Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (64 page)

We kicked and
coughed and swore and screamed, accomplishing nothing.

In the madness
that ensued, the sound and the smoke, I never heard the footsteps of the man
who approached me, never saw the blade in his hand. Had he come to take my
life, he would have done so easily.

But he hadn’t.

The next thing I
felt was a great rush of blood to my hands as the rope that held them split
apart. As the binds fell off, my knuckles briefly brushed against the dull side
of a knife and the gloved thumb arched upon it. The hand pulled away from me, leaving
only air for me to clutch.

And that was all.

No explanation, no
word spent at all. Someone had, quite simply, entered, freed my hands, and that
was all. I couldn’t even make out a shape or shadow, and honestly, I had to
take a moment for my dizzy head to confirm that my sanity hadn’t splintered
like a struck piece of glass and imagined it. I wanted madly to shout out to
whoever had just cut me free, but words stuck together in my throat. I resorted
to just stupidly shaking my hands around in little circles.

“Who’s there?!?” I
finally shouted out in my delirium. I panicked, thrashed, reached out behind me
in the smoke, but was unable to clutch onto the one who had cut me free.

“Hey, calm down!”
Gren said. “It’s just the two of us here!”

“The hell it is!”
I pulled my aching arms forward from the post that had been holding them and
hurriedly tore at the ropes around my torso.

When I was free, I
moved stupidly through the smoke, my fists up in defense.

“Whoever’s cut me
loose, thank you!” I called out. “But if the act was a trick, I’m in no mood!”

“Did you get
free?!?” Gren exclaimed. “Then get your damn self back here and untie me!”

I ignored that for
the moment and continued to scurry about the room. I heard the faintest of
footsteps before me, but when I pursued them, I only came in contact with the
tables that held our possessions. Startled, I reached out and clutched the
familiar glass of my bottle.

Only then did I
hear two words, barely a murmur, creek into the corner of my ear.

“We’re even.”

Alarmed, I spun,
throwing punches about for no true reason and shaking in fear.

The one who came
to my aid must have melted into the smoke itself, for as I traced the room, I
found no one. Well, apart from Gren.

“Would you stop
running around and get me out of this?!?” he rumbled.

“That voice. Did
you hear—“

“Pocket! Ropes!
Untie!”

“Fine! Hold on.” I
began working the knots, and soon had my friend free.

“All right,” I
heard Gren say. “God, I’m sore. Hurry, let’s go before my body falls to
pieces.”

“Not yet,” I said,
moving back to where I had found the tables. I felt around and retrieved
everything. My boots, my coat, calling card, hat, bottle, bubblemaker,
everything.

“Come on!” Gren
barked.

“Okay,” I said,
folding the turnkey and shoving it into my coat pocket. “Let’s move.”

I rushed back in
the direction of Gren’s voice. Moving to the bottom of the stairwell, I heard
him trip and yelp.

“What happened?” I
gasped. “Gren?!?”

Gren coughed. I
heard him retrieve something from the floor. “I found my gun,” he said.

Another small
explosion cracked somewhere above us. We found and hurried up the stairwell,
the only discernable way out of the windowless chamber now quickly clogged with
the thick smoke. The floor above, we soon learned, wasn’t much better off. A
round of fresh, if you can use such a word in this instance, smoke met our
faces and we promptly gagged. The faint, clicking, grinding sound that had been
ever constant in the distance of this nightmare now grew louder, or rather,
closer. It was much like the droning, monotonous tune of machinery at work.

“Over here!” Gren
shouted. I worked my way, half-blinded, over to where he stood. A beam of
daylight was traced through the smoke, entering the room through a small,
sealed window.

“Stand back,” Gren
advised. He then mashed the butt end of the Half-Luck through the glass pane,
shattering open a hole to outside England. Unfortunately the hole was too
narrow, too small for either of us to squeeze through. It did however serve us
in providing fresh air into the stale and polluted chamber. Gren and I acted
fast, moving our arms to waft the dark smoke out through the window. As
visibility slowly increased, we turned our stinging and bloodshot eyes upon the
revealed machinery that filled the room. Great turning wheels and connecting
compartments working a tall, wooden shaft in the center of it all. It stretched
far above our heads through a hole in the wooden ceiling and continued, I would
soon see, up further floors.

“We’re in a mill,”
Gren murmured.

“Are you sure?” I
responded.

“Pretty sure.
Worked in a corn mill for a short time when I was younger. Had a lot of pieces,
gear wheel, grinding stone, that looked a lot like this. Well, somewhat.”

I stood and
watched the pieces clicking and moving in seemingly measured time.

“Why the hell are
the Motorists working out of a corn mill?” I uttered, asking the obvious.

In response,
another loud crack shook the floors above us, followed by another angry chorus
of rants.

“Because I don’t
think they’re milling corn here,” Gren said.

And he was, of
course, correct. The Motorists, we would later come to know, had found and
occupied this property, long abandoned in the shadow of Alexander’s new city.
They began using it as a hideaway, a place outside of their city stations to
conduct their questionable business and the occasional interrogating of
abducted, young street bards looking to hunt down peculiar, slumbering maidens.
They also replaced the aged machinery and restored the property in secret to
serve its original purpose.

As a powder mill.

“Powder mill?!?
They were bootlegging
gunpowder?!?
”

“Crazy as it
sounds, yes. Apparently, no one ever took notice.”

“So, all of that
smoke, those loud sounds…”

“Well, Alan,
that’s the thing. Manufacturing gunpowder can be a risky endeavor. The operation
tends to trigger the occasional explosion. Bit dangerous. That’s why the mills
are always built out by some empty field or river, with its weak side facing
away from anything important.”

“Where did you
learn all of this, Pocket?”

“I’ll come to that
shortly.”

“Heh. So that’s
what happened? Those thugs weren’t even competent enough to keep their own
stock from igniting?”

“That’s a
possibility, sure. Or there’s the chance that someone was intentionally setting
off that powder.”

“But why would the
Motorists purposely do something like that?”

“Oh, not the
Motorists, Alan. Someone else.”

When the noise
cleared, Gren and I weighed our options. We could stay put, find something to
hide behind, and attempt to overpower the Motorists when they returned. Or we
could take advantage of the confusion, continue up the stairs until we found a
way out of our stone prison, and make a run for it. Either decision would be
incredibly risky, but since Gren and I are both the impatient type, we went
with the latter.

“Now!” I declared
in a hush. Gren and I raced up the stairs, my friend taking the lead and
wielding his empty weapon. I looked about. More machinery, sacks, and spilt
gunpowder. There was a dirty set of boot prints tracked through the powder,
across the room, and ultimately up to the top floor. There were also signs of
an explosion, as drops of blood, broken crates, and smoldering, blasted
machinery decorated the room. I wondered if the individual who had cut my ropes
was the source of this attack or had crossed paths with the Motorists, who were
still nowhere to be seen.

“Look!” Gren
announced. There was a tall door resting in the curved stone wall to our
immediate right. A half-moon window at the door’s top, pulling in daylight,
told me we had found our exit. We ran over to it, only to find that it had been
locked from within.

“Damn!” Gren said.
“We’re gunna have to break it down.”

“Let’s do it,” I
agreed, setting down the Doll’s bubblemaker, which had been tucked under my
arm. I lifted my right foot, now rejoined with its shiny golden armor, and
placed it against the door with a swift thud.

I could almost see
the Red Priest in my mind, confidently smiling, arms crossed and most likely
draped in kittens, saying, “See there, Mister Pocket? I told you those boots
would be helpful.”

I then couldn’t
help but picture Madame B marching into my mind in time to lecture the captain
about distracting me while I’m in the midst of an escape.

“It’s not my
fault!” the Priest would respond. “He’s the one daydreaming me up in the first
place.”

“Pocket!” Gren
snapped. “Wake up! What’re you doing?”

“Uh, sorry,” I
said, returning focus to the door.

“Don’t be sorry!
Just kick!”

And kick we did.
We kicked, we shoved, we rammed, and we fought, but the door still stood
impossibly intact.

“Now what?” Gren
wheezed.

“You want to
figure out which of them has the key?”

“No.”

“Then we keep
running. Up. Toward the roof.”

“The roof. What
happens there?”

“We find a hatch
or something. Some way outside and, I don’t know, climb down the windmill.”

“And what if we
hit a dead end?”

“No idea.”

“Nothing like a
good mystery,” Gren muttered. He picked up the bubblemaker and shoved it into
my hands. “Here. Don’t forget this.”

I smiled.
“Thanks.”

We turned back to
the stairwell, but just then, a figure appeared from above. He was wounded,
bleeding steadily, and crawled sluggishly down the stairs on all fours.

It was the bearded
Motorist, suspenders and all, crawling his way until he was hunched at our
feet.

“And they say
there’s no justice in the world,” Gren sneered.

The man wouldn’t
put his eyes to us. He just winced and gasped.

“You got a key for
that door?” Gren continued. “Hey, louse. Listen to me.”

“Go rot, Spader,”
the man mumbled. Gren snorted in amusement and checked the Motorist’s pockets.

“No key,” Gren then
said. “Who’s worthless now? Come on, Pocket. Let’s—”

“GAAAAAHHH!” the
Motorist screamed out in pain. Gren jumped and stared back in shock.

What he saw was
me, hunched over the Motorist in a great rage. The bubblemaker sat at my side,
a rightful audience containing the Doll’s very pieces, as I repeatedly kicked
my metal boot as hard as I could into his bleeding side. He bawled in pain,
rolled over on his back, and wept.

“Pocket!” Gren
yelled. “Hey!”

I couldn’t stop. I
dropped down, beating my fist into his face until my fingers felt like they
would crack.

“Pocket!” Gren
shouted, quickly intervening and pulling me back. “Hey, Pocket! That’s enough!”

“You are
nothing!”
I screamed to the wounded man as Gren held me away. “Just an ugly lump of
skin and hair and bones!”

I slipped free of
Gren long enough to deliver one more kick. The man’s blood gummed up onto my
boot.

“For God’s sake,
Pocket!” Gren said, grabbing me back again.

“I’m surprised you
even bleed!” I yelled to the Motorist. “You as much as
speak
the Doll’s
name again and I’ll pull your insides out one handful at a time!”

“We don’t have
time for this!” Gren shouted, shaking me. “We have to get out of here!”

“I don’t care!”

“Pocket!” Gren
yelled, shuffling his weapon aside and throwing me against the curved wall.
“Listen to me! He’s not worth it!”

“Don’t…care…”

“Pocket…” he spoke
under his breath. “Will. You’re better than this.”

Too exhausted to
fight, I dropped my shoulders and sullenly responded to my friend.

“I don’t want to
be, Gren. I’m sick of it.”

Gren chewed on his
lip. He looked over to the fallen man, still wriggling and purpled and on the
floor, and then back to me.

“What the hell
happened to you?” Gren uttered.

My body hurt. My
mind hurt. My soul was all bunched up at the bottom of my feet. And I was still
hungry.

“I fell in love,”
I said.

Gren drew a very
long breath. “Love,” he repeated. “Okay. But standing around here, screaming
and fighting, isn’t going to do Dolly any good. And you know that. The more
time we waste here, the further away she gets and the more we risk getting
shot. Now, I don’t feel like waiting around to die. How about you?”

I pressed my head
against the coolness of the stone. “No.”

“Then let’s get
out of here.”

I peeled myself
off of the wall and gave a final, passing glance to the collapsed Motorist.

“Okay, Gren,” I
said. “You take the lead.”

The next floor up
was a complete battlefield, and Gren and I were soldiers who had arrived to the
war a day too late. The other Motorists who had transported us here lay slumped
all across the space, many singed by fire. Spots on the surrounding stone were
charred black from the explosions. Bullet marks and blood drops were abundant.
Rifles, chains, and blunt instruments were strewn about. I did not know if
these men were killed, unconscious, or too weak to respond to us, but I didn’t
feel like asking.

“Looks like
someone set up a pretty good trap,” Gren muttered to me.

I nodded in silent
agreement. But who, I wondered. That knife-brandishing set of hands in the
smoke, that phantom who had cut my hands free. Was this his or her work?

“If anyone’s alive
enough to hear me, don’t move!” Gren announced to the room, pointing the
Half-Luck around. “I don’t think any of you want to risk a fight in your
condition.”