Time of Trial

by Michael Pryor

  Another glance. ‘I’m not sure if your friend wants to come.’

  ‘Let me worry about that.’ Aubrey had a thought. ‘Why were you following me if she wanted me to meet her?’

  A small, rather nasty smile. ‘She wanted to know what you’re up to.’

  Really? ‘Nothing important, as you’ve seen. George, are you finished?’

  With some reluctance, George disengaged himself from his pantomime negotiations. ‘May have to come back here soon,’ he said. ‘Excellent stock they have.’

  ‘Shall we go?’ their newly acquired guide said.

  Aubrey stood back from the door. ‘By all means.’

  He took them to an apartment building, five storeys of completely new accommodation all done in a style that combined Holmlandish efficiency with décor that was rich, comfortable and discreet.

  When the lift stopped on the fifth floor, their guide paused for a moment before opening the doors. Then he took his time, peering to his left and right before exiting. ‘This way.’

  He slowed as they approached the end of the corridor. ‘What’s wrong?’ Aubrey asked.

  ‘I...’

  Raised voices came through the last door on the right. Even though the words were unclear, the anger wasn’t. Two people were shouting – a man and a woman, both trying to talk at once. Then came the sound of breaking glass and the woman screamed.

  Their guide stopped. ‘She didn’t pay me for the physical stuff,’ he muttered and took off, barging past Aubrey and George.

  Aubrey hardly noticed. His lips were already moving, rehearsing a spell to smash down the door. He fumbled under his shirt for some matches he’d packed in his vest, ready for a quick application of the Law of Intensification. ‘No time for spells now,’ George growled over the crash of splintering furniture. He backed up, lowered his shoulder, and charged the door.

  It burst open. Aubrey was right behind his friend but they both pulled up short at the frozen tableau that confronted them.

  Tumbled furniture. Broken glassware. A spilled bottle of wine.

  And two people Aubrey had seen before. The man was standing behind the woman, an arm around her throat.

  Aubrey was immediately taken back to the Transcontinental Express, and the brawl in the compartment. ‘Madame Zelinka,’ he said. ‘Manfred.’

  ‘Fitzwilliam!’ Manfred said. With his free hand, he flung something at Aubrey and George.

  Aubrey felt the magic, saw that it was a compressed spell, pushed George to one side and dived after his friend, hoping that the overturned sofa would provide some protection.

  Then the room exploded.

  Nineteen

  Aubrey waved an arm, trying to find some clear air in the billows of choking plaster. Behind him, the wall that separated the room from the corridor had mostly disappeared, thanks to the shaped magical explosive charge that Manfred had hurled at them.

  George rolled over and coughed. ‘Good Lord,’ he said with some reverence after he saw the hole in the wall. ‘Unfriendly greeting, wouldn’t you say, old man?’

  The sound of fist on flesh came from the other side of the room and Manfred cursed. Out of the dust cloud, a figure dived over the top of the sofa and landed on top of them.

  ‘Madame Zelinka!’ Aubrey gasped after a few seconds of desperate untangling.

  She rubbed her knuckles and glanced at him, then she attacked the cushions and extracted a large revolver. She peeped over the sofa and quickly pulled the trigger three times. Aubrey stared, open-mouthed.

  The revolver hadn’t made a sound.

  ‘Magical noise suppression, Mr Black,’ she snapped, noticing his astonishment. She squinted toward the far side of the room but the air was still almost opaque. Aubrey lifted his head, cautiously, but could only make out dim shapes of furniture and the more brightly lit rectangles that must have been windows. Then, to add to his flabbergastedness, Madame Zelinka stabbed a finger at George. ‘You have no magic. Blow.’

  George blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Quickly. Put your lips together and blow.’ She pointed at the other side of the room. ‘In Guttmann’s direction. Now.’

  George did as she bid. His cheeks bulged, and he blew. Immediately, without lowering her revolver, Madame Zelinka barked out a torrent of Achaean syllables which Aubrey, astonished, recognised as components of an intensification spell. When she finished, the room was rocked by a gust of wind. It was strong enough to send books flying from a nearby bookcase and to topple a pair of ornamental potted palms, but it did achieve what Aubrey assumed was Madame Zelinka’s aim. The air was cleared of dust as the wind herded it all out through a broken window. They could see Manfred standing, peering, on the other side of the room.

  The shortfall in the plan was that it meant he could see them. With a grin that Aubrey didn’t like at all, backhanded, he slung a glittering ten-mark piece at them.

  And the man who Aubrey thought had no magical ability followed it with a short, hard, Chaldean spell.

  Magnification, Aubrey thought, and even though he hadn’t heard the spell before he immediately grasped its purpose. Manfred aimed to expand the coin, but such a thing was impossible to maintain for any length of time – which wasn’t important. The coin rapidly grew until it was as big as a dining table. All it had to do was maintain those dimensions for a few seconds and it would crush them like beetles.

  It was Aubrey’s turn. He spat out a tiny spell, one he’d been thinking about since the experience in the pearl prison. It was a temporal spell, using some of the principles that had been in play accelerating time in the cells in which George and von Stralick had been trapped. If he could cast the spell on the falling coin, make its time go quickly, then...

  ‘Ow!’ George rubbed his forehead, then plucked the ten-mark piece from his chest. He shrugged and tucked the coin into his pocket. ‘Ten marks is ten marks,’ he said when he saw both Aubrey and Madame Zelinka staring at him.

  A crash. Aubrey poked his head up to see that Manfred had dragged down the tall bookcase. Books scattered across the floor and Aubrey winced. Manfred vaulted lightly over the bookcase, using it as a screen. He poked up his head and Madame Zelinka pulled the trigger again. Manfred jerked his head sideways and then stared at the hole in the wall right next to him. He ducked, but not before a vase flung by George hit him. Heartfelt cursing from behind the bookshelf signalled that the Holmlander would be sporting a black eye tomorrow, if nothing else.

  Madame Zelinka glared but didn’t pull back behind the sofa.

  ‘That’s Guttmann?’ Aubrey asked.

  She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘I thought you knew Guttmann.’

  ‘I know him as Manfred. And I didn’t know he was a magician,’ Aubrey said. ‘Look out.’

  A black shape, the size of an orange, darted out from behind the bookcase and flew straight at them with evil intent.

  Aubrey dived left, Madame Zelinka dived right, and George ducked. The black shape sped past and went straight through the hole in the wall behind them before it managed to pull up and flit back at them. By that time, George had seized a large chunk of plaster in two hands. He swung lustily, connected, then staggered and dropped the plaster.

  Aubrey scrambled to his friend. ‘George?’

  George raised himself. Carefully, he edged his fingers under the plaster and lifted.

  On the other side was an irregular black splotch. It looked like a giant inkblot from the world’s messiest writer.

  ‘Crude. He must have been in a hurry.’ Aubrey poked it with a finger. ‘Clay. Maybe a hunter golem of some kind?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Madame Zelinka dragged Aubrey back behind the sofa. George scuttled to join them. ‘Can we take him?’

  ‘Who? Manfred?’ Aubrey rubbed his chin and slipped back into the mercenary role. ‘What’s in it for us?’

  ‘Not being killed?’ George suggested.

  Aubrey ignored him. ‘What does he want? And just who are you?’


  ‘He wants magic. A particular sort of magic’

  ‘But you were trying to buy magic from my firm.’

  She frowned. ‘Of course. We purchase what we need to complement our expertise. And it’s our special expertise that Guttmann wants.’

  ‘Of course,’ Aubrey said hastily. This commerce in magic was new to him. He was working in the dark; he needed more information. ‘What sort of magic is he after?’

  She gave him another suspicious look and Aubrey felt that this was her standard mode. ‘Does your firm deal with industrial magic?’

  If I say yes, she’ll consider me a threat. ‘No. We specialise in weapons.’

  ‘I thought as much. Otherwise Guttmann would have approached you already to find his catalytic intensifiers and pressure chamber reinforcing spells.’

  ‘Not our business line at all,’ Aubrey said but something pricked at him. Manfred was after heavy-duty industrial magic of a very specific kind. Who was he working for?

  Madame Zelinka went to reply, but before she could, a high-pitched whine came to them from Manfred’s hiding place. ‘What is that?’ she said.

  Aubrey reached out. ‘Magic.’ As he hadn’t heard the spell, he didn’t know exactly what was going on but he could tell it was powerful and localised.

  The whine became a hissing crackle. Then a blast of heat struck them. Aubrey closed his eyes and threw up an arm. A rending groan was followed by the sound of timber giving way, then a mighty crash.

  George poked up his head. ‘Your bookcase is gone.’

  Aubrey joined his friend. Then he leaped to his feet and raced across the room.

  Manfred had escaped. Behind the bookcase a rough oval had been burned right through the floor. Aubrey found himself peering into the room underneath this one. It was a scene of destruction, with a mound of plaster and timber burying any furniture unlucky enough to be directly below.

  ‘And Manfred has gone as well.’ Aubrey straightened. ‘I hope he enjoys his black eye.’ He rubbed his forehead and found it was gritty. He peered at fingers that were brown with dust and white with plaster. ‘Any chance of freshening up a little?’ he asked a fierce-looking Madame Zelinka, who had joined him to peer through the hole in the floor.

  She unbent and studied him carefully. ‘Perhaps. But not here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  George pointed at the window. ‘Listen.’

  The ringing bells of approaching police motorcars was the same in every country, Aubrey decided. ‘Agreed. Best not to be found here. Any suggestions?’

  Madame Zelinka hurried for the door. ‘Follow me.’

  Aubrey admired her preparations. She took them up three floors in the lift to a rooftop suite. ‘I always have a retreat nearby,’ she said before she opened the door. ‘One never knows when it may be useful. As today.’

  Aubrey was grateful, and to judge by George’s sigh when he threw himself into the nearest chair, so was he.

  After they’d each spent some time in an impressive bathroom, cleaning off the worst of the dust, Aubrey found that the mysterious Madame Zelinka served excellent coffee. Aubrey was willing to accept that any coffee in the world would seem good after the horror brew he’d nearly drunk in the Blue Dog.

  ‘I am pleased that you came,’ she said after they’d settled. The plush armchairs were a cunning combination of wood and velvet that looked dreadfully uncomfortable but defied that expectation by being supremely restful. ‘I would have had trouble without you.’

  Aubrey nodded, but he had something on his mind. ‘You let me be thrown off the train.’ He inhaled the coffee tang and closed his eyes for a moment.

  ‘I had to. I would have been killed otherwise.’

  ‘Difficult decision,’ George said. He’d stowed away three small cakes in quick time and was eyeing an other.

  ‘Not really,’ Madame Zelinka said. ‘I would not be any use to the cause if I were dead.’

  Aubrey sat back and groaned, internally. Another devotee to a cause. But he couldn’t help himself – he was curious about the strange, suspicious woman. She was restrained, competent, and her inscrutability made him want to know more. He drummed his fingers on the armrest and glanced out of the window. It had a view out across the city. He could clearly see the Academy with its grey buildings interrupted by a surprising amount of greenery, making it look like a park where someone had lost some government offices.

  Should he tell Madame Zelinka that the man she knew as Guttmann was actually the Great Manfred, stage performer and Holmland agent? He gnawed on this, but decided to keep it to himself until he knew more about her. ‘Your cause has enemies,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘Sometimes business causes enemies. Sometimes it is politics that causes enemies. Guttmann is trying to do some deals with industry, and industry is full of enemies.’

  Aubrey was puzzled. He’d only known that the Holmlander had been a double agent working for a different branch of Holmland intelligence from von Stralick, not someone involved in industrial espionage. ‘You want to continue business with my firm?’ he said, trying to keep up his guise. He hoped that his pause had made him appear imperious, aloof, even mysterious himself, but he had suspicions that he may have come across as dull.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Your offer sounded good, but I’m not sure if we can continue on the same basis.’

  ‘Because I was thrown from a train?’

  ‘No. Because you appear to be staying at the Albion Embassy.’

  ‘Of course.’ No point denying it. Madame Zelinka had obviously had him followed for some time. Aubrey glanced at George, who shrugged, selected a pistachio-adorned morsel and took a bite. No help there.

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘The Albion government is one of our best clients,’ he said, spinning the story as it came to him. ‘At least, the army is.’

  ‘Not the navy?’

  ‘They couldn’t afford us. It causes some friction between them, but that is no business of ours.’

  ‘So you should be in a position to supply us with the magical apparatus we need.’

  ‘I need more information.’

  Madame Zelinka’s mouth tightened. She studied him for some time and he was forced, professionally of course, to meet her exotically beautiful gaze. Finally, she gave a tiny shake of her head. ‘I told you that we need some of your Albion magic suppressors. I’ve spoken to my colleagues. It appears as if we may need several.’

  Aubrey managed to nod in what he hoped was a knowledgeable way. The magic suppressors, the devices that Clive Rokeby-Taylor’s company had perfected, were currently on Albion’s ‘not to be exported’ list. While Rokeby-Taylor had wanted maximum commercial exploitation of the revolutionary magical technology, after his demise caused his nest of companies to collapse the government had clamped down on the devices, realising that they may have a useful role to play in the armament build-up. A few devices, it was rumoured, had made their way to the Continent – which was not surprising, with Rokeby-Taylor’s Holmland connections – but they apparently were not the fully functional version.

  The magic suppressors had a thousand possible uses. Mostly defensive, neutralising spells and spell casting, they could be used to surprising offensive effect. If a foe was depending on spells to enhance artillery, say, and suddenly the spells failed, then a counter-attack could be devastating.

  With countless skirmishes in the Goltans and beyond, Aubrey was sure the magical suppressors had a ready market.

  ‘This may be possible,’ he said, while thinking of how to deliver apparatus that looked like fully functional magic suppressors but would fail when used. ‘What do you want them for?’

  ‘Is it the usual procedure for your firm to make such an inquiry? I thought discretion was part of what you offered.’

  ‘Of course, of course. It is simply that magic suppressors are so new, so complex, that your people may need training.’

  ‘Ah.’ She pressed her hands together and sco
wled. ‘This may be so.’

  Aubrey was relieved. Extemporising spells was one thing, but ad-libbing smuggling deals was another. ‘Do you need to consult your colleagues again?’

  She shook her head decisively. ‘No. I am empowered to make such decisions. And I will.’

  ‘Excellent. But with these developments, I’m afraid I must know who we are dealing with. We must be sure that we cover ourselves.’

  ‘I understand.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I belong to a secret society.’

  George snorted. Cake crumbs flew. ‘And who doesn’t, these days?’

  She fixed him with an impenetrable look and then handed him a napkin. ‘That may be true. But this society is centuries old.’

  ‘You’re one of the Goltan groups?’ Aubrey hazarded.

  ‘No. We are the Ancient Order of Enlightened Ones.’

  The name rang a very faint bell. ‘You’re enlightened?’

  ‘It’s an unfortunate name. It tends to raise expectations.’ She sighed. ‘Our secret order was founded by a fifteenth-century Venezian scholar. We are dedicated to repairing damage done by indiscriminate magic.’

  ‘Wait.’ Aubrey put a hand to his forehead. ‘Indiscriminate magic? What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘You have magic. You must have seen what happens when spells aren’t well constructed.’

  Aubrey nodded. He’d seen many different results of badly constructed magic – spells exceeding their expected duration and spread, spells fizzling like damp squibs, spells that simply didn’t work at all.

  But they all had something in common. ‘Residue.’

  ‘Even the best spells leave behind magical vestiges. Poor spells throw off residue like a snake sloughs off a skin.’

  ‘I know. Forensic magicians rely on this.’ Aubrey had done some work with forensic magicians belonging to Craddock’s staff. He liked their intensity, their focus.

  ‘And what happens to the residue?’ Madame Zelinka asked meaningfully.