Time of Trial

by Michael Pryor

  ‘We have a reorganisation under way,’ Sir Darius said to Aubrey. ‘And it affects you, and your irregular status with the Magisterium.’

  ‘Magisterium no more,’ Craddock said. ‘I am now in charge of the Magic Department of the Security Intelligence Directorate.’

  ‘Which is part of the Ministry of Defence,’ Sir Darius said. ‘Two departments, Special Services and Magic, working together instead of at odds. It’s what we need in these times.’

  ‘Of course, Prime Minister,’ Tallis said, but Aubrey could see from the sidelong look he gave to his colleague that Tallis was already imagining himself in charge of the entire Security Intelligence Directorate.

  It made sense, uniting the two squabbling intelligence agencies. Aubrey, though, wondered if it would be a happy arrangement.

  ‘If you gentlemen are finished,’ Sir Darius said, ‘I need to talk to my son.’

  ‘Another time then, Prime Minister,’ Craddock said. ‘I still have some items to discuss regarding our new arrangements.’

  Tallis looked at him sharply. ‘If we’re finished, Prime Minister, I have matters to attend to. National security matters,’ he added, just to emphasise that he, for one, was more concerned with the fate of the country than with playing internal power games.

  It was a ruse that failed simply because it was so transparent.

  Once the two warring power-seekers left, Sir Darius slumped in a chair. ‘Good men, both of them. But they’ll be the death of me.’

  ‘Taylor will take care of them,’ Aubrey said without much confidence. The Minister of Defence was competent, but he had a feeling that more than mere competence would be needed to keep those two in check.

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Sir Darius rubbed his face with both hands and Aubrey saw how weary he was. He felt sorry for his father, but he knew that this fatigue wouldn’t abate unless international tensions miraculously ebbed, a situation about as likely as Caroline saying she really liked staying home and knitting instead of adventuring.

  He nearly slapped himself on the forehead. Caroline. She’d be furious if he didn’t take her along on a Holmland adventure. But she couldn’t come with them, not unchaperoned. While she didn’t care a fig for such outdated things, Aubrey was sure that – reluctantly – his mother would insist on utter propriety in her troupe. She wouldn’t want the Holmlanders to have any excuse for offence.

  He put that knotty problem aside for later.

  Sir Darius drummed his fingers on the armrest of the chair. ‘Aubrey, in Fisherberg, I want you to be my eyes and ears. Keep an eye on the Prince. And on your mother.’

  ‘She knows that the Prince is going?’

  ‘I told her. That’s when I suggested your going with her.’

  ‘And her reaction?’

  ‘I was surprised. She quite liked the idea – but she didn’t want to inconvenience you.’

  ‘Happy to do it,’ George said, then he blushed. Both Aubrey and his father knew about George’s infatuation with Lady Rose and had, with commendable restraint, never spoken of it. It lingered, a source of mild unspoken amusement, between Aubrey and his father and – perhaps – his mother.

  ‘Good,’ Sir Darius said, ‘but I’m asking you to keep your wits about you. About Holmland in general. I’d be interested, in particular, to hear your impressions of Chancellor Neumann.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘Once. Forceful chap. Ex-military, which is only to be expected in a Holmland politician.’ Sir Darius looked thoughtful. ‘He spent time in their Second Rifle Brigade as a sharpshooter, of all things.’

  ‘The Chancellor?’ George said. ‘I thought he would have been an officer type.’

  ‘He was, but not straight away. Apparently he insisted on seeing life as the ordinary infantryman did. Interesting fellow. I look forward to getting your observations directly.’

  Aubrey saw it immediately. ‘You want us to report to you, rather than have reports filtered through Craddock and Tallis.’

  ‘That’s part of it. The other part is that you have shown that you have a knack for the – how shall I put it – unconventional? I’d feel much better knowing that the outlandish is being taken care of as well as the obvious.’

  ‘Unconventional?’ Aubrey repeated, feeling strangely unoffended.

  ‘And outlandish,’ George added.

  ‘I see.’

  Sir Darius grinned. ‘Perhaps I should call you my insurance against the unexpected. The others can handle the straightforward security matters, but with you on the spot, the Prince – and your mother – will be much safer.’

  ‘I’m sure we can do it between the two of us,’ Aubrey said and George nodded his agreement. ‘Is there anything in particular we should be aware of?’

  Sir Darius frowned. He sat back and uncrossed his legs. ‘Nothing concrete. But there is chatter.’

  Aubrey nodded. Chatter was intelligence talk. Intercepted communications. Overheard snatches of conversations. Vague rumours. Information bought from those willing to sell. None of which was definitive, but added together chatter sometimes gave a flavour, a sense of something in the wind. When the sheer amount of chatter rose, peaking like a wave, it was enough to give intelligence chiefs sleepless nights, being aware that something was afoot, without knowing exactly what it was.

  ‘Any names being mentioned in this chatter?’ Aubrey asked with an attempt at nonchalance.

  ‘Our friend Dr Tremaine has been whispered about. But then again, his progress through the ranks of Holmland has been the source of much gossip for some time now.’ He grimaced. ‘And there appears to be brigand trouble on the Holmland–Gallia border – they may be rebels, one never knows – and some oddness going on in Fisherberg itself.’

  ‘Oddness?’ Aubrey asked.

  ‘Magical oddness. Should be your cup of tea, Aubrey.’

  Fourteen

  Aubrey enjoyed travel. It didn’t matter if it were by train, boat or horse and cart, he loved the anticipation of arriving in a different place. The perspectives that were granted a traveller were special and changing, always being glimpsed and left behind, with something new just ahead.

  Aubrey had one substantial regret: he’d been unable to contact Caroline by telephone. He’d tried for two days, with increasing feverishness, but in the end he’d had to write a letter advising her of the sudden change of plans. He’d spent a whole morning trying to find the words to explain that she wasn’t being left behind – it was simply unfortunate circumstances and he’d do his best to make up for it and he’d make sure it wouldn’t happen again and...

  It sounded feeble even as he wrote it, and he could imagine her disappointment only too well.

  In his mind, he could see a graph of Caroline’s estimation of him. When they first met at Prince Albert’s estate, he hadn’t made a good impression – the graph would begin at a very low level. In the adventure of the Prince’s near-assassination, he could imagine the graph sloping upwards. Not rapidly, and with a few dips where he managed to put his foot in things, but the trend would have definitely been upward, to a high point just after his father’s election as Prime Minister.

  Then the Gallian imbroglio. Aubrey winced, because after a reasonably positive series of escapades where he thought he’d conducted himself quite well – graph heading upward again – he’d made a disastrous miscalculation in manipulating Caroline’s plans for his own ends. When his mother – his own mother – had taken Caroline on a polar expedition with the express point of putting some distance between Aubrey and her, the graph must have plunged, crossing the neutral axis, he imagined, with Caroline’s attitude actively negative toward him.

  From this nadir, however, thanks to some painful humility and hard work, Aubrey hoped that the graph had been inching its way into positive territory. The underground pursuit of Dr Tremaine and the affair with the Bank of Albion had been a chance for him to show his capabilities, which he hoped weren’t unimpressive. Their rapprochement after these affairs m
ay not have restored matters entirely, and their agreement to remain colleagues meant that a limit was placed on how far the graph could climb, but surely it had peeped into positive territory. Surely.

  Now? Caroline would be affronted at being left out of this Fisherberg trip, and unhappy at the lack of communication. The graph was about to dive again.

  He sighed. If only human matters worked like mathematics. A mathematical function was crisp, clear and open to understanding – with enough effort. To Aubrey’s mind, human affairs were just the opposite – opaque, baffling and profoundly difficult.

  The trip to Fisherberg had been planned as a cross-continental train journey, much to the displeasure of the navy. The Admiralty was mightily miffed when Lady Rose declined the offer to sail on the HMS Invulnerable, one of the latest class of cruisers that the navy was taking to Fisherberg to show off to the Holmlanders. While Aubrey would have enjoyed the chance to spend a few days exploring the most modern ship in the Albion fleet, he thought his mother’s decision was wise. Entering Fisherberg by train would be far more discreet than steaming into harbour aboard a warship. Lady Rose was visiting Holmland as a scholar, not as a symbol of national power.

  The boat train crossed south-east Albion with steely efficiency. The special carriage allocated to Lady Rose at the end of the train was plush and comfortable, but before they left, Aubrey – taking his job seriously – inspected it to make sure that it was secure, even though this had already been done by some of Tallis’s operatives. He approved when he found it had only two entrances. One opened directly into the carriage and the other was the interconnection between it and the second-last carriage. This interconnection included an alcove constantly manned by one of Tallis’s operatives.

  Lady Rose was equally well guarded on the ferry across the channel, while the train that was waiting for them in Gallia had another reserved carriage at the rear, and Aubrey could see the work of the friendly Gallian government in the squad of police who surrounded it at Legras Station, the departure point for the train to Lutetia. They postured and preened when Lady Rose approached, and Aubrey thought a fist-fight was going to break out on the platform to see who was going to have the honour of opening the door for her.

  The train sped across the countryside toward the capital of Gallia. While clean and comfortable, it rattled in disconcertingly erratic ways. Aubrey generally enjoyed the regular clicketty-clack rhythm of trains. This one, however, had nothing regular about it. It groaned up gentle slopes, protested around the mildest of corners, made hard going over bridges and was reluctant to enter tunnels, as if afraid of the dark.

  All the while, it shifted between a clicketty-clicketty and a clacketty-click-click as it ran over the rails, at intervals that were gratingly and irritatingly random.

  George, however, was immune to this. He had spread a newspaper on one of the mahogany tables near the windows and was poring over it, frowning, as if he meant to memorise every word. After an hour or so, Aubrey had become so edgy from the non-rhythm of the train that he stood and began pacing the length of the carriage. His mother was at one end, writing in a large notebook, consulting one of the many volumes she’d plucked from the trunk she’d brought with her. He tried to start a conversation, but the voice dried in his throat when she held up a hand without looking up. He knew that gesture. She was in the middle of something important and didn’t want to be interrupted. He went to look at what she was writing, but as soon as he leaned over her open hand turned to a single, admonitory finger.

  It was enough. He left her in peace. He’d sighted enough to see that she was working on another draft of her symposium presentation. Why she’d be doing this baffled him. He thought each of the previous nine drafts had been fine.

  That left only one source of distraction. ‘Anything interesting in the paper, George?’

  Aubrey inserted himself into the bench seat on the opposite side of the table from his friend. Outside, the afternoon sun beat on the cosy fields of northern Gallia. It was almost like a picture book, with well-behaved flocks of sheep staring at the train as it whistled past. In the distance, a thick forest marched up the side of a modest hill. To one side, a church stood, as if happy to be there.

  George didn’t look up. ‘Always interesting things in the paper, old man. You should know that.’

  ‘You’re applying yourself to this one with special intensity, though. What is it? The world of sport in uproar over a race-fixing scandal?’

  ‘Not much, apart from some sort of commotion on the border with Holmland.’ George shook his head. ‘This is just the last newspaper I’m bound to enjoy for some time. I wanted to make it last.’

  ‘I knew your lack of languages would come home to roost. You should have paid more attention in class.’

  ‘I did. Just didn’t understand a thing, that’s all. Was all foreign to me.’

  George’s inability to come to terms with anything beyond the most basic niceties of foreign languages had never concerned him. He was convinced he could get by anywhere in the world with a firm handshake and a sunny smile. It generally worked, but it seemed as if newspapers were immune to this approach.

  ‘So you’re going to devour the last of good old Albion’s newspapers, then.’

  ‘It’s all I can do. Every last little word, I’ll read.’

  ‘No matter how trivial, how boring?’

  ‘Advertisements for bootblack will be like religious texts to me. Details of shipping consignments I’ll ponder as if they hold the mysteries of the ages.’

  Aubrey cocked his head. ‘Are you sure you can’t spend your time any more usefully?’

  ‘Not really. Especially since by doing this I’ve just learned that Caroline is on her way to Fisherberg.’

  Aubrey straightened so quickly that he banged his knee on the underside of the table – but he hardly noticed. ‘Caroline?’

  ‘A small article in the Arts section. It seems as if Ophelia Hepworth is on her way to this Fisherberg symposium, just like your mother.’

  Aubrey remembered that Caroline had told him this. At the time, it was a two he hadn’t put together with another two and so missed out on coming up with four. ‘And Caroline is going with her?’

  ‘“Accompanying the influential artist on her Holmland sojourn is her daughter, Miss Caroline Hepworth.” Sounds like her, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly does.’ Aubrey sat back, bruised knee forgotten. Caroline in Fisherberg? Excellent. Some time ago, he’d been surprised when she’d mentioned, quite offhand, that she’d visited Fisherberg before. But he could see this being extremely useful. If she could be persuaded to overlook his not asking her along, then persuaded to show them around, it was the sort of thing that could make a difference to their time in the Holmland capital. Of course, that would mean spending time together, which would be a fine thing. Enjoyable. Friendly. Most splendid.

  ‘I say,’ George said. ‘D’you think it might be time for a spot of early lunch?’

  ‘George, straight after breakfast is your notion of time for a spot of early lunch. I think we might wait until after we’ve joined the Transcontinental Express.’

  ‘In Lutetia?’ George thought for a moment, and Aubrey could see him weighing up having some solid, uninspiring food now, or waiting for the legendary offerings of the Transcontinental’s board of fare. ‘It’s not more than an hour away, you’d say?’

  Aubrey glanced at the scene outside the window. ‘At the most.’

  His estimate was almost exact. Fifty-five minutes later saw the train pull into St Remy Station and when it finally stopped the release of steam sounded like a sigh of relief.

  Aubrey had never taken the fabled Transcontinental Express and, despite his misgivings about leaving Caroline behind, and despite taking his bodyguarding duties seriously, he was looking forward to it. Tales of intrigue and mystery had sprung up almost as soon as the Express completed its first journey, late last century, from Lutetia to Constantinople, the gateway to the Orie
nt. Winding its way through a dozen countries – although that number was currently in flux with the shifts in national makeup – the Transcontinental Express was reputed to play host to smugglers, arms dealers, tragic refugees and dispossessed nobles. Plans were hatched in corridors, assignations made in corners, revolutions decided on platforms while waiting for stationmasters – who may or may not be counter-intelligence operatives – to give the all clear.

  Aubrey couldn’t wait.

  At St Remy Station, Lady Rose left Aubrey and George to wrangle with the Gallian porters and their plans to decant the luggage onto the Transcontinental. There was no shortage of willing hands, but Aubrey could see that actual organisation was thin on the ground. Each of the porters had his own idea of the best way to do things, and each of them had a different idea where the Transcontinental Express actually was. It took a giddy few moments before he and George were able to round up all the porters and herd them into a line. With this leadership, they then transported the bags to the next platform, a mere twenty yards or so away, and into the specially prepared carriage on which they’d spend the next twenty-four hours.

  Aubrey lingered. He wanted to inspect the magnificent Transcontinental locomotive.

  Gallian locomotive engineering was substantially different from Albion work, but he admired their approach. The locomotive was a 2-6-4 with a tapered boiler, beautifully suited for racing across flat country, but well able to cope with the steep mountain passages that were a major part of the journey. The engine cowling was a highly polished deep blue, with ‘Transcontinental Express’ emblazoned along its length. Near the driving wheels, he squatted to peer at the coupling rods and nodded in approval at the sound anti-hammering magic that he detected. It was a clever solution.

  When Aubrey finally stepped into their special carriage, he removed his hat with some reverence. This was opulence more at home in a palace than in locomotive transport. It was like entering a lavish living room, rather longer and narrower than most, but impressive all the same. The windows were shaded with blue velvet curtains. Oriental screens, potted palms, gas lights on the walls, a discreet but thick Overminster carpet, a heavy sideboard and an absurdly comfortable sofa and chairs were closest to him, while the far half of the carriage was blocked off by what looked like a set of folding doors in strikingly grained ebony.