Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (20 page)

Kitt's jaw sealed
and he stopped in his tracks.

“Zeppelin?” I said
with a laugh. “You don't say? All kinds of lunatics in this world. Right,
Kitt?” I slapped the thief's shoulder, forcing him to continue on his way.

“Yeah...” he said
quietly. “All kinds...”

We kept moving
towards Gren's neck of London, but Fortune seemed dead set on making us sweat.

“Damn...” Gren
whispered as we happened upon a particularly distressing scene. “The militia
doesn't joke around.”

The street ahead
was a sea of uniforms and ammunition. Tight squads patrolled up and down,
inspecting carriages and sealing off routes.

“How do we get
by?” I asked.

“We don't,” Gren
said.

“Are you sure?”

He and Kitt looked
at me as if I was touched in the head. In the distance, a squad of riflemen
created a human barricade across one corner. “Yes,” Gren said. “Pretty sure.”

“We don't want to
get shot, Pocket,” Kitt said, a little condescendingly. “If we can avoid it.”

“But you two,
isn't this your field of study? Sneaking and shadows and subterfuge and all of
that?”

“Do you think you
can shadow around
that?
” Gren said.

“We don't want to
get shot, Pocket.” Kitt repeated.

I wanted to get
angry, but it was a stupid question on my part, so I switched anger for
humility and looked at the ground.

“We'll have to
find somewhere else to hide,” Gren said. “No way we can get to my place from
here. Come on.”

He shouldered past
me and took off back the way we came. Kitt was quick on his heels behind him.
The Doll smiled and took my hand.

“It's okay,” she
said. “I don't think it was a stupid question.”

“You sure? When
you say as many stupid things as me, you tend to lose awareness of what's not.”

“Are you always so
hard on yourself?”

“Let's go!” Gren
whisper-shouted from across the way. He and Kitt were soon distant shapes
quickly dissolving on the horizon.

“No one's hard on
themselves, Dolly. That's why this world's so boring.”

She had nothing to
say to this.

“Come on,” I said,
still clenching her hand in mine. “Let's move.”

The rest of the
day was a tired scramble for shelter, for a place to rest. My muscles were
tired and my nerves were frayed to the point of numbing. What I really wanted,
I thought as the sky purpled and the moon began making its first appearance of
the eve, was to wake up from this outlaw dream and start again. Open my eyes to
a quieter world, get up, dress, and have a sensible, non-alarming breakfast. As
much as I abhor boredom, I was, at that moment, much willing to take on the
label if it meant rest from this maddening runaround, if only for a little
while.

But then, I wasn't
dreaming, or if I was, I was lousy at waking up. This I also thought as the
moon came up and Gren brought us to the old woman.

We had retreated
to a small region of the city not-so-dotted with vilified posters of me and
Kitt, hoping that we would be lucky enough to blend in for a few hours. The old
woman Gren found had terribly weak vision, a plus to our situation, and ran a
small, unassuming inn. She regretted to inform us that she was all full up, not
a vacancy to be found, but Gren somehow talked her into allowing us to sleep on
the floors in the front room. He thanked her for the hospitality and paid with
the clump of bills he had grabbed from the bludgeoned Magnate.

Oh, there's one
other thing I can't bear to leave out.

The lady lodger
had three granddaughters of age, each with shiny yellow hair and each instantly
taken with young mister Spader.

Gren, of course,
found their flirtations unspeakably irritating.

“Excuse me,
Mister, Mister, Sir!” one of the girls sang at him.

“What?” he snapped
back. He looked for the old woman, but she had already wandered inside, leaving
him at the mercy of her kin.

“Forgive me if I
speak out of turn,” the girl said, sunbeams and flower petals choking each
word. “But I must tell you that your aroma is absolutely delightful!”

“It's butter. Go
away.”

Another girl took
him by the arm, blocking his entrance into the inn.

“He's a handsome
man, sister!”

“Leave me alone!”
Gren barked, trying to shake his hand loose. “Go troll for husbands somewhere
else!”

The ladies giggled
amorously. The third sister did a little dance up to them.

“Are you, by
chance, betrothed?”

“No, but that
doesn't mean you girls can—“

“He is
unbetrothed!” the girl with Gren's arm announced. “What eligibility!”

“How would you
like your pretty little faces sma—“

“Gren-Gren!” the
Doll instructed. “Manners!”

“Did you hear
that?” the first sister said. “He called us pretty!”

“And little!” the
second said. “Such poetry!”

“Get off me!” Gren
demanded. He then decided to change tactics and pointed their eyes my way. “You
want poetry, go talk to him! He's full of it! And I bet
he's
available.
Go bother him!”

“Oh, I don't know,
Gren,” I said amongst my own laughter. “I don't think I'm quite their type.
Lacking the aroma and all.”

The girls agreed
and spent a few minutes trying to comb Gren's hair until he finally made his
escape into the inn.

“He went away!”
said one girl.

“And he locked the
door!” said another.

Kitt and I were
bent over, laughing our proverbial heads off. Dolly seemed equally pleased as
Gren's frowning, reddened face appeared in the front window, watching from
safety.

“I'm sorry,
ladies,” I said, wiping a tear from my non-lensed eye. “I'm afraid you've
scared him away.”

“We'll put in a
good word, though!” Kitt added.

The girls sighed
in disappointment and eventually shuffled away, joining their grandmother via a
side entrance. Gren rejoined us outside, dragging his feet and fuming.

“I hate you all.”

We continued
laughing.

“You wear the
scent of butter well,” Kitt said to Gren. “You should probably thank me now for
stabbing you.”

“Sure,” Gren
grumbled. “Give me a chance and I'll return the favor.”

“Hey Gren,” I
said, forcing myself to cease laughing. “That was a dirty trick, trying to pawn
them off on me.”

“Not that it
worked.”

“How'd you know
that I know poetry?”

“Eh...it's seems
like something you'd know. Not very becoming of a master criminal.”

“Neither is
smelling like butter.”

Dolly, Kitt, and I
resumed our guffaws as night came into its own. The sky was soon as filled with
stars as it was with the bulletproof gambler’s threats on our lives.

The funny thing
about time is how it moves, sometimes slower than a man can suffer, sometimes
mercilessly fast. The hours of this night blinked by in moments, and before I
knew it, I had been fed by the kind lady of the inn and sent tucked into a
blanket on the soft carpet of the front lobby. I rested silently on my pillow
and moved my eyes around the room. It was darkened, but enough moonlight was
filling the space through welcoming windowpanes that I could see my
surroundings. A wooden clock hung on the wall opposite me that was carved into
the shape of a night owl. The owl's eyes watched me. What great knowledge, I
wondered, burned in its beady eyes? What insight was it dying to pass onto me?
Was it a message of confidence or warning? Such a tragedy that his beak was
forever fastened shut, an unsplit cone of wood.

“If you have
anything to tell me,” I whispered. “Now would be the time.”

“What would you
like to be told?” spoke the Watchmaker's Doll.

I turned my head
to find her staring at me over the edge of her blanket.

“Can't sleep?” I
asked.

The four of us
were lying in a neat row across the floor, with four small blankets and pillows
tending to us. Kitt and Gren were already fast asleep. It greatly surprised me
that I wasn't, given my current level of exhaustion.

“I can sleep
whenever I want,” the Doll quietly said. “But I don't feel like it.”

“I know the
feeling.”

“Were you talking
to that bird gentleman on the wall there?” she asked.

I smiled at my
ridiculousness. “I suppose I was.”

“Why?”

I shrugged and
propped my arms behind my head. “He looked like he had something to say.”

“Something to say
to you?”

I looked over into
her shining eyes. “I guess I’ll never know.”

She nodded in
apparent concurrence. In the light, the glow from her eyes seemed purple and
the shine from the moonlight hit her just in a way that rendered the skin it
touched further translucent. I could faintly see now beneath her right cheek a
few, very tiny, moving cogs attached to bands. Funny how I kept forgetting that
they were there.

The bands in her
cheek tightened and her mouth formed a smile. “You can see them, right?”

I felt myself
blush and I looked away. “Yeah, for a moment,” I whispered foolishly. “Just
under the cheek.”

“They show up
sometimes. I don't mind if you look.”

I glanced back.
She was still staring at me. I blew a strand of hair out of my face. “You sure
are something, aren't you?”

“Am I?”

“People seem to
think so.”

“People
meaning...”

“All right, me.
And these two, I'm sure.”

She had a moment
of thought. “I don't see the big deal.”

“Oh, come on.
Humility is one thing, but you can't—“

“I'm nothing
special.” She shifted in the light and her gears disappeared. I sighed and
loosened my hands beneath my head.

“I should've
expected you to say something to that effect.”

She shrugged at
me, mimicking the move I had used on her moments ago.

“Hey, Dolly...”

“Yes?”

“What happens in
two weeks?”

The onlooking owl
watched us there, alone on a strange floor at a stranger hour. He moved the
flow of time forward with precise ticks, one second after another. The
Watchmaker's Doll closed her glowing eyes and made the decision to end the
night.

“Ask me again,”
she said, tightening her hands on her blanket. “In eleven days.”

Night took us in
and we slept. 

Morning found me
with a smoldering hole three inches to the right of my head, accompanied with
the jarring sound of a shotgun unloading a fresh round at a young man wanted
for high crimes against the empire.

I sat quickly up,
something that I rarely did in the morning. Generally, I'm much more of a
sluggish, drag-him-from-the-sheets-with-all-of-your-given-strength type of
waker, but there's something about a round of smoking buckshot that really
alerts your senses.

This, I decided as
I tumbled over my sheets and ran for cover, was to be the tone of today.

Another shot was
fired and my pillow was a blast of feathers.

“Don't shoot!” I
yelled, hiding behind a nearby bookcase.

“No!” someone
shouted back.

“No?!?” I repeated
in incredulity. “Why not?”

“Because I aim to
kill you!”

“Well, stop it!”

Another shot rang
through the room and smacked into a slab of wallpaper. I slid out from my spot
and checked the floor. The others weren't there. Good, I hoped. Maybe they had
gotten out. Another shot hit the wall and I threw my hands up. “Don't! I'll
make it worth your...oh.”

The old lodger was
standing across from me, her thin legs wobbling as her wrinkled hands held onto
the shotgun aimed at my chest. She wore a nasty look.

“I don't take
kindly to master criminals,” she spat at me.

“I can see that.
But if you'd just let me explain—“

“Pocket!” Kitt
shouted, running into the room from the other end, behind the woman.

“Kitt, watch out!”

The woman spun and
took aim. The fox hunt, it seemed, was on. She fired one shot. It missed Kitt
by a mile and shattered a lamp into several pieces. She took another shot and
hit a book in the next room. Then it occurred to me. This woman was half-blind.
She couldn't aim a firearm to save her...

Pow! She fired yet
another shot. It landed exactly at Kitt's feet. He screamed and leapt, seconds
before getting his lower legs blown off.

Okay, so she
couldn't aim a gun. But she could still get lucky.

“For Britain!” the
old maniac shouted.

“Kitt, go!”

He dove headfirst
into the next room. She took off after him.

Oh no, you don't,
you maniac.

“Yah!” I shouted,
a pathetic cry but appropriate enough for wrestling an elderly woman, which is
exactly what happened next. I jumped at the woman and forced her to the ground,
careful not to break her brittle bones. She sustained no injury, but would not
let go off her shotgun and tried desperately to aim it at my face.

“Hold still,
please!” she commanded.

“Are you
serious?!?” I shouted.

Kitt ran in as we
both clawed at the weapon. He was carrying my trusty bottle.

“Pocket! I've got
your juice!”

“Damn the juice!
Get her off me!”

“How?”

“Hit her with
something!”

“I can't do that!
She's old enough to be my grandmoth—“

The woman got a
shot off into the ceiling. Broken pieces of it rained down upon us.

Gren and the
Watchmaker's Doll appeared from the staircase.

“Run!” he
commanded to the Doll. “Get outside and run!”

She did as
commanded, leapt over the struggle, and flew out the front door. Kitt and Gren
dove to my aid, joining in the fight for the shotgun.

“I take it they
started putting up posters,” Gren said, yanking at the weapon.

“I may be old,”
the woman barked. “But I'm sharp enough to recognize a traitor to the King!
Traitors! Traitors! Police!”

“Shut up!” Gren
yelled.

“I don't think
this is working!” I shouted. “Where's your pistol, Gren?”

“I gave it to the
Doll for protection!”

“Nice job! Who's
going to protect us?”

“Ow!” Kitt said.
“She bit me!”

“I'll do it
again!” the lodger said. “I swear I'll—”

A damp cloth
appeared over her face and a fair hand pressed it to her mouth. The old woman
struggled and went limp, falling into a sudden sleep. Her bony fingers slid off
of the trigger of the weapon.

We stood and
looked at the trio of yellow-headed granddaughters, standing teary-eyed with
the rag and a bottle of ether.

“Go now,” they
said. “Run to your freedom, beautiful sir.”

They all took
Gren's hand. Kitt and I began laughing through our wheezes.

“Run away!” the
one with the rag said. “Run to your destiny! And never look back to thank—“

“All right. Be
seeing you.” Gren offered, already running away. Kitt and I looked back at the
heartbroken maidens, waving goodbye.

“Chins up,” Kitt
said. “You can probably do better, anyway. Ladies?”

“Kitt,” I said.
“They don't even see us.”

I grabbed my
bottle. The girls, locked in a stare, continued their wave as we ran out of the
room. I turned back only once, to close the door. In that moment, all I
remember seeing is the owl upon the wall. He had been brushed by one of the
random gunshots, and a chipped eye now appeared to be winking to me.

It would be the
last time we would exchange looks.

Outside, we found
Gren trying to chase the Doll down, who was running frantically down the road,
flinching and waving the pistol around in the air for protection.

“Dolly!” Kitt shouted
as we joined Gren in the chase. “It's all right! Slow down!”

“Don't come near
me!” she shouted, shaking the gun in every direction. She had something else
under her arm. Something round. I realized that it was the wax cylinder that
was left in her company. I hadn't realized that she had been toting it around
throughout this whole escapade.

She turned down
another street. We followed and found the pistol lying in the dirt.

And no girl.

We stopped, took a
much-needed breath, and started poking around.

“Dolly!” I
shouted.

“Not so loud!”
Gren said, taking the pistol. “You two are wanted men. You don't want to call
attention to yourselves.”

“Dolly?” Kitt said
in a hushed tone, prowling the immediate area before stating the obvious.
“She's not here.” He moved down the street to search.

“Doll!” I called
out.

“I told you not to
yell,” Gren said.

“You can try
telling me what to do once I get this girl back. Until then, I suggest you shut
your mouth and help me find her. I swear, if someone nabbed her—“

“If someone nabbed
her, they won't hurt her. She'll just be sent off for the reward.”

“Reward?”

“Right. Big reward
for you two, small reward for her safe return. The King himself has vowed to
see her back to her family.”

“
Family?!?”
I
took a firm step towards Gren and peered into his eyes. “Is that what they're
telling people? That she's just some abduction case?”

“Isn't she?”

I squeezed my
eyes. “Do you really have no idea what she really is? The
Doll?!?
”

“Just a pet name,
right? Like darling or precious or—“

“Gents!” Kitt
said, hurrying back. “It's okay! She's safe!”

Gren and I stopped
our bickering and melted with relief.

“She is?” Gren
said. “Where?”

“With him,” Kitt
said.

On cue, a man with
a wild smile stepped out into view, his hands folded behind his back.

“Hello again,”
said the infamous Doctor D.

“Oh no...” I said,
rubbing my eyes.

“Not the Marin
boys, again.”

“The very same,
Alan.”

“Lovely. So what'd
they do with the Doll? Unscrew her legs and sell them as mechanical
door-stoppers?”

“No, they put her
in a big hat and used her in some silly medicine show. And her legs don't
unscrew.”

“Oh
ho!
So
you've inspected her legs!”

“Don't be
juvenile, Alan.”

“No, no. It's a
valid point. Proper inspection, eh? You work fast, Pocket.”

“Are you about
done with this insinuat—“

“Pardon me,
ladies, if you could just produce your legs momentarily. Routine inspection, I
assure you. Proper maintenance. Have to make sure there isn't any funny
business going on down here.”

“Are you
finished?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not sorry enough.
I don't suppose it's possible to trade you for a more overall silent audience?”

“What fun is there
in silence, Pocket?”

Doctor D fixed his
grin on us and rubbed between finger and thumb the price tag that dangled from
his knotted tie.

“You have her?” I
said, approaching him. “The girl?”

He scoffed at
this. It was the kind of scoff that implied that for anyone to doubt his
capabilities was completely cockeyed. The doctor nodded.

“Where is she?” I
asked.

He released the
tag and threw the thumb over his shoulder. “Caravan. Back there.”

Think what you
will about the Marvelous Marins, but they work fast. The Doll had only been out
of our sight for minutes and the twins had already managed to snag her and
throw her on a wagon.

“So she's safe?” I
asked.

Another scoff. “Of
course,” Doctor D replied.

“Great. Thanks.
Can you take us to where you put her?”

He shrugged and
spun around. “This way.”

We followed him
down to an empty, dead-end street. There was no caravan, only tracks spun about
in the dirt. “Here,” he said, gesturing to the empty space.

“Here
what?
”
Gren inquired.

“This is where we
were parked,” Doctor D said.

“All right...” I
said.

“But it isn't
parked here now,” Gren said.

“No,” the doctor
said. “It is not.”

“So why are you
showing this to us?” Gren said.

“You asked where
we put her. This is where we were parked and this is where we placed the young
lady. Right over there, where that branch is. Just under that was the cabin she
went into. Right there.”

“You're a very
strange person, aren't you?” I asked.

He shrugged and
spun his tie tag. “Your opinion.”

“Can you take us
to where she is
now?
” Kitt asked.

The doctor
giggled. “Of course.” He kicked up some dust and went off in another way.

“He's a lunatic,”
Gren said.

“We can't all be
butter-smelling men of beauty,” Kitt said.

Gren punched Kitt
in the shoulder and we followed Doctor D, who was following the tracks in the
dust.

When we finally
got to the caravan, we found a crowd huddled outside of it. Doctor D's
enthusiastic partner was quickly drumming up excitement, circling the wagon's
connected stage and pointing into the crowd. It was, as I earlier said, Alan, a
kind of medicine show, though instead of medicine he was peddling his
contraptions. The Doll sat center stage on a small stool with a pleased smile. Half
of her face was covered by an oversized, lady's evening hat that drooped over
her small head. My chest tightened and I feared that one of these onlookers
might find her suspicious. Her portrait had not been illustrated on the wanted
posters, but her description was given. Even with her face partly obscured, it
would not take much curiosity on the part of someone to...

“Just stay back,”
Doctor D said, keeping us behind the crowd. “Best not to be seen.”

Right. If the Doll
wasn't recognized by those people, Kitt and I would undoubtedly be if we
started making noise. I nodded to Doctor D and kept my distance from the group.

But then a thought
formed.

“You know who we
are, right?” I mumbled to him.

He nodded. “You
got the balloons.”

“Right, but—“

“I noticed she no
longer has the balloons.”

“Oh, I guess not.
Must have let them go somewhere.”

“Shame.”

“Right, big shame,
but you know who we are
now,
right?”

“Yes. Former
balloonists.”

“No, I mean...you
know, the posters...around the city.”

He nodded. “I
know. It's my fault.”

“What?”

“That's why we're
helping.”

“Your fault? What
are you talking about?”

He took from his
coat a folded illustration and handed it to me. It was an elegantly-detailed
charcoal sketch of the Doll, Kitt, and myself sitting stoically under a
crescent moon. It was, I admit, quite beautiful.

“You drew this?” I
whispered.

He bit his lip,
half-frowned, and nodded.

“What's the
problem?” I asked.

He put his finger
to the illustration and circled my and Kitt's faces. Then I saw it. These were
the faces that were pasted onto the posters around the city. My eyes widened
and I stared at the salesman. He shrugged at me.

“They came around
asking questions, wanted a description.”

“And you
identified us,” Kitt said.

“Yes.”

“And you thought,”
Kitt irritably continued, “that a detailed list of features wasn't enough? That
you'd better draw us for them?”

Doctor D furrowed.

“The so-called
artist in their employ was a disgrace. All slaggy lines and dippy shadow. The
faces he drew greater resembled clothed chimps than the human form. I felt I
had to put him in his place.”

“And make sure we
could be easily identified,” Kitt said.

“A mistake!”
Doctor D hissed under breath. “Mistake! That's why we'll help you now. You can
keep the picture.”

I sighed and
peered down into the paper Dolly's charcoal eyes. At least she was spared from
public display, the face of the victim scrapped in favor of a focus on the
villainous kidnappers.

I sighed again and
tucked the drawing away.

“If you're trying
to help us,” Gren said, “why are you parading her around up there?”

Doctor D grinned
and giggled. “She's blending in.”