Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (79 page)

“The art of
femininity lends itself to a pretty liberal bending of the rules, doesn’t it,
B?”

“Yeeeeeeees,” she
childishly beamed, “but don’t ruin the secret for the rest of your gender.”

“I’m afraid he’s a
little late for that, love!” a new voice shouted from behind the three of us,
followed by an unpleasant chorus of sinister laughter.

Quill, the Madame,
and I turned to the sound, and at the bottom of the steps, we were greeted by a
smug-lipped squad of royal soldiers ready to make our acquaintances.

“Oh, come on,” I
breathed angrily to myself. “This can’t keep happening. This just simply
cannot
keep happening!”

“I’m afraid you
girls are a few hours past closing time,” one of the troops stated. “Best you
come with us.”

“And what if we
don’t
feel
like coming with you?” B spat.

“Then you’re in
for a bit of disappointment,” he sneered before squeezing his eyes at me. “And
look here! Will Pocket, right? Lot of people out for you, tonight.”

“That so?” I
shouted, trying to mask the fear in my voice. “Good thing I love an audience!”

“Oh, you’ll get
plenty for an audience, boyo. You know how many witnesses have been calling at
our doorstep, feeding us leads? Gangly-legged bloke running amuck in the
absolute dead of night, hair in his face, waving a peashooter at the police.
Getting right popular, you are. So how about you come down and have a talk with
us and we won’t have to get ugly in front of your lady friends?”

“You want to see
ugly?” B yelled, moving in front of me as if she thought she was made of steel.
“Oh, we can make ugly to spare!”

Quill took a step
backwards and inched slowly to my side.

“Mister Pocket,”
she whispered, “you might want to go ahead and take a hold of what’s inside my
bag.”

I glanced down at
the ornately-decorated bag that hung at the girl’s hip, the same satchel,
monogrammed with that same letter “Q,” that I’d seen her tote along the
Lucidia.
I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed it upon her, but even more surprised
when I carefully reached inside and clutched onto the cold metal.

“A pistol?!?” I
hissed. I mean, I knew the girl was an established privateer, a pirate of the
skies, but it still struck me as innately strange, like reaching for an apple
in an orchard and plucking a ticking grenade.

“A
pistol?!?
”
I hissed again.

“Shhh!” she
responded.

I shook my head
and turned my focus back to B, who was doing a very commendable job of
distracting the soldiers with her special blend of charm and poison.

“Would you like
your mother to hear the things that are coming from your mouth?” one man
barked.

“Better than what
your
mother does with
hers!
” Miss B charmingly retorted.

“All right,”
another man commanded. “We’re done talking. Restrain them.”

They started
marching up the front stairs. My heart pounded and my grip tightened on the pistol
in Quill’s bag.

“Whatever
happens,” B murmured, turning her head to me, “you find that address. You
understand? Get it! Don’t worry about me!”

“What?!?” I said.
“Wait. What you planni—”

“RAWR!” the lady
pirate screamed, and in a blindingly quick, explosive instant, threw herself
headfirst down the stairs, landing on the first row of marchers and sending
them tumbling back.

“Get inside!” I
ordered Quill as I quickly pulled out the pistol out and fired,
striking…well…striking nothing in particular but contributing to the overall
rebellious effort. I then bravely turned on my heels and scurried like a rodent
into the darkened front room of the library. The doors slammed shut behind me
and I continued charging forward into blackness until I was roughly stopped.

“Oof!” I grunted
as I collided with something solid, smooth, and round in the dark. “Quill?
Quill! Where are you? I can’t see a thing!”

I heard scratching
and scuffling.

“Quill?” I called
again. “What’s going on?”

“I’m barricading,
Mister Pocket!” Quill called out from somewhere. “I think I’ve successfully
jammed the lock, but I’m trying to do better to keep them out.”

“What about Miss
B?”

“You heard her!
Don’t worry! If there’s anyone who can fend for herself—“ Her words were cut
off by the sound of nearby gunfire.  “Well, at any rate,” she continued,
“talking’s not going to do her any good, right?”

“Right! Yes!”

“All right then,
sensei!” Quill spoke, trying to pass for enthusiastic. “Just hold tight! I
think I may’ve found a lantern. How about you?”

“I’ve found
something to hug. Half against my will, actually. Some kind of…they don’t make
library boulders, do they?”

“What’s that?”

Quill struck a
match and started a glow within a small, glass lantern that was elaborately
affixed to the wall. In the weak orange haze, I could make out the grand
decadence of the interior design.  The walls were curved and sweeping and
braced with some kind of rich wood. The space was decorated with lavish
portraiture and shiny trimmings. The hard floor was so precisely maintained
that its shine became a near-perfect mirror. All of this, and we were only
standing in the vestibule.

“Fancy,” I said.

With my eyes
adjusting to the light, my ears took the hint and followed suit, honing in on
the growing rabble from outside.

“Are...are they
getting in?”

“No,” Quill
responded, “but they're trying.”

And try they did.
Whatever diversion Madame B had provided was quickly dissolving, and I swear
that I could almost see the silhouettes of the infuriated as they began beating
their haunting fists against the hardwood.

“I don't want to
say this,” Quill squeaked, “but I don't think this barricade with hold. Sooner
or later, they'll—”

“Let's not
consider that,” I instructed. “We just need bigger barriers. What else can we
slide up there?”

Quill shrugged. I
furrowed in response.

I needed, quite
literally, some leverage on my side. And I seemed to have none.

None, that is,
until I realized what I was hugging.

“Quill,” I said in
a hush appropriate for my setting, “how about this?”

Her eyes got wide,
and nervously and silently, she shook her head.

“No...” she said.
“No, you couldn't. You simply couldn't!”

I exhaled and
patted the cold stone that my weight was resting against.

“Quill, I'm afraid
I must respectfully disagree.”

The world.
Well...a mimic of the world.

A globe. A great,
indulgent, captivating, and oh-so-massive stone globe spinning on what appeared
to be a notably-expensive axis.

“Perfect,” I
whispered.

“What?!?” Quill
spouted.

Without response,
I slid like a snake around the piece and mounted a position directly behind it.

“You can’t touch
that!” the girl yelped. “That globe’s carved from pure white marble! There are
gold insets in the frame!”

“Sorry Quill,” I
said, roughly popping the framework away from the dense, stone orb.

“But…it’s just not
right!”

“Oh, I don’t
know,” I replied, pressing my foot against the sphere. “Kinda feels like the
perfect night for toppling the world.”

With a grunt, I
knocked my lower body weight into it, and the Earth rolled away.

Crash! The
spinning stone lodged itself against the tallish double doors. All right,
perhaps not “lodged.” But it definitely rolled itself up against Quill's
earlier, door-binding precautions, providing a useful service of...well...okay,
so it didn't really accomplish anything helpful to our situation, but it made a
great visual show and served as quite a weighty metaphor, pun somewhat
intended. Anyhow, shouting throats and beating fists continued their orchestra
outside, and wasting no time, I grabbed Quill by the arm and dragged her through
the wooden archways of the vestibule and into the heart of the library. We
hurried between large rows of texts and volumes. The shouting and beating
seemed to follow, sliding like a wave across the walls of the library.

“Can…” Quill
gasped as I pulled her along, “…c-can we slow down a little, sensei?”

“Quill, if there
was ever a time I needed you not to ask me that—”

“Okay! I get it!”

We cut a quick
left toward another wing. Its ceiling was dotted with skylights, allowing me
much greater visibility as I galloped along. I kicked open the doors that led
inside and heard a chilling creak, crack, and chorus that told me that the
wedged marble globe wasn’t serving as successfully as a riot deterrent as I’d
hoped.

I quickly closed
the doors behind me and ran a slender flagpole through the handles to keep them
shut.

“Mister Pocket!”
Quill exclaimed. “I think they’re...they're...!”

“Guess the world’s
not enough to keep those bastards out,” I grumbled.

“To be honest, I'm
not entirely sure why you thought a globe would—”

“It was a visual
expression! I—nevermind! Let’s hurry!”

“Let’s hurry and
what?
”

I put my hands on
the biggest book I saw and handed it to her. Quill started shaking under the
heavy volume.

“Here’s an atlas,”
I said, watching her quiver and inch over to a nearby table. “Get me an
address!”

“But—”

“Just try, okay?
I’ll do my best to keep them busy!”

“Okay, but—“

“Atta girl,
Quill!”

Not keen to stand
around and hear her objections, I used that sentence as my exit line and ran
off down the bookshelves. The wing connected to another section of the library
that curled around back toward the front lobby. As I jogged to the end of it, I
caught a line of thin, short windows that traced the walls where they met the
ceiling as a sort of glass border. I jumped upon a table that stood against one
of said walls and steadied myself. Peering through the glass, I watched with
dread as soldier after soldier seeped into the vestibule, barking and sniffing
about like feral dogs. If I didn’t make a move, and fast, Quill and I would be
dead where we stood.

I needed an idea.

A distraction.

Okay, Pocket, I
thought. It’s a big library. Get them to another part of it and hurry out.

I pressed my index
finger against the small rectangle of glass and noticed that it shifted slightly
in its setting. Carefully, I hooked my fingernails around the edges of the
piece and pulled out the glass, leaving quite a fortuitous hole in its place.

I looked around
and palmed a small bust of some balding literary figure I’d never heard of.
Clenching the fist-sized statue by its smooth forehead like a polished stone, I
took aim.

One shot was all I
had.

With a huff, I
chucked the bust out the window and clenched my teeth as it zipped above the
heads of the intruding Magnates. With a loud crash, it smacked into a door on
the opposite side of the lobby.

As I had hoped,
the hungry troops leapt upon the sound like it was an old bone with a bit of
red meat still sticking to it. The Magnates galloped off into the distance,
chasing the noise.

I exhaled, jumped
back down to the floor, and jogged back to where Quill was waiting.

“Good news!” I
announced.

“News?” she said.

“Good news!”

“Good news?”

“We’ve got a clean
path out of here! Let’s take it!”

“What?”

“That’s right!” I
did a quick, clanky pace to and fro. “I’ve shooed the troops off into some old,
dusty corner of this bookery. We can make a run for it.”

“An escape?” Quill
frowned. “You mean now?”

“No, in a few
years, when we’ve really sat down and worked all of the kinks out. Yes, Quill!
Now!
Hurry up and follow me!”

“But what about
the address?”

“I think taking it
with us would be the smartest move.”

“But I haven’t
found it yet!”

I stopped dead.
Then, in just the sort of way that the dead might perform such a task, I raised
an eyebrow to her.

“What do you mean,
you haven’t?”

“It’s not in this
book.”

“It’s got to be,”
I dumbly argued. “It’s an atlas.
World
atlas. What I’m looking for is in
London, which is in England, which in Europe, which is in the world, so seeing
that this is a
world atlas
, Miss Quill, I will recommend that you look
once more!”

“It’s not there, I
tell you!”

“It’s in the
world,
isn’t it?!?”

“Mister Pocket,
I’m sorry, but that’s not how atlases work!”

“You think I don't
know how atlases work?!?”

“Do you?!?”

“No!” I took a
long breath. “Okay, I guess I don't. I'm sorry. Caught up in the moment and
all, and...well, we're past it. Now, tell me. Where can we find what we came
here for?”

“Well, it's a
local address, Mister Pocket,” Quill said. “The city archives would be the most
logical place.”

“Excellent! Let's
find them!”

“I believe I
already have.”

“More excellent!
Where?”

“Well, there is
this guide here,” she noted, pointing to a framed diagram on the wall that
dissected the grand library into nicely-labeled rooms, departments, and places of
interest. Quill rubbed her lips together and slid her finger across the diagram
until landing on the word “ARCHIVES.”

“Ah,” she smiled.
“Right there. Just up the way and across the hall.”

I clenched a fist
in enthusiasm until I slowly felt something horrible poke at my sense of
acknowledgment.

Up the way and
across the hall.

“What's wrong?”
Quill asked, reading my change in expression.

“Well,” I quietly
uttered, “I believe I may have just chased our pursuers into exactly where we
need to be.”