Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye (15 page)

15

P
icture 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.

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.

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

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

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.”