Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “No,” I babbled. “No, no, no, no.”

  “Mister Pocket! Hurry!”

  I turned back to Quill and saw that a rope ladder was now hanging down from above the broken ceiling, thrown by the pirate queen. It extended down past Quill's feet and rolled along the floor.

  “Where did...” I started, dizzily trailing off.

  “Come on!” Quill urged, grabbing a rung and hoisting her weight onto the ladder. “Climb!”

  I watched as she scampered up a few feet into the air. I then looked back at our crumbling barricade. A face squeezed itself against a splintery hole and locked eyes with me.

  “There!” the face yelled. “The outlaw Pocket is inside!”

  “Sensei, please!” Quill shouted.

  My body snapped into motion, as if breaking from some sleepy spell, and I hurried over to the rope ladder. I clutched the rungs and began to awkwardly climb. I had barely started to ascend when I felt the entire ladder begin to move.

  “Eh?!?” I said, gripping onto my perch. “What's happening?”

  “Hold on!” Quill called out from above me.

  “Wait, no!”

  But my protests held little weight as I realized that Madame B wasn't content to wait for us to climb up into the safety of the ship. Time was precious, so she wasn’t going to waste it. With a slightly horrifying start, she began flying, moving, forward and upward, and we had no choice but to ride along behind her, dangling like a kite tail in the sky.

  I clung tightly to the pegs as the steamship pulled us up and out through the shattered skylight. As we swept over the roof of the library, I looked down in alarm to find the entire building swarming with militia like hungry ants out for fallen morsels. Oh, but we weren’t fallen yet.

  I remember faint choruses of outbursts that sounded almost like a battle song as the hungry ants started firing into the sky. They filled not only the building but the streets outside, and they hurried to race after us as we flew, some on foot, others perched on open carriages or motorbikes. Our ride kept climbing skyward, but the ladder where I hung was so long that we remained always just in reach to catch a well-fired bullet. The rope ladder tossed and twisted, and I put every ounce of energy into keeping upon it. It wasn’t easy, however. My feet, heavy with the bulky weight of my boots, fumbled and swayed as we ascended. They were pulling me down.

  “Quill!” I yelled to the girl a few rungs ahead of me. “Any chance that the Priest rigged some sort of hidden propulsion device into these boots?”

  “Don’t be silly!” she shouted back. “That wouldn’t make any sense!”

  “Well, I could be in trouble here, is all!”

  “Just keep hanging on!” she pleaded as the steamship swung us away from a fresh round of gunfire.

  I clutched my teeth and locked my elbow over the peg, but I was beginning to buckle under the strain.

  No choice, I thought to myself, and began shaking the weighty metal from my left foot.

  My timing proved surprisingly perfect, however, for as the heavy boot slid from my leg, another cluster of angry troops filled the street below. And then…whack! The blunt, golden mass fell off of me and knocked two soldiers flat! My right boot then dropped, sending the troops scattering for cover. Newly unencumbered, I took a breath and rested my aching legs back on the slender perch.

  “What was that noise?” Quill shouted down to me.

  And I’m proud to say that, despite the dizzy terror, my mind came up with a witty response about shedding away the weight of gold and sin, but I never got to say it because we almost slammed into an oncoming chimney.

  “AAAAAAH!” I announced.

  “AAAAAAH!” the girl above me agreed.

  The rope ladder whipped and swung as Quill and I filled the sky with our song of absolute terror.

  “For God’s sake,” I yelled up to her, “tell B to land down somewhere!”

  “She can’t hear me from here!” she retaliated. “I’d have to climb inside!”

  “Then move your feet and get into the bloody ship!” I snarled, my sour tone surprising even me.

  “I’m sorry!” she whined. “I’m scared!”

  “Quill, it’s just a few rungs! Please try!”

  “All…all right!” she said, nervously taking a shaky step upward.

  “Yes!” I encouraged. “There you go!”

  She climbed up a bit more.

  “Almost there, sensei!” she stated.

  “You can do it, Quill! I believe in—”

  At that point, a stray bullet whizzed just above my head and split one of the upper rungs in half. I gasped and flailed, all but falling to my demise.

  “Mister Pocket!” Quill shouted as we passed over a set of flat rooftops. “Are you still down there?”

  I had an idea. As the wind whipped against my face, I squinted and set my gaze on a particularly tall and steady-looking roof we were approaching.

  “Quill, listen to me!” I called out. “You still have the address on you, correct?”

  “Of course!” she responded.

  “Do you remember on what street the abbey resides?”

  “Pockswick!” she shouted. “Towards the end of Pockswick Lane!”

  “All right!” I yelled as the desired flattop grew closer. “Tell the Madame to hurry ahead to the Doll. Waiting on me will only slow things down.”

  And then, I remember it as clearly as anything, Miss Quill, no, Miss Elle Celeste actually turned her neck and looked upon my dangling form with scared, almost childlike eyes.

  “What do you mean, ‘waiting on you?’” she asked.

  I met her face and shrugged. I followed it with a lighthearted smirk to calm her. Then, at just the proper moment, I loosened my fingers from the peg.

  The steamship sailed onward as I let go and fell to the earth.

  No, no, wait. That was too much of a poet’s line. By fell to the earth, I mean that I landed on the coarse but even roof directly below the flight.

  And I landed hard.

  I coughed and grimaced, trying greedily to reclaim some of that precious air that had just been knocked out of me. I got up and winced, feeling a new knot on my shoulder the size of a small apple. Not the last mark my flesh would receive that night, but…heh, well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  I stood up and purposely made a stand without betraying any emotion. As the flying ship sailed away from my perch, I caught Quill’s eyes once more. The childlike stare had been replaced with a stonier, more knowing look of acknowledgment. She nodded and bravely climbed rung after rung until she disappeared up into the body of the pirates’ grand mechanical bird.

  I stood a moment and watched the ship slide away from me. As luck had it, the pursuing troops continued to chase the ship, showing no sign of acknowledging my plummet in the dark. The steamship was heading to the horizon, toward the shadows of some of the tallest buildings in New London, scarcely visible despite the moon’s fairly present glow. Which one, I wondered, held the Doll inside? Which shadow contained my last hope for reunion? And what would await me when I found it? The socked toes of my left foot curled around a slick, roundish marble that nested underneath. I knocked it away.

  Pockswick Lane, I reminded myself.

  And then I dropped again, succumbing at last to the physical and mental exhaustion that had been building since my night began. I curled up on the hard and rock-strewn surface, just for a few precious moments, and pretended that was it some lush, luxurious bed of feathers. I almost caught myself closing my eyes, but my spirit wouldn’t have it. Now was certainly not the time to sleep, and besides, I had just rested for days upon days. How lazy could a man be?

  “Okay,” I whispered, “keep your mind on the moment. The pirates might get to her before the sun, but they’re being pursued, so don’t count on that. You could still have a shot though, Pocket, if no one saw you fall here. The Magnates will be chasing steamships instead of looking on roofs. Now climb down.”

  I surveyed my options. Unfo
rtunately, there were few. There was no direct access into the building from atop and no ledges, sills, or poles connected to the below levels. Jumping was out of the question if I wanted to keep my skeleton completely functional, and shouting for help would be, for obvious reasons, inadvisable.

  So what was left? Anxiously, I looked over the side once more.

  Ah!

  A familiar streak of tarnished metal lined the corners of the edifice, held in place by thick, oversized bolt-heads.

  Yes, much like the ones I had attempted to climb, incredibly unsuccessfully, the night I met Kitt.

  “It's a size issue,” he had said. “These bolts, they get a little smaller the higher you climb. Biggest ones are at the base.”

  I lifted my leg over the side and saw that the closest bolt was indeed dwarfed by my long foot. I chewed on my lip and threw the rest of my body over the side. What followed was a bumpy, scraping, cursing, fumbling trip to the street below that somehow ended without me cracking my head open.

  Shaking and white as I finally reached the ground, I looked around in the dark for witnesses. There seemed to be none, so I took a breath and carried on.

  And then I saw the beggar. He was just sitting there, wrapped and half-concealed in old linens, against an opposite wall.

  “Hello there,” I stupidly spoke, removing my hat and awkwardly scratching above my ear. “You, uh, you didn’t pay attention to any of that, did you?”

  The beggar shrugged and then opened his palm at me.

  “Oh,” I bumbled, “I, um, I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to offer. I mean, I would offer, of course, but at the moment, well, as you can see, I’m hard-pressed for even a pair of shoes.”

  I wiggled my toes for effect.

  The stranger curled his finger at me, requesting that I approach. I chose to respectfully decline, instead hurrying away.

  “Sorry!” I called back to him. “Don’t really have the time!”

  “Pocket,” the beggar spoke. I stopped in my tracks.

  “I think you have me mistaken for somebody else.”

  “Pocket.”

  “Look,” I said, turning back to the stranger. “I—”

  I stopped when I saw that the beggar was now wielding a long and shiny weapon that had seemingly materialized out of the air. I slowly raised my hands in surrender.

  “So…” I bumbled, “…what…uh…what’s that you’ve got there?”

  “It’s called a repeating rifle.”

  “I see. Very frightening.”

  “Pocket.”

  “Although if you’re trying to frighten me, let me just say that I am made of harder stuff than that.”

  The beggar clucked his tongue and shook his head. “You really still are such a terrible liar.”

  Taking one hand off of his weapon, the stranger slowly reached up and pulled back the dirty hood that was concealing his face. He made a smug little smile framed by the red hairs of his goatee.

  “Priest?!?” I exclaimed, wide-eyed.

  “Hello, hello again, Pocket,” he said, dropping his aim and leaning on his rifle like it was a walking stick.

  I was again full of questions, but startled and therefore unable to properly voice them.

  “What…what are you…why did you aim a gun at me?!?” I bumbled.

  “You wouldn’t stop and talk to me.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you were, I don’t know, trying to blackmail me for your silence or something.”

  “Because I watched you climb down a building?”

  “Yes…or rather…not just that, but…well, I don’t know! I’m a little on edge! Every other person’s been trying to kill me tonight and you sneak up with a bloody rifle! Where were you even hiding that thing?”

  “In these robes. They’re deceptively loose down the sides.”

  “Well…all right…but…” I took a moment and tried to arrange a proper sentence. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Jack told me what was happening. Thought you might come into some trouble, so I came to watch. With my gun.”

  “I see.”

  “How was the library?”

  “Horrible.”

  I explained what had transpired. The chase. The bullet fire. The kite tail escape. All of it.

  “I see,” the Red Priest said, stroking his beard. “At least you're looking well.”

  I let out a sour laugh. “Well, I'm not filled with holes, if that's what you mean.”

  He shrugged. The ginger-haired sky sailor then looked at my feet and made a sad smile.

  “So you didn't like them, eh?” he said.

  “Like what?” I asked, glancing at my toes. “Oh. You mean the boots.”

  “Too heavy?” he guessed. “Too difficult on the legs?”

  “No, no, not at all. I just—”

  “Too flashy, then? What with all of that sparkling metal?”

  “No, they weren't gaudy, at least not to me.”

  “Uncomfortable?”

  “Really, Priest, there wasn't a thing wrong with them.”

  “So you just didn't take to them. That's fair. You're entitled to your opinions.”

  “No, believe me! I was wearing them! Quite a bit, actually. I just happened to lose them, by pure accident, when—“

  “You tired of them and lost interest? I understand. No hard feelings.”

  I gave up and slumped over, too spiritually weak to win a match against the Red Priest's logic.

  “Nevermind,” I exhaled. “I've got more pressing concerns.”

  “I've heard.”

  “I don't suppose you could lend me a little help?”

  He nodded solemnly. “That's why I'm here, right?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don't thank me until we're successful,” he insisted, waving his hands. “Come now. We must be off.”

  “Priest...” I then said to him, my brow dropping over my heavy eyelids, “…did Jack tell you...about Dolly—”

  “Yes,” he said, quite serious. “And that's why we must get moving.”

  “Yeah,” I glumly agreed.

  “Have you figured out where we need to go?”

  “Somewhere on Pockswick Lane. Toward one end of it, I believe.”

  “And before sunrise, correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That's going to be tricky,” he said, clutching a watch that was tucked within his robes, “especially on foot.”

  “Damn! If only I hadn't lost your—” As soon as I spoke those words, a stinging pain of guilt rose up in me. “Oh, and, um, about the Prospero—”

  “Don't worry about that now,” he said. “More pressing concerns, right?”

  Once more, the picture of the Doll consumed my mind.

  “Right.”

  We started sprinting, exchanging tidings and information, recounting escapades, while I collected calluses and blisters in my socks.

  “By the way,” I asked in a huff a few blocks later, “can you tell me what you're planning with all of these black cables?”

  I had expected the captain's typical, mysterious grin in response, but instead he just kept staring down the path ahead.

  “Do you know anything about amplification, Pocket?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, the basic idea is to...hey, are you feeling okay?”

  “Sure,” I lied, wheezing and bathing in my own chilled sweat. “I'm fine.”

  “You don't look it,” he commented. “You're starting to turn a little blue.”

  “That's just an illusion caused by this moonlight. It's colorful.”

  “I don't know. Your cheeks are flushing a pretty bright red.”

  “Well, which is it,” I coughed, “blue or red?”

  “Maybe both,” the Priest said. “Maybe you're purpling.”

  “Purple, eh? Well, at least I'll die with a bit of color.”

  As if serving for a little makeshift foreshadowing, I immediately tripped over a loose brick in the street and nearly f
ell on my face.

  “All right,” the Red Priest said, propping me up. “This isn't working. We need to pursue an alternate means of transportation.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  As chance had it, we soon found an unattended carriage parked under a flickering gas lamp. The pirate alongside me argued that it was absolutely ethically fair for us to borrow the machine because of two key reasons: first, we were taking it solely to respond to a dire emergency, and second, the Priest had left in its place a neatly-bundled stack of notes as compensation, should we, for whatever reason, find ourselves unable to return it.

  The Red Priest took the helm, not about to trust my driving skills to the task at hand.

  I sighed and rested on the overstuffed passenger seat next to him.

  “Do you know how many stolen machines I’ve ridden inside this month?”

  “Not stolen!” he insisted. “This one is only borrowed!”

  “Mmm…” I mumbled with little interest before turning my gaze out the window. “Whichever, then.”

  I’ll skip slightly ahead in the story, as nothing of considerable interest transpired until the man wrapped in cables fell off of a roof and landed on us.

  I had been sitting impatiently idle at the time, trying to distract myself by drawing shapes in the stars.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Me?” the Red Priest replied. “Not a thing.”

  “Oh. Huh. I thought you said ‘look out’ or some such—”

  Crash! Suddenly, the aforementioned man plummeted from above and collided with us. I yelped in startled anger as the fellow landed with a sharp smack into the backseat of our fortunately topless carriage. His grimy boots bumped up against the back of my head.

  At first I was angry. Then I realized that the man was Hack-Jack.

  Then I was furious.

  “Jack?!?” I gasped, knocking his feet away. “What in God’s name do you think you are doing?!?”

  “Oh, hey Pocket,” Jack grinned.

  “Are you completely mad?!?”

  “I’m assuming he didn’t do that intentionally,” the Priest added.

  “Nope!” Jack said, scratching the dust out of his hair. “One wrong step in the dark and suddenly the roof doesn’t feel like being under my foot anymore. Good timing though, catching you boys. A second later and I’d be picking my teeth off of the street right now.” He fumbled about, pulling away the segments of cable around him. “Now, if you could let me out of here, I’d like to go let Gren know I’m not dead.”