Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus 1 (15 page)

Through gritted teeth I spoke it—
"Nathaniel!"
—then a counter-spell as before.

The effect was immediate. The charge left me, I slumped to the ground. Small lightning bolts shot off in all directions.

The boy dived just in time—an electric charge that would have killed him

beautifully speared straight through his flailing coat as he hit the floor. Other bolts collided with his bed and desk; one zapped into his vase of flowers, slicing the glass cleanly in two. The rest vanished into the walls, peppering them with small, asterisk-shaped burn marks. It was a delightful sight.

The kid's coat had fallen over his face. Slowly he raised his head and peered out

from under it. I gave him a friendly thumbs-up.

"Keep going," I grinned. "One day, if you work hard and stop making all these stupid mistakes, you might make a real grown-up wizard."

The kid said nothing. He got painfully to his feet. By pure fluke, he had dived

pretty much straight down and so was still safe within his pentacle. I didn't mind. I was looking forward to whatever mistake he would make next.

But his brain was working again. He stood still for a minute and took stock.

"Better get rid of me quickly," I said, in a helpful sort of way. "Old man Underwood will be coming to see what all the noise is about."

"No, he won't. We're too high up."

"Only two floors."

"And he's deaf in one ear. He never hears anything."

"His missus—"

"Shut up. I'm thinking. You did something then, both times.... What was it...?" He snapped his fingers. "My name! That's it! You used it to deflect my spells, curse you."

I studied my fingernails, eyebrows raised. "Might have, might not. It's for me to know and you to find out."

The kid stamped his foot again. "Stop it! Don't speak to me like that!"

"Like what?"

"Like you just did! You're speaking like a child."

"Takes one to know one, bud."

This was fun. I was really riling him. The loss of his name had made him lose his

cool. He was seconds away from another attack, I could tell—he had the stance and

everything. I adopted a similar, but defensive pose, like a sumo wrestler. Ptolemy had been exactly this boy's height, dark hair and everything,[4] so it was nice and

symmetrical.

[4] Better-looking by far, of course.

With an effort, the kid controlled himself. You could see him flicking through all

his lessons, trying to remember what he should do. He had realized that an ordinary

quick-fire punishment was out of the question now: I'd just send it back at him.

"I'll find another way," he muttered darkly. "Wait and see."

"Ooh, I'm really scared," I said. "Watch me shiver."

The kid was thinking hard. There were big gray bags under his eyes. Every time

he made an incantation he wore himself out further, which suited me just fine. Some

magicians have been known to drop dead simply from overexertion. It's a high-stress

lifestyle they have, poor things.

His thinking went on for a long time. I gave an ostentatious yawn and made a

watch appear on my wrist so that I could glance at it wearily.

"Why not ask the boss?" I suggested. "He'll help you out."

"My master? You must be joking."

"Not that old fool. The one who's directing you against Lovelace."

The boy wrinkled his brow. "There's no one. I don't have a boss."

Now it was my turn to look blank.

"I'm acting on my own."

I whistled. "You mean you really summoned me on your lonesome? Not bad... for

a kid." I tried to sound suitably sycophantic. "Well then, let me give you a tip. The best thing now is for you to let me go. You need a rest. Have you looked in a mirror recently?

One without an imp inside, I mean?

There are worry lines there. Not good at your age. It'll be gray hairs next. What

will you do then when you meet your first succubus?[5] Put her right off, it will."

[5]
Succubus:
a seductively shaped djinni in female form. Oddly popular with

male magicians.

I was talking too much, I knew, but I couldn't help it. I was worried. The kid was

looking at me with a calculating expression that I didn't like.

"Besides," I said, "with me gone, no one will know you have the Amulet. You'll be able to use it in complete secrecy. It's a precious commodity—everybody seems to

want it. I didn't tell you before, but some girl tried to jump me for it when I was hanging around in town."

The boy frowned. "What girl?"

"Search me." I neglected to mention that this was pretty much what the girl had succeeded in doing.

He shrugged. "It's Simon Lovelace I'm interested in," he said, almost to himself.

"Not the Amulet. He humiliated me, and I'm going to destroy him for it."

"Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured.

"Why?"

"Um..."

"I shall tell you a secret, demon," he went on. "By dint of my magic,[6] I saw how Simon Lovelace came by the Amulet of Samarkand. Some months ago, a stranger—

swarthy, black-bearded and cloaked—came to him in the middle of the night. He brought

him the Amulet. Money was exchanged. It was a furtive meeting."

[6] Typical magician's guff this. It was the unfortunate imp inside the bronze disc

who did all the work.

I snorted. "What's surprising there? It's how all magicians trade. You should know that. They thrive on unnecessary secrecy."

"It was more than that. I saw it in Lovelace's eyes and in the eyes of the stranger.

There was something illegal, underhand about it.... The man's cloak was stained with

fresh blood."

"I'm still not impressed. Murder's part of the game for you lot. I mean, you're

obsessed with revenge already, and you're only about six."

"Twelve."

"Same difference. No, there's nothing unusual in it. That bloke with the

bloodstains probably runs a well-known service. He'll be in the Yellow Pages, if you let your fingers do the walking."

"I want to find out who he is."

"Hmm. Black-bearded and cloaked, eh? That narrows our suspects down to about

fifty-five percent of the magicians in London. Doesn't even exclude all the female ones."

"Stop talking!" The kid seemed to have had enough.

"What's the matter? I thought we were getting along well."

"I
know
that the Amulet was stolen. Someone was killed to get it. When I find out who, I shall expose Lovelace and see him destroyed. I will plant the Amulet, lure him to it and alert the police at the same time. They will catch him red-handed. But first, I want to know all about him and what he gets up to. I want to know his secrets, how he does

business, who his friends are, everything! I need to discover who had the Amulet before and exactly what it does. And I must know
why
Lovelace stole it. To this end, I charge you, Bartimaeus—"

"Wait just a minute. Aren't you forgetting something?"

"What?"

"I know your true name, Natty boy. That means I have some power over you. It's

not all one way anymore, is it?"

The kid paused to consider.

"You can't hurt me so easily now," I went on. "And that limits your room for maneuver in my book. Throw something at me, and I'll throw it right back."

"I can still bind you to my will. You still have to obey my commands."

"That's true. Your commands are the terms on which I'm in this world at all. I can't break out of them without your unleashing the Shriveling Fire.[7] But I can sure as hell make life difficult for you when I carry out your orders. For example, while I'm spying on Simon Lovelace, why shouldn't I grass you up to some other magician? The only thing

that stopped me doing that before was fear of the consequences. But I'm not so worried about them now. And even if you explicitly forbid me to grass you up, I'll find some other way to do you a nasty. Let slip your birth name, maybe, to acquaintances of mine. You

won't be able to sleep in your bed for terror of what I might do."

[7] A complicated penalty made up of fifteen curses in five different languages.

Magicians can only use it on one of us who
deliberately
disobeys or refuses to carry out a given command. It causes immediate incineration.

Only applied in extreme cases, since it is tiring for the magician and robs them of

a slave.

He was rattled, I could see that much. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if

hunting for a flaw in my reasoning. But I was quietly confident: entrusting a mission to a djinni who knows your name is like tossing lit matches into a fireworks factory. Sooner or later you're going to have
consequences.

The best he could do was to let me go and hope no one else called me up while he

was alive.

Or so I thought. But he was an unusually clever and resourceful child.

"No," he said slowly, "I can't stop you if you want to betray me. All I can do is make sure you suffer along with me. Let's see...."

He rummaged through the pockets of his shabby coat. "There must be something

in here somewhere.... Aha!" His hand emerged holding a small battered tin, on which the words Old Chokey were ornately inscribed.

"That's a tobacco tin!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know smoking kills?"

"It doesn't contain tobacco anymore," the boy said. "It's one of my master's incense pots. It's full of rosemary now." He lifted the lid a fraction; sure enough, an instant later, a waft of the hellish scent reached me and made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Some herbs are very bad for our essence, and rosemary is one of these. In

consequence, magicians can't get enough of it.[8]

[8] There's big business in protective herbal aftershaves and underarm deodorants

for magicians. Simon Lovelace, for instance, positively reeked of Rowan-tree Rub-on.

"I'd turf that out and fill it up with some honest baccy," I advised. "Far healthier."

The boy closed the lid. "I am going to send you on a mission," he said. "The moment you've gone, I shall cast the spell of Indefinite Confinement, binding you into this tin. The spell will not take effect immediately; in fact I shall make it start up a month from today. If for any reason I am not around to cancel this spell before a month is up, you shall find yourself drawn into this tin and trapped there, until such time as it is opened again. How'd you like the idea of that? A few hundred years encased in a small tin of rosemary. That will do wonders for your complexion."

"You've got a scheming little mind, haven't you?" I said glumly.

"And in case you're tempted to risk the penalty, I shall bind this tin with bricks and throw it into the Thames before the day is out. So don't go expecting anyone to

release you early."

"I won't." Too right—I'm not insanely optimistic.[9]

[9] The Indefinite Confinement spell is a bad 'un, and one of the worst threats

magicians can make. You can be trapped for centuries in horrid minute spaces, and to cap it all, some of them are just plain daft. Matchboxes, bottles, handbags... I even knew a djinni once who was imprisoned in a dirty old lamp.

The kid's face now bore a horribly triumphant look. He looked like an unpleasant

boy in a playground who'd just won my best marble.

"So, Bartimaeus," he said, sneering. "What do you say to
that?"

I gave him a beaming smile.

"How about you forget all that silly tin business and just trust me instead?"

"Not a chance."

My shoulders sagged. That's the trouble, you see. No matter how hard you try,

magicians always find a way to clobber you in the end.

"All right, Nathaniel," I said. "What exactly is it that you want me to do?"

Nathaniel

No sooner had the djinni transformed itself into a pigeon and flown from his

window than Nathaniel closed the fastener, drew the curtains, and sank down upon the

floor. His face was corpse-white and his body shook with exhaustion. For almost an hour, he remained slumped against the wall, staring at nothing.

He had done it; yes, he had done it all right. The demon was bested, was under his

control again. He only had to work the binding spell on the tin, and Bartimaeus would be forced to serve him for as long as he desired. It was all going to be fine. He had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

So he told himself. But his hands trembled in his lap and his heart pounded

painfully against his chest, and the confident assertions he tried to conjure fell from his mind. Angrily, he forced himself to breathe deeply and clasped his hands together tightly to suppress the shaking. Of course, this fear was only natural. He had ducked the

Stimulating Compass by a fraction of a second. It was the first time he had come near

death. That sort of thing was bound to cause a reaction. In a few minutes he would be

back to normal; he could work the spell, take the bus to the Thames....

The djinni knew his birth name.

It knew his birth name.

Bartimaeus of Uruk, Sakhr al-Jinni of Al-Arish... He had allowed it to uncover his

name. Mrs.

Underwood had spoken, and the djinni had heard; and in that moment the cardinal

rule had been broken. And now Nathaniel was compromised, perhaps forever.

He felt the panic welling up in his throat; the force of it practically made him gag.

For the first time he could remember, his eyes stung with tears. The cardinal rule... if you broke that, you gave yourself up for lost. Demons always found a way. Give them any

power at all and sooner or later they would have you. Sometimes it took years, but they would always...

He remembered famous case studies from the books. Werner of Prague: he had

allowed his birth name to be uncovered by a harmless imp in his employ; in due course