“He’s not invulnerable to silver,” the gargoyle interrupted. “He told me so.”
“Yep, but nor are we,” protested the orangutan. “It’ll make my fur fall off.”
“We don’t have to touch it, do we? Come on.”
A swift descent to the thoroughfare below resulted in a minor accident, when the driver of a lorry saw us in passing, and jackknifed off the road. Nasty, but it could have been worse.9
My colleague paused in indignation. “What’s the matter with him? Hasn’t he ever seen an orangutan before?”
“Not one with wings, possibly. I suggest we become pigeons on the first plane. Now, break me off three of those railings. They’re not iron, are they? Good. I’m going to find a jeweler’s.”
A quick examination of the retail district revealed something even better: a veritable silversmith’s, boasting a complex window display of jugs, tankards, golfing trophies, and memorial plates that had evidently been assembled with loving care. Bird and orangutan, who had managed to secure three long rails, held back fearfully from the shop, since the freezing aura of the silver raddled our essences even halfway across the street. But the gargoyle had no time for delay. I seized one of the railings, gritted my teeth, and, hopping over to the window, staved the glass in.10 With a quick stab of the rail, I lifted a large silver tankard by its handle and backed away from the shop, ignoring plaintive cries from within.
“See this?” I dangled the tankard at the end of the rail before my bemused companions. “One spear. Now we need two more.”
It took twenty minutes of low-level flying to locate the skeleton once again. This was easy really; we just followed the sound of the screams. It seemed that Honorius had rediscovered the delights of frightening people, and was sauntering along the embankment, swinging from streetlights and popping up behind the river wall to scare witless any passerby. It was a harmless enough hobby, but we had our collective charge, and that meant we had to act.
Each one of us had a homemade spear, complete with its silver object. The bird had a darts cup swinging on the end of his rail, while the orangutan, who had spent a couple of fruitless minutes trying to balance a large plate on the tip of his, had settled at last for a toastrack. I had hurriedly schooled them both in tactics, and we approached the skeleton in the manner of three sheepdogs tackling an obstinate ram. The bird flew up along the Embankment from the south, the orangutan flew down from the north, and I came at him from the landward side. We cornered him in the region of Cleopatra’s Needle.11
Honorius saw the bird first. Another swinging jet of power shot out, cut between his bandy legs, and vaporized a public convenience. In the meantime, the orangutan darted close and thrust the toastrack between Gladstone’s shoulder blades. A burst of greenish sparks, a smell of burning cloth; the skeleton leaped high into the air. It fell to earth with a keening cry, bounded away toward the road, only to narrowly avoid a swipe from my oncoming tankard.
“Ahh! You traitors!” Honorius’s next attack shot past the gargoyle’s ear; yet while he struggled to keep my fleeing frame in view, the bird stole close and tickled his bony leg with the darts trophy. As he spun around to tackle this new danger, the toastrack went to work again. And so it went. However much the skeleton turned and twisted, one silver weapon or another was always in action behind its back. Before long, its missiles became erratic, lacking force; it was more interested in retreat than engagement. Howling and cursing, it fled across the Embankment’s width, nearer and nearer the river wall.
The three of us closed in with great caution. For a moment I couldn’t work out why this felt so unusual. Then I realized: it was a chase, and for once I was doing the chasing. Usually it’s the other way around.
In minutes, we had the skeleton pressed up against the foot of the obelisk. The skull rotated frantically left and right, the red dots flaring, seeking avenues of escape.
“Honorius,” I said, “this is your last chance. We understand the stresses you’ve been under. If you can’t dematerialize voluntarily from those bones, doubtless one of today’s magicians can free you from your binding instead. Surrender now, and I will ask my master to research the necessary spell.”
The skeleton gave a screeching cry of contempt. “Ask your master? Will it really be so easy? Are you on such equal terms? I doubt it very much. All of you are subject to the whims of human masters, and I alone am free!”
“You’re trapped in a festering bag of bones,” I said. “Look at you! Not even able to turn into a bird or fish to get away.”
“I’m in a better state than you,” the skeleton snarled. “How many years have you been working for them? Change shape all you like, the fact remains you’re a slave, with threats and manacles binding you to your task. Ooh, look—now I’m an imp, now I’m a devil! Who cares? Big deal!”
“Gargoyle, actually,” I muttered. But only quietly; his point had hit home.
“If you had half a chance, you’d be here with me, roaming London at will, teaching those magicians a thing or two. Hypocrite! I defy you!” The vertebrae cracked, the torso turned, white bones reached up and grasped the granite column. With a heave and a gasp, Gladstone’s skeleton was climbing up the obelisk, using the ancient carved hieroglyphs for footholds.
My companions and I watched it climb.
“Where’s he think he’s going?” the bird asked.
The gargoyle shrugged. “There’s nowhere for him to go,” I said. “He’s just postponing the inevitable.” I spoke angrily since Honorius’s words had contained more than a grain of truth, and that knowledge hurt me. “Let’s finish him off.”
But as we rose, spears lifted, silver ornaments glinting darkly in the dusk, the skeleton reached the uppermost point of the ancient stone. There, it clambered awkwardly to its feet and raised its ragged arms toward the west and the setting sun. The light shone through the long white hair and danced on the hollow innards of the skull. Then, without another sound, it bent its legs and launched itself up and out over the river in a graceful swan dive.
The orangutan hurled its spear after it, but really there was no need.
The Thames that evening was at high tide and in full spate; the skeleton hit the surface far out and was submerged instantly. Once only did it reappear, way downstream, with water gushing from the eye sockets, jaw champing, arm bones flailing. But still it made no sound. Then it was gone.
Whether the skeleton was carried straight out to sea, or drawn down into the mud at the bottom of the Thames, the watchers on the bank could not say. But Honorius the afrit, together with Gladstone’s bones that housed him, was seen no more.
35
Kitty did not cry.
If her years in the Resistance had achieved nothing else, they had succeeded in hardening her emotions. Weeping was no good to her now. The magnitude of the disaster was so great that normal responses were inadequate. Neither during the crisis in the abbey, nor immediately afterward—when she first halted her desperate flight in a silent square a mile away—did she allow herself to slump into self-pity.
Fear drove her on, for she could not believe that she had escaped the demon. At every corner, using old Resistance techniques, she waited thirty seconds, then peeped back the way she had come. On every occasion, the road behind was empty of pursuit: she saw only slumbering houses, flickering lanterns, silent avenues of trees. The city seemed indifferent to her existence; the skies were filled with impassive stars and the blank-faced moon. There was no one out in the depths of the night and there were no vigilance spheres abroad.
Her feet made the faintest tripping sounds as she jogged along the pavement, keeping to areas of shadow.
She heard little: once a car humming past on a nearby road; once a distant siren; once a baby squalling thinly in an upper room.
She still carried the staff in her left hand.
In her first hurried shelter, a ruined basement of a tenement block within sight of the abbey’s towers, she had almost abandoned the staff under a pi
le of rubble. But useless though it was—good for nothing but killing insects, the benefactor had said—it was the only thing to have come out of the horror with her. She could not let it go.
She rested a few minutes in the cellar, but did not allow herself to sleep. By dawn, central London would be swarming with police. It would be fatal to remain there. Besides, if she shut her eyes, she dreaded what she might see.
Throughout the deepest hours of night, Kitty worked her way east along the bank of the Thames, before reaching Southwark Bridge. This was the most exposed and dangerous part of the whole journey, particularly with the staff in tow. She had heard from Stanley how magical objects radiated their nature to those with eyes to see, and she guessed that demons might perceive her burden from far across the water. So she waited in bushes beside the bridge for many minutes, plucking up her courage, before making a dash to the other side.
As the first lights of dawn began to glow above the city, Kitty pattered under a little arch and into the mews courtyard where the weapons cellar was concealed. It was the only place she could think of to gain immediate shelter, and the need for this was pressing. Her feet were stumbling with weariness; worse, she was beginning to see things—flashes of movement in the corner of her eye—that made her heart pound. She could not go to the art shop—that was clear enough, with Mr. Pennyfeather now (how vividly she imagined it) lying neatly stacked away for the authorities to find. Visiting her rented room was unwise, too (Kitty savagely returned to the practical business in hand), since magicians investigating the shop would learn of it and soon come calling.
Blindly, she located the cellar key; blindly, she turned it in the lock. Without pausing to switch on the electric light, she felt her way down a number of twisting corridors, until she reached the inner room, where the ceiling pipe still dripped into its overflowing bucket. Here, she tossed the staff down, stretched out beside it on the concrete floor, and slept.
She awoke in darkness and lay there, stiff and cold, for a long time. Then she rose, felt for the wall and switched on the single bulb. The cellar was just as it had been the afternoon before—when the others had been there, too. Nick practicing his combat moves, Fred and Stanley throwing discs. She could still see the holes in the joist where Fred’s disc had struck. Much good it had all done them.
Kitty sat beside the pile of logs and stared at the opposite wall, hands lying loosely in her lap. Her head was clearer now, though rather light from lack of food. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on what she should do. This was hard, for her life had been turned upside down.
For more than three years, her energies and emotions had helped to build the Resistance; now, in a single night, as if by a raging torrent, it had all been swept away. True, it had been a rickety enough construction at the best of times: none of them had agreed much on their strategies, and the divisions between them had grown bigger in recent months. But now there was nothing left at all. Her companions had gone, and with them the ideals they shared.
But what were these ideals, exactly? The events in the abbey had not only changed her future, they had transformed her sense of the past, too. The futility of the whole affair now seemed transparent. The futility—and the foolishness, too. When she tried to bring Mr. Pennyfeather to mind now, she saw not the principled leader she had followed for so long, but little more than a grinning thief, red-faced and sweating in the lantern light, rummaging through loathsome places in search of wicked things.
What had they ever expected to achieve? What would the artifacts have truly accomplished? The magicians would not have been toppled, even with a crystal ball. No, they’d been kidding themselves all along. The Resistance was nothing but a flea biting the ears of a mastiff: one swipe of a paw and that was that.
She drew the silver pendant from her pocket and stared dully at it. Grandmama Hyrnek’s gift had saved her: nothing more, nothing less. It was the purest luck she had survived at all.
In her heart, Kitty had long known that the group was dying, but the revelation that it could so easily be snuffed out still came as an overwhelming shock. A single demon had attacked—and their resilience had come to nothing. All the group’s brave words—all Mr. Hopkins’s clever counsel, all Fred’s boasting, all Nick’s earnest rhetoric—were proved worthless. Kitty could hardly recall their arguments now: her memories had been wiped clean by events in the tomb.
Nick. The demon had said (Kitty had no difficulty bringing its words to mind) that it had killed ten out of twelve intruders. Taking the historical victims into account, that meant Nick had survived, too. Her mouth curled into a faint sneer; he’d gotten out so fast that she hadn’t even seen him go. No thought from him of helping Fred, or Anne, or Mr. Pennyfeather.
Then there was the clever Mr. Hopkins.… As she thought of the bland-faced scholar, a thrill of anger ran through Kitty. Where had he been all this time? Far away, safe and sound. Neither he nor the mystery benefactor, the gentleman whose information about Gladstone’s defenses had proved so sadly lacking, had dared be present at the tomb. If it hadn’t been for their influence over Mr. Pennyfeather in the last few months, the rest of the group would still be alive that morning. And what had they gotten for their sacrifice? Nothing but a knobbly length of wood.
The staff lay beside her amid the debris on the floor. In a sudden flurry of rage, Kitty got to her feet, seized it in both hands and brought it down hard over her knee. To her surprise, she achieved nothing but a jarring of both wrists: the wood was much stronger than it looked. With a cry, she hurled it against the nearest wall.
Almost as soon as it began, Kitty’s anger was replaced by a great emptiness. It was conceivable, perhaps, that she could contact Mr. Hopkins in due course. Discuss a possible plan of action. But not today. For now, she needed something different, something to counteract the feeling of being utterly alone. She needed to see her parents again.
It was already late afternoon when Kitty emerged from the cellar into the mews courtyard and listened. Faint sirens and one or two bangs sounded, drifting distantly on the wind from central London, where something was evidently afoot. She shrugged. So much the better. She would not be disturbed. She locked the door, hid the key, and set off.
Despite traveling light—she had left the staff lying in the cellar—Kitty took most of the evening to walk to Balham, and the skies were darkening by the time she reached the familiar knot of roads close to her old home. By now she was tired, footsore, and hungry. Apart from a couple of apples stolen from a grocer’s store, she had eaten nothing. Imagined tastings of her mother’s cooking began to roll tantalizingly over her tongue, accompanied by thoughts of her old room, with its comfy little bed and the wardrobe with the door that didn’t close. How long had it been since she’d slept there? Years, now. If just for one night, she would gladly curl up there again.
Dusk was falling when she walked up the old street and, slowing her pace unconsciously, drew near to her parents’ house. A light was on in the living room: this drew forth a wrenching sob of relief, but also a spur of anxiety. Unobservant though her mother was, she must not guess something was wrong, not until Kitty had had a chance to work out what to do. She inspected herself in the blank reflection of a neighbors window, smoothed back her tousled hair, and brushed down her clothes as best she could. She could do nothing about the dirt on her hands, or the bags beneath her eyes. She sighed. Not great, but it would have to do. With that, she stepped up to the door and knocked. Her keys had been left back in her rooms.
After a slight delay, during which Kitty was driven to knock again, a familiar slim shadow appeared in the hall. It hovered halfway down it, as if uncertain whether to open the door. Kitty tapped on the glass. “Mum! It’s me.”
Diffidently the shadow came near; her mother opened the door a little and looked out. “Oh,” she said, “Kathleen.”
“Hello, Mum,” Kitty said, smiling as best she could. “Sorry this is unexpected.”
“Oh. Yes.” Her mother did not ope
n the door any farther. She was looking at Kitty with a startled, slightly wary expression.
“Is anything wrong, Mum?” Kitty asked, too weary to care.
“No, no. Not at all.”
“So can I come in, then?”
“Yes … of course.” Her mother stood aside to allow Kitty to enter, presented a cold cheek to be pecked, and shut the door carefully behind them.
“Where’s Dad? In the kitchen? I know it’s late, but I’m starving.”
“I think perhaps the living room would be best, dear.”
“Okay.” Kitty stepped down the hall and into the small lounge. Everything was much as she remembered: the frayed carpet, denuded of color; the little mirror over the mantelpiece; the elderly sofa and chair that her father had inherited from his father, complete with lacy antimacassars on the headrests. On the little coffee table was a steaming teapot and three cups. On the sofa sat her father. In the chair opposite sat a young man.
Kitty stopped dead. Her mother quietly closed the door.
The young man looked up at her and smiled, and Kitty was immediately reminded of Mr. Pennyfeather’s expression when he had looked upon the treasures of the tomb. It was a gleeful, acquisitive smile, struggling hard to be contained.
“Hello, Kitty,” the young man said.
Kitty said nothing. She knew what he was quite well.
“Kathleen.” Her father’s voice was barely perceptible. “This is Mr. Mandrake. From the, the Department of Internal Affairs, I believe?”
“That’s right,” Mr. Mandrake said, smiling.
“He wants—” Her father hesitated. “He wants to ask you some questions.”
A sudden wail came from her mother’s mouth. “Oh Kathleen,” she cried. “What have you been doing?”
Still Kitty did not reply. She had a single throwing disc in her jacket, but was otherwise defenseless. Her eyes flicked across to the drawn curtains over the window. It was a sash opener; she could climb out that way—if her father had oiled the latch. Or smash it in a pinch—the coffee table would go through it. Or there was the hall, with a choice of exits, but her mother was standing in front of the door …
Bartimaeus: The Golem’s Eye Page 35
