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 the 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.