A scarab beetle, for all its many qualities, is not much cop in a fight. Besides, it would have taken about an hour to fly across to join the action. So I made my change, flapped my great red wings twice, and was upon them in a flash. My wings blocked out the moon, casting the four combatants on the roof into the blackest of shadows. For good measure, I uttered the fearsome cry of the roc as it swoops down upon the elephants to snatch away their young.2
All this had the appropriate effect. One of the wolves leaped meter backward, its brindled fur fluffed in fright, and disappeared with a howl over the edge of the parapet. Another reared up on its hind legs and received a blow in the midriff from the roc’s clenched talons: it shot into the air like a fluffy football and vanished with a clatter behind a chimney.
The third, which was standing upright in parody of a man, was more nimble, quicker thinking. The roc’s arrival had caught the girl by surprise, too: gawping up in wonder at the splendor of my plumage, she lowered her knives. Without a sound, the wolf leaped at her throat.
Its teeth clashed together, sending bitter sparks flying into the night.
The girl was already several feet up and rising, suspended from my claws. Her hair streamed in front of her face, her legs dangled above the rapidly diminishing rooftop, the street and all its scurrying inhabitants. The noises of fury and disappointment receded and we were suddenly alone, suspended high above the infinite lights of the city, drawn upward by my protective wings into a place of calm tranquility.
“Ow! That’s my leg! Ow! Ah! Curse you, that’s silver! Stop it!”
The girl was stabbing a knife repeatedly into the scaly flesh just above my talons. Can you credit it? This same leg, remember, was preventing her from falling to a sooty destruction amid the smokestacks of east London. I ask you. I pointed this out to her with my usual elegance.
“There’s no need to swear, demon,” she said, desisting for a moment. Her voice was high and faint upon the wind. “And anyway, I don’t care. I want to die.”
“Believe me, if I could only help you out … Stop that!” Another prick of pain, another woozy sensation in my head. Silver does that to you; much more of it and we’d both be falling. I shook her vigorously, until her teeth rattled and her knives plummeted from her hand. But even that wasn’t the end of it: now she began twisting and wrenching back and forth in a fevered effort to loose my grip. The roc tightened its hold. “Will you stop wriggling, girl? I’m not going to drop you, but I will hold you headfirst over a tanner’s chimney.”
“I don’t care!”
“Or dunk you in the Thames.”
“I don’t care!”
“Or take you to Rotherhithe Sewage Works and—”
“I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!” She seemed apoplectic with rage and grief, and even with my roc’s strength it was all I could do to prevent her from prying herself free.
“Kitty Jones,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the lights of north London—we were nearing our destination now—“do you not want to see Jakob Hyrnek again?”
She went quiet then, all limp and thoughtful, and we flew on for a while in a state of blessed silence. I used the respite to circle for a time, keeping a weather eye out for pursuing spheres. But all was still. We flew on.
A voice sounded from somewhere below my wishbone. It was more measured than before, but the fire had not gone out of it. “Demon,” it said, “why didn’t you let the wolves devour me? I know that you and your masters plan to kill me in any case.”
“I can’t comment on that,” the roc said. “But feel free to thank me, if you wish.”
“Are you taking me to see Jakob now?”
“Yes. If all goes as planned.”
“And then?”
I was silent. I had a fairly good idea.
“Well? Speak up! And speak truthfully—if you can.”
In an attempt to change the subject, the roc affected disdain. “I’d be careful, love. It’s unwise to make catty remarks when suspended at high altitude.”3
“Huh, you’re not going to drop me. You just said.”
“Oh. Yes. So I did.” The roc sighed. “The truth is I do not know what is planned for you. Now, shut your trap a minute. I’m coming in to land.”
We sank through the darkness, across the ocean of orange lights, down to the street where the boy and I had sheltered on the night of the Underwood fire. The ruined library was still there: I could see its bulk sandwiched among the lights of the smaller shops nearby. The building had deteriorated somewhat in the intervening years, and a considerable hole now yawned in one place, where a large glass skylight had fallen away. The roc diminished in scale as it approached, judged the angle carefully, and popped the girl feet first through the hole as if posting a letter. We descended into the cavernous space, lit here and there by shafts of moonlight. Only when we were a safe distance from the rubble of the floor did I let my burden go.4 She dropped with a squeak and rolled briefly.
I alighted a little way off and appraised her properly for the first time. It was the same one, all right—the girl in the alley who had tried to pinch the Amulet. She looked older now, thinner, and more jaded, her face gray and drawn and her eyes wary. The last few years had been hard for her, I reckoned; the last few minutes positively cruel. One arm hung limp, its shoulder slashed and caked with blood. Even so, the defiance in her was palpable: she got carefully to her feet and, with chin studiedly aloft, stared at me from across a column of silver light.
“I don’t think much of this,” she snapped. “Can’t you interrogate me somewhere cleaner? I was expecting the Tower at least.”
“This is preferable, believe me.” The roc was sharpening a claw against the wall. I wasn’t in much of a mood for conversation.
“Well, get on with it, then. Where’s Jakob? Where are the magicians?”
“They’ll be along in a bit.”
“In a bit? What kind of outfit is this?” She put her hands on her hips. “I thought you lot were meant to be terrifyingly efficient. This is all cockeyed.”
I raised my great plumed head. “Now, listen” I said. “Don’t forget that I’ve just saved you from the jaws of the Night Police. A little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss here, young lady.” The roc rapped its talons meaningfully on the floor and fixed her with the kind of look that sends Persian sailors diving overboard.
She fixed me with the kind of look that curdles milk. “Get lost, demon! I defy you and your wickedness. You don’t frighten me!”
“No?”
“No. You’re just a useless imp. Your feathers are mangy and covered in mold.”
“What?” The roc made a hurried inspection. “Rubbish! That’s the moonlight giving them that sheen!”
“It’s a wonder they haven’t fallen out. I’ve seen pigeons with better plumage.”
“Now, listen—”
“I’ve destroyed demons with real power!” she cried. “Think I’ll be impressed by an overgrown chicken?”
The cheek of the girl! “This noble roc,” I said with bitter dignity, “is not my only form. It is but one of a hundred thousand guises I can assume. For instance …” The roc reared up: I became, in quick succession, a ferocious red-eyed minotaur, frothing at the mouth; a granite gargoyle, champing its jaws; a thrashing serpent, spitting venom; a moaning ghost; a walking cadaver; a floating Aztec skull, gleaming in the dark. It was a motley assortment of nastiness,5 if I say so myself. “Well?” the skull inquired, meaningfully. “Care to comment?”
She swallowed audibly. “Not bad,” she said, “but all those guises are big and showy. I bet you can’t do subtle.”
“Of course I can!”
“I bet you can’t go extra small—say small enough to … to get into that bottle over there.” She pointed at the end of a beer bottle poking out from under a pile of litter, while all the time watching me out of the corner of her eye.
That old one! If it’s been tried on me once, it’s been tried a hundred times. The
skull shook itself slowly from side to side and grinned.6 “Nice effort, but that didn’t work on me even in the old days.7 Now,” I went on. “Why don’t you sit down and rest? You look dog-tired.”
The girl sniffed, pouted, and folded her arms painfully. I could see her looking around, weighing up the exits.
“And don’t try anything,” I advised. “Or I’ll brain you with a rafter.”
“Hold it in your teeth, will you?” Ooh, she was disdainful.
In answer, the skull faded and became Ptolemy. I altered without thinking—it’s always my preferred form8—but as soon as I did so, I saw her give a start and step back a pace. “You! The demon in the alley!”
“Don’t get so excited. You can’t blame me for that occasion. You jumped me.”
She grunted. “True. The Night Police nearly caught me then, too.”
“You ought to be more careful. What did you want the Amulet of Samarkand for anyway?”
The girl looked blank. “The what? Oh, the jewel. Well, it was magical, wasn’t it? We stole magical artifacts in those days. It was the whole point of our group. Robbing the magicians, trying to use their stuff ourselves. Stupid. Really stupid.” She kicked out at a brick. “Ow.”
“Do I take it you no longer espouse this policy?”
“Hardly Since it got us all killed.”
“Except you.”
Her eyes flashed in the dark. “You truly expect me to survive tonight?”
She had a point there. “You never know,” I said, heartily. “My master may attempt to spare you. He has already saved you from the wolves.”
She snorted. “Your master. Does he have a name?”
“John Mandrake is the one he uses.” I was banned by my vow from saying more.
“Him? That pretentious little fool!?”
“Oh, you’ve met him, then?”
“Twice. And the last time I did I punched his lights out.”
“Did you? No wonder he kept quiet about it.” I was liking this girl more and more with every moment. In truth, she was a breath of fresh air. In all the long centuries of my toil, I’ve spent remarkably little time in the company of commoners—by instinct, magicians try to keep us shadowy and removed from ordinary men and women. I can count the number of commoners I’ve properly conversed with on the claws of one hand. Of course, by and large it isn’t a rewarding process—the equivalent of a dolphin chatting up a sea slug—but you do get the occasional exception. And this Kitty Jones was one. I liked her style.
I snapped my fingers and caused a small Illumination to fly up and lodge among the rafters. From a nearby heap of rubble, I pulled some planks and breeze blocks and arranged them as a chair. “Sit yourself down,” I said. “Make yourself comfortable. That’s right. So … you punched John Mandrake, did you?”
She spoke with a certain grim satisfaction. “Yes. You seem amused.”
I stopped guffawing. “Oh, can you tell?”
“Odd, given that you and he are aligned in wickedness, given that you carry out his every whim.”
“Aligned in wickedness? Hey, there is a certain master-servant thing going on here, you know. I’m a slave! I’ve no choice in the matter.”
Her lip curled. “Just obeying orders, eh? Sure. That’s a great excuse.”
“It is when to disobey means certain destruction. You try the Shriveling Fire on your bones—see if you like it.”
She frowned. “It sounds a pretty ropy excuse to me. You’re saying all your evil is performed unwillingly?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but—yup. From imp to afrit, we’re all bound to the magicians’will. We can’t do anything about it. They have us over a barrel. At the moment, for instance, I have to help and protect Mandrake, whether I like it or not.”
“Pathetic.” She spoke decisively. “Absolutely pathetic.” And indeed, as I heard myself say all this, it did seem so to me, too. We slaves have dwelled so long in these chains of ours that we rarely speak of them;9 to hear the resignation in my own voice sickened my essence to its core. I tried to batten down my shame with a spot of righteous indignation.
“Oh, we fight back,” I said. “We catch them out if they’re careless, and misinterpret when we can. We encourage them to vie with one another, and set them at one another’s throats. We load them with luxuries until their bodies grow fat and their minds too dull to notice their own downfalls. We do our best. Which is more than you humans manage to do most of the time.”
At this, the girl uttered a strange, ragged laugh. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do all these years? Sabotaging government, stealing artifacts, disrupting the city—it’s been hopeless, the whole thing. I might as well have been a secretary, like my mother wanted. My friends have been killed or corrupted and demons like you have done it all. And don’t tell me you don’t enjoy it. That thing in the crypt loved every second of…” Her body gave a violent shudder; she broke off, rubbed her eyes.
“Well, there are exceptions,” I began—then desisted.
As if a thin barrier had been broached, the girl’s shoulders shook and she suddenly began to cry with great spasms of pent-up grief. She did so silently, stifling the noise with her fist, as if to save me embarrassment. I didn’t know what to say. It was all very awkward. She went on a long time. I sat myself cross-legged a little way off, turned respectfully away from her and gazed off into the shadows.
Where was the boy? Come on, come on. He was taking his time.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Try as I might to ignore them, her words gnawed away at me in the still of the night.
42
Kitty gathered herself at last. The last ructions of despair subsided. She sighed heavily. The ruined building was dark, save for the small area near the roof where the magical light glowed faintly. Its radiance had dimmed. The demon sat close by, still wearing the form of a dark-skinned youth clad in a wrapped skirt. Its face was turned aside, the light casting angular shadows on its thin neck and hunched bare shoulders. It looked oddly frail.
“If it’s any consolation,” the demon said, “I destroyed that afrit from the crypt.” It did not turn around.
Kitty coughed and straightened her back, smoothing her hair out of her eyes. She did not reply at once. The despairing hopelessness that had overcome her when the demon plucked her into the sky had subsided now, washed away by the sudden out-welling of grief for her lost friends. She was left feeling hollow and light-headed. Even so, she tried to gather her thoughts.
Escape. She could try to escape…. No, there was Jakob to consider, she should wait for him. if he was actually coming…. She scowled: she had only the demon’s word for that. Perhaps it was better to flee…. She craned her head from side to side, seeking inspiration. “You killed it …?” she said absently. “How?” There was a stairwell close by; they were on the first floor, then. Most of the windows were boarded up.
“Dropped him in the Thames. He was quite mad, you know, after so long. He’d bound his essence into Gladstone’s bones. Wouldn’t—or couldn’t—get himself free. A sad business, but there you go. He was a menace to everything—djinni or human—and is best trapped under hundreds of meters of water.”
“Yes, quite …” There looked to be a broken window not far off; perhaps she could leap from it. The demon might attack with some magic as she ran, but her resilience would see her through. Then she could drop to the street, seek cover—
“I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything rash,” the boy said suddenly.
She started guiltily. “No.”
“You’re thinking of doing something; I can hear it in your voice. Well, don’t. I won’t bother using a magical attack. I’ve been around, you know. I’m well aware of your defenses. I’ve seen it all before. I’ll just lob a brick at you.”
Kitty chewed her lip. Reluctantly, and only for the moment, she dismissed escape from her mind. “What do you mean, seen it before?” she said. “You’re talking about the alley?”
The boy flashed a look at her over his shoulder. “Well, there was that, of course—your chums withstood a fairly high-intensity Inferno from me head on. But I mean further back, long before London’s precious little magicians started getting above themselves. Time and again, I’ve seen it. It always happens sooner or later. You know, considering what’s at stake you’d think that wretched Mandrake would make a bit of an effort to get here, wouldn’t you? We’ve been here an hour already.”
Kitty’s brow furrowed. “You mean you’ve seen people like me before?”
“Of course! A dozen times over. Huh, I suppose the magicians don’t let you read the history books—it’s no wonder you’re so powerful ignorant.” The demon shuffled around on his bottom to face her. “How do you think Carthage fell? Or Persia? Or Rome? Sure, there were enemy states ready to take advantage of the empires’ weaknesses, but it was the divisions within that really did for them. Romulus Augustulus, for instance, spent half his reign trying to control his own people, and all the while Ostrogoths with big mustaches were tramping down through Italy. His djinn couldn’t control the plebs any longer, you see. Why? Because so many of them had become like you—resilient to our magic. Detonations, Fluxes, Infernos—scarcely singed their beards. And of course the people knew that, so they wanted their rights, they wanted the magicians overthrown at last. There was so much confusion that hardly anyone noticed the barbarian horde before it ransacked Rome.” The boy scratched its nose. “In a way, I think it came as a relief. Fresh start and all that. No more magicians in the Eternal City for a long, long time.”
Kitty blinked. Her knowledge of history was scanty, and the strange names and places meant little to her, but the implications were startlingly clear. “Are you saying that most of the Romans were resilient to magic?”
“Oh, no. About thirty percent, maybe. In varying degrees, of course. You don’t need more than that for a good uprising.”