A Study in Silks tba-1 Read online

  Evelina had to find out the truth before anyone else did, and if she could solve the murder, then there would be far less reason for anyone—like her uncle—to uncover Lord B’s secrets. That would give her a chance—somehow—to protect her friends. But common sense said that if she was ever going to find Grace Child’s killer—and perhaps the father of her child—Evelina had to learn where Grace had been, and why.

  The task would not be simple. There might be a connection between her murder and the magic Evelina had felt clinging to the envelope, or not. There might be a connection between the circumstances surrounding her death and the automatons in the attic, or not. Unfortunately, there was too little information to draw any satisfactory conclusions. As Evelina’s science-minded uncle would say, she needed data.

  And she had the means to get it. She could know everything the police knew.

  She swiveled in the chair and unlocked the hasps of the train case. The cover swung up smoothly, showing a lining of watered pink silk. Nestled in the spaces made for glass jars and bottles were what looked like small brass toys: miniature birds, mice, and even a tiny dog. Under the lift-out tray containing these little marvels was a neatly organized supply of gears and springs, watchmakers’ tools, and special magnifying eyeglasses to see their miniscule parts. They were expensive supplies, hard to come by and most of them salvaged wherever Evelina could find them.

  There was also a collection of magical tools that Gran Cooper had given Evelina along with a promise to teach her their use once she grew into her power. One looked like a bracelet of twisted copper, another a wand no bigger than a pencil. There was a painted stone with a hole in it and a triangle of silver etched with tiny runes. Such objects were used only for the most powerful magic, and a student had to learn all the other spells first. Evelina had left Ploughman’s before that had ever happened, so the mysterious objects sat against the pink silk, a mystery too precious to part with. Someday, somehow, she would learn how they worked.

  But she didn’t need them tonight. She dipped into the box, picking up the little bird. It nestled in the palm of her hand, barely four inches long. They were all experimental designs, but this was the one she had labored over the longest. She’d given it eyes of paste emeralds and a beak that opened and closed to reveal a ruby-red tongue. A row of crystal chips tipped its wings. A useless bit of frippery, but the sparkle pleased her eye.

  She had first learned her art from her father’s father, who built coin-operated wonders for Ploughman’s Paramount Circus. Since then, she had devoured everything she could find on the subject and added her own twist. The same inherited powers that let her call flame from a cold candle could be used to animate the creatures.

  Yes, magic was far from legal, but there were other, bigger implications.

  These days, the steam companies had a stranglehold on almost every kind of machinery and the supply of parts, making it next to impossible for independent craftsmen to do their work. Only rich hobbyists, like Tobias, could afford their own workshops, and even he kept his out of sight. The less attention he attracted, the better.

  The reason for the situation was simple: the steam barons didn’t want even a suggestion of competition. Rivals had unsuccessfully tried other inventions to produce power, such as the combustion engine, only to see their companies crumble beneath the steam lobby’s economic hammer. Others purported magic was the fuel of the future, but no one had yet successfully combined the supernatural with mechanics.

  Except Evelina—which was why she worked in secret. When the time was right, her ideas might be the key to scholarly recognition and even financial independence, but she had to be careful not to move too soon.. Nevertheless, this was the perfect opportunity to test her invention. She would never be allowed to join the official investigation of Grace Child’s murder, but she needed to know what Inspector Lestrade found out. Ergo, her little gimcrack toys to the rescue.

  She raised the hand holding the bird and studied it, visualizing a real bird and imagining the wind and sun in its feathers. Slowly, she fell into the image, losing herself in a fantasy of the bird’s darting flight. Her vision broadened to take in a stream below, sparkling with white shards of light where the water tumbled over stones. Above, puffy white clouds seemed to snag in the leafy verdure of willow trees. She circled, sailing up into the green like another leaf caught in an upward draft.

  With that strong, concrete image in her mind, she reached out, seeking the half-conscious essence of a deva. It would have been easier in a garden. The only one nearby was slumbering beneath the flowers on her dressing table. It was small, even for a deva. When she reached out with her mind, she tasted the rich tang of earth and wood. Excellent. Earth devas were the easiest for her bloodline to work with. She hoped the little creature would be strong enough. With barely an effort, Evelina gently caught it in her Will.

  She blew into the tiny beak, urging the deva into the tiny brass bird. The sleeping spirit drifted in, unawares. She sent her Vision of the flight along with it, giving it the dream of all a bird could do. A flare of light shone briefly in the emerald eyes, a spark of heat touched her palm. The metal began to warm as she held it.

  The deva woke. Now she could feel it panic and struggle against her Will.

  Help! The whisper came low and urgent, but the voice was in her head. Her heart tugged, a little sorry for the bewildered spirit. No one liked waking up in a strange place.

  “Sh!” she whispered in return. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”

  What is this place? What is this prison? It’s hard and cold!

  “I gave you a body.”

  What for? The voice was indignant now. I was asleep. Minding my own business. Then, bam, I’m stuck in a brass duck! What the blazes is this about?

  “Lark,” Evelina said automatically. “I made you a lark.”

  There was a stony silence. Not much of an artist, are you?

  Irritation reared in Evelina’s heart, but she squashed it. The unfortunate thing about earth devas was their temper. They might be easy to catch and bend to one’s purpose, but they were vocal about it. There was always a price in magic, and earth devas exacted it with sarcasm the way a hedgehog protected itself with prickles.

  Taking a calming breath, she spoke the words of the old bargain as her father’s mother, Gran Cooper, had taught her. “I summon you by Will and Vision to perform a task for me. If you do it well, deva, I shall set you free.”

  Sullen silence was the bird’s only response. There was just a shifting of the green eyes, which suddenly looked suspicious.

  Evelina set the bird gently on the desk and retrieved a needle that had been poked into the lining of the train case. Catching her lip with her teeth, she pricked her finger deep enough that a bright ruby of blood welled up. She smeared it on the bird’s back. “With Blood I give thee strength.”

  She lifted a glass vial from the case and shook some of the contents into her palm. It was tiny grains of aromatic balsam dried into a resin, perfect for a deva with an affinity for plants and green spaces. She sprinkled it over the bird. “With Tears of Trees I give thee wisdom.”

  The bird flicked its wings, shedding the amber crumbs over the desk.

  “With Words I give thee direction. Go, and come back to me with what I need to know.”

  Picking up the bird again, she crossed to the window and opened it. “By Blood, Tears, and Words I direct thee. Go find Inspector Lestrade. Listen hard. Learn everything you can about the murder in the house tonight, then come back to tell me all. Do your best, and I shall reward you with wine and honey.”

  Blackberry wine with honey stirred into it?

  “If that is what you want.” Earth devas had a notoriously sweet tooth. She wasn’t sure how beings of energy consumed solid food, but every offering she’d ever made had been gone within the hour.

  The brass bird stirred to life in her hand, suddenly far more flexible than any metal had a right to be. Gears inside began to churn like a ti
ny heartbeat, the wings a flittering blur more like a hummingbird than a lark.

  All right, maybe ornithology should be her next area of study.

  Evelina slipped her hand out the window, gently cupping the creature. “Ready?”

  What about cats? The voice in her head was grumpy.

  “You’re too fast for them.”

  Are you sure? I’ve never had a body before. No one’s ever tried to eat me.

  “You’d break their teeth,” Evelina said dryly.

  What if there’s a brass cat?

  “You’re stalling.”

  Am not.

  Impatient, she threw the bird into the air. It arced up and, for a horrible moment, she was sure it would crash to the ground. After all, Gran Cooper said her generation of old wives and wizards was the last who could do the binding. The Blood was too thin to carry on the tradition. Gran had said Evelina was the exception—but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she didn’t have the necessary magic. But then suddenly the air caught the bird, the wings blurring with effort. Evelina’s lips parted, ready to shout with joy. It flew! All those hours pondering speed and weight and aerodynamics had paid off. Her design worked!

  The flare of triumph heated her veins before fatigue rushed back to turn the emotion to ash. Too much had happened in one night to sustain even joy for long.

  Evelina sank to her knees before the open window, leaning her elbows on the sill, her chin in her hands. The night air was cold and sweet, tasting of the uncomplicated freedom of childhood. She wondered if that would ever be hers again.

  The bird streaked away, an errant scrap of gold, into the darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  TERROR AT THE ROYAL CHARLOTTE! STEAM SQUID SINKS WAGNER!

  A most insidious prank was visited on performers and patrons alike at the Royal Charlotte Theatre last evening. Just as Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer was reaching its soaring climax, a hideous mechanical apparition invaded the theater and destroyed the sets. The crablike machine tore the rigging from the ship with giant pincers, all the while firing a barrage of oranges at the public. The masked culprits driving the casket fled the scene and remain at large. The Prinkelbruch Opera Company has suspended all further performances, denouncing English audiences as unready for Herr Wagner’s greatness.

  In this writer’s opinion, musical criticism has finally gone too far. However, it is with some relief we see The Barber of Seville will occupy the stage of the Charlotte beginning tomorrow night.

  —Front page of The London Prattler

  The next day, Tobias appeared in his father’s study, summoned as peremptorily as if he were nine years old. The room, like everything else connected with the pater—Tobias couldn’t resist the disrespectful term, since it drove his father wild—was exactly what protocol demanded: dark, masculine, and slightly musty with the scent of leather and tobacco. A mantel clock kept up a steady, baritone tock-tock. Unlike many of the exuberantly ornate rooms in the house, this one had a plain coved ceiling with no mural or gold leaf. Books lined the walls, punctuated with the severed heads of big game. The snarling tiger over the desk summed up everything about his dear old dad.

  His father stood looking out the window, velvet curtains framing his silhouette. Made the first Viscount Bancroft for his services to the Crown, Emerson Roth exuded respectability like musk. Though his father’s hair had turned to an iron gray, his straight, lean form was that of a much younger man. Jove himself would have envied that commanding profile.

  And his father was just as fond of throwing thunderbolts. He might have been Her Majesty’s former ambassador to Austria, but the pater wasn’t done mucking in politics. He was inching toward a seat in the government’s inner circle. Worse, he knew every lawyer and banker of note in London. If Tobias embarrassed him, he could bid farewell his allowance. He might be thirty before he could stand another round of drinks.

  Bancroft turned, and the expression on his face tightened Tobias’s stomach.

  “What the hell happened to your face?” his father demanded.

  Tobias touched his swollen eye. “Spot of bother last night.”

  His father grimaced in his my-son-the-idiot fashion. He stepped on the claw of a man-height, chased-silver Phoenix, and a tiny blue flame blossomed to life in its beak. He lit one of his pungent Turkish cigarettes. “Have you read this morning’s Bugle?”

  “About the murder?”

  “No, thank God, not that.”

  Bloody hell, then he knows about the squid. Defiance and fear spiked through him. “I’ve just read the Prattler.”

  Bancroft harrumphed derisively. The Prattler was something of a renegade paper, printing the news as they saw it rather than as the Empire—or the steam barons—demanded. No one respectable subscribed. “Then you won’t have seen this.”

  He shoved a folded newspaper, carefully ironed by the staff to make sure the ink did not stain his lordship’s fingers, across the desk. Tobias turned it around and noted the squid had made the front page of this newspaper, too, right next to an article about some actress taken into custody for use of magic. However, his father’s finger was pointing at something else. Tobias read the headline and the first few paragraphs of an article detailing a purchase of shares.

  Confused, he looked up at his father. “Keating Utility purchased majority stock in the Harter Engine Company. Why does that matter?”

  His father sank into the chair behind his desk. The gesture spoke of a weariness Tobias was seeing in his father more and more often these days. It seemed to occur in lockstep with the steadily declining tideline of his whisky decanter. “How well do you understand the Steam Council?”

  Tobias knew it was made up of the men and women they called the steam barons—those industrial magnates who owned the power companies. “I suppose as much as anyone else does.”

  “Coal. Steam. The railroads. The gas companies. Factories.” His father put bite into every word. “Next they’ll be controlling what bread we buy and what ale we drink.”

  Tobias had never seen his father drink anything as common as ale, but he took the point. The steam barons ran their companies and, by extension, certain towns and neighborhoods with a combination of bribes and threats. Each baron had one or more streetkeepers—bully boys who turned threats into broken bones. A shopkeeper sold what the local steam baron told him to, and painted his steps blue or green or gold to show which baron had his allegiance. If he broke the rules, his gas went out and his pipes ran cold—and there was no place to buy his own coal. If he continued in his disobedience, more than his lights would be snuffed out.

  “What I don’t understand,” Tobias replied, “is why the law doesn’t make a stand. Take away their fine clothes and fortunes, and the steam barons are little more than extortionists.”

  His father gave him a sharp look, as if they were finally getting somewhere. “Can you imagine what would happen if Parliament challenged them, and the Steam Council stopped supplying coal and gas?”

  Tobias didn’t have to think long. No industry. Dark streets. No railway. Cold houses. “There would be riots in the streets. If it went on long enough, the government would fall. The Prattler is always going on about how there’s a rebellion just waiting to happen”

  “Precisely.” His father gave a fleeting smile. “And that is exactly why developing an alternative to their steam power is essential. Steam may be the engine that drives the Empire, but the steam barons are the knife at its throat.”

  Tobias was beginning to follow his father’s logic. “And they bought Harter’s, which was trying to develop an alternative type of engine.”

  “You can rest assured that now Harter’s prototype of the combustion engine will never see the light of day. They will buy the patents and bury them. If Keating Utility and their like prevail, steam power will be our only future. Right now, Jasper Keating is determined to seize the defense contracts for a fleet of weapons-class airships. It will be worth millions.”

  Tobias frowned. �
��And?”

  Here his father’s chin dipped a degree. “I felt it was my moral obligation to invest in Harter’s. It is in the best interest of England to break the stranglehold of the council. Unfortunately, I have just lost a great deal of money.”

  A cold chill ran over Tobias as he recalled the wager at the opera, and what might have happened had his plans gone awry. He took a seat in one of the studded leather chairs facing his father’s desk. “How bad is it?”

  “We should have been able to weather this better but, sadly, this is not the first such loss we’ve taken.” His father fixed him with a steady look. “I need your help to ensure there are no further blows.”

  Tobias felt his whole body go still. Those were words he never thought he’d hear from his father. “What can I do?”

  “We must remain respectable.”

  “The murder.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Shouldn’t we concentrate on remaining alive? There was a killing under this roof.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She was a servant.”

  “Are you saying only the servants are at risk?”

  His father reddened with temper. “Absolutely. A disgusting affair. Use your head, Tobias. Why would anyone kill one of the family?”

  “Why indeed?” Tobias asked, letting a smidgen of sarcasm into his tone. There were footmen on every door now. His father was nowhere near as confident as he was trying to appear. “I do notice you’re not whisking your nearest and dearest to the safety of the country seat.”

  “And broadcast to all of Society that we have something to fear?” Lord Bancroft tapped the papers on his desk impatiently. “This unfortunate incident must never become common gossip. Keating will wield it like a sword.”