Dr Tremaine gave that some thought, then shrugged. ‘Why haven’t you removed him?’
‘A moment’s entertainment,’ she said, ‘but now you’re here.’ She raised the pistol again. Aubrey shuffled to the left, then the right. ‘Stand still,’ she ordered.
‘I think not.’
‘Very well then. A moving target is the sort of challenge I enjoy.’
Aubrey was prepared to admit that beauty came in many forms. A well-proportioned building, for instance, was beautiful, as was the countryside on a spring day. A flower could be beautiful, if it were the right sort. Caroline Hepworth was undoubtedly beautiful, in any circumstances.
He’d never considered an act of mayhem beautiful, but when George Doyle swung down from the heights on the end of a silk rope, bowling both Sylvia and Dr Tremaine from their feet, it was beauty of such an exalted kind that he wanted to weep, or cheer, or both.
Sylvia was thrown up against the base of a pillar, her pistol spinning along the marble floor. She lay motionless. Dr Tremaine rolled and was on his feet in an instant, just in time to encounter a second act of beauty, one that transcended the first in the same way that an angel transcends the lowest pig in the sty.
George Doyle was ready for the rogue sorcerer. With every sinew and every muscle working perfectly, George delivered an uppercut that began somewhere around ankle level and accelerated until it struck Dr Tremaine on the point of the chin with enough force to lift the rogue sorcerer’s feet off the ground. His eyes rolled and he fell backward, toppling to the floor like a tree. He, too, didn’t move.
Aubrey had never seen Dr Tremaine even inconvenienced by their attempts to assault him but the unexpectedness and the perfection of George’s assault had slipped under his guard. Aubrey went to applaud. George grimaced and shoved his hand under his armpit. ‘What are you waiting for, old man? Do something magical!’
The booming of a shot made both Aubrey and George duck. Aubrey whirled to see Sylvia staring at her pistol again before Caroline sprang on her from behind the column. Caroline wrenched the pistol from Sylvia’s hand and flung her aside with a blinding shift of weight and a flurry of arms. ‘Hurry, Aubrey!’ she cried.
Hunching his shoulders, and calling himself craven for running away from helping his friends, he ran for the pillars. Another report echoed, from Caroline’s pistol this time as she spared a moment from grappling with Sylvia to snap off a shot. All Dr Tremaine did, as he shook his head and climbed to his feet after George’s magnificent blow, was to irritably slap the bullet out of the air. It struck the base of the nearby column hard enough to take a sizeable chunk out of it, but Dr Tremaine showed no signs of hurt.
So much for the magical projectile, Aubrey thought. It’s time for the other plan.
Aubrey liked to think he was no fool. For too long, he’d seen Dr Tremaine’s mode of operation. Plots within plots, parallel schemes running alongside fallback plans, feints masking important subsidiary operations, all the complex weavings of a master strategist. Along with these observations, he’d had the words of the Scholar Tan to guide him: Plans are like birthdays. One is good, many is better.
Aubrey had learned.
While he’d had great hopes for his magical projectile, he’d been careful to have a number of alternative plans in case of failure. With the renewed vigour of the magical connection, one of his alternatives had leaped up and insisted on being used.
He dived, sliding on his stomach between two columns. He skidded a few feet past the bases and came up against a grey wall of nothingness.
Aubrey lifted his head, tilting it back and staring at the featureless barrier. His ordinary senses told him that it was smooth to the touch, almost slick. It had a sheen that shifted subtly. His magical senses told him that it was alive with unshaped magical potential.
He’d seen it before. It was the same material that underlay the refuge that had kept the unwell Sylvia Tremaine safe, the prison inside the Tremaine Pearl. This was the stuff Dr Tremaine bent to his will to create mazes, sanctuaries, and this impossible construction inside a battleship. It was magic, waiting to be shaped.
He shot to his feet. As much as he’d like to investigate this material further, he had more important work to do. If he wanted to help his friends, he had to do it quickly.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he did his best to convert the yell of fright into a battle cry. He did, however, seize the arm attached to the hand and wrench it around, but when he did so, he realised that Sophie must have been taking some lessons from Caroline, for with three quick movements, she jabbed him in the armpit, causing him to gasp with pain, twisted his elbow, causing him to loosen his grip, and bent his wrist, causing him to repeat his initial gasp with an extra layer of agony.
Sophie let go and put both hands to her mouth. ‘Oh, Aubrey.’ Her Gallian accent was stronger in her distress; Aubrey would normally have found it charming, but pain interfered with his appreciation.
‘Sophie,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I cast a spell,’ Sophie said. ‘We seem to be not where we are.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
She waved a hand, distressed, groping for the words. ‘Displaced. We are displaced. A few feet. They miss when they aim at us.’
‘Splendid.’ Aubrey now understood why Sylvia had failed to shoot him. ‘You have your pistol? Watch over me while I do some magic, will you?’
She smiled bravely. ‘I shall,’ she said, then her mouth formed a O and her eyes went wide. Immediately, she had her pistol in both hands and fired three shots in rapid succession, carefully bringing the revolver back into position after each round.
Aubrey whirled, and cried out at what he saw.
Sylvia had backed away to the perimeter and was leaning against one of the great marble bases. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. She glared at George and Caroline, who were standing, shoulder to shoulder, pistols in hand, but instead of firing at Dr Tremaine – who was fifty feet away, ignoring them and stalking toward the window in the middle of the floor – all their attention was on the target of Sophie’s well-aimed shots.
A towering mechanical figure had clanked out from the greyness behind the pillars. It stood close to Sylvia, towering over her protectively, red eyes glowing, balefully taking in the scene. She glanced up at it and pointed at George and Caroline. The gesture was curt and dismissive, the way someone would ask a servant to get rid of an unappetising dish left on a sideboard.
Even though Aubrey knew that assumptions were dangerous where Dr Tremaine was concerned, he’d thought that his spells had ruined all of the ghastly mechanical golem hybrids. If Sylvia Tremaine were in need of a bodyguard, however, she couldn’t ask for better.
This creature was slightly larger than those he’d seen at Baron von Grolman’s factory in Stalsfrieden. It was fully twenty feet tall and it moved with well-oiled grace. The open armature on its limbs showed the extraordinary blending of clay and metal that marked Dr Tremaine’s hideous innovation, and Aubrey wasn’t surprised that in this giant prince of golem hybrids the copper wire had been replaced by shining silver.
Red eyes fastened on Aubrey’s friends. The short chimney stack over its left shoulder blasted a jet of black smoke and it bounded toward them.
Sophie fired her last shot, reloaded, then sent all five rounds hammering into the golem’s back. Six rounds from both Caroline and George chased the echoes of Sophie’s shots around the dome but the golem wasn’t inconvenienced at all. It advanced on George and Caroline, who had wisely separated as they shot. Footfalls booming on the marble, it took a huge swipe at George, who ducked and rolled away, but he needn’t have bothered. Thanks to Sophie’s displacement spell, the creature’s massive fist missed by a good few yards, leaving George unharmed and decidedly perplexed. He lay on his stomach and sought for a vulnerable spot, then gave up and simply blasted away at the creature.