Caroline Hepworth with dark circles under her eyes, Aubrey decided as he watched her slowly mount the stairs from the basement in the pre-dawn light, was still a delight. He fumbled with the coffee pot, eager to make sure that her mug was full and hot. ‘Here.’
‘Just what I need – my ninth coffee for the night.’
Aubrey bit his tongue. It was her tenth and it wasn’t actually night any more. He could make out the stacks of timber and discarded ironwork in the yard, if dimly, but he was starting to understand that correcting such things wasn’t important. ‘Did a response come through at all?’
Caroline sat at the table and inhaled from her coffee, closing her eyes for a moment. ‘Interference.’ She made a face. Lovely though it was, Aubrey accepted that it was her version of a grimace of disapproval. ‘The Holmlanders have found a way to distort messages. We had to change frequencies often, randomly, but we finally managed to communicate.’
‘We have orders?’
‘We do.’
Aubrey couldn’t help himself. ‘Was there anything about me?’
‘I wouldn’t know, would I? You’re the decoder.’
‘Really? You know how to use the machine as well as I do.’
‘I left most of the work to you. I only ran the first few, to make sure they were coming through properly.’
‘And was I mentioned?’
‘Only inasmuch as you were named in the orders. It was as if you hadn’t done anything unusual, haring off the way you did.’
Aubrey’s estimation of the wiles of Commanders Craddock and Tallis, already significant, rose again. He wondered what it would take to faze them.
‘They prize initiative,’ he said and he went to pour himself a coffee. Before he could, however, the floor and walls of the factory shook, and dust trickled from overhead. In the distance, an explosion sounded – a deep, frightening thump quite unlike the artillery barrage of the night before.
He was on his feet in an instant, but he wasn’t quick enough to beat Caroline to the front door. She clung to the frame with one hand and pointed to the north with the other. ‘There!’
Near the fortress, a pillar of flame rose to the heavens. Overhead, banking away from the site of the explosion, was a single airship. It was a sleek model, smaller than the usual giant dirigibles, and it was moving fast. He braced himself for further explosions but either the craft was having trouble with its bomb delivery or it had discharged its payload.
The fiery pillar was subsiding, but Aubrey didn’t like the look of it. The way the dense black smoke wrapped around it and the streaks of unsettling green amid the flames made it look unhealthy. He couldn’t feel anything, not at this distance, but he was sure that if he was nearer he’d be able to taste the magic.
A sleepy-looking George joined them, his sandy hair in disarray. ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘Is that what Divodorum has been putting up with since we left?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Aubrey said. ‘If this sort of thing had been regularly falling on the city, I’m not sure that we would have found anything when we came back.’
Madame Zelinka and von Stralick came down the stairs. Von Stralick looked well and remarkably spruce in the clean clothes he’d found in the basement store room. ‘This is not good.’ Madame Zelinka was grim. ‘From the roof, we could see that the bomb landed near the river.’
‘Not the fortress?’ Aubrey said.
‘Not far from it. They missed? Were aiming for something else? Who can tell?’
‘The explosion had something uncanny about it,’ Aubrey said. The combination of magic and aeronautical engineering was a worrying development.
‘We should investigate,’ von Stralick said.
‘I agree.’ Caroline put her coffee mug on the table and rose. ‘Now would be best, I’d say.’
‘It would,’ Aubrey said, and he took his courage in his hands, ‘but you need to stay here and get some sleep. You’ve been up all night.’
Caroline looked at him evenly. ‘As have you.’
‘I slept while you were busy. I even managed a bath and to find a new uniform. I’m more rested than you are.’
Caroline faced him squarely, obviously tired but equally obviously not willing to admit it. George and von Stralick looked uncomfortable. Madame Zelinka simply shrugged. ‘I shall ready my people.’
Von Stralick, full of tact on this occasion, jumped to agree. ‘Excellent idea. I shall assist you.’
‘George?’ Aubrey said. ‘Have you something you should be doing?’
‘That’s right. Sophie needs some help in the workshop. She had plans for better concealing this place through some magical innovation or other.’
Aubrey waited for George to nab the coffee pot and two cups before hurrying off, but Caroline jumped in before he could start. ‘Now, Aubrey, are you reassuming command of our unit, expanded as it is?’
Very carefully, Aubrey nodded. ‘I suppose I am.’
‘Which means that you’re ordering me to stay behind, despite the fact we’d worked out that such a command structure ill-suited our special group?’
‘When you say order,’ Aubrey began, choosing his words with all the care of a bomb disposal expert deciding which wire to cut, ‘I was actually using it in the sense of “a very sensible suggestion, one that is open to discussion”.’
‘Ah. I hoped so.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing. My staying behind and getting some sleep is probably a good idea. I was too tired to realise when you first suggested it.’
Aubrey turned this statement around and examined it from all sides before responding. ‘So you’ll stay here and rest?’
‘Since it wasn’t an order in that old-fashioned, inappropriate way, of course I shall.’
‘Caroline, if I ever stop taking it for granted that I can’t take you for granted, you’ll disabuse me of that notion, won’t you?’
She yawned, covering her mouth with an effort. ‘Of course I shall, Aubrey. Of course I shall.’