Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (82 page)

“In these robes.
They’re deceptively loose down the sides.”

“Well…all
right…but…” I took a moment and tried to arrange a proper sentence. “What are
you doing out here?”

“Jack told me what
was happening. Thought you might come into some trouble, so I came to watch.
With my gun.”

“I see.”

“How was the
library?”

“Horrible.”

I explained what
had transpired. The chase. The bullet fire. The kite tail escape. All of it.

“I see,” the Red
Priest said, stroking his beard. “At least you're looking well.”

I let out a sour
laugh. “Well, I'm not filled with holes, if that's what you mean.”

He shrugged. The
ginger-haired sky sailor then looked at my feet and made a sad smile.

“So you didn't
like them, eh?” he said.

“Like what?” I
asked, glancing at my toes. “Oh. You mean the boots.”

“Too heavy?” he
guessed. “Too difficult on the legs?”

“No, no, not at
all. I just—”

“Too flashy, then?
What with all of that sparkling metal?”

“No, they weren't
gaudy, at least not to me.”

“Uncomfortable?”

“Really, Priest,
there wasn't a thing wrong with them.”

“So you just
didn't take to them. That's fair. You're entitled to your opinions.”

“No, believe me! I
was wearing them! Quite a bit, actually. I just happened to lose them, by pure
accident, when—“

“You tired of them
and lost interest? I understand. No hard feelings.”

I gave up and
slumped over, too spiritually weak to win a match against the Red Priest's
logic.

“Nevermind,” I
exhaled. “I've got more pressing concerns.”

“I've heard.”

“I don't suppose
you could lend me a little help?”

He nodded
solemnly. “That's why I'm here, right?”

“Thanks.”

“Don't thank me
until we're successful,” he insisted, waving his hands. “Come now. We must be
off.”

“Priest...” I then
said to him, my brow dropping over my heavy eyelids, “…did Jack tell
you...about Dolly—”

“Yes,” he said,
quite serious. “And that's why we must get moving.”

“Yeah,” I glumly
agreed.

“Have you figured
out where we need to go?”

“Somewhere on
Pockswick Lane. Toward one end of it, I believe.”

“And before
sunrise, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“That's going to
be tricky,” he said, clutching a watch that was tucked within his robes,
“especially on foot.”

“Damn! If only I
hadn't lost your—” As soon as I spoke those words, a stinging pain of guilt
rose up in me. “Oh, and, um, about the
Prospero—
”

“Don't worry about
that now,” he said. “More pressing concerns, right?”

Once more, the
picture of the Doll consumed my mind.

“Right.”

We started
sprinting, exchanging tidings and information, recounting escapades, while I
collected calluses and blisters in my socks.

“By the way,” I
asked in a huff a few blocks later, “can you tell me what you're planning with
all of these black cables?”

I had expected the
captain's typical, mysterious grin in response, but instead he just kept
staring down the path ahead.

“Do you know
anything about amplification, Pocket?”

“Not really.”

“Well, the basic
idea is to...hey, are you feeling okay?”

“Sure,” I lied,
wheezing and bathing in my own chilled sweat. “I'm fine.”

“You don't look
it,” he commented. “You're starting to turn a little blue.”

“That's just an
illusion caused by this moonlight. It's colorful.”

“I don't know.
Your cheeks are flushing a pretty bright red.”

“Well, which is
it,” I coughed, “blue or red?”

“Maybe both,” the
Priest said. “Maybe you're purpling.”

“Purple, eh? Well,
at least I'll die with a bit of color.”

As if serving for
a little makeshift foreshadowing, I immediately tripped over a loose brick in
the street and nearly fell on my face.

“All right,” the
Red Priest said, propping me up. “This isn't working. We need to pursue an
alternate means of transportation.”

“What do you have
in mind?”

As chance had it,
we soon found an unattended carriage parked under a flickering gas lamp. The
pirate alongside me argued that it was absolutely ethically fair for us to
borrow the machine because of two key reasons: first, we were taking it solely
to respond to a dire emergency, and second, the Priest had left in its place a
neatly-bundled stack of notes as compensation, should we, for whatever reason,
find ourselves unable to return it.

The Red Priest
took the helm, not about to trust my driving skills to the task at hand.

I sighed and
rested on the overstuffed passenger seat next to him.

“Do you know how
many stolen machines I’ve ridden inside this month?”

“Not stolen!” he
insisted. “This one is only borrowed!”

“Mmm…” I mumbled
with little interest before turning my gaze out the window. “Whichever, then.”

I’ll skip slightly
ahead in the story, as nothing of considerable interest transpired until the
man wrapped in cables fell off of a roof and landed on us.

I had been sitting
impatiently idle at the time, trying to distract myself by drawing shapes in
the stars.

“What did you
say?” I asked.

“Me?” the Red
Priest replied. “Not a thing.”

“Oh. Huh. I
thought you said ‘look out’ or some such—”

Crash! Suddenly,
the aforementioned man plummeted from above and collided with us. I yelped in
startled anger as the fellow landed with a sharp smack into the backseat of our
fortunately topless carriage. His grimy boots bumped up against the back of my
head.

At first I was
angry. Then I realized that the man was Hack-Jack.

Then I was
furious.

“Jack?!?” I
gasped, knocking his feet away. “What in God’s name do you think you are
doing?!?”

“Oh, hey Pocket,”
Jack grinned.

“Are you
completely mad?!?”

“I’m assuming he
didn’t do that intentionally,” the Priest added.

“Nope!” Jack said,
scratching the dust out of his hair. “One wrong step in the dark and suddenly
the roof doesn’t feel like being under my foot anymore. Good timing though,
catching you boys. A second later and I’d be picking my teeth off of the street
right now.” He fumbled about, pulling away the segments of cable around him.
“Now, if you could let me out of here, I’d like to go let Gren know I’m not
dead.”

“We’re not
stopping,” I demanded. “Not for anything. Not when the night’s dying in front
of us.”

“Eh, fine. That
works for me,” Jack shrugged, wobbling his bare shoulders. “Let ‘im worry about
me a little, gain a little appreciation.”

“Mmm…” Priest
mumbled quietly to himself.

“Don’t get nervous
now!” Jack said to him. “We’ll get our work done in time. Gren’s still got
Eddie around to help, remember.”

“Eddie?!?” I
exclaimed. “Wait…what…Eddie’s found you?!?”

Hack-Jack laughed.
“Yeah, he told me you got a little terrified and drove off without him after
finding Gren.”

“You don’t
understand! I panicked! And Eddie was fighting when…wait. After finding
Gren?
”

“Yeah. Eddie said
you two found Gren rigging cables while escaping. Eddie got out and you just
took off. Said they trying calling after you, but…heh...weren’t lucky.”

I was at a loss
for words. That man, that helmeted city worker I’d raced away from, sacrificed
Eddie to, that damned man was
Spader,
the whole bloody time?!? As I replayed
the scene in my head, the more obvious it became. He and Eddie weren’t
viciously fighting in the shadows, they were playfully sparring like always. I
hadn’t heard the scared screams of betrayal, just their attempts to flag down
the fleeing idiot.

I sighed.

“I see,” I said
dumbly to Jack. Fortunately for my remaining crumb of pride, Jack switched
subjects.

“So I’m guessing
you found that church,” he said.

“That’s right. B
and Quill are already on their way.”

“What, in the
ship? Why didn’t you ride with them?”

“I tried,” I
frowned, “but my feet were too heavy.”

“Eh?”

“Some other time,
Jack.”

Morning wasn’t far
away as we pulled up to our destination on Pockswick Lane. The stars were all
but erased. They were the faintest spots of white, washing out into the
growing, spreading glow of yellows and blues that prepared to rise and usurp
the night.

The moon still
remained in the sky, though, and that gave me strength.

The Bluebird
Abbey. At long last we came to a long, open courtyard paved with white bricks.
I quickly departed and began running toward the very tall cathedral that stood
in the distance.

It was a striking
edifice, stretching skyward with layers of ledges lined with stoic, stony
gargoyles and stained glass.

Glass! My heart
leapt as I peered at the large, circular mural that graced the front of the
abbey. And there it was, amongst the rendered Biblical scene.

My fated beacon,
the great bluebird on the wall.

I had arrived. I
had found the right place. Breathing quickly, I looked up and tried my hardest
to see whether or not the girl I so wanted was standing upon the tallest
steeple, the highest roof. Unfortunately, the cathedral towered so high that I
just couldn’t find a clear view of the top from the ground.

I heard Jack and
the Priest jog up behind me. I turned to them and spoke without hesitation.

“Inside. Let’s
go.”

The Red Priest
nodded and we set our sights on a pair of front doors twice the height of us.
For once, I actually felt slightly relieved. We had beaten the sun to church,
there was no sign that the Doll had taken a premature fall, and there wasn’t a
Magnate in sight.

In that moment, I
let my twinge of relief grow into an actual bit of optimism.

And I really
should’ve known better than to do that.

“Wait,” the Priest
suddenly said, stopping in his tracks. “Something’s wrong.”

I ignored him and
kept walking.

“Pocket!” he
called out. “Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I said,
continuing without pause.

“B and Quill were
already on their way, weren’t they? So where is their ship?”

“Don’t know. Maybe
they’ve already retrieved Dolly and left. But I’m checking this out
regardless.”

I got to the tall,
wooden doors before Hack-Jack piped up. He had also stopped his feet from
further exploration.

“Maybe, uh, maybe
he’s right,” Jack said to me. “Maybe you don’t want to march around in there
just yet. I mean, I wouldn't.”

“No one asked you
to.”

With that, I
grabbed a door, pushed it open, and was met with a bug-eyed, puff-cheeked
Magnate. He raised his gun to me and fired.

My eyesight
blurred as the bullet went through me, and for some reason, I couldn't make a
sound. I fell instantly and stayed where I landed, just remained there on the
ground as Jack screamed my name and the Priest returned fire. From the angle
where I lay, I could watch the Magnate who had shot me. His teeth were terribly
yellow. And then I witnessed the moment that followed as someone, presumably
the Priest, avenged me by sending a shot through the gunman's thick neck. He
gagged and his throat split open. Bright blood, as red as the crown on the
man's lapel, flowed from the wound, and he dropped to his knees, the ruddy mess
splashing onto my coat.

I got woozy, and
the next thing I remember was being quickly lifted up, not to the accompanying
sounds of an angelic choir, but rather the electric hum of my escape.

“Wh-what are you
doing?” I mumbled as my companions hoisted me onto the carriage.

“You caught a
bullet, mate!” Jack shouted. “We’re getting you out of here!”

“What?!? No, no!
We can’t leave yet!”

“Sorry,” the
Priest said, spinning the vehicle around, “that’s not an option right now.”

“The hell it’s
not!” I griped, struggling to sit up. “Dolly might still be in there!”

My objections fell
on deaf ears as the cathedral shrunk away from my eyes.

“Get me back
there!” I snarled. “Or so help me, I’ll—“

“What?” the Red
Priest calmly asked. “What will you do? What can you do in that state? Limp
around and bleed?”

“Better my blood
than Dolly’s!”

“The Doll doesn’t
have any—“

“Damn it, you know
what I mean! I don’t need this right now!”

“Agreed. What you
need is a doctor before you completely bleed out.”

“I’m fine! I can’t
even feel anything!”

“Then you’re in
shock. We have to hurry.”

“Look, I’ m
grateful for the rescue, but if it keeps us from reaching her, you might as
well have left me to die!”

“Just give in,”
Jack advised me. “No offense, mate, but it’s going to be hard enough finding a
medic at this hour who won’t ask questions. We don’t need your complaining on
top of it. And you
are
spreading a lot of blood around.”

“Pfff,” I scoffed.
“Most of this blood isn’t even mine, anyway. That man you punctured went and
leaked all over me. For all I know, this is all…”

I thought for a
moment and pushed my thumb through the fresh bullet hole in the back of my
coat, where the slug had pierced right through me…hadn’t it?

It must’ve, right?

Unless…just maybe…

“Boys!” I
announced, springing upward stiffly. “I haven’t been shot!”

“You were right,”
Jack said to the Priest. “He’s going into shock.”

“No, listen!” I
said. “I think…I think the shot just missed me and caught my coat! Sure, I went
down and stayed there, heavy as a stone, but I think that was just an act of my
imagination!”

“You
think?
”
the Priest asked with understandable skepticism.

“I mean, I’m
certain. Fairly certain, but come on, you two, look at me. I’m not some
grizzled soldier fresh from his hundredth battle. Do I look like someone who
can take a bullet
this
casually?”

They mulled this
over.

“That’s actually
not a bad argument,” Hack-Jack said to the Priest. “He’d probably be acting all
dramatic if he was dying. You know, crying and moaning about the ‘ladies of
destiny’ or something.”

But the driver
wasn’t convinced.

“Check under your
shirt,” the Priest said.

I reached for the
buttons on my stained vest. It was a bit torn by holes, but...that didn’t mean
they were
bullet
holes. I suddenly resisted, thinking on the advice
Alexia had given me.

“Reality is a
compromise for those who toss away the rules.”

“Maybe later,” I
said, taking a deep, self-collecting breath. “I don’t feel like gumming up my
fingernails with borrowed blood.”

“Since when are
you the dandy?” Hack-Jack smirked.

“Never,” I
replied, closing my eyes. “Just trying to hang onto some illusion of
cleanliness.”

The Red Priest
shook his head, but I kept insisting that I was fine. He then threw up his arms
in frustration and mumbled a terse “whatever you say.”

“Right,” I said
back. “Now take me back to the abbey.”

“Not just yet.”

I sighed and
pushed away the tense nausea that was growing inside me with each passing
moment. The Red Priest eventually persuaded me to trust in his actions, and
promised to return swiftly to the cathedral before daybreak after a brief
scanning of the area for, as he put it, “additional irritants.” We made a large
but hasty circle and were about turn back for the church when Jack excitedly
hopped in his seat.

“Hey! Hang on!
Pull over here!”

The Red Priest
obliged, which both surprised and angered me, and I reluctantly followed them
into a small warehouse lot whose entrance had rusted half-open.

“What’s this
about?” I growled as I pushed inside the cramped space. Jack was clawing the
nails out of the top of a wooden crate marked “SURPLUS.”

“I’ve scavenged
here before,” Jack explained. “Docked ships dump unwanted stock in here
sometimes. Usually just lengths of chain or spare pieces, nothing anyone would
care to steal, that’s why it’s not locked up very well. But once in awhile you
can find something worthwhile.”

“So what?” I
muttered, ready to get back to the abbey.

“So maybe there’s
something we can use to defend ourselves. I’m not going back there unarmed
again. Look what nearly happened to you.”

I looked at the
Priest for support, but he just shrugged.

“Indulge him for a
moment,” he said aside to me. “We have time.”

“But—“

“It doesn’t hurt
to look. And I can’t always be relied upon to provide cover. Not for
everyone.
”

“Fine, fine.”

Jack cracked open
the top of the crate, forced the wood to split down the front, and out rolled
an old cluster of cannonballs.

“Ah!” he gleefully
clapped. “Here we go!”

“Here we go?” I
repeated. “They’re just cannonballs.”

“And now they’re
ours!”

“Wonderful. You
have a cannon to go with them? ‘Cause if not, all you’ve found are a giant’s
set of paperweights.”

“Not true!” he
argued, taking off his shirt.

“Oh, now what are
you—”

“See, look!” Jack
insisted, wrapping a cannonball inside his unwashed garment and tying it off
into a sling. When the Priest and I didn’t say anything, he took a step back
and swung his creation in little circles at his side. “See? Gren taught this to
me. Wrap one of these beauties up, and you’ve got a nice little piece. Makes
for good bludgeoning.”

I exhaled. “I’m
going back to the carriage.”

“It’s creative,”
the Priest said to me, but I was already turned and headed back for my ride.

“Well, I’m taking
one!” I heard Hack-Jack say.

I sighed and
drudgingly lifted my right leg into the carriage.

“Oi, you!” a gruff
voice barked. I looked up, and gritted my teeth to see another night patrolman
coming over. “This property’s off-limits to—”

Clunk! Hack-Jack’s
sling appeared from behind and popped the poor bastard right in the skull. He
toppled like a domino, and my escorts were giggling.

“Jesus, Jack!” I
yelled.

“What?” he
laughed, scratching his bare belly. “I told ya. Good bludgeoning.”

I turned my back
to them and angrily got inside the machine. “Just get in.”

They complied and
left me to stew in silence as we travelled back toward the abbey. I had just
nearly gotten over the irritation of the last interruption when Jack again
piped up and demanded that we stop. I was half-seconds away from throwing him
out of the moving carriage for such a suggestion when I saw his reason. To my
great surprise, we spotted none other than Gren and Eddie rigging cables on a
low roof. We parked and flagged them over.

“Hey, you’re still
alive!” Eddie cheerfully smiled to us. “Always a good reason to get a drink,
right?”

Gren said nothing,
looking away in the loudest silence imaginable and aiming a notably cold
shoulder that I couldn’t help but assume was directed at me. I ignored it.

“The drinks can
wait until this nightmare is over,” I said.

“Did ya get to
that church?” Eddie asked.

“Came and left,”
Jack said. ‘Didn’t get a foot inside though. Found a little trouble.”

“I can see that,”
Eddie said, pointing to my bloody overcoat. Gren tossed an eye my way and
frowned in annoyance.

“Any sign of my
ship?” the Priest asked. The two on the roof shook their heads in
disappointment.

“Damn,” Jack
muttered. “Where the hell are they?”

“I don’t like it,”
I said. “How much longer until sunrise?”

The Red Priest
fished out his watch from under his beggar’s rags.

“Twenty, thirty
minutes tops,” he said.

“We need to leave
now!
”
I insisted.

“Agreed. Eddie,
Gren, off the roof with you. We’ll need your help.”

“Hang on there,
bloke!” Eddie argued to the Red Priest. “If the sun’s popping up in that little
of time, shouldn’t you be getting in place for….you know...”

The Priest
bristled and rubbed his lips together. I took the initiative.

“Stay here then,”
I suggested. “Eddie and Gren can hold their own in a fight, should more blackcoats
show up. Jack too.”

Eddie shrugged in
agreement as he and Gren descended to the ground and approached.

“Hmmm,” the Priest
pondered. “Are the preparations complete?”

“All except for
the block Jack left behind when he fell off of that roof,” Gren scowled.

“Oh, excuse me!”
Jack argued, getting in Gren’s face. “Would you rather I’d faced death
after
I finished my work?!?”

“I’d rather you
faced it before I ever met you!” Gren countered.

“All right, then!”
I interrupted. “Jack, why don’t you stay with the Priest and complete whatever
he’s cooking up?”

“He didn’t tell
you?” Gren muttered, avoiding eye contact. I ignored him.