Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (89 page)

“Okay,” Dolly
shyly said. “I'll come. Get ready to hold onto me.”

Turning carefully
on the great steeple, she leaned and reached out for my arm. As she did, her
grand, clockwork eyes locked onto my tired face.

She gasped.

“M-Mister Pocket!”
she shivered. “You've been injured!”

“I'm fine. Just
take my hand.”

“What happened to
you?”

“A lot, but I'm
fine.”

Her eyes widened
and she withdrew her hand from me. She didn't believe me.

“Whoa, wait! What
are you doing?” I asked.

“It's my fault.
You got hurt because of me.”

“Don't talk like
that.”

“I heard fighting
and gun sounds earlier. Who else was hurt?”

“We can talk about
this after—“

“Who was
killed?!?”

“No one!” I
exclaimed before grimacing and turning my eyes away. “But...Kitt and
Gren...they aren't...they aren't great.”

Dolly buried her
face in her hands and began to weep. When she again raised her head, the
falling rain rolled down her face as if intentionally serving in place for the
tears her form was unable to create.

“Please don't
cry,” I urged.

“I'm sorry,” she
said. “You almost convinced me, but I'm sorry. I can't let anyone get hurt
anymore.”

“No!”

“I'm so sorry. But
you aren't going to talk me out of this. You're going to have to let me fall.”

She gave me a look
that told me that it was true.

And there was
nothing I could do about.

“Don't be mad,”
she whispered, and still shaking, stepped back to the edge.

The louder the
rain fell, the quieter the world became. I turned my palms upward and let them
feel a bit of the coolness before I had my decision.

“Okay, Doll,” my
voice cracked, calm, “if I can't stop you from falling, then okay.”

I stretched a
smile over my pained face and winked at the girl. She didn't seem to understand
until I started slowly walking to the edge of the roof.

“No!” Dolly
yelled. “What are you doing?”

I smirked. “The night
we met I told you not to call me a follower,” I said to her, “but look at me
now, eh?”

“Stop it!” she
yelled. “That’s not funny! How could you ever—“

“Doll, one way or
the other, we’re getting off of this roof. But either way, we’re going
together.”

“No!” she shouted.
“No! No! N—“

Her protests were
cut short by a chorus of shrieks and shouts from below.

“Up there!” some
declared.

“The roof!”
screamed others.

Large beams of
light soon started slicing toward us through the rain, connected to patrolling
steamships hastily altering their flight paths.

We had been found.

I wanted to take
Dolly’s hand to comfort her, but she wasn’t close enough to hold.

The whole of
London began screeching and roaring beneath us. I looked at Dolly. She looked
back at me. I felt rain on my nose and chuckled a little.

“What?” Dolly
asked quietly.

“I guess now’s the
time,” I said back to her. “I almost forgot.”

“Time? For...for
what?”

I closed my eyes
and slid my fingers ever carefully into my coat pocket. From it I drew that last,
fragrant, purple cigarette. I was nearly too weak to hold it between my digits.
Miraculously, it was still in one piece, and I squeezed it between my numbed
lips. I checked another pocket, and found that a matchbook was still waiting
for me. I knelt and struck a frail matchstick against the hard roof, then arose
while cupping the flame with my hand, guarding it from the falling water.

Soldiers aboard
one of the patrolling ships were yelling something to me. I couldn’t hear what.
Dolly shuffled over closer to me.

I put the fire to
my mouth and inhaled. A glob of rain caught the match and extinguished it, but
not before it passed its glint to the stick of sweet-smelling tobacco. Standing
over the living world and under the showering heavens, I breathed in the small
fire, waiting to see if it would burn. Waiting to see if I could at last find
magic where I needed it the most. I watched in great suspense as the red glow,
just a little below my nose, began to lightly flicker, and as I was about to
have my answer, my revelation…

The Doll pinched
the cigarette between her fingers and tossed it off of the abbey.

I stood baffled,
absolutely dumbfounded, and with a wide-eyed, fixed stare upon the girl, I all
but demanded, “Why?”

She smiled and
took my palm.

“Cigarettes are
too filthy,” she says. “I don’t like the smoke they make.”

I dropped my tired
brow and squeezed her hand tightly.

“But,” I mumbled
unintelligently, “how else can I hope to find a scrap of magic?”

She leaned in
close and spoke with her small, pinkish lips. “Perhaps we can make our own.”

And somehow we
were calm. We just stood up there holding hands and smiling as the King’s ships
circled like vultures, spitting threats and commands at us. I think…I think it
somehow gave us peace knowing that our demise was no longer in our own hands.
If we were to be martyrs, at least we wouldn’t also have to play executioner.
And that said, I am not so dense to not realize that even if I
had
persuaded
the Doll from taking her life, our chances of escaping the abbey and its
pursuing forces were practically nonexistent.

Some things, I
guess, are just meant to die.

I moved away from
the edge of the roof and held the Doll with a more firm footing. I slid my arm
around her waist and tried to block the rain from further drenching her lovely
dress.

As the ships
circled, I began to spy riflemen aiming their weapons from portholes and
exposed decks. I held my love and waited for swift death.

And then, the
damndest thing transpired.

“Look!” Dolly
breathed against my chest. “There, in the distance!”

A shape was
forming, just on the edge of the rainy horizon, and was floating slowly closer.
Merely a silhouette at first, it seemed some ghastly monster, a huge, blackened
hulk with stringy entrails flowing wildly from its center down to the rooftops
in every perceivable direction. It wafted effortlessly through the wet sky, its
tentacles tethered to the earth but allowing enough slack for the aerial beast
to glide onward. Forward. Closer.

To us.

As it grew nearer,
the blackened silhouette gave way to color and form. It was…how can I put it
into words? It was such a rare and awe-inspiring sight. A craft. Some manner of
floating dirigible, clearly designed and built by an amateur from cannibalized
parts. It was, at its very center, an exposed platform hoisted from the ground
by a trio of tightly-bound balloons, each of great size! The machine seemed to
be guided by small propellers affixed to the underside of the platform, thus
tilting and directing the ballooncraft through the sky. As for the
aforementioned tentacles, well, it became soon clear to me that they were
actually long lines of black cabling, yes, the very same I’d seen woven across
the city. They had all been obviously strung together to the central platform
before this peculiar, sky-faring craft ascended, and as it approached, I could
see the cable lines lifting up from what looked like dozens of rooftops in the
distance. There were also what looked like piles of machinery attached to the
top of the craft’s deck, and the cables, they all seemed to feed
into…something. Some thin, tall, metal device affixed to the exposed platform.

“What do you think
it is?” Dolly whispered to me.

“Frightening,” I
replied.

A single, solitary
figure stood upon the platform, seemingly unaffected by the downpour. Between
the distance and the rain, I could not discern the gentleman’s face, but I
remember that he was decadently dressed in a long, flowing coat of purest white
with a tall, befeathered hat to match.

Dolly and I
watched with solemn attention, like a pair of well-mannered children, as the
flying stranger leaned forward and spoke into the metal device before him.

His voice boomed
through the heavens, loudly echoing through the sky at such a grand, unnatural,
and godlike volume. But the impression was not that the man was yelling. No,
his voice was unarguably soft-spoken, pronounced, and calm. It was not a shout
we were hearing, but a near whisper seemingly replicated and enhanced, the very
sound magnified.

Amplification.

“People of New
London! Soldiers of the King!” the man’s voice gently erupted. “I demand your
attention at once!”

The Doll gasped at
the voice and looked at me for confirmation. I nodded, knowing instantly which
man was sounding off in the sky.

The King’s
mechanical birds squawked at each other, hastily turning their attention to the
gentlemen in white, who continued his speech.

“I have come
forward today to make both an announcement and a confession, both of which
would be in your best interest to acknowledge.”

Thunder was the
only interruption the gent received as he spoke to essentially England herself.
I held the Doll as firmly as I could.

“Let me begin with
the confession,” the man spoke, his amplified voice buzzing with unruly
electricity, “as I think it will lend a considerable amount of weight to my
words. To His Highness, I am known by several names, but I was born into this
world under the surname Carmike. By you, London, I have been most commonly
known as the Red Priest.”

A rumble of jeers
shot back against this revelation. Yes, the pirate king himself had taken to
the sky once again, but for what reason?

“I haven’t thanked
him for my bubblemaker,” Dolly whispered to me. “I’ve got it up on top here
with me.” She paused and added, “…with us.”

“As for the
announcement,” the Priest spoke to us all, “let me begin by saying that to
slaughter Will Pocket now would be a great and ugly stain on each of your very
souls.”

“What?” I murmured
to myself. “What is he getting at here? What could he possibly achieve by
exposing himself to this…oh…damn it…no…”

“Will Pocket and
Kitt Sunner are not responsible for the crimes that they stand accused of by
the Crown,” the Red Priest declared in the distance. “I know this because the
party responsible, the one you should truly be taking into custody, is…myself.”

Whatever serenity
and acceptance Dolly and I had achieved was short-lived. Fear and anger ruled
once more.

“What?!?” I
growled in anger.

“No!” Dolly
squeaked. “No! He’s lying!”

“I am
responsible,” the Priest spoke. “Solely responsible. It was I who orchestrated
the acquisition of the girl…the girl-shaped device. Pocket and Sunner were only
pawns. I sent them in to retrieve the machine under false pretense, leading
them to believe that a woman was awaiting their arrival. I used them and then left
them to take the blame. This I confess under the weight of my own conscience.”

I gritted my teeth
and felt flush with the blood my anger was pushing into my skin.

“The bastard,” I
hissed. “The outright
bastard!
”

“He’s lying!”
Dolly kept hysterically repeating. “Lying! Lying!”

“He’s trying to
steal my place at the hangman’s noose!” I said to her. “He’s going to kill
himself in my stead!”

The rain-soaked
pirate continued. “I know that you here in attendance are more than likely
skeptical upon hearing such a claim,” he spoke, “and given my reputation and
history against the Crown, I can’t say that I blame you. So, as an act of good
faith, I offer a gift.”

In his hand, he
lifted something squarish that I couldn’t quite make out.

“I know what
interest the King holds for what was stolen away. I know what piece he covets
from inside. I’ve seen the blueprint. I hold that metal now in my hand. Absolve
Will Pocket and Kitt Sunner, and I will gladly turn over both the piece…and
myself…into the King’s custody.”

The blueprint…was
it possible? I recalled the surgery performed upon the half-sunken
Lucidia.
Did
the captain, in his work, possibly find…possibly remove…

“Liar!” Dolly
cried against me. “He doesn’t have anything at all! It’s…it’s still inside!”

“Are you…are you
sure, Doll?” I quivered in the rain. “Couldn’t he have…possibly…”

“I never slept!”
she shouted, not to me, but to the distant ships. “When he sewed me up, I never
slept! He didn’t take anything! He only gave his shiny clock parts! Don’t
listen to him!”

But no one could
hear the girl’s protests.

“A bluff,” I
mumbled. My head was racing as I watched the pirate raise his hands in
surrender, awaiting the nearest patrol ship to take him aboard.

He was bluffing.

With nothing but a
hunk of scrap.

But…something wasn’t
right.

Something I
couldn’t put my finger on.

Until I remembered
Madame B.

The last time we
exchanged words, she was tense but smiling. I had asked her what the Priest was
planning, and her response was a wry “you’ll see.” This was the same woman who
refused to escort Quill and I to the library until her heart was clear and sure
that her lover would be delivered the news of our departure. It was only a
passing moment, and one blanketed in night, but I had caught a look in her eye
that told me everything me I needed to know about the lady’s commitment to the
man who now stood seemingly ready for capture. I knew B would never so casually
leave the city with even a shred of suspicion that the Priest would sacrifice
himself, which meant one of two things.

Either the captain
lied and planned to surrender without her knowledge…

…or he wasn’t
really planning on surrendering at all.

That’s when I
remembered something else B had once said to me.

“Mind my words,
Pocket,” she had spoken. “The only pirate who steps into public looking like a
pirate is trying to be noticed.”