Boots for the Gentleman

by Augusta Li

From nowhere, the air sacs inflated with a noise like gears needing oiled. With a creak the metal mouth opened and closed, chomping at the air in what Querry prayed wasn’t an attempt at speech. The hands spasmed and shook like a sot in need of his gin, and the eyes rolled back. Then with a rush the lungs emptied, the air producing a sickly rattle as it passed the throat and teeth. Finally the thing went still, lowering its head. Frolic whimpered and slapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Why?” he hissed through his fingers.

  “I think I know,” Querry said, recalling his companion’s prowess in a fight, as well as Dink’s account. “An army.”

  “But for what?” Frolic shook his head very fast, and his grip almost crushed Querry’s fingers.

  “To go against the faeries would be my first guess. But—” He stopped himself, not wanting to frighten Frolic. But to bring these things to life, to imbue them with thought and feeling….

  He couldn’t imagine the horror. So far, thankfully, the attempt appeared unsuccessful. In a corner nearby, a huge heap of scrap—failed prototypes—lay piled in a haphazard way. Querry walked over to the mound that looked for all its metal and gears like a pile of discarded corpses. The thief regarded the milky eyes in the metal skulls. Querry tipped one skull with a steel-toed boot. A rasping, rattling erupted from the pile and a metallic, skeletal hand flashed out and caught Querry’s leg. Querry yelped and tried to back away, pulling the aborted construct with him. It looked up at the thief with a dull, sickly glow emanating from the weird ocular orbs, its mouth spasming and gasping, the metallic teeth gnashing together like some bizarre, clockwork zombie. The thing had no legs, just a spinal column trailing behind it as it climbed up Querry’s retreating form. Querry pulled his pistol and realized he couldn’t discharge the firearm. The horrible thing gurgled a strangled scream and one of the eyes burst, leaking a viscous, white liquid over the metal cheekbone. The thief spared a glance at his perfect clockwork companion frozen in a paroxysm of fear, his delicate fists pressed against his perfect lips, stifling a scream. Querry flipped the pistol so the grip emerged over his hand. He hauled back and smashed the butt of the gun into the metal skull with a dull thud. The clockwork abomination whined, and Querry hit it again and again.

  Finally able to move, Frolic grabbed a large wrench from a workbench and swung it like a baseball bat at the mechanical corpse. The wrench connected with a sickly rending and the skull was ripped from the neck. It flew into a corner and bounced once before skidding across the floor. The metallic hands clawed at the thief, clenching and unclenching a few times before the entire frame stilled and dropped to the ground. Querry backed away from the thing, panting. The clockwork boy whimpered and dropped the wrench with a deep clang. Silence hung in the dusty room like death in a mausoleum.

  “We can’t let them,” Frolic whispered desperately, having made the connection Querry had hoped to spare him from. “Querry, we have to stop this.”

  “We will. Let’s find that book. Come on. The stairs should be around here somewhere.” They made their way easily through the kitchens and the rooms beyond. Once they had to hide behind a sofa while a plump little maid helped herself to some of his Lordship’s single malt, but they encountered no other obstacles before reaching the dark-paneled study. There, on the matching mahogany desk, as Querry had known it would be, sat Frolic’s book. Notes lay scattered around, as well as various diagrams and schematics. These Frolic seized, tearing them to shreds with such fury that the scraps flew around him in a blizzard. In spite of the noise, Querry let him go, knowing that it helped him exorcize some of the revulsion of what he’d seen, until he reduced every piece of paper to a confetti-sized bit. Afterward Frolic stood panting, looking at the canvases and books lining the walls with confusion. Querry tugged his elbow, and he regained enough composure to follow Querry back through the house.

  Worried over what Frolic might do when faced again with the machines below, Querry found a service entrance near the kitchen. It led them to a gravelly patch between the manor, carriage house, and stable. What snow hadn’t been shoveled away had been fouled by the horses. Their footprints would easily disappear. Even in the dead of night, with the moon already set, the entire area glowed amber from the many lanterns hung on the buildings. Querry wanted to escape into the darkness, but Frolic stood looking up at the great house with his jaw set and his fists clenched.

  “Come on,” Querry said. “Time to go.”

  “Underneath, that’s all I am,” Frolic said, oblivious to Querry’s insistent pulling on his arm.

  “And I’m a pile of bones and guts. What does it matter?”

  “Because!” he shouted, and Querry flinched. He went around behind Frolic and pushed him toward the little path that would take them to a driveway and, eventually, the street. The guard or a stableboy or groundskeeper, somebody, would have heard Frolic. Finally Frolic started to move on his own, though he kept talking. “There was no point to those things. Probably there’s no point to me either.”

  “Is there any point to any of us?” Querry panted as he ran. “Life seems pretty damned pointless to me all around. You’re born, you struggle to get enough to eat, and you die. The bloody world goes on just the same as it was before you were in it.” A steam carriage came chugging up the street, and Querry pulled Frolic around the side of a brick sweet shop. “That’s why you should do whatever makes you happy. Whatever you want. It’s all there is.” He checked the street before running half a block and disappearing down an alley. He took another few alleys, heading toward Hawthorne Street and the waterfront, before he slowed to a walk. They took a dubious-looking hansom to the industrial district before continuing on foot.

  “I’m sorry, Querry,” Frolic said, reaching for the tome tucked under the thief’s arm. “I have to know.”

  “If you must, then you must. But first we need to find a safe place for this,” he held the book up, “so that if they get one of us at least they won’t get it back. And after we decide where we want to go, we can come back for it.”

  “And do you know of a safe place?”

  Querry nodded, scowling. “Where I hide my money.” He jutted his chin out to indicate a cinderblock shell, its entire front and most of its roof caved in. Approaching it felt like walking up Gallow’s Hill, but he pressed on. Frolic followed him over piles of soot-covered rubble and into the vast, dark recesses. Above them, the stars twinkled beyond the metal beams that had once held the roof. Carefully Querry navigated more fallen metal and concrete, wrinkling his nose at the sulfuric stench.

  “What is this place?” Frolic asked as they progressed deeper and deeper into the burned-out factory, passing melted and crumpled machines and disjointed assembly lines.

  “It was a bottling plant,” Querry said, unsure if he wanted Frolic to know the whole truth. He decided to tell him, though. Frolic was all he had left; he shouldn’t keep anything from him. “This is where Reg and I grew up. When the workhouse got too full, they sold some of us off to the factories. They called us ‘apprentice laborers’, but Reggie and me were practically slaves. We were just cogs in a machine, and just as easy to replace. We stood right here—” He stopped in front of a furnace the size of a small house. The door was gone, and it had rusted and caved in, but a series of large pipes still spread from the top. “We shoveled coal from five in the morning until supper, then again from six to ten.” His lip curled, remembering the cut of the strap on his bare back, the heat that made his skin and eyeballs feel like they’d melt, the choking fumes. They hadn’t even bothered to light this part of the plant with the tallow lanterns that hung above the lines, and Querry and Reg labored among the hellish orange glow and frightening shadows.

  Then he thought about Thimbleroy Manor and all the other houses his work had taken him inside. “Stupid,” he spat. “Pointless.”

  “Querry?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, forcing his tone to lighten. “Just some bad memories is all.”

  “I can’t even imagine
how horrible it must have been.”

  “No, you can’t.” Abandoned now, the factory looked eerie and forlorn, but to Querry it seemed peaceful in comparison to the sweltering, noisy place he remembered, where he fought for every scrap of food, and fought to protect himself and Reg. The two comely young men hadn’t been safe a moment from the other workers. Even now, Querry looked deep into the shadows, sure he saw movement, men waiting with clubs or broken bottles.

  “It’s over now,” he said, as much to allay himself as Frolic. Then he reached inside the boiler, felt around a metal shelf and brought out a steel box with a lid covered in gears. He set it on the ground, squatted, and pressed the thirteen levers protruding from the side in the proper order. The clockwork ground together, clinking and ticking, until the lid slowly opened. On top of the coins he’d been saving since recruiting Frolic as a partner, Querry placed the leather-bound book.

  “You’re sure it will be safe here?” Frolic asked, a little skeptically.

  “Absolutely,” Querry said, replacing the box on the shelf inside the furnace. “Not even beggars will come in here, after the fire. You see, Frolic, there was only one way in or out of this place: a tiny metal door at the front. They did it so we couldn’t run away. Though I managed it, after Reg left. There were no windows. So when the place went up, almost everyone inside burned alive. Many of them were children. Hundreds of lives lost.”

  “I’d like to leave now,” Frolic said. “And never come back here.”

  “We must decide where we’ll go,” Querry said, taking Frolic’s hand to lead him away from the nightmarish factory. “Tonight and then forever.”

  Chapter Eight

  “ANOTHER of my boyhood haunts,” Querry said, indicating the notorious Slouch End Slum with a sweep of his hand. Unlike Rushport, no whores or beggars called out to the pair. No cooking smells spilled from taverns. The only drinking establishments here consisted of dank little rooms serving the dregs that other pubs threw out. Querry had been able to order a beer at eight. Fearful silence replaced lewd cacophony as they made their way up the street, Frolic gaping at the tumbledown row houses, most of which lacked windows and many of which lacked doors.

  As they went, dirty children began to emerge from behind broken carriages and ruined walls. They approached slowly, circling like hungry wolves, with faces as wild and desperate. More small heads poked from the holes in the upper stories, and soon the whole neighborhood, a hundred or more orphans, became aware of Querry and Frolic. The thief, having spent much time here in his youth, knew they would cut his and Frolic’s throat for a penny. He stopped in the center of the street and planted his feet in a wide stance. Theatrically he whipped open his coat to reveal his many weapons.

  “Black Bethany,” he said, his voice echoing through the hollowed-out shells of the buildings. Some of the urchins scuttled off, disappearing down the winding alleyways. The rest continued to gawk at them, waiting to be entertained in the way children will. Querry was little surprised at the appearance of heavy pipes, knives, boards wrapped with jagged wire, and all other manner of makeshift armaments. Frolic’s training brought him to stand at Querry’s back, ready to draw his sword.

  “Wait,” Querry instructed quietly, though Frolic’s shoulders against his own felt reassuring.

  The children began to chatter and inch closer, some of them fingering their weapons impatiently. Querry thumbed the hammer of his pistol.

  Then the throng parted and a plump woman sauntered to where Querry and Frolic stood. She wore a garish tartan frock, tucked up in the front to reveal striped hose and armored, knee-high boots with sharp, silver tips. High on each thigh rode an assortment of blades in leather sheathes that matched the bodice pushing her freckled bosom almost to her collarbone. More plaid strips held red-orange ropes of hair, graying noticeably at the roots. Crisscrossing her ample body was a studded belt holding a clockwork rifle. The woman smiled, revealing teeth as black as the coal Querry used to shovel, and said, “Querrilous Knotte.”

  “Black Bethany.” She took her name not from the color of her skin, hair, or even teeth, but from her rumored mastery of witchcraft. Querry couldn’t be sure, though he had witnessed troublesome boys disappear just as new cats took up residence in the Slum.

  As if unaware that her charms had long since departed, she put a hand on Querry’s waist. “You’ve grown into a fine young man,” she said with a wink, in her thick, booze-soaked brogue.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “What is it ye be wantin’ then, Querry?”

  “Sanctuary, I suppose.”

  “Eh?”

  “My companion and I just need a safe place to lay low for a couple of days,” he said. “And if there’s one part of this city law enforcement won’t dare set foot—”

  His words were cut off by cries of “Bugger those pigs!”, “I’ll slit their bags and make them eat my shite!”, and many more colorful oaths from the assembled boys.

  When the fervor died down, Querry continued. “All I ask is that you tell your people to let us be. We’ll duck into one of these buildings and by the end of the week we’ll be gone.”

  “An’ who’s he? A damned sidhe fey—”

  “No,” Querry said quickly. “A friend of mine.”

  “You won’t bring no trouble down on me and mine?” she said suspiciously. “I heard about the work you been doin’, Querry. And who for.”

  He took her rough, dirty hand and said, “Bethany. You know me. I always did what you asked and never tried to keep more than my share of the cut.”

  Swaying, she touched Querry’s face. “Such a handsome lad you was. Quick little fingers too. Aye, you was always one of my favorites. Right then. Just this once.”

  “Thank you, Miss,” Frolic said.

  Black Bethany ignored him and addressed the throng. “Listen up, all of ye. These here are my guests, and if ye little shites don’t want to end up catching rats for yer supper, you’ll let them be.”

  Slowly the boys dispersed, mumbling, disappointed at the loss of participating in, or even watching, a good brawl. Black Bethany took a flask from somewhere in her skirts and enjoyed a long pull. She wiped her mouth on her dress sleeve and belched. “Ye remember your way around?” she asked Querry.

  “Home sweet home,” he answered, and she staggered away. He led Frolic up the steps of one of the long, rectangular buildings. Clothing, food, and bottles lay scattered about by boys who’d never been taught otherwise. Someone had ripped the door from the frame of each of the small rooms. Most of these contained groups of three or four boys, drinking beer, playing dice or cards, or resting on the mounds of discarded clothing that served as their beds. Plates and dishes of food, in various states of putrification, dotted the floor and scented the air.

  “Fuck off someplace else,” said a seven-year-old who sat cross-legged, gnawing on a chicken leg, in the first room Querry and Frolic entered, “’fore I cut your goods off and make ye eat ’em.”

  They encountered similar reactions until they reached a room at the end of the third-floor hallway. Though twice the size of the others, it held only two children: a flaxen-haired boy of about nine or ten and his younger sibling. The older boy reclined in the glassless window, while the younger, not more than two or three, arranged blocks of wood on the dirty floor. In the corner Querry saw a basket lined with scraps of cloth: a makeshift cradle.

  “Suppose we could spend the night here?” Querry asked.

  The older drew a long drag from his pipe and leisurely exhaled a stream of smoke. “Let me ask you somethin’,” he said in a jaded tone. “You a faggot, mister?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “’S just some of the guys been talking. They say they heard about things you done. I gots to protect myself’s all. And me little brother.”

  “You have nothing to worry about from me.”

  “What about him?” the boy pointed at Frolic with his pipe.

  “He’s a doll,” Querry said with a wry grin.<
br />
  “Fucking sick,” the boy spat. “But as long as you keep it between the two of ye. And ye go fetch me two pints of ale and a quart of milk.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the rent, mister. Pay up or bugger off.”

  “We’ll be back with them, then,” Querry conceded. “What’s your name?”

  “They call me Tommy the Axe,” he said, puffing with pride. “On account of her.” He pointed to a heavy axe handle with a jagged, rusted blade. Her owner had driven heavy nails into the wood around the top, and Querry saw some dark brown stains. “Just remember that, if yer thinkin’ of tryin’ anything.”

  “YOU’D never think it to look at the place,” Querry said to Frolic, quietly, as the tow-headed toddler called Little Ricky had finally fallen asleep in his basket, “but this place was a paradise for a boy.”

  Outside, the winter wind howled, but Tommy had covered the window with a horse blanket and lit a fire in a pitted steel cauldron. He’d even been gracious enough to provide Querry and Frolic with a cloth sack full of rags for a pillow and a moth-eaten lady’s coat to cover themselves. Within the fur and leather, Querry felt warm and secure, content with Frolic dozing on his chest. On his errand for ale and milk, he’d picked up a few links of bologna and a loaf of bread, so not even hunger troubled him.

  “Total freedom,” he said, watching Tommy in the corner, well on his way through the second bottle of ale. Frolic’s face nestled closer to his chest, and he made a murmur of agreement. Querry tucked the collar of the jacket around his neck and stroked his curls. “But wouldn’t a little privacy be nice?” he added, tracing Frolic’s ear. “Feels like an eternity since we had some time together.”

  Frolic chuckled sleepily, and Querry kissed the part in his hair before letting himself drift off. Still weak from his ailment, sleep hit him like a wall.

  IT FELT like he’d only been unconscious a few minutes when a loud crash woke Querry. Frolic stood over him, sword in hand. Forcing alertness, Querry analyzed the sounds coming from the hall and the street beyond: boys yelling and cursing, knocking on doors and rousing their allies. Droves of them ran down the building’s halls and into the street. Feeling for his gun and then getting to his feet, Querry scanned the room. The fire had expired to coals; it was colder, and dark. Querry saw young Tommy tucking his brother’s basket into a corner and heaping it high with garments. Next he made a barricade around the infant with a broken piece of a wooden sign and a three-legged chair.