The Soho Literary Society occupied the second floor of a building that had once been respectable and now clung to respectability the way a drowning man clings to driftwood—desperately, and with diminishing returns. The stairs creaked their judgment with each step. The wallpaper had surrendered to time somewhere around 1870 and never recovered.
Casimir arrived at quarter to seven with his manuscript, his pride, and the kind of defiant certainty that only survives in men who have not yet been thoroughly educated by consequence.
To hell with witches and their prophecies, he thought, climbing past a landing where someone had written "GENIUS DIES HERE" in what appeared to be coal dust. To hell with Vane and his digestible truths. I am Casimir Grey, and I write as though every word were a bullet.
The reading room smelled of cheap tobacco, cheaper wine, and the particular desperation of men who believed literature might save them from having to find actual employment. Thirty or so souls occupied mismatched chairs, arranged in semicircles like petitioners before an uncertain god. At the front, a makeshift stage consisted of three boards laid across crates, and a lectern that listed to port as if trying to escape its own function.
"Name?" A clerk sat at a card table near the door, guarding a ledger with the enthusiasm of a man who'd been promised this would be temporary.
"Casimir Grey."
"Subject of piece?"
Casimir hesitated. He hadn't titled it. Titles felt like admissions—of theme, of purpose, of the kinds of small surrenders that made poems sellable. "It's a meditation on urban isolation and the commodification of human connection."
The clerk stared at him with the blank patience of someone who'd heard this exact sentence fourteen times already tonight. "I'll put down 'City Poem.' You're number seventeen. Sit anywhere. Don't smoke near the curtains—they're already suicidal."
Casimir found a seat in the third row, between a trembling boy who looked barely sixteen and a woman of indeterminate age wearing what appeared to be a costume from a production of Hamlet that had gone terribly wrong.
"First time?" the boy whispered.
"Yes."
"You look confident. That's good. I threw up twice already." He showed Casimir his manuscript—the pages trembled like leaves in wind. "It's about my mother's death. Do you think that's too sad?"
"For whom?"
"For the judges."
Casimir studied the boy's face—earnest, open, already preparing itself for the particular species of hurt that awaited anyone who tried to make feeling into form. "I think," he said carefully, "that if you're worried about being too sad, you've already lost. Grief isn't meant to be palatable."
"But Mr. Harwick said—"
"Whoever Mr. Harwick is, he's wrong. Or he's right, and the entire edifice of literature is a lie designed to make us easier to manage." Casimir surprised himself with the vehemence. "Write the grief. Make them taste it. And if they reject it, at least you'll know you were honest."
The boy nodded slowly, some small light kindling in his eyes. "You're right. You're absolutely right. Thank you, Mr.—"
"Grey."
"I'm Simon. Simon Carrow." He thrust out his hand with the formality of someone practicing for a future where handshakes mattered.
Casimir shook it. The boy's palm was damp with terror and hope, and Casimir felt something twist in his chest—recognition, perhaps. Or memory of being that young, that certain that sincerity would be enough.
The room filled. Poets arrived in the universal uniform of artistic poverty: patched coats, proud collars, boots that had been resoled so many times they were more theology than leather. Some carried manuscripts. Others carried nothing but the hubris of believing they could improvise genius on demand.
At seven exactly, a man ascended the stage with the rolling gait of someone who'd made certain chemical preparations for the evening's endurance. He wore a burgundy waistcoat that fought viciously with his complexion and lost.
"Gentlemen, ladies, and assorted practitioners of the impossible art—welcome." His voice had the rich, rolling quality of an actor who'd never quite made it past provincial theater. "I am Aldous Finch, your host, your judge, and your executioner for the evening."
Scattered laughter.
"Tonight, seventeen souls will bare their literary throats before this assembly. Three judges"—he gestured to a table where three individuals sat with the grave expressions of people being paid very little to have opinions—"will determine whose work deserves the laurels of publication and the five pounds that accompanies it."
A rustle went through the room. Five pounds was half a month's rent. Five pounds was the difference between poet and pauper.
"The rules are simple," Finch continued. "You have five minutes. Not a second more. If you exceed your time, I will ring this." He produced a small bell and rang it experimentally. The sound was cruel and final, like a death knell for ambition. "Now then. Our first contestant—Mr. Theodore Wainwright, with 'Ode to the Thames at Dawn.'"
What followed was an education in mediocrity.
Theodore Wainwright's ode was competent, pleasant, and utterly forgettable—the kind of poem that would look lovely printed on a tea towel and would accomplish exactly as much. The audience applauded politely. The judges made notes with faces that revealed nothing.
Next came a Miss Eleanor Pritchard, who delivered a sonnet sequence about her garden that managed to make roses sound like a clerical error. Then a Mr. James something-or-other, whose dramatic monologue about Prometheus was undermined by the fact that he kept pronouncing it "Pro-meth-EE-us" with such confidence that it became impossible to focus on the content.
Young Simon went eighth. He walked to the stage like a man walking to the gallows, which is to say honestly. His poem was raw, unpolished, genuine—a cry from the heart that hadn't yet learned to disguise itself as craft. He spoke of his mother's hands, of the smell of bread baking, of the silence that replaced her voice.
When he finished, the room sat in uncomfortable quiet. It was too real. Too naked. The kind of thing that made people shift in their seats because they'd been reminded that beneath all the clever words, there was actual pain.
The judges conferred. One of them—a woman with spectacles like portholes into another dimension—said, "Very moving, Mr. Carrow. But perhaps... too moving? We fear the Strand readership prefers their sentiment with a bit more... distance."
Simon returned to his seat, devastated. Casimir wanted to tell him that he'd won something better than five pounds—he'd made people feel. But the boy wouldn't understand that now. Maybe never would.
The performances continued. Some competent. Some catastrophically bad in ways that achieved a kind of perverse artistry. One man delivered his piece entirely in Spenserian stanzas about factory workers, which was ambitious and also completely unlistenable.
"Number seventeen," Finch called. "Mr. Casimir Grey, with..."—he squinted at his ledger—"'City Poem.'"
Casimir rose. His heart performed arrhythmia. His hands betrayed him with trembling. But his voice—his voice he could control. He'd spent too many years learning to make words behave to let them mutiny now.
He climbed the stage, positioned himself at the lectern, and looked out at the sea of faces. Most weren't even looking at him. They were looking at their own manuscripts, their own failures and hopes, using his moment to rehearse their own.
Good, he thought. Watch me make you look.
He began.
"This is not titled," he said, "because titles are a kind of permission we grant the reader—permission to know what they're about to experience. I don't want your permission. I want your attention."
A few faces lifted. Finch raised an eyebrow.
Casimir read:
"London is a covenant written in rain and coal— Each brick a clause we signed without reading. We pay rent to structures that despise us, Call it shelter when it's merely the postponement of weather.
See how we arrange ourselves in hierarchies of warmth: The lords beside their fires, The clerks beside their ledgers, The poor beside their Poor, Each one congratulating themselves on not being lower.
We have built a city of magnificent cruelties— Gaslight that promises vision but delivers only shadow, Churches that offer salvation but deliver only Sundays, Markets that offer choice but deliver only appetite.
And we, the citizens, the subjects, the sentenced— We perform gratitude for the privilege of our own exhaustion. We call it Progress when it's merely motion, Call it Civilization when it's merely the agreement To strangle each other with politeness instead of rope."
Someone coughed. It wasn't a dismissive cough—it was the kind of cough that happens when a person forgets to breathe.
Casimir continued, his voice dropping, forcing them to lean in:
"But here is what they won't print in your papers: The city is a mouth, and we are not its speakers— We are what it speaks with, what it chews, What it spits into the Thames when it's done extracting flavor.
Every cobblestone is a tooth. Every alley is a throat. And the fog—the beautiful, murderous fog— Is only London breathing out the souls it's already digested."
He looked up from the page. Met eyes. Made them complicit.
"You think you're the audience? You're the performance. The city doesn't have citizens—it has symptoms. And I'm not here to cure you. I'm here to make you contagious."
He closed the manuscript. The silence had texture now—thick, uncomfortable, alive with the kind of attention that might curdle into anger or applause and hadn't decided yet.
The bell rang.
"Time, Mr. Grey," Finch said softly.
Casimir descended. He didn't look at the judges. Didn't need to. He'd seen their faces—the woman with the spectacles had removed them to clean them, which people only do when they need time to think. The man beside her was making notes with the aggressive speed of someone trying to capture an argument before it escaped. The third judge, elderly, theatrical, sat very still in the way of people who'd just witnessed something they weren't certain they'd wanted to witness.
He returned to his seat. Simon stared at him with naked awe. "That was..."
"Probably too much," Casimir finished.
"No. It was true."
The remaining contestants performed. Casimir heard none of them. He was too busy replaying his own words, cataloging the moments where his voice had cracked, where the rhythm had stumbled, where he'd reached for profundity and maybe only grasped pretension.
To hell with the witch, he reminded himself. I am Casimir Grey, and I don't need prophecies or bargains. I need—
"Ladies and gentlemen," Finch announced, "the judges have reached their decision."
The room stilled.
"This evening has showcased the remarkable range of London's poetic talent—from the traditional to the... provocative. Our judges have deliberated with great care."
Get on with it.
"In third place, for her moving sonnet sequence, Miss Eleanor Pritchard."
Applause. The woman with the roses accepted a small purse and a certificate with the dignity of someone who'd expected exactly this outcome.
"In second place, for his ambitious and technically proficient Spenserian meditation, Mr. Harold Bosworth."
More applause. The factory worker poet looked genuinely shocked.
"And in first place..."
Casimir's heart stopped.
"For a poem that reminded us that lyricism and accessibility need not be enemies, for verse that captures the modern moment with both beauty and clarity—Mr. Theodore Wainwright, for 'Ode to the Thames at Dawn.'"
The room erupted. Wainwright—pleasant, forgettable Wainwright—rose with the modest smile of a man who'd known all along that competence beats brilliance when money is involved.
Casimir sat very, very still.
The woman judge stood. "We found Mr. Grey's piece to be... technically accomplished. But ultimately too cynical, too deliberately provocative. Literature should uplift, not merely indict. The Strand readership expects a certain... hopefulness."
"In short," said the elderly judge, not unkindly, "you're angry, young man. And anger, however eloquently expressed, is not the same as art."
The room began to empty. Poets shuffled out in various states of disappointment and relief—relief that they hadn't won, which meant they didn't have to worry about whether winning would change them.
Simon touched Casimir's sleeve. "They're wrong."
"They're not wrong. They're just not right in ways that matter to them."
"But your poem—"
"My poem told them they were symptoms of a disease, and I expected them to applaud the diagnosis." Casimir stood, collecting his manuscript with hands that no longer trembled because they'd moved past trembling into something colder. "That was foolish of me."
Outside, the rain had thickened into commitment. Casimir stood under the awning, watching water perform its ancient work of making London glisten and lie.
He had one shilling and fourpence. No prospects. No publication. And somewhere in the machinery of the city, a woman in mourning silk who'd predicted this exact outcome.
Come find me, she'd said. I'll be where the city keeps its older gods. Blackfriars. Midnight.
Casimir checked his pocket watch—a gift from his father, back when fathers gave gifts instead of silence. Half past nine.
He had two and a half hours to decide whether he was the kind of man who kept appointments with mad prophets, or the kind who walked home in the rain and pretended tonight had been a learning experience.
A cab rattled past, wheels sluicing through puddles. Inside, a woman laughed—the carefree laughter of someone who'd never had to count their words like coins.
Casimir thought of Vane's face. Of the judges' polite dismissal. Of Theodore Wainwright's modest smile as he accepted money for saying nothing beautifully.
He thought of the witch's eyes—dark windows into unlit rooms.
He thought: I am Casimir Grey, and I am tired of being right in ways that don't matter.
He began walking toward Blackfriars.
Not because he believed in witches or bargains or the kinds of older currencies that came with prices written in small print.
But because he believed in himself, in his words, in the possibility that somewhere in this rain-soaked labyrinth of a city, there was someone who understood that language could be more than decoration.
Someone who took poets seriously enough to use them.
And if that made him a fool—well. London had made fools of better men for worse reasons.
The rain applauded his decision with increasing enthusiasm.
Casimir walked faster, toward midnight, toward Blackfriars, toward whatever waited there.
Not fleeing failure.
Pursuing it on his own terms.
-to be continued chapter 3-