I took a deep, potato-scented breath and sighed. “Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “why do my feet feel cold?”
“They took your boots. Said something about ‘good scrap.’ Shouldn’t you remember all of this?”
“Probably,” I murmured before speaking up. “So, in summation, I’m lying in my socks with my head in a sack. Perfect.”
We didn’t talk for awhile, the both of us too miserable to make conversation.
“Gren?” I eventually said.
“Yeah?”
“What happened last night?”
“I’m not sure. They just…they just found us. One second I’m sleeping, the next I’m being dragged out of the room by those bastards. I tried to fight them off, but it was hopeless. Couldn’t even make it to the Half-Luck in time. They just broke in and trashed the whole, damn place.”
“Christ…”
“Oh, and they weren’t happy when they found out that Dolly wasn’t with us. Kept asking me what we’ve done with her. Weren’t happy with the answers I gave them, either. If you could see my face, you’d know that.”
“Gren, that’s horrible.”
“Yeah, I know. I was there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Eh, well…at least we’re still breathing. For now, anyway. While we’re on the subject, you wanna tell me where the hell you vanished off to last night?!?”
“I went for a walk,” I responded. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Well, you have incredible timing, you know that?”
I exhaled. “I guess so.”
We closed our mouths again and returned to quietly feeling sorry for ourselves. The next time we spoke, it was Gren to break the silence.
“Can I ask you something, Pocket?” he said, surprisingly serious.
“Uh…I guess so. What?”
“Well, I mean, not to get personal or anything, but if we’re going to die soon, anyway—“
“Jesus, Gren!”
“Fine, fine! Sorry! But I was just wondering…um…what were you going to do if you found Kitt?”
I thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know.”
“Were you going to kill him?”
I paused. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Really?” I didn’t answer, so Gren pushed on. “I thought the two of you were pretty good friends.”
“So did I.”
He didn’t take the subject any further. Still, I felt that he owed me an answer in return.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“Who’s Kari?”
He paused for way more than a minute, but at last gave me the truth.
“My daughter.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
And I left it at that. The voyage continued on its way, as two, tired men kept company with their own self-pity.
“Gren?” I asked.
“What?”
“Was I asleep for awhile?”
“A pretty long time.”
“That didn’t upset you, did it?”
“Why would it?”
“Well, because I could’ve, you know, seemed dead.”
“Oh,” Gren said. “No, corpses usually don’t snore as much as you.”
I frowned beneath my burlap veil and shut my eyes once more.
“Just perfect.”
The day rolled on and at last we stopped moving. A few sets of hands clawed at me and Gren. We were lifted and led blind into some sort of shelter.
“Don’t try to run,” one of the Motorists commanded.
“Where would we go, genius?” Gren retaliated. I heard a soft thudding sound followed by my friend moaning in pain.
Not off to a grand start.
I was then tied to something cold and wooden. I didn’t speak a word to my captors, waiting instead for them to make the next move. I had to play things right, I knew, if I was to have any chance at getting out alive, and Gren was already setting the wrong tempo.
Not that I was blaming him.
Hell, I was on the verge of joining in. But I fought myself down. I kept my temper in check and my mouth shut.
I heard someone approach, and at last, the potato sack was ripped from my head. I cringed and blinked as bright light flooded my vision.
“Where the hell did you take us?” I heard Gren ask as my eyes watered over.
“Not important,” someone said.
The first things I noticed when my sight worked itself out were stones. They were stacked high into a sturdy wall that curved around the scene. I was being held in some sort of circular room. Daylight spilt in between the cracks of the stone wall, confirming my suspicion that the night had indeed passed. As I said, the room was bright, though not from the risen sun. A rigged line of lanterns, ten or twenty, maybe, had been strewn about. The cold wood I was tied against was a post that supported the ceiling above me. I caught notice of a small staircase in the distance that spiraled up the curved wall to the space above the ceiling. Was I in some sort of basement?
There was also a very faint, but very constant, sound of grinding.
Most important of all, I saw that directly across from me in this makeshift prison there stood a small pair of tables, and upon them sat all of my and Gren’s belongings. They were each neatly positioned and spaced out, like pieces of evidence to be presented in court. All seemed accounted for, from my ridiculous bottle of faerie juice to Gren’s equally ridiculous Tesla scattergun.
And then there was the turnkey.
Were I still able to feel any corner of my stomach, it would have turned at that moment.
The Motorists were lounging about the room. Their eyes and teeth were all set upon me like sharp-headed spears poised to run me through. Controlling my temper was suddenly more of a great chore.
“So, boys,” one of the Motorists said, stepping forward from the others, “how ‘bout we have a little sit down and talk?”
“Sure,” said Gren, who was bound to another support post beside me. “Hard to sit with the ropes, though. You go ahead and untie us, give me back my gun, and we’ll make a day of it.”
The Motorist responded with an elbow to Gren’s chin. My friend grimaced and spat a little blood.
“You’re in no spot to be an ass, Spader,” the man pointed out, his grey eyes matching the tone of threat in his words, “so shut your mouth.”
It would be easy for me to characterize the men who held us in confinement as monsters, some grotesque mob of slack-jawed hulks with more muscle than mind doing the work for some larger, unseen villain. In truth, they were more or less the opposite. A little brawnier than me and Gren, sure, but apart from that and a spotty coat of engine grease upon their collective skin, they seemed altogether typical. And that is what really appalled me. You see, monsters make easy villains. They need no real justification for their actions, no reason to be evil. They just are. The Motorists weren’t monsters. They were just opportunists, a pack of cheats selling themselves out to the heaviest purse. And now they were in the King’s pocket. Why? Because they could work a wrench and not ask any questions.
“Scruples and those guys just don’t get along,” Gren had once told me in the aftermath of our first encounter with the Motorists. And of course, he was right. This lot would cannibalize an innocent woman in broad daylight for the right price. I knew this because I had seen them try.
But despite all of this, I still made one desperate attempt to appeal to the humanity of the man before me, hoping that locked up somewhere inside of my captor was something I could reason with.
“Listen,” I calmly said to the Motorist, “I know what you’re doing isn’t personal, and I can understand why you’d want to keep faithful to the monarchy. We’re all children of Britain here. But if I could just explain to you—“
“Can you pay more?”
“Than the King? Of course not!”
“Then shut your mouth.”
So much for humanity.
“You okay, Pocket?” Gren whispered. I looked at him, and saw at last what he had endured the night before. His eyes were blued and swollen. Dried blood caked over wounds upon his cheeks and upper lip. The fire in me grew hotter. I clenched my hands into fists. They shook in their bindings behind my back. Gren’s eyes widened as I stared at him, as if he was looking at a stranger wearing my skin.
“Now then,” the pacing Motorist spoke, “where shall we begin?”
Neither of us spoke. The other Motorists giggled. I think they were glad we had decided to make the interrogation difficult. I remember one of them clutching a bit of chain and stroking it like it was some woman’s flowing locks.
The bearded man in the suspenders, however, surprised me by not sharing his cohorts’ gleeful bloodlust. He scowled at the men and clucked his tongue.
“Why don’t you louts go upstairs for awhile?” he grumbled.
“Why the hell should we?” one barked. “We want good seats for the show.”
They bickered for a bit, but the bearded Motorist eventually won out. The others skulked their way up the staircase, shooting me and Gren devious looks and murmuring to themselves.
“There,” the remaining captor said once the three of us were alone, “now I can think straight.”
He took a deep breath, crossed his arms, and sat down on the edge of one of the tables that held our belongings. He glanced at my coat, which had been taken and folded into a square on the table. The Motorist fished a purple cigarette from my coat pocket and took out a lighter.
“Mind if I swipe one of these, gents?” he laughed. I gnashed my teeth. I know the ridiculous offerings of a mindless Frenchman should not have meant a thing to me, but as the man put the cigarette to his lips, I felt greatly insulted. Before he lit the thing, though, the Motorist grimaced.
“Ug!” he said, spitting the cigarette to the floor. “Damn thing tastes like garbage!”
I watched as he grinded his heel onto it, leaving my gift as little more than a pathetic, purple lump.
The next thing he did was look over his shoulder and pick up my bottle of faerie juice.
“Heh,” he said, swirling the bottle’s contents in his hand. “So whose is this?”
“Mine,” I replied.
“You, Pocket?” the Motorist said, looking me over. “That surprises me. I didn’t think you were the type for this sort of…eh…recreation.” He read the bottle’s tag and laughed. “Faerie juice,” he said. “That’s funny. And five pence?” He took a grimy coin from the grimy pocket of his grimy pants and flicked it at me. “You’ve got a sale.”
I looked down at the coin as it bounced and came to rest on the stone floor before me.
“You two are being quiet,” the Motorist then said. “See, that’s a problem for me. Makes it harder to get what I’m looking for.”
“And what’s that?” Gren muttered.
“Answers, Spader. Good, solid, to-the-point answers.”
“You’re wasting your time then. We’ve got none. And even if we did, do you really think we’d play nice and share? Go to Hell.”
A very tense moment followed. I was fairly certain that Gren was about to receive another hard elbow to the face, but instead the Motorist calmly smiled and set my bottle aside. He reached for something else on the table behind him. The Half-Luck. Calmly, he stood up and blew a little dust off of the weapon.
“This yours, Spader?” he asked, inspecting the scattergun.
“Yeah,” Gren replied.
“Is it loaded?”
“See for yourself.”
“I’m asking you.”
“No,” Gren said, “it’s not loaded.”
“Really?” the Motorist said, walking over to us. “So you don’t have any problem with me doing this?”
He pressed the barrels to Gren’s throat and cocked the gun.
“Nope,” Gren said. “No problem here.”
The Motorist bristled and the two locked eyes.
“There’s a price on your friend, Spader,” our captor spoke.
“I’m aware,” Gren snarled.
“But you’re not worth a penny to me.”
“Good. I hate the attention.”
“Gren,” I cut in.
“No, no,” Gren replied. “Don’t interrupt. This ass was telling me just how worthless my lousy skin is to—“
“Gren, shut up!” I interrupted, getting annoyed with this little stand-off. “You, Motorist, if you have questions, start asking them.”
The brute eyed me. He then actually lowered the gun and turned his attention my way.
“You better not try to feed me lies,” he warned.
“Am I in any place to lie?” I muttered, fury building just below my tongue. It was all I could do to keep it down, to swallow the fire.
“Fine,” the Motorist said. “First question. Who are you?”
“Will Pocket,” I said. “I thought you already knew—“
“Of course, I know that,” he spat. “I mean, who are you?”
“I…I don’t follow.”
“Come on, let’s not play this game. You know what we want, why we’re all wasting time here.”
“You want what I found in that basement,” I said. “The Doll.” The words stung as they slid between my teeth.
“What you took,” he clarified. “What you stole. Doll or whatever you want to call it, it’s what you put your hands on and ran out with. So I’ll ask you again. Who are you, Mister Pocket?”
I could only shrug. “Nobody.”
“Nobody,” he repeated. “A nobody who prowls around watch shops?”
“No. I just…I don’t expect you to believe me, but…I just happened to end up there.”
“In that basement?”
“In that basement.”
“By chance?”
“Pure chance.”
“You’re right, Pocket,” the Motorist said. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t…I don’t have another story to tell you.”
“Oh, of course not. No, you wouldn’t have any more stories,” the man mocked, taking my old calling card from the other possessions on the table. “Bard of New London, it says. Wouldn’t expect a bard to know any stories, would I?”
I was so full of contempt I could barely breathe. I wanted the man’s life, wanted to feel his blood on my hands. He must’ve picked up on this because he slapped the card back onto the table and marched up to me, inches away from my face, put on an ugly scowl, and shifted to a more direct approach.
“What is your involvement with the King’s affairs?” he demanded. “What are you trying to accomplish?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I have no issue with the Crown.”
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
“So you just walked away with that device for the hell of it?”
“I walked away with her because she wanted to see more of this world than a dusty basement. Call her a device again and I’ll hand-deliver your lifeless head to the King myself!”
The man took a step back. A thin smile came upon him, and he chortled.
“Well, now!” he laughed. “We are at last getting somewhere!”
“Pocket, let it go,” Gren muttered.
“So you have a few sore nerves in ya,” the Motorist continued, “don’t ya, bard? Got a little soft spot for the clock girl, eh? Hell, if that’s your problem, I’ve got a motorbike with a nicely-curved backside. Tell me what I want and I’ll give ya twenty minutes alone with it. You can pretend it’s any woman you like.”
I threw my head down,
shut my eyes, and ordered myself not to scream.
“You listening to me, boy?” the Motorist shouted. “I’m talking to you!”
“Leave him alone, you bastard!” Gren snapped. “I’m getting really sick of your mouth!”
“And I’m getting sick of yours, Spader! Right now, I’m talking to your friend. You have a problem with that, I’ll close your mouth for good!”
Gren backed down. I started to shake, completely lost in my own emotions.
“Look at me,” I heard the Motorist whisper. I slowly opened my eyes and saw him again very close to my face. His eyes cut holes in me. “Look, boy,” he said, just above a hush, “you’re killing yourself for no reason. That thing you found, it ain’t real. Just another wind-up toy in a cute package.”
Still shaking, I met his eyes with my own. They stung and began to water over. Carefully, angrily, quietly, I spoke to him.
“You will never in your life hold even the slightest understanding of what is real. And that is why you are a waste.”
That got to him. With a coarse shout, he began beating me, pumping his fists into my side with reckless abandon. He was a maniac, swearing in tune with his blows as I gagged and yelped. Gren thrashed and screamed at him to stop, but that only encouraged him. Finally, the enraged Motorist backed off and, moving to the back tables, clutched the Doll’s turnkey in his fist.
“Is this real, then?!?” he bellowed, pointing it at me. “Is this your goddamned beloved?!?”
Aching as I was, my tone was steady. “You…put…that…down!”
“What’s the matter, Pocket?!?” he sneered. “Too jealous to see another bloke put his hands on your woman?” To mock me, he made a great show of stroking his fingers up and down the length of the turnkey. “Ah, yeah. Look at that, boy! How happy I’d bet she’ll be!”
“I am going to kill you!” I erupted, at last unable to take anymore. “I swear on my life, I am going to take you to Hell with my own hands!”
In response, the Motorist swung the Doll’s turnkey like a club and bashed me upside the head.
“Fiend!” Gren boiled.
“Did that hurt, Pocket?” the Motorist cackled. “Did your lover’s touch sting? Well, don’t blame me. She’s the one who struck you.”
Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Page 53