Part Two 3 page

Going to tell us something of the first importance. A new job. Bigger than anything we've ever done."

"Bigger than Westminster Hall?" Stanley sounded skeptical.

Nick grinned. "Saving Mart's memory, bigger even than that. Hopkins's letter doesn't say what, but it's going to shake everything up, he says. It's what we've always wanted, every one of us. We're going to do something that'll transform our fortunes at a stroke. It's dangerous, but if we do it right, he says, we'll knock the magicians off their perch. London will never be the same again."

"About time," Anne said. "Stanley, go and put the kettle on."

Bartimaeus

Picture the scene. London in the rain. Gray sheets of water tumbled from the sky, breaking upon the pavements with a roar louder than cannon fire. A strong wind buffeted the rain this way and that, blowing it under porches and eaves, cornices and capstones, drowning each possible refuge with a freezing spray. There was water everywhere, bouncing off the tarmac, swilling along the gutters, congregating in basement corners and above the drains. It overflowed the city's cisterns. It cascaded horizontally through pipes, diagonally across roof slates, vertically down walls, staining the brickwork like sweeping washes of blood. It dripped between joists and through cracks in ceilings. It hung in the air in the form of a chill white mist, and above, invisibly, in the black reaches of the sky. It seeped into the fabric of buildings and the bones of their cowering inhabitants.

In dark places underground, rats huddled in their lairs, listening to the echoes of the drumming overhead. In humble houses, ordinary men and women closed the shutters, turned lights on and clustered about their hearth fires with steaming cups of tea. Even in their lonely villas, the magicians fled the endless rain. They skulked to their workrooms, bolted fast the iron doors and, conjuring clouds of warming incense, lost themselves in dreams of distant lands.

Rats, commoners, magicians: all safely undercover. And who could blame them? The streets were deserted, all London was shut down. It was close to midnight and the storm was getting worse.

No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this.

Ho hum.

Somewhere amid the driving rain was a place where seven roads met. In the center of the crossroads stood a granite plinth, topped by a statue of a large man on a horse. The man waved a sword, his face frozen in the midst of a heroic cry. The horse was rearing up, back legs splayed, front legs out. Perhaps it was signaling dramatic defiance, perhaps it was preparing to hurl itself into battle.

Perhaps it was simply trying to dislodge the fat bloke on its back. We'll never know. But see: under the belly of the horse, sitting right at the center of the plinth, its tail tucked elegantly against its paws—a large gray cat.

The cat affected not to notice the bitter wind that rippled its sodden fur. Its handsome yellow eyes gazed out steadily into the murk, as if piercing the rain. Only the slight downward tilt of its tufted ears signaled dissatisfaction with its circumstances. One ear flicked occasionally; otherwise, the cat might have been carved from stone.

The night darkened. The rain intensified. I tucked my tail in grimly and watched the roads.

Time trickled on.

Four nights is not a particularly long time even for humans, let alone for us higher beings from the Other Place.[1] Yet the last four nights had really dragged. For each one of them I had been patrolling the central regions of London, hunting for the unknown marauder. I'd not been alone, admittedly; I had the company of a few other unlucky djinn and a barrel-load of foliots. The foliots in particular had caused incessant trouble, forever trying to bunk off by hiding under bridges or slipping down chimneys, or getting startled out of their skins[2] by thunderclaps or one another's shadows. It was all one could do to keep them in line. And all the while it had rained continually, hard enough to cause a canker in one's essence.

[1] Where time, strictly speaking, doesn't exist. Or, if it does, only in a circuitous, nonlinear sort of way....

Look, it's a complicated concept and I'd love to discuss it with you, but perhaps now's not quite the best moment.

Remind me about it later.

[2] Literally so, I'm afraid. All rather messy and inconvenient.

Nathaniel, needless to say, had not been sympathetic. He was under pressure himself, he said, and he needed results soon. In his turn he was having difficulty marshaling the small group of magicians from his department who were providing the other djinn for the patrols. Reading between the lines, they were openly mutinous, disliking being ordered around by an upstart of a youth. And let's face it, who could blame them? Nevertheless, each night djinn and foliots alike assembled glumly on the gray slate roofs of Whitehall and were directed out on our patrols.

Our aim was to protect certain prominent tourist regions of the city, which Nathaniel and his immediate superior, a certain Mr. Tallow, considered under threat. A list of possible sites was given to us: museums, galleries, swanky restaurants, the aerodrome, shopping arcades, statues, arches, and other landmarks.... Taken in toto, it pretty much accounted for most of London. This meant we had to work our interlocking circuits continuously all night to have any chance of keeping check.

Not only was this tedious and tiring (and very wet), it was also an unnerving business, since the nature of our opponent was both mysterious and malign. Several of the more nervy foliots began a whispering campaign straightaway: our enemy was a rogue afrit; itself was—worse—a marid; it wrapped a cloak of darkness around it at all times, so its victims could not see their deaths approaching; no, it destroyed buildings with its breath;[3] it carried with it the odor of the grave which paralyzed human and spirit alike. To improve morale I tried starting a counterrumor that it was nothing but a small imp with a grouchy personality, but this, sadly, didn't stick; the foliots (and a couple of the djinn) went out into the night wide-eyed and tentative of wing.

[3] I've known magicians with similar powers, especially first thing in the morning.

One small bonus for me was the appearance, among the djinn, of none other than my old associate from my days in Prague—Queezle. She was newly enslaved to one of the other magicians in Nathaniel's department, a sour and desiccated individual named Ffoukes. Despite his strict regime however, Queezle retained her old vigor. We made it our business to hunt together wherever possible.[4]

[4] I liked Queezle. She was fresh and youthful (a mere 1,500 years in your world) and had been lucky with her masters. Her first summoning was by a hermit living in the Jordanian desert, who ate honey and dried tubers and treated her with austere courtesy. When he died, she had escaped further service until a female French magician (1400s) uncovered her name. This master, too, was unusually clement and never so much as jabbed her with the Stimulating Compass. By the time she reached Prague, Queezle's personality was thus less embittered than that of hoary old lags like me. Released from service there by the death of our master, she had since served magicians in China and Ceylon, without great incident.

The first two nights of hunting, nothing happened, except for two foliots getting swept away while hiding under London Bridge. But on the third night, loud crashing sounds were heard shortly before midnight, emanating from the west wing of the National Gallery. A djinni named Zeno was first on the scene, with me not far behind. Simultaneously, several magicians, including my master, arrived in a convoy; they encased the gallery in a dense nexus and ordered us into battle.

Zeno displayed admirable bravery. Without hesitation, he flew straight to the source of the disturbance and was never seen again. I was close on his heels, but owing to a dicky leg and the complex layout of the gallery corridors, lagged behind, got lost, and didn't manage to reach the west wing until much later. By this time, having wrought considerable damage, the marauder had departed.

My excuses cut no ice with my master, who would have worked some inventive punishment on me had I not had the protection of knowing his name. As it was, he vowed to encase me in an iron cube should I neglect to engage the enemy next time it appeared. I made soothing answers, perceiving he was addled with anxiety: his hair was disheveled, his cuffs hung limp, his drainpipe trousers sagged loose upon his frame as if he had lost weight. I pointed this out to him in a sympathetic sort of way.

"Eat more," I advised. "You're too thin. Currently, the only bit of you that's growing outward is your hair. If you don't watch out, you'll overbalance soon."

He rubbed his red, sleepless eyes. "Will you stop going on about my hair? Eating is for people who have nothing else to do, Bartimaeus. I'm living on borrowed time—as are you. If you can destroy the enemy, all well and good; if not, at least get some information about its nature. Otherwise the Night Police are likely to take charge."

"So? What's that to me?"

He spoke seriously. "It'll mean my downfall."

"So? What's that to me?"

"Everything, if I bind you into the iron cube before I go. In fact, I'll make it a silver one—even more painful. And it'll happen, unless I get results soon."

I ceased arguing then. There was little point. The boy had changed somewhat since I'd last seen him, and not for the better. His master and his career had worked an unpleasant alchemy upon him: he was harder, harsher, and altogether more brittle. He also had even less of a sense of humor than previously, which was itself a remarkable achievement. One way or another, I looked forward to the end of my six weeks.

But until then, surveillance, danger, and the rain.

From my position beneath the statue, I could see down three of the seven roads. Each one was lined with swanky shop fronts, dark and shadowy, secured by metal grilles. Frail lamps shone in alcoves above the doors, but the rain was stronger than the light, and their radiance did not travel far.

Water sluiced along the pavements.

A sudden movement in the left-hand road: the cat's head turned. Something had dropped onto a first-floor window ledge. It perched there for a moment, a black smudge in the gloom—then, in a single sinewy movement, poured itself over the ledge and down the wall, zigzagging through the grooves between the bricks like a thin rope of hot treacle. At the base of the wall, it dropped onto the pavement, became a small black smudge again, grew legs, and began to splitter-splatter along the pavement in my direction.

I watched all this. I did not move an inch.

The smudge reached the crossroads, waded through the spreading puddles, and jumped onto the plinth. Here it was fully revealed as an elegant spaniel with big brown eyes. She halted in front of the cat, paused, shook herself vigorously.

A shower of water sprayed out and hit the cat directly in the face.

"Thanks for that, Queezle," I said. "You must have spotted I wasn't quite wet enough."

The spaniel blinked, stuck her head coyly on one side, and gave an apologetic bark.

"And you can drop that old routine right now," I went on. "I'm not some human dunderhead who's going to be charmed by limpid eyes and a clot of wet fur. You forget I can see you quite clearly on the seventh plane, dorsal tubes and all."

"Can't help myself, Bartimaeus." The spaniel raised a hind leg and scratched herself nonchalantly behind one ear. "It's all this undercover work. It's becoming second nature to me. You should think yourself lucky you're not sitting under a lamppost."

I did not dignify this remark with a response. "So where've you been?" I said. "You're two hours later than agreed."

The spaniel nodded wearily. "False alarm at the silk warehouses. Pair of foliots thought they'd seen something. Had to search the whole place thoroughly before giving the all clear. Stupid first-timers. Of course I had to reprimand them."

"Nipped their ankles, did you?"

A small crooked smile flickered across the spaniel's muzzle. "Something like that."

I shifted across to allow Queezle a bit of room on the center of the plinth. Not that it was any less damp there particularly, but it seemed a comradely thing to do. She shuffled up and huddled alongside.

"Can't really blame them," I said. "They're jumpy. It's all this rain. And what happened to Zeno.

Being summoned night after night doesn't help either. It wears your essence down after a while."

Queezle gave me a side glance out of those big brown puppy-dog eyes. "Your essence, too, Bartimaeus?"

"I was speaking rhetorically. I'm all right." To prove it I arched my back in a big luxuriant cat stretch, the kind that runs from whisker tip to tail tuft. "Ahhh, that's better. Nope, I've seen worse than this and so have you. Just some pumped-up imp lurking in the shadows. It's nothing we can't handle, once we find him."

"That's what Zeno said, as I recall."

"I don't remember what Zeno said. Where's your master tonight? Safely under cover?"

The spaniel gave a small growl. "He claims to be within signaling distance. The Whitehall office, allegedly. In fact, he's probably holed up in some magician's bar with a bottle in one hand and a girl in the other."

I grunted. "That sort, is he?"

"Yup. What's yours like?"

"Oh, the same. Worse, if anything. He'd have girl and bottle in the same hand."[5]

[5] Manifestly untrue. Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions. But in common with most djinn, I generally preferred to exaggerate my master's foibles in conversation.

The spaniel gave a sympathetic whimper. I got slowly to my feet.

"Well, we'd better swap circuits," I said. "I'll start by patrolling up to Soho and back. You can head between the posh shops down Gibbet Street to the Museum district behind."

"I might rest a bit," Queezle said. "I'm tired."

"Yes. Well, good luck."

"Good luck." The spaniel rested her head gloomily across her paws. I trotted out into the driving rain, to the edge of the plinth, and bent my legs, ready for the off. A little voice sounded behind me:

"Bartimaeus?"

"Yes, Queezle?"

"Oh, nothing."

"What?"

"It's just... well, it's not just the foliots. I'm jumpy, too."

The cat trotted back and sat beside her for a moment, curling its tail around her affectionately.

"You don't need to be," I said. "It's already past midnight and neither of us has seen anything. On every occasion when this thing has attacked, it's done so by midnight. Your only fear should be the boredom of a long, tedious vigil."

"I suppose so." The rain drummed all around, like a solid thing. We were cocooned within it.

"Between ourselves," Queezle said softly, "what do you think it is?"

My tail twitched. "I don't know, and I'd rather not find out. So far it's killed everything it's come across. My advice is keep vigilant watch, and if you see something unusual coming, scamper the other way pronto."

"But we have to destroy it. That's our charge."

"Well, destroy it by running away."

"How?"

"Um... Make it chase you, then lure it into heavy traffic? Something like that. I don't know, do I?

Just don't do what Zeno did and attack it head on."

The spaniel heaved a sigh. "I liked Zeno."

"A little too eager, that was his trouble."

There was a heavy silence. Queezle said nothing. The incessant rain beat down.

"Well," I said at last. "I'll see you."

"Yes."

I hopped down from the plinth and ran, tail out, through the rain and across the waterlogged street. A single jump took me up onto a low wall beside a deserted café. Then, in a series of leaps and bounds—wall to porch, porch to ledge, ledge to tiles—I negotiated my athletic feline way, until I had sprung up onto the guttering of the nearest, lowest roof.

I took a quick look back, down into the square. The spaniel was a forlorn and lonely speck, hunched in the shadows beneath the horse's belly. A gust of rain blocked her from my view. I turned and set off along the roof crests.

In that part of town, the ancient houses huddled close together, leaning forward like gossiping hunchbacks so that their gables almost met above the street. Even in the rain, it was thus an easy matter for an agile cat to make its way swiftly in whatever direction it fancied. And so I did. Anyone lucky enough to be peering out of their shuttered window might have glimpsed a flash of gray lightning (nothing more) leaping from chimney pot to weathervane, streaking across slates and thatch, never putting a paw wrong.

I halted for a breather in the valley between two steeply pitching roofs and scanned the skies longingly. It would have been quicker for me to get to Soho by flying, but I had orders to remain near the ground, keeping my eye out for trouble there. No one knew exactly how the enemy arrived or departed, but my master had a hunch it was somehow earth-bound. He doubted it was anything like a djinni at all.

The cat rubbed some moisture from its face with a paw and prepared for another jump—a big one this time, a proper road's width. At that moment, everything was illuminated by a sudden burst of orange light—I saw the tiles and chimney pots beside me, the lowering clouds above, and even the raindrop curtains hanging all around. Then darkness fell again.

The orange Flare was the agreed emergency signal. It came from close behind.

Queezle.

She had found something. Or something had found her.

The time for rules was past. I turned; even as I did so, I made the change: an eagle with black crest and golden wingtips launching itself in haste into the sky.

I had traveled only two blocks from the place where the portly horseman guarded the seven roads. Even if she had moved, Queezle would not be far away. It would take less than ten seconds to get back. No problem. I would be in time.

Three seconds later, I heard her scream.

Bartimaeus

The eagle hurtled down out of the night, angling painfully into the teeth of the gale. Over the roofs to the lonely crossroads, down to the statue, I alighted on the edge of the plinth, where rain spattered harshly against the stone. Everything was exactly as it had been a minute or two before. But the spaniel had gone.

"Queezle?" No answer. Nothing but the howling of the wind.

A moment later, perched on the horseman's hat, I scanned the seven roads on each of the seven planes. The spaniel was nowhere to be seen; nor were there any djinn, imps, hexes, or other magical effusions. The streets were deserted. I was quite alone.

In doubt, I returned to the plinth and subjected it to a minute inspection. I thought to detect a faint black mark upon the stonework, roughly where we had been sitting, but it was impossible to tell whether or not it had been there before.

All of a sudden I felt very exposed. Whichever way I turned on the plinth, my back was vulnerable to something creeping up quietly out of the rain. I took off promptly and spiraled up around the statue, the crashing of the raindrops thrumming in my ears. Up above rooftop level I rose, safely out of reach of anything lurking in the street.

It was then that I heard the crash. It wasn't a nice, restrained sort of crash—like a bottle breaking on a bald man's head, say. It sounded rather as if a large forest oak had been uprooted and tossed casually aside, or an entire building had been swatted impatiently out of the path of something very big. Unpromising, in other words.

Worse still, I could tell the direction from which it came. If the rain had been just a little louder, or the crashing just a little quieter, I might have been able to misjudge it and head off bravely to investigate in the wrong direction. But no such luck.

Anyway, there was always the small possibility that Queezle might still be alive.

So I did two things. First, I sent up another Flare, hoping against hope that it would be spotted by another watcher in our group. The nearest, if memory served, was a foliot, based somewhere down near Charing Cross. He was a meager individual, devoid of valor or initiative, but any reinforcements would be welcome now, if only as cannon fodder.

Next, I proceeded in a northerly direction, at chimney height along the road from which the sound had come. I was heading for the museum quarter. I flew about as slowly as an eagle can without falling out of the air.[1] All the while I scanned the buildings below. It was an area of luxury shops, small, dark, discreet. Old painted signs above the doors hinted at the delights within: necklaces, rolls of silk, jeweled pocket watches. Gold featured prominently in this district, diamonds likewise. It was to these establishments that magicians came to buy those little extras that emphasized their status. Rich tourists flocked here too.

[1] If it's possible to flap your wings gingerly, that's exactly what I did.

The tremendous crash had not been repeated; all the shop fronts seemed healthy enough, their alcove lights burning, their wooden signs creaking in the wind.

Rain fell around me. down into the street. In places the cobbles had disappeared beneath the stippled surface of the water. There was no sign of anyone, mortal or otherwise. I might have been flying above a ghost town.

The road widened a little, to pass on either side of a small circle of grass and pretty flowers. It seemed an incongruous sight in the narrow street, perhaps a little out of place. Then you noticed the old broken post in the center of the grass, the flagstones hidden among the flowers, and realized its original purpose.[2] Tonight it was all looking very water-blown and windswept, but what interested me, and made me circle around to land upon the post, were the markings in the grass.

[2] The name of the road, Gibbet Street, kind of gave the game away, too. The London authorities had always been good at setting examples for the commoners, although in recent years the bodies of felons were hung up only in the prison district, around the Tower. Elsewhere it was thought to deter tourism.

They were footprints, of a sort. Large ones. Vaguely spatula-shaped, with the imprint of one separate toe visible at the wider end. They crossed the grass circle from one side to the other, each print driven down deep into the earth.

I shook moisture from my head feathers and drummed my claws against the post. Perfect. Just perfect. My enemy wasn't just mysterious and powerful, he was big and heavy, too. The night was getting better and better.

I followed the direction of the footsteps with my eagle eye. For the first few steps beyond the grass they were still partially visible, as indicated by a desultory trail of deposited mud. Beyond that they disappeared, but it was clear that none of the shops on either side had suffered from the attentions of any marauder. My quarry was evidently heading elsewhere. I took off and continued on along the road.

Gibbet Street came to its end at a wide boulevard that ran from left to right into the darkness.

Directly opposite was a tall, imposing fence of metal railings, each post twenty feet high, two inches thick, and of solid iron. There was a set of double gates in the fence, and these were hanging open. In fact, to be accurate, they were hanging open off a nearby lamppost, together with a substantial portion of the adjoining rails. A great twisted hole gaped in the fencing. Something had ripped it in two in its hurry to get inside. How nice to be so eager. By contrast, it was with extreme reluctance that I approached, flying slowly across the street.

I alighted on a wrenched and tortured tip of metal. Beyond the ruined gate was a broad driveway leading up to an expansive flight of steps. Above these was a giant portico of eight imposing columns, attached to a vast building, tall as a castle, dull as a bank. I recognized it of old: the fabled British Museum. It stretched outward in either direction, wing upon wing, farther than my eyes could see. It was the size of a city block.[3]

[3] The British Museum was home to a million antiquities, several dozen of which were legitimately come by.

For two hundred years prior to the magicians' rule, London's rulers had made it their habit to filch anything interesting they could from countries where their traders called. It was something of a national addiction, based on curiosity and avarice. Lords and ladies taking the Grand Tour of Europe kept their eyes open for small treasures that could be stuffed unnoticed into handbags; soldiers on campaign filled their chests with looted gems and reliquaries; every merchant returning to the capital carried an extra crate of valuables in his hold. Most of these items made their eventual way to the ever-expanding collections of the British Museum, where they were set out on display with clear labels in many languages so that foreign tourists could come and see their lost valuables with minimum inconvenience. In due course, the magicians looted the museum of its magical items, but it remained an imposing cultural charnel house.

Was it me, or was everything fairly big around here? The eagle fluffed up its feathers vigorously, but couldn't help feeling rather small. I considered the position. No prizes for guessing why the unknown, big-footed and evidently rather strong enemy had come here. The museum held enough material worth destroying to keep it busy for a week. Whoever wished to heap embarrassment upon the British government had chosen well, and it was safe to say that my master's wretched career would not continue much longer if the marauder completed an uninterrupted night's work.

Which of course meant that I had to follow it inside.[4]

[4] Revenge was another motive for me now. I no longer held out much prospect of seeing Queezle alive again.

The eagle glided forward, low over the driveway and up over the steps, to land between the columns of the portico. Ahead was the great bronze door of the museum; typically, my quarry had decided to ignore it and had staved its way through the solid stone wall instead. This sort of thing wasn't stylish, but had a bowel-looseningly impressive quality that made me spend a couple of extra minutes engaged in flagrant delaying tactics such as checking the rubble of the portico carefully for danger.

The hole in the building gaped wide and black. From a respectful distance, I peered inside, into a lobby of a kind. All was still. No activity on any plane. A tumble of shattered wood and masonry and a splintered sign cheerfully proclaiming WELCOME TO THE BRITI showed where something had shoveled its determined way. Dust hung thickly in the air. A wall on the left had been broken through. I listened hard. In the distance, behind the pummeling of the rain, I fancied I could hear the distinctive sound of priceless antiquities being broken.

I sent another Flare into the sky in case that shirking foliot chose to glance in my direction. Then I made my change and stepped into the building.

The ferocious minotaur[5] glanced imperiously around the ruined lobby, steam rising from its nostrils, its clawed hands flexing, its hooves pawing at the dirt. Who dared challenge it? No one!

Well, because, as expected, there was nothing in the room. Right. Fine. That meant I had to try the next one. No problem. With a deep breath, the minotaur tiptoed tentatively through the debris to the splintered wall. It peeped around with great caution.

[5] Guaranteed to strike fear into a human enemy, there's nothing better than a bull-headed minotaur if you want a bit of the old shock and awe. And after centuries of careful honing, my particular minotaur guise was a doozy. The horns had just the right amount of curl and the teeth were nicely sharpened, as if filed. The skin was blue-black ebony. I'd kept the human torso, but had gone for a satyr's goat legs and cloven hooves, which are that bit scarier than pimply knees and sandals.

Darkness, rain drumming on the windows, amphorae and Phoenician pots lying scattered on the floor. And somewhere distant—breaking glass. The enemy was still several rooms ahead. Good. The minotaur stepped bravely through the hole.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 656