“Landing,” he said.
“You can't fly down the ramp in mid-air! You'll kill us all!”
“Just wait,” Gren said.
“Should I be concerned?” Dolly asked.
“No.”
“Yes!” I argued.
“I'm with Pocket,” Kitt said, cowering. That seemed like a smart move, so I cowered too.
“Watch,” Gren said.
The driver brought us in fast and slapped the wheels beneath us to the ramp in a way that made the shuttle bounce. We fired up the ramp, and the second we were inside of the Lucidia, he killed the propellers and we slid across the floor until coming to a screeching, breaking halt.
“There,” the driver said, rubbing his hands together. “Perfect landing.”
I would have complimented the man on his precision, had I not been back on the floor of the shuttle with the Doll's heel in my mouth.
Hooray.
“Quite the adventure, Pocket.”
“In retrospect, maybe. When it's happening to you, it just feels like fear and movement and bumping about.”
“I imagine so. Huh...Lucidia. Something familiar about the name. Like I've heard it somewhere before.”
“Yeah...I'm pretty sure you have.”
“What?”
“Sigh...I'm getting to it.”
We climbed a set of stairs leading from the docking level to the surface deck. Waiting for us was the blonde woman, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
“Took you long enough,” she sassed.
She was quite extravagantly dressed. Leather breeches, tall, laced boots with what appeared to be tarot cards sticking out from the tongues. Ruffled blouse, exposed midriff under an illustrated corset...
“Illustrated?”
“With an emblem.”
“Of what?”
“Uh...I'll get around to that in a bit.”
...and over a pair of piloting goggles sat a tall, seafaring hat upon her hair, decorated with lace and pearls.
“A lot of money on these sailors.”
“Right. If you'll let me continue...”
She looked us over and returned her eyes to our escort.
“So what kept you?” she said. “Oh, and hi, Gren.”
“Hey,” he replied.
“Alexia offered me breakfast,” the lady's shipmate stated, rubbing his beard. “And Mister Pocket puts spice into goodbyes.”
Sigh.
“Spice, huh?” the woman said. “Well, don't be surprised when I leave you behind while you're...spicing...”
“Yes, yes,” our escort said, shaking off her criticisms. “We're here now, aren't we?”
“I guess.” She took a long breath. “So, which one of you is Pocket? You?” she said, addressing Kitt. “You look like a talker.”
“I'm Kitt Sunner,” he said, as if he expected her to already know that.
“Oh. Nice ears.”
“I'm Pocket,” I said, raising my hand. “Will Pocket.”
“I see. The tower in the back.”
Tower?
“Welcome aboard, tall man,” she continued. “You'll find plenty of spice here.”
“I can see that. And you are?”
“Call me B.”
“Bee?” Kitt laughed. “Like the insect?”
The lady turned a glare on Kitt at once.
“Do I know you?”
“Not closely.”
“That's what I thought.” Her fingers slid down to a custom-rigged switchblade knife that hung at her side.
“Although,” Kitt said, tempting fate, “if you were a bee, you wouldn't have much use for that nice-looking knife because you'd probably just sting people into submission.”
We all stopped and took the time to stare at him with exasperated confusion.
“I'm sorry,” I had to say. “But what?”
“Well, that is their general means of defense, Pocket,” he said back, confident.
B started shaking her head at Kitt, and I was half certain that she was going to throw him over the ship's side. She surprised me by suddenly laughing.
“You are a strange one, aren't you?” she said, softening into a smile. “That's good. You'll fit in more easily around here, fox ears.”
Kitt grinned and shrugged his shoulders at her.
“Hold on, now.”
“Not yet, Alan.”
“A lady called B with a blade...on the Lucidia? I'm sure I've—”
“In due time, Alan. Due time.”
“Well, well!” our peculiar, bearded escort spoke, clapping his hands together most joyfully. “So we're all well met. Now then, there's just the matter of your admittance fee, and I'll have you shown around.”
A rock I don't remember swallowing sunk to the bottom of my stomach.
“Fee?” I managed. “For...uh...”
“Passage and board, yes.”
“Oh...” I said, and then added for good measure, “...uh...”
“What?” the red beard asked.
“Well, uh, it's just that...”
“It's just what?”
“Uh...Gren didn't mention that we would be charged for our stay.”
“He didn't? Are you sure you were paying attention?”
“I think I would've remembered.”
“I see. Well, that's a problem.”
“Whoa,” Gren interjected. “Hold on. When I came knocking, you told me that Pocket didn't have to worry about paying his way onboard.”
“Pocket, no,” B said. “But we never said anything about his cohorts.”
“Cohorts?” Kitt mumbled.
“What?” B snapped. “Just because we let you bum around here for no charge, Spader, you think we can afford to do the same for everyone you meet?”
“Oh, forgive me!” Gren retaliated. “I didn't realize I was such a burden!”
“Wait,” I said. “I don't understand. Why would this crew offer me, just me, free passage to—“
“Not important now,” Gren griped. “What is, if you haven't noticed, is what we're going to do about the fox and the clock.”
“Don't call me that!” Dolly fussed.
“All right!” I said, trying to calm everyone down. “Everyone just...breathe...calm yourselves.”
The sailors didn't find much comfort in my suggestion, only impatience.
“Mister Pocket...” B flatly began.
“Yes, yes. Just give me a second.”
“I'll give you five. Four. Three.”
I turned an apologetic eye to Dolly and Kitt and raised my shoulders.
“Got anything on you?”
The Doll offered up the remainder of her tube of lipstick.
“Doubt that’ll cover it,” I said. “Kitt?”
He shrugged.
“Nothing?” I continued. “You didn’t…you know…”
“What?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Take anything from the tea house?”
“Oh. No. I didn’t swipe anything.”
“Ah.” I felt instantly guilty for asking that question. There are times, I reminded myself, when a thief isn’t thieving.
“Probably should have, huh?” Kitt said.
My guilt flew over the side of the ship and impaled itself on the clouds. Hmph.
“Guess so,” I responded. Sarcasm had taken guilt’s place with a much more solid foothold.
“No,” Kitt said, correcting himself. “What you should’ve done was not stop me from loading up at the watch shop.”
“Loading up?” Dolly asked, bringing a flavor of suspicion to the stew of implied tones that were boiling between the three of us.
“We could have sold our way into a nice bit of money,” Kitt continued. “But, oh no! The high and mighty Archbishop Pocket will not stand for such—“
“Loading up?!?” the girl repeated.
“Relax, Doll,” I said. “I didn't let him take—“
“What did you touch?”
she shouted, barreling through my sentences to fire her eyes like buckshot at Kitt. “I didn't say you could touch anything! Those things were not your property!”
“Sorry!” Kitt said, backing away in fear. “I didn't think you'd really...care...”
“Why?!?” she demanded to know. “Because I'm a dusty old clock?!?”
“I'm sorry, I said! If it makes you feel better, I stole Pocket's bottle too.”
“Why would that make it any better?!?”
“I don't know! Stop yelling at me!”
“Besides, that was just a dumb old bottle!”
“Thanks,” I tossed into the conversation, not expecting to be acknowledged, or at least hoping.
“Very bad, Kitt-Kitt!” Dolly said, shaking her fingers. He sulked. I felt the oncoming of another headache. They had become so common around these two. Then Kitt decided to steer the conversation to me.
“Well, at least if I had,” he complained, “we'd have something to barter with here! What did you tell me, Pocket? Take nothing more valuable than a scrap of paper? Well, here.”
He made a big scene of yanking the crinkled scraps he had mockingly gathered from the watch shop and tossed them into the air. The red-bearded man plucked a few between his fingers.
“How about it?” Kitt jested to the sky sailors. “Don't suppose you'd let us pay our way with bits of papers?”
“Actually,” the man said, eying the pieces in his hands, “in this case, I absolutely will.”
Lady Fate and her more ill-mannered sister Luck have a funny tendency of flirting with a man. Even, it seems, if that man is an ink-stained commoner such as your humble narrator. Those girls must get considerably bored to take up games with the likes of me.
I imagine Luck succumbing to boredom first and, furiously tugging on her sister’s hems, singing “How about a bit of fun?”
“What do you suppose?” Fate would reply.
“I know! I know!” the other would grin, flashing teeth. “Let’s play with that silly Will Pocket. Drop him upon a steamship.”
“And then?”
“Well, I suppose we could take the papers the thief grabbed and reveal them as...say...”
The man raised his rust-colored brows as the word left his lips.
“Schematics.”
“What?” I said.
“What?” Kitt said.
“Let me see that,” I said, peeling one of the pages from him. He was right. I don't claim to be a man of great technical learning, but I voiced the observations that immediately came to me.
“Funny-looking handwriting.”
“Who cares about the handwriting?” the red beard said. “Don't you see what you have here? The workings?”
By “workings,” I assumed he meant the sketches. Little drawings in faded ink of screws, hinges, complicated machinery I had never dreamt of. Then again, my dreams are predominantly more...colorful...
“You'll have to excuse me,” I said to my hosts. “But what exactly are you telling me we have here?”
“Progress,” the red beard grinned. “Possibility. Ingenuity.”
“Meaning?”
“Fancy little bits, sir.”
“I see. Miss B?”
“Yes?” the blonde replied.
“Can you tell me what he's trying not to say?”
She sighed. “Yes. I forgot that most cannot translate this one's vague tongue. They're schematics.”
“We've established that.”
“If you'll let me finish...”
“Excuse me.”
“They're schematics...and...as it happens, the captain of our little ship is a bit of a tinkerer.”
“Oh. Is he?”
“Yeeees...meaning...Mister Pocket...you have a very fortunate find on your hands.”
Kitt puffed up his chest.
“That so?” he said. “How about that? Little Kitt saves us all.”
I ignored that and continued with B.
“So, you'll let my...companions...stay in exchange for these papers? No catches?”
“No catches,” she said. “So what do you say, tall man?”
I glanced back at Dolly for reassurance, nay, permission to hand away the inky scraps that were, as I saw it, belonging solely to her. She reluctantly gave me approval with a shy but steady nod. I then took the blonde lady's hand with a smile. “Madame, you have a deal.”
“Wait. What did you just call the lady, Pocket?”
“Not important, Alan.”
“You called her madame, right?”
“I call lots of ladies 'madame.' Doesn't mean a—“
“There's something awfully familiar here.”
“Can I just tell the story?”
“Sure, but—“
“Moving on.”
The peculiar, red-bearded man, excitement in his eyes, made a quick bow and scurried off with the schematics lustfully clamped in his hands. I assumed that he was off to deliver his find to the Lucidia's captain, whoever that may be. B shouted something after him, but he ignored it and disappeared downstairs into a private cabin. Miss B rolled her eyes and approached us. She opened her mouth to say something, but Gren denied her the opportunity.
“So where's Jack?” he butted in, leaving B with an insulted reaction.
“Where do you think?” she dryly responded, crossing her arms. “Same place as always.”
“Should've known.” Gren snorted and patted me on the shoulder. “You all wait here. Don't touch anything. I've got to talk to my friend.”
Without waiting for a response, he clomped off. Miss B clucked her tongue.
“So you've been traveling with Mister Rusted Sides, huh?”
“I'm afraid so,” I said.
“Hmph...” B said, watching Gren fumble with an old door's latching. “I am so sorry for what you've endured.”
Dolly giggled.
“Well, ignore the hothead,” B continued. “Touch whatever the hell you want. This boat doesn't sink so easily.”
“Good to hear!” Kitt cheerfully said. “So, Miss B. What is it that you do here on the Lucidia? Are you some sort of hostess or something?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you know, I ask because—“
“I'm the first mate.”
“Oh yeah?”
“As in, ‘of this ship.’ Second in command.”
“Is that so?”
“That's so. You surprised, fox?”
“Well, a little. Since, well, you're a woman and all.”
“Oh, am I? I never noticed.”
Dolly and I took a step back and watched Kitt eagerly begin digging out his own grave.
“Well, no, don't misunderstand me,” he said, scooping another shovelful. “I think that's great. I was once told about ladies such as yourself in nautical...or I suppose...aerial positions such as this.”
“Uh-huh,” B said flatly. “And what exactly were you told?”
“Oh, you know. A step up in the world, and all that. Ladies familiar with the company of sailors, businesswomen, really. Ladies of, you know, the evening.”
“Prostitutes,” B interjected without tone.
“Exactly!” Kitt naively continued. “I've heard that their experience, you know, working the seas and skies made for natural experience in the sailing industries. Is that about how you came by your current position?”
B turned three shades of boiling red, squeezed the tiniest yet most fearsome fist I have ever seen, and in a move of fantastic restraint, excused herself to go check current readings on a nearby barometer.
Dolly and I shared a long exhale as the fiery lady sailor marched away from us.
“Is she mad at me?” Kitt loudly asked.
The blonde madame stopped in her tracks, shot her back up and erect, and turned a pair of killer pupils on the foolishly-outspoken thief.
“Is she?” B snapped. “The she standing right next to you, who can hear you say everything? The one whom you called a whore?”
�
��I inquired if you were a whore,” Kitt pointed out.
And then, she...well...she...
“What is it, Pocket?”
“Well, Alan. Honestly, the next bit, it...eh...do you really wish to hear it?”
“Just give me the gist.”
“Ropes, flagpole, side of the ship. Crying.”
“Male crying?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. A bit of begging, pleading, that sort of thing?”
“Exactly.”
“All right. I think I have the picture. That'll do. Continue on.”
“Yes sir.”
Kitt huffed as B gently lowered him back down to his feet. She smiled and kindly patted him on the shoulder. He kindly responded with a respectful returning of color to the face.
“So!” B cheerfully said. “Are we understood now?”
“Yes ma'am.”
“Excellent!”
And that, strangely enough, was that. Any animosity or tension that may’ve been left lingering between the two drifted off with the wind, leaving Kitt and B with no conceivable option except to like each other, so they did.
“I have things to attend to,” B then said, addressing all of us. “Enjoy yourselves.”
I nodded in appreciation and stood by as the lady shuffled away to her duties. The Doll exchanged smiles with me and raised a curious brow that seemed to be looking for confirmation that exploring the lovely and windswept deck was really acceptable. I shrugged, which she interpreted as a “yes” and gleefully took to studying the woody, brassy surroundings, careful not to disrupt the order of the scene. Kitt, on the other hand, took the phrase “enjoy yourselves” to mean “snoop up and down the entire bloody ship” and did just that. I sighed as he wobbled up a long watchtower that stood on the deck
As for me, I was content to stay where I stood and take in a little air at the lip of a railing that separated me and the ship from the endless sky beyond.
The air felt good, almost...sweet. I wondered for a moment if I had been remembering to breathe over the last few days.
Oh well.
It didn't at the moment matter to me.
Dolly was amusing herself watching a small, grey-feathered bird that had taken a perch on the ship. I turned to face the railing and looked at the British horizon.
Tilting my head down to observe the miles of distance between myself and the ground, I felt something begin to slip above my brow. A quick flash of silver passed before my eyes and instinctively I brought my hand out.
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 29