Word of Honour

Caroline pointed at him. 'Clarity, please.'

Aubrey touched the rock. The magic still hummed under his fingertips. 'I need an extendable and flexible leg to kick myself with.'

'What have we missed?' she asked.

'Holmland. Tremaine has been in Holmland for some time now. He must have been listening to Holmland music, Holmland operas.'

'Holmland has operas?' George said.

'Of a sort. Long, long musical dramas about destiny, the gods and heroism.' He turned to the rock. 'Siegfried's Sister.'

The rock disappeared.

While George scrambled to his feet, Aubrey couldn't keep a satisfied smile from his face. 'Schroeder's masterpiece,' he explained. 'A man searches for his long-lost sister, overcoming monsters, temptation and the irritating fact that the same stirring theme is played each time he strides onto the stage. It's become a point of national pride in Holmland to stage it on every conceivable occasion.'

Aubrey paused. Sister? Had Tremaine seen some personal parallels in Siegfried's Sister? Aubrey filed this one away for later consideration.

Caroline bent and peered into the gap that had appeared in the wall of the foundations. 'It's overrated.

Long, loud and laughable.'

'You've seen Siegfried's Sister?' Aubrey asked.

'My mother and father took me. While we were in Fisherberg.'

Caroline had been in Holmland? Aubrey hadn't known that. He put it with all the other reasons to be impressed by Caroline Hepworth.

Aubrey was first through after Caroline. Every sense was alert, and he carried an over-stoked traction engine in his chest where his heart had once been.

Hissing came from the gaslights in wall sconces. They cast a gentle radiance on the waist-high stacks of metal bricks, making them gleam with a lustre that could be only one thing.

'Gold,' he breathed, staggered by the sheer amount of it before him. Hundreds of bars of bullion beckoned to him, each with the unmistakeable stamp of the Bank of Albion.

'Good Lord,' George said as he entered. His head moved slowly from side to side, surveying the field of gold.

'Why isn't it in the actual vaults?' Caroline asked. She moved slowly in the Vault Room, with the reluctance of someone not wanting to disturb a pleasant dream.

The massive doors to the inner vaults were closed. 'I don't know,' Aubrey said. 'All ready for the King to bless?'

George squatted in front of the nearest pile. 'They're on trolleys. They're either going out of the vault or just going in. And I'll warrant that these chests are full of sovereigns.'

Aubrey felt strangely reluctant to approach the gold. Instead, he stood and surveyed the scene, trying to ease the tension from his shoulders.

His gaze fell on an ominous black box in the far corner of the vault. It was slim, featureless, about shoulder height, and it was so discreet that Aubrey had – at first – ignored it as a fixture of the room.

Then he realised that an identical unit stood in the other corner.

He took a step further into the vault and saw that the corners nearest him also sported the black boxes.

While George and Caroline marvelled at the gold, picking up bars and exclaiming at their weight, Aubrey inspected the nearest of the black boxes. Then he had a thought. He took out his handkerchief and shook it. He plucked a simple spell from his memory, one of the first he'd ever learned, just after he'd turned ten. He spoke it softly, but clearly, and let go of the handkerchief.

The spell cost him a bright bolt of pain right behind his forehead, but it worked. The handkerchief fell a little, then caught itself in mid-air. It twisted itself into a vaguely human shape – four limbs, a trunk, a head – and bobbed in the space between his two hands. It danced there for a moment, until he cancelled the spell.

Aubrey glanced at the inert black boxes and stowed his handkerchief in his pocket. All is not as it seems, it seems. He shrugged. With Dr Tremaine involved, why would he expect any different?

'No time for party tricks, old man,' George called. 'Come and look at the riches of Albion.'

Aubrey strolled over, humming something remotely Holmlandish. 'We have a mystery here.'

Caroline raised an eyebrow. 'Of course. Why should the vault of the Bank of Albion be any different to everywhere else we've visited?'

Aubrey pointed to the black boxes in the corners of the vault. 'Those units are magic suppressors.'

'Like the Great Manfred had for his stage act?' George said. 'Good show. Should stop any magical mischief around here.'

Caroline said nothing. She merely pointed to the gaping hole in the wall. George scratched his chin. 'Or not, as the case may be.'

They both looked at Aubrey.

'I tried some small magic, something that should have been impossible within the anti-magic field, but it worked.'

'The magic suppressors aren't active?' George said.

'What's this mean?' Caroline said.

'I think it important to find out,' Aubrey said. 'George, do you still have that pry bar?'

Some muscle work later, Aubrey was convinced. The magic suppressor had been tampered with.

Inside the slim black box were three separate compartments. Each was sealed, but proved to be no match for George's handy implement. The top compartment was full of components that looked like the interior of a radio – valves and wires, wrapped tightly in rubberised cloth. The middle compartment was a solid block of a hard, black ceramic. The bottom compartment was the largest, and contained four metal bars that stretched from the top of the compartment to the bottom. When Aubrey touched one of the bars, it vibrated. An instant later, the other three bars began to vibrate in sympathy.

'But you say it's not working?' Caroline said.

'No. All the components look whole and complete, but something is missing.'

'Or tampered with,' George suggested.

'Rokeby-Taylor's company makes these,' Aubrey said. 'Why does that prompt suspicion?'

'The units are sealed,' Caroline said. 'If an outsider had tampered with these things, the evidence would be obvious.'

'But if the tampering were done at the factory? They would seem to be one thing, and actually be another.' Such a state of affairs was not unusual where Dr Tremaine was concerned. Aubrey's gaze fell on the astounding collection of gold. Frowning, he approached the nearest chest and opened it. Hundreds of sovereigns glinted back at him.

He guessed that the Vault Room held enough gold to finance a moderately-sized nation. 'Dr Tremaine wants to steal the gold.'

'Well, he won't succeed,' George declared. 'Not now that we've found the back door he organised.'

'No.' Aubrey wasn't convinced. 'A Holmlandish battleship is sailing for Fisherberg later this week.'

'Elektor's birthday,' George said. 'The Imperator must be there for that.'

'With a few tons of gold in its hold?' Caroline wondered.