Slow steps drifted away.
Ikey reached over and felt along his left shoulder. It didn’t connect in his head. Nothing sat where his arm should have rested, and so his brain kept insisting that his hand was in the wrong place. His arm was there. It had to be. How could his arm hurt so much if it wasn’t there?
Ikey thought of Smith and chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Cross asked.
Ikey crunched the chuckle in his teeth and gripped the bedsheets again.
“Hey,” Cross said, his voice hardly above a whisper. “That Ellsworth fellow and a few other officials stopped by to ask questions. I told them about the accident. How the three of us were investigating a leak, and Admiral Daughton took his pistol out of his pocket to find something else. He dropped it. I got shot, and the discharge ignited the gas.”
Ikey concentrated on slow, regular breaths.
“They aren’t looking to buy that story,” Cross continued, “but if they come back around and you tell them you weren’t looking at Admiral Daughton, and you don’t remember what happened, it’ll be the only story they get, and I’ve got a feeling that they’re working hard to quietly brush these events aside.”
“How did you know?” Ikey asked. “About Rose and me?”
Cross’s mattress shifted nearby.
“I didn’t. Not at first. I was only trying to get under your skin. But after I saw your reaction, I knew.”
“And you saved my life?”
“I was a bit disoriented. You were a crutch for me. And there’s not much use in a flaming crutch.”
“Disoriented? You were half drunk.”
“The hell I was. I was half shot!”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“I am. I broke my leg. I got singed around the edges, but nothing like what you took. When we’re out of earshot from these nebby nurses, I’d like to hear things from your point of view.”
Ikey gripped the sheets again. The knot of cotton felt hot and sweaty under his grip.
“Thank you,” Ikey said.
“Don’t thank me. Don’t thank Smith, either. He’s the one who pulled you away from the ship. He heard the racket from the carriage and came to investigate. But make no mistake, neither of us did you any favors. You got what you deserve for daft heroics. You should have left me behind. I’ve known Rose a lot longer than you have, and I dare say she’d delight at the idea of being rid of me and having you in one piece, as opposed to the situation we have here.”
“That’s not true.”
“Poppycock.”
“My dad wouldn’t have saved you.” As the words passed his lips, he collapsed into the bed as if that statement had served as a pin holding together an entire machine. The weight of himself felt too great of a burden to bear.
“Bully for him,” Cross said. “Sounds like he’s smarter than you after all.”
“Maybe. But I’m not him. He wouldn’t have done it. I did.”
Exhaustion weighed on him, sudden as a freak summer storm. His face itched to smile, to grin broadly at the realization, but his facial muscles sat against his skull limp and wretched. The sobs came again, and Ikey laid in the bed and did his best to cry silently in his darkness. He willed himself to feel tears or wetness against his eyes—any sign that they were still there, that they worked, but he found nothing more than darkness and a low, throbbing pain. His breathing grew ragged and hoarse and he strained against the panic of not being able to expand his lungs fully.
After what seemed like hours, and possibly some sleep, Ikey called out for Cross.
“What.”
A soft moan drifted across the ward.
“I love her.”
“God help you. Now go back to sleep.”
“I saved you to prove that I could love her. That I’m not my dad. I don’t have to be like him.”
“It’s late. Shut the hell up and go to sleep.”
The moan rose in pitch. Springs groaned as someone rolled over in bed.
“If I can’t be with her, I’ll accept that. But I did it for her.”
“I’m about to snuff you with your own pillow for the sake of the ward if you don’t fucking go back to sleep.”
The moan crescendoed into a retch. Ikey gritted his teeth. His stomach twisted and gurgled. How long had it been since he ate? How long had he been out?
The sobs grew like tumors in the back of his throat. Ikey concentrated on slow, regular breaths in order to keep from crying, to keep from feeling like he was suffocating.
“Ikey?” Cross asked.
Each inhalation was a hand passed over a hand along a rope. His breath was a line that kept him moored to the world. If he spoke, the line would snap.
The retching man gasped and gurgled. Someone called for a nurse.
Ikey inhaled. Ikey exhaled. A sea of darkness passed under him. A sea filled with dark things ready to grasp him with cold and sightless tentacles.
“I’ve been over here thinking,” Cross said, “about a prosthetic arm. I could modify the one in the workshop. Shorten it up a bit so you don’t appear so damned lopsided. We’ll fix you up. Rose and I will.”
A bed creaked. Something cracked against the floor, and Cross cursed under his breath. A warm hand slid into Ikey’s and gripped him tight. Ikey clutched back.
“We’ll make a home for you,” Cross said.
Author’s Note
Thank you for taking the time to read Arachnodactyl. I hope you enjoyed it. On behalf of myself and all those who helped to produce this novel, let me extend my appreciation.
To read more of Ikey’s and Cross’s adventures, visit http://dannyknestaut.com/preorder to pre-order the next book in the series, Tin Fingers.
If you’d like to know when I’m releasing anything, please sign up for my newsletter. It’s a nearly monthly dole of what I’m up to, including reading recommendations for those who wish to read more of the steampunk genre. You can also get a sneak peek at first two chapters of the next book in the Arachnodactyl series. Sign up at http://dannyknestaut.com/newsletter.
Until next time, good luck, and may you find the best books.
Sincerely,
Danny Knestaut
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 dog, a hot cup of coffee, and a good, character-driven book.
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