Kid Gloves

  THANK YOU to Piper and Tia for your encouragement—I’m sure that without it, this weird little story would never have amounted to anything.

  Kid Gloves

  THE little shop on Columbia Road in the East End of London was one of the most popular and one of the most feared places in this corner of the city. It was tucked away almost three-quarters of the way down the dark, cobbled street, and people who lived in the area tended to duck their heads as they passed, not wanting to look into the dusty windows.

  The man who owned and worked in the shop was a social pariah. Whether this was by his own choice or if it was a position forced upon him by the residents of the street, no one quite knew. He kept odd hours and lived in the few small rooms above the shop like so many other traders on the street. Some days the door was open early in the morning, then closed for lunch to not reopen later in the day. Other times dusk would start to fall by the time he appeared from his self-imposed isolation, and the early hours of the morning would chime before he sunk back into the shadows.

  To push through the door that led to Dalton’s shop was to announce to Columbia Road that you were broken. Finn knew this as he reached out with his right arm, retracted it, and used his left to let himself in. The front part of the shop was gloomy; the light couldn’t get in through the windows due to layers of dirt that covered the glass. Inside, the floorboards creaked and groaned as he took the first cautious steps toward the workshop at the back.

  He’d been recommended this place by a friend who had also needed Dalton’s services. Finn had been assured of the man’s discretion and incredible skill, and so, despite his weariness, he’d made the long trip to London.

  The man who Finn assumed was Dalton was hunched over a workbench, his back to the door. The front of the shop area was small, comprising only a plain wooden chair and a counter with a glass front. Behind the counter, an archway led through to a workshop area.

  Finn took a few cautious steps forward, allowing the door to close behind him. Although the shop front was dim and dusty, in the workshop, light seemed to pour from a hundred different sources; there were skylights and windows that let in sunlight from the alley behind and a clever system of mirrors allowed light to bounce from one wall to another. The craftsman’s hair fell in long, thick ropes to his waist, a light blond color that seemed to suggest that the rumors held some credence—he was from another world. To keep the locks from falling into his work, one had been wrapped around the others to secure them in a temporary knot.

  Dalton hadn’t heard his approach, so Finn coughed lightly.

  “Mother of God.” Dalton jumped and whirled around, brandishing a small wooden tool ineffectively. “You could have knocked,” he said, his eyes glaring.

  “I did,” Finn said.

  He was not intimidated by the other man, or the weapon he was still clutching in his hand. Finn was the taller of the two men by at least four or five inches, broader, too, and most likely stronger, despite his weakness. His skin was permanently a few shades darker than the rest of Europe’s population, his hair and eyes dark too, enough to hint at his otherness. Finn had learned not to care. He straightened his back and puffed out his chest, determined to show some dominance in the situation.

  “My name is Finn Croucher. I came here to purchase something from you.”

  Dalton’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, something Finn couldn’t understand. The man was a tradesman. He made his money by selling his wares. Why would he not want Finn to buy what he needed?

  “What?” Dalton demanded.

  With his chin still held high, Finn pushed back the sleeve of his shirt that billowed out over his right arm. The stump at his wrist was smooth. The operation to remove his hand had been clean and successful. Dalton didn’t flinch at the sight, like so many others had. Instead, his frown deepened.

  “Do you still have the hand?”

  It was the one part of the exchange that turned Finn’s stomach. He nodded and swung his pack from his back, taking a few long strides to place it on the workbench so he could undo the buckles and laces. To his credit, Dalton did not try to help; he waited patiently until Finn removed a strong leather bag that had been sewn up tight to prevent its contents leaking.

  This was the package the surgeon had handed him after the operation was done—his right hand and a scrap of paper for a shop named after a man in the heart of London. It was not possible to reaffix the hand, but this man worked miracles, or so they said.

  Dalton did not seem fazed by the contents of the package. He moved to a different bench, this one stone, set against a wall with cupboards above holding a variety of different pots and liquids and jars. Finn watched as he used a knife to carefully unpick the stitches, then tipped the contents of the bag out—sawdust and salt and a severed human hand.

  Finn took a step back, leaning against the wall as a round of phantom pains shot through his missing hand, and his stomach rolled at the sight. There was only a little blood, the end of the hand having been sewn up as neatly as his wrist had been, and apart from the discoloration in the skin, it was wholly recognizable as the extremity that had been attached to his own body for the past twenty or so years.

  “Well preserved,” Dalton murmured as he brushed the sawdust from the skin and examined the hand with a set of large spectacles. “Did Tennessee perform the operation?”

  “Yes,” Finn said, then cleared his throat. “Yes,” he repeated.

  Dalton hummed in what Finn assumed was approval. “I can do something for you,” he said simply. “It will take a few days, though. Maybe as much as a few weeks until it is useful.”

  “Weeks?” Finn demanded. “I don’t have weeks. I need to get back out there, right now. Right away. Do you not have something in stock I could take? I have money. I can pay.”

  “Your money won’t buy you a new hand worth having,” Dalton said, turning and piercing Finn with strangely intense gray eyes. “It will need to be crafted, and you will need to be taught how to use it. It will need to be taught how to use you. These things do not happen immediately.”

  Finn felt a hot flush climb to his cheeks. “How soon can we begin?”

  Cocking his head to one side, Dalton examined the young man before him. “Immediately,” he said.

  DALTON looked at the man—Finn Croucher—studying until he squirmed under the visual interrogation. He’d seen many others like this one before: young, strong, powerful, and dangerous until something happened that stripped them bare. Like infants, they came crawling to him for answers and solutions. And he gave them.

  He made prosthetics. Living prosthetics.

  Mrs. Shelley’s novel had cast fear into the hearts of men and woman around Europe about the danger of hubris, of playing God. Dalton had been branded a witch in too many outlying villages despite the fact that his creations were made from metal and leather and fire, not parts of humans. London became a safe haven, a part of the world where he was free from persecution and allowed to hone his craft. There was no shortage of young men requiring his services: legs blown off in mining accidents or arms destroyed in enemy crossfire, docks workers caught in ropes, workhouse women caught in machinery.

  He made a habit of not asking too many questions, and it seemed like his patrons admired him for this. They were not expected to explain themselves in his presence.

  “Remove your shirt, please,” Dalton said.

  The young man balked, then visibly steeled himself and began the task of removing his jacket, unlacing his vest, and removing the long-sleeved shirt that hid the damaged limb from view. Dalton waited patiently and made no offer of help, sensing in Finn a huge amount of pride. To distract himself from the inches of skin slowly being revealed in an unintentional striptease, Dalton started to collect the tools he would
need: his notebook, and a small pencil.

  There was an attractive blush covering Finn’s chest when he was finally done, his clothes layered on top of the pack that still sat on Dalton’s workbench. To preserve the young man’s modesty Dalton moved to the front shop, locked the door, and turned around the notice that stated he was closed to business.

  “Thank you,” Finn said stiffly when he returned.

  “No need to thank me,” Dalton said softly. “I’m going to take some measurements. Please try to stay still and tell me if you become uncomfortable.”

  Finn nodded and blushed further as Dalton surveyed his seminaked body. Sometimes he tried to reassure his customers that he was a professional, that they didn’t need to be concerned about the way that he looked at them. He told women to think of him like a doctor. Most of the time it was a doctor who sent his clients down Columbia Road in the first place, so they were happy to give him the title in their heads.

  With Finn, though, there was something charming about the combination of his strength—both mental and physical—and his vulnerability. Dalton wasn’t that much older than the young man, maybe eight or ten years at most. There was a light smattering of dark hair that covered Finn’s chest and belly and peeked out from under his arms. His body was clean, as was his hair, pushed back from his face and held there with some kind of shiny pomade.

  Dalton had been experimenting with his prosthetics for a long time and had become very good at his craft very quickly. Most people remarked at his young age: they expected an elderly man to own the shop.

  Still. He was faced with making an extension to the boy’s body that would work just as effectively as the limb he’d been born with. Dalton had his methods. They all worked.

  The easiest part of his task was to take measurements from the client’s existing limb, if it was intact. Dalton slipped his spectacles back on as he lifted and turned Finn’s left arm, taking note of the size of the man’s bicep, the distance from shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist. The length of the thumb, the circumference of the hand, the distance from wrist to longest fingertip. The length of each individual finger, the length of each joint in each finger. He was amused to note that Finn chewed his fingernails. The ones he had left, at least.

  He took a note of the size of the young man’s chest—broad, barreled, strong.

  It was not unusual for men who were in the military to have some kind of ceremonial marking on their skin. It was an ancient rite of passage, and Dalton respected that as he forced himself not to stare at the lines on Finn’s body. There were crosses on the man’s back, two rings encircling his right arm just below the elbow joint, and a circle on the left side of his chest in a crude approximation of the location of his heart.

  Dalton moved on to the right arm. Again, he took the measurements he needed and was pleased that Tennessee had done his usual good work in preserving as much of the wrist joint as he possibly could. The surgeon was a godsend to most of these men.

  “How did it happen?” Dalton asked without thinking, then immediately cursed himself. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s fine,” Finn said, his jaw rhythmically clenching as Dalton’s fingertips skimmed over his skin, turning and twisting and holding. “I was shot. In my leg. I fell from my mount, and she trampled my wrist.”

  Dalton nodded. He suspected as much—the hand that Finn had brought him showed signs of crushing. Really, Tennessee had done the best thing by amputating the hand, to have left it attached while bringing the boy back to London for corrective surgery would have put him at risk from all sorts of infections.

  “I’m done now,” he said, turning back to his notebook and heading the list of measurements with Finn’s name. “You can get dressed. Come back tomorrow. I’ll have it started by then.”

  “And… what will become of my hand?” Finn asked.

  When Dalton looked up, the man looked pale, almost green. “Do you want it back?”

  “No!”

  “Then leave it with me. I’ll see you tomorrow. At nine in the morning. You can show yourself out.”

  WHILE Dalton worked through the night—unadvisable, it would put him in a terrible mood the following morning—Finn went in search of a tavern where he could stay for the night. There were plenty available in this corner of London; his challenge would be to find somewhere where the proprietor didn’t ask too many questions and was willing to let a young man of Romany descent stay for the night.

  Apparently this wasn’t a problem here, and Finn was pleasantly surprised that his first choice of accommodation, a warm-looking inn with rooms above it, granted him board for a few shillings.

  He had been forced to send word to his parents of his injury and that he was back from his duties at the border of southeastern Europe with the Ottoman Empire. His mother, naturally, was panicked, and many letters had been exchanged with her before she seemed satisfied of his safety.

  Finn had joined the army when he was but a child, having known of his skill as a marksman many years before. His father had retained the knowledge that his father had passed on to him, and taught Finn all he knew about shooting a bow and arrow. It was a skill that had fallen out of fashion in the military, then suddenly resurged as troubles brewed in a distant corner of Europe. Guns were noisy. They announced the shooter’s location ostentatiously.

  As long as Finn could remain hidden, and not get shot himself, he could move stealthily, silently, and put an arrow through a man’s neck without his mark ever knowing he was there.

  In five years of military service, only returning home to his mother a handful of times, Finn had earned and saved enough money to be able to afford Dalton’s service and continue with the lifestyle he had grown to love. Or so he hoped.

  The noise from the inn carried through the ceiling and filled his room long after what should have been closing time. Finn wondered if this was why he couldn’t sleep; he lay on the lumpy bed, the fingers of his left hand in constant movement against the rough sheets as if reminding himself that they were still there. He had slept, for the past few weeks, with his right arm above his head so he didn’t have to look at the stump at his wrist. It repulsed and terrified him in equal measure, and when he was forced to dwell on the fact, a hot sickness rose in his throat.

  Not to think of that now, though. Nine in the morning. He would wake early, for sure.

  FINN forced himself to wait until a few minutes before nine before leaving the inn. He’d already taken his breakfast, washed and carefully shaved, and dressed. Since losing the hand, he’d found lacing his boots the most taxing part of his day. It took so much time for the simple task, and he almost didn’t dare to dream of having that power back.

  The sign on the door outside Dalton’s read “Closed,” but Finn knocked anyway and let himself in, carefully shutting the door after. It was warmer in here this morning but not quite so bright. Finn took a deep breath for courage, and walked purposefully through to the little workshop.

  “Morning,” Dalton grunted from a corner.

  “Good morning.”

  Finn failed in his attempt at keeping the excitement from his voice.

  “It’s not finished,” Dalton said in warning, apparently hearing that anticipation and wanting to dampen it early on. “This is a prototype based on the measurements I took yesterday. It will take some more honing and a fair amount of hard work on your part before I can let you loose.”

  “I understand,” Finn said. “Could I see it? Please?”

  Dalton mumbled to himself and stalked around the room for a few moments longer. He was wearing a blue shirt this morning, rough fabric trousers, and his locks of hair, each as thick as Finn’s thumb, were falling free around his face. He swatted at them ineffectually a few times before digging out a long, thin piece of leather cord from a drawer and tying it back.

  Finally he met Finn at the workbench and pulled the new hand from a small wooden crate.

  Excitement shot up
Finn’s spine as he took in the copper and silver contraption. It was both crude and beautiful, shiny in places and dull in others. Springs and wires and screws and molded pieces of metal clashed together. At the wrist, the metal was unformed, waiting, Finn presumed, to be fitted to his own body.

  “It’s incredible,” Finn said.

  He knew from the stories Tennessee had shared around the campfire, and more that he’d sought out himself, that there was virtually no external body part that Dalton was unable to recreate, and he was still experimenting on the internal ones. There were rumors of mechanical hearts, electromagnetic livers, stomachs fueled by real fire. Nothing confirmed yet though. But soon. But maybe.

  Finn also knew that when not working on bespoke pieces, Dalton made generic ones that were sold more cheaply to those who could not afford to pay for more. Old women who worked on the docks, girls who worked in the slaughterhouses, and children lame from the workhouse were sent here to pick up a new foot or knee or leg that was only matched to their height and weight and gender. Not like this piece. This was unique.

  “Need to fit it,” Dalton said, and Finn noticed for the first time the deep, purplish shadows under the other man’s eyes. The hand was clearly the result of many hours’ work, and he had not slept well this past night.

  Finn wasn’t required to remove his shirt for the fitting, but Dalton did carefully fold back the sleeve until it was tucked up out of the way just above Finn’s elbow. He led Finn to a small stool next to an open fire—Finn realized that this must be where the extra heat was coming from.

  “Here,” Dalton said, passing Finn a tin of thick, waxy stuff. “Put this all over the end of your wrist. Use a lot.”

  Finn did as he was instructed, digging his fingers in and smearing it over the stump at the end of his arm. He was suddenly less self-conscious about it than he had been the day before. He gripped the tin between his knees and replaced the lid, then wiped his fingers with a handkerchief.