“You believe the Resistance accomplished this?” Nathaniel asked. “If there are bodies remaining, they must furnish some clues. I would like—”
“Pardon me, Mandrake,” Duvall said. “That is no longer your job. The police are in charge now. Suffice it to say that my Graybacks will be carrying out enquiries.” The Police Chief turned to the Prime Minister. “I think this is the moment, Rupert, for some harsh words to be said. This boy, Mandrake, was meant to be pursuing the Resistance. Now Westminster Abbey, resting place of the great, has been broached and Gladstone’s tomb defiled. The Staff has been stolen. And the boy has been doing nothing.”
Mr. Devereaux looked at Nathaniel. “Do you have anything to say?”
For a moment, Nathaniel considered recounting the events in Prague, but he knew it would be hopeless. He had no proof. Besides, it was more than probable that the traitor was sitting right there, watching him. He would bide his time. “No, sir.”
“I am disappointed, Mandrake, deeply disappointed.” The Prime Minister turned away. “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said. “We must track down the remnants of the Resistance and recover the Staff. Anyone who succeeds will be well rewarded. First, we must destroy the skeleton. Assemble your best magicians in”—he glanced at his watch—“two hours’time. I want everything resolved. Is that clear?” There was a subdued murmur of assent. “Then this Council is adjourned.”
The gaggle of ministers departed the abbey, Ms. Whitwell and Tallow anxiously taking up the rear. Nathaniel made no move to follow them. Very well, he thought, I shall distance myself from you, too. I’ll carry out investigations on my own.
A junior magician was sitting on a pew in the nave, consulting her notebook. Nathaniel squared his shoulders and approached with as much of a swagger as he could muster. “Hello, Fennel,” he said, gruffly. “Bad business, this.”
The woman looked startled. “Oh, Mr. Mandrake. I didn’t know you were still on the case. Yes, a bad business.”
He nodded back toward the tomb. “Found out anything about them?”
She shrugged. “For what it’s worth. Papers on the old man identify him as one Terence Pennyfeather. Owned an artists’ supply shop in Southwark. The others are much younger. They may have worked with him in the shop. Don’t yet know their names. I was just going down to Southwark to consult his records.”
Nathaniel glanced at his watch. Two hours till the summoning. He had time. “I’ll come with you. One thing, though …” He hesitated, his heart beating a little faster. “Back in the crypt … Was there a girl among them—slim, with dark, straight hair?”
Fennel frowned. “Not the bodies I saw.”
“Right. Right. Well then, shall we go?”
Burly Night Police were stationed outside Pennyfeather’s Art Supplies, and magicians from several departments were busily combing the interior. Nathaniel and Fennel showed-their passes and entered. They ignored the hunt for stolen artifacts going on about them, and instead began sifting through a pile of battered account books found behind the counter. Within minutes, Fennel had uncovered a list of names.
“It’s a list of payments to employees,” she said. “A couple of months back. They might all be Resistance. None of them are here today.”
“Let’s have a look.” Nathaniel scanned it quickly. Anne Stephens, Kathleen Jones, Nicholas Drew … These names meant nothing to him. Wait—Stanley Hake and Frederick Weaver. Fred and Stanley, clear as day. He was on the right track, but there was no sign of a Kitty here. He flipped the page to the next month’s payments. Same again. He handed the ledger back to Fennel, tapping his fingers on the glass counter.
“Here’s another, sir.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve already seen—hold on.”
Nathaniel almost snatched the paper from Fennel’s hands, peered at it closely, blinked, peered again. There it was, the same list, but with a single difference: Anne Stephens, Kitty Jones, Nicholas Drew … No doubt about it: Kitty Jones, Kathleen Jones, one and the same.
During his many months of hunting, Nathaniel had scoured official records for evidence of Kitty, and found nothing. Now it was clear he had been looking for the wrong name all this time.
“Are you all right, Mr. Mandrake?” Fennel was staring at him anxiously.
Everything snapped back into focus. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. It’s just …” He smiled at her, adjusted a cuff. “I think I may have had a good idea.”
33
It was the biggest joint summoning that I’d been involved in since the great days of Prague. Forty djinn materializing more or less at once, in a vast chamber built for that purpose in the bowels of Whitehall. As with all such things, it was a messy business, despite the best efforts of the magicians. They were all lined up in tidy rows of identical pentacles, wearing the same dark suits and speaking their incantations quietly, while the officiating clerks scribbled their names down at tables to the sides. We djinn, of course, were less concerned with regimental decorum: we arrived in forty very different guises, trumpeting our individuality with horns, tails, iridescent flanges, spikes, and tentacles; with colors ranging from obsidian-black to delicate dandelion-yellow; with a menagerie full of hollerings and chitter; with a magnificent range of sulfurous guffs and stenches. Out of sheer boredom, I had reverted to one of my old favorites, a winged serpent with silver feathers arching from behind my head.1 To my right was a kind of bird thing on stilt legs, to my left an eerie miasma of blue-green smoke. Beyond him was a slavering griffin, and beyond him—more disconcerting than menacing, this one—was a stumpy and immobile footstool. We all faced our masters, waiting for our charges.
The boy hardly paid any attention to me; he was too busy writing down some notes.
“Ahem.” The serpent of silver plumes gave a polite cough. “A-hem.” Still no response. How impolite was this? You call someone up, then take them for granted. I coughed a little louder. “A-thaniel.”
That got a response. His head jerked up, then swiveled from side to side. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Anyone could have heard that.”
“What is all this?” I said. “I thought we had a private thing going. Now every man and his imp are joining in.”
“It’s top priority. We’ve got an insane demon on the loose. We need it destroyed.”
“It won’t be the only mad thing about if you let this lot go.” I flicked my tongue in a lefterly direction. “Check out that one at the end. He’s taken the form of a footstool. Weird … but somehow I like his style.”
“That is a footstool. No one’s using that pentacle. Now, listen. Things are moving fast. The Resistance have broken into Gladstone’s tomb and freed the guardian of his treasures. It’s at large in London, causing merry hell. You’ll recognize it by its mildewed bones and general smell of decay. The Prime Minister wants it gone; that’s why this group is being assembled.”
“All of us? It must be potent. Is it an afrit?”2
“We think so, yes. Powerful—and embarrassing. It was last seen gyrating Gladstone’s pelvis on Horseguards’ Parade. But listen, I want you to do something more. If you find the de—, the afrit, see if you can get any information concerning the Resistance: particularly about a girl called Kitty. I think she may have escaped with a precious Staff. The creature may be able to give a description.”
“Kitty …” The serpent’s tongue flicked back and forth musingly. A Resistance girl of that name had crossed our paths before. If I remembered correctly, she was a feisty specimen with big trousers…. Well, several years on, her feistiness evidently hadn’t failed her.3 I recalled something else. “Wasn’t she the one who nicked your scrying-glass?”
He made his patented bulldog-who’s-sat-on-a-thistle face. “Possibly.”
“And now she’s pinched Gladstone’s Staff … Talk about going up in the world.”
“There was nothing wrong with that scrying glass.”
“No, but you’ll admit it’d never laid Europe to waste. That Staff’s a formidable piece of work. And y
ou say it’s been lying in Gladstone’s tomb all this time?”
“Apparently.” The boy glanced carefully around him, but all the neighboring magicians were busily delivering their charges to their slaves, shouting over the general caterwauling. He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “It’s ridiculous!” he whispered. “Everyone’s always been too scared to open the tomb. And now some bunch of commoners has made a fool of the whole government. But I intend to find the girl and rectify that.”
I shrugged my hood. “You could always just wish her well and leave her alone.”
“And let her sell the Staff to the highest bidder? Don’t make me laugh!” My master bent closer. “I think I can track her down. And when I do … well, I’ve read a lot about that Staff. It’s powerful, all right, but its Words of Command were fairly straightforward. It needs a strong magician to control it, but in the right hands—who knows what it could achieve?” He straightened impatiently. “What’s the delay here? They should be giving the general order to move off. I’ve got more important things to do.”
“They’re waiting for Buttercup there in the corner to finish his incantation.”
“Who? Tallow? What’s that idiot playing at? Why doesn’t he just summon his green monkey thing?”
“Judging by the amount of incense he’s employed, and the size of that book he’s holding, he’s going for something big.”
The boy grunted. “Trying to impress everyone with a higher-level demon, I suppose. Typical. He’d do anything to keep Whitwell’s favor.”
The winged serpent swayed back violently. “Whoa, there!”
“What’s the matter now?”
“It was your face! Just for a moment there, you had a really unpleasant sneer on it. Horrible, it was.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one who’s a giant snake. Tallow’s been on my back too long, that’s all.” He cursed. “Him and all the rest. I can’t trust anyone around here. Which reminds me …” He bent closer once more; the serpent dipped its majestic head to hear him. “I’m going to need your protection more than ever. You heard what that mercenary said. Someone in the British government tipped him off that we were coming to Prague.”
The plumed serpent nodded. “Glad you caught up. I figured that out long ago. By the way, have you freed those Czech spies yet?”
His brow darkened. “Give me a chance! I’ve got more urgent things to consider. Someone near the top’s controlling the golem’s eye, stirring up trouble here. They might try to silence me.”
“Who knew you were coming to Prague? Whitwell? Tallow?”
“Yes, and a minister in the Foreign Office. Oh, and possibly Duvall.”
“That hairy Police Chief? But he left the meeting before—”
“I know he did, but his apprentice, Jane Farrar, might have wormed the information out of me.” Was it the light, or had the boy flushed a little?
“Wormed it? How’s that, exactly?”
He scowled. “She used a Charm and—”
Rather to my disappointment, this interesting story was suddenly disrupted by an abrupt and, to the assembled magicians, disconcerting occurrence. The stocky, yellow magician, Tallow, who was standing in a pentacle at the end of the next row, had finally finished his long and complex invocation, and with a flex of his pinstriped arms, lowered the book from which he had read. A few seconds passed; the magician waited, breathing hard, for his summons to be heard. All at once, a billowing column of black smoke began to issue from the center of the second pentacle, small yellow forks of lightning crackling in its heart. It was a bit hackneyed, but quite well done in its way.4
The magician went gog-eyed with foreboding; rightly so as it turned out. The smoke coalesced into a muscular black form some seven feet high, complete with four waving arms.5 It shuffled slowly around the perimeter of the pentacle, testing for weaknesses.
And to its evident surprise, found one.6
The four arms froze for a moment, as if in doubt. Then a dribble of smoke emerged from the base of the figure and prodded the edge of the pentacle with experimental care. Two such prods was all it took. The weak spot was pinpointed: a little hole in the incantatory barrier. Instantly, the pseudopodium extended forward and began to stream through the breach, narrowing almost to a point as it passed through, expanding again on the other side. Faster and faster streamed the smoke; it swelled and grew and became a bulging tentacle that darted eagerly across the space to the other pentacle, where the magician stood transfixed in horror. The trails of rosemary and rowan that he had placed around its edges were scattered to the winds. The smoke ballooned up about his shoes, rapidly encasing his legs in a thick black column. The magician made a few incoherent noises at this point, but he didn’t have time for much; the figure in the first pentacle had now dwindled to nothing; all its essence had passed through the gap and was enveloping its prey. In less than five seconds, the whole magician, pinstriped suit and all, had been swallowed by the smoke. Several triumphalist lightning bolts were emitted near the head of the column, then it sank away into the floor like a solid thing, taking the magician with it.
An instant later, both pentacles were empty, except for a telltale scorch where the magician had once stood, and a charred book lying beside it.
Throughout the summoning chamber, there was stunned silence. The magicians stood dumbfounded, their clerks limp and sagging in their seats.
Then the whole place erupted into noise; those magicians who had already suitably bound their slaves, my master among them, stepped from their pentacles and gathered around the scorch mark, stewy-faced and jabbering. We higher beings began a cheery and approving chatter. I exchanged a few remarks with the green miasma and the stilt-legged bird.
“Nice one.”
“Stylishly done.”
“That lucky beggar. You could tell she could hardly believe it.”
“Well, how often does a chance like that come along?”
“All too rarely. I remember one time, back in Alexandria. There was this young apprentice—”
“The fool must have mispronounced one of the locking injunctions.”
“Either that or a printer’s error. You saw he was reading straight out of a book? Well, he said exciteris before stringaris; I heard him.”
“No! Really? A beginner’s mistake.”
“Exactly. It was the same with this young apprentice I mentioned; he waited till his master was away, then—now, you’re not going to believe this—”
“Bartimaeus—attend to me!” The boy strode back to his pentacle, coat billowing behind him. The other magicians were doing likewise, all across the hall. There was a sudden sense of businesslike intensity about them. My fellow slaves and I reluctantly faced our masters. “Bartimaeus,” the boy said again, and his voice was shaking, “as I bade you, so you must do: go out into the world and hunt down the renegade afrit. I bid you return to me only when it is destroyed.”
“All right, steady on.” The plumed serpent eyed him with something like amusement. He was getting all uptight and official with me suddenly, lots of “bids” and “bades”—this suggested he was quite upset. “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “You’re coming over all shocked. I thought you didn’t even like the bloke.”
His face colored. “Shut up! Not another word! I am your master, as you so regularly forget. You will do as I command!”
No more conspiratorial confidences for us. The boy was back to his old foot-stamping ways again. Strange what a small jolt of reality will do.
There was no point talking to him when he was in a mood like this. The plumed serpent turned its back, coiled in upon itself and, in company with its fellow slaves, vanished from the room.
34
There was plenty of activity above the roofs of London that evening. As well as the forty or so heavy-duty djinn, such as me, who, after leaving the Whitehall chamber, had more or less spontaneously scattered in all directions of the compass, the air was rife with imps and foliots of
varying levels of ineptitude. Barely a tower or office block existed that didn’t have one or two of them skulking on lookout from its top. Down below, battalions of Night Police were marching, combing the streets with some reluctance for signs of the rogue afrit. In short, the capital was awash with government servants of every type. It was a wonder the afrit wasn’t tracked down in the first few seconds.
I spent a little time meandering vaguely around central London in gargoyle form, without any definite plan in mind. As always, my inclination to stay out of harm’s way vied with my desire to complete the job and hasten my release as swiftly as possible. Trouble was, afrits are tricky blighters: very difficult to kill.
After a while, lacking anything better to do, I flew across to an unappetizing modern high-rise—a magician’s fancy, constructed of concrete and glass—to speak to the sentries on duty there.
The gargoyle alighted with balletic grace. “Here, you two. Has that skeleton passed by here? Speak up.” This was relatively polite, given that they were small blue imps—always a trying sort.
The first imp spoke up promptly. “Yes.”
I waited. It saluted and went back to polishing its tail. The gargoyle gave a tired sigh and coughed heavily. “Well, when did you see it? Which way did it go?”
The second imp paused in a detailed examination of its toes. “It came by about two hours ago. Don’t know where it went. We were too busy hiding. It’s mad, you know.”
“In what way?”