Keeping a friendly distance was the sensible thing to do, with their demanding studies and other commitments. Very rational, very sensible, and very, very difficult to endure when her presence was so intoxicating and frustrating. Sometimes he thought it would be better not to see Caroline at all. Then he’d be horrified by the prospect of not seeing her and he’d plunge back into his sea of indecision.
‘The ships!’ Her eyes were bright as they always were in times of high adventure. It was one of the things – one of the many things – that Aubrey adored about her. Her reaction to danger? Exhilaration! ‘What are you going to do about them?’
Another thing about Caroline. She had confidence in him – at least, where things magical were concerned.
‘We seem to be trapped!’ Aubrey did his best to sound as if this were of no real importance.
A large picnic basket tumbled past. Caroline looked heavenward, then frowned, then she looked at Aubrey again. ‘Why?’
Aubrey gaped at her. He’d been busy working on ‘How’ rather than ‘Why’. He assumed that ‘How’ would give him a way to counter the stormfleet, perhaps a way to escape. ‘Why’ had slipped his mind.
A wave of dust made him close his eyes. When he opened them again, the cruising battleships were still there, the destroyers were still there, the tending craft still trailing in the skywake of the larger ships. ‘Good question!’ he shouted.
Around them, couples in what had been their outdoor finery were tottering, arm in arm, uncertainly. Knots of burly young men were hunched over, as if they could batter their way through the elements.
‘You have a good answer?’ Caroline shouted, obviously deciding that succinct communication was the order of the day.
By now a few others were milling around Aubrey and Caroline, no doubt through some primitive notion of safety in numbers. All were bedraggled, fearful, unkempt, a far cry from the carefree picnickers who’d been enjoying a sunny afternoon.
Aubrey quickly sorted through his options, limited though they were. Motorcars obviously had no hope of battering through the storm curtain. Communication with the outside world was impossible. Sitting tight and waiting for rescue was the most sensible thing.
Aubrey was about to recommend as much to Caroline when he glanced upward. The underside of the cloudy warships glided high overhead like sharks. He squinted, then stared. Something was falling from the largest of the ships. At first, he thought it was an anchor, which set his mind racing as to the implications of a threatening spectral fleet anchored in the middle of Albion’s greatest university. Was it taking hostages? Trying to sabotage the nation’s intellectual efforts?
Then the shape resolved itself and bone-melting fear muscled its way into Aubrey’s consciousness. ‘Depth charge!’
Caroline whirled. ‘What?’
Aubrey threw caution to the winds – a simple task in the circumstances – and took her around the waist. Her eyes flew open wide and she automatically applied an agonising nerve hold to his elbow.
‘High explosive!’ Aubrey gasped. ‘Submersible killer!’
The brick wall of the pavilion was the nearest possible shelter. He was about to gallantly throw himself on top of her – with the sole intent of protecting her – when the blast struck. A familiar wave of magic battered at him and ripped at the fragile bond that held his body and soul together.
Blackness, dark and terrible, swept him away.
Two
‘Dashed poor timing, that storm. I was in good form,’ George said from where he was sitting at the foot of Aubrey’s bed. Outside, the college clock struck five.
Caroline was there too, sitting on a rickety wooden chair dragged from Aubrey’s desk, balancing a cup of tea on her knee. She hadn’t touched it for some time; Aubrey was sure it was cold.
Otto Kiefer was standing at the window. He alternated between looking at Aubrey with an expression of satisfaction, and glancing uneasily through the drawn curtains. Aubrey thought he couldn’t look more furtive if he’d tried.
Aubrey stretched and enjoyed the sensation. He realised he felt much better than he had any entitlement to. He ran a quick inner inspection and found no aches, no tender gums, no strained vision. A further check revealed that his body and soul were snugly united. Settled. As one. Which, again, was unexpected, given what he remembered.
He sat up and the room spun around him. He was perversely grateful and let himself sag again.
‘Be easy, now,’ Kiefer said. ‘You still need rest.’
‘It was a near thing,’ Caroline said. ‘If not for Otto, I don’t know what would have happened.’
Aubrey had a fair idea. He shuddered. Carefully, he lifted himself onto one elbow. ‘The stormfleet. What happened?’
‘The depth charge exploded with a great deal of noise,’ Caroline said. ‘Then the clouds opened, the rain nearly drowned everyone, and lightning struck the pavilion, but suddenly it all stopped.’
‘The clouds, the storm, everything just evaporated,’ George said.
Caroline nodded. ‘Everyone was dragging themselves away and George and Kiefer and I found you face-down in the mud.’
‘Ah.’
‘We thought you could tell us what all that was about,’ George said. ‘Rather dramatic as it was.’
Aubrey swallowed. ‘It was Dr Tremaine. I recognised his magic.’
He recalled his first magical encounter with the ex-Sorcerer Royal, when he’d inadvertently established a tenuous magical connection with the magician. It was unpredictable but at times it provided an intimate apprehension of the great sorcerer’s magic. Occasionally useful, he was profoundly disquieted by it and the implications– which he was sure he hadn’t fully determined.
Caroline stiffened. ‘Tremaine.’ She still had the ex-Sorcerer Royal fairly in her sights for causing the death of her father.
With his free hand, Aubrey patted himself to make sure he was unharmed. ‘I seem to attract his attention, for one reason or another.’
‘Nothing to do with foiling his plans more than once?’ George frowned. ‘I say. It’s beginning to sound like he has a vendetta against the Fitzwilliams, isn’t it? First he attempts something on your father, then your mother, and now you.’
Kiefer shook a fist. ‘Tremaine!’ he cried with such venom that everyone stared. ‘He must be stopped.’
‘You won’t find any argument about that here, old boy,’ George said after a moment’s embarrassed silence. ‘No Tremaine supporters in this room.’
‘I know, I know,’ Kiefer subsided. ‘That is why I wanted to find you, Fitzwilliam.’
‘I see,’ Aubrey said. Only one conclusion could be drawn. ‘What’s he done to you, Kiefer?’
Kiefer slumped, almost comically, until he was sitting cross-legged on the floor. He put his head in his hands. ‘He killed my father.’
Caroline gave an involuntary cry.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Aubrey paused in the face of Kiefer’s grief, but he needed to go on. ‘How did this happen?’
‘My father was a good man.’ Kiefer’s voice was muffled by his hands. ‘He went to work for Dr Tremaine. He was promised much by the government – money, position, even a title.’
‘Tremaine is a bad person to work with,’ George said. Caroline nodded sharply.
Kiefer lifted his head. His eyes were rimmed with tears. ‘My father was the finest industrial magician in Holmland. The finest.’
Aubrey was naturally tender-hearted; he hated to see suffering. Whatever had happened to Kiefer’s father was another score in the account against Dr Tremaine. ‘I know what it’s like to have a great father. It’s an honour and a burden.’
Kiefer nodded. ‘That is right. You understand, with a prime minister for a father.’