Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (39 page)

“You all right
down there?” she shouted, sending her voice loudly down the stairwell that the
captain had descended.

“Yes, yes,” came
the Priest’s voice from below, casual as ever. “One moment, please.”

A sharp, blasting
sound popped suddenly up from below, followed a mad medley of scratching and
thumping. Once the clamor had passed, the Priest again spoke to us.

“All right, now,”
he said, completely calm and unruffled, “is there anything particular you’d
like?”

“I don’t know,”
the lady pirate said back with a shrug. “These military airships never have
anything interesting aboard.”

“Quill, what about
you?”

“Eh…whatever, I
suppose,” Quill replied.

“Well, you two are
no fun.” He searched quietly for a time. “I’ve found weapons,” he eventually
called up.

“We
have
weapons!”
B sassed back. “You, in particular, have too many. What do we need with more?”

“Sell them.”
“Meh…” she griped, unimpressed. “I’m tired of trading common goods. You’d think
that once in a while we’d find something more exciting.”

“This isn’t the
theatre,” the Priest shouted from below deck. “Pirates don’t typically find
giant, glowing jewels among the British skies. Oh, excuse me once more.”

Another muffled
blast of gunfire came up from below. Miss B sighed and glanced over at us on
the
Lucidia
.

“Not always that
interesting, I’m afraid.”

“It’s interesting
enough for me,” Dolly nervously replied. “Is…is he all right down there?”

“I’m sure he is.”

“But…could you
check?”

B tossed her hair
in annoyance and kicked her heel against the floorboards.

“What?” the Priest
shouted up.

“Just making sure
you’re alive.”

“Oh.” And then he
quieted down and got back to work.

About that moment,
one of the fallen soldiers lying on the deck began to slowly roll his
shoulders. Kitt noticed first and elbowed me in the arm.

“Hmm?” I asked.

He grimaced and
pointed. The soldier, who was sliding an arm out of a loose knot in his binds,
started blinking.

“Uh…madame?” I
cautiously said to B.

As the words left
my lips, the waking man shivered and reached for a discarded pistol on the
deck. He had only just pressed his palm to the metal when the lady sprung into
action.

“Ah...I think
not,” B smiled, pinning his arm down with her boot heel. “No toys for you.”

To drive her point
home, she took out her knife and held it over his throat. The drowsy man
sneered.

“I think you
better stop making ugly faces,” she said to him, “unless you'd like me to aim
this blade a little lower.”

The man was quiet
for a moment. He seemed to be calculating. He wouldn’t let go of the cocked
pistol in his pinned hand, but he wouldn’t stop glaring at the dangling
switchblade either.

“Now what does
that look mean?” B teased the man under her boot. “Honestly, do tell, because
I’m not a mind reader. What is it? Are you scared? Of a tiny crumb of a woman
with an old knife? Is that it? Or are you planning something? Maybe make a go
at pushing free and getting a bullet into me? That could work, maybe. If you’re
lucky. Although I am willing to bet that in the struggle I'd have time to let
this little blade slip out of my fingers and skewer you nicely. Or at least
prevent you from any future breeding. What say you?”

No reply.

Miss B let one of
her fingers slip off of the switchblade.

“Last chance,” she
said a little quieter.

The man remained
silent.

“All right,” she
shrugged. “Nice knowing you.”

The blade fell
from her hand. The soldier gasped. Thunk. The knife landed clean, mere
centimeters away from his flesh.

“A bluff?!?” Kitt
whispered to me. “Is she crazy?”

Maybe she was, but
her tactics had not failed her. In his moment of twitching panic, the soldier
had released his grip on the gun, leaving it open for B to kick away. The
pistol slid down the deck, where Quill quickly scooped it up and kept an aim on
the man.

Madame B chortled,
reclaimed her blade, and pulled her prisoner up to his wobbly feet. He was
staring incredulously at her. Can’t say that I wouldn’t do the same.

“What?” she said
with a smile. “So I don’t feel like getting blood on me today. I can ruthless
and
tidy, can’t I?”

At that moment,
the Red Priest came back into view, hopping up from the stairs with a whistle.
He paused at the top and cocked his head to the side with a curious look.

“What’s this all
about?” he asked.

B let go of the
soldier and tapped her knife against her hip.

“We had an
incident,” she stated.

“Forget it,” the
Priest then said, shaking his head. “You can give me the specifics later.”

The sailor beside
Madame B started stepping nervously away.

“Ah, no, no!” the
Priest cheerfully called out to the man, aiming his weapon. “It’s not time to
run away. In fact, do me a favor and come down here with me. I need another set
of hands to lift some of these heavy boxes. Or, you know, I’ll kill you.”

The pale soldier
stared blankly at his smiling captor.

“Surely you
wouldn’t ask these two nice ladies to dirty their hands, right?” the Red Priest
continued. “Oh, I know. It’s natural to be a little upset. Sailing out to
capture some nasty old pirates and ending up doing their grunt work at
gunpoint. But trust me. In a few weeks, you’ll be laughing about this over
beers or something. That is, of course, unless you refuse to help, in which
case, like I said, I’ll kill you.”

“Go on,” Madame B
added, slicing the ropes that spiraled around the prisoner. “A little heavy
lifting will be good for you. Build up those arms. Now get on it before your
sleeping friends start stirring and we have to resort to nastier measures.”

The soldier dumbly
nodded and was led downstairs by the Priest, who casually filled the man’s ears
with talks of rum until both were out of my sight. Together, they lifted five
long boxes from below and tossed them over the side to the
Lucidia.
Each
time they returned downstairs, the man would tensely squeeze the handrail with
his sweaty fingers, as if in fear of never again seeing the surface.

“Pocket, you're
inventing again. There's not a man alive with eyes strong enough to spot a drop
of sweat run down the hand of a soldier standing off in the distance on another
ship. And aren’t those crewmen usually gloved?”

“You're just
determined to kill this atmosphere I've got brewing, aren't you, barkeep?”

“I should've left
you in the snow.”

All the while, B
watched and snapped her fingers with the rhythm of their pace, as if she was a
fiery schoolmarm directing unruly children. And while Madame B wasn't exactly
the prim and stuffy type, she seemed more than ready to dish out appropriate
punishment.

“Kinda rough,
isn't she?” Kitt whispered. “More like a bloke.”

“Nah,” I replied.
“Just a war face. She's a madame, all right.”

“How can you
tell?”

“A natural sense.
I can spot a lady ten miles away.”

The Doll shifted
her gears and raised a suspicious eyebrow.

When the pirates
had transported a sizeable cargo of…whatever it was they seized, they politely
led their assistant to the steering wheel and promptly tied his hands to it.

“There,” the
Priest smiled, tightening the rope. “That should take care of you.”

“You’re…not going
to kill me?” the other weakly questioned.

“I told you,” his
captor replied. “I’d only shoot you if you didn’t lend a hand. You helped me
out, so I’ll help you.”

The soldier didn’t
have anything further to say.

“Now all you have
to do is steer this floaty boat to the nearest docking point,” the Red Priest
continued. “I’m sure the workmen there will gladly untie you. It’s just a
precaution, you see. Not that I don’t trust you, but considering the—“

“Can we go?” B
interrupted, assisting Quill back over the rail to the
Lucidia.

“I’m just saying
my goodbyes, woman!” the Priest bristled.

“Don’t you ‘woman’
me,” the lady pirate teased back. “I’ll throw you over the side with your pants
down.”

“She probably
would,” Kitt whispered to me.

The Red Priest
patted the bound man warmly on the shoulder, bid him good day, and returned to
the
Lucidia.

“All right now,”
he said, aiming his trusty sniper rifle at the man’s head for encouragement.
“Get going. We both have places to be, don’t we?”

Silently, the
soldier complied, roughly turning the wheel and moving the naval ship away from
us. The
Lucidia
bobbed slightly in the air as the other pulled from the
point of collision. We watched the steamship slowly drift off, almost sulking
as it bid us farewell.

The Priest resumed
his place at the wheel. We drifted away, and all onboard breathed a deep sigh
of relief, glad that our time with the pursuers was over.

Except that it
wasn’t.

“Hey, what’s
that?” Kitt was soon asking as he pointed at an approaching shape. A quickly
approaching shape.

“It’s another
ship!” Dolly gasped.

“No,” the Red
Priest mumbled. “It’s not.”

“Oh,” the girl
replied. “That’s good.”

“No, it’s not,”
the Priest repeated, fishing around for a telescope.

“Why?”

The captain
sighed, squeezing his eye into the peering hole of his retrieved instrument.

“Because it’s the
same
ship.”

Sure enough, the
very naval vessel that the pirates had just sent limping off was again
barreling toward us. The Priest clucked his tongue in annoyance.

“Now why did he
have to do that?” he grumbled. “All he had to do was sail away.”

“The idiot doesn’t
know when to take a hint,” B added. “I should’ve skewered him when I had the
chance.”

The Red Priest shook
his head. “Unfortunate,” he calmly said. “All right. Get ready.”

“Get ready?” I
echoed. “For what?”

“We’re shooting
them down.”

“Hold on, now—“

“I’m sorry, Mister
Pocket. I really didn’t want it to come to this. Too much unnecessary mess. But
we can’t risk a second attack. Get to that cannon, Quill.”

“Yes sir,” she
replied.

I was at a loss. I
had just survived a barrage of gunfire at the hands of these soldiers, but
blasting them clean out of the sky seemed somehow wrong.

“Captain,” I
stupidly uttered, “you’ll, uh, kill them.”

“Probably,” he
said, withholding emotion.

I could tell that
he was purposely avoiding my eyes, and I felt oddly sorry for the man.

“Hold on, Pocket.
What sort of master pirate doesn’t want to shoot down an enemy ship?”

“The sort that
gave me a lift.”

“You sure keep
some strange bedfellows, don’t you?”

“I never said
anything about climbing into bed with them.”

I decided to keep
quiet and let the crew make their preparations. I heard Hack-Jack toss and
snarl on the floor.

“Better them than
us,” he slurred at my feet.

“You finally
awake?” I asked, watching him crawl around.

“Yeah,” he said to
me, “just a little dizzy. See, I think I breathed in some of that—“

“Right. We know.”

“Uh-huh…hey, what
was your name again?”

“Pocket.”

“Okay, yeah.
Listen, Pocket, can you tell me why my foot is tied to the ship?”

“Safety
precaution.”

“Precaution for
what?”

“No idea.”

I watched as the
pirates prepared for their assault. Tilting the wide, angry mouths of their
cannons toward the targeted steamship, they waited for the moment to strike.
Turning back, I saw the Watchmaker’s Doll staring on. One glance at her face
told me that she had absorbed my conversation with the captain, but the look
her pupils held was one of neither acceptance nor condemnation.

The cannons
spilled their bellies.

Kaboom, kaplunk.
Kaplunk, kaboom. The heavy spheres sailed with fire in fantastic arcs,
splitting through the clouds before splitting through the distant ship.

Kaboom, kaplunk.
More holes in the sky.

Kaplunk, kaboom.
More holes in the enemy.

The Priest grimly
ordered another round of fire and set aside his telescope. I seized it and put
my eye to the scene on the horizon. Magnified through the round lens, I could
see the man that had been bound to the wheel by the pirates. He was now free of
the ropes, the struggle leaving bleeding marks visible on his wrists. He looked
half-mad, screaming things I couldn’t hear while frantically untying his
companions, most of whom hadn’t yet shaken off the knockout gas. The few that did
began tripping about in a drunkard’s daze as the bombardment continued.

“They’ll try to
return fire,” I heard the Priest say, though not to me. “We need to end this
soon.”

I returned the
telescope to him and watched the cannons send off one final load before Gren
and Quill started wheeling them from the deck. Madame B hurried to the helm.

“Now,” the Red
Priest commanded.

The Madame dug her
fingers into the wheel and tilted us through the clouds, desperately trying to
increase the distance between the two ships.

“Don’t want to
give their cannons the same clean shot ours had,” Gren said to me in passing.

Sure enough, the
soldiers in the distance did manage, despite their delirium, to return fire on
us, even landing a few small strikes on the
Lucidia
as it retreated.
But, as was about to be clear to all involved, theirs was a losing battle.

“Look!” Kitt piped
in.

I watched as the
naval ship began to sway and dip and descend, moving about like a wounded bird.