Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “We have weapons!” B sassed back. “You, in particular, have too many. What do we need with more?”

  “Sell them.”

  “Meh…” she griped, unimpressed. “I’m tired of trading common goods. You’d think that once in a while we’d find something more exciting.”

  “This isn’t the theatre,” the Priest shouted from below deck. “Pirates don’t typically find giant, glowing jewels among the British skies. Oh, excuse me once more.”

  Another muffled blast of gunfire came up from below. Miss B sighed and glanced over at us on the Lucidia.

  “Not always that interesting, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s interesting enough for me,” Dolly nervously replied. “Is…is he all right down there?”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “But…could you check?”

  B tossed her hair in annoyance and kicked her heel against the floorboards.

  “What?” the Priest shouted up.

  “Just making sure you’re alive.”

  “Oh.” And then he quieted down and got back to work.

  About that moment, one of the fallen soldiers lying on the deck began to slowly roll his shoulders. Kitt noticed first and elbowed me in the arm.

  “Hmm?” I asked.

  He grimaced and pointed. The soldier, who was sliding an arm out of a loose knot in his binds, started blinking.

  “Uh…madame?” I cautiously said to B.

  As the words left my lips, the waking man shivered and reached for a discarded pistol on the deck. He had only just pressed his palm to the metal when the lady sprung into action.

  “Ah...I think not,” B smiled, pinning his arm down with her boot heel. “No toys for you.”

  To drive her point home, she took out her knife and held it over his throat. The drowsy man sneered.

  “I think you better stop making ugly faces,” she said to him, “unless you'd like me to aim this blade a little lower.”

  The man was quiet for a moment. He seemed to be calculating. He wouldn’t let go of the cocked pistol in his pinned hand, but he wouldn’t stop glaring at the dangling switchblade either.

  “Now what does that look mean?” B teased the man under her boot. “Honestly, do tell, because I’m not a mind reader. What is it? Are you scared? Of a tiny crumb of a woman with an old knife? Is that it? Or are you planning something? Maybe make a go at pushing free and getting a bullet into me? That could work, maybe. If you’re lucky. Although I am willing to bet that in the struggle I'd have time to let this little blade slip out of my fingers and skewer you nicely. Or at least prevent you from any future breeding. What say you?”

  No reply.

  Miss B let one of her fingers slip off of the switchblade.

  “Last chance,” she said a little quieter.

  The man remained silent.

  “All right,” she shrugged. “Nice knowing you.”

  The blade fell from her hand. The soldier gasped. Thunk. The knife landed clean, mere centimeters away from his flesh.

  “A bluff?!?” Kitt whispered to me. “Is she crazy?”

  Maybe she was, but her tactics had not failed her. In his moment of twitching panic, the soldier had released his grip on the gun, leaving it open for B to kick away. The pistol slid down the deck, where Quill quickly scooped it up and kept an aim on the man.

  Madame B chortled, reclaimed her blade, and pulled her prisoner up to his wobbly feet. He was staring incredulously at her. Can’t say that I wouldn’t do the same.

  “What?” she said with a smile. “So I don’t feel like getting blood on me today. I can ruthless and tidy, can’t I?”

  At that moment, the Red Priest came back into view, hopping up from the stairs with a whistle. He paused at the top and cocked his head to the side with a curious look.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  B let go of the soldier and tapped her knife against her hip.

  “We had an incident,” she stated.

  “Forget it,” the Priest then said, shaking his head. “You can give me the specifics later.”

  The sailor beside Madame B started stepping nervously away.

  “Ah, no, no!” the Priest cheerfully called out to the man, aiming his weapon. “It’s not time to run away. In fact, do me a favor and come down here with me. I need another set of hands to lift some of these heavy boxes. Or, you know, I’ll kill you.”

  The pale soldier stared blankly at his smiling captor.

  “Surely you wouldn’t ask these two nice ladies to dirty their hands, right?” the Red Priest continued. “Oh, I know. It’s natural to be a little upset. Sailing out to capture some nasty old pirates and ending up doing their grunt work at gunpoint. But trust me. In a few weeks, you’ll be laughing about this over beers or something. That is, of course, unless you refuse to help, in which case, like I said, I’ll kill you.”

  “Go on,” Madame B added, slicing the ropes that spiraled around the prisoner. “A little heavy lifting will be good for you. Build up those arms. Now get on it before your sleeping friends start stirring and we have to resort to nastier measures.”

  The soldier dumbly nodded and was led downstairs by the Priest, who casually filled the man’s ears with talks of rum until both were out of my sight. Together, they lifted five long boxes from below and tossed them over the side to the Lucidia. Each time they returned downstairs, the man would tensely squeeze the handrail with his sweaty fingers, as if in fear of never again seeing the surface.

  “Pocket, you're inventing again. There's not a man alive with eyes strong enough to spot a drop of sweat run down the hand of a soldier standing off in the distance on another ship. And aren’t those crewmen usually gloved?”

  “You're just determined to kill this atmosphere I've got brewing, aren't you, barkeep?”

  “I should've left you in the snow.”

  All the while, B watched and snapped her fingers with the rhythm of their pace, as if she was a fiery schoolmarm directing unruly children. And while Madame B wasn't exactly the prim and stuffy type, she seemed more than ready to dish out appropriate punishment.

  “Kinda rough, isn't she?” Kitt whispered. “More like a bloke.”

  “Nah,” I replied. “Just a war face. She's a madame, all right.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “A natural sense. I can spot a lady ten miles away.”

  The Doll shifted her gears and raised a suspicious eyebrow.

  When the pirates had transported a sizeable cargo of…whatever it was they seized, they politely led their assistant to the steering wheel and promptly tied his hands to it.

  “There,” the Priest smiled, tightening the rope. “That should take care of you.”

  “You’re…not going to kill me?” the other weakly questioned.

  “I told you,” his captor replied. “I’d only shoot you if you didn’t lend a hand. You helped me out, so I’ll help you.”

  The soldier didn’t have anything further to say.

  “Now all you have to do is steer this floaty boat to the nearest docking point,” the Red Priest continued. “I’m sure the workmen there will gladly untie you. It’s just a precaution, you see. Not that I don’t trust you, but considering the—“

  “Can we go?” B interrupted, assisting Quill back over the rail to the Lucidia.

  “I’m just saying my goodbyes, woman!” the Priest bristled.

  “Don’t you ‘woman’ me,” the lady pirate teased back. “I’ll throw you over the side with your pants down.”

  “She probably would,” Kitt whispered to me.

  The Red Priest patted the bound man warmly on the shoulder, bid him good day, and returned to the Lucidia.

  “All right now,” he said, aiming his trusty sniper rifle at the man’s head for encouragement. “Get going. We both have places to be, don’t we?”

  Silently, the soldier complied, roughly turning the wheel and moving the naval ship away from us. The Lucidia bobbed slightly in the air
as the other pulled from the point of collision. We watched the steamship slowly drift off, almost sulking as it bid us farewell.

  The Priest resumed his place at the wheel. We drifted away, and all onboard breathed a deep sigh of relief, glad that our time with the pursuers was over.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Kitt was soon asking as he pointed at an approaching shape. A quickly approaching shape.

  “It’s another ship!” Dolly gasped.

  “No,” the Red Priest mumbled. “It’s not.”

  “Oh,” the girl replied. “That’s good.”

  “No, it’s not,” the Priest repeated, fishing around for a telescope.

  “Why?”

  The captain sighed, squeezing his eye into the peering hole of his retrieved instrument.

  “Because it’s the same ship.”

  Sure enough, the very naval vessel that the pirates had just sent limping off was again barreling toward us. The Priest clucked his tongue in annoyance.

  “Now why did he have to do that?” he grumbled. “All he had to do was sail away.”

  “The idiot doesn’t know when to take a hint,” B added. “I should’ve skewered him when I had the chance.”

  The Red Priest shook his head. “Unfortunate,” he calmly said. “All right. Get ready.”

  “Get ready?” I echoed. “For what?”

  “We’re shooting them down.”

  “Hold on, now—“

  “I’m sorry, Mister Pocket. I really didn’t want it to come to this. Too much unnecessary mess. But we can’t risk a second attack. Get to that cannon, Quill.”

  “Yes sir,” she replied.

  I was at a loss. I had just survived a barrage of gunfire at the hands of these soldiers, but blasting them clean out of the sky seemed somehow wrong.

  “Captain,” I stupidly uttered, “you’ll, uh, kill them.”

  “Probably,” he said, withholding emotion.

  I could tell that he was purposely avoiding my eyes, and I felt oddly sorry for the man.

  “Hold on, Pocket. What sort of master pirate doesn’t want to shoot down an enemy ship?”

  “The sort that gave me a lift.”

  “You sure keep some strange bedfellows, don’t you?”

  “I never said anything about climbing into bed with them.”

  I decided to keep quiet and let the crew make their preparations. I heard Hack-Jack toss and snarl on the floor.

  “Better them than us,” he slurred at my feet.

  “You finally awake?” I asked, watching him crawl around.

  “Yeah,” he said to me, “just a little dizzy. See, I think I breathed in some of that—“

  “Right. We know.”

  “Uh-huh…hey, what was your name again?”

  “Pocket.”

  “Okay, yeah. Listen, Pocket, can you tell me why my foot is tied to the ship?”

  “Safety precaution.”

  “Precaution for what?”

  “No idea.”

  I watched as the pirates prepared for their assault. Tilting the wide, angry mouths of their cannons toward the targeted steamship, they waited for the moment to strike. Turning back, I saw the Watchmaker’s Doll staring on. One glance at her face told me that she had absorbed my conversation with the captain, but the look her pupils held was one of neither acceptance nor condemnation.

  The cannons spilled their bellies.

  Kaboom, kaplunk. Kaplunk, kaboom. The heavy spheres sailed with fire in fantastic arcs, splitting through the clouds before splitting through the distant ship.

  Kaboom, kaplunk. More holes in the sky.

  Kaplunk, kaboom. More holes in the enemy.

  The Priest grimly ordered another round of fire and set aside his telescope. I seized it and put my eye to the scene on the horizon. Magnified through the round lens, I could see the man that had been bound to the wheel by the pirates. He was now free of the ropes, the struggle leaving bleeding marks visible on his wrists. He looked half-mad, screaming things I couldn’t hear while frantically untying his companions, most of whom hadn’t yet shaken off the knockout gas. The few that did began tripping about in a drunkard’s daze as the bombardment continued.

  “They’ll try to return fire,” I heard the Priest say, though not to me. “We need to end this soon.”

  I returned the telescope to him and watched the cannons send off one final load before Gren and Quill started wheeling them from the deck. Madame B hurried to the helm.

  “Now,” the Red Priest commanded.

  The Madame dug her fingers into the wheel and tilted us through the clouds, desperately trying to increase the distance between the two ships.

  “Don’t want to give their cannons the same clean shot ours had,” Gren said to me in passing.

  Sure enough, the soldiers in the distance did manage, despite their delirium, to return fire on us, even landing a few small strikes on the Lucidia as it retreated. But, as was about to be clear to all involved, theirs was a losing battle.

  “Look!” Kitt piped in.

  I watched as the naval ship began to sway and dip and descend, moving about like a wounded bird.

  It was crashing.

  What happened next confused me. Admittedly, I am not remotely knowledgeable on the subject of aerial combat strategy, but it still struck me as odd when the defeated ship, instead of limping away from the victor, again steered toward us even as it was sinking.

  That’s when Kitt, who had in the commotion gotten his hands on the spyglass, noticed that the men on the naval ship were wheeling out some sizable device and pointing it our way.

  “I’m pretty sure they're aiming it at us,” he announced.

  “Probably another cannon,” Quill said.

  “I don’t think—“

  “Ignore it,” B interrupted. “They’re just scrambling in a panic. They won’t be able to—“

  “Look out!” Kitt shouted.

  As if responding to the fox’s voice as signal, the soldiers launched something long and slender toward us, something very unlike a cannonball.

  “Is that...” the Doll asked, peering at the approaching projectile, “…is that a rope?”

  She was close. It was a something on a rope. A very sharp something that dug into the Lucidia and refused to let go.

  “A grappling hook?!?” the Priest shouted. “Are they serious?!?”

  “Damn it!” B said. “They want to take us down with them!”

  The ship jerked and we all tumbled about. The Lucidia dropped downward and started sliding toward the other vessel in a rapid descent. Our opponents, intent that we join the ranks of the doomed, launched three other hooks into us. The Red Priest and Madame B fought to control the wheel, but it was clearly out of their hands.

  And then, the last attack.

  As the steamship Lucidia was dragged from the Heavens, a final hook and rope was fired.

  Unlike the others, this one came high and directly toward the deck.

  There were screams. There were movements.

  I was on the ground. Instinct must have made me fall.

  I heard someone gasp and gasp and gasp, sounding as if too frightened to cry.

  And then, what seemed like a million small, intricate, little pieces of gold, a sparkling rainfall of tiny cogs and gears and screws, the kind one might find in the world's most intricate, delicate clock, rolled past me across the deck of the ship.

  And I knew. And I felt sick.

  The Watchmaker's Doll stood impaled against one of the ship's walls, the large hook piercing directly into her torso. Her innards were spilling out of her, and while still functional, she was scared.

  I made it to my feet long enough to see her point her eyes at me.

  “Mister Pocket,” she said, clutching the hook with shaking hands, “find a way to stop this.”

  “I don't think I—“

  And that was it.

  I was thrown forward into a blisteringly hard con
fetti of air and water and fire and wood and metal and blood and life and death.

  And then I went to sleep again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Oil Sea

  “Open your eyes, Mister Pocket.”

  A wave of white vapor filled my vision. It was all I could see.

  “Open your eyes and stand before us.”

  “Us?” I said, getting up.

  “Yes,” said a second voice. The shapes of two figures in long, flowing robes appeared in the mist.

  “Is this another dream?” I grumbled. “Because I'm getting a little tired—”

  “How real does this feel?”

  A blast of water shot forward and caught my face. It was wet and cold.

  “Pretty real,” I said.

  The two forms approached. They were female.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  Long shadows extended from their backs. Wings?

  “Am I...am I dead?” I asked.

  “Very nearly,” the first form said. “Without us, you would have surely perished amongst the crash.”

  “We have shadowed you,” the second said, “keeping our eyes hidden in the ether.”

  I was confused. “So...you're...”

  “Faeries!” they sang.

  I frowned. “You're...uh...faeries?”

  “Yes, Will Pocket, keeper of the juice!”

  “Behold us, juice keeper!”

  I wafted the steam from my face.

  “Hold on,” I said. “This...ether...it smells a little familiar.”

  “Oh,” the first faerie said. “Well, sure. It would, because...you know...”

  “You have it in your blood!” the second said.

  “What?” I said.

  “In your blood!” the first said.

  “My blood?”

  “Yes! Much like the green of the juice, it fills your veins!”

  “So let me get this straight,” I said, pacing. “You're saying that my body is filled with green juice and foggy air?”

  “Ether!”

  “Oh. That’s certainly…unexpected.”

  “I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is.”

  “Hmmm...so...we're what? On the cusp of life and death, the meeting point of the living world and the next?”

  “Uh...yes! Absolutely!” said the first faerie.