'Which way to where?' Calm, a little puzzled, Lady Rose made sure she closed the door behind them. Softly.
'To somewhere away from here. They're after us.'
'Ah. This way, then. Through the Oriental Hall.'
They'd only made it halfway to the arched entrance to the Oriental Hall when a shout went up, then a shot. Aubrey ducked, instinctively, and flung an arm around his mother.
She shook it off. 'You can run better without such niceties,' she snapped and ducked past the pillar at the entrance.
A few lights were on in the Oriental Hall, enough for Aubrey to make out that it was a long, uninterrupted stretch of display cabinets in two long columns, all as tall as he was, with an aisle in the middle and space between the cabinets and the walls on either side.
Aubrey summed it up in an instant. Fortunately. If they wove in and out of the cabinets, no-one could stand and shoot at them from the entrance with any likelihood of success.
Of course, someone could simply run down the middle of the hall and tackle them.
Therefore, make pursuit more difficult, he thought. Time was important. The nightwatchmen must have heard the gunshot. They'd be converging at any instant.
'Light the lantern,' his mother ordered.
'What?'
'Now,' she said calmly. She held it up in front of his face. 'Light the lantern.'
A simple ignition spell jumped into his mind and the lantern was alight.
'Now,' she said, 'let's see if this helps.'
She swept the beam of the lantern down the hall, through the glass cases. Immediately, it bounced and bent, and the room was full of dozens of shards of light, flashing across walls and ceiling. Some cases were full of brightness, but lost it when the beam moved on. Other cases sent the light in unexpected directions as it reflected off curved surfaces, gold and silver.
'Sow confusion where you may,' Lady Rose said. 'Or so the Scholar Tan says, apparently.'
The evening had turned into a session of complete gob-smackery for Aubrey, so his mother's quoting the Scholar Tan was only mildly flabbergasting.
He grinned. She smiled. Then they were off.
They darted down the middle aisle, then flitted left at a cabinet holding a beautiful, globular water jug, Lady Rose keeping the lantern beam moving in jerky, erratic sweeps. They paused for a moment, then they ran along the wall, before slipping right across to the other wall and racing for the far-off exit.
Aubrey took out the bottle of bicycle oil just as a voice called out from the entrance to the hall. 'Stop right there!'
Aubrey had momentary visions of aeronautical pigs, then he uncorked the bottle and splashed it on the ground as they ran, the sunflower seed rattling inside the bottle. They crossed to the other side of the hall, sprinting past cabinets of ewers and silver plate which reflected the lantern light beautifully.
Aubrey dribbled oil as they ran.
Starting to pant, he chanted a spell, doing his best to make it as clear as possible. The sunflower seed had been in the bottle of oil for months now, preparing for a use such as this. The Law of Proximity. In the time that the oil and the seed had been close to each other, they had absorbed some of the characteristics of each other – helped by some judicious spells, of course. Now, the seed had a special oiliness about it, while the oil had taken on some of the qualities of the seed. With a little magical nudging, the oil had the desire to grow, just like a seed.
Aubrey pushed out the last of the spell, a dimension-limiting element, giving a rough idea of width and breadth. He added his signature and immediately staggered.
It hadn't been a difficult spell but on top of his exertions in the ruined shrine, it was taking a toll.
His mother grabbed his arm. 'Aubrey! Are you all right?'
The spell had drained him. The effort had struck him like a punch to the stomach. 'Fine. Run.'
Behind him, he heard a thud, a crash, renewed cursing, then a shot, but he was too tired to get worked up about it. More thumps, curses, crashes, cursing. It sounded as if a herd of bulls had taken it into their heads to do a spot of china shopping.
'They're floundering on the floor, can't stand up at all,' Lady Rose reported. Whistles sounded from nearby.
'Ah. Watchmen. The oil will disappear soon, I hope.'
'Ten minutes. Was all I could manage.'
'It is enough.'
They dashed out of the Oriental Hall. Lady Rose shone the lantern both ways, then hurried Aubrey toward a nearby doorway. 'The Arctic Display. It's being redone. We won't be disturbed.'
Aubrey would have thought that the entire museum in the middle of the night was a place not to be disturbed, but events had convinced him otherwise. He leaned against a lumpy, canvas-draped shape. The canvas slipped and Aubrey was unsurprised to be staring at a polar bear. He shrugged. 'Can you get us back to the workshop?' he asked his mother. His pulse was loud in his temples. He rubbed them, but it didn't help.
'I can. But I don't think that's wise. We shouldn't be found here.'
'We won't be found here. If you can get us there unseen.'
'Aubrey, you're not making sense.'
'If we can get there, I think we can still spirit the Rashid Stone away.'
Lady Rose put both her hands together, as if she were trying to hold a piece of paper between them, then put them to her lips and studied him over the top. 'Exciting though this has been, I really should get you away from here. Enough is enough.'
'Mother, this could be a last chance to restore the stone to the Sultan. If we don't do something now, Holmland will have it forever.' He put a hand to his forehead. 'Or whoever those thieves are working for.'
And that's something I have to think about. When I have time.
Lady Rose dropped her hands. She looked at Aubrey with exasperation. 'You're determined to do this, aren't you? Despite the danger, you still want to do the right thing?'
He straightened himself and stifled a groan. 'It's our best chance. I think we have to.'
'You're just like your father.'
With that, Lady Rose set off, not looking back, marching deeper into the shadowy maze of canvas and scaffolding that was the Arctic Display under reconstruction.
A door near a fire hose opened onto a short corridor, lit by a single electric light globe in a wire cage. 'I don't think anyone knows this building in its entirety,' Lady Rose said over her shoulder.
The corridor ended in a metal door. Aubrey added his weight – ignoring the burning pain it sparked in his shoulder – and the door screeched open. 'But you've done some exploring,' he said.
His mother nodded. 'This is tricky. Hold my hand.'
Linked, they shuffled along a narrow, concrete corridor that smelled of damp. Aubrey trailed his spare hand along the wall and it came away wet.
'Careful,' Lady Rose said. 'Stairs. We're going down.'
The stairs were metal. Aubrey felt for each one and clung to the handrail with strength that surprised him.