Word of Honour

by Michael Pryor

  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.

  They climbed straight up the outside of the structure.

  Caroline went first, offering advice to both Aubrey and George as they followed. She appeared to have no difficulty with heights, and often hung from one hand as she looked back to check their progress.

  George climbed doggedly, muttering under his breath each time he came to an obstacle that had to be skirted or squir
med around.

  Aubrey climbed a few yards away. A construction that looked suspiciously like a miniature aqueduct appeared just above him, emerging from the wall opposite and disappearing into the depths of the labyrinth. Aubrey hoisted himself up and found that it was, indeed, open on the top and carried water. He added it to the list of unbelievable things he'd recently seen.

  Once on top of the structure, the going was easier. Instead of lifting their own weight, all they had to do was scramble on all fours. They had to work around any pipes, wires or cables that thrust down from the ceiling (or up from the mass below?) and they had to be sure anything underfoot would bear their weight, but the challenges were few.

  Aubrey found himself staring downward as he went, admiring the intricacy that resulted from the myriad interconnections. At times he thought he could detect movement, but he decided it could simply be water, or one of the miniature barges Caroline had seen.

  Caroline paused and glanced back quizzically. Heart pounding, Aubrey nodded, then crawled until he could see that she had reached a gap in the structure. He sought the walls of the chamber and realised they'd reached the centre of the immense meshwork. He found a good foothold on what felt like a solid concrete beam and gazed at the light that filled the gap.

  He had to shade his eyes. The light was fierce, a flickering, dancing radiance that licked upward like a bonfire on Empire Night. Aubrey felt its power even at this distance and it daunted him. It wasn't heat that battered his skin, it was raw magical power, redolent with potential – and a hint that was unmistakeably Dr Tremaine.

  Gritting his teeth, he crawled closer until he could see more.

  A column of cold flame, white and blue, writhing and spinning, filled the gap in the lattice. Mostly, it was half the height of the array, but it occasionally burst upward, as if in joy, sending an arm of flame lancing toward the heights.

  'I can see someone down there,' George said.

  Aubrey started and nearly lost his grip. He hadn't heard George approaching.

  'How many?'

  'Just one, I think.'

  Caroline made a sound deep in her throat. 'It's Dr Tremaine.'

  She lifted her head and scanned the area. It was obvious to Aubrey that she was looking for a way down.

  She wasn't about to shirk a confrontation with the man who killed her father.

  Aubrey tried to think of a good enough argument to change her mind, counselling caution over impulse.

  He blinked and almost smiled when he realised that this was just the sort of advice he'd ignored over the years, from some of the best.

  Caroline glanced back the way they'd come and her face fell. 'Oh.'

  Aubrey followed her gaze and immediately saw the danger. He did his best to appear steely calm, turning a groan of dismay into what he hoped was a determined grunt, while his whole being insisted that elsewhere (anywhere!) was a better place to be.

  A swarm of glittering motes was speeding toward them. Insects was what immediately came to mind – bees or wasps – and Aubrey became aware of a humming that was quite different from the background noise from the structure. It was an angry sound, full of intent. The swarm bent in their direction and the humming became furious as it dived.

  Aubrey started scrambling on all fours, grasping whatever came to hand. Finding action a good antidote to terror, he set off in a different direction to Caroline, trying to draw the swarm away. He hoped George would do the same and perhaps one of them could escape.

  He'd only managed a few frenzied yards when one of the insects struck him behind the ear with stunning force. He fell forward, barely catching himself, then he was struck again, just under the shoulder blades, and he grunted with pain.

  It felt as if he were being pelted with stones.

  A pistol sounded, once, twice, three times in quick succession. He hoped it was Caroline and he hoped she'd done some good.

  One of the insects struck the pipe he was clutching and it rang like a bell. He stared and saw that it was, indeed, a winged insect – but it was made of bright, coppery metal. The insect was chillingly unformed. No features, no details apart from the segmented body, legs and wings. It staggered a little, as if dazed, then it dropped off the pipe and vanished into the depths of the structure.

  Dragging a fine copper wire behind it.

  Horrified, Aubrey jerked his head back as another insect hummed past his eyes. It curved around and he was dismayed to see that it, too, was trailing a fine copper wire.

  Another crashed into a steel cable near Aubrey's hand. He stared at it, but couldn't make out where the insect ended and the wire began. The insect was an extension of the wire or the wire was an extension of the insect.

  And it doesn't matter! he thought frantically. He tried to assemble the beginnings of a spell – any spell – but the copper insects had found him. They bombarded him, scores of them, stinging his back and legs with bruising force.

  The gap in the structure beckoned. Perhaps if he reached it . . .

  The hail of insects kept on, wave after angry wave, battering at him with brutal, senseless ferocity. Aubrey put his head down and crawled.

  Then a wire snaked around his ankle.

  He pulled loose, but another snagged at his wrist. Desperately, he jerked his head around to find that the insects were crawling over his legs, scuttling along pipes, looping their trailing wires around his body and limbs.

  Aubrey thrashed, trying to free himself from the insistence of the wire, not caring if his struggles took him to the edge of the lattice. Revulsion seized him as he realised that this is what must have happened to Maggie and his skin shrank from the evil attention of the creatures.

  This gave him renewed energy. He threw himself from side to side, ignoring the bright pain that came when he struck elbows and knees on pipes and chains. He cracked his head with enough force to make his teeth snap together. Stars jumped in front of his eyes, but he couldn't throw off loop after loop of copper wire that kept coming. He tucked in his chin, fearing he'd be strangled.

  While he struggled he heard a steady stream of oaths and shouts from George, who seemed to be trying to keep the insects off by power of voice. Aubrey was appalled to hear his friend's shouts growing angrier and angrier, until they became wordless, strangled growling.

  At the same time, he heard more pistol shots from nearby. When he rolled to avoid a squad of manic insects descending on his throat, he saw Caroline springing across the framework like a gymnast. One-handed, she swung on an upright and blasted three quick shots that seemed to have some effect on the swarm of insects gathering around her. Even in his difficulties, Aubrey had time to be astonished at her marksmanship, but he groaned to see the pistol plucked from her hand and a blanket of copper wire swirling around her.

  Then he had troubles enough of his own. The insects descended like the Furies. He tried to raise a hand to protect his face but found that his left arm was pinned by his side. His right arm had been trapped diagonally across his body. His legs were wrapped together. Unable to move an inch, he snapped his jaws, trying to bite at the insects as they scuttled across his face.

  Finally, he was immobilised. He couldn't even attempt a spell – the wires criss-crossed his face, making clear speech impossible.

  With the sort of calm deliberation that comes after horror has become too much, he wondered when they would start to penetrate his skin.

  A painful clanking sound echoed through the pipes Aubrey was lying on, as if a giant gear had just slipped a cog. It rattled his teeth. Then it was a series of chuffing, pounding thumps, one after the other, like giant footsteps.

  Steam washed over Aubrey and he gagged at the hot, oily smell.

  A voice cut through the cloud. 'Ah, Fitzwilliam and friends. Just in time.'

  Aubrey threw off the heavy hand of dread and decided that bravado was all he had left. He strained until he had some slack in the wires over his jaw. 'Give up, Tremaine,' he slurred. 'It's all over.'

  Dr Tremaine
loomed into view, stepping off a platform that hadn't been there a moment ago. He was dressed in a green jacket that was so dark it was almost black and he carried a familiar cane. He crouched and studied Aubrey's copper-wrapped face.

  'Fitzwilliam, you overrate your comedic talents.' Tremaine plucked at one of the copper wires. It snapped against Aubrey's cheek, but he'd steeled himself. He didn't want to give Tremaine the pleasure of seeing him flinch. 'Now, let's descend to the anastomosis.'

  Aubrey couldn't help himself. 'Anastomosis?' he asked mushily.

  For once, Dr Tremaine showed irritation. 'Juncture. Nexus. Chiasma. Confluence.' He snorted. 'Never mind. You'll see. It might be the last thing you'll see, but you'll see.'

  He clicked his fingers. A copper insect appeared. It hurried backward and forward, tightening copper wire over Aubrey's face until he was well and truly speechless.

  Twenty-three

  AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GAP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE invigorated framework was a circular walkway. It ran around the edge of a pit, some twenty feet or so across.

  It was the pit that held Aubrey's appalled attention. From it grew the leaping, mounting pillar of magical fire – cold fire, raw magic on the verge of being shaped into something terrible. This was the focus, the origin of the waves of magic that were rolling through the latticework. Erratically, it sloughed off magical power that Aubrey felt as if it were handfuls of hail.

  From his vantage point, Aubrey could see the pipes, wires, chains and beams funnelling into the flame. They weren't consumed; they were channelling the awesome power of the flame outward, radiating through the latticework. They tightened, clanking or trembling as the magic pulsed.

  And then? Aubrey thought and dread seized his innards in an icy grip.

  Stalking along the walkway, attention on the magical flame, ignoring his captives, was Dr Tremaine.

  Aubrey, Caroline and George were each enmeshed in copper webs, pinned against upright pipes. Aubrey could move his head only fractions of an inch, but it was enough to see his friends. In the flickering light, he could make out the strain in their faces as they struggled with their bonds. To make his situation worse, the conduits running behind Aubrey's shoulderblades throbbed and pulsed with malignant regularity, jarring his teeth and shaking his vision.