Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “The clock lady, right?”

  Dolly scowled and Gren elbowed the boiler engineer.

  “What?” Jack said, oblivious.

  “Charmed,” Dolly said, snippy.

  “Hey, uh, good to meet ya, all of ya,” Jack said, scratching behind his ear with his grimy, gloved fingers.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I said.

  “Sure, sure. Thanks for...Gren, ya tell 'em about payin' us?”

  “It's okay,” Gren said. “Kitt had some papers in his pockets.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don't worry. Don't worry about it.”

  “Uh...all right...”

  “More importantly, Jack—“

  At that moment, two things of interest happened. And I'll tell the second one first. Second, the entire ship shook and rumbled with a violent, cracking sound, plummeting into a momentary nosedive that sent all of us sliding across the now-tilted floor of the boiler room. The various greases that coated this floor served to lubricate and speed up our voyage across the area.

  And first, more importantly, just before all conceivable hell broke loose, I stood watching Gren and Jack argue over petty instances, and as I did, I silently sent up a prayer that something a little more interesting would unfold. And my prayer was granted.

  “What the hell is going on?!?” I shouted as I slid on my back, hurtling towards the cast iron doors of the Lucidia's lift.

  “Hang on!” Gren said. As he slid into the lift, he lifted the boot of his heel and mashed it into a button that brought open the iron doors before we had a chance to bludgeon ourselves against them. We all tumbled into the lift.

  “Jack! What did you do now?!?” Gren barked.

  “Nothing!” his friend yelled.

  “Damn it,” Gren said. “That means, then...eh...”

  “What?” Kitt shouted. “What does that mean?!?”

  Before his question could be answered, the ship bounced with a cracking sound and tilted in the opposite direction. I was the first to fall out, sliding toward the giant rusted boiler in the center of the room. My coat became snagged around a small pipe that ran from the machinery and held me firm and in place. I slid my exposed hand down the coat, away from the scalding boiler pipe, and hung onto my sleeve for dear life. Looking up, I saw Gren and Jack propping their arms and legs against the sides of the lift to prevent taking the trip I just had. While they seemed to be sufficiently wedged into the railing, Kitt and Dolly were not so lucky. Kitt fell first, bumping his way down the floor head over heels over head. The Doll soon followed, letting out an “eek” as she slid on her dress.

  Inside the lift, Gren and Jack were arguing as they tried to shift their weight around each other. Then, to make matters worse, Jack slipped and hit his elbow on a lever or button or something. As a result, the doors snapped shut and the whole damned lift shot back up to the surface of the ship, leaving the three of us stranded.

  “Did they just leave?” Kitt asked, still falling over himself.

  “Make it stop!” Dolly cried, kicking her legs.

  As if responding, the ship bounced again and leveled itself out. We gasped for air as we sat there. My coat refused to detach itself from the pipe.

  “Is it...is it over?” the Doll asked.

  “Is it ever?” I mumbled.

  A moment later the ship shook again. And things continued like this, off and on, until we were finally given a bit of assistance.

  “What are you three doing down here?” came a curious voice from a curious onlooker that we had not seen enter.

  “Dying,” Kitt said to the voice. I twisted my neck to find a bright-eyed young woman, a few years younger than me, standing upon a small stairwell that I hadn't noticed.

  “Where's Jack and Gren?” she said, hopping off of the steps and marching over to our disheveled bodies as the ship took a break from tossing us about.

  “They've popped off,” I muttered, fighting to free my pinned coat. “Took the lift. We thought we'd stick around for the excitement.”

  I forced myself loose, one corner of my coat now notably singed off, and looked up at the young lady who had joined us. She was rather small, but the spark in her face seemed to magnify her presence. She wore leathers, jacket and gloves and boots covered in buckles and snaps. A long, fat scarf was wrapped around her white neck and tossed over her shoulder. Her hair was dark, cropped short, and sitting under a large newsboy cap.

  “Hrmm...” she said. “Silly time for that. Did they mention where they were heading?”

  “I didn't think to ask while I was being slammed into the ship.”

  “No, I suppose you wouldn't have. You see, I need Jack's assistance with a matter. There's a bit of an issue going on topside.”

  “We noticed,” Kitt said.

  “Nothing to worry about, of course,” the cheerful girl assured us, all smile. “Still, best to handle it sooner rather than later. Don't you agree? Of course, of course you do. I'm the ship navigator, you see, so sometimes I have to deal with such inconveniences.”

  Navigator. This girl? I was sincerely beginning to question the abilities of this crew. Still, to be fair, I hadn't seen the young lady in action, so I was in no place to criticize. I noticed that she toted a sack at her side that featured the same emblem that B and Jack wore. It was filled to the brim with rolled maps.

  “Would you good people care to accompany me up?” the girl asked, helping Dolly to her feet.

  “Sounds good to me,” Kitt said.

  I nodded in agreement and we began a hurried climb up a set of stairwells, corridors, and walkways as the ship continued to rumble. I tried hard to keep up with both my balance and the young lady's rapidfire conversation.

  “What do they call you?” she said, ducking under some pipes and jogging ahead. We hurried after.

  “Pocket.”

  “That’s a neat name. Watch your head. And what do you do?”

  “I’m, uh, a writer.”

  “Ah! Learned man! How fascinating! Just step over, yes, there you are. A writer! Man of words! Careful, there. It’s slick. Professor Pocket, I’ll have to call you!”

  “That’s not really necessa—“

  “Or instructor or headmaster or sensei, then.”

  “Sensei?”

  “It’s Japanese. Means teacher.”

  “Oh. You seem rather learned yourse—AAH!”

  “Whoops. Told you it was slick. Here we go now. Mister Sunner, Madame Doll. Up the ladder now. Careful not to step upon Professor Pocket!”

  “OW!”

  “Sorry Pocket,” Kitt said.

  The vessel shook again, nearly knocking us all down. Finally the young lady led us to the navigation cabin, a round, little room with a brass “Q” bolted above the archway. The ship rocked and I fell chin-first inside and onto an overstuffed and over-worn sofa.

  “Great ship you have here,” I mumbled. The room smelt of aged paper and thick leathers. Globes cluttered the space, propped upon carved, cherry-tinted, wooden stands or suspended on thin threads from the ceilings. The walls spat books at me as the Lucidia shook. Long, rolling maps were spread across a few rickety tables and, even more peculiar, a few were riveted into the walls as what I could only assume was a sort of makeshift wallpapering. In the madness, Kitt slid backward, smacked his head against a wall, and left a sizable bruise on Norway.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Thank you!” the young lady chimed, hopping through the room to grab at a large, brass telescope that filled most of the cabin.

  “I've missed this,” Kitt griped, pulling himself up.

  “Stop complaining and hold onto something solid!” Dolly shouted.

  “Like what?”

  “I don't know. Just—ah!”

  And then she fell down.

  “Yeah,” Kitt said. “Really missed this.”

  The young lady working the telescope swung its skinnier end from one side of the cabin to the other.

  “Excuse me,” I inquired.
“Young lady with the scope. Miss...”

  “Quill.”

  “Miss Quill.”

  “Just Quill.”

  “Fair enough. If I could pose a question—“

  “On second thought,” the bright-eyed girl interjected, “you can call me Miss Quill.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don't hear that sort of manners these days.”

  “You don't?”

  “Well, not in the circles I travel in.”

  “Can't imagine why,” Kitt said after another great shake spun his eyes.

  Dolly got up and fell down again.

  “My question!” I shouted over the noise.

  “Go ahead,” Quill replied. “You don't have to shout over the noise.”

  “Ah.”

  “Your question?”

  “Yes. Well, as it is, I couldn't help wondering—”

  “Pocket!” Kitt snapped.

  “Just say it!” Dolly snapped.

  “What the hell is going on?!?” I, in all exasperation, snapped.

  Quill slid away from the behemoth peeking glass and cheerfully tossed her scarf over her shoulder.

  “Is that all you wanted, sensei? Didn't Gren say anything?”

  “He was too busy arguing with Jack.”

  “Typical.” She began rummaging through a split-wooden cabinet that was quite wisely bolted to the wall.

  “So it would seem. So anyway, the situation at hand?”

  “Right!” Quill replied with a smile and a nod. “We're being fired upon!”

  Upon that revelation, the wider and blunter end of the telescope spun quickly as the Lucidia dipped to the left, the heavy brass catching me right behind the neck, beneath the ears.

  Things became very quiet and very grey.

  “You're quite a man for naps, Pocket.”

  “Best way to dream.”

  “So you're for them?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even those uninvited ones? Knocks on the back of the head? What sort of dreams do those bring about?”

  “Heh. Now you're getting to the real dirt. I'll let you in on a little secret, barkeep. Before the knocks on the head, my dreams were as powerful as wet paper. Mushy pulp, all of them. Couldn't produce a decent story if you wrote them down a thousand upon a thousand times.”

  “So it's worth the bumps and knots...”

  “Is that a question, Alan, or an agreement?”

  “Pssh…when did this story become about me? That's sloppy tale-telling, bard. Keep your...eh...”

  “Narrative focus?”

  “That'll do. Yes.”

  “I'll try to iron myself against distraction and sentiment. Where were we?”

  “Dreams, Pocket. Come now, get with it. You're out solid on the cabin floor, and the damn boat in the sky is under attack. What dream came to you next?”

  “A very simple one.”

  A great dull pain and a small grey line of light. A tunnel. A familiar, round cat, orange and white, was walking away from me. I was lying on my chest and I asked him where he'd like me to follow. I spoke, but my words had no sound. As the cat became horizon, I was awakened.

  “The boy can sleep through anything,” someone said.

  The air tasted fresher. I made my eyes work.

  I was back topside, lying with a pillow under my skull. Clouds zipped and zagged. There was a great calming moment there, sitting in the clouds. Completely serene.

  And then a cannonball was fired into the ship.

  With a crack.

  And a boom.

  And an angry shout.

  Shouted from an angry man who was fool enough to follow the orange cat down the lighted grey.

  “Get up,” Gren said, taking my arm. “And stop screaming. I think we have enough noise already.”

  “Very nice to be back,” I griped.

  Chapter Twelve

  More Than Capable

  I could feel the very nails in the boards beneath me rumble in their holes as shot after shot collided into the ship.

  Despite my startled yell, the severity of the situation had not yet quite seeped into my head. Still in a dreamer's haze, I spun my eyes over the scene, taking in what I could before I woke up enough to feel panicked and afraid.

  In those few moments of sleepy calm, I watched the people around me spin and move like some sort of farcical ballet. Gren was at my side, barking obscenities and waving his fists at the firing ship in the distance. I squinted my eyes at it. It was a large ship, sails puffed out like the chest of an overconfident prizefighter, spitting ammunition at the golden Lucidia. I cocked my head left and found that Quill was sitting on an overturned bucket, hunched over some sort of wooden-framed device that was cradled in her arms. Over the sound of wind and smell of burnt gunpowder, I heard B jogging across the deck, her boots plud-pludding in rhythm. She was shouting instructions. Still sleepy, I took a step back and rested myself on a crate. B came into view, marching across and shouting back over her shoulder. With a rusty, squeaking sound, Kitt appeared behind her, struggling to wheel out an iron cannon. On the other end of the ship, Jack was leaning halfway over the railing. He shouted for help and Gren came to assistance, grabbing the boiler monkey by his ankles and sliding him ever further over the edge. More sounds. Metal on metal. A sounding clang, clang, clang. Jack was, I realized, mashing a section of the side's metal paneling with a piece of thick pipe. The spring-hinges, I heard Jack shout, then successfully popped open, allowing the paneling to unfold, expand, and provide additional cover and shielding from the onslaught. Gren then lost his grip on Jack's ankles, and the poor soul fell miles through the clouds to a very messy death.

  I'm just kidding. Had to make sure you were still paying attention.

  Dolly was also there, shadowing Kitt and holding a large wooden rod that was wrapped in old rags at one end. B produced a torch.

  Wait.

  Kitt and Dolly began complaining and crying, respectively, as the lady sailor demanded they load, aim, and fire the cannon. What ensued was fumbling, fiddling, improper packing with the clothed pole, gunpowder in the clockwork girl's face, more crying, poor aiming, and finally a sloppy firing of the ship's finest frying pan—not sure how that got involved—over the side.

  I think I laughed. We could've been shot dead out of the sky at any moment, and I'm fairly certain I laughed.

  There was some more arguing. B handed the torch to Kitt, who waved it around like a butterfly net, and the next thing I knew, his voice was in my ear.

  “Pocket? Pocket!”

  “Mmm?”

  “You're on fire.”

  That woke me up. I snapped back to life, kicking my now-flaming pant cuff into a nearby bucket of cold...something.

  “Heh, heh. Is this the infamous 'flammable intensity' of Will Pocket that you spoke of? Your epic spark?”

  “Hilarious. But that ‘epic spark’ came from the epic Kitt epically waving that damn torch around. And for the record, Alan, it burned like hell.”

  I frowned at the singed remains of my left pant cuff.

  “What was that, Gren?”

  “We're still under attack,” Gren repeated. “Pay attention when people are talking.”

  I started to say something sharp, sarcastic, and cutting, but my voice was rudely interrupted by a barrage of buckshot whizzing above my head. I instinctively hit the deck.

  “Get up, Pocket,” Gren said. “They can’t hit a decent target from that range.”

  I looked at the attacking vessel and noticed it was flying the Union Jack from its rafters. I had heard that such was a popular tactic amongst pirates and smugglers, raise the British flag and lull unsuspecting merchant ships into their snare. A coward’s ploy, I thought to myself. And as the Lucidia was decked to the brim with trinkets and valuables, I decided I should probably have a few words with the crew to make sure everything was in order.

  “It'd being handled,” Jack said to me.

  “What?!?” I not-so-calmly replied
, the panic finally setting in.

  “It's being handled.”

  “Handled?!? How?!?”

  “Mister Pocket,” B chimed in, stamping her foot. “If you will kindly take a breath and a step back, you will see that we are more than capable of addressing the situation.”

  “Are you...sure?” Dolly nervously asked.

  “Quill is already calculating a proper retaliation to...you know...those asses trying to knock us out of the sky.”

  Those, uh, asses, as the young lady so eloquently described our adversaries, then took the present moment to ram their ship directly into ours.

  “Asses,” B said, retrieving her hat.

  “So they would seem,” I mumbled. I felt the Doll tug on my sleeve.

  “This is bad, isn't it?” she whispered to me.

  I tried to smile, but I only got half there.

  “No, no, I'm, uh, sure we're fine. This crew is experienced. I'm sure they're...uh...competent.”

  “Is that the most reassuring you're going to get?”

  “I think so.” I exhaled and shook some sense into my head. “I mean, no. No, Dolly! It's not. I mean, look where we are. Prettiest steamship I've ever seen, golden and shiny and powerful. This is the age of progress, after all. Of ingenuity! I'm sure these...these...these airborne machinists, these neo-nautical tacticians are poised and ready to cram their steam-driven heels into the foolish carcass of those who oppose them!”

  “You...you do?”

  “Sure!” I shouted, jogging down the deck. “Miss Quill! Lady Navigator! What is our plan of counterattack?”

  “Hang on,” the girl said to me, hunched over that small, wooden frame. “I've got to move the big beads over to the small beads.”

  My eyebrows nearly squeezed my pupils out of their sockets.

  “Be...beads?”

  “Mmm-hmm!” she cheerfully nodded, proudly presenting her abacus to me. An abacus. The navigator, the only navigator operating on this vessel, this over-decorated tin can, was using an abacus to calculate at what angle her shipmates should best fire at to ensure that we were not quickly destroyed.

  I took this in as well as could be expected.

  “An abacus?!?” I screamed, making Quill jump in surprise. “Those maniacs are ramming themselves into your ship, and you're playing with a bloody abacus?!?”