Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Page 15

  Ikey’s jaw fell open as he inhaled deeply. Dust burned his throat. The air stung. His lungs heaved and the wires embedded in his chest wall stirred. They felt like they had grown huge against his swelling lungs.

  As he reached the peak of his breath, his eyes flitted up, over Gavril’s shoulder. Philip stood beside their own cart. His gaze tracked the mace as it swung through the air. His eyes were squinted slightly, jaw tight, lips drawn into a mask of tension. Waiting. His own breath held.

  For a split second, Philip was both of Ikey’s brothers—bound by helplessness as their dad’s rage come down on Ikey. And as Ikey stood, as he trembled, a little boy bent over, hands hooked behind his knees, he didn’t know until he was much older that the expressions he saw on his brothers’ faces were identical to the one he would have on his own as he took the switch. They were all thinking the same thing.

  Ikey knew what was going through the head of the young man with the mechanical leg. He knew what was coming. He courted it.

  The air cracked. The young man collapsed against his cart and sent it careening forward, toward Philip.

  “Philip!” Ikey shouted, the air in his lungs finally given someplace to go.

  Gavril paused in his attempt to grasp Ikey. He began to turn around.

  The upset cart tipped before Philip. The wooden boxes tumbled and crashed into the side of Philip’s cart. His arms and elbows absorbed most of the impact, but still he staggered back, face blank, lips in an O as if he’d been punched in the gut.

  When the last of the boxes grew calm and their clatter cleared the air, Philip’s shoulders dropped several inches under the relief of a great burden. Tension evaporated from his jaw. He turned, and staring past Ikey and on to the machine, he bolted forward, fists pumping, feet pounding as if in a race for his life.

  Gavril threw his arms wide, but had time to do little else as Philip closed the short distance between them. The young man swatted at Gavril’s arm, then dipped his shoulder and caught Gavril on the left side of his chest. As Gavril spun around, knocked off balance, he caught a handful of Philip’s shirt at the shoulder. Ikey reached out with his left hand to grab Philip's arm.

  Gavril fell. As he went down, Philip teetered. The collar of his shirt drew tight against his neck for a second, then went slack as the fabric slipped out of Gavril’s fist. Ikey clutched at Philip’s arm. His iron and tin hand glanced off of Philip’s forearm as he raced past, and then the gears and escapements clicked as Ikey’s hand closed on a fistful of air.

  Ikey spun around. David stood at the machine. His face was long, jaw slack, eyes cast down at where Gavril lay upon the floor.

  Ikey lunged forward. He ripped another great breath from the air to yell for David. But it was too late. Philip crinkled into a slight crouch, then sprung himself forward, headlong into the jaw of Ikey’s half of the machine.

  There was no scream. Despite the crackling of bones like a fistful of knuckles being popped, there was no scream. And so Ikey couldn’t believe that the tray had lifted up, propelled by a steam-powered piston into the blade-studded roof of the machine. There had been no scream. It hadn’t happened yet. No matter what his blasted glass eye reported, no scream meant there was still a chance.

  As David clutched at Philip’s legs, Ikey darted around to the side of the machine. He dropped to a crouch and yanked a panel off the bottom of the machine and tossed it aside with a clatter. He watched as the piston rose up out of a slot in the floor and lifted the tray once again. There was shouting. More snapping. But no scream. No scream.

  Ikey reached into the recess inside his mechanical arm to retrieve the broken handle he had pulled off the machine the day before. As his fingers touched it, the light around him was sucked away until a watery dusk surrounded him.

  “Get away from that!” The Alligator shouted.

  Ikey glanced up as a boot collided with his face.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ikey clutched at his left side. Cold iron bars. He shivered.

  The smell hit him and he jolted in the cold. The air was dank and rotten. It stank of the sharp scent of urine and a sour scent of defecation. Underneath it was a cold scent. A hard scent. Iron. Iron and stone. He smacked his lips and tasted the metallic flavor of blood. His tongue flowed at a pulsing corner of his mouth. He found a gap where two teeth used to be along his jaw.

  Ikey pushed himself up to sitting. When the vertigo subsided, he patted the floor around himself in search of the teeth. His fingers landed on soft, wet mud in a thin layer over stone. He then recalled he could see, and reached up to push away the bandages or the blindfold.

  His hand landed on his bare face.

  “Hello?” Ikey called.

  No one responded. Panic dripped into his veins. The Old Chopper had warned him about breaking the glass eye.

  But no. The right eye couldn’t see either. Not even fuzzy shapes of light. He was in the dark.

  Ikey let out a sigh. The weight of the dark swirled up around him, buoyed him up like an ocean.

  Then he recalled the sounds of Philip’s bones snapping. The embrace of the dark dissipated and left Ikey alone in the cold. He shivered. Damn him. He saw it coming. He saw the expression in Philip‘s face, the way everything fell from his shoulders. That stare as Philip gazed straight into the mouth of the machine as if it were a gate open onto Heaven itself.

  Blast it. Ikey gritted his teeth. His jaw pulsed, then broke into a chatter as another shiver shook him. Damn him. What the bloody hell had he been doing? His damned hand had betrayed him. He had made the motions to clamp down on Philip's arm, and if he had, nothing could have made him let go. Philip would have had to drag Ikey into the maw of the machine with him. Even if he couldn’t have stopped Philip, he would have at least slowed him down and given David the time to react, to shove that bastard out of the way.

  Ikey started as his fist struck something hard and metallic before him. It was the open palm of his mechanical hand that he had planted his balled-up fist in.

  “Piss on you,” Ikey said to his mechanical hand. He grabbed it with his right hand and shoved it. Pain seared his shoulder. The yoke tightened about his chest. The arm hardly budged.

  He closed his eye and waited for the pain in his chest to subside. As it fizzled away, another shiver racked him. Where the hell was he? And why was it so cold? There was no light anywhere. He should get out of wherever he was. Find David. Maybe David had managed to pull Philip out in time.

  The snapping of bones played in Ikey’s mind like a wild, miserable instrument—a tuneless and macabre piano.

  Ikey stood. The world swayed and dipped underneath him to the point that he thought that perhaps he was on a ship, but as his equilibrium worked itself out, he realized he was merely in the dark.

  “Hello, old friend,” Ikey whispered. He extended his right hand and swept it through the air. He turned a circle, then took a slow step forward. Then another. His hand pressed against a cold stone. A shiver passed through him. He reminded himself to think warm thoughts, and then he saw the flames crawling the walls of the Kittiwake, and Admiral Daughton in the middle of it, dancing to the sound of Philip’s bones snapping.

  Ikey shivered again, then moved his hand along the stone until his fingertips encountered a bit of mortar and a second stone. He made his way along the wall, then around several corners before he came across a slab of iron flecked with rough spots of rust. A door. And as he sought in vain a latch he knew he wouldn’t find, Ikey realized he was in solitary. After he had explored the entire door, he placed his ear against the cold iron.

  Nothing.

  He dragged the tips of his fingers along the door until he came to the jamb. He felt around the door, then moved on to the stone that encased him like a mausoleum. Ikey took his time and passed his fingers over every bump, along every crack. He traced lines of mortar that crumbled once probed with his fingers.

  When he found himself standing in front of the door again, he knelt down. Dampness flooded the
knees of his trousers and chilled him. He crawled along the floor and traced every square inch with the fingers of his right hand until his fingers went numb from cold. He then folded his fingers between his thighs. Coolness radiated out of his hand as his ears scanned the blackness for the slightest sound, the slightest rustling of satin, the faintest hint of a hammer brushing against a brass chime.

  Once feeling returned to his fingers, he continued on until he had explored every inch of the cell. As his fingers bumped up against the final back corner, a smile crossed his face. He warmed his hand back up, then he fished inside the spaces of his mechanical arm and pulled out the handle he had used to fix David’s hand. He began to scrape the flat end of the handle against the crumbling mortar between the stones.

  Time passed in drawn out, sloping waves stretched between spikes of gray light that jabbed through a slot in the bottom of the door as a meal tray was shoved through. Ikey wasn’t sure how often they fed him, but he assumed it was once a day. Between meals, he pulled stones from the wall and stacked them into a corner and made a small stool for himself to sit upon when he took rest. Behind the stones, he found a wall of dank earth, clay, and more stones. He jabbed the end of his tool into the wall of earth and dug. Dirt fell around his legs. Stones bounced off his thighs. Pebbles worked themselves beneath his knees. He jabbed again and again, digging until his right arm grew weary and throbbed and fell heavy as a tube of warm rubber against his side. And so he knelt before the space and with steady breath and heavy concentration, he dug at the earthen wall with his left hand until the muscles in his shoulder and chest burned and ached and his heart fluttered with the effort and dirt peppered his lips and worked its way into his teeth and under his tongue.

  He dare not spit, waste the moisture. Instead he swallowed. And he dug. And he thought of Rose behind him, standing tall as the dark itself, hands clasped behind her as she listened to his digging, to the small grunts he made with each stab of the handle, the hisses that escaped him as he swung his left arm forward, tin-plated fingers curled into a claw. She stepped back when he pushed himself onto his feet and kicked the pile of fresh dirt out even across the floor. She waited for him to pause, and then there would be the slight sound of her lips parting and she would then tell him that she was always there. Always. Every moment he was in the hospital, she was there in the dark. With him. All along.

  Ikey jabbed at the earth again. The handle struck a stone. A spark leaped from the end of the handle and Ikey fell backwards into the loam, a hand over his glass eye. He picked himself up, found the handle, stuck it in the iron of his arm and felt around for the stone he hit.

  It was large. He brushed and tugged away the dirt and found more and more stone until it curved away. He dug more, not wanting to stop, not wanting to cease and give Rose that opportunity to speak and tell him she was there with him now. Behind him. She would always be with him. He would have to run to the very sun itself to escape her.

  Ikey dug and squeezed past the large stone. He jabbed the handle up, stabbing as if to flay the belly of a hulking beast. Dirt showered his face. He reached into his trousers and pulled out the blindfold tucked into the waistband of his knickers. He tied it on and kept going, jabbing and shoving, raking the iron handle through the earth.

  The slot on the door snapped open.

  Ikey paused. His breath charged through him, rapid and quick, rasping. His throat bulged with thirst and his head throbbed. He glanced back, then realized his blindfold was on.

  A tray scraped across the floor.

  The slot snapped shut.

  Ikey listened for long moments and prayed for Rose not to speak, not to say a thing. Wait. Wait for the guard to move on.

  You should eat now, she finally said.

  The handle slipped from his fingers and landed in the dirt covering his feet. He crouched and crab-walked out of the hole in the wall. He kicked the dirt along, then stopped when it occurred to him that he was kicking dirt onto his food. He stepped forward, crouched, found the tray and a spray of dirt covering it. He picked up the bowl and tilted it back, gulping down the gruel, dirt and all.

  He replaced the bowl and returned to the hole. He picked his handle up and shook the dirt off. His head throbbed.

  “Thank you,” Ikey said, his voice loud and hoarse, yet barely a whisper. He jabbed the handle up into the belly of the earth.

  She was close. Her breath stopped shy of his skin. The dirt bounced off her veil and rolled down his back.

  She said no more.

  Ikey worked and worked long past the point where his chest throbbed and the skin around the root of his shoulder was rubbed raw by the augmentation. Dirt had gotten under his yoke and mixed with sweat and ground and scratched at his skin.

  He kept digging.

  He thrust the handle up and felt something altogether different, like he had punched through the muscle of the earth and landed in its soft tissues. He slid the handle into the nook in his arm, then lifted the blindfold. A shaft of dim, gray light seeped down, along with an acrid odor that sizzled in contrast to the dank scent of the dirt.

  Ikey reached up with his right hand and stuck his fingers through.

  Grass.

  Ikey pushed the sod back, braced a boot against the stone, then braced his back against the foundation. He pushed and wiggled himself up until his face poked through the hole.

  The sky burned with the light of a hundred massive brick candles. Each belched great columns of smoke into a dark sky. Below, light rolled from the city like a pus, gangrenous and fetid, and it flowed into an oily slick of water that reflected the city's lights, except where the reflection lay broken by dark things that passed across the surface.

  Go, Rose said.

  Ikey braced his other foot against the stone and brought his hands up to widen the hole, but stopped.

  He took a last look at the skyline, then slid back down to his cage.

  Go, Rose repeated.

  “I can’t,” Ikey croaked. He crouched through the hole in the wall, and with his right hand, he examined the stones amassed in the corner.

  Of course you can. Run. You have your sight. Your arm. Run!

  “I made a promise,” Ikey said as he hefted a stone, then shifted it to his right hand to better assess its weight. “I have to get David and Gavril out of here.”

  Ikey found a stone that he could place over the hole in the sod to obscure his escape route. He rolled it to the hole.

  If you want to help them, you will climb out of this fetid pit now and run for help. You will not serve a soul by remaining here.

  “No!” Ikey hollered. He whirled around and stood to his full height, joints popping in his back. He lifted his chin to face Rose. “I will not abandon them to this place. They leave with me, or I don’t leave at all.”

  So you will foolishly abandon your one chance to bring them help? Remaining here will serve no one. Leave. Climb out now before the sun rises. Tell others what transpires here. Why waste this one chance?

  “Because no one cares!” Ikey shouted.

  Hush, Rose admonished.

  “No one cares! No one is listening. No one pays the least bit of mind to what happens in here. There is no help to be had. No one to tell. There is nothing I can do but get the others out.”

  You will find that it won’t be enough.

  Ikey’s shoulders drooped. His breath pressed against the bottom of his lungs. He turned around and crouched to his stone.

  You are right. No one cares. And no one is keeping score. There is no tally. No reconciliation. At no point will Admiral Daughton’s or Philip’s life be held against you.

  Ikey laid his hands against the stone. The right one reported back on its cool dampness. The other clicked lifelessly, tin on stone.

  “How do you know about the admiral? I never told you. I never told anyone.”

  I stand behind you in your darkest moments.

  Ikey pitched forward onto his knees. He shoved the stone forward with a grunt.


  Saving David, Gavril, or even Cross will fail to undo anyone's death. Not Admiral Daughton’s, not Philip’s, not your sister’s or your mother’s or your brothers’ or your uncle’s. Saving them will not bring you atonement. It will not settle the score for your arm and eye. Most importantly, it will not bring back the boy you once were.

  Ikey shoved at the stone. His hands slipped off. He lunged forward, fell across the stone, then rolled onto the soft ground.

  “It would make a difference to me,” Ikey said as he pushed himself out of the mud and muck. “I keep a tally.”

  At what price?

  Ikey knelt behind the stone again and gave a shove. “What do you mean?”

  Consider your current situation. You are about to barter away your freedom and life for a hopeless chance at adding hash marks to your tally—a tally no one will ever know, see, or ask you to reconcile.

  Ikey bumped his head against the top edge of the hole in the wall. He shoved the stone through, then crawled in after it.

  “You know the tally,” Ikey said. He gripped the stone in his hands and perched on his feet.

  And I’m telling you how worthless it is.

  Ikey pushed with his knees and lifted the stone up, then thrust it forward and shoved it against the dirt wall. He wedged a shoulder underneath it and panted in the dark, the taste of dirt on his tongue like air.

  “To you,” Ikey said.

  And its value to you?

  Ikey grinned, and had he the breath to spare, he would have chuckled in the dark space, among the blind stones.

  “You have to ask?”

  Humor me.

  Ikey gripped the stone again, turned, and heaved upward, straining his shoulder to convince the mechanical arm to take the brunt of the load. Once his right arm extended completely, Ikey planted a boot on the large boulder he had dug around. He shoved his stone forward, against the wall again. As he pushed the rock against the wall, he braced a shoulder into the dirt and lifted his other foot, scrabbling it against the stones of Marlhewn’s foundation until it found purchase.