Aubrey was interested, despite wanting to find Bertie as soon as possible. The Chancellor’s obvious evasiveness was ominous. ‘You have good equipment?’
‘The best.’ The Elektor smiled wryly. ‘Many of our companies give it to me. They think it a good way to ensure support from the government.’
Aubrey was about to query this when the Elektor stopped at a solid iron door. ‘My laboratory is through here. I had it built attached to the east wing.’ He shrugged. ‘I never liked the east wing.’
Aubrey wrinkled his nose. The smell of ozone was creeping from under the door. Electrical experimentation, at the very least, was going on in there. ‘Best to wait here,’ he said to the Elektor. ‘With your guards. Just in case the intruder is inside.’
The Elektor looked thoughtful. ‘In that case, you should have the guards.’
Caroline stepped forward. Her pistol gleamed in the gaslight. ‘We’re well equipped, as well, your highness.’
The Elektor’s eyes went wide. He looked from Caroline to the pistol and back again. He swallowed. ‘I believe you are,’ he said faintly.
The door opened onto a short flight of stairs that were poorly lit by a single electric bulb. Aubrey led the way. Immediately, he was grateful, because Caroline put her hand on his shoulder and followed close behind. George’s heavy footsteps echoed as he brought up the rear.
The stairs took them into a chamber that was larger than Aubrey had expected. Chains hung from the rafters a good twenty feet overhead. Electric cables snaked through them and carbon lamps hung from them like exotic fruit, but they couldn’t dispel the shadows that hung in the corners of the vast space.
Large cabinets took up most of the room between work benches that were laden with glass and metalwork. The cabinets were heavy industrial make and all of them had thick electrical cables connected to them – sometimes more than one. A low, unsettling hum shook the whole laboratory, a sound Aubrey could feel in his bones.
He paused, frowning. Short, sharp bursts of magic came to him from the installations on the other side of the laboratory and Aubrey was immediately alert. This was powerful magic that slid over his exposed skin – the back of his hands, his face – with a raw bitterness that made him hiss with disgust.
This sort of magic wasn’t the tinkering of an amateur. It was directed, intricate magic, with a flavour he knew too well.
Caroline looked at him. He grimaced. ‘Magic,’ he whispered. ‘Tremaine.’ She narrowed her eyes. Aubrey pointed in the direction it came from. George nodded, then eased to the left along the wall, peering ahead. They followed his broad back as they crept through the clutter of the laboratory, the noise of their passage masked by the sudden eruption of electrical arcing. Bright light sparked and jumped, making the shadows wheel and swoop overhead – and making them hurry.
They rounded a large cabinet that hummed as they passed, and more brilliant white light crackled. Aubrey had to throw up a hand to protect his eyes. When he brought it down, purple spots danced in his vision, but that wasn’t what worried him most. He worked his mouth, trying to dislodge the sound of metal being rubbed together. As he rubbed his ears and tried not to hear colours, George tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the right, then hurried off, bent nearly double to take advantage of the cover provided by the overladen benches.
Caroline came to his side. ‘Are you all right?’ she whispered urgently, cutting through the spitting of more electrical discharges – and the prickle of more magic on the back of his eyeballs when he nodded in response to her query.
A tall figure was standing in front of the machine that was the source of the electrical discharges. He was wearing heavy leather gloves, almost gauntlets, extending to his elbows. He wore goggles on his face, tinted glass, Aubrey assumed, but he was surprised to see the man had a shovel in his hand.
The machine was about eight feet tall, and about ten feet or more across. Two large ceramic insulators extended from the top, jutting at angles and looking like piles of dining plates. Four massive cables hung from the rafters and connected to the machine, as well as a six-inch pipe that ran along the stone floor.
The front of the machine was a mass of switches and dials, with three large hatches.
A mound the height of the man was heaped up on the left side of the machine. As they watched and crept closer, the operator stooped and shovelled from the mound into the hatch on the left. When it was full, he closed the door and dropped the shovel onto the mound. He flung a series of switches, and the result was the by now familiar burst of light from the top of the machine – and Aubrey felt the magical excess as slightly sweet on the tips of his fingers.
Heart beating faster, he dropped and crawled closer.
The operator of the machine seized hold of the middle hatch and pulled. The door opened and a long tray slid out. The operator studied it for a moment, then made a sound of disgust. He reached in, scraped around with his gauntleted hands, and then he hurled the contents away in a fury.
Aubrey and Caroline huddled together as glassware crashed around them. A large lump landed on the stone floor near them and came to rest against the leg of the bench. Aubrey waited a moment until the operator started filling the hopper again with the shovel, then he scurried over on all fours, retrieved the lump, and hurried back to Caroline.
He stared at what he’d found. It was about the size of his fist, heavy, orange-brown and misshapen. ‘Clay,’ he breathed and he darted a look at the machine. ‘We must hurry.’
‘What?’ Caroline said. ‘Why?’
‘I think he’s making a golem.’
‘Here? Whatever for?’
‘To substitute for Bertie.’
Ever since the baron’s revelation, Aubrey had been worrying about how Dr Tremaine was to achieve his end of having a puppet on the throne of Albion. His initial thought was that he would use the same method that he’d use to turn Aubrey into an assassin, but after pondering it for some time, he’d discarded this. The mind control spell had worked, in a fashion, but Aubrey hadn’t acted normally. George and Caroline had quickly seen that he was behaving very strangely and were rightly suspicious. Besides, Aubrey hadn’t been any good for anything else. He had one task, one mission; his whole existence had been centred on killing the Prince. He had no mind for anything else.
No, the mind control magic couldn’t be used to keep a replica Bertie in place, convincing all those around, conducting itself through the thousand and one duties of the heir to the throne.
But Dr Tremaine was master of another sort of magic – one that could produce a perfect replica, and one that could operate with a degree of autonomy while still being under total control of its master.
A golem.
The clay-based magical creatures were difficult for most magicians to make, and so their use was generally limited to simple tasks. But Dr Tremaine, as Aubrey knew well, was no ordinary magician. And, to judge from his efforts with the Glauber golem and with the cloudy stormfleet, his powers were growing.
But where was he?
Aubrey gestured to Caroline. They waited their chance, then scuttled closer to another bench, only a few yards away from the machine. Aubrey lifted his head to peer across the bench, but his eyes widened when he saw what was lying there. He snatched it and lowered himself again.
Caroline stared at it. ‘I don’t want to ask,’ she whispered, ‘because I think I know – but whose jacket is that?’
He nodded, the confirmation turning his stomach to ice. ‘It’s Bertie’s.’
The machine crackled again and white light battered them. Aubrey peeped over the edge of the bench to see the masked operator dragging more clay from the drawer, spitting curses as he cast the clay over his shoulder.