Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (63 page)

“Mine,” I replied.

“You, Pocket?” the
Motorist said, looking me over. “That surprises me. I didn’t think you were the
type for this sort of…eh…recreation.” He read the bottle’s tag and laughed.
“Faerie juice,” he said. “That’s funny. And five pence?” He took a grimy coin
from the grimy pocket of his grimy pants and flicked it at me. “You’ve got a
sale.”

I looked down at
the coin as it bounced and came to rest on the stone floor before me.

“You two are being
quiet,” the Motorist then said. “See, that’s a problem for me. Makes it harder
to get what I’m looking for.”

“And what’s that?”
Gren muttered.

“Answers, Spader.
Good, solid, to-the-point answers.”

“You’re wasting
your time then. We’ve got none. And even if we did, do you really think we’d
play nice and share? Go to Hell.”

A very tense
moment followed. I was fairly certain that Gren was about to receive another
hard elbow to the face, but instead the Motorist calmly smiled and set my
bottle aside. He reached for something else on the table behind him. The
Half-Luck. Calmly, he stood up and blew a little dust off of the weapon.

“This yours,
Spader?” he asked, inspecting the scattergun.

“Yeah,” Gren
replied.

“Is it loaded?”

“See for
yourself.”

“I’m asking
you.
”

“No,” Gren said,
“it’s not loaded.”

“Really?” the
Motorist said, walking over to us. “So you don’t have any problem with me doing
this?”

He pressed the
barrels to Gren’s throat and cocked the gun.

“Nope,” Gren said.
“No problem here.”

The Motorist
bristled and the two locked eyes.

“There’s a price
on your friend, Spader,” our captor spoke.

“I’m aware,” Gren
snarled.

“But you’re not
worth a penny to me.”

“Good. I hate the
attention.”

“Gren,” I cut in.

“No, no,” Gren
replied. “Don’t interrupt. This ass was telling me just how worthless my lousy
skin is to—“

“Gren, shut up!” I
interrupted, getting annoyed with this little stand-off. “You, Motorist, if you
have questions, start asking them.”

The brute eyed me.
He then actually lowered the gun and turned his attention my way.

“You better not
try to feed me lies,” he warned.

“Am I in any place
to lie?” I muttered, fury building just below my tongue. It was all I could do
to keep it down, to swallow the fire.

“Fine,” the
Motorist said. “First question. Who are you?”

“Will Pocket,” I
said. “I thought you already knew—“

“Of course, I know
that,” he spat. “I mean, who
are
you?”

“I…I don’t
follow.”

“Come on, let’s
not play this game. You know what we want, why we’re all wasting time here.”

“You want what I
found in that basement,” I said. “The Doll.” The words stung as they slid
between my teeth.

“What you
took
,
”
he clarified. “What you stole. Doll or whatever you want to call it, it’s
what you put your hands on and ran out with. So I’ll ask you again. Who are
you, Mister Pocket?”

I could only
shrug. “Nobody.”

“Nobody,” he
repeated. “A nobody who prowls around watch shops?”

“No. I just…I
don’t expect you to believe me, but…I just happened to end up there.”

“In that
basement?”

“In that
basement.”

“By chance?”

“Pure chance.”

“You’re right,
Pocket,” the Motorist said. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t…I don’t
have another story to tell you.”

“Oh, of course
not. No, you wouldn’t have any more stories,” the man mocked, taking my old
calling card from the other possessions on the table. “Bard of New London, it
says. Wouldn’t expect a bard to know any stories, would I?”

I was so full of
contempt I could barely breathe. I wanted the man’s life, wanted to feel his
blood on my hands. He must’ve picked up on this because he slapped the card
back onto the table and marched up to me, inches away from my face, put on an
ugly scowl, and shifted to a more direct approach.

“What is your
involvement with the King’s affairs?” he demanded. “What are you trying to
accomplish?”

“Nothing,” I said.
“I have no issue with the Crown.”

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

“So you just
walked away with that device for the hell of it?”

“I walked away
with
her
because
she
wanted to see more of this world than a
dusty basement. Call her a device again and I’ll hand-deliver your lifeless
head to the King myself!”

The man took a
step back. A thin smile came upon him, and he chortled.

“Well, now!” he
laughed. “We are at last getting somewhere!”

“Pocket, let it
go,” Gren muttered.

“So you have a few
sore nerves in ya,” the Motorist continued, “don’t ya, bard? Got a little soft
spot for the clock girl, eh? Hell, if that’s your problem, I’ve got a motorbike
with a nicely-curved backside. Tell me what I want and I’ll give ya twenty
minutes alone with it. You can pretend it’s any woman you like.”

I threw my head
down, shut my eyes, and ordered myself not to scream.

“You listening to
me, boy?” the Motorist shouted. “I’m talking to you!”

“Leave him alone,
you bastard!” Gren snapped. “I’m getting really sick of your mouth!”

“And I’m getting
sick of yours, Spader! Right now, I’m talking to your friend. You have a
problem with that, I’ll close your mouth for good!”

Gren backed down.
I started to shake, completely lost in my own emotions.

“Look at me,” I
heard the Motorist whisper. I slowly opened my eyes and saw him again very
close to my face. His eyes cut holes in me. “Look, boy,” he said, just above a
hush, “you’re killing yourself for no reason. That thing you found, it ain’t
real. Just another wind-up toy in a cute package.”

Still shaking, I
met his eyes with my own. They stung and began to water over. Carefully,
angrily, quietly, I spoke to him.

“You will never in
your life hold even the slightest understanding of what is real. And that is
why you are a waste.”

That got to him.
With a coarse shout, he began beating me, pumping his fists into my side with
reckless abandon. He was a maniac, swearing in tune with his blows as I gagged
and yelped. Gren thrashed and screamed at him to stop, but that only encouraged
him. Finally, the enraged Motorist backed off and, moving to the back tables,
clutched the Doll’s turnkey in his fist.

“Is this real,
then?!?” he bellowed, pointing it at me. “Is this your goddamned beloved?!?”
Aching as I was, my tone was steady. “You…put…that…
down!
”

“What’s the
matter, Pocket?!?” he sneered. “Too jealous to see another bloke put his hands
on your woman?” To mock me, he made a great show of stroking his fingers up and
down the length of the turnkey. “Ah, yeah. Look at that, boy! How happy I’d bet
she’ll be!”

“I am going to
kill you!” I erupted, at last unable to take anymore. “I swear on my life, I am
going to take you to Hell with my own hands!”

In response, the
Motorist swung the Doll’s turnkey like a club and bashed me upside the head.

“Fiend!” Gren
boiled.

“Did that hurt,
Pocket?” the Motorist cackled. “Did your lover’s touch sting? Well, don’t blame
me. She’s the one who struck you.”

“…kill you…” I
babbled, delirious. “I swear…you miserable devil, I’ll…I’ll kill you…”

The bearded man
shook his head in disdain and tossed the key aside.

“You’re wasting
time and breath, Pocket,” he said.

But I didn’t care.
Nothing mattered in that lost moment but to empty my flesh of the ugly hate
that was eating into me.

“You can’t have
her!” I bellowed. “Not ever!”

“Last chance,
Pocket,” the Motorist said, grabbing Gren’s weapon once more. “I get the same
pay for handing you over dead, so unless you wanna tell me where—“

“Why?!? Why
her?!?
Take any other woman, any in the whole world—“

“Tough luck.” He
aimed the Half-Luck at my chest.

“What is she to
you?!?” I screamed. “What is she?!?”

“To us?” the man
said. “Nothing at all. We’re just after what’s inside.”

He pulled the
trigger and there was a resounding blast.

Everything went
black.

“What the hell?!?”
I heard the Motorist shout.

I could feel nothing
but a great dizziness in the dark. It seemed as though my soul was being pulled
up and out from my nostrils.

Was this death, I
wondered. Had my last moment come and gone, just like that?

Finally, in that
empty drift, I heard a voice speak out to me.

The Watchmaker’s
Doll, you ask?

No.

It was Gren.

“You can open your
eyes now, Pocket.”

Oh.

Light and shape
and form returned to me...well…because…I opened my eyes.

I hadn’t been
shot? I quickly looked down at my body for blood splatter. There was none. I looked
at Gren for confirmation and he rolled his eyes.

“Idiot,” he
muttered, hiding a bit of a relieved smile.

I hadn’t been
shot. I took a moment and convinced my heart to resume beating. I hadn’t been
shot.

But then what of
that clamor? That sudden, piercing blast?

The Motorist was
now at the stairwell, shouting to his men up above.

“You wanna tell me
what that was?!?” he shouted up, putting aside, for the moment, his
interrogation.

“We don’t know!” a
voice shouted back. “Came from the top. I think something sparked some of the
powder.”

“Jesus…” the
Motorist swore. He cast the Half-Luck the floor and gave us a very serious
warning.

“This isn’t over,”
he growled. “Try anything while I’m gone and you’re both dead where you stand.”

He huffed and
marched up the stairs, complaining to the other Motorists as he did. Once we
were alone, Gren cast his eyes on me in disbelief.

“Wow,” he said.

“Wow,
what?
”
I wheezed back.

“I’ve never seen
you that upset.”

“Never had a good
reason to be.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.
Trying to calm down a little…but…I hurt.”

“You should. He
beat on you pretty good.”

“Anything look
broken?”

“The hell do I
look like, a doc—”

“Gren!”

“No. Nothing looks
too serious.”

“Good. Same to
you. Where he hit you, I mean.”

“Right,” Gren
nodded. “I really thought he was gunna put a bullet in you for a second.”

“Yeah, me too. Why
didn’t he?”

“Who knows?”

“No, Gren. I mean
your gun. When he pulled the trigger on me, nothing happened.”

“Of course nothing
happened,” he retorted. “It’s not loaded.”

“It…it’s not?”

“No. I used all my
rounds in our failed, little raid on the Magnates.”

“But you said you
tried to get to the gun last night when you were ambushed.”

“Why wouldn’t I?
Just because I knew I was out of ammunition didn’t mean they did.”

I thought about
this. “Wait…so…a moment ago…when that man stuck your weapon to your chest…and
you didn’t care…you weren’t bluffing?”

“Hell, no! You
think I’d let him point a loaded scattergun at me?!? That maniac would’ve shot
me!”

I smirked and even
chortled.

“What’s funny?”
Gren demanded.

“For a moment I
thought you were doing one of those dangerously heroic stand-offs like you see
in the theatre. Battle of the wills and all that.”

“Pfff…” Gren
replied. “If being ‘dangerously heroic’ means getting your damn head blown off,
count me out.”

It’s strange, but
that little admission of humility made me feel a little better. Maybe that
would prove to be the key to our survival, I wondered. For once, I was ready to
pull my head out from the storybooks and look upon the situation as it truly
stood.

“All right, Gren,”
I then quietly said, my mind a little sharper, “whatever made that noise, it’s
bought us some time. So how do we get out of here?”

My yellow-haired
partner started mumbling to himself, thinking aloud. Then he started an odd,
little movement, bobbing his chest up and down against his restraints.

“Uh…Gren,” I
began, lifting a very sore and very tired eyebrow, “what are you doing?”

“Some of these
ropes are resting against one of my boiler plates,” he explained. “The metal’s
not sharp, but with enough time, maybe I can use it to cut through.”

“I doubt we have
that kind of time,” I frowned.

“You have a better
idea?”

“No.”

“All right, then.”

I hated it, but he
was right, so I quieted down and watched Gren try to work his way through the
ropes. As you could guess, he didn’t have much luck, and I was soon praying for
a miracle.

No, I told myself.
No miracles. No surprise twists of fate. That’s storybook talk. Get over it,
Pocket.

I took a long
breath, finally reassured.

Then, in a
surprise twist of fate, something miraculous happened.

Damn.

Another cracking
pop rang from above us, followed by some kind of mechanical whine.

“What in God’s
name is happening up there?!?” Gren yelled to our unseen captors.

Instead of
answering, the Motorists began swearing loudly and firing ammunition. Large
billows of black smoke started creeping down the stairs. It filled the space,
saturating the air even more densely than Gren’s shouts were. My eyes began to
water over, and soon I couldn’t see a thing. The hacking and grunting coming
from my immediate left told me Gren was faring similarly. So, over the next few
minutes, we responded in a manner that I’m sure you, dear reader, are by now
well accustomed to us behaving.