“Hold on,” one of the men said.
A moment later, several men enclosed one of the bunks with a number of blankets. Ikey and his customer were ushered inside where a small, beaten lantern burned a shallow, greasy flame that gave off enough smoke to make Ikey’s right eye water.
With the pick, Ikey poked new holes in the leather belts that held the man’s augmentation to his leg. He drew the slack out of the belts and tightened everything.
The man and Ikey slid out of the make-shift tent. Ikey peered into the dark as the man walked up and down the the length of the bunk.
“Good Lord above,” the man whispered. “It’s like brand new.”
Ikey grinned.
“Keep the tools, Ikey,” the man said. “By God, you’ve earned them.”
Men approached out of the dark and asked Ikey to fix this or that in their augmentations.
“Tomorrow,” Ikey said. “I’ve got to get some sleep. My eyes ache. I can hardly see.”
The men grumbled among themselves about who would be next. Ikey slipped into the makeshift tent, collected his tools, and walked back to his bunk in his bare feet, his boots clutched in his hand so as not to rouse the drowsing watchmen.
As he climbed back up onto his bunk, half of which had been taken by some man who snored and managed to smell of onion, David appeared and rested his forearm on the bunk, then settled his chin on his arm.
“How’d it go?”
“Grand. Others are already asking me to fix their augmentations.”
“What did you ask for in return?”
The man next to Ikey snorted, grumbled, and rolled away.
“Nothing, yet. We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Ikey said.
“Excellent,” David said through a grin. “Sleep well, my friend.”
“You too,” Ikey said as David slipped back down to his bunk.
The following day, numerous people approached Ikey with various complaints. He listened to their frustrations, examined their augmentations, and promised to see what he could do later that night. David was never far, and always he intercepted these people to discuss a price. Most offered their Sunday bread. David took the first few such offers, but then started asking for items of real value. Specifically, coin.
The other inmates balked at the idea of getting their hands on money, but David insisted and gave out the names of a couple of guards and shift supervisors who could be persuaded to part with money in exchange for various items and services that could be obtained around the factory.
As the last person walked away, shaking his head, Ikey leaned in and asked how he knew of these guards and shift supervisors.
David shrugged. “I pick things up.”
To David’s chagrin, Ikey worked on augmentations regardless of whether or not the owner provided compensation. He collected mostly IOUs, but he did scrape together a scant collection of farthings and a few pennies that he, David, and Gavril split among themselves and hid in their boots.
One night, as Ikey strolled back to the end of the hall to conduct more repair work, a man grabbed him by the arm and said it was his turn to have his hand looked at. Ikey regarded the man. He wasn’t in the queue to receive repair work.
“What have you got?” Ikey asked.
The man held his hand up. The thumb lilted off to the side. When he made a fist, the thumb clicked, but did nothing more.
“I’ll put you in the queue,” Ikey said with a nod, then moved past the man.
He grabbed Ikey by the bicep and whipped him back around.
“You’ll fix it now.”
“It’s not your turn.”
“The bloody hell it isn’t.”
“I’ve never seen that until now,” Ikey said with a nod to the hand. “I’ll put you in the queue.”
The man stepped up to Ikey. “You’ll fix it now, you will.”
“I will not.”
“You will fix it now, or I’ll tear your arm off and use it instead.”
Ikey stepped back. “You start a fight in here, the watchmen are likely to bust our other hands.”
The man closed the space between them again. “Then I suggest you avoid a fight and fix my hand.”
Ikey took a deep breath. An injury at the hands of the watchmen might send him back to the chopper’s, and he might come back with a second mechanical hand, or a leg. Nothing he could afford. But then again, they might toss him in solitary instead.
His breath halted and his heart skittered in his chest as he thought of solitary, the darkness descending over him, pressing him out of this world and into the cavernous lapse of existence where Rose dwelled. He lightened with the thought of seeing her, of hearing her voice, feeling her breath pass over his skin.
Ikey swallowed. It wasn’t worth the risk. He couldn’t afford a trip to the chopper’s. But neither could he afford to set up a precedent that would make getting repair work done extremely difficult.
“What are you offering in payment?” Ikey asked.
“Fix it, first. Then we’ll talk.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“I think it is.”
Ikey gritted his teeth. If he went to solitary, he could dig a second tunnel. A backup. And he could get some sleep.
He thought of Rose. Her voice in the cell. The certainty that she was right there outside the realm of touch.
Tension dropped from Ikey’s shoulders. A smile teased the corner of his lips.
“Time’s wasting,” the bully said.
A finger tapped the bully on the shoulder.
He turned around to find Gavril staring at him.
“Piss off,” the bully said.
Gavril shook his head in a slow, deliberate motion.
“I said piss off. This concerns you none.”
Gavril shook his head again.
“Come on,” the man said. He grabbed Ikey by the right arm.
Gavril grabbed the man’s other arm.
The bully dropped Ikey’s arm and spun around. He drew back his iron fist, the thumb sticking out wildly as if gesturing back at Ikey instead of winding up for a throw at Gavril.
Ikey kicked the man in the back of his knee. He buckled and dropped to his knees. Gavril delivered a quick blow to the man’s jaw.
The bully dropped off to the side and landed on his face with a crack. After a second, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees and spat blood to the floor.
Gavril put up his fists. Tremors shook his shoulders. A coughing fit was coming on.
“Watchman!” the man hollered out.
A flurry of activity broke out around Ikey and Gavril. Men swirled around them like leaves gathering in a whirling storm. Hands gripped Ikey and Gavril and whisked them into a bunk where they were told to shut up.
“Watchman!” the bully hollered again.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the hall. Laughter broke out among the men. Ikey reached out and parted the wall of legs and torsos that fenced him and Gavril away. The bully sat on his haunches and swatted away feeble kicks from a dancing Saucy.
“What the devil is going on here?” the watchman asked. He planted his hands on his hips.
The bully tried to claim he was attacked by two men, but a wall of laughter drowned him out. The men surrounding the bully swore up and down that the man had picked on Saucy, and Saucy had tripped him up.
The watchman pointed at Saucy and the other man and told the mechanical asses to take them down to solitary.
Ikey hissed in a breath. The bully deserved it, of course, but Saucy did not. He pushed himself up on an elbow. If the men in this room descended on the watchmen right now, they’d be overpowered in a heartbeat. The mechanical asses could be toppled, their limbs jammed with something. If all else failed, if the men ran and poured out of the bunk hall together, they could bypass solitary and perhaps walk right out the front door.
He shook his head. It couldn’t be that simple.
As the watchman and two automatons led the offenders away, Ik
ey stood up. “Thank you,” he said to the men standing closest around him.
“We need you around here more than we need Magrel,” one of them replied.
As Gavril’s coughing fit subsided, Ikey helped him out of the bunk as well. Ikey told the others he’d be back, and he walked with Gavril down the length of the hall.
“Thank you,” Ikey said.
Gavril nodded. His breath came in small wheezes. A tinge of blue colored his face, and his lips appeared a shade of purple.
“Are you all right?” Ikey asked.
Gavril nodded again.
“I could have handled him myself, you know,” Ikey said.
Gavril grinned, then shook his head.
“I could have.” Ikey flexed his mechanical arm. The clicking of escapements and gears made it sound purposeful, his victory no more difficult than unthreading a screw.
“You know not fighting,” Gavril said. “Anger is no skill.”
Ikey glanced at the bunks. The other men were settled in and snoring, or staring at Ikey and Gavril as they dragged their feet past.
“You seemed plenty angry at me the other day,” Ikey said.
Gavril shook his head again. “I angry at David. He ask me to keep you from killing yourself. It is more work than what it is worth.”
Ikey inhaled sharply. “Oh? Then why bother?”
Gavril shrugged. “David ask me. And God smile over me at minding His sheep.”
Ikey smirked. “Smile over you?”
Gavril nodded, then rested a hand over his own heart. “I am a man blessed.”
Ikey looked away again, unsure of whether to laugh or flat-out express his slack-jawed disbelief. “How can you say that?” Ikey asked as they stepped up to their bunks. “Have you seen this place?”
Gavril shook his head, then jerked a bony thumb at the end of the hall. “Those men blessed. God sent someone to fix their metal parts.”
Ikey glanced down at David, who lay on the bunk, his hands under his head. Ikey opened his jaw to ask if Gavril was putting him on, but David’s stern, cool face suggested that there was no joke.
The remaining watchman dealt himself a hand of solitaire at the desk. Ikey would have more light to work with than usual tonight as the one watchman waited for the other. Rather than argue with Gavril, he returned to the end of the hall and the small collection of faces eager to be relieved of pain and further servitude.
After repairing several augments, Ikey strolled back to the bunk in the dark, a haypenny tucked into his boot. As he crept along to avoid waking the watchmen, a hand materialized on his shoulder, and a pair of lips hushed him and asked him not to turn around.
Ikey turned around.
“I told you not to turn around,” said a man wearing only his knickers.
“What do you want,” Ikey asked as he took a step back.
“I want to talk,” the man whispered. “I have a proposition for you. An offer.”
“What kind of offer?”
“Up here,” the man said and motioned for Ikey to climb up on a nearby bunk.
Ikey glanced back at the head of the hall. The watchmen were obscured in the dark, but it was safe to say they were out cold, asleep in their chairs, feet up on the desk. Behind them, the lifeless automatons stood and waited in silence for their next commands.
Ikey glanced back and nodded. The man climbed up. Ikey followed. As he collapsed onto the bed, the weight of exhaustion pressed on him. The man snuggled up close to Ikey and threw a blanket over them. Ikey reached for the edge of the bunk, ready to pull himself off.
The man grabbed Ikey’s arm. “I’ve heard you can repair anything,” the man whispered. “I know someone who wishes to make use of your talents. He can make it worth your while.”
Ikey’s grip on the bunk edge eased.
The man continued. “Places like Marlhewn must be made unprofitable. If the men who run these prisons were to lose money at it, we’d be turned into the street overnight. Freed.”
Ikey’s breath halted. He nodded once.
“If you can be convinced to help make this place unprofitable, I have a friend who can get you most anything you desire.”
Ikey turned his head toward the man. “Can he get me out?”
“Most anything short of that, I’m afraid. You’re not much use to him outside of here.”
Ikey nodded. “There’s a tonic given to those afflicted with consumption. I want some. A dram to start.”
“For your friend?”
“Yes.”
“I admire you,” the man said. “You’re a selfless individual. If this place were full of men like you, we’d have this prison pulled apart brick-by-brick by now.”
“Who’s your friend?” Ikey asked.
“A man who values discretion. I’ll give him your price. I’m sure he’ll come through with your tonic. At that time, he’ll also have instructions for you.”
“Anything else?” Ikey’s fingers closed over the edge of the bunk.
“One last thing. If you mention this to anyone, my friend knows just what to say in order to bring The Alligator’s full wrath down on your friends.”
Ikey’s fingers tightened around the bunk’s edge. “I don’t care for threats.”
“I don’t care for making them. But you understand the need,” the man whispered. “Now go on. I need all the sleep a man can get around here.”
Ikey slipped out of the bunk and padded off to his own, where he continued to share the space above David and Gavril with the onion-scented man who replaced Philip. As Ikey approached, David stirred and lifted his head slightly. He peered over Gavril’s sleeping body at Ikey.
A moment passed in which Ikey considered revealing the proposition to him. He glanced behind himself and half-expected to see the man standing there. Shadows stretched into darkness, into a dense forest of snoring and wheezing and the lilting of a song that swung through it all like the call of a bird mad with loneliness.
By the time he turned back around, David had settled back into bed.
Ikey took a slow, soft step forward. The floorboards creaked.
David lifted his head again.
The two stared at each other in the gloom. Ikey wanted to tell him of the deal, the tonic, what an idiot David was to sell his life away for Gavril, a man who must be mad himself to believe he was blessed, that the others were lucky, that anger wasn’t a skill.
Ikey’s fist clicked in the dark, almost a cricket's song let loose in the odd forest of shadows around him.
Once they stood outside of Marlhewn’s walls and above the bank of the river, Ikey would turn to Gavril and tell him of David, what he wanted, what he asked, that he sacrificed his chance at escape to somehow better the odds that Gavril would live outside of Marlhewn.
How blessed.
Gavril’s comments bore into Ikey, tore at the core of him and left him seething a heat, like holes punched in the worn sides of an old furnace. He didn’t know why.
David laid his head back down.
Ikey approached the bunk. David lifted his head again and watched as Ikey slipped out of his clothes. He appeared to be waiting for Ikey to say something, but he said nothing, except what was said by the clicking of his hand passing through the motions of undressing, and then the creaking of thin boards as he climbed onto the top bunk. He pulled enough of the blanket away from his bunkmate to cover himself. He then slipped his blindfold out from the waistband of his knickers and tied it around his head.
In the dark, the absence of Rose weighed on him, and yet was nothing, like a whole planet shackled to his feet.
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, as David and Ikey tended the press, he told David of the offer.
David stood and stretched his back as Philip's replacement lumbered over and plucked up the pieces around their feet. When the man returned to the cart, David asked about the offer and the man who made it.
“I don’t know,” Ikey said. “It was dark. I don’t know that I’d recog
nize him again if I saw him in the light. And he wouldn’t say who his friend was.”
The Alligator strolled past and eyed them both with anger and malice. As soon as The Alligator’s back was to them David said, “A whole dram in exchange for a fix-it job? You have to take it.”
“I don’t even know what he wants fixed.”
“Doesn’t matter. This is it. You pull this off, you’re out of here. And you need to go soon. Gavril is getting worse. He doesn’t get enough to eat in here, even with the increased bread. If you don’t leave soon, you’ll have to carry him out.”
Ikey glanced back at Gavril as the man approached and crouched at their feet. It was as if David spoke of some other man, some other Gavril who was sickly and weak. He shook his head. David’s blindness struck him as laughable. Had he a clue who Gavril really was? Had he seen that scarlet glint in his eyes when he had Ikey pinned in the narrow alley between the machines?
Ikey opened his mouth to ask of it, what David saw in him, what made him think that Gavril could do anything less than take care of himself outside of Marlhewn. David was a fool for thinking he was needed by Gavril for anything.
The heart fell out of Ikey’s argument. It plopped to the floor, cold and blue.
David knew it. He knew he was not needed. And this act of self-sacrifice was a way to make believe that he was doing something for Gavril.
“Don’t start with the guff,” David said with a wave of his hand. “I know you two don’t get along, but you have to do it. For me. For Rose. For Philip.”
Ikey wanted to chuckle at David’s absurdity. Instead, he leaned into the press and swept out the next round.
“What?” David asked. “I saw that look on your face. Let’s have it.”
“I thought you didn’t want the guff.”
“That wasn’t guff. Not what I saw on your face. Out with it.”
Ikey shook his head. “It’s nothing. I was thinking about last night. On our way back to the bunk, Gavril told me that he didn’t like me, but he was keeping me from killing myself because you asked him to.”
Color flushed over David’s cheeks. He stared hard into the machine.
Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Page 19