Read Online Arachnodactyl by Danny Knestaut - Free Book Online Page B

back of a shelf? Why mess around with an airship when Cross had the ability to make things as stunning as his intricate music boxes or mechanical limbs that moved with a dancer’s grace?
    This was beauty. This would change the world.
    “Are you deaf?” Cross asked. He sat up to his full height on the stool. “Chuck that damned rubbish aside and find me those coils now!”
    Ikey lifted the arm a bit. “Why?”
    Half a smile crept across Cross’s face before he let out a chuckle. “Why? You daft fool. Because if you don’t do what I say, then you bloody well aren’t shit for an apprentice, are you? So stop wanking off over there and—Oh, bloody Nora,” Cross said. He pushed himself up from the table with both hands. At his full height, he stumbled back a step before catching himself on the back wall.
    Ikey’s grip on the arm tightened.
    “You know what’s keeping the Kittiwake from lifting off? Do you?”
    “No,” Ikey said.
    “Ballast. Damn thing is weighted down with a ton of wet excuses. Ain’t got a half-decent mind among the lot of them, and yours is certainly no prized addition.”
    As Cross staggered forward, Ikey slipped away from the shelves, arm held out before him.
    “Damn buggering idiots can’t even come up with half-decent excuses. Morons. The lot of them. And that Admiral Daughton? Biggest daft bugger of them all. Wants his damn ship straight away, but won’t let me hire my own crew. Sticks me with a bunch of whimpering, shit-pantsed sprogs who don’t know a screwdriver from their mother’s nipple.”
    Cross stopped before the shelves.
    “How the hell am I to get anything done?” Cross flung an arm out over the table in exasperation. The left arm steadied him against the shelves. “I mean, look at you.” He waved a hand in Ikey’s direction. “You don’t drink, and you couldn’t find a bloody coil if it was wrapped around your blasted pecker.”
    Cross reached into a box and pulled two coils out. “See? Now I ask you, what is the point of having you around if you can’t even find me two coils after I told you exactly where they were?”
    Ikey looked to the arm again as if it held the excuse, or the explanation. The response. And there it was.
    He presented the arm again. “I understand.”
    A shadow passed over Cross’s glare. He leaned against the shelf and shook his head. “You understand what?”
    Ikey hefted the arm higher, offering it. “How it works. What you did. What it means.”
    Cross’s Adam’s apple bobbed. The wooden shelf creaked under the increasing burden of his weight. He reached for the arm. His fingers paused an inch from one of the rods, and there they hovered, quivered a moment in the gathering dusk.
    “Go,” Cross said.
    The arm dipped again, and once cognizant of the slight ache in his own arms, Ikey let his arms fall until the mechanical arm rested against the tops of his thighs.
    Cross’s face was blank and long. No indication of what he meant lingered in his expression. “Go on.” He jerked his head toward the house. “Get washed up. Rose will have dinner on the table soon.”
    Ikey stood a few seconds more. Putting the arm back in the shadows wasn’t right. But it was Cross’s workshop, and Cross’s arm. He returned the arm and replaced the box that hid it. With a parting glance at Cross, he scurried from the workshop, and with each step toward the house, his heart beat harder against his chest at the thought of seeing Rose, seeing her move, seeing the art of Cross’s genius at work.

Chapter Six
    I n the scullery , Ikey unslung his satchel and dropped it under the basin. Tools clinked as it disappeared into the shadows. He washed his hands and scrubbed his face. He looked up. The blank face of brick stared back from where a mirror should have hung. He grabbed the towel from a rod protruding from the wall and dried himself off. After replacing the towel, he stepped over to the doorway.
    Cross’s lantern remained on the table by the