Stella stopped at a chip shop in Highgate high street and came out a few minutes later with fried fish and chips wrapped in old newspapers. She ate it as she walked home, dropping the paper into the bin in her kitchen when she was finished. When she entered her bedroom, her clothes slipped themselves off. One of her battle outfits was cleaned and ready for her.
The first item was a simple length of silk. She wrapped it around her torso three times, pulling her chest tight. Fighting was difficult enough without one of her own breasts blackening her eye, and the makeshift sports bandeau would help avoid that by compressing everything nicely. She held it in place with her power and then pulled on a pair of boy shorts. After that came two silk straps. They crossed from shoulder to opposite hip, forming an x across her chest and back. When she used her power to pull them tight, she could release the power holding her bandeau. A silk sash around her waist threaded through loops in her cross bands and shorts, and then she stopped controlling the bands.
Stella could only control eight separate pieces of silk at once, so it was important her clothes were self-supporting. She didn’t want to end up naked in a fight.
The thought of losing a fight to preserve her modesty never occurred to her.
The next item was a silk halter-neck wrap top. When she pulled it on, the silk ties slid behind her neck and knotted around each other. The top left most of her back and sides exposed but supported her chest. She tied silk wraps around her thighs like garters and then slid on a pair of harem trousers. They were silk, too, loose for easy movement and with a low, tight waist and tight ankles, but the legs billowed around her.
Her black boots had low heels and when she slid her bare feet into them, the inner silk lining made them an extension of her power. She tied her laces and reached for her jacket.
The jacket was, in Stella’s opinion, the best part of the outfit. It had more than twenty layers of silk and included hardened squares of leather at key points within the lining. It split in the front and back below her waist and the sides would flare out as she moved. The hood was deep enough to cover her entire face and head when required. And the back had seven thick tentacles of silk formed into what looked like a rucksack. It had taken her mother eight days to design and Farnika six weeks to make, and the boiled leather panels could stop some arrows and sword cuts, whilst the layered silk could deflect a slashing knife. They’d tested it extensively and found it useless against gunfire.
It was supposed to be eight tentacles, but she’d had to sever one when Fireboy lit it up. She grabbed one of her spares, made of multiple, braided lengths of silk, twisted together and fused into a limb as thick as her wrist, and twenty feet long, and held it as the silk of the tentacle merged with the back of her jacket.
Her volto mask she slipped into a pocket. Her hair was shoved up and a cloche hat pulled on to keep it in place, then she wrapped a silk scarf around her face. Silk fingerless gloves completed the ensemble, and after a moment everything was black.
It was once more time for codename to be confirmed later to go forth and battle evil and investigate mysteries and do all that kind of stuff. Maybe she could even spend part of the night thinking up a good codename, since her mother wouldn’t give her one, and Farnika’s suggestion of Tee for Trouble was just bad. And unfair. It was practically slander!
“The försvarsdepartementet would not stand for slander,” she muttered, but she knew that was cheating. It wasn’t part of an actual conversation, so it wasn’t deserving of peaches. Sighing, the Silk Shadow left her bedroom.
No, that name was terrible.
The Shadow snuck downstairs.
How was it that this was a worse code name?
Trouble left by the back door.
Why was Farnika’s ridiculous idea the only one that sounded good?
The Serpent of Silk… no, she couldn’t even finish that thought. She needed the mysterious Voice to give her a naming Ability the next time she levelled.
Stella froze on the garden path as the thinking part of her brain caught up with the random thoughts it generated. The next time she levelled? What next time? Was she that used to the Voice that she was planning on the Abilities it might give her? And if she was, why an Ability to name things? Such an Ability would be useless when she could just hire someone to do the job. Hildy Johnson would probably give her a great name.
She needed to tell her mum about the Voice as soon as she saw her tomorrow.
That decided, she moved on to the large brick building at the side of the house. She wheeled her bicycle out of the former stable, locking it back up behind her, and then walked the bike out of the garden. In the street beyond, she pulled her goggles from the handlebars and slid them over her head, adjusting them until they sat properly over her eyes, and then she mounted it and started to cycle.
She had a Ladies All-Black Golden Sunbeam for when she was being Stella, with no cross guard so she could ride in skirts, but tonight she wasn’t Stella, she was The Silk Enigma… no, that was stupid, too. Tonight, she was on her 1919 Rover Roadster, a black painted men’s bicycle with red wheels. The wheels were 28 inches and had 42 spokes, the frame was 26 inches, and the bike had three gears. It was heavy, heavier still than the standard Rover Roadster because hers had a petrol-powered engine mounted on the chassis. The engine powered nothing, it wasn’t even connected to anything, but her heroic form got her to speeds that the engine could explain.
It was close to eight in the evening when she reached Highgate High Street, and the route she was planning would take her around forty minutes. If she really pushed, she thought she could do it in fifteen, but there wasn’t any reason to go so quickly yet. She would enjoy the feeling of the wind on the tip of her nose which, between hat, hood, goggles and scarf, was the only part of her face that was exposed.
Highgate High Street became Highgate Hill, and her speed picked up as she shot down the steep incline. She pulled a sharp turn into Hornsey Lane. then turned again into Hornsey Rise, went wide to avoid a slow-moving omnibus, and continued straight onto Hornsey Road. When she passed a motorcar she realised the others weren’t slow moving, she’d sped up more than she had thought.
Hornsey Road was very long and mostly straight, and her entire body was built for speed and endurance. She started pushing harder, the pedals spinning beneath her. The pedals and chain had been upgraded too, the standard ones had a tendency to break when she started exerting herself. The original crank arms had been hollow but the new ones were forged from solid pieces of metal. The pedal axles were reinforced, and a custom bottom bracket had been devised with over-sized bearings. The wide chain guard hid two parallel chains with motorcycle-grade links. All of it was over-designed so she could reach high speeds without damaging the bike, and all of it was carefully designed so that it looked normal or explainable to an observer.
When she started hitting the speeds that only she, and possibly some of the teens in the crypt, could manage, the secondary purpose of the fake engine kicked in. The primary purpose was to explain the ease with which she passed motorcars, but the secondary purpose was as a counterweight. It was low, slightly forward, and heavy, and it reduced wobbles from the front wheel and twitches from the back one and ensured there was no high speed shimmy.
Stella jerked her bike around a woman crossing the road and heard a man yell at her, but he was already so far behind she couldn’t hear the words.
She was approaching the tunnel, and there was a train coming. She put her head down and increased her speed. The train would go above her, she would be under it, but she wanted to know if she could beat it. The handlebars were slightly lower than on a normal Rover, which increased her aerodynamics. They were also hollow, the insides filled with silk that poked out of tiny holes in the handlebars like bristles. Her fingertips rested on that silk, and the silk wound from there through every part of the bikes frame, giving her a level of control over it that most cyclists could only dream of.
The train… was a train. Huge, heavy, fast. The ground trembled as it approached, shrieking its whistled warning for all to hear. She gritted her teeth and pedalled faster. The bike frame hummed in resonance with the rails. The silk inside it dampened the vibration instantly.
The train passed over the road in front of her a few seconds before she shot through the tunnel. She’d lost, but that had been fun and the fastest she’d ever gone. She had to be doubling motorcycle speeds now, and the tip of her nose was freezing. At least the smell of the waste transfer station after the tunnel was gone in a second, a bonus to moving so fast.
She startled a policeman, and he dropped the fried dough balls he was enjoying and yelled, shaking his fist in the air. She raised one hand in a lazy salute, and the roadster wobbled. She slammed her hand back onto the handlebar, and steadied the bike, then began easing off on the speed. The shopfronts on the ground floors of the Victorian brick terraces that lined this street might be closed, but the narrow residential road was still busy. By the end of Benwell Road, as she turned into Drayton Park, she was only as fast as a motorcar. If she’d had her bike with her the night of the warehouse fire, Doctor Jekyll would never have escaped. He still wouldn’t escape. The pursuit would just take slightly longer. Days instead of minutes.
She bounced across Holloway Road, over the tram lines, and into Palmer Place so fast the horse that witnessed her gave a startled jump and dumped the contents of its bowels in fright. She was already turning into Liverpool Road.
It was even busier than Benwell Road. The shops had their shutters down, but the pubs were open, and the scent of alcohol and coal hung over the street. She whizzed passed a drunk man peeing against a wall so fast he spun to see her and sprayed the path, and it devolved into an argument behind her. She was far away and forgotten by the time the first punch was thrown.
Children were playing hopscotch in the shadow of the high walls that hid what had once been St Mary’s Workhouse. Their chalk images brightened the grim brickwork, flowers and lopsided people and what was either a dog, a sheep, or a three-legged cloud.
Delivery boys darted in front of her, their packages and messages more important than their safety, but her reactions were honed and her silk-infused bike instantly responsive to the lightest touch she made.
Liverpool Road led into Islington High Street, passed Angel Underground, and the Lyons Angel Corner House. This part of the journey had her slowing considerably, with the constant streams of subway users and the crowd outside the restaurant. The six storey building’s electric lights shone through its plate glass windows, falling over customers, delivery men, cart horses, messenger boys, and at least two pickpockets she spotted working the crowd. She dinged her little bicycle bell and yelled for them to make way, but her voice was lost in the constant susurration of street sounds.
She weaved around a girl in a thread worn shawl selling flowers, and past a line of cabmen waiting for fares. A newspaper boy with an evening edition almost tempted her, but she moved on, pushing through the crowd into St John Street, which was almost as busy. The small workshops along this road were still open, and delivery carts hogged the street. People thronged the roads, not all of them walking. Some just stood in the middle of the street chatting. Messenger boys ran between everyone, prostitutes tried to entice men into alleyways, and hawkers with hand barrows selling hot pies and sausages, winkles and shellfish, or eels had claimed different parts of the road.
St John Street was long, and beyond the initial food and drink area, she could smell blood from the butchers, ink from the printers, and fresh shit on the road. The workshops, butchers, and pubs sat between residential houses in Georgian buildings at least a century old, and the street never quieted. The lamp men were out lighting the gas lights, their long, hooked poles and flames held aloft.
She almost ended face-first in a horse’s butt when it stopped abruptly in front of her, but she swerved and swerved again to avoid a woman wearing a shoulder-strapped tray filled with oysters, who yelled at her in what sounded like Polish.
Then a slow, tight left into Charterhouse Street, a quick right into Aldersgate and she was passing the Barbican Underground. Another sharp left onto Gresham, and she moved from the bumpy, noisy granite blocks to smooth tar-macadam. The crowds died suddenly; Gresham Street was filled with banks and livery halls and businesses that didn’t open late, and no one lingered here after six. She instantly sped up on the smooth surface and quiet street and was going faster than a car when she hit the creosote-soaked wood-block paving of the City of London. The wheels struggled to grip the smooth street, and if there had been any rain lately, she would have toppled for certain. Instead, she skidded for about twenty yards before regaining control.
Then she was onto London Bridge, her bike wobbling a little, a slight tremor in her arms. She slowed uncertainly, a queasy feeling in her stomach. Halfway across the bridge, she pulled to the side, dismounted, staggered to the railing, yanked her scarf down and threw up into the river. She blinked sweat out of her eyes, her stomach roiling. Whatever this was, it had come on suddenly.
She wiped at her mouth, then grabbed the bike with one hand. Her fingertips connected with the silk bristles, but her power felt hazy, undefined. What was happening to her? Had that fish been off?
Her head hurt and it was difficult to concentrate, and her bike was heavy. She supported it with both hands and started walking across the bridge. A few people were staring at her.
She ignored them and kept walking.
By the end of the bridge, she felt better and mounted her bike again. Whatever that was, it had come on fast and left as quick. She’d probably been overdoing it with racing the train and her speed on the last stretch. It had taken her just over half an hour to get this far, and at least two thirds of that had been the stretch between Liverpool Road and St John Street.
She took her time now, in case whatever that illness had been came back. A slow easy right turn took her into Montague Close, her bike vibrating over the close’ stones. The high walls of Southwark Cathedral pressed in on her left, with the slightly lower walls of dockside warehouses to her right.
Montague Close curved left, and then she took a right onto Winchester Walk. The Borough Market on her left was closed, but the market’s evidence was everywhere along this narrow street. She wove between barrels, handcarts, and crates under flickering gaslights, then moved under the railway viaduct.
Rats scampered out of her way as she cycled alongside huge brick archways. She splashed through puddles left from melting ice that had packed fish as trains rumbled overhead. Shadowy figures moved inside the arches, which were filled with factories, strange workshops, and lodging spaces for transient workers. In one, several drunks were passed out around an illegal still, in another, money passed between dirty hands as a small crowd watched two men box, shirtless and bloodied. In a third, a man had pinned a woman against a wall. Her skirt was hiked up to her waist, her legs wrapped around him as he thrust her into the hard bricks. Stella turned her attention away, feeling disquieted. Or perhaps it was her queasy stomach returning. That fish definitely must have been off.
She passed out from under the viaduct on Park Street. It was dark, and eerily quiet. The timber yards and old warehouses cast strange shadows, and the sun might not have set yet, but it was low enough that the only lights here were from flickering gas lamps. Stella stopped for a moment and checked the bike’s front light. She flipped open the side panel and squinted at the carbide chamber. There was some leftover grey sludge from the last time she had been out, but there were also a few semi-solid pebbles of calcium carbide that had only half-melted, still left in that sludge. She turned the small tap and heard the distinctive hiss of escaping gas and waited as the scent of garlic built. Then she produced a her new trench lighter from a pocket, lit it, and held it to the burner nozzle.
The lamp popped as the acetylene caught fire, the bright white flame casting a narrow beam through the lens. She closed the side door. The headlight didn’t illuminate much at all, only a narrow strip a few feet ahead of her.
A train rumbled across the viaduct behind her as she pushed off again.
Stella stopped a little further on, turning off the lamp. She dismounted and opened the fake engine, then pulled a heavy chain and padlock from the hollow space inside. She used that to secure the bicycle to the iron fence it rested beside and placed her hat and goggles into the fake engine, then walked into Bear Gardens.
Previous Chapter: Chapter Eleven
Next Chapter: Chapter Thirteen
Author’s Note
Context post on the queerguide today about London.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.