Tin Fingers: Book 2 in the Arachnodactyl Series Read online

  Ikey moved several steps down as Cross took several gulping, ragged breaths to calm his lungs.

  “This bloody air,” Cross said. “It ain’t fit for man or beast.”

  Ikey tromped down the stairs, his fingers gliding along the wall. At step number 14, he took another step forward and found himself on the street again.

  “Bloody Nora,” Cross said. “That was the creepiest damn thing I’ve ever encountered.”

  “What about it?” Ikey asked.

  Cross grabbed Ikey by the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go back to the pub. I could use something to wash this air down with.”

  “What about The Old Chopper?” Ikey insisted.

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like him before. That man is… It’s hard to say where flesh ends and machine begins.”

  Ikey closed his eye and tried to picture The Old Chopper again, focusing on the few details he could make out in the blur of light.

  “His voice,” Ikey said.

  “Aye. There’s this plating before his throat. Like rings of copper coiled around a flexible neck, like you’d make for a length of flexible pipe. I don’t know if he has a neck or not—a real neck under there. It sure as hell doesn’t sound like it, does it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “And his face, it was all blank like. But not blank like the man was calm or something, but blank like he was dead. Like I was talking to a corpse. Pale gray. And it hung loose off his skull, like it was draped on, like you’d wear a…” Cross laughed. “Like a bloody veil. Except I think it was his face. But those eyes…”

  A tiny tremor ran through Cross’s hand and spilled over Ikey’s shoulder.

  “They were pale, almost white as the whites of his eyes. Made his pupils pop out, like he was bloody-well looking right through you. I swear to God we talked business with a bloody ghost.”

  “Do you think he can do it?” Ikey asked.

  Cross stopped Ikey short as something large and lumbering and pulsing with heat and noise and a sulfurous odor rumbled by.

  “Whether he can do it or not, we’d best ask around elsewhere. There’s something wrong with that… thing. I wouldn’t trust him to operate on my worst enemy’s dog’s shit. That man’s not right.”

  Ikey wished for vision clear enough to turn and get a good look at Cross. His voice was pitched higher than usual, his words ushered out a tad faster than average. If he could see, Ikey expected Cross’s face to be drawn and pale, his eyes shifting back and forth as he tried to shake whatever had spooked him so.

  “What if they’re all like him?” Ikey asked.

  “Can’t believe they are. He’s a nutter, that one. Once we get back to the pub, I’ll ask around, see if I can find one that’s a jot more reputable.”

  “He said he could fix me up. If I work, I can afford the augmentations. I can do it in a matter of months. You know me. I can work on an engineering detail. Make the money back in no time.”

  “That’s another thing,” Cross said. His grip tightened on Ikey’s shoulder and his pace slowed, then stopped. His hand shifted in a manner that suggested Cross had glanced behind them.

  “Notice that he wouldn’t talk cost? He was up to something, that one.”

  Ikey drifted off in thought, consumed with the possibilities. With his eyesight back and an arm to wield, he could work off the debt and then set himself up with a chopper, be the one to make the prosthetics. If the chopper was charging such an outrageous price, then surely he could make a fair amount of money quickly. The Old Chopper might even take him on as an apprentice, rather than forcing Ikey to get some factory to front his augmentations.

  Over time, Ikey might open his own shop. Hire his own choppers and bring Uncle Michael down to Kerryford, far from the failing farm. And they could make incredible prosthetics. He would garner a reputation for producing elegant, graceful appendages that people would sport and feel lightened of burden, their new arms and legs weighing the bare minimum, yet giving back fluid movement and strength. He’d make them long, if he could, and give everyone an extra inch of reach, a little more presence; their hands arresting like a bouquet of slender beauty, the fingers curling down like a swan folding its wings until the tips rested against the wrist.

  Cross shoved Ikey along. He stumbled a step or two before Cross righted him.

  “Sorry about that, but we need to keep moving.” His voice hardly rose above the surrounding din.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Keep moving.”

  Ikey hurried along despite feeling that he would crash into someone. He relied on Cross to steer him, to stop him before he collided with anyone or anything. Had he eyes worth a damn he could see what was going on. As he was, he was nothing more than a liability. Why the hell wouldn’t Cross want him fixed up as soon as possible?

  “Excuse me,” someone said before them.

  Cross’s grip tightened on Ikey’s shoulder. He wrenched him to the left.

  Ikey stumbled, then brushed against someone. A heel kicked up against his shin. Cross’s hand disappeared from Ikey’s shoulder.

  Ikey turned around.

  Cross gave a muffled shout. Something dark slammed into Ikey and knocked him backwards. He fell to the ground. His body slammed against the street as something tall and warm fell atop him, then rolled off.

  The air exploded from Ikey’s lungs. He flipped to his left. His lost arm screamed. He gasped for air. A mouth of dust and acrid soot filled his lungs.

  “You sons of bitches!” Cross called out.

  A thud like meat hitting a table.

  Ikey pushed himself up onto his one hand and his knees. Something struck him across the back of the head.

  He dropped back down into a world of black.

  Chapter Seven

  A shrill, piercing whine snagged Ikey by the scruff of his neck. It yanked him upward, a fish on a hook. He struggled and fought and his shoulder exploded with pain and his teeth clenched together at the pressure of the sensation. His head split with pain and the whine droned on and on, rising and dipping in pitch until it shattered like a plane of glass and the shrapnel fell around him in clicks and clatters and tinkles and left Ikey writhing on a hard surface, panting, staring into darkness.

  He gulped down sour air that tasted thick as a nectar of soot and oil.

  This wasn’t a dream.

  He reached over and slapped at the space where his arm used to be. His hand landed on a metallic rod.

  Ikey shifted. The rod twitched. Pain shot through his chest again. He lay back and panted at the suffocating air. He needed to stand and push away the lid of this box and take in a great lungful of clean air.

  Something covered his face. Like the bandages. But Dr. Gretten had removed the bandages. He patted at his face. More bandages.

  A shuffle moved across the room. Footsteps.

  “Awake, are we-eeeeee…” Click.

  Ikey cleared his throat. “Where am I?”

  “Our shop, of course.”

  “What happened? Where’s Cross?”

  “How are we feelin-nnnn…” The Old Chopper asked.

  “Cross. Is he okay?”

  “We do not know what became of Cross. We were brought here alone.”

  Ikey pushed himself up. A weight hung from his left shoulder and threw off his balance. He lay back down and patted at his side to find a mechanical arm attached to his shoulder. A yoke of tight canvas and a collection of straps ran across his chest.

  Ikey swallowed. “Is this…”

  “Connected,” The Old Chopper said. “Give it a try. To lift it, hunch our shoulder up, like a shrug, and hold it.”

  Ikey swallowed a dry clutch of his throat. He raised his left shoulder and held it as if in a shrug. Pain pulsed across his head. A tightness spread across his chest. The canvas yoke drew in slightly, but nothing happened.

  Regardless, Ikey’s heart felt like porcelain in his chest, like its own fluttering would obliterate it.

  He had
an arm. Both arms. An arm of iron.

  “The swelling in our chest might prevent it from functioning yet. A day or two of recuperation, it will then work like a charm. Like our old arm.”

  Ikey swallowed again. His mouth was dry, and tasted nasty and sticky. He moved his face in the direction of The Old Chopper’s voice. “And my eyes?”

  “Let’s take a look, shall we-eeee…” Click.

  Iron hooks brushed Ikey’s cheeks and caught under the edge of the bandage. They pulled upwards, and then Ikey took in the clear and sharp details of an ashen face that lacked all hair and drooped from its skull. Dark, violet bags puckered beneath the eyes. Like Cross had said, the iris was a blue-gray so pale it looked white. The dark pupils pierced Ikey.

  He gasped.

  The corners of The Old Chopper’s lips turned upward into a slow smile, like ropes lifting a curtain. “Surprised, are we-eeee…” Click.

  “How?” Ikey blinked. The image shifted, got clearer, then took on a blurry edge like holding a plate of milky glass over one of his eyes. He shut his eyes. The image of The Old Chopper sharpened and grew crisp again and remained steadfast.

  “We cut away the scarred flesh over our left eye,” The Old Chopper said. His loose lips scarcely moved over a cavernous mouth lacking teeth. “Our lens was so scarred and warped that it required a glass replacement. We can fix the other eye up as well. If we’d like. But we might wish to keep a spare. Take a fist to that eye, and we may lose the whole thing if the glass breaks.”

  Ikey closed his right eye, then hovered his hand over his left eye. Gingerly, he lowered his fingers until the tips grazed glass.

  “But if we wish both eyes done now, and since we’re here…”

  “No,” Ikey said as he pulled his hand away. He glanced around. His gaze couldn’t rest on one single thing. His eyes shifted back and forth across the room, taking everything in, every detail from the sconces burning on the wall to shelves lined with books and jars. Everything around him in the dim room appeared miraculous in its sudden clarity.

  He could see again.

  Ikey grinned and stifled a laugh. He clutched at his belly and shook his head. “No, that’s all right. I’m fine with this as it is.”

  The Old Chopper stood tall with a squeal and a clacking. His bare chest exposed both of his mechanical arms. They lacked plating or the etched flourishes that made Smith’s arm a work of art. The Old Chopper’s appendages were all function and no decoration. Rods of iron and collections of gears sat exposed without apology. Pistons peered out from deep inside and indicated an engine at work.

  Ikey sniffed the air. Coal smoke lingered. But in Kerryford, coal smoke was as common as the air itself.

  “We can discuss recompense with the porter at Marlhewn,” The Old Chopper said. “If we wish to linger a day or two in the recovery ward, make sure the wires in the chest take, that is permissible. We recommend it, we do.”

  Ikey pushed himself to a sitting position. His head swam. The room spun. His hand gripped the edge of the table. To combat the vertigo, he squinted his eye, but it did nothing to shut out the sight of iron feet sticking out from under the ends of The Old Chopper’s trousers.

  “Careful,” The Old Chopper said. His cold hand gripped Ikey’s bare bicep. “The ether has yet to wear off completely.”

  Ikey took a deep breath. Nausea passed over him like a cloud on a sunny day. “I have to find my friend. He has the money.”

  “We’re sure,” The Old Chopper said, “but unless we can find our friend in the waiting parlor, we’re afraid we must insist on payment now.”

  Ikey took a few seconds to process The Old Chopper’s statement, the maddening use of we. He looked up at the pale eyes and was grateful to see them, to see anything, that it didn’t matter how dead they appeared.

  “Is he out in the waiting parlor?” Ikey asked.

  The Old Chopper slowly shook his head. The copper strips coiled around his neck flexed and shifted with the effort. “No one out there but Tug.”

  Ikey glanced at his new arm. It was like The Old Chopper’s, but not as built-up. It was skeletal in its devotion to mere function. Mechanisms sat exposed to air. The iron rods that made up the length of the arm and the hand were simple, thin enough to provide support and structure with a minimum weight, but they would not provide the brute strength of steel, or a greater gauge of iron. The collection of gears and escapements built around the arm was a simple affair. He recognized function, but not the raw power that pushed Ikey’s dad’s arm over like a sapling beneath Smith’s augmentation.

  Ikey could do better. Much better. And with his eyesight restored, he would.

  “I could work for you,” Ikey said. He forced himself to look back up at the creature’s face. “I can build prosthetics. Good ones. Better than this. Slim ones that weigh nothing.”

  Something inside The Old Chopper clanked. Or he grunted. “We’re sure. But we don’t need another prostheticist. We need us to pay up.”

  Ikey rubbed at his face. “I have to find my friend. We were attacked. Something happened to him. I have to find him.”

  “We were mugged, then, were we-eeeee…” Click. “In that case, we most definitely must pay up before we are allowed to leave.”

  “I don’t have any money. My friend has all the money.” Ikey took a deep breath, then glanced at his new arm. The sight of it flowed over his eyes like cool water down a parched throat. He thought of clenching his hand into a fist, but nothing happened. How would he manage such an action?

  Ikey furrowed his brow and shook his fuzzy head as he recalled the issue of more immediate concern. “I didn’t ask you to do this, anyway.”

  “We most certainly did.”

  “No,” Ikey said. “We did not.” He pushed himself off the table. His booted feet clunked on the wooden floor. He steadied himself on the edge of the table. The Old Chopper stood more than a head taller than him and didn’t budge. “I asked about the procedure, but I did not ask you to do this. I did not give you permission.”

  “We wish it undone-nnnn…” Click.

  Ikey glanced around. His attention stopped on a row of shelves that held glass jars. Four shelves held six jars each, and in each jar, something floated in a cloudy liquid. The fingers of a hand rested against the glass in one jar.

  Ikey swallowed. He closed his one eye while the other continued to stare at the jars. He wished to see Rose one last time, the way he used to, her long, splendid fingers in the yellow glow of a lantern, her pale neck sprouting up from the lace collar of her dress. The yearning hollowed him out to the point that he wanted to glance down and see whether or not The Old Chopper had carved out his insides and installed an old, tin bucket where his heart and stomach used to be.

  “Yes,” Ikey said as he regarded the arm. “Undo it. Make me as I was. I did not ask you to render these services. I want them undone.”

  The Old Chopper clanked again. “Tough.”

  He pointed an iron finger at a door in the back of the room. “Through there, we will meet with the porter. We will arrange restitution for us at Marlhewn Workhouse.”

  “No,” Ikey said. He shifted along the edge of the table. He glanced behind himself and saw another door. “You can’t make me pay for something I didn’t agree to.”

  “But we did agree.”

  Ikey bolted for the door. Pain roared through his left shoulder as it was yanked backwards. Ikey gasped and cried out. He fell backwards, then scrambled around to his knees as The Old Chopper held his mechanical arm fast.

  “We would wish the arm twisted right off, would we-eeee…” Click.

  “Stop,” Ikey panted. He clenched his right eye shut, but the left eye continued to feed back information. It showed him the sharp, clear details of the rough-hewn and stained floor planks behind The Old Chopper’s legs.

  The grip loosened. The burning sensation subsided into a throbbing ache. If the situation weren’t so dire, Ikey would have smiled at the realization that for the first t
ime since he woke up in Whitby’s infirmary, he didn’t suffer phantom pain.

  “All right,” Ikey whispered. “I’ll see the porter.”

  “Yes,” The Old Chopper said, “we will. Tug!”

  The floorboards beneath Ikey’s knees shuddered.

  Ikey raised his head. Gray skin stretched tight over The Old Chopper’s bare chest. Underneath his rib cage, slightly to his left, a small knob pressed against the skin. Ikey’s gaze moved to the mechanical arm. He scoured the length of it for a vulnerability.

  A door creaked opened behind Ikey. Slow, methodical footfalls cracked the floor and shook pins and needles into Ikey’s knees.

  “Take this to the porter, will we-eeee…” The Old Chopper said.

  A mechanical hand grabbed Ikey’s right arm and lifted him to his feet, then pinned his arm behind him. Heat radiated against Ikey’s back.

  The Old Chopper’s grin widened.

  As Ikey was marched to the door, he craned his neck around as far as possible. With his new eye, he saw the head of a mule attached to a pole atop a cylindrical body. Lifeless, black glass eyes stared out at the world.

  Ikey glanced back to The Old Chopper for an explanation, but the madman only watched through his pale eyes as the automaton propelled Ikey to the back door. Once there, a mechanical hand with three, long, thick fingers and a thumb reached out from behind Ikey, spun the doorknob, and pushed. The automaton shoved Ikey into a hall lit with gas sconces, the flames of which trembled with each step of the mechanized beast.

  Ikey craned his head back around again and examined every possible detail he could see. There might be something in the automaton’s build that would allow him to dismantle it, to incapacitate it.

  He remembered the arm.

  Ikey lifted his left shoulder. When nothing happened, he rolled it forward, then back. The arm only swayed slightly with each of his steps.

  Ikey grunted in frustration. He stumbled under the automaton’s guidance, regained his footing, then threw back his head and laughed. How absolutely absurd. He finally had his arm, his eye, a fist of iron, and none of it could help him find Cross or even escape the clutches of some ridiculous mechanical ass. The laughter sluiced down the hall, splashed across the door at the end, and ricocheted back to him, crashed over his ears like the crunching of an empty can.