A Study in Silks tba-1 Page 6

  Heat from the engine seeped through the soles of his boots. Tobias wiped his face with the back of his glove. Already he was starting to sweat, his lips salty as he chewed them in concentration. Some of the repetitive movements of the creature were punched into a rotating cylinder that programmed the gears. The rest were powered by pneumatic pressure, guided by the clump of levers that stuck out from the contraption like the quills of a porcupine. He knew each one perfectly well, but for a moment his mind blanked. Slow down. Take your time. He inhaled a long breath, then let it out slowly. This is completely, boffing mad.

  Which was exactly why it was going to be so much fun. Suddenly, doubt was gone. He had this victory in his pocket, and it was going to taste as sweet as buttered cream.

  A grin split his face as he pushed a button and the machine issued a gust of steam. Bucky fell back, putting some distance between himself and the scalding air.

  “Anytime now,” said Bucky, his voice subdued. “We’re ten minutes from the final curtain.”

  Tobias thumbed the controls. With a smooth click and whirr, the petals of the lotus unfolded, slowly angling away from the core. Click. Chirrrr. The bottom ends of the petals detached and unfurled to reveal that the petals were actually eight multijointed limbs. Four slapped the sandy dirt with a scrunch, the other four reaching up with questing pincers.

  Tobias paused long enough to wipe his face again. The grin, if possible, had only grown wider. He grabbed two of the levers, easing them back slowly. With a shudder and lurch, the bulbous body swung free of the cart, hoisting itself into the air as the legs drew themselves straight with a sigh of metal on metal. It had been designed to move quietly—or at least quietly enough to be drowned out by an opera. So far, they had attracted no unwanted attention to their secluded alley.

  Thinking about too many things at once, Tobias pulled hard on one of the levers. One leg straightened faster than the rest, tilting the machine so Tobias listed in his seat. His rump sliding dangerously, he grabbed the edge of his perch with one hand and adjusted the levers with the other. With a stomach-churning lurch, the mechanical beast righted itself.

  Tobias took another deep breath, registering the fact that everyone else seemed very far away. He had been lifted seven feet into the air. The dim light of the gaslamps slid along the machine’s riveted plates in an eerie glow. The steam engine that powered the beast, hidden in the depths of its belly, powered gears and pistons that ground and thumped in a well-insulated murmur.

  Tobias wallowed in dreadful glee. Or was that gleeful dread? “Behold the great, riveted squid monster, bane of ghost ships.”

  “It doesn’t have enough tentacles to be a squid,” protested Edgerton. “And squids don’t walk. It’s a crab.”

  “It’s a squid,” Tobias insisted.

  “Maybe it’s a lobster.”

  Bucky consulted his pocket watch one more time. “Better unleash the kraken, or we’ll miss our cue.”

  Edgerton paid the workmen. They wheeled the cart, along with the discarded evening clothes, back to the warehouse a few streets away where the machine had been stored.

  The leather helmets came equipped with masks and goggles that disguised the top half of the face. All three pulled them down, adjusting the eyepieces. Tobias pulled a lever, and one leg gracefully lifted to take a step forward. As he lowered it, the body of the beast swayed, sending Tobias sliding in his seat again. He swore under his breath, giddy with vertigo and pride in his own cleverness. He pulled the next lever, moving another leg and lurching in that direction. The sliding around wasn’t so bad once he learned to compensate. Kind of like riding a camel, he supposed. Not that he’d ever ridden a camel, but …

  Leg one arced forward with a whoosh of metal joints.

  Leg two.

  Leg three. Squeak!

  Leg four.

  The tentacles waggled in the steamy air.

  Beautiful! Tobias began guiding his nightmare down the alley, as proud as a mother at her baby’s first waddling steps.

  Wagner oozed into the night air like heavy treacle. The wild energy surging through Tobias bubbled in his throat, urging him to bellow along. It was a night to imprint in his memory—the laughter of his friends; the stink of the alley; the cold damp on his cheeks; the power throbbing through the controls. Leg three of the beast needed more grease, but it was an imperfection that set off the magnificence of the whole.

  Bucky ran ahead to the theater to prop open the high double doors used for delivery of lumber for sets and props. Beyond lay the warren of corridors and dressing rooms behind the stage. As they approached, Bucky and Edgerton stayed a few steps ahead to take care of any interference. The stagehands had been bribed to ignore the invading creature and its shabbily suited keepers, but Tobias wasn’t taking any chances. He couldn’t afford to lose.

  Just as Bucky opened the door and Wagner’s music boomed forth into the fetid alley air, a collective gasp came from the motley collection of dressers, understudies, carpenters, and stagehands crowding the backstage area. A huge towheaded brute, surely part of the Prinkelbruch entourage, swore in German. He bulled forward just as the machine made it over the threshold, blocking Tobias’s path.

  Bollocks!

  Two equally beefy characters joined him, so similar in coloring and scowl that they must have been brothers. The other bystanders were clearing away, wanting no part of whatever was about to transpire. A gabble of conversation was rising, sure to disturb the performance onstage. Tobias was running out of time. The three ugly brothers would simply have to move.

  With a flurry of levers, the machine swayed forward, one massive foot narrowly missing the biggest of the three. The wooden floor magnified the sound of the beast’s movement with a thundering clomp.

  The gabble of exclamations died at the sound. Tobias felt a surge of gratification. The three huge stagehands growled.

  Tobias’s friends surged forward, flexing their shoulders and undoing buttons for ease of movement.

  Clomp. A papier-mâché breastplate died with a sickening scrunch.

  One of the brutes lunged for Bucky, who promptly slammed his fist into the man’s gut. “Get it on stage!” he roared. “Go!”

  Edgerton dove for the other two, tackling them both at once.

  Tobias frantically worked the gears, trying to squeeze speed out of the lumbering beast. The creature laboriously lurched forward, rudely blasting a puff of steam from its hindquarters.

  It was time to change tactics. Tobias thumbed a control. Two panels in the top of the would-be sea monster whirred open, and twin cannons poked out like antennae. These were Bucky’s contribution to the project. The ammunition was a reservoir of overripe oranges.

  A few more thumping steps, and Tobias could see the stage. The backdrop was a painted ocean. Imitation boulders and cliffs flanked the set, discreetly hiding the thick mattress upon which the heroine was to leap to her death. The Flying Dutchman itself had been wheeled into the middle distance, where it supported a chorus of ghostly sailors.

  The cursed captain was staring in horror at Tobias and gradually losing his pitch.

  This was the moment they’d worked for. Tobias drove the machine from the wings and into the last act. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  A woman in the audience screamed—a wonderful, gurgling shriek. The cry was taken up by every female occupying the Royal Harlot’s plushy seats. Tobias whooped in merriment.

  As scandals went among the London ton, this beat yet another bedroom farce tentacles down. Tobias fired the cannons, sticky orange guts splatting the audience in a perfectly calculated parabola.

  With a puff of steam and a flurry of levers, the tentacles of the monster grabbed the ghostly craft’s rigging with a sickly sound of ripping canvas and splintering wood. The remaining chorus jumped ship. Outraged, the baritone roared in E flat major.

  Tobias punched a button and the cannons fired more oranges, one catching the conductor in the ear. The other landed on the stage in a mighty squish, s
howering the principal singers in slimy fruit guts.

  The next volley hit the brass section. Uproar coursed through the audience like a wave. Half rose with a cheer. The other half bolted for the exit before orange peel death rained from the sky. Edgerton picked that moment to sprint across the stage, a banner raised high on its pole.

  It was emblazoned with the society’s motto: Beware, Because We Can.

  It was just enough of a distraction that Tobias didn’t notice that the doomed captain had drawn his weapon, proving that an operatic hero would indeed attack a seven-foot steam-driven monster with a pretend sword from the costuming department.

  At that moment, Edgerton collided with a fleeing sailor. The rebound knocked the chorister into the captain, who thumped into the ghost ship. The mast toppled and smashed. Relentless, the squid stepped over the wreckage, but a jutting spur of wood caught and jammed in a leg joint. The jolt sent Tobias flying from his perch. He tried grabbing at the levers for balance, but one came off in his hand as he grappled for the steel frame of his seat.

  It was the brake.

  Damn it all to hell.

  The leather gloves, so essential for handling the hot metal, were hopelessly clumsy. His grip was slipping. Nevertheless, Tobias barely noticed his precarious position, the conductor snapping his baton in two, even Bucky’s wild arm-waving. He’d caught sight of his father’s enraged face. Lord Bancroft looked in his son’s direction, but as usual didn’t recognize who he was. Mocking anger twisted Tobias’s gut: that peculiar mix of love, shame, and disappointment only a child can know.

  Have I finally lived down to your expectations, Father?

  At that moment, the only element of success thus far lacking came pounding through the gilded doors at the back of the auditorium. The fourth charter member of the society—Captain Diogenes Smythe—had raised the alarm. Burly men in tight uniforms were coursing down the aisle, faces as grimly set as if they were storming enemy barricades.

  Unfortunately, they were shooting. Apparently Smythe hadn’t bothered to mention specifics, like not killing anyone.

  Death missed Tobias by an inch, smashing into the machine’s controls. Tobias dropped to the stage, his shins stinging from the bad landing. Another bullet smashed home, gears and bolts spraying in all directions. Tobias felt the wound to his creation like a searing injury to his own flesh. He hadn’t expected it to survive the night, but still its destruction was almost too much to bear.

  However, the monster did not die easily. Something jammed inside, causing it to fire volley after volley of rotten oranges, drenching the ornate theater in a sweetish stink. That should have been the most it could do, but some devil had possessed the machine. There was no hand to steer it, but pistons and gears kept churning in its brass gut. Sparks flew as the creature blundered through the set, crushing the ship with the nightmare force of a real kraken.

  Tiny flames licked the cheap painted scenery. The Flying Dutchman was about to become Siegfried’s ring of fire. Horror dragged at Tobias’s limbs. With a vague notion of steering the creature back into the street, Tobias ran beside it, trying to grab a handhold and clamber back onto his perch. Bullets whistled past his ear and smashed into the brass panels of its sides.

  He was ducking out of the way when a fist cracked into his right eye. He staggered backward, crashing into the plywood waves. He caught his balance in time to see the baritone charge, head down like a bull. Tobias raised his fists.

  Hands grabbed the back of his coat, yanking him away. “Don’t be an idiot,” Bucky hissed, dragging Tobias into the wings.

  “This is just getting good!” he said, as the baritone floundered headlong in the scenery.

  “They’re going to drive a bullet into your idiot hide.”

  Bucky’s words barely had time to sink in before the soldiers stormed toward them. Edgerton stood in the wings, waving frantically.

  Tobias gave up and ran. The three friends pelted through the theater and into the alley, a flock of police and soldiers behind them. Muck and mud splattered under their pounding boots, smelling of offal and worse. A police whistle shrilled through the night. He had a horrible vision of one of his friends catching a bullet in the back. “Split up!” he cried.

  It was risky, here in King Coal’s alleyways, where the Blue Boys reigned over a patch of London little gaslight ever reached. Barely half a mile from the Royal Charlotte, the homes were a honeycomb of broken-down tenements and twisted alleys. Edgerton disappeared to the north. Bucky vanished into a tavern. They wouldn’t pass for working-class Londoners, but in their dull brown jackets, they hoped no one would notice them right away.

  Tobias kept running, leading the police away from his friends. He was young, fast, and a natural athlete. His pursuers fired but night and speed were on his side. He ducked and wove, making it impossible to aim. Curses filled the air.

  A lunatic laugh escaped him.

  The first few streets were empty, but the next was filled with traffic. Streetwalkers idled on the corners. Crates and barrels clogged the narrow throughway. Normally, no stranger could walk here in safety, but this time Tobias had a pass. The locals were all too happy to get in the way of pursuing coppers, resulting in a shoving match. A fist was thrown by a drayman, a copper’s lip split, and chaos erupted. The chase was over.

  Tobias plunged on with the instincts of a fleeing fox.

  Eventually, he dodged through a gap-toothed fence, emerging into a cobbled alley scented with stewing lamb. With a jolt of surprise, he realized this place was behind a restaurant he knew well. Directly above him, a curtain fluttered from an open window, the source of the enticing smell.

  Tobias stopped, trying to listen past the heaving of his breath. The globes on the gaslights here were Keating Utility gold, indicating a much better neighborhood. He could hear two men passing on the nearby street, amiably chatting about a whist party. A hackney went by in the other direction, drowning out their words. From above, a dull hum of conversation floated from the window, punctuated by the clatter of the kitchen.

  No sound of pursuing feet. For the moment, he was safe. He wondered, with a wrench in his chest, if his friends were all right. There would be no way to know until morning.

  Tobias shut his eyes, feeling the beat of his slowing heart. We did it. I won the bet.

  Scandal. Soldiers. There was no way the event would fail to make the papers. Abercrombie had lost. But was it worth it?

  The question hung in the chill air, draining the energy from his limbs. Suddenly, Tobias was bone-tired. The destruction in the theater had been pointless. The whole wager had been a mindless lark. So much of his life was.

  But he’d planned and executed a mission fraught with both scientific and logistical complexity. He’d done something.

  Satisfaction bloomed in his chest like a small, private sun. It was a new and wondrous sensation.

  His pleasure deflated just as quickly. The four friends had forgotten one detail. With the exception of Smythe, they hadn’t planned on splitting up. Now they couldn’t vouch for each other’s whereabouts. If they met someone they knew, their unfamiliar clothes would be hard to explain. In fact, the outfits would connect them with the invasion of the opera house. Bad planning.

  It was clear that they weren’t very experienced criminals.

  I need an alibi.

  Tobias stopped in his tracks and then, after a long moment of contemplation, turned right up a long, winding lane that seemed to have been lost in an earlier century. The street was uneven, the houses tall and narrow with wrought-iron fences guarding them from passersby. His feet found their way to the top of the lane, automatically stopping at a door painted a deep purple—violet for the Violet Queen, who ruled the brothels with a fist of lace-clad steel. A brass lion’s head gleamed against the dark paint.

  Tobias lifted the knocker and rapped softly, knowing there would be a servant listening for callers. As expected, it swung open at once, revealing a Negro boy in a turban and spangled garb th
at spoke more of theater than of tribal origins. The boy bowed deeply, recognizing a good customer.

  “I’ve come to see Margaretha,” Tobias said.

  The boy didn’t blink, but opened the door wide so that he could enter. It was no less than Tobias had expected—the employees of any of the Violet Queen’s houses could be counted on for silence, an alibi, or anything else that could be purchased for coin. So what if a gentleman at the door was wearing goggles and orange slime, not to mention what was starting to feel like a serious black eye? That would be the least shocking thing they were likely to see on any given night.

  The boy closed the door and made another deep obeisance, causing the bright green feather in his turban to nod gracefully. He spoke in a soft, liquid accent. “Allow me to summon Madame Margaretha to attend you.”

  With a sweep of his arm, he invited Tobias to enter the sitting room through a set of etched-glass doors and then disappeared up the stairs. Tobias strolled through the doorway and helped himself to the selection of brandies on a heavily carved sideboard. The room was unoccupied but for a statue of Venus draped in a net of miniscule lights—an eerie feature of the place. Tobias sank into a thickly cushioned chair opposite the statue and swirled the liquor in his glass, letting the fumes soak through his growing fatigue. Venus stared back, a remote look on her perfect face that reminded him oddly of his mother.

  That wasn’t an encouraging thought. Nor was it helped by the realization that he didn’t particularly want a woman right then. If he could have had the option, he would have chosen someone with a clever wit, someone who could understand what he had just accomplished, and maybe someone who could tell him why his achievement felt so hollow.

  Margaretha was lush and beautiful, but she wasn’t the woman he needed. The only one he knew with that quick mind and gentle heart—one who would listen without judgment—was Evelina Cooper. In some ways, Evelina was so much a part of the family that she had become like another sister—except that not all his thoughts about her had remained particularly brotherly. With every passing day, he was less certain how to approach her.