Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (34 page)

And then,
she...well...she...

“What is it, Pocket?”

“Well, Alan.
Honestly, the next bit, it...eh...do you really wish to hear it?”

“Just give me the
gist.”

“Ropes, flagpole,
side of the ship. Crying.”

“Male crying?”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. A bit
of begging, pleading, that sort of thing?”

“Exactly.”

“All right. I
think I have the picture. That'll do. Continue on.”

“Yes sir.”

Kitt huffed as B
gently lowered him back down to his feet. She smiled and kindly patted him on
the shoulder. He kindly responded with a respectful returning of color to the
face.

“So!” B cheerfully
said. “Are we understood now?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Excellent!”

And that,
strangely enough, was that. Any animosity or tension that may’ve been left
lingering between the two drifted off with the wind, leaving Kitt and B with no
conceivable option except to like each other, so they did.

“I have things to
attend to,” B then said, addressing all of us. “Enjoy yourselves.”

I nodded in
appreciation and stood by as the lady shuffled away to her duties. The Doll
exchanged smiles with me and raised a curious brow that seemed to be looking
for confirmation that exploring the lovely and windswept deck was really
acceptable. I shrugged, which she interpreted as a “yes” and gleefully took to
studying the woody, brassy surroundings, careful not to disrupt the order of
the scene. Kitt, on the other hand, took the phrase “enjoy yourselves” to mean
“snoop up and down the entire bloody ship” and did just that. I sighed as he
wobbled up a long watchtower that stood on the deck

As for me, I was
content to stay where I stood and take in a little air at the lip of a railing
that separated me and the ship from the endless sky beyond.

The air felt good,
almost...sweet. I wondered for a moment if I had been remembering to breathe
over the last few days.

Oh well.

It didn't at the
moment matter to me.

Dolly was amusing
herself watching a small, grey-feathered bird that had taken a perch on the
ship. I turned to face the railing and looked at the British horizon.

Tilting my head
down to observe the miles of distance between myself and the ground, I felt
something begin to slip above my brow. A quick flash of silver passed before my
eyes and instinctively I brought my hand out.

Got you.

The angle at which
my head was resting had caused the slotted spoon in my hat to slide right out,
nearly lost forever. I smirked and held it between finger and thumb. The
reflection of my face was stretched across the piece, dotted by its many holes.
Lucky catch, I thought.

Lucky. I nearly
scoffed at the word, for it was one I could no longer trust. Moments of fortune
between hours of mischief. Granted, I felt very fortunate that I hadn't yet
managed to land a bullet in my back throughout this mad series of escapades,
but I was far from hopeful. I eyed the slotted spoon. Suppose I hadn't caught
it, or even better, suppose I’d purposely dropped it. Just flicked it over the
edge of the ship. What luck would befall that? Would chance have it land in
some pile of dirt, never to be seen again? Would it land at just the right
angle to pierce some poor slob's skull, adding the offense of murder to the
list of charges against me? Would it fall in the palm of some brilliant,
British super-sleuth, who would instantly deduce from where it came and who had
pitched it, thus quickly resulting in my capture?

Or would it only
result in a marginally lighter hat? Hmph. Most likely. I felt the pull of the
hanging bottle, its strap digging into my shoulder. Maybe I could stand to rid
myself of a little baggage. I slipped the strap off and propped the bottle onto
the railing. With an index finger on the cork, I tilted it forward, watching
the contained green swill start to slide to the falling end.

“What are you
doing?” Dolly said to me.

I blinked and
clasped the bottle in my hand. “Just fooling around.” I returned the spoon to
my hat.

“You were going to
toss it,” the Watchmaker's Doll said, angry and pouting.

“Eh, not
necessari—“

“Mister Pocket.”

“All right.
Suppose I was. What of it?”

“That would be
very stupid!”

“Sorry,” I said,
not particularly meaning it.

She rolled her mechanical
eyes. “Do you even know
why
that would be very stupid?”

“Sure,” I said
dully. “Could land on somebody. Strike 'em dead. You know, one time, Kitt had
these marbles—“

“It would be
stupid,
”
she informed me, “because it is your essence.”

I shrugged.

“Don't shrug!” she
protested. “Wouldn't you care if you lost a part of yourself?”

“It's a pretty
heavy part of myself. Maybe I get tired of dragging it.”

“But—“

“It's just a
bottle of something. Probably mucky water. It's not magic.”

“But...like the
story goes...it's you...”

“Then I'm a batch
of nasty muck. Lovely thought, that. Will Pocket, adding up to a pitcher of
dirty water, the only benefit of which is that from the right distance, from
the right pair of eyes, it can be mistaken for something more interesting,
something...grander...”

The Doll frowned,
took my bottle, and hugged it. I sighed and crossed my arms.

“Maybe that isn't
so far off, Dolly. Maybe I'm just something that looks good from a distance.
Like seeing a piece of shiny garbage and mistaking it for a lost coin. I mean,
look at me. Running from the King like some grand, romantic criminal. All over
a petty misunderstanding gone way too far.”

The sweet taste in
the air fell away. The Doll made a childish sound and pushed the bottle to my
stomach.

“Hmph! Shiny
garbage,” she said. “If you believe that, then you are truly the stupidest man
who ever lived!”

She crossed her
arms to mock me and turned her eyes away. I watched her intentionally view the
clouds instead of me. I couldn't help but half-smile. Quietly, I put the bottle
and strap in its normal place over my shoulder, and joined her in cloud-gazing.
Neither of us heard the lady sailor join us.“You like?” B said with a confident
smile, leaning an elbow over the rail.

I blinked. “Do
we…like…”

“The ship,” she
said.

“Oh. Yes. Very
impressive. Can’t say I’ve seen another like it.”

B laughed. “Not
surprised. They don’t come out of the shops looking like this.”

“I believe you.
Seems to be a good bit of custom modification.”

“Well, when you
travel with a pack of steam-pressed wrench jockeys like I do, you see a lot of
it. Dying for any chance to play with machines. Jack calls himself and the
Captain ‘new world cannibals,’ but they’re really just little boys messing
around with things they shouldn’t. One day they’re going to blow us all up. And
if they do, they better pray the explosion kills me.”

“Mmm...” I
muttered. I decided to stay away from that line of conversation and instead
flicked my fingers against a piece of brass. “It certainly is all dolled up,” I
commented, and then, thinking upon my choice of words, tossed a smile and a
shrug to the clockwork girl beside me as an apology.

“It’s pretty,”
Dolly said.

“Pretty and
powerful,” B grinned. “Nothing like being blown out of the sky by a shiny, golden
death machine.”

“A pretty death is
still death.”

Thrown off our
guard by the Doll’s sudden shift to the morose, the lady sailor and I dropped
our eyes and looked out to the sky.

“Sorry,” the Doll
added. “Didn’t mean to bring the gloom.”

B smirked. “Well,
aren’t you just a little rain cloud?”

“I like rain
clouds,” I interjected. “Touch of grey in the sky, a little dark. Makes a nice
contrast in the colors.”

I winked at the
Doll, changing her guilty frown into a cautious smile.

“Colors in the
sky,” B said. “Heh. That’s right. You’re the storyteller, aren’t you, tower?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“So what would you
say about a giant golden death machine?”

“Well,” I said,
stretching my back between the two women, “I’d always be honored to die before
something beautiful.”

The Doll played
with her gloves and chewed a little on her synthetic lip.

“Hey!” Gren
suddenly yelled, appearing at the other side of the deck. “Pocket!”

“What?” I called
back.

“Come over here. I
need your help.”

“With what?”

“With your hands.”

“Not what I
meant.”

“Just come here!”

“Fine.” I clucked
my tongue. “Excuse me, ladies.”

I was soon in
front of a pair thick iron doors, full of rivets and clashing with the rest of
the ship's color and design. They were clenched shut, smashed into each other.
Gren's fingers gripped them at the meeting line, attempted to pull them apart,
and turned pink. He then hurt his hand punching them.

“That'll show
them,” I said.

“Will you just
help me?” he responded, rubbing his knuckles.

“Sure,” I said
with a great exhale. “How?”

“These stupid
doors get stuck sometime. Help me pry 'em apart.”

“Sure,” I
repeated. “How?”

“There's a pair of
hand wheels you can spin. Manually open the damn things when the electrical
controls trip up. Take that one on the right.”

“All right.”

Me and Gren leaned
our weight into the matching hand wheels that stood on each side of the doors,
slowly pulling them open. I won't lie. I thought my arms were going to fall
off.

“Too heavy for
ya?” Gren muttered, a vein appearing on his forehead.

“Not at all,” I
lied, sucking in air.

At last they were
open and we both nearly collapsed in exhaustion. Gren and I caught each other
panting on the floor and we started laughing.

“Not exactly
musclemen, are we?” Gren joked.

“Not exactly,” I
admitted. “It's a shame Eddie's not around. We could use a little strength.”

“Eddie would die
of boredom here. Sitting around for hours in the sky, waiting to land.”

“Would probably
start spitting over the railing.”

“Yeah. Probably.”
Gren stood and cracked his neck. “Anyway, doors are open. Thanks for the
assistance.”

“No prob. I
was...was...” My words trailed off, and I stood transfixed at what stood behind
the heavy iron doors. My jaw dropped.

“What?” Gren said.
“Never seen one of these before?”

“Is that what I
think it is?” Kitt said, surprising us both by appearing from the corner.

“Gah!” Gren said,
startled. “Don't do that.”

“Yeah,” Kitt said.
“But is that—“

“Yes, it is. Don't
get all excited.”

“I wasn't.”

“What is it?”
Dolly asked, walking over with B.

“The mechanical
future,” Gren said with a snort. “Or some hogwash like that. For people too
lazy to lift their legs up and down a damn pair of stairs.”

“So it's...” Dolly
wondered.

“Yes,” B said,
jumping to the point. “It's a lift.”

“You're joking.”

“Alan, really?”

“Sigh...you're not
joking.”

“Of course not.”

“But Pocket. You
didn't get on the damn thing, did you?”

“Alan...”

“Right. Of course
you did.”

I instinctively
gripped the railing that circled the middle of the cast-iron pod. The lift slid
downward with perpetual bops and jerks, pinballing us about to the hum of its
electric song.

“First time in a
lift?” Gren asked with a grin.

“Yeah,” I said. I
was beginning to regret the decision. Gren had quickly offered us the
opportunity to ride along, as he was heading down to the bowels of the ship.

“Fastest way
down,” he had said, flashing a cocky grin at, I imagine, the realization that
he had experienced something in this world that we had not. B declined,
claiming to have better things to do than poke around the boiler room for Jack,
but Dolly, Kitt, and I were curious enough to come. So we squeezed into the box
and began our decent.

I held my footing,
looking at the words stamped into the domed lid of our pod.

NEW LONDON HYDRAULIC COMPANY – 1885

“I didn’t know
they put these on ships,” Kitt said.

“They don’t,” Gren
said.

Kitt seemed ready
with a follow-up question but the lift jerked again.

“Do not like!”
Dolly fussed to Gren.

“Agreed,” I said,
dizzy. “What the hell, Gren? The adverts say these electric models run fairly
smooth.”

“Pfff…what do they
know?” Gren scoffed. “They’d say anything to sell you—“

Another rough
shake. Gren smacked his plated back against the side, and the metal against
metal rang out in a harmonic hum.

“All right, a
little bumpy,” he grumbled. “But what do you expect from a custom job?”

“Custom?” Dolly
asked. “What do you mean?”

“Like I said, they
don’t stick these in ships. The captain acquired this and hardwired it in
himself. Well, him and Jack. They toy around with stuff like this. Tinkerers.”

“I wish they
would’ve tinkered a little harder,” Kitt said.

“Hey, this isn’t
bad, considering,” Gren argued. “We’re in the air, flying all around. We’re
lucky it doesn’t drop us down the shaft like a stone.”

“An optimist,” I
muttered.

“And, uh, is that
a possibility?” Kitt asked.

“Just shut up and
hold onto the railing. That’s why it’s there.”

The lift bumped
its way to the belly of the ship and we were finally granted our freedom from
the would-be falling tomb. The iron doors opened and we stepped into the boiler
room of the steamship
Lucidia.

“Oh my…” the Doll
said. “
This
…is their steam boiler?”