Heart of Gold

by Michael Pryor

  Aubrey shrugged. So do I, he thought.

  AUBREY AND GEORGE WERE HERDED ALONG ALLEYS AND lanes and through the crowded yards of carters, merchants and providores. Gabriel went confidently and was often greeted by name. Aubrey noted this as an indication of how far the Marchmaine independence movement had penetrated Gallian society, at least at the level of those who fetched, carried and carted.

  They came across another pack of dogs, worrying at the remains of what appeared to be a horse. The dogs growled but didn't give chase.

  They entered a short street. On the corner was a seedy bar, the Loyal Badger. Half a dozen shops were lined up along the ground floor of the four-storey buildings. Gabriel led the way to the last door on the left, just before the street ran into another at right angles.

  Gabriel put a hand on the door. He grinned at Aubrey, showing a bad tooth. 'Your task awaits you.'

  Gabriel's silent friends were behind Aubrey and George. Aubrey sized up the moment. He was sure he and George could escape, but it would ruin their chances with the Sons of Victor. No, they were committed to going through with whatever ordeal Gabriel had planned for them.

  His heart pounded as he crossed the threshold and stared down a short flight of stairs into the room below. The only light came from the door behind him and through cracks in the boards covering the windows, so the room was a pit of shadows. He took a deep breath and descended into the unknown.

  Carefully, arms extended, Aubrey kicked aside loose paper that was strewn on the floor. The place was damp and he was sure it would smell of mildew – if he could smell. In the middle of the room, he strained to make out a large shape, as tall as George, unmoving and ominous. He tensed at movement, but it was only Gabriel lighting a match, then an oil lamp, and Aubrey sighed with relief when the darkness rolled back.

  'A printing press,' George said without enthusiasm.

  'This is your challenge,' Gabriel said, rubbing his hands together.

  Aubrey had skinned many knuckles on printing presses during his father's helter-skelter election campaign. He ran his hand along the guide rail. It came away dusty.

  Aubrey sighed. 'It's a Woolley Imperial. Made in Albion.'

  'You are familiar with this machine?' Gabriel said. 'Good. We need handbills. Many handbills. Lutetia must be carpeted with our handbills.'

  Aubrey took off his hat and jacket. He looked for a place to hang them but gave up and dropped them in a corner. Something stirred and ran away under the paper, squeaking. Aubrey reminded himself to check his clothes when he picked them up again.

  'This is our task?' George asked. 'To make handbills? That's all?'

  'Hah!' Gabriel smiled nastily. 'You think that working the Beast is easy? You're more stupid than you look.'

  Aubrey watched George. His friend nodded, slowly, and Aubrey knew he was making special note of Gabriel's face. For later.

  Two hours later, Aubrey understood how the printing press had earned its nickname. His shirt was soaked with sweat and he had ink stains up to his elbows. George had a nasty gash on the back of his hand where a retaining bar had, without warning, snapped back into place while he was adjusting a platen head. They had not managed to print a single handbill.

  Aubrey was struggling. His thumb was still bleeding, despite his twice rebinding the wound with fresh handkerchiefs. His knees, elbows and shoulder joints were spots of hot pain, as if someone had filled them with powdered glass.

  Gabriel left after half an hour's gloating, taking one of his comrades with him and leaving the other to supervise. This consisted of sitting on a bale of paper, picking teeth, grunting and refusing any requests for help.

  The door opened. Aubrey straightened from tightening a roller nut, ready to explain their meagre output.

  'Fitzwilliam! My friend! What are you doing here?'

  'Hello, Saltin.' Aubrey was glad of the distraction. He wiped his face with a weary hand. 'I was wondering the same thing.'

  The airman was reassuringly unharmed. 'I am here to help my friends in their struggle for a free Marchmaine.'

  'Isn't that a little . . . well . . . dangerous? For someone in your position?'

  'Nonsense. When does a citizen of Gallia fear to speak his mind? The revolution was fought for such freedoms!'

  George scratched his chin. 'But you don't want to be part of Gallia any more.'

  Saltin was puzzled for a moment, then brightened. 'But the enlightened state of Marchmaine will naturally share the same values as revolutionary Gallia. It is the only truly modern way.'

  Aubrey looked at his supervisor, who hadn't moved. 'I think it's time for a break, wouldn't you say?' He repeated it in Gallian and earned a grunt in reply. This time, he chose to interpret it as a positive grunt rather than a negative one. He sat on one of the boxes of useless spare parts that George had hauled from one of the back rooms. George sprawled on another, but Saltin remained standing.

  'What about last night?' Aubrey said to Saltin.

  The airman's face fell. 'The AT 204. It was almost totally destroyed. Months of work, gone.'

  'AT 204? I thought the 200 was your most advanced airship.'

  Saltin grinned. 'The 200 is a wonderful craft, but the 204 is going to be even better.' His face fell. 'Was going to be even better.'

  'Who do you suspect?'

  Saltin spread his hands. 'I have no shortage of suspects, but no evidence to speak of.'

  'It wasn't a magical attack. I can assure you of that.'

  'Ah. That is good to know. When I left the airfield, the Bureau had been there for some hours. They said the same thing, but they were puzzled by what they called magical traces on the other side of the hangar. When I told them about the bear, they were most excited.'

  They would be. 'What about your airship development program?'

  'It has been damaged, severely. We have a dozen craft that are airworthy, with another three under repair. These are all serviceable, but they lack the refinements we were working on for the AT 204.'

  Aubrey mentally translated the word 'refinement' to mean 'armament'. He had no doubt that the new generation of Gallian airship was being planned with the impending war in mind. Which, of course, made the Holmlanders the obvious suspects.

  'I'd love to help you,' Aubrey said, 'but . . .' He gestured at the printing press. It looked smug and Aubrey glared at it.

  'Ah!' Saltin exclaimed. 'The Beast! That is why I have come!'

  'You know this thing?' George asked.

  'We are old foes.' The airman took off his cap and jacket. He folded them on a bale of paper and rolled up his sleeves. 'Let us face the enemy together, as our treaty demands, Gallia and Albion as allies!'

  Saltin pressed their supervisor into service. He sulked while he cranked the machine, but his shoulders were well suited to the task. He tolerated no nonsense from the printing press, either. A snarl and kick from him did wonders, where Aubrey's careful adjustments had failed.

  It took another hour, but eventually they stood back, exhausted, with a working printing press.

  Gabriel came back alone, with paper-wrapped lunch, in time to see handbills emerging from the maw of the Beast. They were clear, well trimmed and presentable. Gabriel gave the lunch parcels to Saltin and slapped Aubrey on the back. 'You are one of us, now. Free Marchmaine!'

  'Free Marchmaine,' Aubrey and George echoed.

  Gabriel's other comrade slipped in, slamming the door behind him and cursing.

  'Dumont!' Gabriel said. 'What is it?'

  He spat on the floor. 'A soulless one. In the street.'

  Aubrey wiped his hands together. His knuckles hurt. 'Are the police on their way?'

  It was Gabriel's turn to curse. 'We don't want the police poking around. Shut down the press until they're gone.'

  'But we've just got started,' Saltin protested.

  'You can start again when they've gone.'

  Aubrey frowned. Saltin had said that the Marchmaine movement wasn't illegal. What had Gabriel to hide from t
he police?

  Aubrey pushed a bale of paper close to the brick wall, then made himself comfortable. Comfort, he'd discovered, was a relative thing. At this time and in this place, it was a damp brick wall to lean against and a bundle of coarse paper to sit on. Blissful.

  Gabriel, Saltin and the two taciturn offsiders went into one of the back rooms. George arranged four bales of paper into a couch and stretched out on them with his hands behind his head.

  Aubrey straightened, startled. The tang of magic had drifted into the room, like salt breeze from the ocean. A low rumble shook the walls, a deep growling sound. George came to his feet and the four others emerged from the back room. Aubrey went to the window. He peered through a gap in the boards but could see nothing in the street.

  'What was that?' Gabriel demanded

  'I thought it was a convoy of lorries,' George said.

  By craning his neck, Aubrey could see four or five police officers at the end of the street. They were on foot, and moving away up the slight hill.

  'It looks quiet out there.' He moved away from the window and dusted his hands together.

  'The floor shook,' Saltin said. 'Like an earthquake.'

  'An earthquake in Lutetia?' Gabriel snorted. 'Rubbish.'

  If it wasn't an earthquake, Aubrey thought, then what was it?

  Voices and the noise of a motor drew him back to the window. 'More police,' he said, after peering through the crack.

  'Probably reinforcements to help with the soulless ones,' Gabriel. 'Fools, they are.'

  Aubrey remembered Inspector Paul's words. 'The police have scaled down their work on the soulless ones. I don't think –'

  He was interrupted by thumping on the door.

  'It's open,' George shouted, but the door crashed aside. A pair of husky constables lurched in, followed by a grizzled police captain with a patch over one eye. He stood at the top of the stairs, taking in the scene, while a squad of junior officers milled behind him.

  He and Gabriel locked eyes. Gabriel snarled, the police captain smiled. 'Arrest them all,' the captain ordered.

  Aubrey didn't want to tax himself more than he needed. Unfortunately, he had little choice.

  He seized a sheaf of handbills and flung them toward the police. He snapped out a spell he'd perfected for card games, an application of the Law of Patterns. He hoped his quick estimation of the size of handbills was accurate enough, then he added a short, but difficult spell that used the Law of Origins. He was relying on the fact that paper had once been wood and with the right spell it could regain an aspect of that material. In this case, with the emphasis on the correct element, he was looking for the strength of wood.

  In flight, the papers scattered and whirled, but then – seized by the power of the first spell – assumed an orderly grid, four feet or so across and twice that high. It dropped and blocked the bottom of the stairs, then changed colour from off-white to a dull brown, while expanding until it was a yard thick.

  The first of the police constables descending the stairs ran right into the wooden wall and staggered back. Those behind ran into them and soon the staircase was a tangled mass of constabulary, curses and oaths.

  'This way!' Gabriel barked while the police captain tried to sort out the chaos.

  AUBREY STRUGGLED TO KEEP UP WITH GABRIEL AS HE LED them over the brick fence and down a fetid lane. The effort of casting the spells had sapped him and without George's helping hand he would have been in danger of falling behind and being lost.

  Barrels of what looked like offcuts from a tannery were leaking into the drain that ran along the middle of the lane and – judging from the expression on George's face – Aubrey was glad that his sense of smell had diminished.

  How long can I keep this up? he thought as they squeezed through a gap in a wooden fence. On the other side was an abandoned coachbuilder's yard, taken over by waist-high grass and thistles. How close to the edge am I?

  Gabriel pushed through a sheet-metal door in a building that should have been condemned years ago. It was dark and damp inside, but Gabriel didn't hesitate. He guided them through the empty space as confidently as a judge, directly to a set of stairs. The stairs took them to a first floor that was as crowded as the ground floor was empty. Crates and boxes stretched from wall to wall, a solid mass, but again Gabriel didn't hesitate. He leapt onto a small box, then stepped up onto a large wooden cabinet, then onto a massive crate that could have held an omnibus. From here, Gabriel forged along an uneven way that took them to a window, soaped over and opaque.

  The window screeched open and a short drop brought them to the roof of the building next door. After a quick crossing, down the fire escape and then through a yard full of horses, wagons and broken bottles, Gabriel called a stop behind an immense, rusty furnace, abandoned behind a foundry that was a tumult of pounding metal. On the other side of the foundry was a hole in the ground that smoked and reeked.

  While a curious dog watched, Aubrey leaned against a vent door and tried to catch his breath. 'I thought you said that the Marchmaine movement was legal?' he said to Saltin.

  The airman was woebegone. 'It is.'

  Gabriel seemed preoccupied, but shrugged, frowning. 'It was just a matter of time. All governments become oppressive when threatened.'

  Aubrey frowned. The words lacked conviction. Something else seemed to be on Gabriel's mind.

  'But what about liberty? What about freedom for all?' Saltin said. 'The ideals of the revolution, what happened to them?'

  'Pragmatism overrules ideals,' Gabriel said absently. 'It is time for us to go underground.' He sized up Aubrey. 'I did not realise you had magic. It will be useful to our struggle.'

  'I have a little,' Aubrey lied. 'It's not very reliable.'

  'It worked,' Gabriel said. 'Go now. Wait for our call.'

  Aubrey translated for George, who frowned. 'Won't the police be waiting for us?'

  'It was dark,' Gabriel said in Albionish. 'We were not recognised, I'm sure. Go about your normal business. They won't suspect Albionites, not even the grandson of the Steel Duke.'

  Gabriel spoke with more certainty than Aubrey felt, but he nodded. This could be the chance he needed to get to the university.

  Aubrey and George walked through the Maltarre district with its garment manufacturers and Aubrey wondered at Gabriel's farewell. He was used to being noted as the son of the Albion Prime Minister, but noone had connected him with his grandfather for years.

  He was snapped out of his ponderings by a short, sharp earth tremor, then another. He glanced at George, who shrugged and pointed at a series of poorly printed posters on the wall of a telephone exchange. They seemed to be calling for action, but it was hard to determine of what sort and against whom, so bad was the text.

  They trudged on. Aubrey's hands and feet felt as if they enormous weights attached to them, and he had to shake his head, often, to keep his eyes open. Blood seeped through his bandaged hand, and the unhealed wound throbbed.

  Magic use was accelerating his decline. It drained him, much faster than mere physical effort did. Not that there was much alternative, he thought.

  With gloomy fascination, Aubrey probed his teeth with his tongue and found that several at the back were loose. His gums were tender, as well.

  'Where to, old man?' George asked.

  'The university. Now.'

  Twelve

  THEY SKIRTED THE UNIVERSITY, KEEPING TO THE Boulevard of Wisdom and its busy cafés, before entering the campus via the medieval gate that led to the Faculty of Magic.

  The doors to the tower were locked. George pounded on them and they were eventually greeted by the bemused face of Maurice, the porter.

  'Maurice,' Aubrey said after he'd introduced George, 'has anyone come for Monsieur Bernard's things?'

  Maurice ushered them inside and closed the door behind them. 'No, sir. I've packed them up, but the boxes are waiting in his workshop.' He wrung his hands. 'Dreadful times, sir. Dreadful times.'

  'Yes,'
Aubrey said, while George sauntered around the space, inspecting the staircase. 'Terrible.' Then he paused. 'What sort of dreadful times, Maurice?'

  The porter patted the nearest wall. 'It's this building, sir. It's moving.'

  'Moving?'

  'It leans, it does – questing, like a hound sniffing the breeze.'

  Maurice's simile was unexpectedly vivid, and Aubrey looked upward toward the turret. He could see how a building like this must have absorbed some magic, after having been exposed to centuries of it. With magic embedded in its brickwork, strange things could happen. 'How can you tell?'

  'It tilts, straining in one direction for a while, then another. Tiny, it is, but I notice.' Maurice scratched his head. 'What it's after, though, that's the question.'

  'It would have to be something of great magical power.' The theft of the Heart of Gold had been noticed by the Magisterium magicians in Albion. Aubrey wondered if it mightn't be sensed by a questing tower. 'Do you mind if I examine Monsieur Bernard's workshop? I'm interested in his work.'

  Maurice shrugged, his face downcast. 'I'm glad someone is. A good man was Monsieur Bernard.'

  Maurice had been thorough in his cleaning up. The benches of Bernard's workshop were empty, the floor scrubbed, the bookshelves cleared. It could have been a vacant studio waiting for a tenant.

  George strolled to the window. 'Good view of the Library wall from here. Fine-looking bricks.'

  'I'm sure Monsieur Bernard appreciated them.' Aubrey went to the entry vestibule and examined the tea chests and boxes that Maurice had stacked there. 'Lend a hand, would you, George?'

  Together, they wrestled a number of boxes into the workshop. While George opened them with a pry bar he begged from Maurice, Aubrey took Bernard's notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped through the pages, looking for something relevant. Anything describing the time Bernard had experimented with death magic . . . Not weather magic, not the Law of Transformations, not post-Babylonian syllabic utterances . . . He paused, as something odd caught his eye. There.

  Opposite a page of notes on limiting diagrams, Bernard had written a page in a peculiar black ink. It had a double line border around it and the number 7 in the bottom left-hand corner.