Aubrey shook his head impatiently and started pacing as excitement bubbled inside him. ‘No, it’s not that. I can still feel them, but this is different.’ He stopped. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘It’s him.’
Caroline’s hands curled slowly into fists. ‘Tremaine?’
‘Yes. I can feel him.’ Aubrey ground his teeth. His first certainty was fading. Could it be the magic he’d been performing with the mannikins, leaving him sensitive to other connections?
‘Where is he?’ Caroline said.
She was sitting upright and doing her best to remain calm, but her burning hatred for Dr Tremaine had never diminished. Her eyes were bright and hard as her desire for revenge on the man who killed her father.
Aubrey couldn’t refuse her. ‘He’s in the factory. His presence is ... everywhere.’
‘Why? I thought you said the whole idea of the clay and the machinery was so he could go about his evil ways elsewhere, while others finished the golem work.’
‘You’re asking me to divine Dr Tremaine’s thoughts?’
Caroline nodded sharply, acknowledging Aubrey’s point. ‘So how are we going to get in there?’
‘Into the factory?’ That wasn’t the plan. Reconnoitre, observe, then report, that was the plan. When Aubrey’s mannikins came back he was sure he’d have enough information to satisfy the Directorate. Any action after that would be up to the planning bigwigs.
‘We can’t walk away.’ Caroline stood and crossed her arms, hands clutching elbows. ‘He’s here, we’re here, and we have allies. It’s a good chance to strike a blow against Holmland. Imagine if we can remove him.’ Aubrey wisely didn’t question Caroline on exactly what that meant. ‘Holmland would be thrown into disarray. We could stop the war before it really starts.’
Quibbling with Caroline when she was in this mood was a delicate affair. He doubted, for instance, that she’d appreciate it if he pointed out that the relatives of the soldiers and civilians already killed in the Low Countries would be convinced that the war had started. ‘Taking him would certainly thwart his plans.’
‘Oh yes,’ Caroline said softly. ‘It would do that.’
Aubrey wondered if he would be the same if the situations were reversed. When his father had been abducted by Dr Tremaine, he had been outraged at the affront. He’d rushed to do something to get back at the man, but his anger had cooled once his father had been rescued. His attitude to Dr Tremaine after that was shifting, not quite fixed. The rogue sorcerer’s gusto and utter self-confidence had undeniable appeal. He was never struck by the self-doubt that crept up on Aubrey when he least needed it.
What a gift to go through life undisturbed by such nigglings, he thought. How clear everything must seem.
But Dr Tremaine was without conscience, in a way that was shuddersome. Aubrey had wondered whether the man was truly human, so unconcerned was he for other people. When he disposed of them, it wasn’t with cruelty, or spite, it was with a casual lack of regard. Aubrey doubted if he could remember the names of any of them.
Through their magical connection, Aubrey knew how deeply this attitude ran. It wasn’t a pose. It wasn’t a guise. He simply had no sympathy with other people on any level at all.
Aubrey shivered at the contemplation of such a condition. Was such a person actually human? Anyone who had so little connection – and there was that word again – was frightening. It meant he was capable of anything, and would feel as little concern about sending hundreds of thousands to their deaths as he would demolishing a potting shed.
Aubrey could admire the wide-reaching intellect of Dr Tremaine, but he could never admire the man. He was dangerous on a level that was beyond any other single person. Even the leaders of nations were pawns in his cosmic game.
Caroline hated Dr Tremaine for a simple reason: he had killed her father. Sometimes a simple response was enough.
‘Let’s wait until we have more information,’ he said, hating both how priggish and how feeble that sounded. ‘If Dr Tremaine is in the factory, we can report, wait for reinforcements, then move on him. We can round up Sophie’s brother then, too.’
‘More information,’ Caroline murmured. ‘Yes, that’s standard procedure, isn’t it?’
‘The mannikins shouldn’t be long, I’m sure. Then we can decide.’
She patted him on the arm. ‘You’re right, Aubrey. Now, where are George and Sophie? Perhaps we could see about some breakfast.’
Aubrey realised, then, that dawn was breaking. His eyes were gritty. He yawned. ‘I might see about catching an hour of sleep, first, if that’s all right.’
‘By all means.’
Caroline patted his arm again, looking thoughtful and rumpled in a way that made Aubrey’s heart nudge his breast bone. She wandered out through the kitchen door and into the farm yard, touched gold and pink in the dawn.
Twenty-five
The next morning, he discovered what ‘bone weary’ truly meant. It wasn’t just his muscles that were complaining, every single part of his skeleton was picketing for a nice, long holiday. Hunched over, he limped to the kitchen to find that the mannikins were waiting for him. He groaned as they bounced about at his presence.
He desperately wanted to sit down for a moment to gather himself, with a cup of tea as a restorative, but mannikins didn’t last forever. The animating spells for such low-level golems had a duration determined by the clay. With time and movement, the creatures simply wore out, their joints fraying and failing. Overcoming these problems was one of the main challenges of creating and maintaining the higher order golems – a Dr Tremaine speciality.
Von Stralick climbed out of the trapdoor to the basement. He was dressed in what looked like army khakis, but with no emblems or insignia. ‘Ah, little dolls.’
‘Mannikins.’
‘How quaint. Mannikins. I hope they have news for us. Did you see that the factory is busy this morning? Producing more spell muck for us to clean up, no doubt.’
‘It’s probably because Dr Tremaine is managing the operation.’
Von Stralick’s easy demeanour disappeared. ‘Dr Tremaine?’ he said harshly. ‘He is here?’
‘I can sense him.’
Von Stralick scowled in the direction of the factory. ‘We thought he was elsewhere.’
‘He has a habit of getting about unobtrusively.’
‘This ... this changes the situation.’ Von Stralick cast another glance toward the factory, tugged at the hair covering his missing ear. ‘What is he doing there?’ he wondered, and he raised an eyebrow. ‘Ask your dolls. What have they seen?’
Aubrey felt a fool, crouched in the kitchen of a Holmland farmhouse communing with a squad of four-inch-tall clay people while a collection of assorted magicians from around the world stood guard, but he decided it would make a nice episode in his memoirs.
Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, he liked the idea of writing his memoirs. Not because he desperately wanted people to read about his life, but because if he wrote them it meant that he’d lived through whatever dangerous predicament he was currently in.
The reporting back was on the same sort of level as the little golems themselves. It wasn’t a detailed military report complete with diagrams and troop numbers. It was more an impression of what each mannikin experienced. As a result, it took some time for them to work through their recollections, and it took Aubrey more time to sift through the dross to find nuggets.
As he worked through the mannikins he became more and more concerned. Each one recounted the same experience from different vantage points (under benches, in rafters, in between banks of shadowy machinery) and they affirmed what he’d guessed at.