Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  I couldn't argue. I don't know why. Maybe I'm more selfish than I ever let on, but I couldn't say one word against him. So silently, I joined Gren at the side of the iron box and helped him push, onward and onward, until it nearly covered the archway that led to the cathedral’s inner stairwell.

  “Thanks,” my partner gruffly said. “I can take it from here.”

  “Gr...Gren...” I managed at last, “Are you sure about this?”

  “Up the stairs,” he responded. “That's your last shot. I'll hold off the dogs for as long as I can.”

  Again, I wanted so much to argue, but I couldn’t. My stomach turned over.

  “Go on,” Gren said, as both thunder and the outside poundings grew in volume. “Hurry.”

  I nodded sadly and patted his shoulder.

  “I'll be seeing you, all right?” I murmured.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure, you will, Pocket.”

  I turned my eyes to the dark doorway ahead. With my heart in my throat, I began to move.

  “Hey, hold on,” Gren said from behind me.

  I turned in confusion and saw him limping away down the main aisle. He picked up something I had left behind and carried it over to me. That heavy lump in the sling. I tried not to sigh.

  “Before you go sulking up to the roof,” Gren said, dropping it into my hands, “you should at least remember to collect your toys.”

  I frowned, rubbing my fingers on the clothed weight with little more than indifference.

  “I don't know, Gren,” I exhaled. “I don't think an old cannonball's gunna give me much help at this point.”

  My friend took a step back and raised his eyebrows.

  “Cannonball?” he said, confused. “Pocket...what...is that what you think is in that sack?”

  I looked down at the dull heaviness that I held. I squeezed my eyes at it. And then, holding my breath, I loosened the rope and let the brown cloth slip away.

  I couldn't feel my heartbeat.

  “Gren...” I breathed, paling, “…this is...”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

  “H-how? How did you get your hands on this?”

  “After you deserted me, I didn't have a lot to do but walk the town. Day after you vanished, I found a group of beggars banging it against a stone wall.”

  I half-laughed.

  And half-cried.

  “Couldn't get into it, could they?” I smiled, running my thumb over the familiar glass beneath the rough coating. It was smooth and cold as I ran my hand down its slick curves.

  “They chewed off the tag,” Gren said, “but otherwise, no. That’s as far as they got.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve given up on selling it, anyway.”

  I swirled the mess in the glass. My sloppy soul swashing about in all of its lack of glory. The juice of the faeries. Stupid, unnecessary nonsense.

  It felt good to hold it again.

  “I’m glad. Better shared than sold,” Gren weakly said, pushing his voice out of his body. “One of these days, Pocket, you come find me, and we’ll have a few drinks out of it.”

  “Soon as I figure how, right?”

  He nodded. “Soon as you figure how.”

  My eyes brought their bloodshot gaze up from the glass bottle toward the altar before me. It was backed by tall curtains, and from one I took a once-golden length of velvet rope, now stained and mottled by the great fight, and threaded it through my bottle’s glass handle. Tying the velvet together into a loop, I threw my fashioned sling over my aching shoulder and felt the bottle bobble against my thigh.

  Exhausted and drained of color as he was, Gren made a wry smile at my pose.

  “Feel good to have your spirit back on ya, Pocket?”

  “Actually, Gren,” I sighed, “it’s putting a bit of a strain on me.”

  He weakly punched me in the arm and pushed me toward the stairwell. I nodded and squeezed myself through the thin, remaining crack between the entryway and the makeshift obstruction. Once I was on the other side, I stood silent and waited for my friend to finish the act. With a sour grunt, Gren again shoved the confessional over the passage like a stone before a tomb.

  “A strain, huh?” Gren repeated to me when there was no more than a sliver of open air between us. “Of course. That’s how ya know it’s still there.”

  Clunk! The iron box shuffled into its final place of rest, and I was left alone, no company except stairs, no place to walk except up.

  “So long, Spader,” I said to the floor.

  I turned and lifted myself onto the first step. Steadying my weak posture with the handrail, I took one long, heavy moment and then began climbing.

  I climbed for what seemed like hours, the empty plodding of my feet on the steps echoing in the dim space. The Bluebird Abbey, I soon learned, was gruelingly tall to traverse. The stairwell spiraled up to floor after floor, and I climbed forever, passing levels of the church that split off into the abbey’s housing quarters, where the nuns who pitied my Dolly made their home. I didn’t pause my climb to explore these rooms and corridors, but as I passed each floor, I found no sign or sound of anything human.

  The sisters, like the clergy of the altar below, were noticeably missing. The Magnates must’ve run them all out when they first arrived.

  Thunder rumbled outside and seemed to wrap around the church’s thick walls.

  Better than me finding their bodies, I suppose.

  I continued upward, dragging my weight and my bottle along. You may have noticed, dear reader, that in this incredibly hostile and dangerous situation, I opted not to take a weapon from the bottom of the church with me as I climbed. As to why I didn’t make such an obvious choice for my own security, well, I’m not sure. I can offer plenty of excuses…I was too weary to focus the sights of a weapon, I wanted to leave the wounded Gren with as much firepower as possible…but the truth of it is…I really don’t know. If I had to wager a guess, I’d have to say that I was simply tired of them, tired of the aesthetic and the smell of the powder.

  I grimaced as I walked, my already-mounting fatigue growing stronger. I battled on, fighting the very bands of muscle in my body. But the stairs seemed endless, and with each ascending step, a little drip of willpower would sink from my head and drain out through my toes. I could no longer hear anything that may have been transpiring below, and I couldn’t decide whether to attribute that silence to the climb, the breaking down of my body, or my ears’ refusal to pick up any distant sound in fear of listening in on Gren’s demise.

  No. I couldn’t think about anything like that, or else it might come to be. A child’s resolve, but damn fitting. I kept moving and kept breaking down, as Eddie would say, piece by piece. I soon grew lightheaded and delirious. The steps fuzzed around the edges and I started questioning if they were even really there. Exhaustion started choking my neck, and I could barely breathe through its grip. Looking down, I saw that the steps were more than fuzzy now. They were completely washing away, and I began to wonder if I was only moving through an extended delusion. Maybe all of this, this madcap run against daylight, was little more than a passing thought in my mind, a momentary hesitation in a watchmaker’s basement. Maybe I was still down in that little room I’d awoken in. I remembered the stairs I had perched upon before returning to the surface of the city. Maybe those were truly the steps I felt beneath my heels. Was I still down there, still anxiously looking up at the door in the ceiling? Was this whole night a fleeting “what if” bred in the head of an overcautious coward? Maybe, I pondered, exhaling thin breaths against the handrail, this is what happens when a boy’s sanity falls and cracks over the surface of his imagination.

  I let my knees buckle down as I wrestled with that possibility, but after knocking one softly against my bottle of juice, I conceded that I was more than likely not delusional, so I continued upward.

  The next pain I felt was one both instantly familiar and uncommonly absent from the night so far.

  Hunger. Deep, deep
hunger.

  I gritted my teeth as my stomach squeezed itself into rope and reminded me that entire days had passed since my last meal. I wasn’t sure why it hadn’t reminded me sooner, and in that moment I blamed it on the faerie juice. Regaining my essence may’ve very well restored appetite and lust along with it, and I began to wonder if I would’ve been better off leaving the green behind.

  I snorted away such qualms and stretched my shoulders out. I had lived through so much this night, and was not about to be done in by a lack of nourishment. Starvation be damned, I declared to myself, climbing with stronger, pronounced stomps. I am not so weak to be thus defeated.

  Five steps later, I crumbled down and moaned at another sharpness in my belly.

  “God help me, I’m hungry,” I spoke out.

  “You too?”

  Every speck of my skin prickled at the unexpected voice, and I almost sneezed out my ghost.

  The voice came from a very small alcove on the above floor. I moved off of the stairwell towards the source of the sound. It was a terribly littered area. Broken glass. I nearly cut my foot on a piece. Scattered staples of the church. Bibles and candlesticks and such. I assumed that the alcove was being used as a place of storage for these items. Drops of blood. Which I’d been finding so many places lately that it didn’t even seem unusual in my presence. And the centerpiece of this great turbulent scene, the breaker of the glass, the giver of the blood, the source of the other voice, lay outstretched before a shattered mural.

  “Hi Pocket,” the voice said.

  I knelt at the young man’s side and watched his chest desperately rise and fall, as if it forgot exactly how it was supposed to accomplish the feat of breathing.

  “Hi Kitt,” I said.

  The troublesome little cutpurse grinned at me then hid his eyes behind his lids. He looked so unfamiliar there, his head bare and bereft of his beastly ears. I know this will sound like dramatic posturing, silly, storyteller talk, but without his cap, he really seemed like he’d been scalped and robbed of his vulpine nature, his magic.

  But he was still Kitt.

  “You look terrible,” he said, reopening his eyes and blinking at me.

  I scowled and plopped back against a wall to rest. “You aren’t a picture of health yourself,” I grumbled.

  He gave me a sad smile and looked away. “I know.”

  I sighed. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  I noticed the severed length of rope was still tightly knotted to his ankle, so I removed it for him. A deep, red mark crusted with blood was left on the skin.

  “Thanks,” he said, stretching his foot. “That was really bothering me.”

  “I can imagine so,” I nodded, taking a deep breath. “Kitt…are you…are you dying?” He laughed a little too hard at that, and it annoyed me. “What?” I sneered.

  “You say such big and dramatic things. Even when they’re appropriate, they just sound so funny to hear.”

  “Hmph,” I frowned.

  “Don’t get mad,” he said, his split lips again making a smile. “It’s good to be dramatic and silly.”

  I closed my eyes with a reluctant smile and shook my head. “I guess so,” I replied. “Bastard.”

  He laughed and I laughed. We chuckled until we coughed, which was far too early.

  “You’ve got your bottle back,” Kitt said.

  I looked at the faer—the absinthe—and shrugged.

  “Believe it or not, it came back after me.”

  “I believe it,” he said. “Pocket, I’m sorry.”

  “Look, we’re far past—”

  “For taking your bottle in the snow. And, yeah, everything else, but the bottle. You should know something. I really wasn’t concerned with whether or not you’d have it back. In fact, I probably would’ve just left it lying around somewhere when I was done with it. I didn’t expect for you to follow after me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just wasn’t used to that reaction.”

  “But you’re a…I mean, your means of survival…”

  “I know. A thief. I was surprised too. You’d think people would fight harder after a run-in with a pickpocket, but in the past, most of my targets just…let me go. Like it wasn’t worth the trouble. They’d curse me out as I ran off, sure, but hardly anybody cared enough to chase me down just for petty trinkets or pocket change. But you did.”

  I snorted. “I cared for a stupid bottle. That’s not commendable.”

  “Yeah, it is. It’s commendable because it was stupid.”

  I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but I let it pass.

  “Well, if we’re apologizing,” I said, “I should say I’m sorry for putting a bullet in your arm.”

  Kitt leaned up and examined his bandaged flesh. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “The shot didn’t land. All it did was cut the skin open on its way past. The Magnates did far uglier work on me.”

  “Oh,” I dumbly responded. “Good, then. Well, not good, I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Thunder rumbled, breaking for a moment the awkward air.

  “So,” I eventually continued, “how’d you get caught?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I just did. I got tired and they spotted me. Nobody can run forever, Pocket.”

  More rumbling. Louder.

  “Dolly’s here, isn’t she?” Kitt then said.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “She is.” I couldn’t decide whether or not to mention Gren.

  “Is she in trouble?”

  I watched the world outside of the broken window flitter between contrasting shades of color as thunderclouds began choking the morning sky. It grew dark fast.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well,” Kitt quietly said, rolling onto his side, “you should be off then.”

  “But…” I sputtered, “…what about…can you…”

  “We both know how Dolly gets when she’s kept waiting,” he smiled. “Get going.”

  “Kitt, seriously—”

  “Just let me rest here,” he said. “Please.”

  I stood and glumly nodded at my friend. “Sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anything I can do for you before I go?”

  Kitt thought about it and lifted his shoulders off of the floor. I took his arm and helped him sit more comfortably up.

  “You see that fallen box?” he said, nodding toward one corner of the mess. “I think there’s a music box underneath. If you could get it going, I’d sure enjoy the company while I rest.”

  I fished out the smallish music machine and set it at his side.

  “Thanks,” Kitt smiled. “What’s on the wax?”

  I plucked the cylinder and spied the round, printed label upon its end.

  “Selections from the ‘Book of Psalms.’” I stated.

  “That’ll do, I guess.”

  “Yeah...” I looked at the instrument and remembered something. From my overcoat pocket, I retrieved the recording of Lady Jay I had, by chance, acquired hours earlier.

  “I’ve got this,” I offered.

  “Ah,” he softly responded. “Put it on.”

  I placed what I held into the machine and set it all into motion.

  “Good to get a little sound in here,” I whispered, making myself stand.

  “Mmm,” Kitt responded, sliding his eyes away toward the broken window. “It’s gunna rain, you know.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do,” he replied. “Better hurry before the sky opens up.”

  “Agreed,” I glumly said. “Well, I’m on my way then.”

  “Give her my best,” the fox said with one last laugh. “God knows, I’ve already shown her my worst.”

  “I will.” One final breath and I moved off toward the stairwell. “Goodbye, Kitt.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, goodb—”

  “Stop talking over the song. I’m tr
ying to listen to the words.”

  “Sure,” I said, taking the handrail and resuming my climb. “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks,” I heard Kitt Sunner say as I began to march upward. “And goodbye, Will Pocket.”

  Moisture clogged the outline of my eyes as I silently ascended the church. The singing voice, freed from the music box, echoed after me in such a haunting way that I had no choice but to hang onto the words as I climbed.

  Lady Jay.

  That faceless songstress, framed and shaped only by her own words. I began to wonder if she was ever a real woman at all. She seemed to me a familiar specter, a cloud of sightless sound forever hovering around me, almost as if she knew when I’d next need her accompaniment.

  I absorbed her “Far Too Early” once more, and for the first time, I realized I actually made it through the entire song. Lifting myself up the stairs, I wrapped the song’s concluding verses like neatly-spooled ribbon into the cavity of my head. Feel free to correct me, Alan, if I misuse a word.

  “Maybe I’ll sing this song forever, far too long to spill my voice.

  That autumn moon is all but gone, and never by my choice.

  Still got that worst foot forward, but at least it keeps in step.

  And if I don’t forget the rhythm, I just may find you yet.”

  Rhythm. I was practically bereft of it as I went on my way. But in a lunatic response, as if instructed by the song, I began dropping my feet upon the steps in tune with a soft, timed beat of ploh-plop, ploh-plop. The abbey ceiling came closer to my face.

  “The lesson here, my truth be told, is if you find a jewel,

  never trust it to a pocket, or you’ll find yourself a fool.

  Though if you do, I say to you, keep close a threaded spool,

  to sew the hole that pocket grows, lest your night be that more cruel.”

  And then I was at the top. Thunder welcomed me across the finish line as I pushed my frail fingers against the hatch to the outside. It was smaller than the one in the watch shop, but a thousand times heavier. I pushed it ajar and breathed deep the air from the open sky.

  Now was the time.

  Dirty, sweaty, reddened, and famished, Will Pocket climbed out onto the vaulted roof of the cathedral.

  The Watchmaker’s Doll was waiting.

  “A hole that, far too early, made you poor before you knew.