Corpse & Crown

by Alisa Kwitney

  “You could always try trusting me,” said Dodger, even though that was absurd, since he was spying on her a bit—although never when she was undressing or indisposed. Still, shouldn’t she know there were some lines he would never cross?

  She raised her chin. “I will trust you—if you give me your word that you will stay out of my head.”

  Without planning his response, Dodger leaned forward, putting his handcuffed hands on the desk. “What’s in it for me, then?”

  Aggie seemed surprised. “What would you like?”

  “Make me a cambric shirt.”

  That surprised her. “Yes,” she said, as if this were not an absurd request. “Of course, I know the clothes they’ve given you leave much to be desired.”

  “Without any seams or fine needlework.”

  She blinked. “Beg pardon?”

  “Then wash it in yonder dry well, which never sprung water nor rain ever fell.”

  She gave a soft, sad laugh when she caught the reference. “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme?” She had a pleasant singing voice, low and husky.

  “That’s the tune, all right.”

  “Scarborough Fair is in Yorkshire, you know. Where I’m from.” She looked a little rueful as she added, “The song makes it sound like a goblin market, all magical trinkets and impossible tasks, but the reality is much more mundane.”

  He did not smile back at her. “Your science is as bad as any goblin magic.”

  She drew in a breath. “So what are you saying? That you don’t trust me? That there’s nothing I can offer you?”

  “I want my eyes back.”

  She let her breath go as if deflated. “I can’t make that happen.”

  “I want my life back.”

  She looked defeated. “Ask me something I can do and I swear to you, I will do it.”

  He studied her. “Did you really think you could just strike a bargain with me that only benefits you? What did you think—that I’m so smitten that I’d just give up my one advantage?”

  She hung her head, clearly embarrassed. “I could put in a good word with Shiercliffe. Perhaps get you a better room—gentler treatment.”

  “I’d still be a slave, though.” He took a breath. “Aggie, I’m out of time. The kaiser arrives tomorrow. Help me get out of here before I have to face off against his corpse walker.” He hadn’t known he was going to say it until the words came out of his mouth.

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “If I did that, I would lose my position.”

  “Least you have something to lose.”

  “That’s not fair. Would you sacrifice your life to save mine?”

  He shrugged. “Seems like I did just that—not that I was given a choice.” He held her gaze, willing her to feel the connection between them.

  She looked away, and suddenly Dodger’s throat closed up, making it hard to swallow. So that was that. He hadn’t known how much he wanted to escape until this opportunity had presented itself. Now her face told him the cage door was slamming shut again. He hated to plead with her, but desperation forced the words out. “Ags, please. I’ve got a bad feeling the size of a cannonball in my belly.”

  “Dodger,” she said, “I want to help you, I really do.” The word but was unspoken, yet he heard it loud and clear. Even so, the anguished expression on her face nearly made him do something foolish, like apologize for what he was about to do.

  But right now, it was every man—or Bio-Mechanical—for himself.

  “I understand perfectly,” said Dodger. “You want to help me. You just don’t want it badly enough to actually do it.” Raising his voice, he called, “Wiggins! The lady is done with me now.”

  30

  Wiggins opened the door so quickly it was instantly apparent that he had been standing just outside it the whole time. “Everything all right then, probationer? You got what you wanted?” His tone was perfectly respectful. It was his eyebrows that revealed the thread of mockery.

  “Yes, thank you.” Aggie stood, flustered and uncertain whether she was disappointed or relieved. She had no answer to her request. But maybe that was her answer. Dodger couldn’t or wouldn’t break the connection. For some mad reason, she felt a tiny bit relieved.

  “Hang on,” said Wiggins, checking the chain of keys at his waist. “Where’s the bloody key to your cuffs?”

  “Maybe you should have given it to me for safekeeping,” said Dodger.

  “Very funny.” Wiggins looked through his jacket pockets. “Blast me, I couldn’t have dropped it.”

  As Wiggins searched, Aggie tried to avoid looking directly at Dodger. She was unsettled by Dodger’s suggestion, but underneath it was another feeling that was not so easy to name. She thought of her mother’s accusatory tone, warning her how she would wind up if she allowed herself to touch or be touched by a boy. She had a flash of Shiercliffe’s thin, disapproving frown.

  But it wasn’t so easy to dismiss someone when you could see how the world looked through their eyes. She’d felt a connection with Dodger even before she’d received his eyes. With them, she saw as he saw, and sometimes...felt as she imagined he was feeling.

  “All right, then,” said Wiggins. “I’ll find the blasted key later. We’ll be on our way.”

  “I do hope you won’t get in trouble for that lost key,” said Dodger. “Let’s try to think where you might have left it.” Dodger’s voice was as helpful as a wife’s, trying to joggle her husband’s memory. “Hmm. Did you have it when you were eating lunch?”

  Aggie noticed something that should have occurred to her before—Dodger didn’t appear unhappy at being taken back to his cell. In fact, he had been the one to call Wiggins. Why?

  “Lunch... Hang on,” said the porter as something on the desk caught his eye. “Is that my sandwich?”

  “I don’t know. Does it look like your sandwich?”

  Wiggins’s fist shot out, knocking Dodger off his feet. Aggie’s startled yelp made him smile, which looked awful—his mouth was filling with blood.

  “Surely there’s no need for that,” she said. “And the professors wouldn’t want him damaged. Especially with the kaiser arriving tomorrow.”

  Dodger’s face registered nothing, but she saw a flash of something in his eyes. Had he expected more from her?

  “I won’t damage him. I know my job,” said Wiggins. “And I don’t blame him for thieving. Clearly, it’s his calling. I blame meself for not paying more attention.” He stroked the edges of his moustache. “Won’t make that mistake again.”

  “You think you won’t,” said Dodger. “But you will. The problem is, you’re focusing all your attention on guarding against one kind of theft—” with a quick twist, Dodger had his handcuffs off his wrists, and with another twist, he had Wiggins’s right hand cuffed “—and you leave yourself open to a different approach.” Yanking Wiggins’s hand behind him, Dodger got his second hand cuffed.

  Wiggins was sputtering, outraged. “How the bloody hell did you do that?”

  Dodger held up the key he had swiped. “You should pay more attention to your belongings, mate.”

  Aggie found herself giving an unintentional snort of laughter.

  “This is the kind of low trickery I should have expected from one of your tribe,” said Wiggins. “Sneakiness and cowardice—the hallmarks of your people.”

  “My people,” said Dodger, sounding bemused. “Why, Wiggins, I thought you were a philosopher, not a garden variety anti-Semite. Or did you mean Bio-Mechanicals? Never mind—open wide.” Dodger pinched the man’s nose until he opened his mouth, and then crammed in the half-eaten sandwich. “That should keep your mouth occupied.” He pulled a vial of chloroform out of his pocket as Wiggins stared, bug-eyed, and tried to protest around the sandwich stuffed in his mouth.

  For a moment, Aggie was dumbfounded. Then she realized how she
had been tricked.

  “You hoodwinked me,” she said. “When you knocked into the cabinet—you’ve been planning this all along!”

  “I’d say I keep my eyes open for opportunities,” he corrected her. Then, with a sudden move, he stripped off his ragged shirt, revealing a leanly muscled chest and the marks of recent beatings on his back.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  “What do you expect? Bio-Mechanicals aren’t meant to have feelings, remember? They’re just cannon fodder. So why would the guards care how they treat us?”

  “I didn’t know.” Which was hardly an excuse—she hadn’t bothered to think of it, but as a probationer nurse for the hospital that created Bio-Mechanicals, shouldn’t she have considered the implications? She looked at the glint of the metal alloy over his heart, and the electrodes at his neck. They did not make him any less human to her, and she could not understand how anyone could see this vital boy as something less than an animal.

  Then he used the key to pry the top of the vial of chloroform and she realized what he was about to do. “Dodger, wait,” she said. “Chloroform can be dangerous.”

  “Can’t think of another way to borrow our friend’s uniform.”

  Wiggins looked frightened. Like many people in a low position of authority, he had confused himself with his position and had not considered what might happen to him if he lost it. Spitting the sandwich out of his mouth, he said, “I swear, I won’t make trouble.”

  “I shall treat that assurance with the same confidence you would, if our positions were reversed.” Tipping the vial onto his wadded-up shirt, Dodger took a step toward Wiggins.

  “Wait!” Aggie moved in front of Dodger. “Do you honestly expect me to just sit idly by and let you get away with this?”

  “Well, you can help if you like. Otherwise, idle sitting would be acceptable.” Dodger pressed the chloroform-soaked shirt to the man’s face, and for a moment, Aggie considered screaming for help. But only for a moment. She wasn’t sure what made her decide to help him, or if it was weakness or bravery that made her do it. She only knew that she could not summon guards to stop him.

  “That’s enough,” she said, watching as Wiggins finally succumbed to the chloroform, his muscles going lax. “Anymore and you could kill him by accident.”

  Dodger removed the handcuffs from Wiggins’s wrists and fastened them on his waistband. “You sound as though I’m doing this as some kind of lark. If I stay, Ags, they’re going to stick me in a ring with some German killing machine. And you know as well as I do that I won’t last long, no matter how much they’ve tried to prepare me.”

  She shook her head. “That can’t be right. They haven’t said anything about having you fight the kaiser’s Bio-Mechanical.”

  Even as she said the words, she wasn’t sure she believed them. She could well imagine Shiercliffe and Moulsdale lying to achieve their ends, and even though she still wanted to believe that the Bio-Mechanical program was for the common good, she had begun to feel doubt creeping in. The cause still sounded noble—who wouldn’t want to stop the senseless killing in war, and to make sure no more young men with bright futures died on the battlefield? Yet Dodger was a young man, too, despite his transformation. Shouldn’t he be spared, as well?

  Of course, it wasn’t all about Dodger. What if the only way to make a superior Bio-Mechanical soldier was to create a being that had self-awareness?

  “Doesn’t matter what they say,” said Dodger, cutting into her thoughts. “What do you think they’re going to do with us? We’re two roosters in a cockfight. They’re not going to judge us on how pretty our feathers look.”

  Aggie felt her left temple beginning to pound. She didn’t want him to leave. Not like this. “But Shiercliffe said it was just a demonstration.” It was more a token protest than a real argument. She knew what she needed to do now.

  Dodger knelt down beside her. “I might not be fond of Wiggins here, but when he told me I’d wind up fighting the kaiser’s corpse walker, I knew he had the right of it.” He began peeling away Wiggins’s navy-and-red porter’s uniform with calm efficiency, revealing a pale, flabby, pear-shaped body mercifully concealed by long, sweat-stained woolen underwear. There was a rip in the seat—clearly, Wiggins was the kind of man who kept good care of what the world saw but didn’t bother with what he looked like in private.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” Dodger pulled on Wiggins’s jacket over his ragged shirt. “I’ve got some mates down in Brighton. Figure this might solve both our problems. I get out of here, and you don’t have to worry about me spying on you. I reckon our bond shouldn’t stretch beyond city limits.”

  “It won’t work, Dodger. First of all, that jacket is way too big on you.” Aggie checked Wiggins’s pulse—still steady. “Second of all, you do realize that you won’t have more than a few days before you need an infusion of fresh ichor.”

  “There’s a doctor not far from here who’s got the goods.” Dodger stuffed his own ragged shirt and trousers down the front and pulled the man’s leather belt as tight as he could.

  “You mean Henry Clerval? He’s not competent to bandage a wound.”

  Dodger shrugged. “He doesn’t need to be the world’s greatest surgeon to sell me some bootleg ichor, Aggie.”

  “What if it’s not the right formula? What if it’s a fake?” She wondered if he could tell that she was running out of arguments—or that she could feel his yearning for freedom as if it were her own emotion.

  “At least I’ll have tried something. Now, what do you think?” He tugged Wiggins’s cap down low, concealing his eyes.

  “I think you’re too stubborn to listen to reason.”

  “You might be right, sweeting, but there’s nothing to be done about that, now is there?”

  Anyone else would have been fooled by his shrug and his wink, but Aggie could read him. He was terrified. Of course, she was pretty frightened herself. Both for him, and for what she was about to do.

  “There is one thing to be done.” She removed her dark spectacles and handed them to Dodger. “You can wear these...and I can come with you.”

  31

  Slipping out a side door that opened onto a back alley, Aggie worried that someone might spot her probationary nurse’s uniform and question where she was headed. The moment they walked around the side of the hospital, she could see that this was not going to be a problem. Even though the kaiser was not due to arrive until the following morning, the streets surrounding the Royal Victoria were already teeming with throngs of people.

  “Good Lord,” she said, taking in the number milling about outside the hospital gates. “They’re not threatening to burn the place down, are they?” She was only half joking—the last time she had seen a gathering of townspeople outside a hospital, they had been waving torches and shouting incendiary words. She no longer trusted crowds, even though many people in this crowd were laughing and smiling.

  “It’s in honor of the royal visit,” said Dodger. “Here, maybe you want to stay close. There are a group of sailors that look like they’ve started celebrating early.” He offered her his arm, and after a moment’s hesitation, Aggie slipped her hand through his elbow.

  “Where? I can’t see any sailors,” she said, looking around.

  “You will,” he promised.

  “Just how well can you see now, Dodger? Especially in this light.” The last rays of the sun were just setting, which meant that it was probably close to eight, when the hospital closed its gates for the night. Given everything that had happened already, the day felt both much longer and much shorter.

  “Don’t know. Haven’t yet seen what I’m looking for, though.” Dodger guided Aggie around a group of old women putting the finishing touches on a sign that read Rule, Victoria, For the Next 100 Years!

  “Incredible,” she said.
“Who would want to stand around waiting all night, just to catch a glimpse of the queen?”

  “It’s as good an excuse for a party as any,” said Dodger. “Folks need a bit of pageantry now and then.”

  “So it would seem.” Some men and women were wearing little Union Jack ribbons pinned to their wool jackets, while others were waving small flags enthusiastically enough to poke the unwary in the eye. Others, drinking gin to stay warm, were noisily singing “God Save the Queen” and the music hall favorite “We Don’t Want to Fight,” with its rousing second verse:

  But by jingo, if we do

  we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men

  and the Bio-Mechanicals, too!

  We’ve fought the Bear, we’ll fight the Hun, because we’re Britons true.

  The kaiser will be on the run

  when we show what we can do!

  “They certainly seem patriotic,” she said as Dodger maneuvered her through a tight knot of young men wearing sailors’ distinctive caps and bell-bottoms.

  “Seems to me like the same sort of crowd that shows up for public executions. Good pickings, I should say. Care to change careers? We could make a fortune tonight.”

  “Your new eyes might even be an advantage.”

  “There’s a thought. But this kind of mob can turn unruly. If they caught a bloke stealing, they probably wouldn’t bother to wait for the constable or the hangman.”

  Aggie tried to pull him back. “Then let’s turn around. I know you want to believe he can help you, but Clerval is a quack.”

  “He’s my only chance at freedom, Ags.”

  Aggie knew it was useless, but she tried one last time. “Remember that poor girl we tried to help, the night we first met? She believed in a quick fix, too.” The thought of watching Dodger being operated on in some back alley surgery made her shudder.

  “But I’ve got you here, don’t I?” He pressed her hand to his side with his elbow. “You’re going to watch, to make sure it’s all on the up-and-up.”

  “Oi, Red,” said one of the sailors, stepping in front of Aggie. “You’re going the wrong way. Don’t you want to see the kaiser and the queen?” His breath reeked of rum.