Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (78 page)

“Don't scare us
like that again, all right?”

“You really need
to work on your bloodthirsty, pirate attitu—“

“Never again!” she
demanded. “All right?”

I made a sigh and
told a lie. “Never again.”

And again, the
road moved and turned beneath my wheels. Only this time, I had direction.
Madame B, as it turned out, was not patrolling the streets alone, and as I
explained the situation, I received my first positive lead all night.

“We can find that
cathedral,” Miss B said, determined and stroking one of the cats as the others
cooed from the cell in the back of the electric wagon.

“You can?” I
asked, turning down another cable-strewn street. “How?”

“Quill,” B said.
“She's got more maps than hairs on her head, and she's pretty good with the
layout of this city.”

“Is she nearby?”

“Near enough.”

I nodded but
didn't relax. No, that was a luxury I wouldn't allow myself until Dolly was
back in my arms. One thing gave me slight comfort, though. Madame B's demeanor.
While sympathetic, her reaction to the news of the Doll's possible demise was a
far cry from Alexia's.

“I see,” she had
simply said, angry and almost eerily calm upon learning Dolly’s suicidal
intentions. “Well, we're not going to let that happen. Accelerate.
Now.
”

As we drew closer
to where B directed me, the wagon grew very quiet. Even the cats became mute.

“So, listen,” I
eventually said, unable to stand the dead air, “thank you for coming after me.”

“I'm not the only
one,” she clarified. “The others are lying in wait with Quill.”

“Priest and Jack,
you mean?”

“And Gren. Though
those three boys may still be working around on the roofs.”

“The roofs?” I
repeated. “Are you the ones behind all of this cable work?”

“Yes, we certainly
are,” B said with a smirk and no further explanation.

“You know, I got
dragged through the streets by one of those.”

“How?”

“It was wrapped
around my ankle.”

“Well, why did you
go and do something like that?”

“It wasn’t on
purp—“

“We were pulling
those things behind an airborne shuttle. You could’ve skinned your face off!”

“I nearly did!”

“Tsk. Boys. I
swear. Come on, drive faster. We aren’t far.”

I did and soon
pulled the police wagon up beside an unassuming, little building. We released
the cats and watched them scatter and hurry between a few loose bricks into the
premises.

“Don’t worry,” B
smiled. “They know where they’re going. A lot a better than we do.”

She led me up a
fire escape and onto a flattop roof where cables hung like shoelaces. I took a
handful and squeezed them.

“They’re
everywhere,” I commented, watching how they draped from one building to the
next as far as I could see. “You’re going to attract some attention with this.”

“That’s why we’re
doing it at night,” B said.

The pirate queen
opened a discreet passage and hurried me inside. I carefully traversed my way
in the dark until arriving in the connected room down below the roof.

The room was boxy.
Thin chips of white paint stuck to otherwise bare walls. Oil was burning in a
dirty lamp. Hack-Jack and Quill were sleepily rummaging at a stubby table when
I entered with B, and the pair’s eyes snapped to me.

“Holy hell!” Jack
squawked at my arrival.

“Mister Pocket!”
Quill added, bewildered. “You’re…you’re not dead!”

“Not yet,” I
replied, slumping down onto an unoccupied chair. “Good to see you both.”

“Good to see
you,
”
Jack said. “Where the hell’ve ya been?”

“Catching up on
some rest.”

“Eh?”

“Not important.
Where are Gren and the captain?”

“Out down the
street, rigging cables. See, we’re putting up these—”

“Yeah, I know.
Listen to me. Right now, I need some help from you.”

Jack gritted his
teeth and made an unflattering face.

“Oh,” he moaned.
“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You shouldn’t,” B
chimed in, rolling a half-serious, half-teasing tone off of her tongue.

Quill pursed her
lips and tossed her head quizzically to the right.

“What do you need,
sensei?” she asked.

“I have to get to
a cathedral,” I said, resting my head on the table, “before daybreak.”

“That’s all?”
Quill asked. “Sure, we can give you a ride to where you—”

“No. There’s
more,” I explained. “I need an address.”

“Well, we’re not
exactly the Sunday service type,” Hack-Jack shrugged, roughly scratching his
fingernails through his dark hair, “but maybe we can track something down.
What’s the name of the place?”

“I, uh, don’t
know,” I admitted.

The three of them
looked at me blankly.

“What?” I said.

It was B who
finally spoke.

“So…you’d like
us…to give you a ride to a place you can’t name at an address you don’t know?”

“What of it?” I
responded. “It's not like London's the largest city in the world. Flashy,
glitzy, sure, but not gigantic.”

“That may be,” B
protested, “but it's still littered with steeples and church grounds. And let's
not forget that we have to beat the sun there.”

”All right,” I
said, slumping down in my chair. “I didn’t say it’d be easy.”

“You didn’t say
it’d be impossible either!” the lady pirate sassed. “If I’d known that, I’d
have left you on the ground where I found you.”

“I’ll point out
that
you
were the one to put me on the ground, B.”

“Sensei,” Quill
then said, determined to be optimistic, “is there anything at all you can tell
us that might help identify this church?”

“Yeah…maybe…let me
think.” I drummed my fists on the table, recalling the Doll’s diary in my mind.
“It’s got tall windows of colored glass.”

“Is that supposed
to narrow things down?” B grumbled.

“I don’t know!” I
spouted, rising from the table and pacing. “I’m trying, all right? I can’t
think!”

I pulled the
Doll’s diary from my coat and flipped through it angrily.

“Hey…Mister
Pocket…” Quill nervously said, “…calm down a little. You’re…you’re being a
little frightening.”

I slammed the
diary loudly onto the table and groaned.

“She’s going to
die!
”
I bellowed. “She’s going to die and I can’t even find out where! I oughta save
the trouble and put a bullet through my brain right—”

“Hey!” Madame B
shouted, marching over and grabbing me by the collar. “No one is giving
themselves a bullet tonight! Not while I’m here!”

She followed with
one of her signature fiery glares, but I was in no mood. Searing a fire right
back at her, I spoke.

“You can’t keep
anyone from dying,” I spat, just above a whisper. “Especially not me.”
A flash of surprise and fear came across B’s pupils before she steadied her
gaze on me.

“And why not?” she
said, just as quiet and combative as I was.

I put on a sick
smile. “Because I’ve already started to die.”

The two of us
stood there in tableau for what felt like forever, until our sparring bouts of
rage were interrupted by a loud and deliberate cough from Hack-Jack.

“Not to disturb
you two,” he griped, “but the night ain’t gunna stick around forever.”

“Yeah,” Quill
nodded, still noticeably uncomfortable.

“Right,” I sighed,
thumbing again through the diary. “Just…just hold on. There must be something
here that can help.”

“Did Miss Dolly
write—”

“Damn it!” I
swore, dropping my fist on the table. “Why is this so hard?!? Tall, damn room
with tall, damn windows! That’s all I’ve got! Nuns and pews and stained glass
bluebirds!”

There was a hush
as I scraped my teeth together. It was Quill that ultimately spoke.

“Excuse me,” she
cautiously murmured, “but did you say bluebirds?”

“Hmm?” I blinked.
“Oh, that. Yeah, she writes of a bluebird shape in the colored glass. Not that
it does me any good.”

Quill smiled and
leaned forward on her elbows.

“Maybe it does,”
she said.

The Bluebird
Abbey. A stately place of worship built during the reconstruction of London
some decades back, and named for the unusual fowl prominently featured in the
front glass mural above the cathedral’s entrance. Or so Quill told me.

“I read about it
in a paper once,” she explained.

“What’s so unusual
about a bluebird?”

“Most churches put
up doves,” she said. “Symbols of peace. But the benefactors of the church
wanted something different to symbolize the changing of the times. So they
chose a bluebird, the figure of happiness and—“

“Okay, so where is
the place?”

Quill frowned. “I
don’t know. That’s really all I can remember from what I've read.”

“You remember all
of that, but you can't
spot
the place?!? I thought those sort of
landmarks became quick, common knowledge to the locals!”

“Locals?!?” Jack
jumped in. “Pocket, thanks to our current standing with the King, we haven't
exactly
frequented
New London in some time.”

I was getting
anxious. “Quill, what about your maps? B said that you have maps.”

“I do, but not
ones for every inch of the city,” she replied, “and most of my collection are
still locked up on the
Lucidia.
”

“Then what do you
suggest?” I retorted. “Go door to door, wake up a few people, introduce
ourselves as fugitives, and kindly ask if they could offer directions?”

Madame B stepped
forward to the table, took the Doll’s diary, and fanned herself with it.

“I think I have an
idea,” she proclaimed.

We were soon out
of that unadorned, little space and huddling in a corner alley just down the
way.

“Give me a hand
with this,” B said, pulling litter and old sheets off of a sizable lump that
turned out to be the sky pirates’ temporary mode of transport. It was an
impressive ship for what it was, not the glamorous behemoth that the
Lucidia
was, but far bigger than the Red Priest’s personal steam shuttle.

“Won’t we attract
attention in something like this?” I asked. “I mean, flying so low and at such
an hour?”

“Of course we
will,” B said, opening one of the ship’s greyed and bolt-lined doors. “Why do
you think I was searching the streets for your silly self on
foot?
But
we don’t have the luxury of time, so shut up and climb in.”

I did, followed by
Quill.

“Happy flyin’,”
Hack-Jack grinned, waving from the alley.

“Aren’t you
coming?” I called out the open doorway.

“Can’t,” he replied.
“I’ve got work to finish up here. But I’ll be seeing you.”

I sighed. “I’m
sure you will, Jack.”

I settled into my
seat as B dictated a message to the grease-spotted engineer, with orders to
relay the words to the Priest at once.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack
smirked.

“I’m serious,” B
sassed. “I don’t want him worrying about us running off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he
half-mocked. “Your word is law.”

“Damn straight,”
she said, closing the door and gripping the controls. “The word of the queen,
my babies.”

We flew away, coasted
over a few blocks of square-tops, and landed again.

“Hurry up and get
out,” B instructed.

I nodded,
complied, and was soon eying a great building being held by twin stone pillars
wrapped in brass. Lord, is there anything left on this land that
isn't
wrapped
in brass?

I walked up to the
steps with the two ladies shadowing me.

“Nice place,” I
commented, eying the slab above the columns and the seven metal letters that
were screwed into the rock.

L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

THE CITY LIBRARY OF NEW LONDON

“Very nice,” I
added.

“Haven't you ever
been to the city library before, Mister Pocket?” Quill asked.

“Of course,” I
said. “I've just never seen it in this light.”

Madame B quietly
slipped forward past me and Quill and pressed her body against the doors to the
place. She squeezed the doorknob and sighed.

“It's locked,” she
said to us.

“Locked?” I dryly
grumbled. “A library? In the middle of the night? Who would
dare,
B?”

“Shut your mouth,”
she hissed. “I'll get you inside.”

“Okay. So, what
then? We find a window to break? Because there doesn't seem to be any out front
or...what's so funny?”

B and Quill were
laughing.

“Boys,” B smirked.

“Boys,” Quill
nodded.

“You have a better
idea?” I growled, crossing my arms.

“As a matter of
fact, I do,” B smiled. “You see, ladies possess a certain something called
finesse, Pocket. And I think a feminine touch would work a little better at
this moment than just up and breaking things.”

And with that, B
waved my objections away and proceeded to retrieve a small and concealed metal
piece from her leather pants. Before I could ask what it was, she jammed the
piece into the keyhole and started turning it.

“And lock
picking’s more feminine, is it?” I muttered.

“Of course,” she
retorted. “Manipulating pins and tumblers is a delicate skill.”

In a matter of
moments, I heard a gentle click, and the pirate queen grinned in triumph. She
tugged on the lock pick but failed to bring it out of the keyhole.

“Problem?” Quill
asked.

Madame B responded
by giving the door a swift kick until it smacked open and knocked her
instrument free.

“No problem,” she
gleefully answered, concealing the lock pick.

“Nice work,” I
admitted, “but what happened to being delicate?”

“I
was
being delicate,” she argued, before giving the door another healthy kick for
emphasis. “And now I’m not.”