Ring Of Solomon (44 page)

A flash of light, a smell of cream and roses: Queen Balkis stood upon the rug. She wore a long white gown with golden trim, and necklaces of gold and ivory. Her hair was piled high above a golden coronet, and earrings of twisted gold hung beside her shapely neck. Slightly detracting from her beauty and elegance was her vacant expression of numbed bewilderment, and the notably greenish quality of her skin. She swayed a little where she stood, gasping and blinking, staring all around.

The Sumerian youth leaned in close to Asmira. ‘Spontaneous transfer makes you nauseous,’ Bartimaeus whispered. ‘She’s holding it in, though. No random vomiting. That’s a sure sign of good breeding.’

‘Welcome to Jerusalem, my lady.’ Solomon held out a casual glass. ‘Care for some wine?’

Balkis did not answer him. Her gaze had alighted on Asmira and, after a moment’s doubt, flared with recognition. She gave a little cry.

‘My lady—’ Asmira began.

‘Wicked girl!’ The queen’s face turned suddenly white; red spots burned in her cheeks. ‘You have betrayed me!’ She took a stumbling step in Asmira’s direction. She raised a clawing hand.

‘Not at all,’ Solomon said, interposing himself smoothly in between them. ‘In fact, quite the reverse. This is your most faithful servant. She carried out your mission. She stole the Ring from me. She destroyed those persons who threatened you in my name. Without her, the future of Israel – and of Sheba, dear Balkis – would have been grave indeed. I am indebted to Asmira,’ Solomon said. ‘And so are you.’

Queen Balkis said nothing. Her eyes, still trained on Asmira, were hard with doubt and cold hostility, her lips a single solid line. Asmira tried to recall the way the queen had looked when they’d spoken together two weeks before. She tried to recall the smiles and blandishments, the intimacy, her swell of pride …

No good. The memory was fugitive, and no longer carried power.

Balkis turned to the king. ‘So you say, my lord,’ she said at last. ‘I remain to be convinced of these facts.’

‘Indeed?’ Solomon gave a courteous bow. ‘It is unsurprising. We
have
rather sprung this on you.’ He held out the wine, and the full radiance of his smile bathed the queen; this time Balkis took the glass. ‘May I propose, then,’ he said, ‘that you accompany me for a walk about my palace, where some little work of reconstruction is going on? I can give you further details, and we can talk together about relations between our countries, which – I expect you agree – are in need of much improvement.’

The queen’s composure had, in small measure, returned. She bowed stiffly. ‘Very well.’

‘In the meantime, your guard—’

Balkis shook her head peremptorily. ‘She is no longer a guard of mine. I do not know
whom
she serves.’

Just for a moment Asmira endured a keen pain, like a knife-blade in the heart. Then it faded, and with it her agitation at the queen’s arrival. To her surprise she felt quite calm again.

She regarded the queen levelly. Balkis took a sip of wine and turned away.

‘In that case,’ Solomon said, smiling, ‘you will not mind, my lady, if I have a small suggestion. Asmira’ – now all the full charm and glamour of his guise was turned on her – ‘I have an offer to make you. Enter
my
service, come be my guard. I have seen first hand your many excellent qualities, and I now know – somewhat ironically after the events of last night – that I can trust you with my life. So, help me re-establish my rule here in Jerusalem. Be part of my more enlightened government! I will need all the help I can get in the days and weeks ahead, for my servants have been scattered, and if any of my magicians survive, they will need careful watching. Help me go forward, Asmira! Start a new life in Jerusalem! Be sure,’ he smiled, ‘that I will reward you richly.’

At this, King Solomon put his wine glass down. ‘Now, it is high time that I attended to my most
important
guest. Fair Balkis, we shall take a leisurely tour, then retire to the pavilions for iced sherbet. The ice, incidentally, is brought fresh from the shoulders of Mount Lebanon; I swear you will never have tasted fresher. Please …’

He held out his arm; the Queen of Sheba took it. Together they moved across the room, stepping delicately around the debris on the floor. They reached an arch at the far side and passed through. The rustling of their robes dwindled, the sounds of their small-talk faded. They were gone.

Asmira and the djinni looked at one another. There was a pause.

‘Yep, that’s kings and queens for you,’ Bartimaeus said.

Uraziel, great Spirit of the Ring, wasn’t one to mess about when he had a palace to repair. Down below the tower, the work was underway. The buildings around the gardens that had sustained most damage in the fire-fight had been encased in teetering bamboo scaffolding, and scores of djinn were already scurrying up and down a maze of ladders, removing rubble, pulling out burned timbers and expunging any remaining taint of magic. From the direction of the quarry came sounds of frenzied hammering; afrits flew west towards the forests in search of logs. In the forecourts, lines of moulers
¹²³
stood beside cement vats, stirring industriously with their tails, while in the gardens, stretching away into the blue distance, armies of imps laboured to re-seed the blackened lawns.

Amongst it all strode Solomon, leading the Queen of Sheba by the hand.

From where I was, up on the balcony, even Solomon and Balkis’s monumental self-regard seemed insignificant. They were simply two tiny figures in gold and white, almost indistinguishable from the straggling pack of onlookers following at their heels
¹²⁴
. Balkis moved slowly, stiff-backed, the picture of brittle pride; Solomon with more of a graceful step. Now and then his arms made extravagant flourishes, no doubt as he pointed out the wonders of his gardens. On one hand there shone a little flash of gold.

It had to be said that, given the amount of power he had at his command, Solomon was, by human standards, quite admirably restrained. Most of his actions seemed more or less designed for the common good, and he was personally magnanimous too – as Asmira and I had just found out. But, all in all, he was still a king at heart, and that meant grand and flashy. Even his casual, throwaway magnanimity to us was, in its own way, grander and flashier than all his jewels. Not that you were going to hear me complaining.

But as for the Queen of Sheba … Well.

High on his lofty vantage point the dark-eyed Sumerian youth made a rueful face. He hauled his ragged essence off the balustrade where he’d been leaning and went inside.

It was time for me to go.

I found the girl sitting on one of the golden chairs in Solomon’s apartments, eating large quantities of honey cake with all the delicacy and restraint of a famished timber-wolf
¹²⁵
. She didn’t stop when I came in, but went on scoffing. I sat in a chair opposite and appraised her properly for the first time since my return.

Physically she had the right number of arms and legs remaining; otherwise she was undeniably the worse for wear. Her clothes were torn and scorched, her skin bruised, her lip a little swollen; in places, her hair had been discoloured green by a blast of magic fire. None of this could exactly have been considered a plus, yet it wasn’t the whole story by any means. As she took a long slug of Solomon’s wine, then wiped her sticky hands deliberately on one of his silken cushions, a perceptive onlooker (me) could also note that she seemed a good deal more vibrant and alive than when first I’d seen her, so stiff and cold upon her camel in the gorge that day.

Badly as Asmira’s exterior had been battered by the night’s events, I guessed that a chain inside her had also been broken – and
this
breakage wasn’t a bad thing.

She took a couple of grapes and an almond bun. ‘Still down there, are they?’

‘Yes, busily doing the tour …’ I narrowed my handsome eyes meditatively. ‘Is it me, or is your good queen Balkis something of a sour old trout?’

Asmira gave me a crooked grin. ‘I must say she wasn’t as … generous as I’d hoped.’

‘That’s putting it mildly.’

‘Well, what can you expect?’ The girl flicked pastry off her lap. ‘She sent me out to do a nice clean assassination and steal the Ring. Now she finds me praised to the skies by Solomon, the Ring still on his finger, and herself summoned to Jerusalem like a dumb imp on a leash.’

It was a fair analysis. ‘He’ll win her over,’ I pointed out. ‘He always does.’

‘Oh, she’ll forgive Solomon,’ Asmira said. ‘She won’t forgive me.’

She went back to her cakes. There was silence for a while.

‘Good job you got the offer, then,’ I said.

She looked up, chewing. ‘What?’

‘Solomon’s offer. Richly rewarding you for helping him move forward with his new, progressive government, or whatever it was. All sounds a bit woolly to me. Still, I’m sure you’ll be happy.’ I stared up at the ceiling.

‘You seem disapproving,’ the girl said.

I scowled. ‘Well, it’s just him using his Charm on you, isn’t it? Hooking you with that sparkly, one-on-one eye-contact stuff – all those white-toothed smiles, that business about trusting you with his life … That’s all very fine, but where will it end? First you’re a guard. Then a “special adviser”. Next thing you know you’ll be in his harem. All I can say is, if that happens, make damn sure you don’t sleep in the bunk below the wife from Moab.’

‘I’m not going in his harem, Bartimaeus.’

‘Well, you say that
now
, but—’

‘I’m not taking up his offer.’ She took another swig of wine.

‘What?’ Now it was my turn to look bemused. ‘You’re turning him down?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s Solomon. And … leaving aside what I just said, he
is
grateful.’

‘I know that,’ Asmira said. ‘But I’m not entering his service, even so. I’m not going to simply swap one master for another.’

I frowned. That chain inside her had snapped, all right. ‘Are you
sure
about this?’ I said. ‘Yes, he’s a conceited autocrat; yes, he’s got a mania for collecting wives. But he’d still make a better boss than Balkis by a long chalk. For a start, you wouldn’t be a sl— you wouldn’t be a hereditary guard. There’d be a lot more freedom for you – and gold too, if that tickles your fancy.’

‘It doesn’t. I don’t want to stay in Jerusalem.’

‘Why not? Thanks to that Ring, it’s the centre of the world.’

‘But it isn’t Sheba. It isn’t my home.’ And suddenly in her eyes there was that same fire that I’d noticed the night before, burning brightly still, but with a gentler flame. All its anger, all its zealotry had gone. She smiled at me. ‘I wasn’t lying to you – what I said last night. Being a guard, doing what I did – yes, I was serving the queen, but I was serving Sheba too. I love its hills and forests; I love the desert glittering beyond the fields. My mother showed it all to me, Bartimaeus, when I was very small. And the thought of never going back to it, or to her—’ She broke off. ‘You can’t know what that feeling’s like.’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I can. Speaking of which—’

‘Yes, of course.’ Asmira stood up decisively. ‘It’s time. I see that. I have to let you go.’

Which just goes to prove yet again that she wasn’t
really
a magician. Since the days of Uruk, all bouts of slavery have traditionally ended with a sordid argument in which my master refuses to set me free, and I become a cackling corpse or blood-clawed lamia in order to ‘persuade’ him. But the girl, who had freed herself, was happy enough to do the same to me. And do it without a scrap. For a moment I was so surprised I said nothing.

I got slowly to my feet. The girl was looking around the hall. ‘We’re going to need a pentacle,’ she said.

‘Yes. Or even two. There’ll be a couple somewhere.’

We hunted about, and soon enough spied the edge of a summoning circle peeping out beneath one of the singed carpets. I began to throw aside the furniture that covered it, while the girl stood watching me with that same calm self-possession I’d noticed in the gorge. A question occurred to me.

‘Asmira,’ I said, kicking an upturned table across the room, ‘if you head back to Sheba, what are you going to
do
there? And what about the queen? She’s not going to be pleased to see you hanging about, if today’s spite is anything to go by.’

To my surprise the girl had her answer ready. ‘I won’t be hanging about in Marib,’ she said. ‘I’ll take work with the frankincense traders, help guard them on their journeys across Arabia. From what I’ve seen there are plenty of dangers out there in the deserts – bandits and djinn, I mean. I think I can deal with those.’

I tossed an antique couch approvingly over my shoulder. That actually wasn’t a bad idea.

‘It’ll also give me a chance to travel,’ she went on. ‘Who knows, I might even go to Himyar one day – see that rock city you mentioned. Anyway, the incense trail will keep me well away from Marib most of the time. And if the queen
does
take exception to me …’ Her expression hardened. ‘Then I’ll have to deal with it. And her.’

I wasn’t a soothsayer or an augur and had no knowledge of the future, but I wondered if things might prove a little ominous for Queen Balkis. But there were other issues to attend to now. I shoved the last bits of furniture to the side, rolled up the priceless carpet and threw it in the plunge-pool – and stood back in satisfaction. There, embedded in the floor – and quite undamaged – lay two pentacles of pinkish marble. ‘Slightly fey,’ I commented, ‘but they’ll have to do.’

‘Right then,’ the girl said. ‘Get in.’

We stood facing each other for a final time. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘you do
know
the words of a Dismissal, don’t you? I’d hate to hang around for months while you were apprenticed out to learn them.’

‘Of course I know them,’ the girl said. She took a deep breath. ‘Bartimaeus—’

‘Hold on a minute …’ I’d just spotted something. It was a mural I hadn’t seen before, just along the wall from Gilgamesh, Rameses and all the other top despots of the past – a handsome full-length portrait of Solomon himself in all his glory. Somehow, miraculously, it had survived the carnage of the night before.