Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “Complications, what does that mean?”

  “It’s okay,” Gren said to me. “We’re close now. Damn close. We can get to Dolly before daybreak.”

  “Exactly,” B agreed.

  But I wasn’t satisfied, and after taking a dry, drawn-out breath, I spoke.

  “Madame, can I speak with you in private for a moment?”

  “Oh!” Gren said. “So I’m not interesting enough to—”

  “Not now, Gren. Madame?”

  She seemed surprised. “Sure,” B replied. “Lead the way.”

  I marched her around the corner and leaned impatiently against a brick wall as she stretched her arms.

  “All right, bard,” she said. “Start talking. Make it fast, though. A ship parked in the street’s going to attract us some—”

  “Did you or did you not get to that cathedral?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Yes, Pocket. We did.”

  “Then where’s Dolly? Why didn’t you pick her up?”

  “We tried. Made a sweep over the roof, didn’t see her. Would’ve searched further, but we couldn’t land.”

  “Why not?”

  “Complications.”

  “You keep saying that! Specifics, B!”

  “Look, don’t wor—”

  “To Hell with your ‘don’t worry!’ I didn’t bring you here to discuss my bloody emotional state! I want answers! Cold, simple answers! So you tell me what happened and you tell me now!”

  “Excuse me! I don’t know who you think you’re speaking to—”

  “I’m speaking to the woman who had better start talking fast!”

  “Or else what?” she snarled, reaching for yet another knife in her seemingly-endless collection. In anger, I countered, reaching for the pistol Gren loaned me, and we were soon at a standoff, her blade to my chest and my barrel to her throat. We held the tableau for a minute before B broke the silence.

  “This how you conduct yourself around a lady?”

  “If I have to,” I muttered. “Start talking.”

  She sighed and dropped the knife. “You always have to be so dramatic, don’t you? Fine. We were spotted before we could land, all right?”

  “Spotted?”

  “By a government ship.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me.”

  “So what? You just turned and ran off?!?”

  She stamped her foot at me. “What would you have had us do, Pocket? Risk killing ourselves in the process of retrieving her?”

  “Yes!” I bellowed. “If you had a chance to get in there and find her, nay, save her, then I say damn the risks! Instead, you ran! You. Ran. B! I would think that if Dolly’s at stake, then—”

  “Then I don’t think leading the King’s forces right to her would be the best idea, now would it?!?”

  I looked away from her and just scowled.

  “I know how you’re feeling, you damned idiot!” B continued. “Do you think any of us, any of us, would be out here tonight if we didn’t?!? You think you’re the only head on the chopping block?!? Like it or not, you aren’t in this alone anymore, and you have to deal with things a little more carefully! If not, you’re just going to end up wearing a hell of a lot more of that red slop. You understand?”

  I sighed and looked again at my toes. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

  Smack! The girl arched up on her tiptoes and slapped something flat against my forehead with her palm. She slid her palm away, and that flat little something remained, a rectangle stuck in place by the sweat of my skin. I peeled it off, but didn’t look at it.

  “Tarot, eh?” I whispered. I tucked it away in my coat with all the other pieces of my travels. “Have I started looking like one of your victims, lady?”

  B turned her back to me. “You’re damn close. Keep acting like an ass and watch. You’ll end up just as dead.”

  The card felt like it was burning in my pocket.

  “Well, I’ll hang onto it then,” I said. “In the end, I’d rather have a card of yours on my brow than a set of pennies on my eyes.”

  The lady shook her head. “So bloody dramatic,” she griped, again facing me. “Come on. We need to get going.”

  I took in a little more air to stall the future a moment more.

  “Right,” I ultimately said.

  “I know I’m right. Go on. Move those socks.”

  We rejoined the others, and my friends took their places within the flying machine.

  “So,” B smiled, leaning out of the open hatch, “would you like a ride to the cathedral?”

  I was tempted, but politely declined.

  “There’s enough time to get there on foot. You need to get them out of the city right away. I’m not risking any more captures.”

  “Are you sure? What happened to ‘damn the risks?’”

  I shrugged. “Don’t remember saying that. You probably overheard some more stubborn ass. Besides, I don’t think the Doll would forgive me if I traded you for her.”

  Madame B stretched over and punched me softly in the arm. “You go get your girl, all right?”

  “I will.”

  “Please be careful, sensei!” Quill shouted from inside.

  “I promise.”

  “Damn right, you promise!” B added, sliding back inside the craft.

  The door began to shut when I stuck my head in for one last question.

  “Tell me, Miss B,” I said, “what exactly is the captain hoping to accomplish when the sun rises?”

  “Oh, you’ll see,” the pirate queen responded, shooing me out. “You’ll see.”

  Another round of goodbyes, another ship full of faces to float away into the clouds. The sky was lit with an early blue glow, but the moon still remained, however slightly.

  “You ready for this?” Gren asked, the last one remaining at my side.

  “Ready as ever.”

  “Still got some fire in that pistol?”

  “A little. Your rifle?”

  “A little.”

  Gren then jogged to the abandoned carriage and brought back that damn, bludgeon-hungry cannonball.

  He handed me it and I clutched the sling.

  “For insurance,” he said, “or maybe luck.”

  I moved my wrist and spun the heavy object around in a small loop.

  “Let’s go, Gren.”

  The Bluebird Abbey.

  It was just over a block away, and as we arrived in the empty courtyard, I was happy to find that the dead soldier with the split throat was still lying in the open doorway.

  “Guess that means reinforcements haven’t arrived,” I breathed.

  “Why?” Gren asked.

  “Well, I imagine that the King’s militia would’ve collected their dead.”

  “Don’t give them too much credit, Pocket.”

  Gren kicked the body off to the side and we entered the church, carefully closing the heavy doors behind us. The room was breathtaking, tall and sweeping and painted with the long windows of colored glass that had so captivated Dolly. An ornate confessional dipped in cast-iron stood at the opposite end of the room.

  There was, however, no sign of the Doll. Or any of the clergy. Or anyone else. I dropped my wrapped cannonball on the nearest pew and hurried through the space.

  “Dolly?” I called out, my tattered voice echoing through the rafters. “Dolly, are you here?”

  “Uh…Pocket…” Gren uttered.

  I looked at him and he pointed at one of the many panes of stained glass. Small pockets of light were starting to shine through.

  “The sun,” I frowned. “Gren, get outside! Watch the roof while I search in here!”

  “All right.”

  “Dolly!” I shouted. “Dolly, can you hear me?!?”

  “Mister Pocket?”

  My body became stone.

  “Did…did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Gren asked, pausing at the doors.

  “I thought…I thought I heard—“<
br />
  My concentration and the colored glass over Gren’s head suddenly shattered as a small projectile ripped loudly through the mural, reducing it to scrap. The piece, a smallish iron ball, fell to the floor with a strong smell of what seemed to be gunpowder.

  Click-clack-click.

  There was an odd bit of turning gearwork attached to the sphere that appeared to be moving a small, sparking flame down into the shell of the device at a deliberate, measured speed.

  “Get down!” Gren screamed, dropping his gun and scooping up the smoking projectile. “It’s a timed grenade!”

  He pitched the ball back into the air, and it was barely out of his fingers when it erupted into a cloud of fire. Metal shrapnel bounced in all directions, and as I dove for cover, a razor-sharp piece caught me on the cheek. The quiet that followed was an unnerving one.

  “Pocket!” I heard Gren shout a moment later. “Are you okay?”

  “Y-yeah…” I exhaled, shaken, “…I think so. How about you?”

  “Think so.”

  I slowly got up and crossed to him. “What…what’s going on?”

  I’ll never forget the sickly way his cheeks fell when I asked that.

  “I think we’ve been found,” Gren said.

  The large, heavy doors were knocked open like they were made of paper, and a line of militiamen filed inside. They didn’t waste time with words.

  As I stood there…

  …well…

  Thinking back, I have to laugh.

  Because I hadn’t any words either.

  I remember, while entering what I was certain was to be my final chapter, everything became reduced to just…

  …colors.

  The line of Magnates was a just a hard, rigid slab of grey. The top of the abbey, a broken sky of blue, yellow, purple. My friend Spader, a furious orange fire. And myself…

  …well…

  I suppose I wasn’t paying attention.

  I took a slow, deliberate breath into my nose.

  The room smelled too sterile.

  I didn’t like it.

  The soldiers raised their guns.

  “Hey Gren.”

  “What is it, partner?”

  “I was just thinking that I hate the smell of this place.”

  Gren laughed.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Too churchy.”

  “Smells like soap and dust.”

  “And a little old blood.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, glancing down at the stain I wore. “That’s got to be the worst of it.”

  The gunmen aimed in on our heads. I put my hands behind my ears and looked up at where the glass had been shattered. One figure remained mostly intact in the otherwise broken mural, a bright-eyed young angel, her hair a fantastic red.

  Oh, that’s just not fair, I thought with a smile.

  “Sir,” one of the gunmen said to his superior, “ready on your command.”

  One of them nodded and began to count.

  “Ten…nine…eight…”

  A soft sound of thunder rolled in from the distance.

  “Sounds like rain’s coming,” Gren said.

  “Good,” I replied. “This city needs to be rinsed clean.”

  “…four…three...”

  “You know what, Gren?” I continued. “You know what I think would make this place smell better? A good beef roast, turning on the spit. The smoke just pulling the scent up until it’s practically soaked into the rafters.”

  “Yeah,” Gren replied, “that sounds great.”

  The thunder grew louder. A drop of rain fell in where the unbroken angel flew, hitting me dead between the eyes.

  “Hey,” Gren then said, “have you been killed yet?”

  “I don’t think so. Have you?”

  “No.”

  I looked back down at the firing squad. They stood silenced, their ugly counting game called off by something even uglier. A barrel-chested beast of a man stood before them, his black, crown-pinned coat unbuttoned and his shirt collar loosened enough to reveal the top of a tattoo. The eyes of a great, inked serpent glared at us from the man’s hairy neck. His raised hand signaled his inferiors’ pause.

  “No,” he growled, frighteningly calm, “not yet.”

  I glanced at Gren. He looked away and bitterly hung his head.

  “Damn it,” I heard him say. “Damn it all.”

  “You boys forget that you’re standing in a place of worship?” bellowed the commanding Magnate. “Or are you just generally classless?”

  “You want to talk classless?” Gren shouted, snapping his eyes back up at the opposition. “How about hunting down a scared, defenseless, little woman so you can pull her insides out?”

  The hulking man smiled. “Gren Spader, right?” he spoke. “Quite alive, aren’t you? Suppose we can’t believe everything we read in the papers. Right, boys?”

  The other soldiers snickered and huffed. Gren chose not to respond.

  “And Will Pocket,” the beast announced, “in the proverbial flesh.”

  I only nodded, my jaw bonded shut by absolute spite. Gren and I wore stones as faces and traded our blood for ice water.

  “Spader, this doesn’t involve you,” the man with the painted snake said. “Step aside and maybe the King will take pity on you and your role in this unfortunate matter.”

  “Oh, will he? How kind! How incredibly gracious of him!” Gren snorted. “Hmph. You tell your King he can go and—”

  “As for you, Pocket, I’m sorry to say that you will not be able to save your mortal life, but it is not too late to die with a clean slate.”

  “He doesn’t have the breath to waste on you overgrown worms!” Gren barked.

  “What it’ll be, Pocket?” the Magnate growled.

  I said nothing, so he continued.

  “I urge you to unburden yourself and go to the Maker redeemed.”

  I said nothing.

  “Will you remove your stain and confess to me the location of the stolen property?’

  I said nothing.

  He cracked his flushed knuckles and shook his head in condemnation. “No interest at all in salvation, then?”

  Nothing.

  “Fine,” he growled. “Live as a wretch, die as a wretch. Gentlemen, take aim upon—”

  “You’re a farce,” I uttered.

  The serpent general became an angry statue for a half-minute, letting my words linger and soak rather than swatting them quickly away. He turned a blood-cracked eye to me and showed me his teeth.

  “You say something?” he quietly boiled.

  “A farce,” I repeated. “All of you. An absolute joke.”

  He began turning brand new colors, colors I had never seen and that disgusted me, and I was half-sure that he was moments away from tearing me to dog scraps with his bare hands.

  “Are we now?” he hissed, his cheeks puffed with venom. “And how’s that?”

  “Because you think that with enough effort and power, you can decide what is real. And that’s understandable. Because I used to think just like that. I used to think that calling myself a bard gave me the ability to cast the players as I saw fit. Lovers and fools and heroes and whatnot. But we all do that, don’t we? In your little story, I’m your little villain and I’ve been running around with a valuable little piece of metal in some silly delusion that I’m actually courting a woman. That’s what’s real to you. It’s not wrong. It’s not right. It’s just how you see it. But you can’t make it any more real to anyone else. That’s the problem with this ‘new world’ Alexander’s trying to create. It’s too wrapped up in one man’s idea of real to give anyone else any breathing room. It won’t even let a being of gears and lace call herself a proper girl. And you think that killing me now’s going to make any of this any different? Well, I admit nothing. No guilt. No crime. Nothing that needs to be forgiven by the likes of you. You are a circus. You are a farce. And I am not afraid.”

  Quiet once more took the sleepy air of the cathedral.


  And then great fire.

  Clutching me by the collar and squeezing hard upon my neck, the serpent general dragged me violently forward and out through the open doors of the cathedral. Gren screamed and lunged after him. The other Magnates quickly fired, hitting Gren in what I hoped was his chest plate and knocking him off of his feet. I pulled my head up long enough to see him writhe on the church floor as the other soldiers turned and followed their leader.

  Outside I was met with a wave of gasps and outbursts that filled my ears. The front courtyard was now swarming with bodies. Machines of war arched up like small trees from the mob, and high above, a trio of royal gunships covered the sky. A thick line of officers, subordinates, royal guards, and common patrolmen formed a block against heavy crowds of cawing, sleepy onlookers, each desperately trying to gain an eyeful of the unfolding scene.

  My infernal audience.

  The serpent general cast me to the ground and I landed hard upon my side. The crowd erupted.

  “Si-sir!” one of the other Magnates interjected.

  “You want to see fear, louse?” the man above me bellowed. “You want to see what this ‘circus’ of ours can accomplish?!?” He addressed an officer at hand. “Bring it down!”

  The man receiving the order nodded, moved off to the side, and relayed a series of hand signals to the gunship floating closest to the cathedral. The vessel dipped down a little closer to the earth, and someone onboard pushed something of considerable size from the exposed deck.

  The object was tied to a rope and it whizzed downward before stopping to dangle a few feet above the mob.

  It was a human body, beaten, bruised, and hanging from its right foot. Arms hung lifelessly, and as I peered up at the spectacle, a hat fell from the unfortunate’s overturned head and landed before me.

  I took the cap, a little bit of worn leather, in my palms, and read the words written inside of it.

  LE PETIT RENARD

  My hands shook in terror as I slowly looked again skyward, as my gaze took in the lifeless figure floating before one of the church’s great glass windows.

  “Kitt,” I whispered, feeling altogether sick.

  The serpent general broke out in a grand fit of laughter, eliciting a variety of heated responses from the crowd. My eyes stayed glued to Kitt’s dangling form, particularly the wrapped gunshot wound in his arm. Weakly, I reached into my coat and pulled out the tarot card B had pressed against me.