Word of Honour (33 page)

In the heights, running between the beams, was a
meshwork of metal wires, spread in all directions. Bright,
shiny copper wires that looked just like those that had
infested Maggie.

With a glance and a gesture, Aubrey made sure that
Caroline and George lurked at the back of the crowd.
When the guide conducted the group along a walkway
toward the coal intake area, they passed a staircase that
headed downward. Aubrey, Caroline and George dawdled,
inspecting walls and dials with the avidity of Wall and
Dial Inspectors, then they darted down the stairs after the
tour group had left them behind.

The cellar was huge – a deafening, wet, pillared hell
where the bulk of the furnaces had residence. Immediately,
Aubrey saw that this was the place where the dirty
work went on, while upstairs was the showcase. It was
chokingly hot, with rattling conveyor belts feeding the
never-ending hunger of the fires. Above, in the generation
chambers, was the polite face of the coal-devouring
monsters. Down here, it was the sweaty, grinding reality.

The place smelled of coal, dirty water and the ozone
created by electrical activity. Large electric lights in the
ceiling lit the space, but despite their size they seemed to
struggle with the soupy atmosphere in the cellar.

They were immediately drenched in the foggy heat.
Aubrey found distances hard to judge. Hasty stacks of
timber, bricks and metal were flung willy-nilly around
the place and he could imagine the panic as opening
day had drawn nearer. The cellar was out of sight of the
public. Anything that wasn't bright and shiny had been
thrown down here, so that even though the facility was
only months old, the cellar had the look of an abandoned
industrial wilderness.

'Which way?' Caroline asked. She'd changed into her
fighting suit and stowed her dress in a small bag she wore
at her waist. This time Aubrey managed to pretend it was
a matter-of-fact transformation.

'Down,' he said with certainty. 'Our answer lies
underground.'

Aubrey's head ached from the noise and the
humidity made him feel nauseated but he welcomed
these as mere physical sensations, relatively simple to
bear. More worrying was the blurring of his vision,
something he couldn't blame on perspiration running
into his eyes; he was sure it was a symptom of his body
and soul disuniting.

It would need attention. When he had time. Right
now, he had enough to worry about with the increasing
certainty that they were reaching the domain of
Dr Tremaine. Maggie's tortured warning about the
depths was becoming more ominous as they edged
through the dark and oppressive realm.

Aubrey's lips were dry with apprehension as he peered
through the shadows. He could feel his heart racing,
rapping his ribs from the inside. The notion of turning
around and heading home suddenly had great appeal.
A bath, a good meal, a rest and come back some time
when better fortified.

No.
He thought of poor Maggie
. I want to find him now.

They trudged along, trying doors and hatches as they
came to them. They climbed around piles of building
debris, some of which looked as if it had been merely
dropped from above. They worked by the feeble light
of the dirty electric globes and a lurid red light that
came from the slitted grilles and air intakes of the
furnaces.

'Another door,' George grunted as they slogged
through a pool of ankle-deep water. It was warm, and
Aubrey could see the eyes of rats swimming in the near
distance. He peered through the gloom.
At least
,
I hope
they're rats.

The door was heavy steel, bolted and barred. Aubrey
hammered on it, but the door was so solid it didn't make
a sound. Thinking hard, he rubbed his fist.

Caroline wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
'We've been right around the perimeter. We've found
closets, storage rooms, switchboards, nothing useful.'

'This is the only door that's been secured,' George
pointed out. He leaned right next to it. His face was red.

'Then I think we may have found our way into the
underworld,' Aubrey said.

'What makes you say that?' Caroline asked. She took
an unruly strand of hair that was plastered against her
temple and, with both hands, fixed it behind her head.

'When I thumped the door, I felt a magic residue.
A familiar one.'

Caroline narrowed her eyes. 'Concentrated on the area
near the lock, I assume?'

'Dr Tremaine?' George said. He raised his fists, as if he
thought Tremaine was going to burst through the door
at any minute.

'Correct, both of you. It's the same security spell he
used on the Old Man of Albion, and the tunneller.'

'So I missed him,' Caroline said flatly. She clenched
her fists.

'Maybe not,' Aubrey said. 'Tremaine is . . . I don't
know . . . not like normal people?'

George rubbed his chin. 'Are you saying like one
of those werewolves in the stories? Do we need a silver
bullet to finish him off?'

'No, nothing like that. It's just that things that would
stop an ordinary person won't stop him.'

'I see,' Caroline said and Aubrey knew that she was
taking careful note of this information. It wouldn't
make her give up her quest for revenge – it would just
make her more careful to do it properly next time.

'He's down there,' Aubrey said, 'so it's time for some
ifs.' He counted them on his fingers. 'If it's Tremaine, and
if he managed to escape from the Bank of Albion and
find somewhere to recover, and if he's still down there,
then he'd suspect that his security spell was compromised.
He'd change his password.'

'So we're stuck?' George said.

'Maybe not. I might have an idea about a replacement
password.'

He spread his left hand on the metal, just above where
the bolt slid home. He felt the tingle of magic and had
no doubt that it was Dr Tremaine's. 'This has been set
recently. Within the last twenty-four hours.'

He ignored Caroline's sharp, hissing intake of breath.

'Sister,' he said, clearly and carefully.

The lock didn't budge.

'Sylvia.'

Nothing.

He chewed his lip, then had an inspiration. 'Pearl,'
he said, and the lock's tumblers ticked, clicked, shifted.
The bolt slid back and, with grim satisfaction, Aubrey
realised that he may have found his enemy's weak spot.

He wrenched the door open and was greeted with
a welcome gust of cool air. 'Journey with me,' he said
grandly, 'to the centre of the earth.'

Without a word, Caroline stepped through. George
followed, mumbling, 'I hope we don't have to go that far.'

Aubrey took a moment to prop the door open with a
few bricks, then darted after his friends.

The stairwell was poorly lit. Mechanical noises echoed
along its brick walls – clanking, vibrating sounds that
made Aubrey think of clockwork toys run amok – but
toys the size of buildings. By the time they reached the
bottom of the stairs, his knees and calves were aching,
but the pounding of his heart didn't come from exertion.
His whole body was gripped by tension as they
approached their destination, and – not for the first time
– he wondered what foolishness had prompted him to
plunge into the unknown like this.

Next time
, he thought,
I'm going to have a crack squad of
magical operatives, sappers and marksmen with me. As a bare
minimum.

He hoped there would be a next time.

In the lead, Caroline held up a hand and they stopped.
The light that fell on her face made her look heartbreakingly
beautiful and determined. She beckoned them
forward and slipped out of the doorway.

Aubrey followed, then the outrageousness of the
scene struck him. All his breath ran out in a single, awed
exhalation.

The chamber was vast, the ceiling soaring cathedral-like
overhead. The walls to the right and left were thirty
or forty yards away but he couldn't make out the far
wall, for the chamber was almost choked with a dizzyingly
tangled meshwork of chains, cables and conduits.
Pipes and wires of a thousand different sizes and colours
emerged from the walls, floor and ceiling and dived into
the central snarl, a tangled interweaving that defied the
eye to unravel it. Plumes of steam gushed from its depths,
and it vibrated, rattled, throbbed, hummed and pulsed
with enough energy to seem alive.

Aubrey stared, numb, assaulted by the complexity of
the array. He guessed that the entire structure must have
plenty of open space, but the overall effect was of overwhelming
solidity, of the coalescence of uncountable
elements into a massive, compound whole. It reminded
him both of a lattice and something organic, something
that had grown, branched and grown again.

And he could feel waves of magic rolling through
the fantastic construction, waves that came from a single
source.

'Where's the light coming from?' Caroline whispered.

Aubrey whispered back, not sure why he kept his
voice low, but it seemed most appropriate in this unsettling
place. 'In the middle. Where the magic is coming
from.' He moved his head from side to side. Light
flickered across his face, scattered by the jungle of pipes
and wires.

'Must be big. And it's moving,' George said. 'Look
around.'

On the walls and ceiling, shadows moved, sliding
along, overlapping each other, slipping at speed, then
being swallowed by others. 'The light is rotating,'
Caroline said.

Aubrey crossed to the edge of the structure. He peered
past a series of parallel cast-iron pipes, each only as thick
as his thumb, but it was like looking into a thicket; he
could see only three or four feet. He put his hand on
a brass pipe, a modest one a handspan in diameter, and
narrowed his eyes as he felt a tingle of magic moving
through it. The pipe emerged from the wall near the
stairwell and plunged directly into the structure at about
chest height; but as soon as it entered, it bent at ninety
degrees and shot upward.

Aubrey edged his head in underneath an earthenware
pipe and a sticky bundle of wires as thick as his thigh. He
tried to follow his brass pipe to see how high it went.
He thought it bent again at right angles and ran parallel
to the front edge of the cube for about ten yards. There
it met a three-way junction and he lost it.

Aubrey's grip tightened. A few yards away, wrapped
around a large cast-iron pipe, was a loose mat of copper
wire, the same wire that had infested Maggie.

He shuddered, but forced himself to inspect the
malignant wire more closely. The mat was thick, like
weed, and it oozed magic. It dangled from the cast-iron
pipe and linked it to a bright steel beam that was standing
vertically amid a riot of other wires, pipes and struts,
interlinked in a structure that hinted at organisation. He
was tempted to try to find the underlying pattern, but it
defeated him.

'Rails,' George said. Aubrey withdrew his head,
catching his ear a stinging blow on a square wooden
duct. He hardly noticed.

'What?'

'About twenty yards in that direction. A narrow
gauge railway comes out of a tunnel and heads into
that mess.'

'And we have a canal over here,' Caroline said, appearing
from the shifting shadows. Motes of light flashed
across her face. 'A tiny one, only a few feet across.'

'It could be a drain,' George said.

'With miniature wooden barges?'

'Miniature barges?' Aubrey said. 'What on earth?'

'I assume they're barges. They might be just boxes.

They're definitely manufactured, and just like the rails,
they disappear into the middle of that thing.'

Aubrey looked up, then down, then all around. 'From
all directions, they go in there.'

'It depends on how you look at it, old man,' George
said. 'They could be leaving the middle of that thing and
going outwards.'

'Or some might be pumping inward, and some
flowing outward,' Caroline said.

Aubrey's head started to ache with the possibilities. 'But
pumping what? And flowing what? Water? Electricity?
Steam? What's going in? And what's going out?'

'Boats?' George said. 'Maybe it's a strange new communication
system that uses miniature naval craft to
convey information.'

'That is probably one of the more bizarre suggestions
I've heard for a long time,' Aubrey said, 'and I'm frightened
because I'm considering it seriously.'

'Naturally,' George said, looking pleased with himself.

'But whatever else it is, it's a mystery.'

'It's only a mystery until we find out,' Caroline said.

'And how are we going to do that?' Aubrey said. 'It's a
maze in there. A ferret couldn't squeeze its way through.'

'If we can't go through and it's pointless to go around,'
Caroline said, 'then we must go over. A better vantage
point, a position of strength. We may be able to see into
the centre from up there.'

Aubrey raised his head, then leaned back. It was difficult
to tell in the shifting light, but it looked as if the
structure ended a good ten feet before the ceiling.

Caroline grinned. 'Let's see how you two are at
climbing.'

The going was reasonably simple, at first, and Aubrey
certainly found it easier than climbing most trees. Solid,
rigid pipes were always close at hand, and if he put his
weight on something that flexed ominously, an alternative
was always nearby. Many pipes were conveniently sized
for gripping, but even the large bore mains were simple
enough to clamber over. Chains and cables infested the
meshwork, too, and provided useful handholds.

But to Aubrey's increasing unease, he found that many
of the interweaving strands carried traces of magic.

He avoided wires, singly or in bundles. He had a
healthy respect for electricity, as he did for most things
that could kill him. Whenever he saw the bright copper
mesh, he kept well away from it.