Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (43 page)

“After you all,”
the captain said, holding the door, “and watch your steps. We are on a little
bit of a slope.”

And so we entered
the chamber of the Red Priest.

The captain's
quarters were stunning. Rich, smooth, blackened wood made a railing that snaked
around a diamond-shaped room. The walls were lined with blood-red velvet
fastened by rivets made of imported black onyx. The pirate's life had been good
to him, I thought to myself.

Two diamond points
came together to a place of long, layered glass. Frosted panes of stacked
cubes, latticed with brass, created a giant window that treated the Red Priest
during the flights to a sweeping view of the open sky.

But not at this
moment.

The Red Priest
sighed, putting his hand to his chin and observing the window like a portrait
hanging in some great gallery. Nothing but a wall of thick, oil-blotted
seawater could be seen through the glass. It slid against the panes, offering
only the occasional bubble against the surface. The Priest seemed disappointed,
not so much because of the collision, but that the incident left his cabin
beneath the slimy surface of such a view-ruining mess. Or so was my
presumption.

“You have
a...lovely chamber,” the Doll quietly said, her tone both upbeat and
apologetic.

For whatever
reason, the one unifying image in my head of this scene, the image that jogs my
memory to remember how the events unfolded, is the formation our bodies took as
we assembled in the room.

I leaned against a
cabin wall and crossed one ankle over the other. Dolly dropped herself onto an
overstuffed lounging sofa of Eastern European design, Turkish, I believe the
captain said, and she did so in a manner not completely becoming of a lady.
Gren and Kitt hunched over smaller guest chairs. Hack-Jack and Quill planted
themselves on the floor by the exit, and Madame B draped herself on an entirely
over-pillowed sitting chair. The Red Priest was the only one who kept entirely
on his feet. He made a small circle, moving in quiet steps in the center of our
congregation. In his hand flowed a long hose that connected to the captain's
personal “hookah,” an elaborate glass and marbled device from the Indies used
for the purpose of smoking tobacco. Or so he claimed.

The Priest walked
another circle, furrowing his brow in thought, puffing on his hookah, and
exhaling tobacco smoke. The smell of his smoke was surprisingly fragrant and
distracting to me as I tried to keep my mind focused on the present.

“I...believe...”
he finally said, “…I...believe...that we should discuss our current situation.”

“Isn't that why we
came down here?” I asked, a little confused.

“Pocket,” Madame B
said, “don't be argumentative.”

“I didn't think I
was.”

“Now,” the Priest
continued, “if you'll let me continue...” He paused to await any further
interjections.

“Be our guest,” I
finally said, prompting him to speak.

“Quite the
opposite, actually,” the captain said.

“What?”

“You shall be
my
guests, won't you?”

“Oh. Yeah, I
suppose so.” I had somehow forgotten the very crucial point that I was not only
stranded in an oil sea on a sunken ship, but I was stranded on a sunken ship
that did not belong to me.

“Is that a
problem?” Kitt asked, wary.

“Oh, no,” the
Priest said. “I mean, I don't have very much choice in letting you take up room
and board. I either can or escort you out into the oily depths, and I am just
not that cruel.”

“Ah,” I said.
“Thank you...for not being that cruel.”

“Yes!” the Doll
added, kicking up her feet from the sofa. “We'd much rather have a nice, dry
sleep here.”

“Don't say that
until you've tried it,” Gren laughed.

“Oh, is our
boarding not good enough for you, Gren?” B growled.

“Hey, hey. Didn't
say that. It's a gorgeous ship. It just doesn't seem so accommodating when the
gorgeous ship is angled, sinking, and leaking oil.”

“I told you,” the
Priest pointed out, “we’ve handled the leaking.”

“Maybe for now,
but—”

“We'd love to
stay!” Dolly stated, smiling to the captain and then scowling at Gren.

“Don't give me
that face,” he muttered to her.

“Don't be rude to
our hosts,” she muttered to him.

“At any rate!” the
Priest said, talking over them. “At any rate, like it or not, we are stuck
together.”

“Kind of a dreary
way to look at it, isn't it?” I asked.

“Pocket,” B said,
“you're being argumentative again.”

“Am I? Didn't seem
so to me.”

“Hush.”

“Sure. No argument
here.”

She clucked her
tongue at me. The Red Priest continued.

“Our ship is far
from a proper lodging house. We have neither maids nor servants nor even a
proper kitchen, so your dining options, I'm afraid, will be somewhat limited.”

“This luxury
steamship has its own working lift but no way to prepare a meal?” Kitt asked.

“Manners!” Dolly
hissed to him.

Kitt scoffed,
doing nothing for the girl's currently sour disposition towards him.

“We are
travelers,” the Priest explained. “We prefer to seek out meals in the various
lands we kick up dust in, rather than eat in huddled captivity on the ship.
There are food rations aboard, though. And a rather simple hot plate. Rations
aren't the freshest...but they are consumable.”

My appetite didn't
exactly respond to the suggestion and tucked itself away.

“Maybe I could put
together something to eat,” the Doll cheerfully suggested. “I've baked scones
for the boys!”

“If you want to
play around in the rations and heat something up, feel free,” B said, “but
don't set your sights very high until you see what's there to work with.”

“Hmph. I never got
a scone,” Gren added.

“We hadn't met you
yet,” I responded.

“Did they have
jam?”

“Lots of it.”

“Just my rotten
luck.”

“Excuse me!” Kitt
barked. “Look, I think we have larger things to discuss right now than jam!”

“Do we?” the
Priest said, sounding quite sincere.

“
Do we?!?
Yes,
we do!”

“Oh, all right.
Settle down. Where were we in our discussion?”

“Repairs, I
think,” Gren said.

“Yes. Well,
obviously, there isn’t too much we can do in our current state. But, Jack—“

“Yeah, yeah,” the
boiler monkey spoke up. “I’ll start seeing what I can screw together. No
promises though.”

“Just be fast
about it.”

“Right,” Jack
grunted. “Gren and I will get on it right away.”

“Oh, and thanks
for volunteering me!” Gren predictably shot back.

“You wanna sit
around in this mud puddle forever?”

“The priority,”
the Priest interrupted, uninterested in their familiar, petty squabbles, “is
finding a way to shore, either a means of transportation or a means of
signaling passersby.”

“Transportation…”
Kitt repeated. “That’s right! Your shuttle! If we can get down to it, maybe can
fly out to—“

“No such luck,”
Jack cut in. “The landing bay’s taken on a lot of water, and even if we could
force the ramp open, we’d only have the Atlantic to greet us.”

“Settle down,
Kitt,” Gren advised, crossing his arms. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Like what?!?” the
thief complained, growing more agitated. “Strap some rubber to a pair of poles
and catapult us over the clouds?!? Start flapping our arms?!?”

“I said,” Gren
barked, also more agitated, “we will
figure
something
out.
”

“And what if you
don’t?”

The Red Priest
shrugged.

“Shrug?!?” Kitt
yelled. “Is that all you can do?!? After you've damned us all?!?”

“Kitt!” Dolly
fussed.

“Well, don’t you
think they deserve to take a little responsibility?”

“Kitt, shut up!”

“Why should I?!?”

“Shut up and
apologize!”

“
Apologize?!?
To
a bunch of pirates?!?”

“That saved our
lives, yes!”

“So what?”

“So what?!?”

“You of all
people, Dolly, you should be backing me up, after what they did to you!”

“Hey—“ I began to
argue.

“Yeah, that’s it,
Pocket. Make some noise! The Doll’s not under the knife now! Make all the noise
you want at them!”

“They didn't do a
single damn thing!” she shouted, somehow managing to make profanity fit easily
in with her usually cute tone.

“You're crazed!”
Kitt spat back. “I had heard women were temperamental, but I didn't think you'd
so easily forget a hook through your stomach!”

The Priest's face
faded from a smile to a more wounded expression.

“I...I did say I
was sorry for that,” he mumbled.

“Yes,” Quill said,
very quietly. “Very sorry. But we did fix her.”

“Oh, good!” Kitt
said. “You're all sorry! Will you be sorry the next time you let a guest get
gutted?”

“Shut up right
now!” Dolly yelled, squeezing her eyes and clenching her fists. “Why do you
have to go and ruin everything?”

“Me?!?” Kitt
replied, greatly insulted. “You should be thanking me for being the only one
defending you!”

“I do not need
defending!”

“Well, no offense,
but those bandages around your stomach say something different. Back me up
here, Pocket.”

I frowned and
rolled my eyes to the floor. I heard Kitt scoff, and I didn't need to see it to
know where it was aimed.

“Typical,” he
said. “Way to take a stand, Pocket.”

Kitt got up and
stormed past me.

“Where are you
going?” I asked.

“Out,” he said.

“Going for a
breath of lousy air?”

“Whatever you say,
Pocket.”

“Fine!” Dolly
shouted. “Go take a swim!”

Kitt huffed, flung
open the large, double doors, and slammed them behind him.

“Damn it all,” I
swore.

Miss B, who had
been sitting stone-faced, reddened, and surprisingly silent, took a long, slow
breath, rose, brandished her knife, and stabbed it into a side wall.

She spoke one
word, “ingrate,” and marched loudly out of the cabin.

We all stayed
quiet for a half-minute, reeling from the unexpected. At last, I pushed myself
into action and moved to the doors.

“Don't bother,”
Dolly said.

I ignored her and
made my way out.

“He won't listen!”
she shouted behind me.

I covered my face
with my sleeve and went through the smell to where I found Kitt. He was sitting
on a barrel with a sleeve over his own face and, I suspect, pouting behind it.

“Oh, is it your
turn now?” he coldly addressed me.

“Just calm down
and—”

“Because that
pirate woman just came and took a pretty sizable piece out of me.”

“Did she hurt
you?”

“Unless you count
feelings, no. Well, go on. Say what you came here to say.”

“Look, Kitt,
this...uh...this hasn't been easy for anyone...but...”

“But what?”

“…I don't know.”

He rolled his
eyes. “No, of course, you don't.”

“The hell does
that mean?”

“It means, grow a
pair, Pocket. Take a stand for once in your life. Look at you, standing out here
without a damn thing to say. Why don't you just recite what they told you to
come tell me?”

“They didn't tell
me anything! In fact, they wanted me not to come! How's that for a stand?”

“Please. The only
reason you came out here was to show that you could and prove me wrong. Well,
here you are, and without a decisive word in your head.”

“That's enough.”

“Forget it. I'm
going to find somewhere private with a little less stink.”

He jumped off the
barrel and started walking. My temper ignited by such a casual dismissal, I
grabbed Kitt by the arm, forcing him to listen to me.

“If you want to
discuss personal inadequacies, friend, you’d better start with yourself. If it
wasn't for you sneaking around, I wouldn't—“

“Who put a gun to
your head and made you follow me?”

“Had to.”

“You never had to
do
anything.
”

“Well...I
mean...the bottle...”

“You would've
gotten it back. And fine, maybe we did get thrown into this mess together, but
what have you ever done since to take charge of the situation?”

“I...um, I mean I've...”

“You've just
followed.
You followed me, you followed Dolly, you followed Gren and Eddie and Alexia
and now look where it’s gotten us. We're stuck on a bloody, sinking pirate
ship, and your precious clockwork doll’s now wrapped in bandages!”

“You...you can't
say that's...my fault...”

Kitt pulled his
arm roughly out of my grip and gave me one last, spiteful look.

“Maybe not,” he
said. “But don't blame someone else the next time she gets impaled. And when
she can't be fixed so easily, see how you feel then.”

“I...” Words were
failing.

“If you were any
kind of a man, you would've made a damn decision by now instead of chasing
after any stranger who will make it for you!”

He turned his back
to me and began walking.

And I just stood
there, paled, breathing in the foulness of the dark ocean around me. I stood
and I watch his form slowly shrink into the distance.

Finally, I just
shouted, not knowing what would come out of my mouth, to break the unbearable
silence.

“Fine! Off with
you, then!” I yelled to him. “Turn your back to me on a sunken ship! Very
fitting!” I boiled as he continued away. And then I added in cold mockery,
“Let's see you run away from
this!
”

It wasn't long
before he was gone, and I, empty of further ammunition and turning green from
the sickening air in my throat, resigned from the scene and escorted my wounded
pride back to the Priest's door.