The Laws of Magic 6: Hour of Need by Michael Pryor

strategy.’
    ‘No-one would come out and argue against a vital war strategy.’
    ‘Of course not.’ Caroline touched him on the chest, just over the spot where the Beccaria Cage had left its mark. ‘Aubrey, at last! Votes for women!’
    ‘Splendid. There’s just a little matter of a war to get out of the way first.’
    ‘Quite right. Once the Albion Suffragist Movement was assured of your father’s commitment, all sorts of possibilities opened up. Our mission was revised to include a visit to Lutetia to encourage the Gallian Women’s Rights Association to follow our route, before Sophie and I went to Fisherberg to find Count Brandt’s sister.’
    ‘No doubt you were authorised to give certain undertakings? Money? Access to intelligence?’
    ‘Aubrey, we didn’t have to promise anything. Ilse Brandt was already organising her own resistance to Chancellor Neumann’s regime, and since most Holmlandish men were connected with the war in one way or another, she’d been using her female friends and acquaintances. Our assistance will make her organisation stronger, but it was on the way before we arrived.’
    ‘A remarkable woman, just as her brother was a remarkable man.’
    ‘She’s nearly twenty years younger than he was. She told me how Count Brandt had left home before she really came to know him.’
    ‘That’s sad.’
    ‘When she was older, in her teens, he’d visit and tell of his studies and his travels. When he came, he always brought her a present from wherever he’d been lately. He spoke to her, she said, very formally, in a way that she found both hilarious and endearing. That was when she came to love him in a way that she couldn’t before.’
    ‘Now, in his memory, she’s continuing his work to bring Holmland back to its people.’
    ‘It’s her work too, Aubrey. She’s not just filling in for him.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that.’
    ‘I’m glad.’ She paused. ‘I know you didn’t. Forgive me.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I can be a little prickly when people make assumptions about women.’
    ‘Really?’
    This time, the squeeze on the shoulder was more of a pinch. ‘Don’t affect innocence, Aubrey. You know me very well.’
    ‘Let’s say I do. Is that a bad thing?’
    ‘That you know how I feel about the way women have been treated? No. I’d say it suggests a certain familiarity.’
    ‘And you’re uncomfortable with that?’
    ‘Would I be sitting on your knee if I were?’
    ‘No. Probably not. Certainly not.’
    ‘There you are, then.’

     
    A SUBLIME TIME LATER, DURING WHICH THEY DIDN’T TALK at all, George and Sophie came back. Aubrey was disappointed when Caroline detached herself from his embrace, but understood that a time and place for everything was a useful, if unsatisfying, motto.
    ‘I say.’ George wore a huge grin and he leaned over the backboard of the lorry. ‘You should hear all the magical stuff that Sophie’s been getting up to, old man. Sounds as if she could be useful for whatever you’re planning here.’
    Sophie playfully tweaked him on the shoulder. ‘George, Aubrey is an expert. I am a learner.’
    ‘Sophie had some special instruction from Commander Craddock’s people,’ George said.
    ‘Not enough,’ she said, ‘but they said that my talents are mostly in the magic of seeming and illusion.’
    ‘Which is how you were able to slip into Baron von Grolman’s factory,’ George pointed out, ‘even though your magical talents were as rusty as an iron anchor.’
    Aubrey blinked. ‘All anchors are iron, George.’
    ‘Are they? That’s a lot of rust, then, which is my point.’
    ‘A point that we’ll allow to slide gracefully by. Sophie, I have two items that you’ll be most helpful with.’

     
    A UBREY ENCOURAGED S OPHIE TO CREATE A SMALL LIGHT for them to work by, and he was pleased to see how readily she managed the spell. As basic as it was, doing spellcraft like this was a way to refine one’s talents and keep them at one’s