Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series

by Danny Knestaut

  Gavril tucked Rolfe’s knife into the waistband of his trousers. As he pulled his hand away, blood, bright and dangerous, marred the yellowish-white of his shirt.

  Clumsily, Gavril sat David up, trying not to put too much weight on his splinted arm. Ikey wrapped his right arm around David’s torso and grabbed the waistband of his trousers. As he lifted with his knees, Gavril shoved David forward over Ikey’s shoulder. Once Ikey staggered up onto his feet, he heard the echoing approach of iron footfalls.

  Ikey glanced to the magnet, then to Gavril’s broken arm.

  “Come on,” Ikey said. “We have to run for it.”

  Gavril nodded and fell in behind Ikey as a man yelled for them to stop.

  They raced down the hall. Ikey pushed as hard as he could. David’s weight was thankfully slight. The man was not much more than bones and iron hands, his mop of thick hair, but the strength in Ikey burned away. It evaporated quickly as the weeks of deprivation came to take their toll.

  Ikey and Gavril rounded a corner and spotted two of the mechanical asses approaching them. A man stood between them, his mouth open in shock.

  Gavril surged ahead as he whipped the knife from his waistband and brandished it before him. The gaslight flayed on the blade’s edge. The man backpedaled behind the asses, both of which reached out for Gavril. He dove under their hands, tucked himself into a ball, and sprang to his feet right in front of the man.

  Despite himself, Ikey’s pace staggered. He stumbled a few steps in surprise at the display of dexterity.

  The man turned and fled down the hall.

  Gavril whirled around. His face was red, approaching blue. Saliva streamed down his chin as his shoulders hitched. Instead of doubling into a coughing fit, he flipped the blade around in his hand, sprang at the nearest mechanical ass, and drove the blade down between its eyes.

  The beast halted.

  Gavril yanked the knife back, then shoved the stricken automaton. It tipped over and took out its mate with a clang as Gavril stumbled into the wall. He hunched over and coughed into his elbow a few times.

  As the remaining mechanical ass struggled back to its feet, Ikey stumbled past. He spared a glance at Gavril, who took two deep breaths, ripping them from the air. He returned his knife to his waistband and hurried after.

  When Ikey and Gavril burst into solitary, the night watchman stumbled to his feet from behind his desk.

  Gavril lurched forward, knife at the ready.

  “Stop!” Ikey yelled. “Put him in the cell.”

  The night watchman had barely time to blink before he found himself pinned against the wall, his hands up, fingers splayed as he rolled his eyes down and tried to see the point of the blade pushing against his throat.

  Gavril’s shoulders hitched as he fought a coughing fit.

  “I won’t breathe a word,” the guard whispered. “Promise.”

  A muffled cough shook Gavril.

  “Don’t do this, Gavril. Someone loves him.”

  “A wife. And three children,” the guard stammered. “They love me, I swear they do. They need me.”

  “Someone loves David. That didn’t stop The Alligator,” Gavril said.

  “Please,” Ikey said. “For me.”

  “No one loved The Alligator,” Gavril said. He flicked his wrist and tossed the knife. It lodged itself in the top of the desk. As the guard followed the knife with his eyes, Gavril crashed his fist into the guard’s face. His head snapped back and bounced off the wall. The man collapsed to the floor.

  Ikey sighed. At least that was one life saved. “That was hardly necessary. He was willing to cooperate. Now take his trousers off.”

  Gavril hacked into his fist, then arched an eyebrow at Ikey.

  “We’ll make a sling for David. To get him out of the shaft.”

  Ikey handed the knife back to Gavril, then swept everything off the top of the desk. He laid David down. The man’s pulse was still present, but his color wasn’t great.

  As Gavril removed the guard’s trousers and struggled with tying the legs around David’s shoulders, Ikey took the keys and began to open the cell doors. He ran his hand across the back of each door and felt for a patch of rust with a particular shape in a precise location. When Ikey opened the door of the fourth cell, Saucy sprang out. Before Ikey or Gavril could react, Saucy raced down the aisle and out the door.

  Ikey sighed and glanced to Gavril. Gavril shook his head and pointed to David. They dragged him inside and shut the door behind themselves. As Ikey pulled the stones from the hole, Gavril caught his breath.

  “You know not love,” Gavril said in the dark. His words staggered between question and statement.

  “What do you mean?” Ikey grunted as he tossed another stone aside.

  “I kill The Alligator to save David. To get him help. I would do everything for David. Anything. And you said someone loved the guard, and he should live because of that. But you would stay here. You would let The Alligator kill you. Is there no one you love?”

  Stones clattered as Ikey tossed them aside.

  “Rose?” Gavril asked.

  Ikey tensed as if Gavril had announced her arrival, rather than asked him a question.

  A stone dropped from his grasp. “I talk in my sleep, right?”

  “You speech much with her.”

  “She’s someone else’s wife.”

  “I am not understanding.”

  Ikey cleared the last stone. He crawled over and grabbed the waistband of the guard’s trousers and pulled David to the hole.

  “You go first,” Ikey said. “Climb to the top of the shaft.”

  Gavril moved along the wall, his feet sucking in the muck beneath them. When he reached the breech in the foundation, Ikey heard the scrabble of stones and the man’s wheezing breath.

  You took pity on yourself, Rose said. Fortunately for you, Gavril does not.

  “I haven’t got time for this,” Ikey whispered. He gripped the guard’s belt with his one hand and crab-walked backwards, pulling David through the slick sheen of muck.

  Had you made The Alligator suffer, had you rained down on him ten-fold the misery that you yourself have known, you would not have found your anger alleviated. It would still not be justified. Your rage. That pain. All of it would be there, but larger. Grown rabid on the meat of your actions.

  Ikey crawled through the hole in the wall and pulled David through. “I know.”

  Of course you know. And you know you can’t live with it.

  Ikey’s butt hit the back of the shaft. He sank to his knees, then rolled David over. He pulled on the sling, lifting it upwards as hard as he could to bring the unconscious man up onto his knees. As his arm quivered with exhaustion, he leaned back, drawing David’s weight onto himself. He shoved his arm under David’s arm, and then around his back. Ikey struggled to his feet bringing David up along with him. Under his tight breath, he prayed for the use of his mechanical arm, but it failed to respond. He paused a second, took a deep breath, then dropped into half a crouch as he raked David back over his shoulder.

  A muffled clang passed through the walls.

  They’re coming, Rose said. Saucy tipped them off. They’re searching the cells for you.

  Another door clanged.

  You will not find salvation in pity. Drop David. Climb to safety. The man is on death’s door to begin with.

  Ikey stood, adjusted David’s weight the best he could, and then planted his boot against a rock as he braced his mechanical arm and ruined shoulder against the foundation. David’s slight weight had grown to a force that pushed down on him like the hand of God.

  How can you climb out of here with one arm, even if you weren’t burdened with David’s dead weight? The guards will kill you. And David. You will be hanged for the deaths of The Alligator and Rolfe. Your death will serve no one but yourself.

  “Is Rolfe dead?”

  Don’t be a coward, Ikey. Don’t go like this. If you must balance your tally, then do so sensibly. The
re are many more people who need you.

  Ikey grunted as he lifted himself up. He kicked his foot against the foundation and scrambled to find a handhold to push off of.

  Another door clanged.

  Don’t do this, Rose said. You want to make your father pay. You want that more than anything. That is the coal that fires the rage inside you. Your entire existence has been a machine building up to that moment, taking the pain and suffering dealt to you like a spring takes motion. And you live to give that back to him. I know this. I know you. It’s why I wanted you to stay with me. In my house you can escape that. You slip outside of the light of that raging fire every time you fall inside my shadow. But that fire is always there, is it not? You can’t ignore it. Don’t ignore it now. Drop David. Otherwise, all you have suffered through and seen will be for nothing. Ikey, drop David now.

  Ikey’s hand clawed at the edge of the rock. He found a grip and pulled himself up. The rock tore into his flesh. The toe of his boot slipped on the foundation before it caught in a crevice.

  “I don’t want that,” Ikey grunted as he pulled and wrenched himself and David free of the constraints of gravity.

  Come back to me, Rose said. Then she was gone as iron hinges squealed and light rolled across the floor of the cell and into the foot of Ikey’s shaft.

  Something brushed Ikey’s cheek. He braced his shoulder against the wall and swatted at the irritant. His hand found a hank of fustian. He glanced up. Gavril leaned over the edge of the hole. The leg of a pair of trousers was wrapped around his arm. The other leg was in Ikey’s hand.

  Ikey twirled the leg around his wrist as Gavril leaned back, groaning with the strain.

  Ikey scrambled. He kicked and shoved with his feet, each toe seeking out a hold before propelling him upward.

  “Stop!” a man hollered below.

  Fetid air washed over Ikey’s face. Grass tickled his nose as he popped his head up through the sod. Gavril wrapped an arm around David’s waist, then stood and stumbled back, pulling David off Ikey’s shoulder.

  A hand smacked the heel of Ikey’s boot. He kicked down, buried his fingers in the sod, then scrambled over the edge, gasping.

  Without ceremony, Gavril laid David on the ground, then placed his good hand on the stone Ikey had used to cover the hole. Gavril shoved it back toward the foundation until it fell into the hole and elicited a muffled cry.

  “We go,” Gavril said.

  Panting, Ikey scrambled to his feet. Gavril helped sling David over Ikey’s shoulder again. He staggered a few steps, then picked up his pace, running for the edge of the river below, Gavril gasping and wheezing at his side.

  Ikey glanced over his shoulder to see if Rose followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  As they entered the pub Ikey had visited upon his arrival in Kerryford, Ikey motioned to a table in the back corner. He and Gavril slipped through the crowd as David worked his way to the bar.

  Ikey took a seat that was either the exact same seat, or one close to where he and Cross had shared a drink with Percy. With his glass eye, he surveyed the pub and saw what Cross had meant by atmosphere. Corrugated iron covered the walls, and graffiti covered the iron. A rough bunch made up the clientele. Their augments were bared, not hidden by either sleeves or trouser legs. At a table in the middle of the room, a crowd gathered around two men arm-wrestling with iron arms. They shouted at and goaded each other.

  At the bar, David leaned in toward the bar maid. He slipped a coin from the pocket of his waistcoat and placed it on the bar.

  Ikey glanced away for a second. Three days had passed before David was able to stand without assistance. The following day, he had disappeared while Ikey slept in the abandoned building they had been hiding in. When David returned a few hours later, he had a small sum of coin and a change of clothes. When Ikey questioned him about the goods, David said simply not to ask. When Ikey insisted, David stated it was a payment of the poor tax—a tax on the city for the luxury of having paupers. He would say no more on the subject.

  David gathered up three glasses and carried them back to the table as Ikey continued to scan the room for either Cross or Percy.

  “Any luck?” David asked.

  “No,” Ikey said. “I don’t see Cross.”

  David passed the glass of rum to Gavril. “Well, I spoke to the bar maid and told her we were looking to hire his services, but she said she hasn’t seen a soul matching his description.”

  Gavril grunted, then sipped at his rum.

  Ikey peered over at the bar maid. She averted her eyes and then inserted herself in a conversation being held at the bar.

  “I think she’s taken a shine to you,” Ikey said.

  “Pity, that,” David said, then took a drink of his vodka.

  “Next?” Gavril asked.

  David cocked an eyebrow at Ikey and sat back in his chair. His hand drifted up to his hair, then fell to his side. Ikey saw the restraint used to keep from poking at the tender goose egg The Alligator had left under his mop of hair.

  Ikey leaned forward onto his elbow and took a drink of his scotch. “I don’t know. If Cross is still in Kerryford, I have to find him.”

  “You should send a wire to Rose,” David said. “See if he went back to Whitby.”

  Ikey stared at the tabletop, scarred and gouged with a galaxy of scrapes and scratches and spots of oil and spilled drinks and who knew what else.

  “I suppose I should.” He could have the wire hand-delivered and read by a courier, one who could take dictation and send a response back. But would Rose even answer the door?

  Ikey looked up at his new friends and caught them exchanging a glance. David shifted in his seat, then peered into his vodka. He took a drink.

  Ikey caught such exchanges now and then. Private moments telegraphed between the two when they thought no one was paying attention. Ikey looked around the pub. No one paid them the least mind. Yet David and Gavril kept a wall between themselves that neither would dare scale.

  Ikey took a drink of his scotch.

  During his stay in the hospital, a touch of Rose’s fingers would have meant more than the world to him; the brief tingle of her cool skin on his pain-wracked body to let him know that the world was still out there, that there was more than the moaning of the sick, the ceaseless darkness, the throbbing pain of his head and arm. He wanted to know he was worth saving, worth the visit, worth the trouble.

  Yet David and Gavril sat secure in such knowledge without ever having to say so, to demonstrate with simple touches, fingers lingering on the arm. Their relationship stood fast in the small space allotted to it, like a tenacious weed struggling between cobblestones in the street.

  Ikey grimaced as he went through the motions of lifting his mechanical arm and resting it on the table. The tender muscles in his chest harped and sizzled with the effort. He rolled his glass back and forth along the iron rods of his palm.

  Rose did what she could from where she could. Ikey might wish for more, but then it wouldn’t be Rose. It wouldn’t be the woman who turned his world sideways, doused the lamps, and showed him how to live parallel to the world that was so mean and violent.

  Ikey looked back at David and Gavril. Parallelism. Two lines that never touch.

  Ikey would have to choose a side.

  But not today.

  He gulped down the rest of scotch and grimaced. “Let’s go send that wire, then come back here. There was a man we spoke to when we first came here. A man who had views a lot like Rolfe’s. I have a feeling that if we find this man, we’ll find Cross.”

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for taking the time to read Tin Fingers. I hope you enjoyed it. On behalf of myself and all those who helped to produce this novel, let me extend my heart-felt appreciation.

  I’m hard at work at the rest of the series, seriously. If you wish to be notified of when book 3 will be available, please visit http://dannyknestaut.com/newsletter and sign up for my newsletter. It’s an irregu
lar note added to your inbox about what’s coming up, as well as links to my blog where I review good steampunk books when I find them. If you have a question, comment, concern, or even want to suggest a good book (I’m always on the lookout for them!) you can send me a message at http://dannyknestaut.com/contact.

  Until next time, good luck, and may you find the best books.

  Sincerely,

  Danny Knestaut

  Other Works by Danny Knestaut

  Arachnodactyl: Book 1 in the Arachnodactyl Series

  About the Author

  Danny Knestaut is liked by children and cats, but he has no idea why. He feels it robs him of some of the credibility he'd like to establish as a writer of steampunk fiction that leans towards a dark edge and explores the reactions of luckless characters in difficult situations. When not writing in his home in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania, he further damages his credibility by enjoying knitting, the company of his spouse, his dogs, a hot cup of coffee, and a good, character-driven book.

  http://dannyknestaut.com