Staggering, bent over double, Aubrey was bombarded with a tumble of impressions, of nations, governments and magical advances. In all of them he was stunned to see how few people actually featured. His father, briefly, and Chancellor Neumann, but even they were almost featureless, more important for their positions than for their person. The only fully formed, fully realised person that emerged from this welter of memories and recollections was Dr Tremaine’s sister, Sylvia. She burned with a fire that was only matched by Dr Tremaine’s appreciation of himself. They were the only ones who were alive, who were vital, who were important.
Aubrey didn’t feature. His interruptions to Dr Tremaine’s plans did, but only as irritations to be overcome. The frustration of the foiled assassination plot against King William, the rescuing of the Gallian Heart of Gold, the ruination of the twin plot to animate Trinovant and to destroy the currency of Albion, all were inconveniences when measured against the vast canvas that Dr Tremaine was working with.
This attitude pervaded all of the feelings and thoughts that battered Aubrey as his head spun. It wasn’t even contempt. It was as if people were an alien species with which Dr Tremaine – and his sister – had little in common. They simply didn’t matter.
Aubrey struggled, sickened almost to the point of vomiting, but he was determined to prove Dr Tremaine wrong. People did matter.
Dr Tremaine’s world roared over the top of Aubrey, and swept him away.
Even though it seemed as if an age had trudged past, when Aubrey was next able to frame coherent thought, he was dimly aware that he was lying on the marble floor. He was unable to do much about it as his limbs had apparently turned to jelly. He could lift his head, a little, to see that Dr Tremaine was lying on the floor as well, yards away from the column of magic. A stone’s throw away, George was crumpled, unmoving, and Sophie was running to him. Behind them, Caroline had managed to trip the steaming golem hybrid with the silken rope, and to tangle a sword-wielding Sylvia in it as well.
Aubrey really wanted to remain there for a while and recover, but he knew that he couldn’t afford that luxury. Personal hurts, and wants, and dreams, could wait. He had to complete his plan.
Climbing to his feet was one of the harder things he’d had to do in his life. His chest felt as if it were one single, great bruise. The rest of his body wasn’t much better, but it was functioning, more or less, in the same way that the Gallian police functioned, more or less. His head thrummed and thumped whenever he moved, which was unfortunate because he had no prospect of holding still because Dr Tremaine, too, was climbing to his feet.
‘Fitzwilliam,’ the rogue sorcerer called and Aubrey was remarkably heartened to hear that his usually powerful voice had been reduced to a croak. ‘Why do you think you’re different?’
Aubrey’s heavy, aching head dropped. His eyes widened, slightly, painfully, when he saw, still attached to his chest, the ghostly remains of the magical cord that had once connected him to Dr Tremaine. He followed it with his magical senses and realised that his spell had been successful – it was the short length that remained on his side of the cut. Wearily, he sought for the other part and saw it was still connected to Dr Tremaine’s chest.
‘What do you mean?’ Aubrey said and his mind, sluggish though it was, began to arrange magical elements and string them together.
Dr Tremaine was dragging his left leg as he worked his way around the column of magic. ‘This thing. This connection. Gave me a glimpse at you. Your thoughts. You.’ Dr Tremaine glanced upward. He changed direction and shuffled toward the light. ‘You think you’re different from all the others, but you’re not. You’re all alike.’
‘We are.’ Aubrey squinted. He could make out the remnants of Dr Tremaine’s end of the connector more clearly, stretched limply on the floor. ‘We are all alike and we are different.’
‘Ah. The uniqueness argument. Tedious and meaningless.’ Dr Tremaine grunted as he reached the column of power. It roared, rich with magic culled from all the consciousnesses in Trinovant. ‘To me. Meaningless to me, which is all that matters. You are all alike. I can manipulate you all, move you all around, to suit my ends. None of you matters.’
Aubrey took a step in the direction of the rogue sorcerer. ‘And that’s going to be your downfall. If you thought more about how we are different, and the different ways we can all contribute to bringing you down, then you might have had a better chance.’
Dr Tremaine laughed. It was a weary laugh, but it held no doubt. ‘A better chance? I need no chances. My plan is a certainty.’
With that, he spoke a sharp series of syllables and plunged both hands into the pillar of light. For an instant, he jerked backward, his spine arching, his teeth bared. Then a sigh came from his lips and when he turned to Aubrey his eyes were shining. All trace of pain and exhaustion had disappeared. ‘Such power,’ he whispered. ‘Such power you’ll never know.’
Aubrey hardly heard. He was still stunned at the spell Dr Tremaine had spoken. The economical, clipped, syllables bore no resemblance to any language Aubrey had ever heard. The sounds, the rhythms, the patterns were almost inhuman in their brutality. Aubrey doubted that his mouth could cope with such a thing, so awful was it – but its effect was undeniable. Was this the Universal Language for Magic?
Aubrey started to run. ‘I’m glad. If it makes people like you, I don’t want a part of it.’
Dr Tremaine barked a hard laugh. He withdrew one hand from the pillar of light. In it, he held a blinding mass, a lump of raw magic that changed as the rogue sorcerer worked his fingers, shaping it like clay. Small bolts of false lightning darted from it and he chuckled. ‘Goodbye, Fitzwilliam.’
With a careless, backhand action, the sorcerer flipped the magical missile at Aubrey. Shedding light and magic, it hurtled at him.
Aubrey didn’t stop running. He snapped out a few syllables, the elements he’d used to deflect the worst of his Transference spell onto the soldiers on either side of no-man’s-land, and raised an elbow. The boiling magical missile glanced off, veered away wildly and burst harmlessly.
Aubrey didn’t stop. He spat out a tiny spell that was concentrated on the specific area between the soles of his boots and the marble floor, decreasing the coefficient of friction a few thousand per cent so that it was nearly zero. He went into a long, braced slide at a speed that took his breath away.
It was like wet ice on wet ice and Aubrey’s sudden transformation from a galloping nuisance to a lightning bolt surprised Dr Tremaine enough for Aubrey to throw himself forward in a long, shallow dive. He thumped onto his chest and stomach, adding to the indignities that his poor body had experienced, and slid, just missing Dr Tremaine’s feet, but close enough to grab the remains of the magical connector still embedded in the sorcerer’s chest.
Lying on his back, only a few feet away from the torrent of magic, Aubrey shielded his eyes and flung the loose end of the connector into it.
Dr Tremaine shouted, a huge wordless cry that filled the chamber. It roared like a storm, reverberating until it was elemental in its rage. His limbs were flung wide, star-like, his mouth jerked open and he hung, spread against the magic pillar like an insect in a museum.
His eyes were on fire. They filled with blinding light, consumed by the raw power channelled by the connector, which had swelled and grown, three or four times its previous diameter, jerking and throbbing with crude potency.
Aubrey lay on the floor, panting, horrified and triumphant at once. Dr Tremaine was caught in the grip of a magic that was beyond his control. The combined power of the magical artefacts, the captive magicians and a million Trinovantans was too much even for him when it was pumped into his very being via a magical connector. The control he wielded as a master magician was no use here, as the connector bypassed his intellect. Magic poured into him unchecked.
Aubrey had deduced that it was only Dr Tremaine’s intellect and talent that allowed him to work such stuff. The connector was more primitive and more direct than
that. Now the rogue sorcerer was helpless.
‘Mordecai!’
Before Aubrey could move, Sylvia Tremaine ran from the shelter of a pillar base. She halted, aghast at the sight of her brother being consumed, the back of her hand to her mouth.
Then, to Aubrey’s amazement, Dr Tremaine resisted. Wracked by untold magical power, he shuddered. Slowly, his eyes closed with the ponderousness of stone. When he opened them, they were his again. He had expelled – or controlled? – the magic.
Still pinned against the column of light, the rogue sorcerer threw back his head and howled, the tendons in his neck standing out like hawsers. ‘Sylvia!’ he cried. He strained to release his limbs but they were held fast against the light. ‘Sylvia!’
Without hesitation, Sylvia flung herself at her brother, clasping him around his neck. She cried out, he howled again, and then they started to change.
Aghast, Aubrey couldn’t take his gaze away as first Dr Tremaine, then his sister, were pulled upward, losing their substance as they were drawn like oil over glass. Their wordless cries rose in pitch as, together, they smeared across the column of unrelenting, uncaring magic. Dr Tremaine struggled, but his efforts were useless. Thinner and thinner they became as they were drawn out. Light began to shine through them as their mass was stripped away. Finally, they started to shred, reducing quickly to tatters.
In a burst of light, with a last howl that was both agonised and defiant, they were gone.
Aubrey climbed to his feet, feeling a thousand years old. Caroline was at his side. He reached out and touched a nasty bruise on her cheek. ‘The golem,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry yourself about it.’
‘Caroline,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided to give up worrying. It hardly seems worth the effort.’
84
Aubrey had never been to the Palace at Belville, even though it was only half an hour from Lutetia. He had, however, always been intrigued by its reputation for unrivalled opulence. It had been the home of the Gallian kings for two hundred and fifty years, up until the commoners of Gallia decided they’d had enough of being oppressed by rich layabouts and decided they wanted to be oppressed by poor layabouts instead. The palace had survived rather better than the aristocrats who used to swarm about its extensive gardens, its numerous courtyards and its swooningly lavish rooms. Aubrey had heard that one court official had had the responsibility of walking about the place checking for anything that might be considered drab. If he found something, he had a stupefyingly large budget to gild it, extend it, or get a famous painter or two to daub a forest scene over it.
The Gallery of Glass was the most astonishing part of the palace and, while waiting for the formalities of treaty-signing, Aubrey had much time to admire the impressive windows spaced along one long wall of the gallery, perfectly arranged to throw light on the dozens of crystal chandeliers and make rainbows on the richly panelled far wall.
In his full Directorate uniform, adorned with the embarrassingly ornate medal that King Albert had pinned on his chest, Aubrey stood at ease next to Sophie – who also sported the same medal, one of only four in existence – in their entirely superfluous job as aides to Commander Craddock. Not far away, the bemedalled Caroline and George were filling the same role for Commander Tallis, the two commanders being the representatives of the Albion Security Intelligence Directorate at the signing.
Two months had flown by since the battle in the skies over Trinovant. Without Dr Tremaine’s plans and advice, the Holmland war effort had collapsed and the new government, installed after a popular uprising, had quickly sued for peace.
Aubrey and his friends had spent much of that time in Darnleigh House, compiling accounts of the events leading up to the Battle of Trinovant and being called in to offer opinions on sightings and observations after the collapse of the Holmland government. Aubrey was intensely interested to see, for instance, a report about Manfred the Great conducting prestidigitation lessons for the king of one of the smaller islands in the Pacific. A documented rumour about one Elspeth Mattingly opening a fencing academy in remote Muscovia specialising in the sabre was harder to believe, especially once Caroline expressed doubts about Elspeth’s abilities in that area, pointing out that she was sure she could thrash the spy without much effort at all.
Dr Tremaine’s crippled skyfleet had begun evaporating soon after the rogue magician’s demise. Every eye in Trinovant was turned skyward for two days as an urgent effort was made to ferry the magicians and the artefacts to the ground before the magical craft lost their solidity entirely. Caroline and Aubrey piloted separate ornithopters in the ultimately successful undertaking, so short-handed was aerial service since the sky battle.
Aubrey hadn’t known that signing a treaty document would take three days – with the promise of more to come – but he was learning that everything in international diplomacy moved at a pace that would make a glacier look positively frisky. He patted his pocket, which reassured him – and then filled him with doubts – but he took the confusion as a good sign that life was resuming normality.
Aubrey’s father was at the head of the extraordinarily long table that had been placed in the Gallery of Glass. He was with the Gallian Prime Minister, Giraud, while in between them was the new Chancellor of Holmland, Ilse Brandt.
Aubrey had difficulty remaining solemn whenever he looked at Chancellor Brandt. The sheer novelty of a woman rising to such a position told Aubrey that if the world was resuming normality, it was a delightfully new kind of normality that promised much.
Part of the reason for the delay in the final signing had been the traditional negotiating over the fine points in the treaty. In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, Sir Darius and his Foreign Office had ironed out the major issues, but Sir Darius had confided to Aubrey that he’d deliberately left some minor points vague. He understood that it would be important for Holmland to win some concessions in the negotiation.
Sir Darius had been adamant about this, even in the face of resistance from his own party. Many in Albion and Gallia wanted to punish Holmland for the war. Some wanted to go further and humiliate the country for its aggression. Suggestions were made to strip Holmland of some of its territory, while enormous sums of money were touted as appropriate reparation for the damage Holmland had done.
Sir Darius refused. He could see the dangers of such vengeful actions. He offered to resign if his party didn’t support him. He pointed out that since the uprising, Holmland was a different country, and as such it needed assistance, not punishment. The Chancellor and his warmongering cronies were on trial for their crimes, with some damning evidence coming from the file that von Stralick had provided to Aubrey. Crushing Holmland would only create resentment – and a breeding ground for a dangerous future.
Not without some grumbling from backbenchers, Sir Darius won the day.
Aubrey glanced at George, which was a mistake. Days ago, his friend had decided to liven up the interminable occasion by constantly trying to make Aubrey laugh and this time, the face he pulled nearly succeeded. It was only by adding to the bite marks already on the inside of his cheeks that Aubrey maintained the demeanour expected in such a dignified setting.
A few more speeches interrupted proceedings and Aubrey found himself wondering if he were under a misapprehension and the speeches were, in fact, the proceedings and the signing an interruption.
When the observations from the Veltranian delegate concluded, Aubrey decided it was a sign of the times that a former rebel leader could become a respected figure in an international setting. He caught Rodolfo’s eye as the Veltranian shuffled his papers at the lectern, then he saluted. He was rewarded with a smile, which was a triumph, coming as it did from the notoriously doleful Rodolfo.
An end to the day was called, with no sign of a conclusion to the conference. Aubrey stifled a sigh, waited for Commander Craddock to leave, then he slipped outside. Fresh air and a lack of stuffiness – atmospheric and personal – beckoned.
Lady Rose was on t
he terrace, gazing out over the gardens. She wore a large hat to shade her face. Her dress was a pale yellow. ‘Are they anywhere near a conclusion yet?’
‘Hardly, Mother.’ Aubrey pecked her on the cheek. ‘It’s only been three days. I’d say they’re just warming up.’
‘I knew there was a good reason I never accompanied your father on these diplomatic jaunts.’
Aubrey had been surprised when his mother had volunteered to come along to the Belville signing, but he knew that she had a sense of history and a sense of occasion. This collection of the high and mighty was bound to be remembered for years and it was good to be a part of it.
‘I hope you know that your father is immensely proud of you,’ she said suddenly, turning away from her contemplation of the flower beds that stretched into the distance.
‘I do,’ Aubrey said. ‘He told me.’
It had been a shock when Sir Darius had taken Aubrey aside just before the first gathering in the Gallery of Glass and explained how impressed he was with Aubrey’s conduct and achievements. It was the term ‘heroic’ and the firmness of the handshake that left Aubrey lost for words.
‘I’m glad,’ Lady Rose said. ‘I insisted that he did, but I wasn’t sure he’d work up enough courage.’
‘Courage?’
‘Everybody has their areas of diffidence, Aubrey. He’s never been confident where you’re concerned.’
Aubrey took this as well as he’d take a blow to the head. He snatched at the first thing that came to mind. ‘I’m proud of him, too.’
‘And so you should be.’ She patted him absently on the shoulder. ‘And I’m proud of both of you.’
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