He stared at the creature with horror, until he became aware that Caroline was grasping him by the shoulder. ‘What is it?’ she whispered in his ear, concerned and urgent.
‘The creature.’ He stumbled over the words. He was having trouble with his tongue. ‘The thing.’
‘Slow down, Aubrey. Slow down. Breathe deeply.’
He did what he was told until his heart was calmer, merely thumping along instead of racing out of control.
‘Now.’ Caroline held his shoulders. ‘What have you found?’
‘We must go. We have to let them know.’
‘We will, don’t worry. But what have you found?’
Aubrey swallowed, took a deep, deep breath, and found what he hoped was his poise. ‘I know where the wounded soldiers have gone. Part of them, at least.’ He rapped the mechanical soldier on the head. ‘There’s a human brain in here.’
Aubrey explained, in tight, clipped sentences, what he’d found. The more he used dispassionate language, the more he was able to control his horror. Caroline was appalled, but her revulsion quickly turned to anger. ‘What can we do?’
‘We must get back to George and Sophie.’
‘But these creatures, the havoc they will create.’ She swallowed. ‘I can’t help thinking of the poor people, trapped inside all that metal.’
‘I don’t think they’re aware of their plight. Dr Tremaine has used the brain as a component, a superb component, to control the rest of the creature. It’s extraordinary.’
Caroline narrowed her eyes. ‘You almost sound as if you admire him.’
‘I do?’ Aubrey reflected, and to his horror he realised that he had been verging on admiration for the man and his creation. The breathtaking daring of such a thing...
Don’t be ridiculous, he thought. The man is a villain. An unprincipled, arrogant villain.
‘I have an idea,’ he said, finally. ‘I may have a way to stop these creatures.’
‘That’s better. Something involving large explosions, I hope.’
‘Something more subtle than that. I need to get to the brass cylinders again. The enhanced coal.’
Caroline didn’t argue, which was perhaps a measure of her profound shock. She found one of the ways connecting the warehouse and the factory – and also found two white coats. These donned, Aubrey hoped, would give anyone at least a moment’s pause before suspecting them outright. He knew that in a single moment, Caroline could achieve wonders of mayhem. He could brandish his pistol, too, given enough time.
It made them a formidable pair and he hoped anyone encountering them would realise it.
The factory was subdued, not the overwhelmingly noisy place of earlier in the day, but it wasn’t silent. Hoists were moving and at least one conveyor belt was in action. Electricity flashed and hissed. The personnel on duty were absorbed in tasks or dozing, which made their passage remarkably easy.
The door to the stone chamber was closed this time, and Aubrey cursed as they studied it from their hiding place in a tangle of pipes that emerged from the wall nearby.
‘I can get us in,’ Caroline said.
‘But what about whoever’s inside?’
‘No-one’s inside. Look closely: two locks, one in the door, and a padlock looped around the handle and through the eyebolt in the wall. You can’t lock yourself inside like that.’
‘But someone on the outside could lock you in.’
‘Aubrey, it’s a matter of weighing up the odds. We’re taking a risk just being here, but the odds of someone being locked in a bunker are low, if you think about it.’
‘Right. I’ll keep watch while you go to work.’
He didn’t have to watch for long. Caroline approached the door confidently in her white coat. The padlock went quickly. The lock in the door was more complex, to judge by her frowning, but soon it yielded.
Caroline didn’t look back toward Aubrey’s hiding place. She briskly stepped inside and left the door ajar.
Aubrey waited until he counted sixty, slowly. Then he scanned the surroundings, climbed out of the pipes, crossed to the stone chamber and slipped inside.
Caroline was crouching over the manhole, which she’d opened. ‘I assume,’ she said after glancing over her shoulder, ‘that your plan involves destroying these transportation cylinders so the mechanical soldiers can’t be refuelled.’
Aubrey couldn’t answer for a moment. The magic that poured from the pit in the floor was staggering. It spewed from the open mouth like a fountain.
He came to the pit and leaned close, squinting. His ordinary senses told him that it was simply thousands of small black balls. His magical senses, however, were assaulted by the web of spells that was embedded in the orbs of enhanced coal. Tartan patterns played on his skin. He heard colours – red, silver, black. His mouth was full of music, discordant and loud.
‘If we destroy the cylinders...’ Aubrey shook his head in an effort to clear it. ‘They can make more. It’s not an answer.’
Caroline straightened. She took one of the cylinders from the rack and unscrewed the top. Inside, Aubrey was intrigued to see that it was packed with loose, spun material. Rock-wool?
She put the open cylinder on the floor, then took another from the rack. ‘It may not be an answer, but it’s a start.’
With that, she used one cylinder to hammer the other, destroying the thread and making it impossible to close. The chamber rang. ‘Unless you’re thinking of using that enhanced coal to blow up this place, this may be the best we can do.’
Aubrey looked at the hundreds of cylinders. He thought of George’s helpful deadline and knew it would take too long to batter each one of the cylinders so that they’d be unusable. ‘I have a better idea.’ He knelt and peered into the pit again. ‘If this place is the source and repository for enhanced coal, then we could have a chance here.’
‘I hope it’s a chance that we can take quickly. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.’
An idea had been nudging Aubrey, demanding his attention; he finally yielded and gave it his full attention. He realised that a number of considerations had come together without his really thinking about it. The unexploded spell in the Gallian embassy had contributed, as had the attempt to stop the symposium in Fisherberg, but his cogitations had gone back further than that, drawing on every encounter with spell compression and interaction.
He wanted to construct a tiny spell, one that was hard to notice – but one that had the ability to reproduce itself. A spawning spell.
Aubrey was convinced that such a thing was possible, even though he’d never heard of it being done. The Law of Constituent Parts, the Law of Essence, the Law of Seeming, the Law of Origins, the Law of Separation and dozens more all danced about the concept of identity and being. If he could bring them together with derivatives of the Law of Similarity and an application of the Law of Contiguity, then he could have something. One half of the spell would be the infectious factor, the other would be the part that would do the damage.
He wanted to infect the enhanced coal so that pieces in proximity would pass on the spell to each other. Any new enhanced coal in this pit would be infected by the rest. Any enhanced coal taken elsewhere would spread the infection.
The damaging part? He rubbed his hands together. A tiny, imperceptible spell that would lie dormant until triggered.
Aubrey considered the trigger and decided that a thermal point would be best. Nothing too early, or else the spell may be detected. No, it had to be when the mechanical soldiers were marching into battle, steaming at their most furious.
Then the spell would spring into action.