Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “An escape?” Quill frowned. “You mean now?”

  “No, in a few years, when we’ve really sat down and worked all of the kinks out. Yes, Quill! Now! Hurry up and follow me!”

  “But what about the address?”

  “I think taking it with us would be the smartest move.”

  “But I haven’t found it yet!”

  I stopped dead. Then, in just the sort of way that the dead might perform such a task, I raised an eyebrow to her.

  “What do you mean, you haven’t?”

  “It’s not in this book.”

  “It’s got to be,” I dumbly argued. “It’s an atlas. World atlas. What I’m looking for is in London, which is in England, which in Europe, which is in the world, so seeing that this is a world atlas, Miss Quill, I will recommend that you look once more!”

  “It’s not there, I tell you!”

  “It’s in the world, isn’t it?!?”

  “Mister Pocket, I’m sorry, but that’s not how atlases work!”

  “You think I don't know how atlases work?!?”

  “Do you?!?”

  “No!” I took a long breath. “Okay, I guess I don't. I'm sorry. Caught up in the moment and all, and...well, we're past it. Now, tell me. Where can we find what we came here for?”

  “Well, it's a local address, Mister Pocket,” Quill said. “The city archives would be the most logical place.”

  “Excellent! Let's find them!”

  “I believe I already have.”

  “More excellent! Where?”

  “Well, there is this guide here,” she noted, pointing to a framed diagram on the wall that dissected the grand library into nicely-labeled rooms, departments, and places of interest. Quill rubbed her lips together and slid her finger across the diagram until landing on the word “ARCHIVES.”

  “Ah,” she smiled. “Right there. Just up the way and across the hall.”

  I clenched a fist in enthusiasm until I slowly felt something horrible poke at my sense of acknowledgment.

  Up the way and across the hall.

  “What's wrong?” Quill asked, reading my change in expression.

  “Well,” I quietly uttered, “I believe I may have just chased our pursuers into exactly where we need to be.”

  The girl's round eyes got somehow rounder, and her pupils shrank away to little dots.

  “Wh-why would you do that, sensei?” she asked.

  “Because, dear Quill,” I said, “there is a fairly strong chance that your sensei is a complete idiot.”

  “Oh,” she said, noticeably not arguing against my self-lobbed insults. “So what can we do?”

  “...well...give me a minute.”

  One minute later.

  Well, five. Five minutes later.

  Probably more. Probably considerably more. I sort of caught a blank in my head and lingered on it for awhile, staring into nothing while trying to form the image of a plan in my mind.

  “Mister Pocket!” Quill eventually spouted.

  “I'm thinking!”

  “We...don't...have...the...time!” she whined.

  “All right. I have an idea.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course,” I lied. “Just, uh, just follow me.”

  We cautiously moved out into the hall and shuffled toward the area in question. I remember consciously controlling my breath as I walked, softly exhaling puffs of spent air while gingerly moving my feet.

  When we got to the archival wing of the library, we saw that the connecting door was still ajar. Quill and I pressed ourselves against the walls upon each side of the doorway and bent ourselves away from the line of sight.

  “What do we do now?” she whispered to me.

  And then...well...a strange moment overcame me. I remember standing there, half-terrified, staring at the girl across from me. She was quivering and looking to me for guidance. And right then, I am ashamed to say, a cruel contemplation wafted into my head. How bad, I asked myself. How bad did I need Dolly? What tactics would I entertain if they would ensure my reunion with the clockwork girl? I had already thrown Eddie to the wolves, and he had just saved my life. But that was different...wasn't it? That was a moment of cowardice...right? The questions plagued me, and all I knew for sure was what I needed.

  I needed an address. And to get that, I needed a distraction. I looked Quill over. She seemed as small as a dormouse in the dark. She looked brave...but frightened. Alert...but overwhelmed. Trusting...but vulnerable.

  I needed a distraction. Something to keep the Magnates busy.

  Bait.

  “Mister Pocket?” Quill whispered to me. “I said, what do we do now?”

  I realized I was looking at the gun I had taken from her bag. I looked up to her and blinked.

  “Se-sensei?” she mouthed. “Are you still with me?”

  I looked again at the gun in my hand, took a deep breath…

  …and handed it to her.

  “Here,” I said softly with a smile. “You should hang onto this. For protection.”

  “I'm not sure I understand,” she whispered.

  One last, heavy breath, and I had my decision. “In a moment, Quill, I am going to reveal myself to the Magnates.”

  “What?!?”

  “I'm going to provoke them, and then I'm going to run like hell. As soon as I've lured them as far out as possible, you get in there, and you find that address. Are we clear?”

  “But you'll be weaponless!”

  “Are...we...clear?”

  Now it was her turn for the deep breaths. “Clear,” she eventually said.

  “Good. Now, I don't know how long I can outrun these apes, so I need you to search as fast as you possibly can.”

  “Got it.”

  “All right,” I said, creeping quietly backward. “Just a moment.”

  I snuck quickly away and returned with a sturdy book nabbed from the first bookcase I’d happened upon.

  “All right,” I announced, wiping the dust from my shoulder with a first edition of Twenty Adventure Stories for Young Boys. “It's time. Go hide somewhere nearby.”

  She nodded and scurried off, finding some unseen hole for cover. “Please be careful, Professor.”

  And then I walked.

  Foot over foot, I stepped rigidly into the city archives with only a single book clenched in my hands. It was pathetically unheroic. The chamber, I remember, was surprisingly bright, as a huge, domed, glass skylight covered the large room, letting my sourly-sweet moonlight drip its way inside.

  The soldiers were all hunched with their backs to me, sniffing under tables and between shelves. I took aim at the broadest, squarest back I could see, and after tightening my throat, I pulled back my arm and heaved the book directly at my target.

  Thwop! The projectile hit the bloke just below the neck and his posture sprung itself into proper form. With some unearthly howl, he twisted his frame around and shook his claws at me.

  “Men!” he yelled. “The boy!”

  I turned on my heels and broke into a run as they made noise and started firing any-and-everywhere.

  “A little loud for a library,” I huffed to myself as I ran headlong down the aisles of the great building.

  It didn't take long for them to get close, with my heavy boots and weak spirit slowing me down. Yet somehow, I managed to keep a few steps ahead. Don't ask me how.

  I ran and ran and ran and ran. It felt like I spent years between the stacks. My eyes soon watered, making each book that lined the library blend into the next. A sharp pain was developing under my ribs like a spreading fire, and I wanted so badly to stop, to lie down.

  But I ran.

  Toward the end of my chase, they were nearly upon me, screaming commands and flinging ammunition. Glancing briefly over my shoulder, I saw shot after shot collide just behind my heels, leaving disfiguring holes in the gorgeous flooring.

  Fortunately, these boys couldn’t maintain the greatest aim while sprinting in the dark.


  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t get lucky.

  Ping! A shot smacked into the thick plating that covered my right heel. I gasped, and the stun of the hit nearly made me trip over myself.

  At this point in the run, I had no true path in mind, so rather than attempt something intelligent like a great sweeping loop back to the city archives, I chose to crash elbows-first through first set of doors I reached.

  Which is an awfully good way to end up trapped at a dead end.

  “Damn it!” I swore as I galloped into a half-circle reading room lit a by a single, skinny window. I hobbled to the glass, sloppy with sweat, and tried madly to break the pane.

  The Magnates soon arrived behind me, and where I had failed in shattering the window, they had quickly succeeded, breaking it with a quick bullet meant for my head.

  I rolled to the side and clung to the wall, certain that each breath I brought into my body would be my last.

  Then, without word or warning, a spinning, shiny blur whizzed into the room from beyond the broken window and lodged itself in a gunman’s forehead. A pitched knife. He shrieked, clutching his bleeding head and dropping down. The attention was instantly off of me as the remaining soldiers turned their guns to the window and pulled on their triggers.

  It was the only opportunity I had, so I broke into a sprint. The fallen man with the split temple was quick, though, grabbing onto my leg as I ran past. I fumbled forward, kicked back, popped the bloke in his jaw, and plunged to the floor.

  “Don’t let him get away!” the knife-headed man screeched as I twisted around on the floor. I looked up and saw the instruments of death in the mob’s hands, saw them drawn again to me. Death was moments and inches away.

  Another blurry blade was launched through the small window. It arced high and severed a cord affixed to the ceiling. Attached to that cord, it is significant to note, was a very large and pointy chandelier.

  “Pocket!” a familiar voice screamed. “Watch out!”

  Doing as commanded, I rolled out to the side just in time to miss the falling, pointy, deadly, and aesthetically-pleasing fixture.

  “Good God!” I yelled, watching the chandelier plow the soldiers into the floor in a most gruesome fashion.

  Completely stunned, I shifted my weight on the floor and felt something crunch beneath my knee. There were little pieces of glass beneath it, but not from the crash.

  These pieces were green.

  I had, in the turmoil, dropped and rolled upon my ridiculous and already-broken eyeglass, reducing it to a little glassy mess that would surely go unnoticed next to the giant, nasty one to my immediate right. I looked once more at the little pieces of green and tried to think of something poignant, but someone was hissing my name.

  “Pocket!” it hissed once more. “You all right in there?”

  The voice was on the opposite side of that knife-vomiting window. I weakly stood and approached the face outside that was attached to the sound.

  “Thank you, B,” I wheezed to the lady in hiding, taking a much needed breath and keeping my eyes off of the twitching pile of soldiers beneath the chandelier.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she countered, peering into the small opening. “More of them are coming.”

  “More?!?”

  “That’s what I said. Your friends on the floor there are just the first round. Those who didn’t barge inside scurried off to get reinforcements.” A faint bit of gunfire barked in the distance. “Aaaaaaand…” B added, “…here they are now.”

  My mind raced so fast that I could feel the sides of my skull pulsing. I gripped the slim window frame with both hands and took a few breaths.

  “All right, Madame,” I spoke, “I want you to get out of here before you’re spotted.”

  “Without you and Quill? How stupid do you think I—”

  “You’re a sitting target here. You’ve gotten lucky so far, but that doesn’t mean you’re invincible.”

  “Oh, you think just because—”

  “Get back to the ship and circle this place from on high. When you see me and Quill get out, for Christ’s sake, be ready to get us onboard.”

  She crossed her arms and made a defiant face.

  “If you have something to say, B, say it,” I growled, “because I don’t have time for this.”

  The pirate queen bit down on her lip as if actually trying to keep her sharp tongue within her.

  “Fine,” she said at last. “All right, fine. Just promise me you won’t get shot.”

  “I won’t if you won’t.”

  “Deal.”

  We parted ways and I hurried back toward the city archives, and upon reaching my destination, I hastily swung open the door.

  “Quill! I—”

  “AH!” she screamed, firing bullets toward me.

  “Whoa, whoa! Stop! Quill! It’s me! It’s Pocket!”

  “Mister Pocket?” she shivered, slinking into my field of vision. “My God! I am so sorry!”

  “It’s all right. No damage done.”

  “The other men…are they…coming back here?”

  “No,” I said, catching yet another breath, “but their friends are.”

  “Their friends?”

  “Reinforcements. They’re on the way.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m glad that you do,” I said, wiping away a bit of sweat with my cuff. “So please tell me that you’ve found our address.”

  “I have!” Quill announced, her face glowing. “Took a little bit, but I absolutely—”

  “All right. Come with me, then.”

  “Wait, wait. I need something to copy the address upon.”

  “Just tear out the page. We’re in a hurry.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Quill—”

  “I can’t defile a book, just like that! Books are wonderful creations! They’re the collected thoughts, words, and expressions of the world, of the human experience! Surely as a writer, you can understand.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled, rummaging through my coat. I found a folded square of parchment with some old, silly poem jotted on it and handed it over. “Write on this.”

  She looked baffled, delicately touching the paper.

  “But…Mister Pocket,” she said, “don’t you need this?”

  “I need Dolly!” I exclaimed, staring her down. She looked into my eyes with nervous comprehension.

  “I…understand,” she meekly nodded.

  She silently picked up an ink pen left on a nearby desk and transcribed as I tried to assemble our escape plan.

  “All right...” I mumbled, pacing back and forth, “…maybe this place has a back exit or something. Some way to get out other than the front do—”

  I heard shouts and crashes from somewhere not far enough for comfort. Quill gasped and my stomach turned over. They had arrived sooner than I had expected. I hurriedly shut the door to the archives and began pushing every piece of furniture I could move in front of it.

  “Nightmare…” I groaned, slowly shuffling a short shelf heavy with collected volumes of newsprint from London's past. “This is...a nightmare.”

  Quill, finished with her work, grabbed desk lamps and chairs, anything her small hands could seize, and assisted me. In a very short time, we had a decent barrier, and sitting down before it, we listened to the footsteps of the soldiers echo through the building. I wasn't sure, but it sounded like they were a much larger mob than the one that had previously pursued us.

  “Well,” I said quietly to Quill, dropping my head in my hands, “that's it. We're done for. Cornered. It's only a matter of time before they find us, and we have nowhere to run.”

  “We mustn't give up hope, Mister Pocket!” she said back.

  “Hope's a tease, Quill. I should've dumped it off somewhere years ago.”

  “Come now, please! Don't say things like that! The Madame's still out there, after all. She'll think of something.”

  “Hmph,” I said, glaring up and again
noticing the large skylight that comprised most of the ceiling above. “Something like what?”

  Quill also looked up, and glancing over, I saw her smirk.

  “Something like that,” she said, spotting at a shape in the sky I hadn't yet noticed.

  “What?”

  To answer my question, a great, rumbling chug-chug-chug sung out above me. I looked up once more just as a large, lumpy…something began to materialize just outside of the glass ceiling. Even with the moon above, the night was too dark for me to see anything but a silhouette of what was looming in the air, but it was close enough to the skylight to cast a reflection of its general shape.

  It looked like a steamship.

  “See?” Quill exclaimed, jumping back to her feet and waving to the shadow in the sky. “She's found us! She's flown about and she's found us!”

  “Are you sure? It could be our enemy’s.”

  “No, no, I’m certain!”

  I stood and squeezed my eyes at the ship I couldn't quite see. I smiled a little, but I wasn't ready to give hope another chance just yet.

  “All right, so she's found us,” I said, “but what does that change? We're still trapped. All she's achieved is a nice spot to float and watch us get eventually gunned down.”

  “You don't give the lady enough credit,” Quill argued. “By the way, I'd take a step back.”

  “Why?”

  And then we received Madame B's response, which was about what one following this story should come to expect from her by now. A piercing, ear-crunching noise filled my already-noise-weary ears, and what followed was a falling rain of glass.

  The skylight had shattered, and falling through its fresh, jagged hole, was some sort of metal canister. It struck the floor with a great clang, coming to rest on its side.

  “Is this how a modern pirate drops anchor?” I dryly asked, walking over and kicking the canister.

  “Seems so,” Quill replied.

  The breaking of the glass, as expected, alerted the attention of the pursuing soldiers, and it wasn't long before we were met with a banging, driving force at our reinforced door. Gunfire popped through the wood of the door and the surrounding wall, followed by growling threats. I realized they weren't simply trying to break into the room to reach us. They were trying to break through it.