Dr Tremaine walked behind them, issuing instructions, ‘Left here’ or ‘Straight ahead’, when they came to intersecting corridors. This part of the complex was obviously residential, for the baron and his people, with some administrative function, and it was quieter than the manufacturing section, so Aubrey was able to hear a strange, unfamiliar noise. Aubrey frowned as Dr Tremaine nudged them through a doorway and through the gardens, past the concrete giraffe and back into the factory, and then his eyes widened.
Dr Tremaine was whistling.
It was soft, but the rogue sorcerer was whistling as he went. He accompanied it by tapping his cane on handy iron stanchions, columns and balustrades while he herded them up stairs and along walkways to a control room overlooking the factory floor.
Dr Tremaine was a virtuoso whistler, Aubrey realised, but it didn’t surprise him. As well as being an unparalleled magical genius, the man was a concert standard baritone, a sculptor whose miniatures were much sought after, and a bare-knuckle fighter banned from competition for being entirely too good, and they were only a few of his accomplishments.
He was whistling a chorus from Ivey and Wetherall’s Major Majority, the musical farce that was all the rage in Trinovant since its premiere two months ago.
Aubrey stared. Two months ago? Then how did Dr Tremaine come to hear it?
The control room could have been an office for a minor clerk or bookkeeper. It was cramped, with pigeon holes and key hooks taking up the wall opposite the entrance, and it smelled of dust and paper. Three telephones were lined up on the long bench under the window. The wall that overlooked the factory floor was entirely made of glass.
Dr Tremaine gazed outward, admiring his handiwork, then he gestured at the two wooden chairs while he leaned against the empty peg board that was the back wall.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘it goes like this. I’m going to remove your gag so you can respond. But first.’
Dr Tremaine struck his cane on the floor, hard, then twisted it. The head separated, and he was holding a sword. ‘Not magic, just good craftsmanship,’ he said, running a finger along the flat of the blade. He held the point just under Aubrey’s chin, tickling his Adam’s apple.
‘Don’t imagine you can spit out a spell faster than I can wield this beauty. And don’t think that my wrist will be bound to grow weary and the point will drop for a moment into which you can cast a spell you’re no doubt preparing.’
Aubrey went to shake his head, thought better of it, went to nod, thought better of it, then swallowed, and regretted it as his skin feathered against the steel.
Dr Tremaine smiled broadly and released the gag with his other hand. The sword stayed steady.
‘What do you want?’ Aubrey croaked. He wanted to spit out rope fibres, but he stopped himself.
‘Aubrey,’ Caroline said.
‘Let him speak,’ Dr Tremaine said. ‘I have some time, and I find that amusement is in short supply when I’m surrounded by Holmlanders.’
‘I’m not here to amuse you,’ Aubrey said. ‘I’m here because I’m a nuisance to you.’
Dr Tremaine sighed. ‘You disappoint me – which, by the way, is generally not a good thing to do. You’ve made the same mistake that many people do. They imagine that I’m actually interested in them and their little lives. It gives them a sense of self-importance, I gather, to think that Dr Tremaine, the most feared man in the world, is concerned about them.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘Only in the same way that I’m concerned about the moth that’s flitting about the electric light.’
‘What moth?’
Dr Tremaine gestured. A bright flash, and a tiny, ashy shape fell to the table.
‘That moth.’
Aubrey swallowed again, and felt the tip of the sword. ‘Neatly done, if a little showy.’
‘Ah. Everyone’s a critic.’
Aubrey bridled. ‘You say you’re not worried about me? Then what about the stormfleet? And when you turned me into a mindless assassin?’
‘Those? I’d almost forgotten them. Minor stuff, designed to inconvenience you and thereby inconvenience the Albion Prime Minister.’ He wagged a finger. ‘You see yourself as important. I see you as a tiny part of my plans, an infinitesimal tooth on a minute gear in one ordinary corner of the vast, interlocking and magnificent machine that I have built to serve my ends.’
‘Your quest for immortality. A small quest for someone so ambitious.’
‘I have no ambitions. I simply have so much to do that one life is too absurdly short. Which leads me to what I want from you.’
Aubrey opened his mouth to point out that this could be seen as contradictory, his being both nugatory and useful at once, but decided that since Dr Tremaine had the better of him, it might not be a good time to go down that path. ‘Go on.’
‘You’re aware of this connection we have, of course.’
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
‘I’m not interested in whose fault it was. I’ve spent some time analysing it and it looks as if it was a freak accident, a blending of our magics at a time when we were both vulnerable.’ He laughed. ‘Imagine that. For an instant, I was actually vulnerable – and all that happened is that I have this flimsy connection with you.’
‘It’s erratic,’ Aubrey ventured.
‘I know. Erratic, ghostly, unreliable, but mildly interesting nonetheless. In some circumstances, I can sense your presence. Not from any distance, but it has proved useful. I knew you were lurking about, for instance.’
‘You didn’t come looking for me?’
‘Looking for you? I left you to the baron. I knew you’d trip yourself up in time.’ He chuckled, and Aubrey thought it was a measure of the man that one minute he was making offhand death threats, and the next he was enjoying a joke.
‘So you want to destroy the connection,’ Aubrey said.
Dr Tremaine started, but the tip of the blade at Aubrey’s throat didn’t move. ‘That’s not it at all. I want to study it and reproduce it because I want to connect with Sylvia.’
Sylvia. Dr Tremaine’s much-loved sister, the only one in the world he cared for. Aubrey and Caroline had encountered Sylvia in a coma, induced by Dr Tremaine in an effort to preserve her life from the terminal illness that had been wracking her.
‘She’s here?’ Aubrey asked.
‘She’s somewhere delightful, somewhere of her own choosing. Cured now, of course.’
That, in part, had been Aubrey’s doing. Not that he looked for any thanks. ‘So you want to connect so you can monitor her.’
‘Monitor? I want to be sure she is safe. I want to take the feeble thing you produced and improve it so I know all about her at all times.’
Aubrey wondered if Dr Tremaine had bothered to ask his sister if this is what she wanted. He saw that the same thought had occurred to Caroline. ‘And what will happen to her once you’re immortal?’ Caroline asked him. ‘You’ll be leaving her behind.’
Dr Tremaine shook his head. ‘That’s the beauty of my machine for the future. It can change, it can be adapted, it can have bright new components bolted on. In this case, once I had recovered Sylvia, it meant that she, too, would need the Ritual of the Way performed.’
Aubrey went cold. ‘So that means your blood sacrifice will need to be doubled.’
‘That’s right, yes.’ Dr Tremaine withdrew the sword, but before Aubrey could react he flipped it to his left hand and then it was back at his throat. ‘Practice, practice, practice. Just being good isn’t enough, you know?’
‘Stop,’ Caroline said, half rising from her chair before a cock of Dr Tremaine’s head toward Aubrey stilled her. ‘You’ve just said you want hundreds of thousands more people to die. Just to fuel your personal aims.’