“Well, we did suffer a crash, Mister Sunner. Only natural that—”
“You mean the ship’s taking on water?!?”
“Was taking, yes. We've managed to put a stop to that. Well, by 'we,' I am of course excluding myself. I was a little busy getting Miss Dolly gathered and ready for her procedure.”
“But the leaks are stopped, right?”
“Oh, of course. No need to worry about the Lucidia further sinking. Quill assured me that the doors of all flooded cabins have been properly closed and sealed.”
“That...is your solution?” Kitt said, his breathing quickening. “Close the doors? Let the rooms fill and flood? Pocket, did you hear that?”
“Can't say I can think of a better response,” I said, rather stupidly.
“Look,” the Priest said gently, “we have this perfectly in control.”
“Like you were in control earlier?” Kitt snapped.
“That's history now,” the Priest continued. “Try to calm down. Take deep breaths. Well, maybe not that. Not out here. But once we're back below, I want you to remember to breathe deeply. Make a note of it. Mister Pocket, do you have a scrap of paper on you?”
“Nevermind that!” Kitt said. “You're telling me that we're stranded here?!?”
“For the time. From where we’ve landed, I surely wouldn’t recommend we try to swim for shore. The distance is clearly too great. I think we need properly assess the situation and begin planning our repairs.” The captain stopped and had a laugh. “That is, if we’re not found first by our fallen opponents. Or their friends.”
Kitt did not find the prospect nearly as humorous as his host. His angry eyes looked at me for reassurance. I shrugged and rubbed my boot's heel into the deck wood.
“That’s another thing,” Gren spoke up. “That soldier ship was tethered to us when we fell into a dive. If they aren’t stuck in the sludge with us, then where the hell are they?”
The Priest pondered this and tugged on his beard.
“Miss Doll,” he addressed the girl, “you were the only one to remain conscious during our landing. Did you happen to notice what became of the others?”
“Um…I was a little preoccupied,” she responded, hugging the bandages around her stomach.
“Then we have no answer,” the captain said, sounding disappointed. “It’s possible they managed to cut their lines prior the crash and touched down somewhere nearby but unseen, perhaps along the shore.”
“So we have the Royal Navy to worry about as well!” Kitt groaned. “On top of everything else!”
“Everyone,” the Priest said, trying to keep order amongst us, “it's been a long day. Why don't we all retire to my cabin to discuss possible strategy? Fortunately, it had not sustained any damaged in the collision.”
“Fortunate for him, maybe,” Kitt mumbled to me. I pretended not to hear it.
“Sounds good,” Gren said. “I'm tired of smelling this air.”
“Agreed,” the Priest said.
Dolly bent over the edge of the ship to the look at the mess, slipped, and let out a high-pitched “eek.” I caught her by the back of the dress and tugged her back onboard.
“Thank you,” she said shyly.
The Priest made a grand sweeping gesture with his hands and shuffled us down the now-inclined deck to his personal quarters. The Lucidia was resting on a very slight tilt, and I realized as he opened the door to the room that most if not all of the cabin had to be dipped beneath the surface of the sea. I had hoped he wasn't lying about the lack of leaks and damages.
“After you all,” the captain said, holding the door, “and watch your steps. We are on a little bit of a slope.”
And so we entered the chamber of the Red Priest.
The captain's quarters were stunning. Rich, smooth, blackened wood made a railing that snaked around a diamond-shaped room. The walls were lined with blood-red velvet fastened by rivets made of imported black onyx. The pirate's life had been good to him, I thought to myself.
Two diamond points came together to a place of long, layered glass. Frosted panes of stacked cubes, latticed with brass, created a giant window that treated the Red Priest during the flights to a sweeping view of the open sky.
But not at this moment.
The Red Priest sighed, putting his hand to his chin and observing the window like a portrait hanging in some great gallery. Nothing but a wall of thick, oil-blotted seawater could be seen through the glass. It slid against the panes, offering only the occasional bubble against the surface. The Priest seemed disappointed, not so much because of the collision, but that the incident left his cabin beneath the slimy surface of such a view-ruining mess. Or so was my presumption.
“You have a...lovely chamber,” the Doll quietly said, her tone both upbeat and apologetic.
For whatever reason, the one unifying image in my head of this scene, the image that jogs my memory to remember how the events unfolded, is the formation our bodies took as we assembled in the room.
I leaned against a cabin wall and crossed one ankle over the other. Dolly dropped herself onto an overstuffed lounging sofa of Eastern European design, Turkish, I believe the captain said, and she did so in a manner not completely becoming of a lady. Gren and Kitt hunched over smaller guest chairs. Hack-Jack and Quill planted themselves on the floor by the exit, and Madame B draped herself on an entirely over-pillowed sitting chair. The Red Priest was the only one who kept entirely on his feet. He made a small circle, moving in quiet steps in the center of our congregation. In his hand flowed a long hose that connected to the captain's personal “hookah,” an elaborate glass and marbled device from the Indies used for the purpose of smoking tobacco. Or so he claimed.
The Priest walked another circle, furrowing his brow in thought, puffing on his hookah, and exhaling tobacco smoke. The smell of his smoke was surprisingly fragrant and distracting to me as I tried to keep my mind focused on the present.
“I...believe...” he finally said, “…I...believe...that we should discuss our current situation.”
“Isn't that why we came down here?” I asked, a little confused.
“Pocket,” Madame B said, “don't be argumentative.”
“I didn't think I was.”
“Now,” the Priest continued, “if you'll let me continue...” He paused to await any further interjections.
“Be our guest,” I finally said, prompting him to speak.
“Quite the opposite, actually,” the captain said.
“What?”
“You shall be my guests, won't you?”
“Oh. Yeah, I suppose so.” I had somehow forgotten the very crucial point that I was not only stranded in an oil sea on a sunken ship, but I was stranded on a sunken ship that did not belong to me.
“Is that a problem?” Kitt asked, wary.
“Oh, no,” the Priest said. “I mean, I don't have very much choice in letting you take up room and board. I either can or escort you out into the oily depths, and I am just not that cruel.”
“Ah,” I said. “Thank you...for not being that cruel.”
“Yes!” the Doll added, kicking up her feet from the sofa. “We'd much rather have a nice, dry sleep here.”
“Don't say that until you've tried it,” Gren laughed.
“Oh, is our boarding not good enough for you, Gren?” B growled.
“Hey, hey. Didn't say that. It's a gorgeous ship. It just doesn't seem so accommodating when the gorgeous ship is angled, sinking, and leaking oil.”
“I told you,” the Priest pointed out, “we’ve handled the leaking.”
“Maybe for now, but—”
“We'd love to stay!” Dolly stated, smiling to the captain and then scowling at Gren.
“Don't give me that face,” he muttered to her.
“Don't be rude to our hosts,” she muttered to him.
“At any rate!” the Priest said, talking over them. “At any rate, like it or not, we are stuck together.”
“Kind of a
dreary way to look at it, isn't it?” I asked.
“Pocket,” B said, “you're being argumentative again.”
“Am I? Didn't seem so to me.”
“Hush.”
“Sure. No argument here.”
She clucked her tongue at me. The Red Priest continued.
“Our ship is far from a proper lodging house. We have neither maids nor servants nor even a proper kitchen, so your dining options, I'm afraid, will be somewhat limited.”
“This luxury steamship has its own working lift but no way to prepare a meal?” Kitt asked.
“Manners!” Dolly hissed to him.
Kitt scoffed, doing nothing for the girl's currently sour disposition towards him.
“We are travelers,” the Priest explained. “We prefer to seek out meals in the various lands we kick up dust in, rather than eat in huddled captivity on the ship. There are food rations aboard, though. And a rather simple hot plate. Rations aren't the freshest...but they are consumable.”
My appetite didn't exactly respond to the suggestion and tucked itself away.
“Maybe I could put together something to eat,” the Doll cheerfully suggested. “I've baked scones for the boys!”
“If you want to play around in the rations and heat something up, feel free,” B said, “but don't set your sights very high until you see what's there to work with.”
“Hmph. I never got a scone,” Gren added.
“We hadn't met you yet,” I responded.
“Did they have jam?”
“Lots of it.”
“Just my rotten luck.”
“Excuse me!” Kitt barked. “Look, I think we have larger things to discuss right now than jam!”
“Do we?” the Priest said, sounding quite sincere.
“Do we?!? Yes, we do!”
“Oh, all right. Settle down. Where were we in our discussion?”
“Repairs, I think,” Gren said.
“Yes. Well, obviously, there isn’t too much we can do in our current state. But, Jack—“
“Yeah, yeah,” the boiler monkey spoke up. “I’ll start seeing what I can screw together. No promises though.”
“Just be fast about it.”
“Right,” Jack grunted. “Gren and I will get on it right away.”
“Oh, and thanks for volunteering me!” Gren predictably shot back.
“You wanna sit around in this mud puddle forever?”
“The priority,” the Priest interrupted, uninterested in their familiar, petty squabbles, “is finding a way to shore, either a means of transportation or a means of signaling passersby.”
“Transportation…” Kitt repeated. “That’s right! Your shuttle! If we can get down to it, maybe can fly out to—“
“No such luck,” Jack cut in. “The landing bay’s taken on a lot of water, and even if we could force the ramp open, we’d only have the Atlantic to greet us.”
“Settle down, Kitt,” Gren advised, crossing his arms. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Like what?!?” the thief complained, growing more agitated. “Strap some rubber to a pair of poles and catapult us over the clouds?!? Start flapping our arms?!?”
“I said,” Gren barked, also more agitated, “we will figure something out.”
“And what if you don’t?”
The Red Priest shrugged.
“Shrug?!?” Kitt yelled. “Is that all you can do?!? After you've damned us all?!?”
“Kitt!” Dolly fussed.
“Well, don’t you think they deserve to take a little responsibility?”
“Kitt, shut up!”
“Why should I?!?”
“Shut up and apologize!”
“Apologize?!? To a bunch of pirates?!?”
“That saved our lives, yes!”
“So what?”
“So what?!?”
“You of all people, Dolly, you should be backing me up, after what they did to you!”
“Hey—“ I began to argue.
“Yeah, that’s it, Pocket. Make some noise! The Doll’s not under the knife now! Make all the noise you want at them!”
“They didn't do a single damn thing!” she shouted, somehow managing to make profanity fit easily in with her usually cute tone.
“You're crazed!” Kitt spat back. “I had heard women were temperamental, but I didn't think you'd so easily forget a hook through your stomach!”
The Priest's face faded from a smile to a more wounded expression.
“I...I did say I was sorry for that,” he mumbled.
“Yes,” Quill said, very quietly. “Very sorry. But we did fix her.”
“Oh, good!” Kitt said. “You're all sorry! Will you be sorry the next time you let a guest get gutted?”
“Shut up right now!” Dolly yelled, squeezing her eyes and clenching her fists. “Why do you have to go and ruin everything?”
“Me?!?” Kitt replied, greatly insulted. “You should be thanking me for being the only one defending you!”
“I do not need defending!”
“Well, no offense, but those bandages around your stomach say something different. Back me up here, Pocket.”
I frowned and rolled my eyes to the floor. I heard Kitt scoff, and I didn't need to see it to know where it was aimed.
“Typical,” he said. “Way to take a stand, Pocket.”
Kitt got up and stormed past me.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Out,” he said.
“Going for a breath of lousy air?”
“Whatever you say, Pocket.”
“Fine!” Dolly shouted. “Go take a swim!”
Kitt huffed, flung open the large, double doors, and slammed them behind him.
“Damn it all,” I swore.
Miss B, who had been sitting stone-faced, reddened, and surprisingly silent, took a long, slow breath, rose, brandished her knife, and stabbed it into a side wall.
She spoke one word, “ingrate,” and marched loudly out of the cabin.
We all stayed quiet for a half-minute, reeling from the unexpected. At last, I pushed myself into action and moved to the doors.
“Don't bother,” Dolly said.
I ignored her and made my way out.
“He won't listen!” she shouted behind me.
I covered my face with my sleeve and went through the smell to where I found Kitt. He was sitting on a barrel with a sleeve over his own face and, I suspect, pouting behind it.
“Oh, is it your turn now?” he coldly addressed me.
“Just calm down and—”
“Because that pirate woman just came and took a pretty sizable piece out of me.”
“Did she hurt you?”
“Unless you count feelings, no. Well, go on. Say what you came here to say.”
“Look, Kitt, this...uh...this hasn't been easy for anyone...but...”
“But what?”
“…I don't know.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, of course, you don't.”
“The hell does that mean?”
“It means, grow a pair, Pocket. Take a stand for once in your life. Look at you, standing out here without a damn thing to say. Why don't you just recite what they told you to come tell me?”
“They didn't tell me anything! In fact, they wanted me not to come! How's that for a stand?”
“Please. The only reason you came out here was to show that you could and prove me wrong. Well, here you are, and without a decisive word in your head.”
“That's enough.”
“Forget it. I'm going to find somewhere private with a little less stink.”
He jumped off the barrel and started walking. My temper ignited by such a casual dismissal, I grabbed Kitt by the arm, forcing him to listen to me.
“If you want to discuss personal inadequacies, friend, you’d better start with yourself. If it wasn't for you sneaking around, I wouldn't—“
“Who put a gun to your head and made you follow me?”
“You never had to do anything.”
“Well...I mean...the bottle...”
“You would've gotten it back. And fine, maybe we did get thrown into this mess together, but what have you ever done since to take charge of the situation?”
“I...um, I mean I've...”
“You've just followed. You followed me, you followed Dolly, you followed Gren and Eddie and Alexia and now look where it’s gotten us. We're stuck on a bloody, sinking pirate ship, and your precious clockwork doll’s now wrapped in bandages!”
“You...you can't say that's...my fault...”
Kitt pulled his arm roughly out of my grip and gave me one last, spiteful look.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But don't blame someone else the next time she gets impaled. And when she can't be fixed so easily, see how you feel then.”
“I...” Words were failing.
“If you were any kind of a man, you would've made a damn decision by now instead of chasing after any stranger who will make it for you!”
He turned his back to me and began walking.
And I just stood there, paled, breathing in the foulness of the dark ocean around me. I stood and I watch his form slowly shrink into the distance.
Finally, I just shouted, not knowing what would come out of my mouth, to break the unbearable silence.
“Fine! Off with you, then!” I yelled to him. “Turn your back to me on a sunken ship! Very fitting!” I boiled as he continued away. And then I added in cold mockery, “Let's see you run away from this!”
It wasn't long before he was gone, and I, empty of further ammunition and turning green from the sickening air in my throat, resigned from the scene and escorted my wounded pride back to the Priest's door.
“How'd that go?” he asked me as I came inside.
“How do you think?”
“Come and sit down.”
“I’m sorry. He had no right to speak to you like—“
“He'll get over his tantrum. And perhaps he had a point about the danger we have put you all in.”
“Garbage! He was talking like an absolute—“
“Shhh...please, Mister Pocket,” the Priest said, putting a finger to his lips. “No more anger. We just now managed to calm the girl down a little.”
“Eh?”
Dolly was hunched over in a corner, her back to us, with Jack and Quill on either side. She seemed to be making a low sound, and I worried that she was weeping.
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 37