Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (32 page)

“Of course,”
Alexia spoke, barely above a murmur, “you already know that, don't you?”

“Well!” Gren
announced, not paying attention to the previous exchange. “It's been fun.
Eddie, we owe you a lot.”

“Pfft, don't
mention it,” the brawler said. “Kept us from getting bored, right?”

“Right.”

“Hey, storyteller.
Come back around sometime. I'll give you another spin on my bike. Helmet and
everything.”

I smiled. “You're
on, Eddie.”

Our escort waited
patiently while we said our goodbyes. He then led us through the front yard,
where his vehicle took shape in the dissolving mist.

“Wha...what is
that?
”
Kitt said, mouth agape.

“What do you think
it is?” our escort said, stroking his goatee.

“Strange.”

And Kitt was
correct.

The
vehicle...eh...I'm not sure how best to describe it. It looked like a carriage,
only bigger, about the size of a small fishing boat. The windows were all
tinted and reinforced, and grid-patterned bumpers were screwed onto both ends.
A canopy door, in addition to the four standard passenger doors, was attached
to the roof of the machine, allowing its operator to enter the separated
driving compartment from above. Thick, treaded tires held up the contraption,
but most astounding were the propellers. Yes,
propellers!
Two small and
splintered sets of wooden blades attached to each side, pointing skyward.

“This
thing...flies?” Kitt asked.

“If it has to,”
our escort said. “But I assure you that it’s safe. Very safe.”

“Is this...the
Lucidia?
”

“This?” The man
laughed. “Of course not. Just my personal shuttle.”

“But it will take
us there?”

The man nodded and
swung open a passenger door. “All aboard.”

Cautiously, we all
entered the cabin and found our seats. I was the last to enter and as I stepped
into the frame, I felt someone tugging at my pant leg. I looked back and found
Iago standing behind me, pouting.

“Hey, can you give
me a moment?” I asked, stepping back outside. The escort nodded, climbed down
the canopy door, and got settled. I faced the child.

“Hiya, Ig. Come to
see us off?” His face didn't change. I tried not to laugh. “Aw, don't make that
face at me. It's too grim.” He crossed his arms. “I mean it, put it away.
You'll see us again. I promise. But we have to go off for a bit now, and I'm
afraid that you can't tag along.” He balled little fists and started to protest
until I patted him on the head. “You're a good kid, Iago. Don't change that,
and don't let anyone else change it for you.” The boy looked at his feet,
unsure. “Look, I'll tell you what. I'll make you a deal. You keep strong while
we're away, and look after
those
two,” I said, pointing to Eddie and
Alexia as they walked over. “Do that, and when you're a little older, you can
come and find me. I'll answer any questions you have. Well, as many as I can.
Knight's oath.”

He looked at me
and seemed to understand. Eddie's hand landed on the boy's shoulder. I looked
at my gracious hosts. “You are in good hands.”

“Yeah?” Eddie
said, chuckling to the boy. “You're going to take care of us, little guy? I'd
like to see that.” He was laughing, but for a moment he let out a smile I
would've missed had I not been watching for one.

“Bye-bye, Iago!” Dolly
said, leaning out of the shuttle and waving. “We'll come visit soon.”

The lantern boy
lit up like a candle and waved back to her.

“Bye-bye!” he
shouted.

“Goodbye, Mister
Pocket,” Alexia said, taking the child by the hand. “And good luck to you.”

“Thanks, tea
lady,” I replied, climbing into the cabin. “I'll take all I can.”

I closed my door
and we were off. The red-bearded man achieved ignition and we rolled quickly
down the way.

The Gaslight Tea
House was soon a colored spot in the distance, an odd, little daydream fast
hidden by the rising clusters of trees.

“Alan...are
you...are you crying?”

“What's that? Eh,
no. Don't be silly. Must be the stink of this place.”

“Must be.”

“Makes the eyes
water. Old beer and cheese.”

“That'll do it.”

“Still, you know.
That's a romantic thought there.”

“Romantic, Alan?”

“The people and
the places and the moments of our lives, I mean. Coming up and in and out of
the mist. I'm not a poet, I can't really explain. It's sort of like, well, like
the way a cloud'll make shapes and then thin out like a...eh, I don't know. Do
you get my meaning at all?”

“Yeah. I think I
do.”

“Thank God. So I
can shut up now?”

“If you like.”

“Good. Romanticism
is exhausting.”

“Is it ever.”

We zigged and
zipped for awhile, bouncing through the English countryside. Wired to the floor
beneath our seats was a smallish music box, and the seeping songs of Lady
Jay—my God she was becoming popular—twisted and turned with us on the ride.

“
Fly, birdie,
fly,”
came the sounds, rising up from our feet.

“Up the branch
a little higher.

Taking to the
sky,

my clever,
little flier.”

Kitt sneezed, and
I realized that it was the first sound offered amongst the cabin since our
departure.

“Bless you,” Kitt
said to himself.

We were pretty
much crammed into each other, sliding back and forth on the cushioning.

“Did you just
bless yourself?” Gren asked.

“Can't very well
trust you lot to care for my wellbeing,” Kitt teased, making a funny face. He
then started fidgeting in his seat and tapping his knuckles against the glass,
the metal walls, Dolly's head, anything within reach.

“Something wrong?”
Gren asked, clearly restraining himself.

“I'm bored,” Kitt
responded.

“Oh, I'm sorry.
Was it more fun when we were being shot at?”

“A little.”

Kitt turned to
stretch, pushing Dolly into Gren into me, then bent forward, peering at the
thick piece of red-tinted glass that separated us from our driver.

“Do you think he
can hear us from there?” Kitt asked.

“Yes,” said our
escort, his back to us.

We were quiet
again for a time.

“So you liked it,
Mister Pocket?” our driver suddenly said as our shuttle turned onto a cleared,
dirt road lined by wooden planks.

“Eh?” I said,
slightly startled. “Yes, yes I did.”

“I am glad.”

“Good.
Ah...incidentally...what specifically are you glad I liked?”

“You know.”

“Do I?”

“The sweet rum.”

“Oh, right. Sure.
Good batch.”

“It is.”

We drove through a
clearing populated by a small community of merchants and so on. The presence of
commerce told me that we must have travelled closer to the city, and I became anxious
wondering how far the King’s hunt had reached.

“Don't worry,” the
driver said, as if reading my mind. “This place is safe.”

He piloted the
craft to a makeshift air dock and snorted when he found that his ship was not
there.

“Impatient...” he
said to us.

“What did you
expect?” Gren laughed. “She said she'd leave us to rot in the dust if you took
all day.”

“
I
did not
take all day,” our escort objected, flipping some switches. “I was invited to
breakfast. Didn't want to be rude. Besides, it was Mister Pocket who held us
up, talking that child's ear off.”

“Hey, hey,” I
said, firmly wedging myself into the argument. “You can't pin this on me
because I put a bit of spice and sentiment into my goodbyes.”

“You took
forever.
'Come find me when you are a man and I will answer...' You sounded like
something out of a weak serial magazine.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, don't get so
excited. Here, we're on our way.”

“What?”

The attached
propellers kicked on, spinning quickly. The cabin began to shake as our driver
straightened out the shuttle.

“I said, we're on
our way,” he repeated, pulling back on the controls.

And then we were
in the air. Somehow. All I really remember of our ascent was the shaking
followed by my companions falling on top of me followed by the sudden appearance
of clouds outside of the windows.

“We're...we're
flying?” Kitt asked.

“
I'm
flying,”
the goateed man said. “You people are just sitting around.”

“Exciting,” the
Doll said, trying to remove her heel from my ear.

“But is it safe?”
Kitt asked, pulling himself up.

“Usually,” our
driver replied.

I managed my way
back to my seat. I removed my hat and punched out the dent it received from the
cabin's floor. I felt a hand moving through my hair. It wasn't mine.

“What are you
doing?” I asked.

“It got messy,”
Dolly said, moving her slender fingers.

“Falling down will
do that.”

“There...yes,
that's better.”

I found my
reflection in a window and inspected her work.

“It's still
messy.”

“Yes, but now it's
charmingly tossed, not eccentrically frazzled.”

“There's a difference,
then?”

“Of course! I
thought gentlemen of this age were fashionably conscious.”

“Not all of them.”
Admittedly, I am far from the dandy type.

“Well, count
yourself lucky to have a lady around who understands a bit about subtlety.”

“I can be subtle.”

“Not when you
eat!” Kitt pointed out with a laugh.

“Eating's a matter
of appetite.”

“So?”

“So there's no
room for subtlety. Appetites define a man, how he is driven. I'm not the type
to play that down. If I started suppressing my appetites, I'd come off as pretty
dull, right? And if that's not gentlemanly enough, oh well.”

The Doll smiled
and nodded. “I see.” She took my hat and plopped it on my head.

So we rode through
the sky, moving over treetops, roofs, and chimneys. Sounds of violins played
from the music box, and the arrangement so matched the rhythm of our flight
that one would suspect our airborne machine of sliding on a set of tuned
strings as it drifted through the clouds.

Speaking of
clouds, one in particular soon loomed before us. It was quite large and, unlike
all others in the air that day, very dark.

“A black cloud?”
Kitt wondered. “Doesn't look like rainy weather.”

“That's because
it's not black,” our driver said. “It's shadowed.”

“Shadowed? Up
here? By what?”

Our escort tilted
our shuttle toward the mass. The propellers started to blow away bits of cloud
as we approached.

“By this.”

That's when we saw
it. From behind the cloud emerged a massive steamship of British Naval design.
Covered in wood, steel, and brass, it was quite the sight. It seemed to the
observer to have undergone extensive reconstruction, as all military insignia
has been removed and replaced with reinforced armor, additional mounted
artillery, quite polished, and thick tubing that snaked everywhere. In the
center of the railed deck stood a tall watchtower, and fashioned to the point
of the ship was a gilded, longhaired siren. The vessel was as beautiful as it
was unusual, and across the side was stamped a single word.

LUCIDIA

“Nice ship,” I
said.

“Thank you,” said
our driver, steering ahead.

As we got closer,
we could see that in the watchtower stood a young lady with a crooked
telescope. She saw us and immediately rang a connected bell. Responding to the
sound, another young woman, a blonde, marched out onto the deck and peered at
our shuttle.

“Is she...frowning
at us?” I asked.

“She's impatient,”
the driver said.

Ropes on wheels
started moving on the
Lucidia,
lowering a small ramp from the bottom of
the ship.

“Ah, perfect,”
Kitt said. “Just signal them to land and we'll drive on board.”

Gren snickered.

“What?” Kitt said.

“Just wait,” Gren
replied.

Without a word,
our escort dropped our vehicle downward into a steep curve, barreling in on the
ramp.

“Hey, hey!” I
shouted. “What the hell are you doing?!?”

“Landing,” he
said.

“You can't fly
down the ramp in mid-air! You'll kill us all!”

“Just wait,” Gren
said.

“Should I be
concerned?” Dolly asked.

“No.”

“Yes!” I argued.

“I'm with Pocket,”
Kitt said, cowering. That seemed like a smart move, so I cowered too.

“Watch,” Gren
said.

The driver brought
us in fast and slapped the wheels beneath us to the ramp in a way that made the
shuttle bounce. We fired up the ramp, and the second we were inside of the
Lucidia,
he killed the propellers and we slid across the floor until coming to a
screeching, breaking halt.

“There,” the
driver said, rubbing his hands together. “Perfect landing.”

I would have
complimented the man on his precision, had I not been back on the floor of the
shuttle with the Doll's heel in my mouth.

Hooray.

“Quite the
adventure, Pocket.”

“In retrospect,
maybe. When it's happening to you, it just feels like fear and movement and
bumping about.”

“I imagine so.
Huh...
Lucidia.
Something familiar about the name. Like I've heard it
somewhere before.”

“Yeah...I'm pretty
sure you have.”

“What?”

“Sigh...I'm
getting to it.”

We climbed a set
of stairs leading from the docking level to the surface deck. Waiting for us
was the blonde woman, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

“Took you long
enough,” she sassed.

She was quite
extravagantly dressed. Leather breeches, tall, laced boots with what appeared
to be tarot cards sticking out from the tongues. Ruffled blouse, exposed
midriff under an illustrated corset...