Level Four. Ability: octaweave mind ascension. Ability: silkfield awareness.
Stella opened her eyes on the floor of the church and froze, the memory of that impossible Voice booming in her mind, the words whispered straight into her soul. She was lying on her side, the floor hard beneath her, smelling of stone and dirt. The others around her smelled of sweat, and there was blood on her silk and in the air, and something meaty from the kitchen. Ham, maybe. It smelled like ham.
Her sense of scent did not seem to have increased with the level, and when she checked her pulse it was still 23 beats per minute. She released the breath she had drawn in and focused on the unforgettable words. Level four. Aside from her birthday, she had so far levelled every time she had fought. Was the Voice telling her to fight? Well then, it probably wasn’t the Voice of God. Probably. How bloodthirsty was God?
No, that wasn’t what was important. For the first time, one of her existing abilities had repeated. Ascended. So it was higher? More powerful? And the other one was even more incomprehensible than the one that made her shiny to priests. What even was a silkfield and how could she be aware of something when she didn’t know what it was?
Maria was nearby, chatting quietly to Isabel. They were talking about the future, since today they would be leaving the church. They were worried. Maria was concerned about her brother and Isabel was worried about the journey. In the kitchen, Stella’s mother was cooking with Kusi Sisa, and telling her about the others that had gone ahead, and her plan for the compound.
Stella was listening to both conversations simultaneously, and following along with every word, as well as having another stream of consciousness analysing the fact that she could do that. Was this the upgrade to her octaweave mind? How many thought processes could she have? She split off another one to do random multiplications, just to see what would happen, and it worked. Listening and understanding every word in two different conversations and two different languages, doing multiplications, and analysing the fact that she had four separate thought processes going at the same time. She spun off another to find a word starting with every letter of the alphabet and a spike of pain shot through her temple hard enough to make her cry out, and dropped every thought process down to one that just kept repeating over and over that that had really hurt.
So, four then.
Maria came over, but not even her powers could shift the headache, and it was still there an hour later when Uncle Toma and his family arrived. It was only beginning to fade as Stella and Violet waved her mum, the two women she had rescued, the eight Spanish teenagers, and Toma and his wife’s family off. They stood in the street long after the others had gone.
“What do we do now?” Violet asked.
“Go home, I suppose.” Stella froze at the look on Violet’s face. “Wait, you didn’t actually think I lived in a church, did you? You did!”
“It seemed a reasonable assumption,” Violet whispered.
“There’s nothing reasonable about it.”
Stella led Violet north to commercial road, and bought a newspaper from the little boy, Jack, as they waited on the tram. The main headline was Hatton Gardens in Gang War, and went on about the barricades being erected, the guns in the street. It mentioned the presence of both police forces, and that twelve of the Sabini gangsters had been arrested and one was in hospital.
That was good. He hadn’t died.
The second major front page news story was the execution of Felipa Borayo in Burgos. He had been Pope Innocent XIV’s right-hand man, and the General of the Holy Spanish Empire’s Inquisition for seven years. They found him hiding in an attic, and a mob dragged him through the streets before hanging him.
There was a small note that the Eye’s photographer, Mr Charles Foxx, had been murdered whilst documenting the violence in Spain. His images had been spellbinding; the front page one from near the end of the war with a small Spanish boy holding a rock, ready to throw it at the pope in Madrid, had won twenty awards or something. It was probably the most famous image in the world.
The seemingly inevitable upcoming end of the Persian Alliance had brought panic to the Tehran markets. Merchants were stockpiling gold and grain, fearing shortages in the upcoming months. It had resulted in wild swings in value, stalled deals, and a sudden freeze in confidence, apparently.
She didn’t really understand global financial markets, but she didn’t think it was something she needed to worry about. It wasn’t like she could do anything to affect the value of gold, or whatever the article was saying. She did think inevitably was a great word, though, and she resolved to find a way to use it today as she took a seat on the tram. Violet sat beside her.
The newspaper also mentioned that, due to instability within the Persian Alliance, the Royal Navy had established a presence at Hormuz, with the ships HMS Sapphire, Foxhound, and Adelaide. Adelaide made her think of Molly. How had her mother known she was a spy? What was it that gave her away?
She couldn’t think of any one thing, so it had to be a combination. Molly had seemed quieter than the others, but Stella had thought she was in shock or traumatised. Perhaps she was just calmer? How could a spy be calm though?
Her mother surely couldn’t have that much experience identifying spies?
They took two more trams then walked the last little stretch to Bishopwoods Road. Violet stopped on the street outside the building. “This is where you live?” she asked, staring at Stella’s home.
“Yes,” Stella replied, looking at the building. It seemed taller than it should be given how narrow it was. Brick, three levels. A double door that stuck out from the front wall, under a slight slanting roof of red tile that covered just the door. To the right of the door, a large window opened up the morning room, and let the dawn sunlight in. To the left of the door, as she looked at it, a smaller window. Above that, on the first floor, a window topped with an arch, and above that, on the second floor, was the circular window that always made her feel like she was on a ship.
To the building’s left was the stable block, though they didn’t have horses. Stella and Farnika had both argued in favour of making it a garage and getting a car, until her mother pointed out none of them could drive, and then Stella had argued for a horse.
There was grass in front of the house, dotted with daisies, and a fountain that had a unicorn with the water spraying from its horn, and bushes that had once been cut into shapes but were starting to grow away from that.
“Come on,” Stella said, leading Violet along the driveway towards the stable, then down the path to the front door. The double doors had been painted white and stood at the top of six stairs, with a window above them to let light into the reception. Stella went up and unlocked them, then turned to stare at Violet, who was standing on the path as if she had forgotten how to ascend stairways. “Well, come on.”
“Yes, milady,” Violet said as she came out of her daze.
The front doors opened into a wide, white reception hall. The floor was of pale marble, the staircase opposite the door wide enough it could have accommodated seven Stellas side by side. The ceiling was double height; the first floor was a balcony to the left and right. A chandelier hung over the centre of the room, electric lightbulbs surrounded by dangling crystal.
“This is the coat stand,” Stella said, “and this is where shoes go. Inside shoes only for inside the house, outside shoes for outside.”
“You have different shoes for inside and outside the house, ma’am?” She slipped her shoes off and stood there in bare feet.
“Of course. Oh, this is for hats, and this is for umbrellas. Toilet,” she indicated the first door on the left. “Bathroom is upstairs. Morning sitting room,” that was the first door on the right, “Kitchen, dining room,” the second and third doors on the left. “Formal Drawing Room, Evening Room,” the second and third doors on the right. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour. This is the morning room. It gets the best sunlight in the morning. We get newspapers delivered and I read them in here.”
The morning room was bright. The walls were a pastel yellow above the rail, a bright blue wallpaper below it. The paper was decorated with common garden birds and the whole room was awash with early sunlight. The furniture looked expensively soft; chaise lounges and comfortable armchairs, one by a table, with electric lamps and pale rugs on the dark hardwood floors.
From the morning room, they moved through a connecting door into the formal drawing room. “None of us like this room,” Stella said. “My mum only bought the house last year, and it was already mostly furnished. Apparently, this room is where we bring guests to show off or something, but we never really have guests. We keep the fireplace filled with wood but don’t light it, and we all just kinda avoid this room, unless it’s a shortcut. What kind of drawing room doesn’t have a desk to draw on? Honestly. And none of the chairs are remotely comfortable, probably so guests don’t linger.”
The formal drawing room led into the evening room. It was more comfortable, smaller. The furniture was softer, the wood in the fireplace sitting on a layer of ash. Rugs were placed haphazardly, several of the chairs had blankets on them, and there were bookshelves along one wall. “We often sit in here and read or knit in the evenings.”
“You knit, Lady Stella?”
“Of course. Mama makes me make my own blankets.” She’d been making her own blankets since she was seven but her favourite was her faded brown one, the last her mother had made her.
The walls of the evening room were blue above the rail with a paler blue wallpaper below it. This wallpaper had bright orange and red goldfish on it.
They moved back into the reception hall, then into a room behind the staircase. “This is the laundry room. Worse than even the formal drawing room. I hate doing laundry, it takes so long, and everything I have is silk and that’s hard to wash. Sometimes I just bin it and buy more silk, but don’t tell my mama that, she’ll say it’s lazy. It is lazy, but bloodstains are so hard to remove from silk.”
After the laundry room, it was the dining room, with a massive table that could easily seat fourteen people. “This is my seat,” Stella proudly pointed to one in the back left corner of the room. “Best view of both doors, see, and the window. No surprises.” There was the door they had come through, that led back out into the reception, and a door that led into the kitchen.
“What of those doors, milady?” Violet asked, pointing at the French doors that were almost behind Stella’s seat.
“You understand,” Stella said, delighted. “It took me a while to find the best option but, look.” In the corner opposite Stella’s seat, mounted between two walls and the ceiling, was a mirror angled so that anyone in the chair had a clear view of the French doors and the garden beyond.
The kitchen was next. The external wall was dominated by a brick-lined alcove that looked like it should hold a fire, and instead held a broad Esse Range double oven in polished dark metal. On the counter beside it sat a metal slab etched with runes. “Hotplate,” Stella said. “We use that for tea, it makes it taste better than the stove somehow, and it’s definitely better than aether kettle tea. I think the water boils at a lower temperature or something, but I don’t really know how it works.” As far from the cooker as possible, the distant corner held a free-standing metal cupboard, covered in runes and glowing with a pale blue light that washed out across the kitchen. “Oh! Have you seen one of these before? They call it a Runic Refrigerator, or a frune. Fridge rune, right? They are always advertised in the paper. Anyway, kitchen is basically a kitchen, I imagine they’re all the same really.” She waved her hands vaguely in the direction of cabinets and polished granite counter tops, and a sink with hot and cold taps beneath a window.
“Wha…” Violet began, then stopped speaking almost immediately.
“It’s alright, you’re safe, you can talk or say or ask anything you need to. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
The promise seemed to make things worse, but Violet’s eyes were locked on the runic refrigerator as if she had seen a ghost.
“You want to know about this? Alright,” Stella opened the door and it was as if the room had been bathed in an arctic aura. “It keeps food cold so it will last longer. Good for milk and meat, just like the ad says.” She closed the refrigerator and pointed at another door. “Pantry. Oh, we could have two tins of peaches. Or,” a delighted grin at the sheer decadence of the idea spread across her face, “three tins.”
“Three tins?”
“I know, three tins in a month is a lot, but if we don’t tell Mama I’m sure it will be fine.”
Between the toilet at the front of the house and the kitchen were the back stairs and the pantry. Stella led the way up the back stairs, chattering about tins of peaches, and how she still had one left from her birthday, and how strange it was to call stairs at the front side of the house back stairs. The main stairs were further back than these. On the first floor, she pointed to a door that led to Selene’s suite, which had a dressing room and a master bedroom. She’d turned her private sitting room into a family library. Farnika’s room was next, then Stella’s. There was a fourth room, absolutely filled with silk. They had eight large barrels of the expensive material, as well as tables and workstations, sewing machines and papermache shop display mannequins wearing various iterations of her costume. One had six knives sticking out of its chest, and there was an entire box of her masks.
“This is the Silk Room,” Stella explained.
The next room was completely empty, except for the very thick carpet on the floor. “This is where we practice fighting. I’m sorry, Violet, I think we’ll need to give you a bedroom upstairs.”
“That would be absolutely perfect, ma’am.”
Before they headed to the next floor, Stella pointed out the bathroom. The huge claw foot tub looked like it belonged in a palace. On the next floor, there were four bedrooms, three furnished but unused, and the fourth was a box room they used for storage. “I’m not sure if it’s a box room because it’s box-shaped or because it’s filled with boxes,” Stella admitted. “And that’s a small bathroom. Take any bedroom you like, no one else lives here, but stay away from that room,” she said and pointed to the door closest to the stairs.
“Thank you, ma’am. May… I ask, what is that room?”
“Oh, it’s the knife room,” Stella replied. “Want to see?” She took Violet’s hand and tugged her over to the room, opening the door but not stepping inside. “We can look,” she said.
The knife room was completely empty in that there was nothing at all on the floor except the carpet. The walls of the room, however, were full. Almost every piece of space was taken up by a weapon with a blade. Every kind of possible knife and three swords were mounted on those walls, hundreds of blades, perhaps close to a thousand or more.
Stella sighed. “My mama constantly makes my bi-da knives, and she needed somewhere to put them. I don’t really know what it’s about or why she needs so many, but we are absolutely not allowed to touch them or go in the room. Looking is fine, though.”
“What are your plans for the rest of the day, milady?”
“A simple, easy day, I think,” Stella said. “No heroics. I’m going to make sure all the entrances, doors and windows, are secured, and patrol the perimeter. You sort the room out to your satisfaction and call if you need anything. Please don’t go into the back garden; it’s just, you don’t know where any the traps are, that’s all.”
Previous Chapter: Chapter Twenty-seven
Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty-nine
Author’s Note
Hi hi hi.
If you’ve been reading along on the website all this time, hi friend.
If you just turned up because you reached the end of the royal road or tumblr launch and want to read ahead, it is great to have you here. There is one week of content for free and then you can sign up for more, if you want.
As well as Raptors of London, I have a second website called the goblinpunk queerguide. It is about raptors. Sometimes I post context on the latest chapter, sometimes I post my thoughts on writing craft. You can read what the blog is about here.
Today’s context post on the queerguide is about what’s real and what’s not. Don’t worry, it’s not that deep.
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