If she gave it to him.
Aubrey cast the spell with no hesitation, keeping his voice low, with George keeping a discreet look-out. With the busyness about them, however, no-one wasted any time on wondering what two perfectly ordinary lieutenants were up to. Too many other things to do.
As soon as Aubrey completed the spell, he closed his hand on the ring, and was rewarded by feeling its tugging. ‘She’s in here.’
The sound of a thousand motorcars being pushed off a tall building made them both jump, and before they were quite settled it happened again. Two white coats wandered past, shouting at each other about reducing valves, oblivious to the hideous noise.
‘I see,’ George said, shrugging. ‘If she’s in here – with Caroline, I hope – how are we going to get her out?’
‘By getting everyone else out first.’ Aubrey took two steps to the red box on the wall. He seized the hand crank, agreed with the sign that this was an emergency, and wound it for all he was worth.
It was a very good siren. It had to be, Aubrey supposed, to cut through the noise that owned the place. Aubrey’s cranking was picked up and amplified through some neat magic, and a banshee howl sprang out of the speaker horns high on the walls. The alarm didn’t just cut through, it sliced the factory noise to pieces and then danced on the shreds. It had an edge to it that you could shave with, as long as you didn’t mind its teeth-jarring, bone-numbing quality.
Aubrey clapped his hands to his ears and stopped cranking, but the siren didn’t diminish. It rose, echoing across the factory floor and sending workers running for the exits.
‘Well drilled!’ Aubrey shouted.
George had his hands over his ears. His face was screwed up. ‘Like my head!’
‘We won’t have long!’ Aubrey signalled, and George followed. They had to push through the soldiers and white coats who were headed in the other direction, but Aubrey found that a well-wielded toolbox at kneecap level was a wonderful path clearer.
They worked their way past benches where soldiers had flung down tools. Lathes and punches were still whirring, shaping brass and steel. Waves of heat came from industrial ovens they passed. The far end of the building was taken up with huge machines that nearly reached the roof, but iron pillars and great brick chimneys made it hard to see their purpose.
Whitecoats and soldiers fled the factory with an alacrity that suggested they’d experienced an unpleasant state of affairs or two in recent times. It didn’t take long before Aubrey and George gazed about, alone, while the siren wailed away, echoing madly.
George flinched. ‘Can you do anything about that noise?’
Aubrey sympathised. His head felt as if it were being rasped out from the inside. He studied the fire alarm and thought of the work he’d done back at Stonelea School on amplifying voices in Clough Hall via an inverted application of the Law of Attenuation. If he could just add to that...
He cranked the handle. He spoke some careful Akkadian. The siren rose in pitch, then swallowed itself in a pained, electrical squawk.
The silence was wonderful. They pushed into the factory, looking for Caroline and Sophie.
The immense factory floor was divided into sections, with conveyor belts and chutes running between them. Some parts were obvious in their function, with banks of lathes and metal-working machinery indicating light engineering works, but other parts were less apparent. Those stone walls in the rear corner, for instance, didn’t match the rest of the architecture. Two walls making a small room which was separate from the factory floor? It looked as if it were an addition, and a secure addition to judge from the heavy brass door – which had been left ajar by whoever had been inside when the sirens went off.
A secure facility within a secure facility that was making something useful to the Holmland military. Aubrey considered exactly how difficult it would be for him to ignore the open door, and it actually made him dizzy.
Of course I’m going to investigate, he thought. It would be wrong not to.
George followed him, avoiding the belts and chains that hung from the walkways.
Aubrey raised an eyebrow at how thick the walls of the secure chamber were. Double walls made of large stone blocks, reinforced with steel bars. Whatever was in here was extremely valuable.
Or extremely dangerous, a small voice at the back of his mind said. He stopped at the entrance. A dusty, oily smell came to him, and it brought to mind trains and locomotives, but this smell was sharper. Carefully, he reached around and fumbled for an electric light.
Racks. The entire chamber was lined with wooden racks. Resting in the racks, in separate concave niches, were hundreds of metal cylinders about the length of his forearm and four or five inches in diameter.
In the centre of the room was a manhole. A large brass cover over a circular hole in the wooden floor. It was locked with a heavy padlock, brass again.
George, leaning over his shoulder, frowned. ‘Why brass?’
It hadn’t occurred to Aubrey, but once George had thrown up the question, it intrigued him. Surely steel would have been cheaper and quicker to machine. ‘It looks good?’
George eased Aubrey aside and stepped into the chamber. He picked up one of the cylinders. ‘They’re light.’ He tilted it from side to side, then shook it. ‘Empty.’
Brass. Aubrey had it on the tip of his tongue. Something about brass. ‘What’s brass used for?’
‘Musical instruments. It has a lovely tone.’ George placed the cylinder back in the rack, and Aubrey realised he was relieved he had. ‘Some plumbing fittings, things you don’t want to rust.’
Aubrey examined the room. Featureless, apart from the electric light, the manhole and the racks of cylinders. The floor was wooden, which was interesting, as the walls and the ceiling were made of stone. ‘Anything else?’
‘Lots of things, old man. Brass is jolly useful. It doesn’t spark, for instance.’
The hairs on the back of Aubrey’s neck rose. ‘Step outside, George. Carefully. And don’t knock any of those cylinders.’
George heard Aubrey’s tone of voice, and he was out of the chamber in a flash. ‘Are they dangerous?’
‘No. But they’re stored in a double stone-walled, reinforced chamber. With a wooden floor, just in case they’re dropped. And they’re made of brass, so as not to cause sparks. I’d say that someone is taking precautions against explosions, wouldn’t you?’
George paled. ‘I gave one of them a good shaking.’
‘It was empty, you said.’ Empty. Waiting to be filled with something?
‘So it seemed. Famous last words, “I’m sure it’s empty.”’ George snorted, then he pointed. ‘Are those machines the same as the one you commandeered from Fisherberg?’
Aubrey turned. ‘Golem makers.’
Twenty-six
Racks of pipe fittings separated them from the large, blocky machines that George had spotted. They had to step over discarded implements, dropped in the haste to escape the imaginary fire. Aubrey didn’t blame the workers. Factory fires had caused huge loss of life in Albion and around the world where factory owners put profits ahead of safety. Crowding workers into poorly ventilated, appallingly lit facilities was only the start. Add highly inflammable materials and the lack of easy exit, and the results were nearly always disastrous. Aubrey had heard of workers trapped by flames choosing to leap from tall buildings, rather than waiting for a fiery end.