by Paul Crilley
Of course, nowadays the Tesla Towers helped with all that, but the old-fashioned æther constructs were still the more popular (and affordable) models. Especially as the Crown liked to keep a tight grip on the secrets of Tesla power.
Unfortunately for Octavia, the light from Manners's æther cage only served to illuminate her own failings. Her stitches were large and unevenly spread. Not very nice. Not very nice at all.
Oh, well. At least the thread matched the material, so nobody was likely to notice.
Her father opened the door and peered into the room.
“Oh, hello, Octavia. Not at the paper today?”
Octavia repressed a sigh. It was already past eight in the evening. She had been home from her job at The Times for two hours already. Well, she called it a job, but she wasn't paid anything. It was more of a volunteer research position that she was allowed to keep because her mother used to work there as a journalist, something Octavia hoped to one day emulate. She forced a smile onto her face. “Finished up for the day, Father. I just wanted to practice my stitching.”
“Why don't you just use the Babbage?”
Octavia looked at the wall opposite where a huge, intricately decorated machine made from mahogany and brass stood. It looked more like a church organ than what it was meant to be—a machine that would do your sewing for you. Octavia had tried to use it once, but it had taken her longer to program the stupid thing with the punchcards than it would to actually sew the material by hand.
But she didn't say that to her father. Ever since her mother's disappearance, her father had been getting more and more absentminded. More and more distant. She didn't want to do anything that would push him farther away.
Instead she smiled and said, “I wanted to do it myself. I'm afraid I need the practice.”
Her father smiled. “Good girl. Your mother would have approved.”
No she wouldn't, thought Octavia bitterly, glaring at the door as her father retreated from the room. Her mother would have thought Octavia was wasting her time.
It had been a year since her mother's disappearance. A year of watching her father grow more and more withdrawn, retreating into his work until it was all that kept him going.
He thought her mother was dead, but Octavia didn't believe it. Her mother had been researching a story, looking into rumors that Professor Moriarty had returned from the dead to claim his rightful place as the king of London's underworld. Octavia used to go into work with her mother, something she actively encouraged. Octavia would help with the filing, help with the research, make tea—anything, really, as long as she got to watch how the newspaper worked.
Then one day Octavia's mother was taken. Octavia had witnessed it, seen the strangely dressed gang who swept out of the sky in an unmarked zeppelin, whisking her kicking and screaming mother away into the night.
Ever since, she had done everything she could to try to track her mother down, following rumors, leads, anything to do with Moriarty. Trying to find out what he was after, why he had returned after he and Sherlock Holmes supposedly perished at Reichenbach Falls.
But the answers had remained elusively out of reach. She was no closer to tracking down Moriarty or her mother.
Octavia broke the end of the thread with a vicious tug. She looked around for her needle but couldn't find it anywhere. She was always doing that. She would find it later. Probably when she sat on it.
Octavia climbed the thickly-carpeted stairs to her bedroom. As she opened the door, a small metallic dog bounded across the carpet and banged painfully into her ankle. Octavia winced, leaning down to rub the sore spot.
What had her father been thinking? Her pet dog Phileas had died and he'd actually gone out and paid someone to put the poor thing's spirit into this…this…shell. Octavia honestly didn't know what to do about it. The construct seemed to recognize her and act similarly to Phileas, but she didn't know if that was just the programming of the automaton or the essence of the dog coming through.
Octavia hesitated, then reached down and tentatively patted the thing's brass head. “Good…dog,” she said. This seemed to please the construct. It trotted over to its basket and lay down as if going to sleep.
Octavia's room was a fairly typical example of its kind: a large bed; a roll-top desk that she kept locked, with a few modifications of her own to make sure no one came snooping; and a dressing table.
However, she did have something that was not typical for a girl her age: shelves of books by the likes of Verne, Wells, Flammarion, and Lord Dunsany. Her father had once disapproved of her collection, but she had refused to back down on it, and her mother screamed at him when she found out he wanted to stop Octavia reading them. Octavia remembered feeling sorry for him at the time. You didn't want mother angry at you. She could make your life a living hell.
Octavia was about to ready herself for bed and a re-reading of The King of Efland's Daughter when she heard a tapping at the window.
Octavia's heart skipped a beat. She hurried over to the window and slid it open. It made no noise. Octavia made sure the wood was kept well-greased.
A tiny construct barely larger than her hand hopped onto the sill. It looked more like a skeleton than anything else, a brass framework topped with a featureless oval head.
It was one of four messengers Octavia used. The first one hid inside an abandoned building in Holywell Street. It was known to a select few that to contact her a message was to be dropped through the letterbox of that building. This first construct would take the message to the second, the second would take it to the third, and the third would scurry across the rooftops to hand the message to the fourth. Only the fourth knew how to get to the home of “Songbird,” the name Octavia had chosen for herself.
Octavia took the small piece of paper from inside the tiny automaton's rib cage and unfolded it. Her heart beat even more rapidly in her chest. It was from Jennings: a request for a meeting. He had information on Moriarty.
Octavia unlocked her desk. She rolled the lid up and quickly scribbled an address on the back of the paper, slipping it back into the construct's rib cage. Once she was finished, the messenger scrambled up the wall and onto the roof, disappearing into the night.
Octavia went to her bed and unfolded the black material she had been sewing. It looked like she would get to put it to use sooner than she'd thought.
It wasn't easy for an unaccompanied young lady to move about London in the middle of the night. Questions would be asked, even nowadays with all the progress being made for equal rights by the followers of the Lovelace Movement.
But an unidentifiable person dressed in old, dirty street clothes, on the other hand, could find it very easy to move about. As long as they didn't want to use any of the up market modes of transport. But that didn't matter. An omnibus was an omnibus, whether it had leather chairs, served drinks, and supplied copies of today's newspaper, or whether it was standing room only and stank of the tannery workers who used it last.
Octavia arrived at London Bridge about three hours after the tiny construct had crawled through her window. She leaned on the concrete balustrade, watching the black waters of the Thames rushing between the arches of the bridge. There weren't many people around at this time of night. Certainly nobody of good repute. Ever since they'd built the new, upper level of the bridge, and above that, the wire tracks that moved carriages back and forth across the river, the original level had become the haunt of vagabonds and villains. Up above were lights and patrols, even shops and pubs, mimicking the old bridge of the seventeenth century. But down here there was just darkness, litter, and the homeless trying to shelter from the cold and rain.
Jennings was late. This troubled Octavia. The note said eleven o'clock, and it was already twenty after. He'd never been late before.
Her mother always told Octavia to rely on her gut feelings. She said it was the one thing that would never let you down. And right now, Octavia's gut was telling her to go home.
She drummed he
r fingers on the balustrade in irritation. She'd been hoping for some new information. Something she could use to track down her mother. Jennings usually had good intelligence.
Octavia thrust her hands into her pockets and turned around.
“Evenin’,” said the figure standing before her.
Octavia froze. She narrowed her eyes and studied the man. It certainly wasn't Jennings. Jennings was five foot five with one leg shorter than the other, while the person standing before her now was well over six and a half feet tall.
Octavia carefully moved her hand inside her pocket, curling her fingers around the grip of the Tesla gun hidden deep inside. She usually carried two of the small devices, but the other was still attached to the wall socket in her room, drawing its charge from the Tesla Towers.
“Evening,” she said, disguising her already deep voice.
“My name's Colin,” said the figure.
“Jolly good for you,” said Octavia brightly. “Not that I asked.”
“What's your name?”
“Robert,” said Octavia promptly. “Robert Blackwood.”
“Robert Blackwood?” said Colin. “That's puzzlin’.”
“Why, pray tell, is it puzzling?”
“Because I was under the impression that your name was Songbird. At least that's what Jennings told me before I threw his body into the Thames.”
Octavia moved her thumb and flicked a small catch on the gun. She could just hear the tell-tale whine building up.
“Songbird? No I'm afraid you're mistaken. As I said, I'm Robert. Now if you'll excuse me—” Octavia took a step to the right, but it was mirrored by Colin the unfriendly giant.
“No need to rush off,” he said. “I just want a word, that's all. Just a little word in your ear—” he smiled—“before I rip it off.”
“What do you want?”
“You. See, word's got around that someone's been askin’ questions about a certain person, and this certain person don't like it. He's put the word out to his chums on the street—” here Colin smiled and spread his arms wide—“and I'm one of them—to find out who it is that's so curious about him.”
“And then what?”
“Well, as I understand it, they want to have a little chat with him.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. ‘Ah.’”
“And you are speaking to me…why, exactly?”
“I'm speaking to you because Jennings was kind enough to tell me he was supplying information to a certain person called Songbird, and that he was supposed to meet Songbird here. I say ‘kind enough to tell me,’ but it was all I could do to make out his words. You know, in between all the screaming and crying.”
“I see. You know, it's funny you should mention screaming and crying,” said Octavia.
“Oh? And why's that?”
Octavia whipped out the Tesla gun and Colin lunged toward her. Octavia pulled the trigger, sending a blue-white bolt of lightning straight into his chest. He screamed, then dropped straight to the ground as his muscles stopped working. Octavia waited while the high-pitched whine built up again, then she fired another bolt into Colin's twitching body.
Octavia walked over and prodded him with her shoe. He didn't move. She bent over and felt for a pulse. Still alive.
“That's why, Colin,” she said in her normal voice. “That's why.”
Tweed stumbled along Whitechapel Street, his mind racing over the events of the past few hours.
His father was gone. It hadn't really sunk in yet. It was too vast for his thoughts to encompass. He kept expecting to see Barnaby striding along beside him, greeting an oyster seller, or laughing about some aspect of the job.
Except he wasn't.
Because Professor Moriarty had taken him.
Why? That was the question. What did he want with Barnaby?
Or maybe that wasn't the question at all. Maybe it was rather, “What had Barnaby done?” It was entirely possible Barnaby had gotten himself involved in something he shouldn't have. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
Tweed arrived at the rundown building in which they lived and shoved open the door. He stepped into the dark hallway and let the door close behind him.
The house was silent. He looked down at the pile of coats lying on the warped floorboards. Barnaby had left them there after trying them all on as he searched for the perfect accompaniment to his outfit. Tweed had told him to pick them up, but Barnaby had waved his hand negligently and said he'd pick them up when they got back.
Tweed prodded the pile with his foot. He stared blindly at them for a while then trudged through to the living area, a vast space that took up the whole ground floor of their dilapidated house. The walls that once sectioned off the various rooms had been removed by Barnaby on one of his decorating stints. A single set of stairs was all that remained of the original floor plan, climbing up to the bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor.
Tweed turned up the gas lamps to fend off the gathering dusk, illuminating the chaos and disorder all around him. Scratched and battered desks had been shoved up against every available wall, all of them covered with a bizarre collection of oddities: automaton parts; gears; cogs; glass valves; old, mildewed books; and costume jewelry. Glass jars contained strange animals in formaldehyde: a two-headed snake; ten rats whose tails had wrapped around each other, tying them together into a massive knot; and a tiny brass skeleton that Barnaby had thought amusing to build.
One desk was the home of four ventriloquist's dummies. Tweed had been absolutely terrified of them as a child, convinced that their glass eyes followed him around as he walked. It got to the point where he'd refused to enter the room unless they were covered up. He found out a few years later that his fears had in fact been entirely justified, thanks to a simple mechanism operated by his father, who thought the whole thing was a hilarious joke.
In the far corner was the empty brass shell of an automaton. Barnaby had built it a year ago, spending months on the project, getting every detail exactly right. Tweed thought it was going to be a prop in some sort of elaborate con, but was disappointed to find out Barnaby simply wanted it for a costume party.
Tweed dropped onto the threadbare couch. His gaze drifted around the empty room. It really was empty. The house was draped with a deep silence, as if it knew something was missing, the absence of Barnaby leaving behind a faint echo of wrongness.
If everything had gone according to plan, he and Barnaby would be enjoying a nice supper right about now. They always bought good food after a job. They'd been talking about going to a restaurant.
And now?
Now his father had been kidnapped.
Tweed felt the beginning of anger stir in the pit of his stomach, fighting sluggishly against the shock of what had happened. Just who did Moriarty think he was? What gave him the right to just go around kidnapping people?
Fine, yes. Maybe Barnaby wasn't the best father in world, but nobody was perfect. And he was Tweed's father. That was the point. And Tweed would be damned if he was going to let some masked freaks whisk him away in the middle of the night without some kind of reckoning.
Tweed knew he and Barnaby had an odd relationship. More…friends than father and son. Teacher and student instead of close family. And that suited Tweed. He was happy with that. He'd read books where fathers showered their children with praise and love, and all the time he'd read he thought, Really? People actually say that kind of thing? He couldn't imagine Barnaby saying he loved him, or even giving him a hug. A clap on the back, yes, if he'd retained some important piece of knowledge, but that was about it.
Barnaby had always said it was his duty to raise Tweed to be the best man he could be, to make sure he could stand on his own two feet and rely on nobody but himself.
Now it seemed Tweed had a chance to put that to the test.
Another thing Barnaby said was that one of the most important things in any situation was to step back and take emotion out of the equation. Emotion clouded j
udgment, he said. Calculate. Analyze. Theorize. Never act without thinking.
Barnaby had taught him that lesson in this very room. It was one of Tweed's earliest memories. Barnaby, teaching him to use logic in all things. To analyze any emotions he felt and ignore them. To discard sentimentality and embrace rationality.
Tweed had been five years old at the time.
Tweed stood up and started to pace. First things first. List objectives.
One…get Barnaby back.
Oh, well done, Tweed, he thought contemptuously. A truly brilliant analysis of the situation.
How? That was the question.
Two…find out why Moriarty wanted Barnaby.
Better. If he could find that out it would go a long way to answering a lot of questions. In fact—
Three…was it really Moriarty? Maybe someone was making themselves up to look like the enigmatic professor.
Hmm. Annoying. That complicated things. Tweed pondered the possibility, but could go nowhere with the thought. He didn't have enough information. Point two would answer number three. So…discard that one for the moment.
Another possibility occurred to Tweed, freezing him in mid-stride.
What if they had already killed Barnaby?
He held his breath for a second, then let it out. No. Not possible. They took him alive. They killed everyone else, but took Barnaby. That meant they wanted him for something.