Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1)

by Lori Williams

  “What?!?” I growled in anger.

  “No!” Dolly squeaked. “No! He’s lying!”

  “I am responsible,” the Priest spoke. “Solely responsible. It was I who orchestrated the acquisition of the girl…the girl-shaped device. Pocket and Sunner were only pawns. I sent them in to retrieve the machine under false pretense, leading them to believe that a woman was awaiting their arrival. I used them and then left them to take the blame. This I confess under the weight of my own conscience.”

  I gritted my teeth and felt flush with the blood my anger was pushing into my skin.

  “The bastard,” I hissed. “The outright bastard!”

  “He’s lying!” Dolly kept hysterically repeating. “Lying! Lying!”

  “He’s trying to steal my place at the hangman’s noose!” I said to her. “He’s going to kill himself in my stead!”

  The rain-soaked pirate continued. “I know that you here in attendance are more than likely skeptical upon hearing such a claim,” he spoke, “and given my reputation and history against the Crown, I can’t say that I blame you. So, as an act of good faith, I offer a gift.”

  In his hand, he lifted something squarish that I couldn’t quite make out.

  “I know what interest the King holds for what was stolen away. I know what piece he covets from inside. I’ve seen the blueprint. I hold that metal now in my hand. Absolve Will Pocket and Kitt Sunner, and I will gladly turn over both the piece…and myself…into the King’s custody.”

  The blueprint…was it possible? I recalled the surgery performed upon the half-sunken Lucidia. Did the captain, in his work, possibly find…possibly remove…

  “Liar!” Dolly cried against me. “He doesn’t have anything at all! It’s…it’s still inside!”

  “Are you…are you sure, Doll?” I quivered in the rain. “Couldn’t he have…possibly…”

  “I never slept!” she shouted, not to me, but to the distant ships. “When he sewed me up, I never slept! He didn’t take anything! He only gave his shiny clock parts! Don’t listen to him!”

  But no one could hear the girl’s protests.

  “A bluff,” I mumbled. My head was racing as I watched the pirate raise his hands in surrender, awaiting the nearest patrol ship to take him aboard.

  He was bluffing.

  With nothing but a hunk of scrap.

  But…something wasn’t right.

  Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

  Until I remembered Madame B.

  The last time we exchanged words, she was tense but smiling. I had asked her what the Priest was planning, and her response was a wry “you’ll see.” This was the same woman who refused to escort Quill and I to the library until her heart was clear and sure that her lover would be delivered the news of our departure. It was only a passing moment, and one blanketed in night, but I had caught a look in her eye that told me everything me I needed to know about the lady’s commitment to the man who now stood seemingly ready for capture. I knew B would never so casually leave the city with even a shred of suspicion that the Priest would sacrifice himself, which meant one of two things.

  Either the captain lied and planned to surrender without her knowledge…

  …or he wasn’t really planning on surrendering at all.

  That’s when I remembered something else B had once said to me.

  “Mind my words, Pocket,” she had spoken. “The only pirate who steps into public looking like a pirate is trying to be noticed.”

  I clutched onto my girl more tightly.

  “A bluff,” I mumbled. “Dolly, be on guard.”

  A royal ship slid next to the airborne platform and prepared to dock with the odd cluster of balloons.

  “Flock of ‘loons,” Dolly whispered in an odd mix of amused awe and great terror.

  “Get behind me,” I softly instructed, stepping out in front of her and shielding her with my right shoulder.

  The Red Priest moved away from the electric amplification device and seemed to acknowledge his approaching captors. He made no attempt at preparing an attack, or if he was, I couldn’t discern it from where I watched.

  Predator and prey prepared to meet. All was quiet. And then…

  Fire in the sky.

  Whether or not the Red Priest truly planned to give himself over to the monarchy, I will never know, because fate stepped in and made the decision for him.

  CA-CRACK!

  A bolt of lightning cut through the rain and severed a clump of the craft’s tethered tentacles, causing a sickly, deafening burst of electrical pomp from its wound. Light and sound battered our senses, and the balloon-lifted platform rocked violently throughout the sky, snapping off more of its earthbound cables and vomiting more voltage.

  “Ruse!” I heard some soldier shout, and the barrage began.

  Dolly clutched onto my back. I stiffened my arms outward in hopes of providing more cover. We could only watch as Hell itself came into form and motion in the clouds. The explosions, I realize now, were instantly mistaken by the King’s battle-ready troops as a direct attack. Every man aboard every warship began firing ammunition at the Priest’s perch as it bucked and flittered without control or direction through the sky. I could not tell if the pirate was still at helm or thrown over the edge.

  Gunfire smacked what few cables still clung to the craft, creating more electrical bursts. As the last one fell free, the craft spun madly toward the abbey, propelled in a shot by the final rain of sparks.

  The gunmen turned their weapons to the roof.

  I grabbed Dolly’s hand and hurried with her across the slick roof as bullets flew toward us. It wasn’t long before the girl behind me slipped, her heel twisting. Dolly fumbled onto her belly and nearly tumbled off of the roof. I reached out to clutch her, but was too slow, and gasped as she scraped that beautiful artificial skin against the coarse rooftop. She caught herself, and began slowly crawling back up to the peak where I stood.

  And then, just as she curled her arms around my right leg, I looked up into the sights of a rifle.

  “Doll!” I screamed, twisting my weight to the side and, as result, swinging my hung bottle up and around me. “Stay dow—“

  Pop.

  Crack.

  Shatter.

  Cry.

  The falling rain started falling at one-tenth the speed. The clouds and the ships and everything else I could see also slowed down until the entire world was one lazy crawl. All sound became both deafening and deafened, the loudest quiet you can imagine, if you can. The rain was a sickly mumble of lament, like a row of grievers who showed up to the wrong man’s funeral and were thus at a loss for proper conversation. I had in that moment, for whatever reason, imagined Kitt and Gren amongst that group, arguing with each other over whose mourning coat wore the shade of black most striking and appropriate for the situation.

  Amidst the blaring, earsplitting silence, I began to feel a series of painful sensations erupting at different points of my body. Most were small, direct, and sharp, spread about arms and neck, but the strongest was a furious and overzealous burn just under my ribs, where I had just been shot.

  Did I need to mention that I’d been shot? It just struck me, no pun meant, that I hadn’t outright stated it, and I’m too tired at this hour to start wondering if my talents as a storyteller are strong enough to simply imply such bloodshed.

  But yes, shed blood there was, and enough visible evidence this time around to keep me from arguing elsewise. No tucking my coat tightly shut and laying ownership of my stains on another.

  My ruddy mess spit upward in the rain.

  But there was something off about the mess, and despite my wounded haze, I quickly deduced that the something was the color. There was too much green in it. My attention moved back to the smaller pains in my arms, and I realized they that been punctured by pieces of glass. Similar shards fell with the water.

  The bullet that struck me had first broken through the weight I wore on a strap, and, in doing
so, had pushed those broken pieces into me.

  The glass was with my skin. The green was with my blood.

  And the faeries? Swatted down and crushed beneath the King’s heel.

  I was limp on my feet, and I could hear the Doll wailing. My weight began to fall forward and the girl reached up and pushed against me. I felt…lighter…the way as a child I always imagined the dead felt when they were lifted skyward on the shoulders of angels. It was only the protesting voice of the Doll that made me fight away that feeling of lightness and keep my focus on London.

  “I’m sorry!” I remember she cried. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s…okay, Doll,” I mumbled, forcing balance long enough to help her up into my arms. Then, wobbly as I was, I plucked a larger piece of glass from my arm, wiped off the blood with rainwater, brushed some hair out her eyes and tried to smile.

  My eyes drifted from her face to the scene of war behind her. The Priest’s craft was tumbling toward us, and the others were aiming cannons. I closed my eyes and inhaled.

  “Is this the end, Mister Pocket?” Dolly whispered.

  “I couldn’t tell you, love,” I replied. “I’m terrible with endings.”

  Fire.

  Bang.

  Boom.

  Crumble.

  The first round of cannon fire had launched, and one blow hit the abbey just below the overhanging lip of the roof where we stood. The impact threw Dolly and I, arms and hearts locked together, up from our feet and into the sky. Pieces of mortar and brick erupted in little bursts around us. There was a metallic, crunching sound accompanied by the Doll shrieking, and then a fresh set of pains were carved into my skin. The last thing I remember seeing was the swollen fabric of the Red Priest’s balloons as we plummeted down over the runaway vessel.

  There was a great length of darkness that I cannot, despite my best efforts, forget. It dribbled. It dropped. And mucking around in the thick of it, I think there was that old Frenchman, laughing and hooting and splashing his legs. He was muttering something prolific about purpling one’s skin, but I was too busy running from the black to care. Suddenly I felt someone’s hand on mine, and I opened my eyes.

  I was on my back. And all I could see was sky. Vast, cloudy, rainy, scrolling sky. I was floating, and with a deep breath, I realized that it wasn’t away to Heaven. Despite all dreamy appearances, Will Pocket was still rattling around in the same, old, rundown body. And he was clutching a pretty girl’s hand.

  I was floating, and with my left palm down, I felt the same fabric I had noticed just before the darkness came. Yes, unbelievably, it seemed that my life had been spared by complete, ridiculous luck. Dolly and I had landed directly upon the center of one of those large, floating balloons and instead of bouncing off of the soft globe, we had miraculously stayed atop, our bodies dipping and sinking down until we found ourselves supported and cradled into the thick, air-cushioned cloth. I could see no more ships in the sky, and wondered if that sorcerer of a pirate achieved the impossible while my eyes were sealed. Had he regained control of his vessel? Alluded everyone, every gun and gunner, and hurried us away without the slightest trace? Impossible. Things like that, they simply do not happen.

  And yet the heavens were empty. The rain was thinning out, and a cool breeze touched my face.

  It felt good.

  But everything else hurt. Everything. I was quickly bleeding out, and my punctured skin was now fully lacerated with a slew of metal gears and bits that stuck into me. I felt faint. I felt sore. I felt nauseous. I felt so many things that I couldn’t concentrate on just one.

  “Mister…Mister Pocket…” came a whisper to my right.

  Tilting my stiff neck to the side, I saw something that made me openly weep.

  “Please…” the girl whispered. “Please don’t cry right now.”

  “Dolly,” I wavered, full of great, great sickness, “I…”

  “Please. Just hold this hand.”

  I closed my mouth and simply nodded, unable to keep from crying.

  She was as beautiful as ever. Only…she was…

  She...she was…dear God…

  “Hey, settle down, Pocket. You’re shaking.”

  “Alan…I…I don’t…I’m not sure that I can keep going…”

  “Calm down. No one’s forcing you to talk.”

  “No. No, I’ll try. This is important.”

  “Don’t force it. You’ll make yourself sick. Besides, not talking about something won’t make it any less true.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But if I ignore this now, even in this empty hole of a bar, I’ll probably end up ignoring it for the rest of my life. And I just can’t do that. I won’t. So let me carry on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It may kill me, but yeah.”

  “…yawn…then I’m listening, friend.”

  The Doll, she was just...lying there. Resting in the clouds to my immediate right.

  But, I am sad to say, not all of her.

  She gave me a brave smile as I stared at her, the girl’s limp body perching softly on the great balloon.

  Her left leg was missing.

  Just below her hip, where her skirt was sharply ripped, a blunt, metal rod protruded out like an exposed bone. She wiggled her hips and loose gears tumbled out of her form. They rolled around like shiny pennies. Her left arm was also gone, ripped away in the blast, and her right eye was now just a sad, little cavity. Little tears and cuts marked her skin all over.

  Tears singed my sore and tattered cheeks. She just kept smiling.

  “Why do you keep making such a frowny face, Mister Pocket?” she whispered as we glided through the sky. “It doesn't do you well.”

  “I...I know....” I choked back.

  “Then be happy. We're still together, right?”

  “Sure. Sure, Doll. Sure, we are.”

  My eyes drifted over to my aching arm. I realized that it was punctured with a handful of the Watchmaker's Doll lost parts. I blinked, observing how my skin puffed up and pinkened around the spot where a cold gear was cut into me. My chest and thighs were similarly lacerated with her lovely shrapnel. These cuts tore openly through my beaten clothes, and the skin exposed from underneath cracked flush from blood and bruising.

  “Mister Pocket,” the Doll then said to me, “raise your arm a bit.”

  I complied.

  “This piece here, that’s in your arm. That’s from me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I am…within you, then.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I…could I…ask you something terribly rude?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Could I…sample…or, that is, could I…taste…some of your…blood?”

  I blinked and I breathed.

  “My…my blood?” I asked, pathetic and frail. “Why?”

  She closed her remaining eye in what I suspect was embarrassment. “It’s just that…I’d like some part of you to be inside of me as well.”

  I faintly smiled. “I see.” I lifted my whitened, bleeding arm to her face and brushed her pretty bangs over the empty socket. I then slid my long fingers down her cheek and turned my wrist toward her mouth. Her lips parted and took in a few falling drops of my blood.

  She smiled and then made a sour face. I had to chuckle.

  “How do I taste?” I smirked.

  “It’s a very bitter jam,” she admitted. “I much prefer strawberry.”

  I took her hand once more.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said to the Watchmaker’s Doll. “Me too.”

  I rolled my neck over to the opposite shoulder and realized that there was a small something resting in my free hand. It was a thick piece of curved, broken glass and pooling upon it was, of all the infernal luck, a spit-amount of green.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I whispered, clutching the shard. “Absolutely damned.”

  “What did you say, Mister Pocket?” Dolly inquired.

  “Nothing, love,” I resp
onded, lifting the pointy glass to my lips. “Just making a silly toast.”

  I don’t remember how it tasted.

  The sky wet my face with its unsalty tears, and I squeezed my beloved's hand. We were being carried away on the cobbled back of a bird so unknown to me, yet the swollen balloon felt so good beneath my raw and troubled shoulders.

  I closed my eyes and prepared for sleep as we slid into a cloud shaped like a smiling angel.

  “Get some rest with me, Dolly,” I said. “It'll pass the time until we're home.”

  And then, all was peace.

  “And with that peace, I come at long last, dear Alan, to…well…to what I’d like to call the end, but as I’d just pointed out…I’m rather terrible with them. Endings, I mean. I suppose I could leave it then and there, with the beaten but reunited lovers adrift in the sky. That makes a pretty picture, right? But it also leaves quite a few unanswered questions, doesn’t it? I suppose I could rattle off a list of after-the-matter facts, but I can’t help but worry that such a list would chip away at the beauty there. I suppose a compromise could work, a little dash of facts, the grey and drab, amongst the colors of my ending, restrained enough to keep from muddying the hues. Yeah, that’s worth a try. Give me a little room for sloppiness with the paint, though. I’m a little tired to be eloquent, though I imagine a more accomplished wordsmith could weave…uh…Alan?”

  “…”

  “Alan?”

  “...”

  “Sigh. Looks like you just solved my problem for me. I guess I kept you up too late, after all. Oh, well. Sleep soundly, then. As soundly as you can in a place like this. Here, I’ll slide Miss Hatter’s music box beside you. It’ll give you a sweet sound to wake to. I’ll just…let myself out…now. All right. Goodnight, Alan. Or rather, good morning.”

  “…”

  “I should be leaving now.”

  “…snore…”

  “So, why aren’t I?”

  “…sn-snore…”

  “What’s stopping me, Alan? Why aren’t my feet walking to the door?”

  “…hmph-sn-snore!”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I just can’t bear to leave a story unfinished.”