A Study in Silks

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, showering 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