As the lorry neared, its headlights caught the prone shape. The lorry slowed, approached, slowed again, then stopped with brakes that noisily indicated their lack of maintenance.
‘Wait until they get out,’ Aubrey whispered to George.
The driver’s door was flung back, groaning with the same complaint as the brakes, but instead of booted feet touching the macadamised road, a fierce electrical light stabbed out. Before Aubrey could move it swept across the road and pinned him against the boulder. He heard the unmistakeable sound of five, then six, rifle bolts, then he lost count, which didn’t really matter because half a dozen was probably enough.
‘Ah, Fitzwilliam! We thought we’d find you hereabouts! Care for a lift?’
Aubrey’s jelly legs almost betrayed him as he rose, with George at his side. He plucked at a remark he’d prepared earlier, one that he felt useful whenever surprised and wanting to appear unfazed. ‘What kept you, Hugo?’
‘What kept me, Fitzwilliam? Your Miss Hepworth and your Miss Delroy, that’s what kept me. They’re in the back of the lorry.’
16
It took a few seconds of complete flabbergastedness before Aubrey and George regained enough control of their bodies to sprint to the rear of the vehicle. Caroline and Sophie – in anonymous Holmland garments – looked down at them, smiling and sceptical.
George roared with laughter and seized Sophie by the waist. He lifted her bodily over the backboard, then whirled her away. She laughed with him as they spun up the middle of the road.
Aubrey was caught open-mouthed. He knew that by now he should have held out his hand, bending at the knee, to help Caroline down. Then he should have gazed into her eyes and said something that was witty, disarming and thoroughly heartfelt. After that, he would have batted away her half-formed thanks and endeared himself to her in every possible way.
He mentally rehearsed the swoop and stoop, but then became aware that Caroline was regarding him coolly. ‘Aubrey,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to see you.’
He found a grin dragging his mouth upward. It was an acceptable start. After her unexpectedly emotional departure the last time he’d seen her, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her say: ‘Please forget what happened. It was an unfortunate lapse. I’ve come to my senses now, so never speak of it again.’
‘Hello, Caroline,’ he said and he flailed for something to add. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’
He closed his eyes for an instant, then he went to apologise for a greeting entirely devoid of panache – and George and Sophie nearly crashed into him on their final madcap swing.
Sophie laughed again. ‘Aubrey,’ she said, still making the first syllable of his name sound like ‘Ow’. ‘Madame Zelinka and Hugo found us in Fisherberg and brought us here.’
Von Stralick strolled along the side of the lorry, Madame Zelinka at his side. They were both smiling: him broadly, her less so, as was her way. ‘Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere else?’ the Holmlander said.
‘We can’t go far,’ Aubrey said, ‘not unless we want to run into a Holmland special unit disguised as Albionite infantry.’
Von Stralick raised an eyebrow. ‘You have much to share with us.’
Caroline leaped down from the back of the lorry, landing lightly. Aubrey broke out in a very different sort of sweat when she steadied herself by taking hold of his shoulder. He enjoyed the sensation while part of his brain – a needlessly analytical part – insisted that he’d never seen Caroline need to steady herself before.
‘Hugo, shouldn’t we back the lorry in beside this boulder?’ she asked and then her fingers brushed away something from the nape of Aubrey’s neck. He nearly fainted on the spot.
In minutes, it was done. Even better, the lorry was disguised with branches torn from nearby trees, which allowed them all to sit under the canvas in the rear. A shaded lantern helped them share provisions. They sat facing each other on the benches with the food spread out on an ammunition box between them: smoked salmon, bread, pastries and milk that von Stralick had thoughtfully packed in Fisherberg. George and Sophie were next to each other, as were Madame Zelinka and von Stralick. Aubrey couldn’t help but notice that Caroline sat next to Madame Zelinka, on the opposite side of the lorry from where he was. He ran through a thousand possible explanations for that, until he was quite giddy, then gave up and just enjoyed the fact that she was there.
After Aubrey and George explained the situation in Korsur and were greeted with expressions of puzzlement and concern, von Stralick recounted what had happened after the separation at Dr Tremaine’s retreat.
‘When we left you on the cliff top,’ he said, ‘we were fortunate that the Holmland troops were most foolish. Zelinka’s people created havoc in the dark. Once the soldiers were lured from their transports, it was an easy thing to slip through the convoy and steal the rearmost lorry.’
‘After disabling the others, of course,’ Madame Zelinka added. She was holding von Stralick’s hand. ‘They faced a long walk down the mountainside.’
‘I wanted to come straight to Korsur, to find you,’ von Stralick said, ‘but Zelinka insisted on going to Fisherberg.’
Her face was unreadable. ‘I had business there.’
Von Stralick studied her for a moment with a mixture of exasperation and tenderness. ‘She took all of her people and told me to wait at a house in Castermine, just outside the middle of the city.’ He shook a finger at her. ‘I thought it was one of your Enlightened houses, whatever you call them, but it belonged to the Albion Security Directorate.’
‘We were there,’ Caroline said. All through the narrative of von Stralick and Madame Zelinka, she had been disconcerting Aubrey even more than usual by managing to make a Holmland farm worker’s ensemble look attractive, despite the way the jacket was scrunched up by a sharply pulled-in belt. Or – he swallowed when he contemplated this – perhaps because of this arrangement.
He was snapped out of his ponderings about intelligence operative couture by Caroline’s amused expression. ‘Aubrey? Did you hear anything we’ve just said?’
‘All of it. Every single word. Something about a house.’
‘We’d completed our Fisherberg mission. Or, at least, as much as we could for the present. We were waiting to slip out of the city.’
‘Which is the opportunity I provided,’ von Stralick said. ‘Although they hesitated when I told them I was going to Korsur to try to find you.’
‘Hesitated?’ George said.
‘A fraction of a second, I think it was. Possibly less.’
‘Do not tease, Hugo,’ Madame Zelinka growled.
‘I cannot help it, my dear. It amuses me so.’
‘Since it amuses you so, then I think we need to go and inspect the motor of this vehicle. I think it was developing a problem.’
‘A problem?’ Von Stralick lifted an eyebrow. ‘Ah, a problem. I understand, my dear. After you.’
Madame Zelinka led a chuckling von Stralick into the darkness.
George coughed into his hand. ‘This might be a good time to show Sophie the lie of the land. I thought I spotted a ridge not far away that could provide a useful outlook over Korsur.’
Sophie had her hands together in her lap as she sat on the bench. Her hair was bright under a black bonnet. ‘Taking note of surroundings is an important function of the field operative.’
‘You’re a quick learner, my gem,’ George said. ‘A few days of Directorate training and you’re reminding me of things I’ve already forgotten.’
Hand in hand, they slipped into the night, leaving Aubrey and Caroline alone.
She tugged at a loose bit of hair. ‘A neat spell, the illusory body on the road.’
‘A variation on something I’d been fiddling with for ages.’
‘Clever, and useful. You need to perfect it.’
‘I’ll add it to the list. I think that makes item number eighty-four.’
Aubrey leaned forward. He put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands together. The last few weeks
