A Study in Silks

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 Hollander 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?”