Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye (37 page)

“Indeed. And I think we should preempt him. If you find the Staff and return it to Mr. Devereaux yourself, your standing will be greatly enhanced, and Mr. Duvall will have suffered a setback. I will be content, too, since the Prime Minister will continue to help finance my works worldwide. What do you think of this proposal?”

Nathaniel’s head was awhirl. “An … interesting plan, sir.”

“Good, good. So, we are agreed. We must act swiftly” Mr. Makepeace leaned forward and clapped Nathaniel on the shoulder.

Nathaniel blinked. In his comradely enthusiasm, Makepeace was taking his acceptance entirely for granted. The proposal
was
beguiling, of course, but he felt uncertain, outmaneuvered; he needed a moment to work out what to do. Yet he
had
no time. The magician’s knowledge of his activities had caught him horribly off guard, and he was no longer in control. Nathaniel made a reluctant decision: if Makepeace knew of his visit to Balham, there was no point concealing it anyway. “I have already conducted some investigations,” he said stiffly, “and I believe the Staff might be in the hands of a girl, one Kitty Jones.”

The magician nodded approvingly. “I can see my high opinion of you was correct, Mandrake. Any idea where she might be?”

“I—I nearly caught her at her parents’ house this evening, sir. I … missed her by minutes. I don’t believe she had the Staff on her at the time.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Makepeace scratched his chin; he made no attempt to cross-examine Nathaniel on the details. “And now she will have fled. She will be hard to trace … unless we can encourage her out of hiding. Did you arrest the parents? A few well-publicized tortures might draw the girl out.”

“No, sir. I did consider it, but they were not close to her. I do not believe that she would give herself up for them.”

“Even so, it is an option. But I have another possible idea, Mandrake. I have a contact who has one foot in London’s murky underworld. He is acquainted with more beggars, thieves, and cutpurses than you could cram into a theater. I shall talk to him tonight; see if he can give us word on this Kitty Jones. With a bit of luck, we shall be able to act tomorrow. In the meantime, I suggest you go home to get some sleep. And remember, we are playing for high stakes, my boy, and Mr. Duvall is a dangerous rival. Not a word of our little agreement to anyone.”

37

M
idday, and the shadows were at their smallest. The sky above was eggshell blue, flecked with amiable clouds. The sun shone pleasantly upon the rooftops of the suburb. It was an upbeat hour, all told, a time for honest enterprises and decent work. As if in proof, a few industrious tradesmen passed along the street, wheeling their barrows from house to house. They doffed their caps to old ladies, patted the heads of little children, smiled politely as they introduced their wares. Bargains were struck, goods and money exchanged; the tradesmen strolled away, whistling temperance hymns.

Hard to believe that anything wicked was about to happen.

Perched in the depths of a tangled elderberry bush set back from the road, a hunched black form surveyed the scene. It was a mess of bedraggled feathers, with beak and legs protruding as if at random. A medium-sized crow: a bird of ill and unkempt omen. The bird kept its bloodshot eyes trained firmly on the upstairs windows of a large and rambling house at the other end of an overgrown garden.

Once again, I was loitering with intent.

The thing to remember about this summoning business is that nothing is ever strictly speaking your own fault. If a magician binds you to a task, you do it—and quickly—or suffer the Shriveling Fire. With that kind of injunction hanging over your head, you soon learn to discard any scruples. This means that during the five thousand years I’d been back and forth across the earth, I’d been unwillingly involved in a good many shabby enterprises.
¹
Not that I
have
a conscience, of course, but even we hardened djinn sometimes feel a little soiled by the things we’re called upon to do.

This, on a small scale, was one such occasion.

The crow squatted drably in his tree, keeping other fowl at bay by the simple expedient of letting off a Stench. I didn’t want any company just then.

I shook my beak in mild despondency.
Nathaniel.
What was there to say? Despite our occasional
²
differences, I’d once hoped that he might turn out slightly different from the normal run of magicians. He’d shown a lot of initiative in the past, for instance, and more than a crumb of altruism. It had been barely possible that he might follow his
own
path through life, and not just go down the old power/wealth/notoriety road that every one of his fellows chose.

But had he? Nope.

The signs now were worse than ever. Perhaps still unsettled by witnessing the demise of his colleague Tallow, my master had been curt to the point of rudeness when he summoned me that morning. He was at his palest and most taciturn. No friendly conversation for me, no tactful pleasantries. I received no further praise for my dispatch of the renegade afrit the night before, and despite changing into a few beguiling female shapes, didn’t get a single rise out of him. What I
did
get was a prompt new task—of the sort that fits squarely into the “nasty and regrettable” category. It was a departure for Nathaniel, the first time he’d sunk to these depths, and I must admit it surprised me.

But a charge is a charge. So here I was, an hour or two later, loitering in a bush in Balham.

Part of my instructions was to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible, which was why I didn’t just bust my way through the ceiling.
³
I knew my prey was home and probably upstairs; so I waited, with my little beady eyes fixed upon the windows.

No magician’s house, this. Peeling paint, rotting window frames, weeds growing through holes in the tiled porch. A sizable property, yes, but unkempt and a little sad. There were even a few rusting children’s toys buried in the foot-high grass.

After an hour or more of immobility, the crow was getting twitchy. Although my master had wanted discretion, he had also wanted speed. Before long I would have to stop dallying and get the business over with. But ideally I wanted to wait until the house had emptied, and my victim was alone.

As if in answer to this need, the front door suddenly opened and a large and formidable woman sallied forth, clutching a canvas shopping bag. She passed directly beneath me and headed off down the street. I didn’t bother trying to hide. To her, I was just a bird. There were no nexuses, no magical defenses, no signs that anyone here could see beyond the first plane. It was hardly a proper test of my powers, in other words. The whole mission was sordid from beginning to end.

Then—a movement in one window. A patch of dusty gray net curtains was shoved aside and a skinny arm reached through to unlatch the clasp and shove the casement up. This was my cue. The crow took off and fluttered up the garden, like a pair of black underpants blown upon the wind. It landed on the sill of the window in question, and with a shuffle of its scaly legs, inched along the dirty net curtains until it located a small vertical tear. The crow shoved its head through and took a look inside.

The room’s primary purpose was evident from the bed shoved up against the far wall: a rumpled duvet indicated that it had recently been occupied. But the bed was now half-obscured by a colossal number of small wooden trays, each one subdivided into compartments. Some held semiprecious stones: agate, topaz, opal, garnet, jade, and amber, all shaped, polished, and graded by size. Others held strips of thin metal, or wisps of carved ivory, or triangular pieces of colored fabric. All along one side of the room a rough worktop had been erected, and this was covered by more trays, together with racks of slender tools and pots of foul-smelling glue. In one corner, carefully stacked and labeled, sat a pile of books with new plain leather bindings of a dozen colors. Pencil marks on the bindings indicated where ornamentation was to be added, and in the center of the desk, bathed in a pool of light from two standing lamps, one such operation was in progress. A fat volume in brown crocodile-skin was having a star-pattern of tiny red garnets added to its front cover. As the crow on the windowsill watched, the final gem had a blob of glue applied to its underside and was set in place by a pair of tweezers.

Deeply engaged in this work, and thus oblivious to my presence, was the youth I had come to find. He wore a rather worn-looking dressing gown and a pair of faded blue pajamas.

His feet, which were crossed under his stool, were encased in a huge pair of stripy bed-socks. His black hair was shoulder length, and on a split hairs-general grease rating put even Nathaniel’s noxious mane in the shade. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with leather, glue, and odor of boy.

Well, this was it. No time like the present, etc. Time to do the deed.

The crow gave a sigh, took hold of the net curtain in its beak, and with one quick motion of the head, ripped the fabric in two.

I stepped through onto the inner sill and hopped onto the nearest stack of books, just as the boy looked up from his work.

He was very out of shape; the flesh hung heavily on him, and his eyes were tired. He caught sight of the crow, and ran one hand through his hair in a distracted sort of way. A fleeting look of panic passed across his face, then dulled into resignation. He set down his tweezers on the desk.

“What manner of demon are you?” he said.

The crow was taken aback. “You wearing lenses or something?”

The boy shrugged wearily. “My grandmama always said demons came as crows. And normal birds don’t slice their way through curtains, do they?”

This last bit was admittedly true. “Well, if you must know,” I said, “I am a djinni of great antiquity and power. I have spoken with Solomon and Ptolemy, and hunted down the Sea Peoples in the company of kings. Currently, however, I am a crow. But enough about me.” I adopted a more efficient, businesslike tone. “You are the commoner Jakob Hyrnek?” A nod. “Good. Then prepare—”

“I know who sent you.”

“Er … You do?”

“I’ve guessed this was coming for a long time.”

The crow blinked in surprise. “Blimey.
I
found out only this morning.”

“It makes sense. He’s decided to finish the job.” The boy shoved his hands deep into his dressing gown pockets and sighed feelingly.

I was confused. “He has? What job was this? Listen—stop sighing like a girl and explain yourself.”

“Killing me, of course,” Hyrnek said. “I assume you’re a more efficient demon than the last one. Although I have to admit he
looked
a lot more scary. You’re a bit drab and weedy. And small.”

“Just hold hard a moment.” The crow rubbed its eyes with a wing tip. “There’s some mistake here. My master never heard of your existence until yesterday. He told me so.”

It was the boy’s turn to do the perplexed bit. “Why would Tallow say that? Is he mad?”

“Tallow?”
The crow was practically cross-eyed with befuddlement. “Slow down! What’s
he
got to do with it?”

“He sent the green monkey after me, of course. So I naturally assumed—”

I held up a wing. “Let’s start again. I have been sent to find Jakob Hyrnek at this address. Jakob Hyrnek is you. Correct? Right. So far so good. Now, I know nothing about any green monkey—and let me tell you, incidentally, that looks aren’t everything. I may not seem much at present, but I’m a good deal more vicious than I appear.”

The boy nodded sadly. “I thought you might be.”

“Too right, buster. I’m nastier than any monkey you’re likely to come across, that’s for sure. Now, where was I? I’ve lost my thread … Oh, yes—I know nothing about the monkey and I certainly haven’t been summoned by Tallow. Which would be impossible in any case.”

“Why?”

“Because he was swallowed by an afrit last night. But that’s by the by—”

Not to the boy, it wasn’t. At this news, his face lit up: his eyes widened, his mouth curved up and outward in a long, slow smile. His whole body, which had been slumped over his stool like a sack of cement, suddenly began to straighten and gain new life. His fingers gripped the edge of the desk so hard the knuckles cracked.

“He’s
dead?
You’re sure?”

“Saw it with these eyes. Well—not
these
ones, exactly. I was a serpent at the time.”

“How did it happen?” He seemed uncommonly interested.

“A summoning went wrong. The fool misread the words, or something.”

Hyrnek’s grin broadened. “He was reading from a book?”

“A book, yes—that’s generally where incantations are to be found. Now, can we
please
get back to the business at hand? I haven’t got all day.”

“All right, but I’m very grateful to you for the information.” The boy did his best to compose himself, but kept grinning inanely and breaking into little chuckles. It really put me off my stride.

“Look, I’m trying to be serious here. I warn you to take heed—oh hell!” The crow had taken a menacing step forward and stuck its foot into a glue pot. After a couple of tries, I managed to shake it off across the room, and began to scrape my toes clean against the corner of a wooden tray. “Now, listen,” I snarled as I scraped, “I’ve come here—not to kill you, as you surmised—but to take you away, and I advise you not to resist.”

That knocked some sense into him. “Take me away? Where?”

“You’ll see. Do you want to get dressed? I can spare you a little time.”

“No. No, I can’t!” All of a sudden he was upset, rubbing at his face and scratching at his hands.

I tried to be reassuring. “I won’t try to harm you—”

“But I
never
go out. Never!”

“You have no choice, sonny. Now, how about a pair of trousers? Those pajama bottoms look loose, and I fly at speed.”

“Please.”
He was desperate, pleading. “I
never
go out. I haven’t done so for three years. Look at me.
Look
at me. See?”

I looked at him blankly. “What? So you’re a bit podgy. There’s worse than you out there walking the streets, and you’d solve the problem fast enough if you did some exercise instead of sitting on your backside here. Embossing spell books in your bedroom is no life for a growing boy. It’ll play hell with your eyesight, too.”

“No—my skin! And my hands! Look at them! I’m hideous!” He was yelling now, thrusting his hands toward my beak, and flicking his hair back from his face.

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“The coloring, of course! Look at it! All over me.” And sure enough, now that he came to mention it, I did see a series of vertical gray-black bands running up and down his face and across the backs of his hands.

“Oh
that,”
I said. “What of it? I thought you’d done that intentionally.”

Hyrnek gave a sort of silly, sobbing laugh at this, the kind that implies far too much time spent maundering in solitude. I didn’t allow him time to speak. “That’s a Black Tumbler, isn’t it?” I went on. “Well, the Banja people of Great Zimbabwe used to use that—among other spells—to make themselves look more attractive. It was considered very becoming for a young bridegroom to have a full body-coat of stripes before the wedding, and the women went in for it, too, on a more localized basis. Only the wealthy could afford it, of course, as the sorcerers charged the earth. Anyway, from their point of view you look extremely eligible.” I paused. “Except for your hair, which
is
pretty bad. But so’s my master’s, and it doesn’t stop him from flouncing about in broad daylight. Now, then”—amid all of that, I thought I’d heard a door slam somewhere in the house—“it’s time to go. No time for trousers, I fear; you’ll have to chance your luck with the updrafts.”