Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye

by Jonathan Stroud

  This sight almost caused Kitty to lose her grip and tumble away into the void. Instead, she pressed herself close to the bricks, supported her weight with one hand and eased the other into her satchel. She took hold of the first thing she found—a sphere of some kind—and, taking rapid aim, dropped it toward her pursuer.

  Glinting as it spun, the sphere missed the brindled back by inches; a moment later, it hit the pavement, sending out brief jets of flame.

  The wolf made a gurgling noise deep in its throat. It came on.

  Biting her lip, Kitty flung herself back into her climb.

  Ignoring the protests of her body, she clambered frantically upward, fearing at any moment the clasp of claws around her leg. She could hear the beast’s scratching at her heels.

  The parapet … With a cry, she pulled herself up onto it, stumbled and fell. The satchel was twisted under her; she could not get access to her missiles.

  She twisted around onto her back. Even as she did so, the wolf’s head slowly rose above the edge of the parapet, snuffling avidly at a trace of blood smeared from her hand. Its yellow eyes flicked up, looked straight into hers.

  Kitty’s fingers fumbled in the lining of her shoe; she drew out the knife.

  She struggled to her feet.

  With a sudden fluid leap, the wolf plunged over the edge of the parapet and onto the roof, crouching a moment on all fours, head lowered, muscles tensed. It stared up at Kitty out of the corners of its eyes, assessing her strength, debating whether to spring. Kitty waved the dagger back and forth warningly “See this?” she panted. “It’s silver, you know.”

  The wolf looked at her sidelong. Slowly, its forelegs rose, its humped back elongated and straightened. Now it was standing on its hind legs like a man, towering over her, swaying back and forth, ready for the attack.

  Kitty’s other hand groped in her satchel for another missile. She knew she didn’t have much time before—

  The wolf leaped, slashing with its clawed hands, lunging with its red mouth. Kitty ducked, twisted herself around and thrust upward with the knife. The wolf emitted a curiously high-pitched noise, swung an arm out and caught Kitty painfully across the shoulder. Claws snagged through the satchel strap; it fell away. Kitty stabbed again. The wolf bounded back out of reach. Kitty likewise stepped away. Her shoulder was throbbing painfully from the cut. The wolf was clasping a small wound in its side. It shook its head sadly at her. It seemed only mildly inconvenienced. They circled each other for a few seconds, lit by the silver moon. Kitty now had barely enough strength to lift the knife.

  The wolf stretched out a clawed foot and drew the satchel toward it across the roof, well out of Kitty’s reach. It gave a low, rumbling chuckle.

  A small noise behind her. Kitty risked a quick turn of the head. On the other side of the flat roof, tiles rose diagonally to a low gabled crest. Two wolves stood astride it; as she watched, they began a rapid, skittering descent.

  Kitty drew the second knife from her belt, but her left hand was weak from the shoulder wound; her fingers could barely grasp the handle. She wondered vaguely if she should throw herself off the edge of the roof—a swift death might be preferable to the wolves’ claws.

  But that was a coward’s way out. She would do a little damage before the end.

  Three wolves advanced on her, two on four legs, one walking like a man. Kitty pushed her hair back out of her eyes and raised her knives for the last time.

  40

  “What a boring evening,” the djinni said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Nathaniel paused in his circuit of the room. “Of course it will. Be silent. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.” He was aware his voice carried no conviction. He glanced at his watch to reassure himself. “The night’s still young.”

  “Sure, sure. I can see you’re wildly confident. You’ve already worn a small furrow in the floorboards. And I bet you’re powerful hungry, too, since you forgot to bring provisions.”

  “I won’t need them. She’ll turn up soon. Now shut up about it.”

  From its station at the top of an old wardrobe, the djinni, which was back in the form of a young Egyptian boy, stretched its arms above its head and yawned extravagantly. “All great master plans have their drawbacks,” it said. “They all have their little flaws, which make them tumble into ruin. That’s human nature: you’re born imperfect. The girl won’t come; you’ll wait; you haven’t brought any food; therefore, you and your captive will starve.”

  Nathaniel scowled. “Don’t worry about him. He’s all right.”

  “Actually, I am quite hungry.” Jakob Hyrnek was sitting on a decrepit chair in one corner of the room. Beneath an old army greatcoat, which the djinni had located in one of the safe house attics, he wore nothing but pajamas and a pair of king-size bed socks. “I didn’t have any breakfast,” he added, rocking back and forth mechanically on his wonky chair. “I could do with a bite.”

  “There you are, you see,” the djinni said. “He’s peckish.”

  “He’s not, and if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay quiet, too.” Nathaniel resumed his pacing, eyeing the captive as he did so. Hyrnek seemed to have gotten over his fear of the flight by now, and since he’d been immediately shut up in the empty house, with no one else to see him, his paranoia about his face had quieted down a bit, too. The actual captivity didn’t appear to bother him much, which slightly perplexed Nathaniel; then again, Hyrnek had been in a self-imposed prison for years.

  The magician’s gaze strayed toward the window, hidden behind its swathe of sheeting. He quelled a desire to step across and peer out into the night. Patience. The girl would come; all it took was time.

  “How about a game?” The boy on the wardrobe grinned down at him. “I could find us a ball and wall-hoop and teach you two the Aztec ball game. It’s great fun. You have to use your knees and elbows to get the ball through the hoop. That’s the only rule. Oh, and the losers get sacrificed. I’m very good at it, as you’ll discover.”

  Nathaniel waved his hand wearily. “No.”

  “I Spy, then?”

  Nathaniel blew out hard through his nose. It was difficult enough to remain calm without the djinni’s jabbering. He was playing for high stakes here, and the consequences of failure did not bear thinking about.

  Mr. Makepeace had visited him early that morning in secret, bringing news. His underworld contact believed he could gain access to the fugitive Kitty Jones and that it would be possible to tempt her out of hiding, if a suitable goad could be discovered. Nathaniel’s swift and inventive mind had immediately turned to her childhood friend Jakob Hyrnek, who had been mentioned in the records of her trial and to whom Kitty had a proven loyalty. From what Nathaniel had seen of her—here he gingerly fingered the purpling bruise on his cheek—the girl would not be afraid to come to Hyrnek’s aid if danger threatened.

  The rest was easy. Hyrnek’s capture had been rapidly effected, and Makepeace had conveyed word of it to his contact. All Nathaniel had to do now was wait.

  “Psst.” He looked up. The djinni was beckoning him over, all the while nodding and winking with furious confidentiality.

  “What?”

  “Come over here a minute. Out of earshot.” It nodded toward Hyrnek, who was rocking back and forth in his chair a little way across the room.

  With a sigh, Nathaniel stepped close. “Well?”

  The djinni bent its head over the edge of the wardrobe. “I’ve been thinking,” it whispered. “What’s going to happen to you when your precious Ms. Whitwell finds out about this? Because she doesn’t know you’ve snatched the boy, does she? I don’t understand what game you’re playing here. You’re usually such a well-behaved little underling, a petted lapdog eager to please.”

  The barb hit home. Nathaniel bared his teeth. “That time is past,” he said. “She won’t find out until I have the girl and the Staff under lock and key. Then she’ll have to clap with the rest of them. I’ll be too close to Devereaux for
any of them to do anything other than cheer.”

  The boy arranged itself to sit neatly cross-legged, in a manner reminiscent of an Egyptian scribe. “You’re not doing this on your own,” it said. “Someone’s helped you set it all up. Someone who knows how to find the girl and tell her we’re here. You don’t know where she is, or you’d have caught her yourself by now.”

  “I’ve got contacts.”

  “Contacts who know a great deal about the Resistance, it would seem.You’d better be careful, Nat. Things like that can work both ways. That hairy Police Chief would give his carnassials to link you somehow with those traitors. If he knew you were doing deals with them …”

  “I’m not doing deals!”

  “Ooh. That was a shout. You’re agitated.”

  “I’m not. I’m just saying. I’m capturing her, aren’t I? I just want to do it my own way.”

  “Fine, but who’s your contact? How does he or she know so much about the girl? That’s what you should be asking.”

  “It’s not important. And I don’t want to talk any more about it.” Nathaniel turned his back. The djinni was right, of course: the ease with which Makepeace delved into the underworld was startling. But the theater was a disreputable profession; Makepeace was bound to know all kinds of odd commoners—actors, dancers, writers—who were only one notch above the criminal type. Uneasy as he was with his sudden new alliance, Nathaniel was quite happy to reap the benefits of it, provided all went well. But he would be in a parlous position should Duvall or Whitwell discover that he had been acting behind their backs. That was the main risk he was running. Both of them had asked for updates that morning about his activities; to both of them, he had lied. It gave him a prickly sensation at the back of his neck.

  Jakob Hyrnek held up a plaintive hand. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “What?”

  “Please, Mr. Mandrake, I’m getting a little bit chilly.”

  “Well, get up and walk about, then. But keep those stupid socks out of my sight.”

  Wrapping the coat tightly about him, Hrynek began to shuffle about the room, his candy-colored striped bed socks peeping out incongruously from under his pajamas.

  “Hard to believe anyone would risk her life for this specimen,” the djinni observed. “If I were his mother, I’d look the other way.”

  “You haven’t met this Kitty,” Nathaniel said. “She’ll come for him.”

  “She won’t.” Hyrnek was standing near the window now; he’d overheard this last exchange. “We used to be close, but not anymore. I haven’t seen her for years.”

  “Even so,” Nathaniel said. “She’ll come.”

  “Not since … my face was ruined,” the boy went on. His voice throbbed with self-pity.

  “Oh, give me a break!” Nathaniel’s tension exploded into annoyance. “Your face is fine! You can talk, can’t you? You can see? Hear? Well, then. Stop complaining. I’ve seen far worse.”

  “That’s what I told him.” The djinni negligently stood and hopped down from the wardrobe without a sound. “He’s far too het up about it. Look at your face—that’s permanent, too, and you’re not afraid to parade it before the world. Nope, for both of you its your hair that’s the real downer. I’ve seen better styles on the back end of a badger. Just give me five minutes with a pair of shears—”

  Nathaniel rolled his eyes and sought to reassert some authority. He grabbed Hyrnek’s collar and spun him around. “Back to your chair,” he snarled. “Sit down. As for you”—he addressed the djinni—“my contact’s man will have given the girl this address some hours ago. She will be on her way now, almost certainly with the Staff, since that is her most powerful weapon. When she enters the stair below, a sensory sphere will be triggered and sound the alert up here. You are to disarm her as she comes through the door, hand me the Staff, and prevent her escape. Got that?”

  “Clear as daylight, boss. As it was the fourth and fifth times you told me.”

  “Just don’t forget. Get the Staff. That’s the important bit.”

  “Don’t I know it? I was at the fall of Prague, remember?”

  Nathaniel grunted and resumed his pacing. Even as he did so, there was a sound from the street outside. He turned to the djinni, wide-eyed. “What was that?”

  “A voice. Man’s.”

  “Did you hear—There it is again!”

  The djinni indicated the window. “Do you want me to look?”

  “Don’t let yourself be seen.”

  The Egyptian boy sidled to the window; vanished. A scarab beetle crawled behind the sheet. A bright light flared somewhere beyond the glass. Nathaniel hopped from one foot to the other. “Well?”

  “I think your girl’s arrived.” The djinni’s voice sounded small and distant. “Why don’t you take a peek?”

  Nathaniel ripped the sheet aside and looked out, in time to see a small column of flame flare up from the ground halfway down the road. It died back. On the previously deserted street were many running forms—some on two legs, some on four, and some that were evidently undecided about the matter, but were still gamely lolloping along under the bright moon. There was a snapping and a howling. Nathaniel felt the color drain from his face.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “The Night Police.”

  Another small blast; the room shook mildly. A slight and agile two-legged form sprinted across the road and leaped through a newly blown hole in the wall of a building. A wolf pursued her, only to be engulfed by another explosion.

  The scarab beetle whistled approvingly “Nice use of an Elemental Sphere. Your girl’s good. Even so, she’ll hardly evade the whole battalion.”

  “How many are there?”

  “A dozen, perhaps more. Look, they’re coming over the rooftops.”

  “You think they’ll catch—”

  “Oh yes—and eat her. They’re angry now. Their blood’s up.”

  “All right—” Nathaniel stood away from the window. He had come to a decision. “Bartimaeus,” he said, “go out and get her. We can’t risk her being killed.”

  The scarab beetle chittered in disgust. “Another lovely job. Wonderful. Are you sure, now? You’ll be going directly against that Police Chief’s authority.”

  “With luck, he won’t know it’s me. Take her to …” Nathaniel’s mind raced; he snapped his fingers. “That old library—you know, the one we sheltered in, when Lovelace’s demons were after us. I’ll take the prisoner and meet you later. We all need to get away from here.”

  “I’m with you on that one. Very well. Stand clear.” The beetle skittered backward on the sill away from the window, rose onto its hind legs and waved its antennae at the glass. A bright light, a spurt of heat; a lopsided hole melted in the middle of the pane. The beetle opened its wing cases and hummed out into the night.

  Nathaniel turned back into the room, just in time to meet a chair swinging into the side of his face.

  He fell to the floor awkwardly, half-stunned. One spinning eye caught a skewed glimpse of Jakob Hyrnek hurling the chair aside and hurrying for the door. Nathaniel gabbled a command in Aramaic; a small imp materialized at his shoulder and loosed a lightning bolt at the seat of Hynek’s pajamas. There was a sound of rapid scorching and a shrill yelp. Its work done, the imp vanished. Hyrnek halted momentarily, clutching his rump, then continued his stumbling progress toward the door.

  By now, Nathaniel had gotten to his feet; he flung himself forward and down in a clumsy tackle; his outstretched hand caught hold of a bed-socked foot and pulled it sideways. Hyrnek fell; Nathaniel clawed himself on top of him and began slapping him frantically about the head. Hyrnek replied in kind. They rolled around for a while at random.

  “What an unedifying spectacle.”

  Nathaniel froze in the act of pulling Hyrnek’s hair. He looked up from his prone position.

  Jane Farrar stood in the open doorway, flanked by two hulking officers of the Night Police. She wore the crisp uniform and peaked cap of the Graybacks and her eyes were op
enly scornful. One of the officers at her side made a guttural noise deep in his throat.

  Nathaniel cast through his mind for an explanation that might suffice, but found none. Jane Farrar shook her head sadly. “How the mighty have fallen, Mr. Mandrake,” she said. “Extricate yourself, if you can, from this half-dressed commoner. You are under arrest for treason.”

  41

  Werewolves in the street, Nathaniel back indoors. Which would you choose? Truth to tell, I was glad to get out and about for a bit.

  His behavior was disconcerting me more and more. In the years since our first encounter, doubtless under Whitwell’s careful tutelage, he’d become an officious little beast, carefully obeying his orders with one eye always on promotion. Now he was deliberately going out on a limb, doing underhanded things, and risking much by so doing. This was no homegrown idea. Someone was putting him up to it; someone was pulling his strings. He’d been many things to me, Nathaniel had, most of them indescribable, but he’d never looked so much of a puppet as he did now.

  And already it had all gone wrong.

  The scene below was one of chaos. Wounded creatures lay here and there across the street amid piles of broken brick and glass. They writhed and growled and clutched their flanks, their contours altering with each spasm. Man, wolf, man, wolf … That’s the problem with lycanthropy: it’s so hard to control. Pain and strong emotion make the body shift.1

  The girl had downed about five, I thought, not including the one blown to pieces by the Elemental Sphere. But several more were pacing redundantly in the road, and others, displaying a little more intelligence, were busily scaling drainpipes or searching for fire escapes to climb.

  Nine or ten were left alive. Too many for any human to handle.

  But she was still fighting: I saw her now, a little whirling figure on the rooftop. Something bright flashed in each hand—she was waving them high and low in little desperate feints and thrusts to keep three wolves at bay But with every turn she made, the black forms inched a little closer.