corner of Madoc Street. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe twenty minutes, but it took longer than it should have because at the bottom of Allanathy, right there at the docks, he stopped to watch an old steamboat out in the river deeps, the running lights along the deck  yellow circles out in the mist. Reflection like somebody’d dragged a brush through paint. Pretty. He stood watching until he heard the ripples from the wake slap against the wall that sloped down to the water. Then he went on along the street, working out the tone he wanted to take with Mister Creswell, how he’d say what he needed to say. He imagined what the guy might say back. Or might maybe do, he got scared. Fen didn’t want to scare him but there wasn’t any way around it. He just didn’t want to make things worse than they had to be. 

So he played it calm when he got to Verding’s shop. The Graver’s Lane Ship Supply and Awning Store was the name of the place, painted there in gold on the door window. Beneath, in smaller letters—newer letters, the paint brighter—Fen saw a proud exclamation: An Honorable Member of the Tumbrel Chandlers Union! He tried the handle. He’d hoped (weakly, but still hoped) that it’d be locked, that Mister Creswell might’ve closed up early and gone home. But of course he hadn’t. Fen opened the door.

It smelled like creosote inside the place, a good sunny smell, oily and sweet like the ropes at the wharf. A run of lanterns hung from the ceiling and kept things bright. Verding Creswell stood at the counter writing up a sale for the guy standing across from him. Verd, not looking away from the receipt, said he’d be just a moment. Fen told him to take his time, no hurry, polite about saying so. Said sir. He walked slow around the store while he waited. It was the sort of place that made him feel dumb and awkward, like he might break something expensive. There were axes and augers, caulking irons and drawknives, all the tools well-made, the kind with maker’s plates. Copper lanterns that shimmered like oil.

Down from where Verding stood writing was a display case built into the front of the counter. Behind the glass lay some of the stock on sale: a set of framing chisels, some handplanes, a pair of marlinspikes. The spikes looked like giant sewing needles with duller points. Bigger one was longer than Fen’s arm, industrial—might even have been a Girton tool, too, and that meant money. Fen squatted to see how much it cost, and that was when Mister Creswell finished writing out the sale. The other guy took the bag and the receipt and left the store with a thank you. The bell rang. 

Verding apologized again, asked what he could do. Fen looked over. “I came down here on some business for my boss,” he said—honest about it—“but let me ask first, these spikes here, are they Girtons?”

Verd came around the counter now, being the salesman. His eyes fell to the whiskey bottle in Fen’s hand, but it didn’t change his voice. He sounded warm like somebody’s nice grandda. “They are Girtons, actually, yes. The doors aren’t locked, if you’d like to take a look.”

Fen took out the bigger spike. Had some weight to it. He caught the price—and yeah, more than what he’d make in a month, working for Harlow. He looked past the tag and saw Verd, an older fat man at the end of his working day, him smiling tired inside all that face, asking what Fen thought, saying his boss would never have to buy another, that the metal was guaranteed to hold its shape no matter how heavy the cable.

Fen, telling himself to get this over with before he couldn’t, put the spike on the counter. “Listen,” he said. “I have to hurt you.”

Verd blinked, still smiling, but confused now too, like maybe this was a joke. “What?”

Fen offered him the bottle, feeling dumb, an amateur at this—and scared too, no lying about that, but keeping things together better than he thought he would. “I’m sorry. But I brought you something to drink. Thought it might help.”

Verding took a step backwards. His elbow bumped a coil of rope lying on the counter. The sisal hissed against the wood as it slithered to the floor. Fen reached out and caught Verd by the upper arm, held him fast. Fresh sweat beaded out on the guy’s big face. He said, “Harlow can’t do this, you can’t—listen!—do you know Hairlip Garrick? You know who that is?”

“No sir,” Fen said. He kept his grip. His fingers were moist with sweat coming out of the man’s pits but he didn’t say anything about it. Fen didn’t want to be mean, not with how afraid the guy already was. Look at him shaking.

“Talk to Garrick,” Verd begged. “He’ll tell you, he has the papers up at the hall, I’m in the union now—”

Fen shook his head. He offered the bottle again. He said, respectfully as he could: “I’m sorry, Mister Creswell, but this is how it is. Drink as much as you need to. Just let me know when I can start.”

3

So Fen hurt Verding Creswell pretty bad, yeah, wasn’t any way out of it. But he didn’t kill the guy. What Fen did do, he locked the door to the shop and drew the blind, and then—after Verd got good and drunk quick—used the marlinspike like a club. Verd asked not the mouth please, he didn’t want to lose any teeth, and Fen didn’t have any problem with that, but he did black one of Verding’s eyes and bloodied his nose. Got him once across the lower back, too. Before he swung, he told Verd that it was normal to piss blood a couple days after getting hurt there. It’d happened to Fen once when he fell off the old trawler and landed bad on a piling. Said if it didn’t get better in a week go see a barber but it’d probably heal up fine. Sorry.

But that was as far as Fen took it. Afterwards he found a rag and poured some whiskey into the cloth and dabbed at the split under Verd’s eye. Fen told the man to hold it there, let it get clean. Verd, sitting on the floor with his back against the counter, pulled air through his teeth at the pain. His mouth and the front of his shirt were lined and splattered with blood from his nose and his left eye had started to swell shut. 

Fen wiped down the marlinspike and put it back in the display case. Least he could do. Then he looked over at Verding. “I’m sorry,” Fen said. He didn’t know what else to say, so he added, dumb about it: “This is a nice store. I like your stuff.”

Verding didn’t have anything to say to that and Fen didn’t blame him, lame as it was. Fen put the whiskey in the man’s reach. Then he unlocked the shop and raised the blind and left. He glanced back once through the glass as he pulled the door shut and saw Verd close his eyes and take another drink. Fen felt a mellow sort of relief now that it was over. Like he’d done the best he could and it hadn’t been bad. But he felt weak, too. Shaky. He sighed and wiped his hand down his face and started back towards Harlow’s drousie, meaning to tell her he’d made the call. 

What happened after that he couldn’t say. He didn’t know. But the next time somebody saw Verding—it was his wife, who’d gone to the shop the following morning after he hadn’t come home—the man was dead, lying on the floor, strangled with the rope he’d knocked over earlier. His fleshy face was purple and bloated and his eyes had gone red from the hemorrhage.

It was Verding Creswell’s murder that started the street war between Harlow and the Chandlers Union—the Blackpowder Deliverance, the city newspapers called it later, because of what happened, how bad things turned out.

And Fen’s luck, he was there in the middle of it.