The Gods Of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye Read Free Book Online

slick and slippery as an eel.
    You’re hurt worse than you think, Tim.
    “I don’t want your setups. To run for state senate or work as a hydrant inspector,” I grated out, ignoring my own thoughts.
    “It’s plumper than oyster pie, I’m telling you.” Standing, Valentine began doing up buttons, leaving the wet cigar end at the side of his expressive mouth. “Got us both appointments only this morning, through the Party. Course, mine is … a bit higher up. And in this district. You, I only managed to post in the Sixth Ward. You’ll have to live there, find a new ken, since roundsmen are required to live in the same ward they patrol. But that’s no matter. Your house is getting hosed off into the river by now.”
    “Whatever it is,
no
.”
    “Don’t get so peppery, Timothy. There’s to be a police force.”
    “Everyone knows that. Anyhow, I saw your poster. It didn’t endear them to me.”
    Despite my misgivings or maybe because of them, the police saga had been the first political tale I’d closely followed in years. Harmless citizens were shrieking for a system of constables, and less harmless patriots were bellowing that the freemen of New York would never stomach a standing army. Legislation passed in June, a Democrat victory, and the harmless citizens had won out at long last thanks to tireless thugs like my brother—men who liked danger, power, and bribes in equal measure.
    “You’ll come round soon enough, now you’re a policeman yourself.”
    “Ha!” I barked bitterly, sending a twinge of suffering through my pate. “I call that nice. You want me trussed up in a blue strait-waistcoat for the real men to throw rotten eggs at?”
    Valentine snorted and somehow managed to make me feel even smaller than I normally do in his company. No easy trick. But he’s an expert.
    “You think a free republican like me would be caught walkingaround in blue livery? Dry up, Tim. We’ve a real police now, no uniforms, and with George Washington Matsell himself at the head. For good, they’re claiming.”
    I blinked blearily. Justice Matsell, the equally infamous and obese civic figure I’d seen in the thick of the fire, shooing gawkers toward the oasis of the courthouse. I’d also heard from diverse sources that he was a degraded lump of blubber, that he was the righteous hand of God come to bring order to the streets, that he was a power-hungry troll, that he was a benign philosopher who’d owned a bookstore selling the sordid works of Robert Dale Owen and Thomas Paine, and that he was a damned dirty Englishman. I’d nodded at all accounts as if their gospel verity was unassailable. Mainly because I didn’t give a damn. What did I know about governance, after all?
    As for joining the new police force, that was clearly a plot of Val’s to make me look ridiculous.
    “I don’t need your help,” I declared.
    “No,” Valentine sneered, snapping one of his braces.
    With considerable calculation, I sat up in his bed. The room reeled around me as if I were a maypole, and a hot molten flash branded my temple.
    Nothing is as bad as it seems
, I thought with the last remnants of my dense optimism. It couldn’t be. I’d already lost everything once, I’d been ten, and so had countless other people I knew, and they all picked up and kept going. Or they picked up and went in a slightly different direction.
    “I’ll go back to bartending,” I decided.
    “You have any notion of how many people are out of work this morning?”
    “At a hotel or another of the better oyster cellars.”
    “How does your face feel, Tim?” Valentine snapped.
    Sulfur drifted through the air now. A hot and grainy sort of rage tugged at my throat.
    “Like it was slapped with a laundry iron,” I answered.
    “And you’re supposing it looks sprucer than it feels?” he mocked me more quietly. “You’re in difficulties, little Timothy. You took a dose of hot oil where it’ll be noticed. You want to tend bar from behind a