Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (65 page)

Gren carefully
moved about the men, kicking away any nearby weapons from their reach and
checking their clothes for that missing key. I stood and watched, my fingers
white and shaking as they clutched onto the Doll’s toy. The act may seem
ridiculous to some, but at the time it was the only thing I could do to protect
the smallest part of the woman I loved.

“Nothing,” Gren
said, returning to me. “No one has it.”

“To the top,
then,” I replied.

The topmost floor
of the Motorists’ bootleg powder mill was a sight I could barely describe. If
the room below had been a battlefield, then this space was the Apocalypse
itself. The windmill’s central machinery, notably its spinning, center shaft,
was still miraculously intact and functional, but practically everything else
had been blown to bits, including a quite sizable hole in the stone wall. How a
gunpowder blast managed to blow through solid stone and not harm the wooden
shaft completely eluded me. But now was not the time to wonder.

“Watch yourself,”
Gren said, stepping through the rubble. “It’s a little rocky.”

“I imagine the
Apocalypse would be.”

“What?”

“Nevermind. Look,
there’s the hatch,” I said, pointing to the wooden exit built into the ceiling.

“And there’s the
ladder to get to it,” Gren said, pointing to the wooden pile of charred sticks
blasted apart by the detonations.

“Ah,” I replied,
frowning, “I see.”

“Now what?”

“You want to try
climbing on my shoulders?” I suggested.

“Do you
want
me
climbing on your shoulders?” he sarcastically countered.

I started to
sweat, or rather, started to realize that I had been sweating profusely for
some time. I wiped my forehead. “So we’re trapped here. Wait! No!”

I jogged to the
edge of the gaping hole that was torn into the side of the wall.

“Hey Gren,” I
said, watching the large sails of the windmill swing past outside, “how sturdy
do you think those things are?”

My friend shrugged
and then slowly widened his eyes as my meaning sunk in.

“Something funny,
Alan?”

“You’re telling me
that you,
you,
Pocket, jumped out of a hole and rode a windmill to the
ground?”

“Well, I didn’t
really
jump.
And Gren, as well.”

“I’m just having
trouble picturing that.”

“Well, it wasn’t
very graceful.”

“I bet.”

Gren peered down
the opening, glaring at the ground below.

“No,” he said.

“It’s only a few
floors down. The fall probably wouldn’t even kill us.”

“No.”

“The beams holding
those sails are pretty thick.”

“No.”

“And we can wrap
our arms and ankles through those wooden lattice holes that are holding up the
sailcloth.”

“No.”

“So we don’t have
to depend on supporting our own weight so much.”

“No.”

“If you’ve got
another idea, I’m listening.”

Gren paused,
scowled, and rolled up his sleeves.

“That’s what I
thought,” I sassed.

And as the two of
us at last planted our feet onto the soft soil at the bottom of the mill and—

“Whoa, whoa! Hold
on now, Pocket. You’ve promised me an amusing windmill episode. Silly, you said
it was. What you’ve given me is a whole chapter filled with nothing but
bloodshed and torment.”

“Well, granted,
but I think it was important to—”

“And
finally,
when
you actually get to a little piece of comedy, a
piece,
mind you, not the
complete chapter I refilled your glass for—“

“Fine. I get it.”

“—you skip over
the entire business.”

“Alan!”

“What?”

“Sigh. So you want
some comedy?”

“I think you owe
me a little.”

“Okay then. How’s
this?” 

And so it came to
be, as decreed by the great Alan Dandy, bartender to the great city, bearer of
the great bottles of even greater substances, that the farcical tale of the windmill
was to be recounted. All praise to Alan Dandy!

And may the rest
of London forgive me.

The voice of Gren
Spader rang through the air like birdsong, provided that the bird involved was
frightened. And tone-deaf. And probably dying.

“This was a horrible
idea!” Gren squawked, clinging onto the sail beneath mine.

“At least we’re
outside!” I shouted back from my own perch.

“Oh, sure!” he
shouted. “This is
much
better!”

I should probably
mention that this was our eighth circle around the whole of the windmill. My
suspicion that the beams were sturdy enough to withstand us was thankfully
correct. I had misjudged, however, the difficulty to remove our limbs from the
small lattice holes in time with the meeting of the sail with the ground. Also,
the sails didn’t exactly
meet
with the ground, so it was more of an
issue of falling free at the point where the ground was as physically close to
our bodies as possible.

After three
circles around the entire windmill, Gren and I figured out the proper time to
let go.

After four we
realized that we were stuck to our posts.

“Much, much
better!” Gren shouted as the sky once more twisted upside down before my eyes.

“Great, Spader!
Complain some more!” I yelled. “That’ll help!”

Gren howled. “I
swear, just
one
more turn on this ride, and I’m dropping this damned
thing!” He was referring to the Doll’s bubblemaker, which was clutched between
his knees.

“You do and I’ll
kill you!”

“Why does everyone
want to kill me today?!? It’s getting really old!”

“You won’t live
long enough to become ‘really old’ if you drop that toy!” I threatened. “Parts
of Dolly are in there! Would you drop her?”

“I still don’t see
why you couldn’t have held this thing?”

“I’m already
hanging on to this,” I said, cradling my bottle of faerie juice against my
ribcage with my elbow. “You think I’m happy to see you holding the Doll between
your legs?”

“What did you
say?” Gren shouted, his head spinning.

“I said, don’t let
go of that bloody—”

“Look!” Gren
exclaimed as we began our ninth circle around. “Someone’s in the sky!”

“Military?!?” I
gasped, afraid.

“No, some sort of
civilian dirigible. It’s…yeah, it’s a hot air balloon. I’m gunna try to signal
them.”

Unfortunately,
with our hands and feet and Gren’s knees incapacitated, we could do little more
than thrash about on the posts. Miraculously, the pilots of the balloon spotted
us anyhow and began steering toward us.

“Thank God!” Gren
said.

I spun upside down
once more and got close enough to grasp a quick look at the men approaching in
my overturned sky. There was something unsettlingly familiar about them.

“Oh no,” I
muttered to myself.

The two men,
brothers, began to wave excitedly as they approached. The unusual, colorful
wardrobe hanging from their bodies were unmistakable.

The Marvelous
Marins, peddlers, medicine men, maniacs, were careening through the clouds. And
they were heading our way.

“Hello!” Doctor D
yodeled to us.

“Good day!” Doctor
P sang out.

Well, I figured,
at least they’re on my side.

“Pocket!” Gren
shouted from below me. “That better not be who I think that is!”

“Would you rather
keep riding this?” I retorted.

He groaned and
yelled to the Marins. “All right, boys! Over here!”

We continued to
circle as they bobbed closer to us.

We continued to
circle as they bobbed past us.

We continued to
circle as they bobbed away, waving a gleeful goodbye to us.

“Adieu!” Doctor P
shouted.

“Happy sporting!”
Doctor D followed.

And they were
gone. And we continued to circle. I think I heard Gren cry.

Four spins later,
I decided that I was quite ready to disembark. I tugged and pulled my left
wrist and at last yanked it free. As my sail approached the ground, I let go of
my bottle. It bounced upon the soil and, to no surprise, landed completely
unharmed. With my free hand, I started yanking at my other entangled limbs. I
cheered in victory as my right hand slipped loose.

My feet, however,
were still quite held in place. And as the windmill continued to turn, I was
soon thrown downward, hanging by my ankles, coat draped over my face, as my
sail turned back up to the sky.

“Now this is just
sad,” I heard Gren say.

I ultimately
worked my way out of my coat and sent it, along with my hat, sailing down to
the earth.

I sighed. “Tough
day.”

Exhausted as I
was, and with blood quickly rushing to my crown, I tried to muscle up the
strength to pull my dangling body back onto the whole of the sail. I was unable
to do so, but I did manage to dislodge my legs and fall headfirst onto the sail
below me, nearly crippling Gren as I landed.

“Ow!” he snapped,
the bubblemaker fumbling out of his clutch. “Get off of me!” I rolled over the
side of the beam and caught the sailcloth just in time to keep from falling
off.

“I told you not to
drop that!” I yelled at Gren.

“Well, I wasn’t
expecting you to land on me!” he yelled back.

“Neither was I!”

I took a deep
breath, commanding my aching fingers to hang on until the mill had circled back
toward the ground. And then, of course, the cloth ripped.

“No, no, no, no!”
I yelped, falling down and catching the sail that was coming up beneath me.

“You all right?”
Gren called out.

“I’m still alive,”
I bitterly retorted, “so,
no!
”

But at the very
least this procession of tumbling had left me in a much better position to make
a jump for it. Or rather a weary, half-hearted drop.

Thud! I smacked
against the ground and rolled off onto my back. Thoroughly worn down, I laid
still, breathed deeply, and considered taking an impromptu nap. Sleep upon the
grass and soil? Didn’t seem like a bad prospect. I turned my stiff neck to the
side and saw that, like my bottle, the Doll’s toy had come to rest perfectly
unbroken. I closed my eyes in peace, glad that for a single, passing moment,
everything was calm, at rest, and thoroughly as it should be.

“Damn you,
Pocket!” Gren screamed. “I am going to stomp you into pudding if you don’t get
up and pull me off of this overgrown pinwheel
right now!
Do you hear
me?!? Right
now!
”

Everything at
rest. Everything in a lull.

My tension melted
into the soil, and I breathed in the day’s air.

“Pocket?!? I know
you can hear me!”

And with our
hero’s final taste of serenity, so ends the terribly great or greatly terrible
comedy of the windmill. God save Alan Dandy, may his followers remain forever
joyous and for never sober. 

“Satisfied?”

“A bit short for a
chapter, Pocket.”

“Come on, Alan.
What do you want? That’s all the comedy I have left in me.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. We got off
of the windmill. The end.”

“But Gren was
still—”

“He cracked the
wood around his ankle and got down within five minutes. The end.”

“But those Marins
and their balloon—”

“They passed and
were gone. The end.”

“But—”

“
The. End.
Okay?
If you want more laughs, I may as well stop right now.”

“Okay! You don’t
have to get so angry! What’s the matter with you?”

“I’ve told you,
Alan! I’ve been telling you! This story, this whole, stupid story, it’s not
easy for me to tell!”

“You haven’t
seemed to have much trouble up to now.”

“Well, now we’re
reaching the beginning of the end. And I can’t say you’re going to find much
more laughter.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Sorry. If you
want me to leave, I’ll—”

“No, it’s fine,
Pocket. I want to listen. But, really…is it that dreary?”

“Sigh…I promised
you a story, Alan. But I never promised a happy ending.”

“Well, Pocket, the
sun’s not up yet. Tell me whatever one you’ve got.”

“Very well.”

And as the two of
us at last planted our feet onto the soft soil at the bottom of the mill and
surveyed the fields beyond, Gren and I shared a moment of silent recognition of
what we had done. Our freedom again rewarded to us, we turned our backs on the
powder mill and began to retrieve our possessions amongst the grass.

“Any idea where we
are?” Gren tiredly asked as he bent down to retrieve the Half-Luck. He had
thrown his weapon to the dirt before climbing onto the sail. I had done the same
with my boots, not wanting the heavy pair to weigh me down.

“None,” I glumly
said, taking my coat and hat before shoving my socked feet back into my boots.
It dawned on me that I still had in my possession my green-lensed eyeglass,
which I had absentmindedly tucked into my pants pocket before heading out
flower-shopping the night before. I would’ve thought the remaining glass piece
would be completely crushed during either my abduction, interrogation, or
escape, but as chance had it, the piece survived with only the golden frame
being slightly bent.

“You still wearing
that ridiculous thing?” Gren grinned.

“Got to hold onto
whatever I’ve got left,” I said as I straightened the frame, “ridiculous or
not.”

“You realize it’s
only keeping half of the sunlight out of your sight.”

“Yeah. But no
matter,” I said, sliding the eyeglass up my nose. “I’m fine with keeping one
eye in the shade.”

I gathered the
faerie juice and the bubblemaker, a box of her body and a bottle of my soul. Or
just trivial baubles. Gren began smacking the barrel of his scattergun to
loosen the caked-in dirt.

I threw on my
overcoat and stuffed my hands in the pocket. The contents were more or less
still inside: the same scraps of paper, the same ridiculous calling card, the
last remaining purple cigarette, and the…wait…

I dropped to my
knees and began clawing at every stitch, every seam, every corner and cranny of
my overcoat. I felt sick.

“What’s wrong?”
Gren said, walking over.

I started to pale.
I looked up at him, shaking, and swung my head. “It’s…it’s gone…”

“What are you
talking about?” Gren said. “What’s gone?”

“The turnkey.
It’s…it’s not here.”

Gren’s jaw
dropped. “What?!? Are you sure?!? Are you checking the right pocket?!?”

“I’ve checked them
all.”

Gren practically
dove into the earth. He crawled and swayed and tore handfuls of grass in his
fists.

“It’s not there,”
I weakly said.

“Must be!” he
barked. “Must’ve fallen from you on the way down!”

“No.”

“Must’ve landed
somewhere in the brush! Damn it, why isn’t it reflecting in this light?”

“Because it’s not
here.”

“Don’t say that! I
mean, you’re sure you took it back from the Motorists?”

I was sure.
Despite the blinding smoke and surrounding clatter, the one task I was
completely determined to perform was the retrieval of that turnkey. Oh, I had
it, all right. And I would’ve damn sure noticed if I had dropped it as I went.
No, in that moment, watching Gren beat down on the earth, I was certain. The
only way that the turnkey of the Watchmaker’s Doll could’ve disappeared is if
it was taken directly from my person in the dark.

Taken by someone
with the ability and finesse to get their fingers into my coat without being
seen or detected.

Like a pickpocket.

My stomach knotted
as I thought of that phantom in the mill, that sudden knife slicing me free,
and those two words I had heard.

“We’re even.”

Confusion became
understanding, fear became anger, and the pale white of my face turned hot red.

The fox had broken
into the mill.

I heard the
slightest sound behind me, and before I faced it, I already knew. I knew the
figure would be there, standing as he was, on the very top of the windmill.
Backlit by the early sun behind him, he was little more than a silhouette. But
those telltale, triangular ears sewn onto his cap shaped out the shadow.

And in his hand, a
folded rod of platinum.

“Kitt Sunner!” I
screamed, all but limping my body back to the ravished, stone mill. “Come down
here so I can kill you!”

Too weak to even
move, I stumbled and collapsed, but Gren was already quickly following. He too
was boiling red, screaming as he dragged himself to the mill. I got to my feet
somehow and caught up. As we approached, Kitt’s silhouette waved a friendly
hand at us and jumped backward off of the edge of the windmill.

“Jesus!” Gren
exclaimed as Kitt disappeared behind the back of the mill. “He just fell five
floors!”

“Get him!” I
shouted. We split ways and took off around each side of the round mill, hoping
to surround Kitt wherever he had fallen.

“There!” Gren
said, seeing a shape lying hidden in a soft patch of weeds. He jumped at it
only to find he had seized a lumpy pile of dirt with a smiling face
finger-drawn on. The cutpurse had disappeared.

“It’s a trick!”
Gren snarled to me.

“Of course it’s a
trick!” I retorted. “It’s Kitt! It’s always a tri—“

“Nevermind! Then
where is he?”
Our answer was delivered in the form of a sudden, chugging rumble coming back
from the opposite side of the powder mill.

We hobbled back,
wheezing, and found a muddy, thin set of tire tracks stretched out over the
fields. Where they originated, I found a parked clump of steam-driven
motorbikes, the expected mechanical steeds of those grease-coated Motorists.

“No!” I cringed.
“Damn it, no! He’s got it, Gren! The turnkey! He got it away from me!”

“That’s not all,”
Gren coughed. “Look! Bastard even swiped that toy!”

“What?!?” I looked
back and, sure enough, the bubblemaker was gone. My corked bottle now sat alone
in the dirt, robbed of its golden-geared partner.

I gritted my teeth
as a breeze blew my dark bangs over my eyes, consuming the storm in my pupils.

“The coward!” Gren
exclaimed. “Came, stole, and ran! Didn’t even say a word to us! I can’t believe
after all we’ve gone through, the little thief’s gotten away again!”

I looked over at
the remaining motorbikes. “No, he hasn’t.”

Without thought, I
grabbed the handlebars of the closest bike and threw my leg over the seat.

“Whoa! Wait!” Gren
cried out.

I took off like a
shot after Kitt’s direction as Gren’s protests faded into the distance.

We were even, the
fox had claimed.

Like hell we were.

The machine
rattled under my body, and despite my lack of experience, I kept it moving with
only somewhat unsteady precision and control. I was soon alone, tracing the
tracks until they met a proper road. Following it, my heart pounded as I
finally noticed a similar bike moving quickly just ahead of me. Kitt turned his
head back, saw me, and immediately accelerated.

“You think that’ll
stop me?!?” I shouted from a dry and scratchy throat.

I barreled down on
Kitt, riding along at the highest speed I could reach. My hands felt clammy and
numb. My eyelids grew heavy. I was woozy, having lived through far too much in
the last two days. But I had to do this.

“Come on,” I
whispered to myself. “Just hold together a little longer.”

I couldn’t catch
up with Kitt, couldn’t overtake him, but I continued to match his speed and
kept with him. Just like the night we had met, when I chased him through city
streets and across rooftops, I knew the loser of the race would be the one who
tripped up first. Only this time, he had the Doll in his hands. My mind became
steeled, and my will, unshakeable. I would allow neither to disappoint.

There was the
fickle issue of my body, though. I’ve often noticed in the grand stories of old
that a steel mind and unshakeable will is always enough to pull the hero back
from the verge of defeat, no matter how broken his bones are.

Such was not the
case with Will Pocket that day.

Very quickly my
head grew even heavier, which didn’t help my already quite limited ability to
control a motorbike. My front wheel started to wobble and zigzag.

At that point my
eyelids completely betrayed me, falling down perpetually every five seconds,
clicking along like clockw—eh, well, repetitively. I verbally commanded them to
stay alert, and during the argument that proceeded between my mouth and my
eyes, my motorbike spun off of the road and slid into a patch of soft dirt at
its edge. I tumbled face first, coughing up dust as my target drove
victoriously away.

Damn.

I couldn’t even
yell. Lying limp and alone, the filthy ground pressing cold against my cheek, I
could only watch as the shadow of Kitt Sunner melted into the horizon like a
shot of cold milk into bitter coffee.

And then I slept,
as I simply could not endure another waking moment of this horrid day. I slept
right there in the soil, and I slept hard. And in that morning slumber, I felt
nothing. Not only did I fail to see the Doll, I failed to even create a dream.
I believe that deep down that was how I wanted it. No visions. Just dead sleep.
I was far too ashamed to face the one I loved, even in a dream, after what I
had let happen. I couldn’t bear to look into those eyes and admit my failure.
“It’s lost,” I would have had to say to her. “I’ve let him take your key, the
last chance I held at bringing you back into this life. Whether you wake or
sleep forever is now completely his choice. And for that, I am unspeakably
sorry.”

Sleep forever.
Though many deem such a thought sinful, I half-hoped as I closed my eyes in the
dust that I could do just that. Maybe after a few eternities in a dead slumber,
I would be able to muster the courage to face the Doll. Maybe then I could
spread paint around the space, shade in a little color, and put together a nice
dream for the two of us. Maybe she’d even come to forgive my failure and choose
to stay with me.

I wouldn’t
complain if such a fate befell me.

In fact, it’d make
a decent enough ending for a story that had been going on for far too long.

But guess what?

“Pocket! Hey, come
on!” Gren’s voice said, his hands pulling at my coat. “Get up!”

I cracked my eyes
open. Little slivers of white they were, carved into my face. My friend was
kneeling at my side, and behind him, the motorbike he had taken to track me
down.

“Oh, good,” Gren
continued. “Thought you were dead for a minute there.”

I watched a patch
of clouds hideaway the shining sun above me.

“For a minute, I
was,” I whispered, “but I can’t figure out how to make it stick.”

Hours passed.

Eventually we were
found by a passing carriage, whose driver took pity on us and drove us to a
small, countryside hospital. There, Gren and I, admitted under the aliases of
Stanley and William Falston, were supplied with ointments and bandages and
fresh, white sheets. We stayed the night, sleeping off our windmill beating,
and arose at dawn before the nurses. We stole away with our clothes and items
through an unlocked window, assuming we’d be unable to pay whatever number our
bill would request. We made our way across the cold grass, slapping up the dew
from their blades, jogging through the world to nowhere, no destination except
away.

Days passed.

It was difficult,
but once we figured out more or less where we had ended up after the Motorists
drug us out of the city proper, we were able to find refuge. Gren knew a place
in the area, more of a scattered handful of buildings than an actual village,
which sat on the crossroads of another smallish air dock. It was a spot Gren
knew from his time with the pirates, who preferred to park the
Lucidia
at
spots conveniently forgotten by most of the surrounding nation.

 Amongst this
scattered and forgotten handful was a tired, little dart-and-billiard parlor
whose owner was well acquainted with Gren. As might be expected of someone of
Gren’s profession, my friend would oft frequent the establishment, passing the
time by playing cards or shooting billiards for money that he’d inevitably just
hand back over the bar counter once night came around. Gren led me to this
parlor immediately once we entered the town, promising that we’d find free room
and board behind its yellowed doors.

“Why?” I dully
asked, speaking my first word in what seemed like weeks as I followed Gren down
the road.

“The owner keeps a
back storeroom with a few beds and tables and things.”