Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Read online

  “I know you can’t use it now, but once those bandages come off, you’ll be able to see well enough to help me out around here.”

  Ikey lifted the cup to his lips and tipped it back. The scotch burned as he swished it around his mouth. Fumes rose into the cavern above his nose and spread like melted butter across his brain. He swallowed. “What are you doing these days?”

  “Oh, not much.” The arm scraped against the table as Cross picked it up. “Keeping a low profile. Been working on this. Wanted you to…” The sentence trailed off in a sigh.

  “Did you ever get a good look at Smith’s arm?” Ikey asked.

  “Smith? Daughton’s coachman? No, but I saw enough to know that it was a dandy. Why?”

  Ikey nodded. He couldn’t remember if he had told Cross, or dreamed it. “I want that. His mechanical arm. I want to find a way to have his setup.”

  Liquid sloshed in a bottle. “That’s a tad beyond my abilities. I can handle the mechanics, but surgery?”

  “Smith got it done down in Kerryford.”

  “I bet. I hear they do a lot of things down in Kerryford.”

  “I want to go. I want to find whoever fixed Smith up. I want the same.”

  “I bet that’s right costly.”

  “I never asked how involved you were in Admiral Daughton’s scheme.”

  Cross chuckled. “Is this blackmail?”

  “It’s a fact.” Ikey tipped his cup back and drained it. He placed it before himself. The air around him got a bit slippery, a little less sure-footed. It bumped against him. The pain in his shoulder and the ghost of his arm drifted away, hovered several inches from him. It was a great weight lifted.

  “I’ll send a few wires,” Cross said. “Not because I had anything to do with the admiral’s scheme, and not because I feel I owe you, because I don’t. I didn’t ask for you to save my sorry life, and if you’d asked my opinion on the matter, I’d have told you not to bother. But you did. And I feel bad for you. It was a dumb choice, but it shouldn’t have cost you what it did.”

  Scotch sloshed into the cup before Ikey.

  “How much money did you make working with the admiral?” Ikey asked.

  “Not half as much as you think.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Is it enough?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  Ikey’s grip tightened on the cup. The weeks spent recovering had afforded him ample time to think and plan. The distraction had been sorely needed. Though blinded and lamed, his ears worked fine—too well, in fact. He had lain in bed under a blanket of moaning, crying, and occasional bouts of throat-rending screaming. The near-constant sounds rushed across the room and tore teeth into the ghost of Ikey’s arm, setting his shoulder on fire. The noises lit the itching in his eyes as nurses scurried across the floor, heels clicking as they called for another nurse, a doctor, someone.

  Ikey took a deep breath. The air didn’t quite fit inside his mouth. Like an ice cube, he shuffled it from cheek to cheek.

  Thoughts of Smith’s arm got him through the worst nights, gave him a place to bury his attention. He recalled the sight of the hooks that poked through welts of scar tissue in the man’s chest, where his arm used to be. He thought of the eyelets as they fit over the hooks. He pictured the rods, escapements, and gears that came together and formed a mechanical arm which held all the capability Smith lost when British artillery fire cut away his flesh arm.

  In the piles of time available for thinking, however, Ikey had yet to come up with a way to pay for such an arm. He had neither a shilling nor a way to earn one.

  He took a drink.

  “I need this,” Ikey said as he lowered the cup.

  “It helps the pain, all right.”

  “I mean the arm. I need the arm. The hooks and wires and all. I need to be made whole again.”

  Cross chuckled. The table creaked as a weight leaned upon it. “There is none of that, I’m afraid. There is no being made whole again. The moment your mother pulls you from her teat, you are never the same again. And as long as you live, you pile on ever greater damage until you finally collapse in on your bloody self. That’s how it is. There is no being made whole again.”

  “That’s not much help.”

  “It ain’t supposed to be. It is what it is.”

  “But I can’t go through life like this. What am I supposed to do?”

  “If you could only see me shrug my shoulders.”

  “Piss off.”

  Cross chuckled again. “I like this new you. I do. No longer a boy, are you, but a man I can relate to. A man chewed up by life and spat out and stepped on and dumped on by a horse with a mouthful of rotten oats. I can relate.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Me too.” Scotch sloshed through a bottle’s neck.

  “I can’t stay here. Not forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Rose.”

  “What about her?”

  “It’s… I can’t stay.”

  “Where’re you going to go, then?” Cross asked.

  “Home.”

  “And that’s where? The Dales?”

  Ikey nodded. “I need the arm. I can’t go back like this. My dad has to be missing the money Admiral Daughton promised him. He was going to use it to get a nursemaid to watch after Uncle Michael. I can’t go back and be a further burden. And it’s my fault the money has stopped. I have to go back. I can’t live like this.”

  “What if I gave you a job?” Cross asked.

  Ikey laughed. The sharp angles of it caromed off the shelves and the mangled music boxes lining them. It came off rough, cramped, forced.

  “I’m dead serious,” Cross said.

  “A job? Doing what? You need me to be your bloody hat rack?”

  “Aye, and an ugly one you’d be at that. Scare the hell out of my hat.”

  “I can do nothing for you,” Ikey said. “I’m asking you to help me get the arm. I’ll pay you back. I’ll work for you. I’ll get a job, work hard, pay you off, and then some. You know I will.”

  “Won’t you be Rose’s companion?”

  “What?”

  “I’m serious. I’ll pay you a stipend to… to do whatever it is you two do together. I mean, when you were around the first time, her attitude changed. She got downright civil. Had something else to think on besides how much I pissed her off. And I tell you, it made for a nice change around here. Felt like a thousand raw pounds off my shoulders. But when I got out of the hospital, and I found her here still keeping things going, she was mean as a rabid dog with a beehive up her arse.

  “I ain’t paying you to be her friend or her consort or whatever,” Cross said. “Just be around. Be someone for her to talk to.”

  Ikey took a drink and thunked the cup to the table. “She’ll hate that. And she’ll hate you for suggesting it.”

  Cross snorted. “Lord, how would I know the difference?”

  Ikey shook his head. The room shifted around him. He released the cup and planted his palm square on the table. “I can’t do it.”

  “Sure you can. What’s to it?”

  Ikey sighed. He pushed his breath over his lips. It felt oily and hot—not fit for his lungs or head. “I can’t do it.”

  “How much you want? A crown a week?”

  “I don’t want your blasted charity.” He slammed his palm down on the table. Metal tinkled.

  “It ain’t charity. You don’t think there’s a reason I hide out here all hours of the day and night? Or out at Turk’s Head? I don’t know what goes on between you two—I don’t want to know. I want things to be a jot more civil around here. I want them to be like they was before the Kittiwake burned.”

  Ikey took a drink. Before the Kittiwake burned. Back when he had two eyes and both arms. Back when he stumbled around in the dark, lost and intoxicated on the exotic nature of Rose; so different and beguiling and kind and so unlike any person he had ever met that he believe
d she wasn’t human at all, but rather, an automaton of Cross’s design.

  Now, Ikey knew better. He knew she was kind and gracious and loving to him as long as he was in her world, but never would she enter into his. Not for him, at least.

  Ikey sighed and pushed his hat brim back. He scratched at the hair on his head and pretended he was scratching at his eyes.

  “How ‘bout it?” Cross asked.

  “I can’t.”

  “Because she didn’t visit you in the hospital?”

  “Because…” Ikey said. His hand wrapped around the tin cup. “Because. I’m not fit to be her minder, and she would throttle me if she ever found out what you were trying to do.”

  “Two crowns, then.”

  “I’ll tell her what you’re trying to put me up to.”

  Cross laughed. The bottle gurgled. “Lord. Now you are blackmailing me.”

  Ikey smirked and leaned forward. He planted his elbow on the table and lowered his jaw onto his fist.

  “Why don’t you leave her?” Ikey asked.

  “She’s my responsibility,” Cross said. “I don’t step away from my responsibilities.”

  “She thinks she can take care of herself.”

  “She thinks a lot of things. But those things don’t hold water outside of that house.”

  “Am I your responsibility now, too?”

  Cross drummed his fingernail against the bottle. “No. You can still have a future. But not here.”

  Ikey sat up straight. “Then why the hell are you trying to pay me to sit with Rose?”

  “You ain’t got anywhere else to go. You have to sit tight until the doctor sees fit to cut away those bandages. There’s no better place to be blind than right here, in this dark house.”

  Ikey nodded. It was a good point.

  “Until the bandages come off, then,” Ikey said. “And you loan me the money to get the surgery. Then I’ll come back here, and you and I can build a proper arm together. Then I’ll get a job and pay you back.”

  Cross chuckled. “Damn straight you will.”

  Ikey laughed. He lifted the cup, but paused before it reached his lips. His shoulder throbbed, but the pain felt distant, far out along the horizon, and watery like a mirage. The alcohol left him in a cloud, and it congealed before him, squishy and thick, waiting to be wiped away. Everything felt wrapped up in that cloud.

  Ikey smiled at himself and shook his head. “I see why you like to drink.”

  Cross didn’t respond.

  “Cross?”

  “You don’t,” Cross said. “You’ve no idea why I drink.”

  “Then why do you drink?”

  “The company, of course.”

  “What?” Ikey asked. Out of reflex, he attempted to furrow his brow and found instead a wall of cotton pushing back.

  “The company,” Cross said. “I drink for the company.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You will never know.”

  Ikey’s mouth dropped open, but a response failed to fall out. Instead, he plugged his trap with the tin cup’s lip and tipped it back. Emptiness found his tongue. Ikey replaced the cup and held on to it, not sure if he wanted another. Cross’s response left him cautious, stumped. It was a large, dark animal moving through the cloud.

  Instead, he considered Cross’s rubbish offer. It was ridiculous. It was pity. It was a pitiful attempt at pity, tossed onto the table, twitching and half-rotted.

  “I want some air,” Ikey mumbled as he slipped off the stool.

  Cross didn’t respond. As Ikey stepped outside, drawers in a tool chest slid opened behind him. Tools were clunked down onto the workbench, a point made.

  Outside, Ikey filled his lungs. The breeze had died down. Nothing stirred except the noise of traffic. A horse whinnied as the roar of a steam-driven carriage approached. Ikey turned toward the hangar, or where the hangar had once stood. He sifted through a deep breath, tasting it, seeking flecks of ash that were more than cooking fires and coal stoves. He sought evidence and residue of the Kittiwake in flames. The scent came upon him now and then. It thrust itself at him like a bag slipped over the head, and in there, inside the bag, sure as burlap scratched the skin, he saw Admiral Daughton standing inside the airship’s engine room, swatting the flames that sprouted like flowers from his clothes, his hair, his darkening skin until the gun in his breast pocket exploded.

  Ikey started. He reached behind himself and touched the cool, weathered wood studded with rusting nails. The worst part of not seeing was being unable to look away, to distract himself. The image of Admiral Daughton burning came on him like a cold front, and the image stayed like an all-day rain no matter how hard he tried to think of Smith’s arm, his mum’s face, his brothers’ laughter. Nothing worked except for the memory of his dad’s face as the redness peaked in his cheeks, his jaw clenched, and an artery in his temple pulsed and ticked in the seconds before he exploded.

  Think of the cart. The wood. The iron. And there danced Admiral Daughton in the bed of the cart, fire falling from his frame, smooth and flowing as a silken cape.

  Ikey gripped his left ribs. They shifted and stirred beneath his fingers as he took another deep breath. The world outside of Cross’s workshop tilted and swayed. He leaned back against the shed.

  He’d have to get to Kerryford. The sooner, the better. Sitting around Cross’s house wouldn’t do. If Rose couldn’t be bothered to visit him in the hospital, and if she couldn’t even be sorry that she never visited him, then he wasn’t needed around here. Cross could deal with his own situation. The man lived in the trap he had chosen.

  The moment the bandages came off, things would be better. Once he could see, he could make use of the arm Cross had built. It would be a stopgap, but it would at least add some functionality to his current situation. As soon as the bandages were off.

  Ikey pressed his fingertips to the bandages above his eye. He traced the bone underneath his eyebrow and drew his hand to his temple.

  It would be fine—perfectly fine—once the bandages came off.

  His thumb drifted down his cheek and stopped at the bandage’s bottom edge. He fidgeted with the cotton wrap, then hooked his thumb under the gauze. How much difference could a couple of weeks make? Why not tease it up an inch or so, peek out and make sure that the world still spread out before him, that it hadn’t abandoned him to the world of formless darkness?

  Ikey’s breath came ragged and rattled.

  “You having trouble finding your pecker out there?” Cross called.

  “Piss off,” Ikey called back.

  “You piss off. And once you’re finished, get back in here. I need your help.”

  Ikey laughed a short, ugly laugh. He swung around, his limbs feeling buoyed on water, his joints greased in lard. “You? Need my help?”

  “I only got two bloody hands. I need a third. And since you’re not doing anything terribly important with yours...”

  “I don’t want your pity,” Ikey said from the doorway.

  “I don’t give a bloody toss what you want. Get your arse over here and hold this thing up while I tighten this brace.”

  “What is it?” Ikey asked as he approached the table.

  “Something I’ve been tinkering with. Been thinking on the engine we built for the Kittiwake, and I thought I might make a couple adjustments, downsize the whole mess, and put the thing in one of those steam carriages. Get them to run farther and faster on less coal. Maybe everyone would take a trip out of town, and I’d finally get some peace and quiet.”

  “You want peace and quiet, you should shut your blasted trap.”

  “You can hold this plate up with your jaw, actually, if you've got no better use for it.”

  Ikey stopped a few feet from Cross’s voice. “What do you need?”

  “Hold your hand out.”

  Ikey extended his hand. Cross grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward, then turned Ikey’s hand over and pushed it down a few inches. A plate mat
erialized under his hand.

  “Curl your fingers around it.”

  Ikey grasped the metal plate.

  “That’s it. Just like that. Hold it.”

  “You couldn’t get a clamp?”

  “You was doing something better?”

  Metal clicked on metal in several quick successions. The plate shivered under Ikey’s grip. Cross released a small grunt.

  “That’ll do it. Tell you what. When it’s time to test this, I’ll let you do the driving.”

  Ikey sighed.

  “I thought that was funny,” Cross said.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, it was. But if you can’t see around your own wallowing any better than that, then you really will be blind all your damned life.”

  “As soon as the bandages come off.”

  Cross grunted again. Something on the table shifted. Metal bits rocked and teetered and chattered. “What if you can’t see after the bandages come off?”

  “I can. I can see. I see… flecks of white. Things shifting. Little lights. It’s there. I mean, it’s not total blackness.”

  “Ever wonder if Rose sees the same things?”

  “She’s been blind from birth.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ikey shook his head. “I’m not blind. As soon as the bandages come off, I’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re so sure of that, then why didn’t you think my comment about driving was funny?”

  Ikey drummed his fingers across the table and turned his face away from Cross.

  “Bah,” Cross spat as he dropped something to the table with a thud. “To hell with it. Let’s go wash up.”

  Chapter Two

  Inside Cross’s house, Ikey navigated the scullery as well as a sighted man. The soap sat where it had been the last time he used it. The towel hung from the same rod it hung from last time. The door to the dining parlor stood four steps to his left, and then a turn to the right. After passing through the doorway, he took five more steps, then reached out and placed his hand on the back of a dining chair.

  The scent of bread filled the room. Underneath it lay a rich, mouth-watering aroma of stewing beef. Ikey turned to his right, and then realized he no longer had an arm to reach out with and touch the backs of the chairs, count them off like fence posts as he circumnavigated the table.