Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Read online

  “I don't know when I'm going to see you again!”

  “I'll come back here tomorrow night.”

  “I'm not working tomorrow night!”

  “Watch your fingers,” I advised as the child brandished her teeth.

  “Look, why don't you—OW!”

  “Told you.”

  “Why don't you tell a story for the balance and we call it even?”

  “It's getting late for stories, Alan.”

  I realize now how often I seem to be making this argument.

  “A story!” yelled Annabelle, “I want a story!”

  “Fine, a story,” I said, rubbing my temples, “What about?”

  “Tell one about my daddy!” Annabelle shouted.

  “Fine. Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Annabelle and one day her father went out and killed a dragon. The end. God save the King. Goodnight, Alan.”

  “My daddy never did that! Tell me a true story!”

  “I...uh...all right. What does your daddy do?”

  “He works for the castle!”

  “All right, then. Once upon a time, there was a man named…”

  “Annabelle's daddy!”

  “…Annabelle's daddy, and he worked for the greater good of all of Britain, serving proudly as…what is it he does?”

  “He's a magpie!”

  “A wha…do you mean a Magnate?”

  “That's it!”

  “Your father's a Magnate? All right…eh…so Annabelle's daddy worked bravely night and day, tending obediently to the whims of our great Alexander. Annabelle's daddy and his fellow men patrolled the streets of England in grand black robes that bore blood red emblems in the shape of crowns, the famous mark of the King's personal militia. They fought hard and true and made sure that the people who didn't realize that they needed constant supervision were constantly supervised. The end. God save the King.”

  I moved into the direction of what I thought was the front door only to collide face-first with the large frame of a barrel-chested man with curled blond bangs and a squared jaw.

  “Evening,” I said.

  “You tell stories?” he said, snorting through his nostrils.

  “He tells lots of stories!” shouted Annabelle, who was suddenly standing behind me. She handed him my card, and the man stood there for a moment, squeezing it in his sweaty, thick wrist.

  After about a minute, his extended brow began to furrow.

  “Can you read?” I asked. He flicked the card off of my forehead and huffed.

  “You talk a lot.”

  “Kinda helps to tell a story.”

  That was when he threw me onto the bar. It gets better.

  “Is there a problem?” I politely inquired.

  “Yer story,” he said. “Found it a little insulting.”

  My head was resting on the wider ends of two overturned beer bottles.

  “How so?”

  His meaty hand grabbed at the buttonholes of his whiskey-soaked jacket, popping it open. From inside, he retrieved a small leather flap with a red-on-silver symbol of a crown pinned onto it.

  An off-duty Magnate.

  He stumbled over his boots and breathed over me. A drunken, off-duty Magnate. My luck was immeasurable.

  “Well, for starters…” he grunted, cracking his knuckles. “I thought yer interpretation rang a little anti-Alexandery.”

  “Did it?”

  “Personally I felt yer wordplay smelt of rebellion.”

  Now, dear readers, it has never been my practice to question the criticisms of those larger or drunker than I, but given the situation at hand, my first response as author was to defend my artistic point of view.

  “Rebellion?!? Where in God's name did you find rebellion?!?”

  “You 'ere talking 'bout our crowns 'n buttons, and you called them, I believe, blood red.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  “You have a problem with adjectives?”

  He grabbed my shirt's collar and lifted me off the bar. At the moment, I had wished he would make up his mind on where exactly he would prefer me to lie in intimidation.

  “As I see it, blood is a fairly suggestive word.”

  I was hanging in the grip of a literary scholar, it would seem. My feet dangled over the ground.

  “Well, yes, of course it is,” I replied. “I was merely trying to create an image of color in the minds of the audience.”

  “Blood suggests violence, death, and whatnot.”

  “Well, that's one reading, sure. But—”

  “Are you implying that the monarchy operates under a thinly...hiccup...thinly-veiled pretense as a bunch of murdering crooks?”

  “Not at all. I didn't realize you military men were such sensitive scholars.”

  “That a crack on our intelligence?”

  “No, I—“

  “Because I don't like insinuation! I once knocked a man cold for insinuation!”

  “I'm sure you did, but I can assure you—”

  “Do you swear yerself loyal to our King and our great lady England?”

  “Look, if you could put me down—”

  “Or do you stand as an enemy to the Crown?”

  “No, of course not! I believe your interpretation may be slightly askew, is all.”

  You know those points in stories where a dangling protagonist is saved from a perilous situation by the innocence of a child?

  “You gunna throw him real far, Daddy?” little Annabelle, sweetheart of the city, asked my assailant. Lovely.

  I was soon introduced with “real far,” as Annabelle's daddy threw me headlong out of the Brass Rail. I remember thinking in midflight that this would make for a lousy beginning to a story.

  Moments later, I collided with a man-shaped fox and the night took a turn for the strange.

  Chapter Two

  The Bottle and the Fox

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “You stopped talking, Pocket. Where's the rest of the story?”

  “That was the story, Alan. I'm done.”

  “You told me a story of how you got thrown out of a bar! I could tell you a dozen of those!”

  “I'm…I’m tired, okay?”

  “Come on. The drinks tonight weren't that bad. You owe me better than that. You build me up with turnkey girls and man foxes, then tell me something I was there to see?!?”

  “Eh...”

  “Eh?!? Don't give me, eh. What happened to flash?”

  “Look, the truth is, I'm having second thoughts.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the booze’s wearing off. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Wouldn’t under…Hey, Pocket. I already told you, I don’t care how long it is, just—“

  “It’s not a matter of length, Alan. It’s just…well… it’s not a story that's particularly easy for me to tell…actually harder than I thought. So just forget it. You wouldn't believe half of it, anyhow.”

  “I don't care if I believe it! I'm bored.”

  “Alan—“

  “I can be this stubborn all night.”

  “…ug...fine. Hope you're comfortable. Where was I?”

  “Man-shaped fox.”

  “Right. Tell me, Alan. You know a guy named Kitt Sunner?”

  “Yeah, actually. Not in a long while, but he used to come around this place, asking for leftover peanuts. What about him?”

  “He's a headache.”

  The first things to come to me were sounds. Wind, coughing, swearing. A faint, drunken laughter in the distance, eventually muted by the slamming of a door. Next came more physical sensations. A spinning dizziness. Someone's fingers pushing against my shoulder. The cold, wet, griminess beneath my fingernails that only genuine, British back-alley slush can provide. A tightness in my lungs.

  A headache.

  “Damn, that hurt,” said a voice. I was surprised to realize that it wasn't mine. “You okay?”

&nbs
p; I rolled over onto my back, shook the snow from my nostrils, and began thumbing the frost out of my eyes.

  “I think so. Are you?”

  “Think so. You hit me.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “That's okay. I've been thrown around before. Somebody in there not like you?”

  “I really am not sure.”

  I blinked. Shadows and shapes formed, particularly the shape of the young man I had slammed into on my way outside. A dark silhouette of two fox-shaped ears sprouting from a round head appeared. I began to fear that the impact had caused me to hallucinate, so I spoke very softly and slowly.

  “So…” I carefully pronounced, “…you appear…to be a fox.”

  The fox laughed.

  “You could say that. Sure.”

  “All right,” I said, blinking out more ice. “Are you a…uh…good fox?”

  “Just open your eyes, Pocket.”

  I did as commanded. As my vision came into focus, I found not a fox but a young man sitting on his left knee. What I had mistaken for ears were actually flaps of leather sewn into rather fox-like points on the top of an old aviator’s cap. Unfastened chin straps hung down on either side of the young man's youthful face over curly, black hair. He smiled cheerfully.

  “Oh,” I dumbly said. “You're not a…”

  “No. But don't feel embarrassed.”

  “Should I be embarrassed about being thrown into you?”

  “Probably a little.”

  “Good. I'm reacting properly then.”

  “It's really no big deal, Pocket.”

  “Right. About that. How exactly do you know my—”

  “This was stuck to your boot heel,” the boy said, holding up a stained, white card. “It smells like whiskey and anger.”

  “It should. The man who—”

  “Did you know you misspelled 'absent?'”

  Sigh.

  “Yeah, well, I didn't actually print the card myself, so—”

  “You’re really a bard? What's that like?”

  “A paradise of fulfillment. I'm sorry. I didn't get your name.”

  “Oh. I'm Kitt Sunner.” He was decked in leather and had a pair of thick flying goggles strapped to his unusual fox-eared cap. He reminded me a bit in appearance of a child with piloting aspirations playing dress-up and make believe. We helped each other up. I took back my card and Kitt frowned. He started slowly stretching his leg and I raised an eyebrow.

  “I'm okay,” he said. “Just a little stiff. Nothing broken.”

  Broken. A thought occurred and I immediately began padding down my overcoat and vest pockets.

  “Something wrong?” Kitt asked.

  “I just remembered that I was carrying a...oh...”

  I felt a jingling in my left coat pocket. I fished from it a handful of emerald green slivers of glass. The fox-headed boy traced them over with his eyes.

  “What's that you've got there?”

  I frowned. “Scrap glass, now.” I removed the prized set of round, golden-framed, green-tinted spectacles I had found at a carnival but a week before. They were now snapped in two and the right lens had smashed into sharp confetti when I hit both the ground and the wide-eyed stranger.

  “They would've been nice,” Kitt added. I'm fairly sure this was an attempt to cheer me up, but the comment achieved instantly the opposite effect.

  Determined to play the optimist, I took the un-mangled half of the spectacles and hooked the frame under my left ear. The snapped bridge rested slightly lopsided on my nose and the rounded left frame sat poised before my eye as a sort of makeshift monocle.

  “What do you think?” I asked, hoping to hang onto at least the slightest bit of class on this increasingly deteriorated evening.

  “Unusual,” Kitt admitted, studying the fashion of it. “But I think I like it.”

  “You're a man of taste.”

  A wind hit us and Kitt began rubbing his hands. “It's late. I should...”

  “Right. Sure. Nice running into you.”

  “That's a horrible joke.”

  “Yeah. Well, good evening to you...Kitt, right?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, brushing some snow off of my coat, “Good evening, Mister Pocket.”

  Kitt pivoted on his heels and strolled away from me, throwing a cheerful wave over his back in my direction. I nodded and, stuffing my hands in my coat pockets for warmth, started off in the opposite way. Something seemed immediately different about the feel of my inner pockets, but what was missing didn't dawn on me until Kitt shouted “Hey!”

  “Hey!” came again his angry shout, fired from the distance. I looked over my shoulder to find Kitt standing in the slush, gripping something small and brown in his fist, and shaking it so that I could see.

  “Hey!” he repeated a final time, now that I was watching. “Is this some kind of joke, Pocket?”

  “Eh?”

  Wearing a look of grave disappointment, he marched back up to me and tossed the little brown thing into my open palms. It was a small, leather bag. Empty.

  Empty...

  Of course. Kitt had just handed me my own wallet.

  “This...” I began, at a loss for words. “This is...”

  “Empty,” he added, a bit sour.

  “You...stole from me?” I said, more confused than upset.

  “I tried. You know, it's kind of a waste of my time to pick pockets shallower than mine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Forget it. If you ever get any rich friends, send them my way.”

  He shrugged, mumbled something to himself, and tried to walk away. Fortunately for me, the collar of his jacket was instantly caught in the angry fist of a bard who had just in that moment realized the reality of the situation.

  “Do you mind?” Kitt asked.

  “You snatched my wallet!”

  “Yeah. I know. Nothing personal, Pocket. Heh, Pocket. I picked Pocket's pocket. Pretty good, right?”

  “You. Snatched. My. Wallet!”

  “It's right here.”

  “What difference does that make?!?”

  “I don't know. I thought you'd appreciate the gesture. I mean, if you want to make a case out of it, remember that I gave it back—“

  “Because there was nothing in it!”

  “I'm not thrilled about that either.”

  “So you're...what? Some kind of street thief?”

  “No! Well, I mean, yeah. I am. Not like I have much of a choice.”

  “No?”

  “No. This is...look, I don't have to explain myself to a complete stranger!”

  “You do when you've stolen from that complete stranger, you cutpurse!”

  “Would you keep it down? You'll attract attention.”

  “Oh, good point! I wouldn't want to bring any notice to the thief who's robbing me!”

  “Robbing implies that you had something to steal!”

  “Funny!”

  “Look, will you calm down? You'll wake up half of the city.”

  “Fine! Let's wake them up! See what I care!”

  “Have you…been drinking tonight, Pocket?”

  “I don't see what that—yeah, a little bit.”

  An understatement, but it was a good point for Kitt to make. I took a moment to wisely shut up. Unfortunately, the damage was already done.

  The door of the Brass Rail swung open and the same curly-locked Magnate who had sent me into flight leaned through the frame, snorting like a bull.

  “What's all this shouting about, then—Oh, ho! Storyteller! You still squawking about here?”

  That'll sober a man up fast.

  “Uh...hey there!” I bumbled. “Good seeing you! My friend and I were just having a bit of a lively discussion.”

  “Political discussion?”

  “No! Nothing political! Just catching up on old times, right Kitt?”

  “Is that the man who threw you into me, Pocket?”

  “Just get out of here before I bury you both!”
the brute shouted. “And storyteller! Take yer junk with you!”

  Without another word of warning, the Magnate flung something transparent, the size of a small cannonball, whizzing at our heads. Kitt and I hit the dirt, just centimeters away from getting our skulls cracked. As a new round of slush coated my eyes, I heard the Magnate chuckle. He shouted something idiotic to a few friends inside and closed the door. I rolled over and opened my eyes. My view was filled with the blue-purplish smear that was the English sky, dusted with the flicker of starlight.

  My only favorable view of the night thus far.

  I could hear Kitt rustling beside me, shuffling to his feet and scraping his boot heels in the ice. I didn't feel like making the first sentence, so I let him have it.

  “That was close,” he said. Not a bad first sentence. I would've gone with something slightly more expressive, but it broke the silence.

  “Yeah,” I said, not being expressive at all. For some odd reason, I didn't take my eyes off of the stars, feeling that if I waited long enough, some grand answer would be spelled out for me amongst the vanilla dots.

  “We should leave,” I heard Kitt say. “I don't want that man to have some more drinks and decide to throw some more of pieces of junk our way.”

  The drunk's projectile had landed, miraculously unbroken, in a small patch of grass behind us. It was an oval-shaped bottle, wide-lipped, corked, tagged, but most importantly, half-filled with a bubbling, green liquid that seemed to be glowing on its own. The bottle was, as the brute so eloquently claimed, an oddity of my own possession.

  Kitt wrapped his gloves around it. “What's in there?”

  “Faerie juice.”

  “I see,” said Kitt, who clearly didn't. He took hold of the bottle and shook its contents. “Where'd you find faeries to juice?”

  “Electric Bohemia.”

  Kitt played some more with the bottle, his attention not entirely on the answers I was giving him. “Uh-huh...look, it gets all shiny when you hold it up to the moon.”

  “I know.”

  “That's a pretty neat trick. Where'd you say you got this, Pocket?”

  I sighed. It would not be the last time.

  “Electric Bohemia.”

  “Hold on.”

  “What is it now, Alan?”

  “I like imaginative stories, Pocket. I do. But you start talking about spotting faeries and they'll lock you up in Bedlam with the other 'imaginative' gentlemen.”