Kid Gloves

T
HANK
YOU
to Piper and Tia for your encouragement—I’m sure that without it, this weird little story would never have amounted to anything.

T
HE
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.

D
ALTON
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.”

W
HILE
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.