Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (85 page)

Gren kicked the
body off to the side and we entered the church, carefully closing the heavy
doors behind us. The room was breathtaking, tall and sweeping and painted with
the long windows of colored glass that had so captivated Dolly. An ornate
confessional dipped in cast-iron stood at the opposite end of the room.

There was,
however, no sign of the Doll. Or any of the clergy. Or anyone else. I dropped
my wrapped cannonball on the nearest pew and hurried through the space.

“Dolly?” I called
out, my tattered voice echoing through the rafters. “Dolly, are you here?”

“Uh…Pocket…” Gren
uttered.

I looked at him
and he pointed at one of the many panes of stained glass. Small pockets of
light were starting to shine through.

“The sun,” I
frowned. “Gren, get outside! Watch the roof while I search in here!”

“All right.”

“Dolly!” I
shouted. “Dolly, can you hear me?!?”

“Mister
Pocket?”

My body became
stone.

“Did…did you hear
that?”

“Hear what?” Gren
asked, pausing at the doors.

“I thought…I
thought I heard—“

My concentration
and the colored glass over Gren’s head suddenly shattered as a small projectile
ripped loudly through the mural, reducing it to scrap. The piece, a smallish
iron ball, fell to the floor with a strong smell of what seemed to be
gunpowder.

Click-clack-click.

There was an odd
bit of turning gearwork attached to the sphere that appeared to be moving a
small, sparking flame down into the shell of the device at a deliberate,
measured speed.

“Get down!” Gren
screamed, dropping his gun and scooping up the smoking projectile. “It’s a
timed grenade!”

He pitched the
ball back into the air, and it was barely out of his fingers when it erupted
into a cloud of fire. Metal shrapnel bounced in all directions, and as I dove
for cover, a razor-sharp piece caught me on the cheek. The quiet that followed
was an unnerving one.

“Pocket!” I heard
Gren shout a moment later. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah…” I
exhaled, shaken, “…I think so. How about you?”

“Think so.”

I slowly got up
and crossed to him. “What…what’s going on?”

I’ll never forget
the sickly way his cheeks fell when I asked that.

“I think we’ve
been found,” Gren said.

The large, heavy
doors were knocked open like they were made of paper, and a line of militiamen
filed inside. They didn’t waste time with words.

As I stood there…

…well…

Thinking back, I
have to laugh.

Because I hadn’t
any words either.

I remember, while
entering what I was certain was to be my final chapter, everything became
reduced to just…

…colors.

The line of
Magnates was a just a hard, rigid slab of grey. The top of the abbey, a broken
sky of blue, yellow, purple. My friend Spader, a furious orange fire. And
myself…

…well…

I suppose I wasn’t
paying attention.

I took a slow,
deliberate breath into my nose.

The room smelled
too sterile.

I didn’t like it.

The soldiers
raised their guns.

“Hey Gren.”

“What is it,
partner?”

“I was just
thinking that I hate the smell of this place.”

Gren laughed.

“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Too churchy.”

“Smells like soap
and dust.”

“And a little old
blood.”

“Yeah,” I nodded,
glancing down at the stain I wore. “That’s got to be the worst of it.”

The gunmen aimed
in on our heads. I put my hands behind my ears and looked up at where the glass
had been shattered. One figure remained mostly intact in the otherwise broken
mural, a bright-eyed young angel, her hair a fantastic red.

Oh, that’s just
not fair, I thought with a smile.

“Sir,” one of the
gunmen said to his superior, “ready on your command.”

One of them nodded
and began to count.

“Ten…nine…eight…”

A soft sound of
thunder rolled in from the distance.

“Sounds like
rain’s coming,” Gren said.

“Good,” I replied.
“This city needs to be rinsed clean.”

“…four…three...”

“You know what,
Gren?” I continued. “You know what I think would make this place smell better?
A good beef roast, turning on the spit. The smoke just pulling the scent up
until it’s practically soaked into the rafters.”

“Yeah,” Gren
replied, “that sounds great.”

The thunder grew
louder. A drop of rain fell in where the unbroken angel flew, hitting me dead
between the eyes.

“Hey,” Gren then
said, “have you been killed yet?”

“I don’t think so.
Have you?”

“No.”

I looked back down
at the firing squad. They stood silenced, their ugly counting game called off
by something even uglier. A barrel-chested beast of a man stood before them,
his black, crown-pinned coat unbuttoned and his shirt collar loosened enough to
reveal the top of a tattoo. The eyes of a great, inked serpent glared at us
from the man’s hairy neck. His raised hand signaled his inferiors’ pause.

“No,” he growled,
frighteningly calm, “not yet.”

I glanced at Gren.
He looked away and bitterly hung his head.

“Damn it,” I heard
him say. “Damn it all.”

“You boys forget
that you’re standing in a place of worship?” bellowed the commanding Magnate. “Or
are you just generally classless?”

“You want to talk
classless?” Gren shouted, snapping his eyes back up at the opposition. “How
about hunting down a scared, defenseless, little woman so you can pull her
insides out?”

The hulking man
smiled. “Gren Spader, right?” he spoke. “Quite alive, aren’t you? Suppose we
can’t believe everything we read in the papers. Right, boys?”

The other soldiers
snickered and huffed. Gren chose not to respond.

“And Will Pocket,”
the beast announced, “in the proverbial flesh.”

I only nodded, my
jaw bonded shut by absolute spite. Gren and I wore stones as faces and traded
our blood for ice water.

“Spader, this
doesn’t involve you,” the man with the painted snake said. “Step aside and
maybe the King will take pity on you and your role in this unfortunate matter.”

“Oh, will he? How
kind! How incredibly
gracious
of him!” Gren snorted. “Hmph. You tell
your King he can go and—”

“As for you,
Pocket, I’m sorry to say that you will not be able to save your mortal life,
but it is not too late to die with a clean slate.”

“He doesn’t have
the breath to waste on you overgrown worms!” Gren barked.

“What it’ll be,
Pocket?” the Magnate growled.

I said nothing, so
he continued.

“I urge you to
unburden yourself and go to the Maker redeemed.”

I said nothing.

“Will you remove
your stain and confess to me the location of the stolen property?’

I said nothing.

He cracked his
flushed knuckles and shook his head in condemnation. “No interest at all in
salvation, then?”

Nothing.

“Fine,” he
growled. “Live as a wretch, die as a wretch. Gentlemen, take aim upon—”

“You’re a farce,”
I uttered.

The serpent
general became an angry statue for a half-minute, letting my words linger and
soak rather than swatting them quickly away. He turned a blood-cracked eye to
me and showed me his teeth.

“You say
something?” he quietly boiled.

“A farce,” I
repeated. “All of you. An absolute joke.”

He began turning
brand new colors, colors I had never seen and that disgusted me, and I was
half-sure that he was moments away from tearing me to dog scraps with his bare
hands.

“Are we now?” he
hissed, his cheeks puffed with venom. “And how’s that?”

“Because you think
that with enough effort and power, you can decide what is real. And that’s
understandable. Because I used to think just like that. I used to think that
calling myself a bard gave me the ability to cast the players as I saw fit.
Lovers and fools and heroes and whatnot. But we all do that, don’t we? In your
little story, I’m your little villain and I’ve been running around with a
valuable little piece of metal in some silly delusion that I’m actually
courting a woman. That’s what’s real to you. It’s not wrong. It’s not right.
It’s just how you see it. But you can’t make it any more real to anyone else.
That’s the problem with this ‘new world’ Alexander’s trying to create. It’s too
wrapped up in one man’s idea of real to give anyone else any breathing room. It
won’t even let a being of gears and lace call herself a proper girl. And you
think that killing me now’s going to make any of this any different? Well, I
admit nothing. No guilt. No crime. Nothing that needs to be forgiven by the
likes of you. You are a circus. You are a farce. And I am not afraid.”

Quiet once more
took the sleepy air of the cathedral.

And then great
fire.

Clutching me by
the collar and squeezing hard upon my neck, the serpent general dragged me
violently forward and out through the open doors of the cathedral. Gren
screamed and lunged after him. The other Magnates quickly fired, hitting Gren
in what I hoped was his chest plate and knocking him off of his feet. I pulled
my head up long enough to see him writhe on the church floor as the other
soldiers turned and followed their leader.

Outside I was met
with a wave of gasps and outbursts that filled my ears. The front courtyard was
now swarming with bodies. Machines of war arched up like small trees from the
mob, and high above, a trio of royal gunships covered the sky. A thick line of
officers, subordinates, royal guards, and common patrolmen formed a block against
heavy crowds of cawing, sleepy onlookers, each desperately trying to gain an
eyeful of the unfolding scene.

My infernal
audience.

The serpent
general cast me to the ground and I landed hard upon my side. The crowd
erupted.

“Si-sir!” one of
the other Magnates interjected.

“You want to see
fear, louse?” the man above me bellowed. “You want to see what this ‘circus’ of
ours can accomplish?!?” He addressed an officer at hand. “Bring it down!”

The man receiving
the order nodded, moved off to the side, and relayed a series of hand signals
to the gunship floating closest to the cathedral. The vessel dipped down a
little closer to the earth, and someone onboard pushed something of
considerable size from the exposed deck.

The object was
tied to a rope and it whizzed downward before stopping to dangle a few feet
above the mob.

It was a human
body, beaten, bruised, and hanging from its right foot. Arms hung lifelessly,
and as I peered up at the spectacle, a hat fell from the unfortunate’s
overturned head and landed before me.

I took the cap, a
little bit of worn leather, in my palms, and read the words written inside of
it.

LE PETIT RENARD

My hands shook in
terror as I slowly looked again skyward, as my gaze took in the lifeless figure
floating before one of the church’s great glass windows.

“Kitt,” I
whispered, feeling altogether sick.

The serpent
general broke out in a grand fit of laughter, eliciting a variety of heated
responses from the crowd. My eyes stayed glued to Kitt’s dangling form,
particularly the wrapped gunshot wound in his arm. Weakly, I reached into my
coat and pulled out the tarot card B had pressed against me.

It was the card of
the Fool, and as my bony digits clutched it, my thumbnails pressed small marks
against the figure’s printed head, marks that bent out in a shape
half-resembling a pair of ridiculous fox ears. The Fool. That damned, bestial
trickster, seemingly dominant over any hunter, any trap lain in his path. The
card felt like it was melting in my hand. My shaking, pale thumbs slid across the
surface and brushed the stiff edge of the thing. Suddenly, I noticed that a
second card was stuck to the back, half-glued by some sticky substance. Old
booze, I suspected. Carefully peeling the second card free, I saw that it was
appropriately the Hanged Man, a grotesque pantomime mimicking the young man
above me.

“Kitt,” I uttered.
“Kitt, no…”

Refusing the
reality presented to me, I took the Hanged Man between my digits and tore it
angrily in half. Tossing the pieces away, I turned my rage upon the serpent
general and spit on his boot. He responded by kicking me upside the chin.

“Oh yes!” he
mocked, pandering to the observers. “You have nothing to be afraid of here! No
harm can come to the great Will Pocket from the hands of buffoons like us! We
are just a bloody farce, aren’t we?”

He kicked me again
and wound up for a third when a subordinate interrupted him.

“Sir!” the other
exclaimed, pointing up. “Look!”

The serpent
general turned his face to the sky, and his eyes bugged out. Trying to ignore
the flashes of pain beneath my skin, I propped myself up on my elbows and
looked up at Kitt.

His right foot was
now wiggling in his thick binds.

The crowd squealed
and pointed frantically as the hung man began moving. Kitt’s cracked fingers
began to bend in their joints, and astonishingly, his eyes opened.

“Kitt?” I called
up, stupefied.

He looked at me
with a tired smile and blinked. “How’s it going, Pocket?”

I shook my head
and landed somewhere between malaise, guilt, and amusement. “Not great, Kitt,”
I responded to the sky. “Someone’s gone and spilt blood all over my coat.”

“You should get it
cleaned then,” he weakly shouted back.

“It’s not my
blood.”

“Then someone else
should get it cleaned.”

“Enough of this!”
the snake-wearing Magnate yelled to another. “I was told that this man was
already dead!”

“We thought he
was!” the other said.