Free A Study in Silks by Emma Jane Holloway

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 remainingchorus 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 lackingcame 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.