“I don't think anything. That's why I asked.”
“I told you I was leaving on vacation.”
“Did you?”
“I did. The night you got thrown out of the Rail.”
“Oh? I guess I forgot, then.”
“I was talking about it all night!”
“I was kind of wondering how you didn't know Kitt and I were marked men. Seems like something you would've brought up.”
“Yeah, I would've remembered.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Because I listen to people.”
“Alan, I've had a bit of a full plate since we spoke that night. Mechanical woman. Shoot on sight. That bit. It slipped my mind. I am unspeakably, incredibly sorry.”
“...so you say.”
“Alan—”
“No, it's fine. You don't have to explain yourself to the likes of me.”
“Would you feel better if I told you that forgetting that little choice morsel of information resulted in a horrible inconvenience for me?”
“A little.”
The bartender must've gotten tired of looking at my head on the counter because he chucked an empty glass into it.
“Order something,” he said.
I rubbed my then-sore crown and took the glass in hand.
“Too early for the good stuff,” he continued. “But have some water or milk or something.”
A body sat down at the stool next to me. I paid no mind.
“Fine,” I said at last. “Butter.”
“What?”
“You serve lunches here, right?”
“Sandwich and soup.”
“Then you have butter.”
“...yeah...”
“Take some butter,” I said, twirling the glass against the counter. “Heat it. Melt it into liquid and give it to me in a glass.”
The man looked me over.
“You serious?”
I chucked the glass back his way. “Hot.”
The barkeeper was confused but obliged, shaking his head as he went into the back to search a pantry.
“Hot butter,” said the body sitting beside me. “That's a new one.”
“It's a new age,” I grumbled.
“What does one charge for a glass of frothy butter?”
Charge. My eyes went wide then sank.
“Damn it,” I said, my shoulders sloping. You’d think that someone who spends as much of their time without money as me would be quick to remember that fact. The voice beside me laughed. It was a high, rough chortle, but indisputably feminine. I glanced over and found that the sound belonged to the woman I had seen ordering the piano movers. She had been commanding the stage arrangements since I first entered, and her fleet of helping hands were sitting exhausted on stools just past her.
“I'm sorry,” she said with another laugh. “You just look so pathetic.”
My face was long.
“I've just never seen it,” she said through the laughter. “The sad man at the bar, too poor to purchase his butter drink.”
I groaned and tried to scoot the stool slightly away. She was quick to stop it.
“Don't be so angry. I'll give you a hand.”
“What?”
“I'll pay for you.”
I didn't understand. “Thank you, but...”
“But what? ‘No thanks, I'd rather just sit here?’”
“You don't know me.”
“Fine. Nevermind then. See you arou—”
“Wait. Okay. You can...if you want. I mean, thank you.”
She smiled, not the way the Doll did, but the way a confident magician does at the close of a great parlor trick.
“Oh, you didn't think it was that easy, did you?”
“What?”
“I'm bored. I'll give you some coin if you can help me out.” She grinned back at her personal army. The men began rattling tired fingers on the counter and giggling.
I was totally lost by this moment. “Help you?”
The next thing I knew I was sitting on the backstage under a flickering lantern, propped behind a rather large standing bass.
“I'm not sure how this is going to help, Miss...” I rolled my eyes down the instrument. The name J.M. HATTER was stamped into the body. “Miss Hatter.”
“I require inspiration.”
“I can't play this thing.”
“I can't either. It's fine.”
“But you're not trying to.”
“I need a song. Get me one and I'll buy you some butter. What's your name?”
“It's, uh, Alan Dandy.”
She nodded, pointing at her assistants to move into position.
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
“Relax, Alan.”
“You can't go around throwing out my name!”
“Well, I wasn't about to give my own. I could've been arrested.”
“...ug...even still...”
I pushed the bass off of me and let it lean against a wall. A few onlookers began to walk up to the edge of the stage. They seemed to be expecting a show.
“Miss Hatter,” I said. “You're...some sort of performer, I take it?”
“I sing.”
“That's nice. Anything I might know?”
She rattled off a list of songs, but I didn't hear them, too concerned with the attention I risked receiving from this meager crowd. One of Hatter's men plucked the bass from behind me and started producing notes. Another took up a violin and began playing. I could do nothing but sit there. The woman took center stage, raised her arms, and addressed the simple audience.
“Okay, so you can't play,” she whispered to me from the side of her mouth. “What can you do?”
“I don't know,” I whispered back. “I'm a writer.”
“Fine, fine. Don't miss my cues.”
“What?”
The man at the piano joined in, hitting the keys. A song was coming into collision and I was poised at the meeting point. Hatter locked her hands, sang a high note, and then stretched it into a word.
“Sometimes...” she sang. A pause. Her eyes darted at me expectantly. The implication was clear.
She had to be kidding.
“Sometimes...” she sang again, a little more hurried. Her eyes grew further impatient with me.
“Uh...okay...” I whispered, sliding my chair back away from the edge of the stage. “I need to think.”
“Sometimes, I need to think...” she sang.
“No,” I whispered. “That wasn't what I meant.”
“No, that wasn't what I meant...” she sang.
Damn, she was really going to go along with this. Who was this lady?
“Sometimes...” I whispered, “I...uh...need to...drink.”
“Sometimes, I need a drink...”
“Until...uh...the night is...spent?”
“...until the night is spent.”
The small crowd of drunkards clapped rowdily at this. Hatter grinned at me.
“Keep it up, Dandy.”
I obliged. She lifted her arms to the crowd again, repeating each of my words.
“And...uh...they tell me that this world...”
“...world...”
“Is gunna give us all a shine...”
“...shine...”
“...but I've never been that much for shining...”
“...shining...”
“So if I don't, I guess that's fine.”
“...fine.”
The band quickened their pace, lighting up the small corner in a roar of sound. Hatter repeated the verse a second time and then began clapping along to a piano solo.
“Nice job, Dandy,” she whispered.
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Needs some work, but there's a start there.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, not really enthusiastic about it.
“We'll have to track you down sometime, repay you with a tune.”
“Uh-huh...”
“Hey Dandy,” she said, her voice suddenly deeper.
&nb
sp; “Yes?”
“We're going be at this for some time. A few more songs.”
“All right.”
“So now might be a good time for someone looking to leave unnoticed to leave unnoticed.”
I slid up in my seat to make sure I had heard her right. She gave me a serious nod.
“Nice playing with you, Dandy.”
“Yeah...you too.”
The music ended and I hopped off of the stage as Hatter announced her second song to the audience. I quickly got through the crowd and was heading for the stage as the bartender whispered to me, shaking in the air a glass of melted yellow butter.
“Thanks,” I said, returning to the bar. “I almost forgot.”
“No problem. And the lady took care of the bill.”
I exhaled and took the glass. “Good. Well, I'll be seeing you.”
“Hey, mister. Hold on a moment. You do know who that is, don't you?”
“Who, the lady?” I said, staring at the butter. “Of course I do. She's the woman who just bought me a glassful of answers.”
“No, I mean—”
“I'll be seeing you.”
I hurried back up the stairs and into the old bedroom. Kitt and Dolly were keeping tabs on this Gren Spader, who was now lying on the bed. He looked up as I closed the door behind me.
“You get something?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Took you long enough.”
I laughed. “You wouldn't believe what I had to go through to nab a little butter.”
“Butter?!? I never said anything about using butter, of all things!”
“If you have a better idea, feel free to wander downstairs yourself.”
Gren had made a very specific request to us before I went out there. A very simple, specific request. Get the knife out. All attempts at pulling the damn thing out equated us to a pack of medieval peasants gripping the unmovable Excalibur from its famous perch. We figured greasing the thing up might slide it out of the piece of plating that Gren wore.
Kitt had made a very thoughtful comment at the time.
“Why don't you just take off all of that boiler plating? It would make it easier to—”
“Can't,” Gren had said.
“Why not?” the Doll had asked.
And then the man just sighed and without warning began unbuttoning his shirt and unbuckling his straps. Once his chest was bare, the mysterious condition of Gren Spader had come to light.
“Jesus...” I had muttered.
You see, Gren Spader did not wear thick metal plating only for protection. He also wore it out of necessity, for the riveted plates were not strapped or laced onto his body, but grafted.
The metal was quite literally sewn into his skin.
And the leather straps, the ones that wrapped his torso, they weren't simply clinging to his body. They were helping to hold it together.
“Yeah,” he had said dryly. “Get all of your staring in. Go on.”
We studied in fascination the way that the plates, punched and marked from apparent gunfire, were surgically connected to his form. It was a rusty patchwork that covered, one guesses, his entire body. We couldn't help but be a little impressed.
“How—” Kitt began.
“No, no.” Gren interrupted. “I'm not going to answer the same obvious questions for the four hundredth time. Not at least until I get this knife out of me.”
“That's fair,” Kitt agreed. “I need that back anyway.”
Gren grunted at that and then demanded that someone head downstairs and find some lubricant. As usual, I was volunteered, but didn't run off so quickly.
“Why should we do you any favors?” I had said. “You still haven't told us—”
“You want a way out of here, Pocket?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to know what business I have with you three?”
“Yes.”
“Then go downstairs and find me something slippery.”
Idiot. I hated taking directions from him, but I didn't have much leeway.
“Fine.” I had said. “Don't even think about trying anything stupid while I'm away.”
“We won't let him,” Kitt had said.
“He'll be nice,” Dolly had said.
“Now get going!” Gren had said.
Idiot. I rubbed my teeth against each other and drudged down the stairs. And, well, you know the whole bit that followed, so let us return to...where was I? Ah, yes. My grand return.
“All right.” Gren said. “Butter will do. Bring it here.”
“Nothing doing. I want some answers first.”
“Fine,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“A lot. Are you the one who tipped off the potboy that we were coming?”
“That's right. I figured you'd put that together when I came into the room.”
“But you came in through the window.”
“Yes...to make sure that it was possible—”
“Possible to do what?”
“To exit through the window! What do you think?!?”
”You were planning to sneak us out?”
“A little better than marching through the front door, isn't it?”
“Hold on,” Kitt interjected. “So how do you know who we are?”
“Trust me, a lot of people know. A lot of angry people. Haven't you seen the posters?”
“They have posters now?” the Doll asked.
“They do,” Gren said. “Pretty lousy drawings of you boys, but recognizable enough.”
“So they know our appearances,” I said, dropping onto the bed.
“Afraid so,” Gren continued. “Someone described you to the police. Said he saw a pair of men shouting 'Pocket' and 'Kitt' and shuffling an odd, pale girl around the air docks. Didn't take long for the police to get the word to the militia. Those damn Magnates are sweeping the streets now. Count yourself lucky that I got here first.”
“And you, what? Recognized us? Followed us here?”
“That's right. Pretty easy too. You couldn't tell you were being followed? I wasn't exactly discreet about it. In fact, I was trying to get your attention most of the way. Then when bottle boy over here started shouting about the Gilded Goose, I took a shortcut and arranged this little meeting before you walked into someone else's hands. You really are rather lousy criminals, I have to say. I'm surprised the King's so interested.”
“Damn it…” I said, breathing hard. “Damn it!”
“What do we do?” the Doll asked, sitting down on the bed next to me.
“I don't know.”
“Pocket,” Kitt said. “You said you knew someone here. Someone who could hide us.”
“No luck. He's out of town, vacationing.”
“Shouldn't you have known that?”
“We'll have to try something else.”
“Something else?” the Doll pouted. “What exactly is something else?”
“If you'd let me finish,” Gren grumbled. “I will tell you.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Continue.”
“If you think you can stay in New London and avoid capture, you're already dead. Trust me, I've...dealt...with a few blokes with a price on their heads. Those who got cocky thought they could hide under Alexander's nose and ended up in a noose. Nice guy, our King, by the way.”
“We don't have time for politics,” I said. “Get to the point.”
“If you want to stay alive, you've got to get out of town, and the further the better. The outskirts of the city are probably safe for now, but word will spread soon. Plus, they'll start guarding city exits.”
“Right,” Kitt said. “We thought of that. So where do you come in?”
“I can get you out,” Gren said. “Or at least I'm pretty sure I can.”
“Pretty sure?” the Doll asked.
“Nothing's a sure thing. The cards and these plates taught me that.”
“The cards?”
“It's a chance,” I said. “
And it's better than waiting around to be shot. What do you two think?”
Kitt and Dolly thought it over and nodded in agreement.
“Okay, we're in,” I told Gren. “But one last question before the butter.”
“Make it a good one,” he said.
“Why should we trust you, you who’s been so greatly motivated to risk another bullet in your plates to help three marked strangers in their time of need?”
“Can't a good Samaritan exist in this age?”
“You'd be the first, Spader.”
He laughed. “I think we're going to get along well, Pocket.” He propped himself up and gestured for the glass of butter. I sighed and handed it over.
“You see,” he said, pouring the mess down the blade of the knife. “It's like this. There's a—Ah! Damn it, that’s hot!”
“Of course it is,” I said bluntly. “You need heat to melt butter.”
“Stings like hell,” Gren grumbled. “Anyhow, it’s like this. There’s a bounty on your heads.”
“We've heard,” Kitt said.
“Have you heard the price?”
“Heard it's big.”
“It is. Really big. And as it is, I'm in a position to enjoy such a big number. So I started turning that possibility over. But then I think, wait now. If I turn you in, I'm helping the King.”
“Problem being?” I asked.
“Problem being the monarchy in its current state is a pile.”
“Well said!” Kitt chimed in.
Ah. Another among the country's discontented. Alexander's image doesn't stand up the way it did when I was a child.
“So you place pride before money?” I asked.
Gren smacked the bottom of the glass. One final drop of butter slid out. “Anyone who doesn't can decorate the bottoms of my shoes with their testicles.”
“I'll remind you that there is a lady present.” But the Doll was already giggling. She seemed not at all put off by the colorful analogy and I somehow wasn't surprised to learn this.
“That being said,” Gren continued. “I'm not stupid enough to ignore money altogether. So, I figured since I'm not keen on taking payment from the Crown, then perhaps I can help you help me....ugh...come on...there!”
With a pop he pulled the knife out and clutched it in his hand.
“Finally,” he spat. “Here. Take it.” He tossed the weapon to Kitt, who meekly apologized again and concealed the blade within the wrench.
“So...” Gren said, standing up and buttoning his shirt. “We have a deal?”
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 16