Velvet Over Steel

Thirteen months. Thirteen relentless, building, carving months. That's how long it's been since I first sat across from Rupert, hands firm on my diagrams, telling him the future I meant to carve out, whether the world thought it proper or not.

So much has changed since then. More than I ever dared imagine back in the dim dormitory at Wool's, listening to coughs echo off stone walls and wondering if I'd ever be anything I planned would actually work out.

The company came first. Russo Holdings. The name stood proud in crisp black letters on stacks of legal papers, licensing agreements, and eventually on a neat brass plate fixed to the door of a modest London office. 

Mr. Ellery, still trim and brisk as ever, oversaw the endless filings: documents for the Board of Trade, as well as patent and trademark registrations under the Paris Convention. France. Italy. Canada. India. South Africa. Nearly forty countries, each one a fortress laid brick by careful brick around my idea.

The licensing deals followed. At first, some local textile manufacturers snorted into their tea, humouring me like one might a clever pup until they saw the demonstration: a strip of my crude prototype, now finally made from precious nylon, fastening and unfastening with that soft, unmistakable rasp. 

By spring, cautious curiosity had shifted to serious interest. By midsummer, agreements were signed and orders placed, allowing funds to be used for a proper warehouse, hiring clerks and managers, and engineers to refine the manufacturing lines. Enough to start drafting the second patent, finer hooks, tighter weaving.

And I discovered I was good at it. Not just the invention itself or the careful columns of figures, but also the speaking. Although I got off to a slow start, with some awkward conversations, I started to learn how to draw people in, telling them exactly what they longed to hear. 

Wrapping my certainty around them like warm wool until they found themselves nodding, smiling, signing. I learned how to lean forward just enough, how to let a pause stretch, how to let silence coax out concessions. It was the power of another sort, and it fit my hand almost too well.

It was frightening how easily power settled into me, warm and coiling, like it had always waited there under my ribs. Watching men five times my age sign papers with my name at the top, seeing factory doors open because of a single flourish of my pen, it fed something starved. I reminded myself often that comfort dulls knives. I let myself taste it, but never for long.

Yet there's a darker side to that power, because my magic hasn't just grown in raw force, it's blossomed into something stranger, more insidious. It comes as scents. Not mind reading, not exactly, but close. Emotional Sense would be a more honest name. The more I've let my mana soak into conversations, the more people's feelings rise like perfumes or like rot.

Envy is sharp and metallic, like blood left too long on rust. Suspicion clings like damp wool, heavy and mildewed. Lies give off a rancid sweetness that sits foul at the back of my tongue. But joy? True affection? Those come clean: warm bread, lilacs on a spring breeze, the tart sting of lemon. The nobler the feeling, the cleaner the scent. The fouler the heart, the more it turns my stomach.

It's made negotiation almost effortless. I can smell when belief blooms sweet and full, or when doubt starts to sour. I've sidestepped ruinous deals, steered clear of men who would have slit my throat on paper and smiled doing it. However, it has also made me wary. 

Because it peels back people's masks, leaving only the raw scent of who they truly are. I've had to teach myself to stay calm, even as my senses twist with disgust.

It wasn't just boardrooms, either. Sometimes I'd catch a waft of sorrow so soft and clean it could only come from Rupert, drifting across the parlour when I spoke too easily of futures he knew he wouldn't see. Or a sharp, acrid greed peeling off one of my own clerks as he handled the ledgers, making me quietly arrange a second set of eyes on the books. Even the alleys told stories: a girl clutching a basket reeking of desperate hope, a man watching her with breath that stank of cruel intentions. London had always whispered its secrets; now it fairly screamed them at me.

That wasn't the only change; there was one in my sinew and stance.

Rupert fed me. Rich meats streaked with fat, potatoes swimming in dripping, custards that slid like cream across my tongue. Bread that came out of the oven still warm, instead of stale lumps dusted in flour and air. My shoulders broadened, muscles slid in easily where there was once only the ghost of them. My skin flushed with life again, my hair thickened, darkened, as if it too had decided to live now that the rest of me was thriving.

It wrapped itself around my discipline like velvet over steel. Because with a strong body paired to a sharper mind, both well-fed and well-kept, I could reach further. Build more. Plot deeper.

Rupert never asked much in return. Sometimes he'd catch me across the dinner table, eyes soft with a sorrow that smelled faintly of warm pine, grief mellowed by time. I'd meet his gaze, nod, and we'd both look away, two survivors politely ignoring the ghosts seated with us.

By spring, I left school entirely, not expelled, simply unnecessary now. It wasn't compulsory to start with, and with the teachers stretched thin by the war, barely noticed, and with contracts stacking up under my name, schoolroom sums felt like small toys I'd outgrown.

Through it all, I kept Wool close.

I visited the orphanage every week. The younger boys crowded close, little shadows with bright eyes, telling me who'd lost a tooth, who could finally run the length of the yard without panting. I slipped some change into their hands whenever I visited. Martha crushed my hands in hers, grateful. Even Mrs. Cole, stiff and guarded, gave me nods that stretched a little longer each time.

Some of the older boys asked, shyly and hopefully, if one day I might find them places in my company. I always said perhaps. Because it wasn't a lie. Influence mattered. Loyalty mattered. And there were worse things than filling a warehouse or an office with men who remembered me slipping them half a bread roll when they truly needed it.

I wanted them to do well, of course. But I also wanted them to remember whose hand fed them first, so that one day, if whispers ever rose against me, I'd have a chorus ready to drown them out.

Evenings brought a quieter rigour. While Rupert sat by the fire with his pipe, lost in drifting coils of smoke, I bent over my notebooks, murmuring through French declensions and writing letters in a practised, looping hand.

It wasn't a whim. I already wielded English like a blade, carried Italian like an heirloom, and bore Latin like a half-forgotten priest's service. But French was the tongue of commerce, of diplomacy, of colonial treaties and the contracts that stretched from Paris to Saigon. I'd seen enough foreign patent agreements to know a man who could charm in French, who could draft clauses without a translator, stood taller than most at any table. So I carved it deep into my mind. Another lockpick for doors that most men never even noticed.

Then there was boxing. That was born not of cold ambition but from the raw, choking memory of a hand over my mouth in a London alley, of breath crushed to wheezing panic, of blows that landed soft and harmless on a man who only laughed.

I refused to be that boy again.

So I hired Moran, a half-crippled army sergeant with knuckles like knots of old rope. Three mornings each week, he forced me to slip from swinging hooks, to block with elbows welded tight, to hammer back with short, savage crosses that left my knuckles cracked and bleeding. More than once, he dropped me, ribs shrieking in bright pain, head whirling. But each time I dragged myself up, grinning through the salt taste of my own blood.

Because every blow was a vow. That I would never again feel hands on me, and think there was no way out.

The war has ended.

15th of August 1945. V-J Day. Londoners spilt into the streets by the thousands, strangers hugging, kissing, weeping into each other's ears. Lights blazed all night. Bonfires crowned old streets that hadn't known joy in years.

I stood with Rupert on the edge of it, his hand heavy on my shoulder, watching the city roar. The joy in the air was so thick you could almost choke on it. But in my chest, there was only a quiet, measured relief.

Like seeing a storm finally crack apart and knowing it had already stripped your house to the bones.

Even victory could be a hollow hall. Some nights I'd take, expecting the creak of floorboards, the scent of Mum's lavender water, the mutter of Papa's voice. The house stayed silent. Success lay thick as gold around me, but none of it laughed, none of it called my name.

Grateful, yes. Happy? No. The world had teeth still. They simply weren't lamped around Britain's throat at this hour.

All of it together; the boxing, the French, the rich food and the careful books, the loyal boys at Wool's, the hush of a war finally gone quiet, it made something new of me.

Sharper. Broader. A creature rebuilt from marrow outward, wearing hunger like a knife tucked under my coat.

Because I knew what I was after.

And the world, fresh from bleeding, was full of gaps I meant to slip through before anyone else thought to seal them.

And beyond those gaps, behind brick barriers and laughing children who vanished at King's Cross, waited a world even older and sharper than this one. 

When I stepped through, I would do so not as a boy begging scraps, but as Richard: a name carved in contracts, a fortune that no wand could dismiss, a mind already trained to scent the rot beneath fine robes. I was laying stones for more than just factories; I was building the armour I'd bear when I finally crossed into their halls.

Let them look down their wands at me. Let them sneer at patents and bank ledgers and call it Muggle nonsense. By the time they realised wealth could be a wand all its own, I'd be too deep inside their gates to ever be cast out.

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