Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (81 page)

“Something like
that,” she said, spotting at a shape in the sky I hadn't yet noticed.

“What?”

To answer my
question, a great, rumbling chug-chug-chug sung out above me. I looked up once
more just as a large, lumpy…something began to materialize just outside of the
glass ceiling. Even with the moon above, the night was too dark for me to see
anything but a silhouette of what was looming in the air, but it was close
enough to the skylight to cast a reflection of its general shape.

It looked like a
steamship.

“See?” Quill
exclaimed, jumping back to her feet and waving to the shadow in the sky. “She's
found us! She's flown about and she's found us!”

“Are you sure? It
could be our enemy’s.”

“No, no, I’m
certain!”

I stood and
squeezed my eyes at the ship I couldn't quite see. I smiled a little, but I
wasn't ready to give hope another chance just yet.

“All right, so
she's found us,” I said, “but what does that change? We're still trapped. All
she's achieved is a nice spot to float and watch us get eventually gunned
down.”

“You don't give
the lady enough credit,” Quill argued. “By the way, I'd take a step back.”

“Why?”

And then we
received Madame B's response, which was about what one following this story
should come to expect from her by now. A piercing, ear-crunching noise filled
my already-noise-weary ears, and what followed was a falling rain of glass.

The skylight had
shattered, and falling through its fresh, jagged hole, was some sort of metal
canister. It struck the floor with a great clang, coming to rest on its side.

“Is this how a
modern pirate drops anchor?” I dryly asked, walking over and kicking the
canister.

“Seems so,” Quill
replied.

 The breaking
of the glass, as expected, alerted the attention of the pursuing soldiers, and
it wasn't long before we were met with a banging, driving force at our
reinforced door. Gunfire popped through the wood of the door and the
surrounding wall, followed by growling threats. I realized they weren't simply
trying to break into the room to reach us. They were trying to break
through
it.

“No,” I babbled.
“No, no, no, no.”

“Mister Pocket!
Hurry!”

I turned back to
Quill and saw that a rope ladder was now hanging down from above the broken
ceiling, thrown by the pirate queen. It extended down past Quill's feet and
rolled along the floor.

“Where did...” I
started, dizzily trailing off.

“Come on!” Quill
urged, grabbing a rung and hoisting her weight onto the ladder. “Climb!”

I watched as she
scampered up a few feet into the air. I then looked back at our crumbling
barricade. A face squeezed itself against a splintery hole and locked eyes with
me.

“There!” the face
yelled. “The outlaw Pocket is inside!”

“Sensei, please!”
Quill shouted.

My body snapped
into motion, as if breaking from some sleepy spell, and I hurried over to the
rope ladder. I clutched the rungs and began to awkwardly climb. I had barely
started to ascend when I felt the entire ladder begin to move.

“Eh?!?” I said,
gripping onto my perch. “What's happening?”

“Hold on!” Quill
called out from above me.

“Wait, no!”

But my protests
held little weight as I realized that Madame B wasn't content to wait for us to
climb up into the safety of the ship. Time was precious, so she wasn’t going to
waste it. With a slightly horrifying start, she began flying, moving, forward
and upward, and we had no choice but to ride along behind her, dangling like a
kite tail in the sky.

I clung tightly to
the pegs as the steamship pulled us up and out through the shattered skylight.
As we swept over the roof of the library, I looked down in alarm to find the
entire building swarming with militia like hungry ants out for fallen morsels.
Oh, but we weren’t fallen yet.

I remember faint
choruses of outbursts that sounded almost like a battle song as the hungry ants
started firing into the sky. They filled not only the building but the streets
outside, and they hurried to race after us as we flew, some on foot, others
perched on open carriages or motorbikes. Our ride kept climbing skyward, but
the ladder where I hung was so long that we remained always just in reach to
catch a well-fired bullet.  The rope ladder tossed and twisted, and I put
every ounce of energy into keeping upon it. It wasn’t easy, however. My feet,
heavy with the bulky weight of my boots, fumbled and swayed as we ascended.
They were pulling me down.

“Quill!” I yelled
to the girl a few rungs ahead of me. “Any chance that the Priest rigged some
sort of hidden propulsion device into these boots?”

“Don’t be silly!”
she shouted back. “That wouldn’t make any sense!”

“Well, I could be
in trouble here, is all!”

“Just keep hanging
on!” she pleaded as the steamship swung us away from a fresh round of gunfire.

I clutched my
teeth and locked my elbow over the peg, but I was beginning to buckle under the
strain.

No choice, I
thought to myself, and began shaking the weighty metal from my left foot.

My timing proved
surprisingly perfect, however, for as the heavy boot slid from my leg, another
cluster of angry troops filled the street below. And then…whack! The blunt,
golden mass fell off of me and knocked two soldiers flat! My right boot then
dropped, sending the troops scattering for cover. Newly unencumbered, I took a
breath and rested my aching legs back on the slender perch.

“What was that
noise?” Quill shouted down to me.

And I’m proud to
say that, despite the dizzy terror, my mind came up with a witty response about
shedding away the weight of gold and sin, but I never got to say it because we
almost slammed into an oncoming chimney.

“AAAAAAH!” I
announced.

“AAAAAAH!” the
girl above me agreed.

The rope ladder
whipped and swung as Quill and I filled the sky with our song of absolute
terror.

“For God’s sake,”
I yelled up to her, “tell B to land down somewhere!”

“She can’t hear me
from here!” she retaliated. “I’d have to climb inside!”

“Then move your
feet and get into the bloody ship!” I snarled, my sour tone surprising even me.

“I’m sorry!” she
whined. “I’m scared!”

“Quill, it’s just
a few rungs! Please try!”

“All…all right!”
she said, nervously taking a shaky step upward.

“Yes!” I
encouraged. “There you go!”

She climbed up a
bit more.

“Almost there,
sensei!” she stated.

“You can do it,
Quill! I believe in—”

At that point, a
stray bullet whizzed just above my head and split one of the upper rungs in
half. I gasped and flailed, all but falling to my demise.

“Mister Pocket!”
Quill shouted as we passed over a set of flat rooftops. “Are you still down
there?”

I had an idea. As
the wind whipped against my face, I squinted and set my gaze on a particularly
tall and steady-looking roof we were approaching.

“Quill, listen to
me!” I called out. “You still have the address on you, correct?”

“Of course!” she
responded.

“Do you remember
on what street the abbey resides?”

“Pockswick!” she
shouted. “Towards the end of Pockswick Lane!”

“All right!” I
yelled as the desired flattop grew closer. “Tell the Madame to hurry ahead to
the Doll. Waiting on me will only slow things down.”

And then, I
remember it as clearly as anything, Miss Quill, no, Miss Elle Celeste actually
turned her neck and looked upon my dangling form with scared, almost childlike
eyes.

“What do you mean,
‘waiting on you?’” she asked.

I met her face and
shrugged. I followed it with a lighthearted smirk to calm her. Then, at just
the proper moment, I loosened my fingers from the peg.

The steamship
sailed onward as I let go and fell to the earth.

No, no, wait. That
was too much of a poet’s line. By fell to the earth, I mean that I landed on
the coarse but even roof directly below the flight.

And I landed hard.

I coughed and
grimaced, trying greedily to reclaim some of that precious air that had just
been knocked out of me. I got up and winced, feeling a new knot on my shoulder
the size of a small apple. Not the last mark my flesh would receive that night,
but…heh, well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I stood up and purposely
made a stand without betraying any emotion. As the flying ship sailed away from
my perch, I caught Quill’s eyes once more. The childlike stare had been
replaced with a stonier, more knowing look of acknowledgment. She nodded and
bravely climbed rung after rung until she disappeared up into the body of the
pirates’ grand mechanical bird.

I stood a moment
and watched the ship slide away from me. As luck had it, the pursuing troops
continued to chase the ship, showing no sign of acknowledging my plummet in the
dark. The steamship was heading to the horizon, toward the shadows of some of
the tallest buildings in New London, scarcely visible despite the moon’s fairly
present glow. Which one, I wondered, held the Doll inside? Which shadow
contained my last hope for reunion? And what would await me when I found it?
The socked toes of my left foot curled around a slick, roundish marble that
nested underneath. I knocked it away.

Pockswick Lane, I
reminded myself.

And then I dropped
again, succumbing at last to the physical and mental exhaustion that had been
building since my night began. I curled up on the hard and rock-strewn surface,
just for a few precious moments, and pretended that was it some lush, luxurious
bed of feathers. I almost caught myself closing my eyes, but my spirit wouldn’t
have it. Now was certainly not the time to sleep, and besides, I had just
rested for days upon days. How lazy could a man be?

“Okay,” I
whispered, “keep your mind on the moment. The pirates might get to her before
the sun, but they’re being pursued, so don’t count on that. You could still
have a shot though, Pocket, if no one saw you fall here. The Magnates will be
chasing steamships instead of looking on roofs. Now climb down.”

I surveyed my
options. Unfortunately, there were few. There was no direct access into the
building from atop and no ledges, sills, or poles connected to the below
levels. Jumping was out of the question if I wanted to keep my skeleton
completely functional, and shouting for help would be, for obvious reasons,
inadvisable.

So what was left?
Anxiously, I looked over the side once more.

Ah!

A familiar streak
of tarnished metal lined the corners of the edifice, held in place by thick,
oversized bolt-heads.

Yes, much like the
ones I had attempted to climb, incredibly unsuccessfully, the night I met Kitt.

“It's a size
issue,” he had said. “These bolts, they get a little smaller the higher you
climb. Biggest ones are at the base.”

I lifted my leg
over the side and saw that the closest bolt was indeed dwarfed by my long foot.
I chewed on my lip and threw the rest of my body over the side. What followed
was a bumpy, scraping, cursing, fumbling trip to the street below that somehow
ended without me cracking my head open.

Shaking and white
as I finally reached the ground, I looked around in the dark for witnesses.
There seemed to be none, so I took a breath and carried on.

And then I saw the
beggar. He was just sitting there, wrapped and half-concealed in old linens,
against an opposite wall.

“Hello there,” I
stupidly spoke, removing my hat and awkwardly scratching above my ear. “You,
uh, you didn’t pay attention to any of that, did you?”

The beggar
shrugged and then opened his palm at me.

“Oh,” I bumbled,
“I, um, I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to offer. I mean, I
would
offer, of course, but at the moment, well, as you can see, I’m hard-pressed for
even a pair of shoes.”

I wiggled my toes
for effect.

The stranger
curled his finger at me, requesting that I approach. I chose to respectfully
decline, instead hurrying away.

“Sorry!” I called
back to him. “Don’t really have the time!”

“Pocket,” the
beggar spoke. I stopped in my tracks.

“I think you have
me mistaken for somebody else.”

“Pocket.”

“Look,” I said,
turning back to the stranger. “I—”

I stopped when I
saw that the beggar was now wielding a long and shiny weapon that had seemingly
materialized out of the air. I slowly raised my hands in surrender.

“So…” I bumbled,
“…what…uh…what’s that you’ve got there?”

“It’s called a
repeating rifle.”

“I see. Very
frightening.”

“Pocket.”

“Although if
you’re trying to frighten me, let me just say that I am made of harder stuff
than that.”

The beggar clucked
his tongue and shook his head. “You really still are such a terrible liar.”

Taking one hand
off of his weapon, the stranger slowly reached up and pulled back the dirty
hood that was concealing his face. He made a smug little smile framed by the
red hairs of his goatee.

“Priest?!?” I
exclaimed, wide-eyed.

“Hello, hello
again, Pocket,” he said, dropping his aim and leaning on his rifle like it was
a walking stick.

I was again full
of questions, but startled and therefore unable to properly voice them.

“What…what are
you…why did you aim a gun at me?!?” I bumbled.

“You wouldn’t stop
and talk to me.”

“I’m sorry. I
thought you were, I don’t know, trying to blackmail me for your silence or
something.”

“Because I watched
you climb down a building?”
“Yes…or rather…not just that, but…well, I don’t know! I’m a little on edge!
Every other person’s been trying to kill me tonight and you sneak up with a
bloody rifle! Where were you even hiding that thing?”