Word of Honour (35 page)

But understanding where his fear came from had
helped him control it. It was almost as if he'd managed to
pack it into a box and park it in a corner. This cleared his
thinking so he could train it on trying to devise a way
out of their predicament. The trouble was, nothing came
to mind – except an understanding of what Dr Tremaine
was planning.

For the lack of anything better, Aubrey began to
struggle. Dr Tremaine threw his head back and laughed.
'At last! Someone who doesn't disappoint me!'
Rokeby-Taylor looked most put out. 'What on earth
do you mean, Tremaine?'

'Young Fitzwilliam. He's worked out what I'm up to,
with very few hints at all.'

'How do you know?'

'Look at him. He was quiet, thinking, and now he's all
a-flutter. He's no idiot, Rokeby-Taylor, not like you.'

'Steady on, Tremaine. No need to be offensive.'

'No need, but it's a pleasure anyway.' Dr Tremaine
shook his head. 'For all the money I've given you,
Rokeby-Taylor, I haven't asked you for much. But you've
messed up just about everything I've tasked you with.'

'A run of bad luck, Tremaine, that was all.'

'I could have used the Rashid Stone to help with these
spells but you managed to mess up procuring that in a
way that I thought impossible. Even if your minions
failed to steal it, I was going to have access to it on board
the
Imperator
, but now it's disappeared.'

Aubrey should have known that Dr Tremaine would
have had some interest in the Rashid Stone. He was glad
he'd managed to put a stick in those spokes.

'That's hardly my fault,' Rokeby-Taylor said. He didn't
whine. Not quite.

'And then there was the
Electra
. You managed to get
yourself aboard, but because you insisted on using your
cheap magicians you nearly killed Sir Darius instead of
wrecking the boat in the deep water test it was due to
undertake on the very next day.'He glanced at Aubrey. 'I
suppose I should thank you for preventing that. Now
isn't the time for your father to be removed. That will
come later.'

Any trace of fear disappeared from Aubrey. It was
replaced with cold, hard anger. Tremaine's casual assumption
that he could play with the lives of those Aubrey
loved was a reminder of what the man was – a menace
that must be defeated.

Rokeby-Taylor made an attempt at dignity that fell
short by a league or two. 'Listen here, Tremaine, I was
nearly killed myself in that escapade. I risked my life
for you.'

'And what about the tunneller?' Dr Tremaine went on
remorselessly. He glanced sideways as a trail of sparks
fizzed along a chain and disappeared into the latticework.
'You had a few easy connectors to dig and you managed
to flood the old hydraulic tunnel. Then you made your
own railway line collapse. I couldn't believe it.'

'Could have happened to anyone. Who knew that
tunnel was still down there?'

'I did. You should have.' Dr Tremaine looked at Aubrey
for a moment, then he uttered a short, spiky spell.

Copper insects scuttled over Aubrey's face. His skin
crawled, but in seconds his jaw and mouth were free.

He worked it from side to side, testing it warily.

'What do you want?' he asked Tremaine.

'I want to know what conclusion you've reached.'

'Why?'

'I'd like to be surprised. I so rarely am.'

'You're going to turn the city into a monster.'

'Not the best choice of words, but I see what you're
thinking.'

'You're animating the city, using the tunnels, the
wires, the pipes as connectors, like veins, arteries and
nerves.'

'Yes, yes, like ligaments, sinews and tendons. And have
you ever noticed how a metaphor can actually reduce the
object of comparison? No? Very well, what will happen
next?'

'The city must have reached a critical level of connectivity
to facilitate this.'

'Yes, well, partly that's due to Rokeby-Taylor here.
His electricity generating plants have been important in
achieving this – as you put it – critical level of connectivity.'
Tremaine paused. 'I like that phrase.'

'So Rokeby-Taylor's responsible for this.'

'Don't be foolish. He does what I tell him.'

'Is that right, Rokeby-Taylor? Why?'

Rokeby-Taylor glanced at Dr Tremaine, who grinned.
'Go ahead. You can answer.'

Taylor wouldn't meet Aubrey's eye. 'Dr Tremaine has
offered me eternal life.'

Aubrey's eyes widened at the absurdity of the offer.
Eternal life wasn't something to be handed around like a
box of chocolates. Dr Tremaine's plans for eternal life for
himself involved long and meticulous planning, committing
a whole continent to war. 'Eternal life? I thought
you wanted money.'

'I do. Bucket loads of it. But what good is money if
you only have one lifetime to spend it?' He frowned, as
if it should have been obvious.

Aubrey sighed. Rokeby-Taylor's betrayal was for such
a petty motive. He wanted the good life, but he wanted
it to go on forever. Nothing elevated there, no appeal to
a philosophical ideal, just base and sordid greed.

'You see,' Dr Tremaine said,'Rokeby-Taylor here has
sold himself to me, in exchange for his heart's desire.
A simple transaction, with benefits to us both.'

'And disadvantages for Albion.'

'There you go again, taking a lofty view of what is
essentially a personal matter.'

'Personal matter? You'll turn Trinovant into a
monster and then . . .' Aubrey thought hard. Apart from
ruining the financial centre of the Empire, what else
would he do? 'Send it rampaging across the countryside
to destroy what? Our munitions factories? Shipyards?
Railways?'

Dr Tremaine waved this away. 'I'm sure I'll find some
use for a city-sized creature. Once I
have
a city-sized
monster.'

A flat, deadly voice came from Aubrey's left. 'You killed
my father. And you tried to kill Lady Rose.'

'Eh? Ah, Miss Hepworth. I thought I'd cancelled
that insect's work after it freed young Fitzwilliam.
Never mind.'

'You killed my father,' Caroline repeated, 'and you
tried to kill Lady Rose.'

'Now you're getting tedious,' Dr Tremaine said. 'I told
you about your father, and how unavoidable that was.
Lady Rose, though, that's another matter. I've found that
those Holmlander espionage agencies need something
to keep them busy, something to keep their noses out of
my business. A simple assassination or two is just the sort
of thing.'

'They failed,' Caroline said.

'Yes. Most of humanity is less competent than I am,
but I can't do everything. Now, I need to concentrate.'

This gave Aubrey some hope. Dr Tremaine could still
be stopped; he hadn't finished his work.

The magician snapped out a short spell and Aubrey
felt the hated copper insects crawling over his face.
Within seconds, they'd bound his mouth again. At
the same time, he saw insects shuttling across Caroline's
face. Despite her furious struggling, she, too, was
silenced.

He strained against the wires, desperately hoping the
insects had left some slack this time. The wire bit cruelly
into his cheeks and lips, but he didn't give up until blood
trickled from a cut on his upper lip.

In his desperation, he realised that this was a small
victory. He worked his neck, one of the few tiny movements
available to him. The cut opened. Blood smeared
on his skin. Ignoring the pain, he continued, working
away, straining a fraction of an inch this way, a fraction of
an inch back.

Until he felt the wires slip, lubricated by his own
blood.

Hope flared in him and he looked toward Dr
Tremaine. The sorcerer was locked into his cycle of
spells. His voice – vast and majestic – rolled around the
chamber and the pillar of flame responded, roaring
upward, swollen with power. Sparks crackled along
chains and cables, turning the latticework into a shadowy
fairyland. Pipes shook. Metal quivered with the force of
the magic it channelled.

And the latticework was alive with sound – low
whistling, a multitude of creakings and shiftings, a
humming just on the edge of perception.

Aubrey shifted, flinched, then thrust a little with his
chin. The bloody wires separated, freeing his mouth just
enough for him to articulate a spell. A very short, very
simple spell.

So I'll have to start small
.

It appealed to his sense of irony. Against prodigious
magic, he was forced to use a humble spell. But if it
worked, it would be a step toward foiling the destruction
of Trinovant. If he could find a spell to free his mouth
properly, he could then cast a more substantial spell – one
that could stop Dr Tremaine.

He recalled his flirtation with the violin at university.
Two days of dogged practice had left his fingertips sore
and tender, so his instructor had used a spell to harden
them. After this, he was able to press on the strings with
no problem at all, as if his fingertips were little blocks of
wood. The effects didn't last long, just for a practice
session, but that was all that was required. Naturally,
Aubrey had been intrigued by the spell. At the time, he
had sworn off magic – but he had played around with
some of the elements, in a strictly theoretical manner.

This time, though, he needed something harder than
wood – and it wasn't his fingertips he was hardening.
It was his tongue.

He constructed a spell sequence, adjusting the hardness
factor. He wanted the tip of his tongue to be as hard as
steel. As hard as diamond!

In the clanking, hissing world of the pipeworks,
Aubrey didn't think he could be heard, but he kept his
voice low in any case, barely above a whisper. Five short
terms then a clipped final signature and he was done.

Unsure if the spell had worked, he tapped his tongue
against his teeth and was reassured by the solid 'clink'
it made.

He went to work. The copper wire was no match for
his diamond-hard tongue. He sawed the edge against
them and, one by one, they parted. First on the left
side, then the right, and soon his whole mouth was
free. He cancelled the spell, stretched his mouth, and he
was ready.

Now he could do some serious magic, but he was
frozen by the sight that confronted him.

Even with a small audience, Dr Tremaine did not
neglect the dramatic. As his spells grew, rising in volume
and complexity, he thrust up a hand, summoning and
harnessing the power of the cold flame. It quivered in
response, and all the connectors vibrated with the power
it was pumping out to the edges of the city.

Rokeby-Taylor had backed away until he was pressed
against a huge, vertical pipe. His expression was one
of avidity and excitement, a man seeing his heart's
desire, but unwilling to believe it was so close. His hands
trembled even though he held them together.

Aubrey had time for one spell. Even though he could
work his mouth properly, he doubted that Dr Tremaine
or Rokeby-Taylor would allow him the luxury of a long,
uninterrupted casting, so something short and useful
would have to do.

His mind was awhirl with the possibilities, but what
could he do to combat Dr Tremaine's power, face to
face?

Then he realised he didn't have to meet him head-on.
Dr Tremaine had embarked on a careful series of interlaced
spells. His admonition to Rokeby-Taylor not to
interrupt him wasn't just an artist's petulance, it was vital.

If one component of the spell matrix was incomplete, the
whole program could fall apart.

All Aubrey had to do was break up his spell-casting,
but interrupting someone with such a focus, such an iron
will, was not going to be easy, however much magic
Aubrey had at his disposal.

So he turned the problem around. Not magic, antimagic.

The Rashid Stone, the mysterious Roman fragment,
his work on Ancient Languages, had all helped to
refine his understanding of the basic nature of magic –
and how language shaped it. Added to this, Rokeby-Taylor's magic suppressors showed that magic could
be damped, neutralised. All he had to do was work out
a way of achieving it here.

His mind seized on the rods inside the magic suppressors.
They vibrated. If they generated magic that was
equal to and opposite any magic performed in the area,
everything would be effectively cancelled out – much as
the sound-deadening magic that Aubrey had some
experience of, back at Stonelea School.

Aubrey grasped at this fundamental application of the
Law of Opposites. The difficulty was setting up the spell
so it had duration – and that it also adapted to cancel out
any magic within its range.

Feverishly, he plotted out the elements, the variables
and the constants. Striving for potency, he reached back
and used Sumerian, hoping that the primeval language
would have the simplicity needed for such a weighty
spell.

It was intricate. Aubrey had doubts about its effectiveness,
and the variable for dimensionality seemed to be
intimately linked with the intensity constant. It meant
he couldn't cast it very far away – it was an extremely
proximate, localised spell. He realised it explained the
restricted field generated by the suppressors, and how
carefully they had to be situated.

He could affect Dr Tremaine, but not the fountain of
animating flame.

It was enough – he hoped. If he could interrupt
Dr Tremaine, it should stop his careful spell-casting.

When he had it mapped in his mind, he ran through
it twice, then began.

Immediately, he faced a struggle.

What he was doing was fundamentally inconsistent.
He was casting a magical spell to negate magic. Each
syllable resisted him. He had to force his mouth to
make the correct shapes and spit them off his tongue.
His split lip flared with sharp, lancing pain at each
movement. Sweat sprang from his forehead and his jaw
ached with the effort of speaking each element. They
were heavy, dragging his lips downward so that he had
to compensate in his delivery. He felt as if he were being
strangled.