It started when they were having afternoon tea on Mother’s Day in the family sitting room, and she was trying to work out how to weaponise her silk control. Her training had stalled, and even her mother seemed uncertain how to progress it. Nothing they had tried in the past few weeks had worked out well. Her new body was great; it was even better than before her birthday. She was faster and stronger and could keep going for longer, all wonderful things, but her control of silk was a gimmick at best, yet Stella felt like it could be a weapon.
Her mother and her bibi-daj were discussing Portugal’s newly announced Spanish travel advisory: do not go to Spain, you might get lynched was the subject on most people’s tongues since the newspapers had broke the story on Thursday. Her mother and her bibi-daj had discussed it six times at her last count, but they both had reasons to dislike Spain, so there was a certain grim satisfaction that the Holy Spanish Empire had fallen further, and the citizens were hanging every former Inquisition officer they could find.
If she lived in Spain, Stella was certain, she would have weaponised silk by now. It was practically a war zone over there. Her eyes drifted to the folded newspaper on the table. Parts of London were a quiet war zone, too.
“I have been considering the situation,” Stella announced into a break in the conversation.
“What situation?” her bibi-daj asked, frowning. She’d just dipped her Rich Tea biscuit into her tea, and now she held it up as she stared at Stella.
“The one we have found ourselves in at present,” Stella replied.
Her mother sipped her tea. “What are your conclusions, my varra?”
“What situation are we in?” her bibi-daj asked. Part of her soggy biscuit broke and dissolved into a goopy mess that landed on her lap. She ignored it.
“All my life, you have trained me for what was coming. Now, I have something we cannot train. These new abilities. Our training methods don’t work, and no one has magic like this.”
“It’s not magic,” her bibi-daj protested, tossing the remains of her biscuit on her plate. “Magic has entirely different rules.”
Stella ignored that comment. “I need a new way to train. I need opponents who will challenge me. We live in a city rife with crime. I have been reading about the city’s crime in the newspapers.”
“I noticed you have been perusing them more often,” her mother said.
“Four a day. My favourite is the London Eye, the writers are very good, and Hildy Johnson, in particular, is quite interesting. I have been reading about crime, as you taught me, mama. Know your enemy.”
“Criminals are not your enemy, tikni stardi,” her bibi-daj protested.
“Criminals are the enemies of all law-abiding people, bi-da. As I was saying, I should like to engage in combat against someone, and I have identified our enemy. It would help my training immensely, mama. I think it is the logical next step.”
“Nothing about any this is logical!”
Her mother set her teacup on the table. “It will be very dangerous.”
“I am aware. You cannot win a war by hiding.”
“Are you going to war, Stella?” her mother asked.
“I think… mayhap I am.” She considered this for a moment. “Yes, I am.”
Her mother smiled. “Good. A war is just what you need. We cannot cover that in your training, it’s hard to simulate a war. Now, let’s make proper plans. You will have to identify targets, and then you will have to observe them. This will be the hardest thing you have done yet. I am not sure you are ready for this.”
Her bibi-daj looked at her mother. She looked at Stella, and then she looked back at her mother. “What’s wrong with you two?”
That was how Stella began her war on the criminals of London, with her bibi-daj and her mother along in support. The first night had been disappointing. She’d found a man beating up a woman and he’d wet himself when her tentacles reached down from the roof she was on and brought him up before her. The second night she hadn’t found anything.
The third night…
The yard smelled of tar and creosote, the scent tickling her nose beneath the plain volto she wore. She was lying across a pile of timbers held aloft by a crane, about twenty feet over the wet, muddy ground. Beneath her, two men were having a clandestine meeting.
Well, a man and a boy, really, and the boy was throwing a tantrum. “No, no, no, you gotta give me somethin’ good if’n you wan’ me to give you the Sabinis. I got the goods, copper, the racetrack goods, but I got me something else, too. Respec’, that’s what they givin’ me. You cain’t just offer me a bob, bobby. I wants… I wants five quid.”
“Ronnie,” DI Donald said, dragging out the name, “Ronnie, come on lad, I respect the hustle but you’re neva getting a fiver. I’ll give you five shillings today, and another ten if this racetrack goods pans out, alright?”
“You don’ respec’ me,” Ronnie said. “You dunno what I can do. You know what they call me, now? The Terror of the Thames. That’s right, copper, I got me a name, respec’, money, more than your offerin’ anyway.”
Stella frowned above them. The kid, who was probably about her age, but he felt more like a kid to her, was proud of that ridiculous name? He was an idiot, but he was an idiot with information she needed. She wished he’d just drop it already, so she could go beat up some Sabini scoundrels.
“No one who respects you would call you the Terror of the Thames, Ronnie,” DI Donald said, and went up a notch in her estimation for bluntly calling the boy out for being a fool.
“Respec’ the red, copper,” Ronnie said.
“That doesn’t make any… Ronnie? Good God… Bloody hell, Ronnie!”
Stella frowned at the detective’s voice. It had gone up in pitch. He was shocked by whatever it was Ronnie was doing. She began to inch her way across the wood. Listening was no longer enough; she had to see what was happening.
The timbers creaked and swayed as she moved. She could hear cracking and popping from below, and unsteady, stumbling steps. Heavy breathing, squelching mud.
And then a bellowing roar, like a lion, that she both felt and heard. Her bones vibrated from the impact, and she gave up on stealth and rose on all fours, crawling to the edge. Below her, the detective was soaring through the air like a rag doll. He landed in a splatter of mud and rolled and came up to his feet unsteadily.
Ronnie Staunton moved into view beneath her. Nine feet tall, four feet wide across the shoulders, red-skinned, practically naked bar the scraps of the clothes he’d had on before he changed.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at him. That wasn’t natural, that wasn’t human, that was magic. He was just like her. She wasn’t the only one, there was someone else in the world with a weird power Farnika would insist wasn’t magic, and he was stamping on a detective’s legs.
Even from here, she heard the snap of bone, and the detective’s howl of pain was almost as loud as Ronnie’s roar.
Right, think about what it meant that they were the same age later, stop him from killing the nice detective now.
She dropped to the ground behind him as he kicked Donald, the blow half submerging the cop in mud.
“Oh my, you’re incredibly ugly up close, aren’t you?” she asked.
Ronnie froze at her voice, then slowly turned his whole body to face her. The muscles on his neck were too thick to let him easily turn his head. He roared at her, drool spraying from his mouth. She wasn’t sure if he could speak in this form.
“Well, let’s test your combat prowess, Red. Come at me when you’re ready.”
He didn’t move.
Not taking her eyes from him, she reached into a pocket and withdraw a metal marble. It was a large one, with a three-quarter inch diameter. She held her hand up, the steel ball held inside silk which spun with her power, until she released it and the ball slingshotted forward. It struck him dead centre in the forehead and fell to the ground.
He bellowed again.
She’d known David and Goliath was too simple a story to be true.
“Come at me, you ugly lobster,” she yelled.
He bellowed and charged forward, and her tentacles grabbed the crane and pulled her aside. His momentum carried him through where she had been, and he smashed through a pile of barrels before stopping. When he turned towards her now, dark, syrup-thick creosote was smeared across two thirds of his body.
“Alright, you oversized fire bucket, let’s do this.” She moved so that Donald wasn’t behind her, and laughed as Ronnie pawed at the creosote, smearing it across his chest, and then staring at a hand where it hung from his fingers like stalagmites of slime.
His eyes moved from his hand to her, as if he was blaming her for this indignity. He chuffed a breath, then charged towards her. She grinned behind her mask and charged towards him, then pivoted aside, sending a tentacle out to wrap around his legs multiple times even as she dodged.
Ronnie ripped through the silk as if it was wet newspaper.
He stopped a few paces further on and turned to face her once again.
“That’s right, post box. You missed me. Twice.”
He came towards her slowly this time, which would have been the smart move, if he could fight, or she couldn’t. If she wasn’t tactically aware, trained to always evaluate every situation, if she hadn’t been sparring daily since she could walk. If his slow careful progress didn’t put him under a bundle of heavy timbers, 20 feet long, 10 inches thick, and hanging twenty feet in the air above him.
“Hey, raspberry tart,” she smiled. “Squelch for me.” Her tentacles whipped around her, five of them grabbing the stack of wood, then yanked down so hard the crane’s cable snapped. Ronnie had just enough time to glance up before a tonne of oak beams smashed him into the muddy ground.
She moved over to the detective, grumbling as she walked. “Squelch for me? What kind of mooncalf says squelch for me?”
The detective was half sitting up when she reached him. His eyes kept closing, but every few seconds he would force them open. They didn’t seem to be registering much of what was happening.
“You have a concussion,” she told him. “A broken leg, too, and probably some broken ribs. By the sound of your breathing, your lungs aren’t doing too great, and you’re going to have two black eyes and a puffy mouth. Bet you wish you’d given that kid a fiver, huh?”
Behind her, she heard the sounds of shifting wood, as Ronnie pushed himself to his feet for round two. With a smile, she glanced around at all the things she could make him run into or drop on his head. It was going to be like bullfighting, which she’d always wanted to try.
It was the one form of training her mother had always said no to. Stella wasn’t sure, but she suspected it was because a bull had killed her father.
“Brick,” she said, as she turned towards him once more. “I dub thee Brick, because you have the colour, hardness, and intelligence of a brick.”
He bellowed. She screamed. They fought.
She walked away, then half-collapsed when she got around the corner and her mother and bibi-daj were there to ensure she didn’t fall. That had been the most difficult fight of her life.
“You, ah, you didn’t overhear the fight, did you?” she asked.
“Half of London heard those roars, tikni stardi.”
“Only the roaring, nothing else. Why?”
“Ah, no reason.” She was taking squelch for me to the grave. She might have to kill Donald and Brick to do so, though. No, Donald was delirious with pain and Brick was a brick, which was a relief because she didn’t actually want to kill anyone. She’d left Brick unconscious for the police to handle when they arrived to rescue Donald.
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