Underwood reeled with astonishment. “That djinni? How—how do you know this? They were unable to learn its name…. And—and it escaped, this very afternoon….”
“It did indeed.” Lovelace did not explain how. “After its escape, my agents … spotted it. They followed Bartimaeus across London—and back here.”3
Underwood shook his head in befuddlement. “Back here? You lie!”
“Not ten minutes ago, it disappeared down your chimney in the form of a noxious cloud. Are you surprised that I came immediately to reclaim my object? And now that I am inside …” Lovelace raised his head as if he could smell something good. “Yes, I sense its aura. It is close by.”
“But …”
“I would never have guessed it was you, Arthur. Not that I didn’t think you coveted my treasures. I just thought you lacked the competence to take them.”
The old man opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish, making inarticulate sounds. Lovelace’s imp contorted its face for an instant into a violently different expression, then reverted to the original. Its master tapped the table gently with a forefinger.
“I could have forced an entry to your house, Arthur. It would have been quite within my rights. But I prefer to be courteous. Also, this piece of mine—as I’m sure you are well aware—is rather … contentious. Neither of us would want word of its presence in our houses to get out, now would we? So—if you return it to me with all speed, I am sure we could come to some … arrangement that will benefit both of us.” He stood back, one hand toying with a cuff. “I’m waiting.”
If Underwood had comprehended one word of what Lovelace was saying, he might have saved himself.4 If he had recalled his apprentice’s misdeeds and put two and two together, all might have been well. But in his confusion he could see nothing beyond the false accusation being leveled, and in great wrath he rose from his chair.
“You pompous upstart!” he cried. “How dare you accuse me of theft! I haven’t got your object—I know nothing of it and want it even less. Why should I take it? I’m not a political lickspittle, like you; I’m no fawning backstabber. I don’t go grubbing about after power and influence like a hog in a cesspit! Even if I did, I wouldn’t bother robbing you. Everyone knows your star has waned.You’re not worth harming. No, your agents have got it wrong—or more probably, they lie. Bartimaeus is not here! I know nothing of him. And your trinket is not in my house!”
As he was speaking, Simon Lovelace’s face seemed to shrink back into deep shadow, even though the lamplight still played on the surface of his glasses. He shook his head slowly.
“Don’t be foolish, Arthur,” he said. “My informants do not lie to me! They are things of power that grovel at my command.”
The old man jutted forth his beard defiantly. “Get out of my house.”
“I need hardly tell you what resources I have at my disposal,” Simon Lovelace went on. “But speak softly with me and we can yet avoid a scene.”
“I have nothing to say. Your accusation is false.”
“Well, then …”
Simon Lovelace clicked his fingers. Instantly his imp sprang down from thin air and landed on the mahogany top of the dining-room table. It grimaced, strained. A bulb swelled at the end of its tail, finally growing into a prong with a serrated edge. The imp lowered its rump meditatively and twirled its tail. Then the prong stabbed down into the polished surface of the table, cutting it as a knife does butter. The imp strode across the width of the tabletop, dragging its tail through the wood, slicing it in two. Underwood’s eyes bulged in his head. Lovelace smiled.
“Family heirloom, Arthur?” he said. “Thought so.”
The imp had nearly reached the other side when there was a sudden knock at the door. Both men turned. The imp froze in its tracks. Mrs. Underwood came in carrying a laden tray.
“Here’s the tea,” she said. “And some shortbread; that’s Arthur’s favorite, Mr. Lovelace. I’ll just set it down here, shall I?”
Wordlessly, magicians and imp watched as she approached the table. With great care she set the heavy tray down upon it midway between the sawn crack and the end where Underwood was standing. In the heavy silence, she unloaded a large porcelain teapot (which the invisible imp had to step back to avoid), two cups, two saucers, two plates, a display-rack of shortbread and several items of her best cutlery. The table’s end shifted noticeably under their weight. There was a slight creak.
Mrs. Underwood picked up the tray again and smiled at the visitor.
“Go on, help yourself, Mr. Lovelace. You need some weight put on, you do.”
Under her direct gaze, Lovelace took a piece of shortbread from the display-rack. The tabletop wobbled. He smiled weakly.
“That’s right. Yell if you want a fresh cup.” With the tray under her arm, Mrs. Underwood bustled out. They watched her go.
The door closed.
As one, magicians and imp turned back to the table.
With a resounding crash the single connecting spur of wood gave way. One whole end of the table, complete with teapot, cups, saucers, plates, the shortbread, and several pieces of the Underwoods’best cutlery, collapsed onto the floor. The imp jumped clear and landed on the mantelpiece beside the display of dead flowers.
There was a brief silence.
Simon Lovelace tossed his piece of shortbread into the mess on the floor.
“What I can do to a wooden table I can do to a blockhead, Arthur,” he said.
Arthur Underwood looked at him. He spoke strangely, as if from a great distance. “That was my best teapot.”
He gave three whistles, shrill, high-pitched. An answering call sounded, deep and booming, and up from the tiles before the fireplace rose a sturdy goblin-imp, blue-faced and brawny. Underwood gestured, whistled once. The goblin-imp sprang, turning in midair. He fell upon the smaller imp that cowered behind the flower heads, scooped it up with his fingerless paws and began to squeeze it, heedless of the flailing sawtooth prong. The small imp’s substance contorted, blurred, was molded like putty. In a trice it had been squashed down, tail and all, into a yellowish pulpy ball. The goblin-imp smoothed down the surface of the ball, flicked it into the air, opened his mouth and swallowed it.
Underwood turned back to Lovelace, who had watched all this tight-lipped.
I confess the old man surprised me—he was putting up a better show than I’d expected. Nevertheless the strain of raising that tame imp was taking its toll. The back of his neck was sweaty.
Lovelace knew this too. “One last chance,” he snapped. “Give me my property or I’ll raise the stakes. Lead me to your study.”
“Never!” Underwood was beside himself with strain and rage. He did not heed the promptings of common sense.
“Watch then.” Lovelace smoothed back his oiled hair. He spoke a few words under his breath. There was a frisson in the dining room; everything in it flickered. The wall at the far end of the room became insubstantial. It receded, moving farther and farther back until it could no longer be seen. In its place a corridor of uncertain dimensions stretched away. As Underwood watched, a figure appeared far off along the corridor. It began to move toward us, growing larger at great speed, but floating, for its legs were still.
Underwood gasped and stumbled back. He knocked against his chair.
He was right to gasp. I knew that figure, the bulky frame, the jackal’s head.
“Stop!” Underwood’s face was waxen; he gripped his chair for support.
“What was that?” Simon Lovelace held his fingers to his ear. “I can’t hear you."5
“Stop! All right, you win! I’ll take you to my study now! Call it off!”
The figure grew in size. Underwood was cowering. The goblin-imp made a rueful face and withdrew hastily back through the tiles. I shifted in my corner, wondering quite what I was going to do when Jabor finally entered the room.6
All at once Lovelace gave a sign. The infinite corridor and the approaching figure vanished. The wall was there again
as before, a yellowed photograph of Underwood’s smiling grandmother hanging in its center.
Underwood was on his knees beside the ruins of his tea service. He shook so hard he could barely stand.
“Which way to your study, Arthur?” Simon Lovelace said.
29
Nathaniel stood alone on the landing, gripping the banister as if he feared to fall. A murmur of voices came from the dining room below; it rose and fell, but he hardly registered it. The panic rushing in his head drowned out all other sounds. The only bad magician is an incompetent one. And what was incompetence? Loss of control. Slowly, steadily, over the last few days, everything had spiraled out of Nathaniel’s control. First, Bartimaeus had learned his birth name. He had remedied that all right with the tobacco tin, but the respite had not lasted long. Instead, disaster after disaster had struck in quick succession. Bartimaeus had been captured by the Government, Underwood had discovered his activities and his career had been ruined before it had begun. Now the demon refused to obey his orders and Lovelace himself was at the door. And all he could do was stand and watch, helpless to react. He was at the mercy of the events he had set in motion. Helpless …
A small noise sliced through his self-pity and jolted him upright. It was the gentle humming made by Mrs. Underwood as she padded along the hall from the kitchen toward the dining room. She was bringing tea: Nathaniel heard the clinking of the china on the tray she carried. A knock upon the door followed; more clinking as she entered, then silence.
In that moment, Nathaniel quite forgot his own predicament. Mrs. Underwood was in danger. The enemy was in the house. In a few moments, he would doubtless force or persuade Underwood to open his study for inspection. The Amulet would be found. And then … what might Lovelace do—to Mr. Underwood or his wife?
Bartimaeus had told him to wait upstairs and be ready for the worst. But Nathaniel had had enough of helpless loitering. He was not done yet. The situation was desperate, but he could still act. The magicians were in the dining room. Underwood’s study was empty. If he could slip inside and retrieve the Amulet, perhaps he could hide it somewhere, whatever Bartimaeus might say.
Quietly, quickly, he stole downstairs to the landing below, to the level of his master’s study and workrooms. The muffled voices from the ground floor were raised now: he thought he could hear Underwood shouting. Time was short. Nathaniel hastened through the rooms to the door leading to the study stairs. Here he paused. He had not gone that way since he was six years old. Distant memories assailed him and made him shiver, but he shrugged them off. He passed onward, down the steps….
And pulled up dead.
Underwood’s study door stood before him, daubed with its red, five-pointed star. Nathaniel groaned aloud. He knew enough now to recognize a fire-hex when he saw it. He would be incinerated the moment he touched the door. Without protection, he could not progress, and protection required a circle, a summons, careful preparation….
And he had no time for that. He was helpless! Useless! He beat his fist against the wall. From far away in the house came a noise that might have been a cry of fear.
Nathaniel ran back up the stairs and through to the landing, and as he did so, he heard the dining-room door open and footsteps sounding in the hall.
They were coming.
Then from below, Mrs. Underwood’s voice, anxious and enquiring, speared Nathaniel with a thrill of pain. “Is everything all right, Arthur?”
The reply was dull, weary, almost unrecognizable. “I am just showing Mr. Lovelace something in my study. Thank you, we need nothing.”
They were climbing the stairs now. Nathaniel was in an agony of indecision. What should he do? Just as someone turned the corner, he ducked behind the nearest door and closed it almost to. Breathing hard, he pressed his eye against the small crack that gave a view onto the landing.
A slow procession passed. Mr. Underwood led the way. His hair and clothes were disordered, his eyes wild, his back bent as if by a great weight. Behind walked Simon Lovelace, eyes hidden behind his glasses, his mouth a thin, grim slit. Behind him came a spider, scuttling in the shadows of the wall.
The procession disappeared in the direction of the study. Nathaniel sank back, head spinning, nauseous with guilt and fear. Underwood’s face … Despite his extreme dislike of his master, to see him in that state rebelled against everything Nathaniel had been taught.Yes, he was weak; yes, he was petty; yes, he had treated Nathaniel with consistent disdain. But the man was a minister, one of the three hundred in the Government. And he had not taken the Amulet. Nathaniel had.
He bit his lip. Lovelace was a criminal. Who could tell what he might do? Let Underwood take the blame. He deserved it. He had never stuck up for Nathaniel, he had sacked Ms. Lutyens … let him suffer too. Why had Nathaniel put the Amulet in the study in the first place, if not to protect himself when Lovelace came? He would stay out of the way, as the djinni had said. Get ready to run, if necessary …
Nathaniel’s head sank into his hands.
He could not run. He could not hide. That was the advice of a demon, treacherous and sly. Running and hiding were not the actions of an honorable magician. If he let his master face Lovelace alone, how would he live with himself again? When his master suffered, Mrs. Underwood would suffer too and that would be impossible to bear. No, there was no help for it. Now that the crisis was upon him, Nathaniel found, to his surprise and horror, that he had to act. Regardless of the consequences, he had to intervene.
Even to think of doing what he now did made him physically sick. Nevertheless he managed it, little by little, step by dragging step. Out from behind the door, across the landing, along toward the study stairs … Down the stairs, one at a time …
With every step, his common sense screamed at him to turn and flee, but he resisted. To run would be to fail Mrs. Underwood. He would go in there and tell the truth, come what may.
The door was open, the fiery hex defused. Yellow light spilled from inside.
Nathaniel paused at the threshold. His brain seemed to have shut down. He did not fully understand what he was about to do.
He pushed at the door and went in, just in time to witness the moment of discovery.
Lovelace and Underwood were standing by a wall cupboard with their backs to him. The cupboard doors gaped wide. Even as he watched, Lovelace’s head craned forward eagerly like a hunting cat’s, and his hand stretched out and knocked something aside. He gave a cry of triumph. Slowly, he turned and raised his hand before Underwood’s corpse-white face.
Nathaniel’s shoulders slumped.
How small it looked, the Amulet of Samarkand, how insignificant it seemed, as it hung from Lovelace’s fingers on its slender gold chain. It swung gently, glinting in the study light.
Lovelace smiled. “Well, well. What have we here?”
Underwood was shaking his head in confusion and disbelief. In those few seconds, his face had aged.
“No,” he whispered. “A trick …You’re framing me….”
Lovelace wasn’t even looking at him. He gazed at his prize. “I can’t imagine what you thought you could do with this,” he said. “Summoning Bartimaeus on its own would have been quite enough to wear you out.”
“I keep saying,” Underwood said weakly,"I don’t know anything about this Bartimaeus, and I know nothing about your object, nor how it got there.”
Nathaniel heard a new voice speaking, high and shaky. It was his own.
“He’s telling the truth,” he said. “I took it. The person that you want is me.”
The silence that followed this statement lasted almost five seconds. Both magicians spun round on the instant, only to stare at him openmouthed in shock. Mr. Underwood’s eyebrows rose high, sank low, then rose again, mirroring his utter bewilderment. Lovelace wore an uncomprehending frown.
Nathaniel took the opportunity to walk farther into the room. “It was I,” he said, his voice a little firmer now that the deed was done. “He knows nothing about it
. You can leave him alone.”
Underwood blinked and shook his head. He seemed to doubt the evidence of his senses. Lovelace remained quite still, his hidden eyes fixed on Nathaniel. The Amulet of Samarkand swung gently between his motionless fingers.
Nathaniel cleared his throat, which was dry. What would happen now he dared not guess. He had not thought beyond his confession. Somewhere in the room his servant lurked, so he was not entirely defenseless. If necessary, he hoped Bartimaeus would come to his aid.
His master found his voice at last. “What are you gibbering about, you fool? You can have no idea what we discuss. Leave here at once!” A thought occurred to him. “Wait—how did you get out of the room?”
At his side, Lovelace’s frown suddenly fractured into a twitching smile. He laughed quietly. “A moment, Arthur. Perhaps you are being too hasty.”
For an instant, a fleeting glimpse of Underwood’s irascibility returned. “Don’t be absurd! This stripling cannot have committed the crime! He would have had to bypass my fire-hex, for a start, not to mention your own defenses.”
“And raise a djinni of the fourteenth level,” murmured Lovelace. “That too.”
“Exactly. The notion is abs—” Underwood gasped. Sudden understanding dawned in his eyes. “Wait … perhaps … Can it be possible? Only today, Lovelace, I caught this brat with summoning equipment, and Adelbrand’s Pentacle chalked out in his room. He had sophisticated books—The Mouth of Ptolemy, for one. I assumed he had failed, was overambitious…. But what if I was wrong?”
Simon Lovelace said nothing. He never looked away from Nathaniel.
“Just this past hour,” Underwood went on, “I caught him spying on me in my study. He had a scrying glass, something I have never given him. If he is capable of that, who knows what other crimes he might attempt?”
“Even so,” Lovelace said, softly, “why should he steal from me?”
Nathaniel could tell from his master’s behavior that he had not recognized the Amulet for what it was, and realized that this ignorance might yet save him. Would Lovelace believe the same was true of Nathaniel, too? He spoke up quickly, trying to sound as much like a child as possible. “It was just a trick, sir,” he said. “A joke. I wanted to get back at you for hitting me that time. I asked the demon to take something of yours, anything at all. I was going to keep that thing till I was older, and, erm, till I could find out what it was and, how to use it. I hope it wasn’t valuable, sir. I’m very sorry for putting you to any trouble….”