question stringlengths 14 1.69M | answer stringlengths 1 40.5k | meat_tokens int64 1 8.18k |
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I would like to say a massive thank you to Waffle and the team Sunday for their wonderful job yesterday hosting my daughters birthday. Her and her friends had a wonderful time, especially when Hogstar came out to greet them!
Food was fantastic as always and Waffle was wonderful catering to all our needs! I highly commend Waffle for being able to put up with all my requests and checking in that everything was okay.
Kind Regards a very happy customer.
Our group of 25 people, including 14 disabled had a wonderful time at Hog's Breath. Waffle (Jasmin) who looked after us was very attentive and thoughtful. They even offer to take a photo of our group when we were leaving. Food yummy and plenty of space. Would definitely visit again.
Hog's Highpoint<|fim_middle|> the birthday boy or girl a little present.
Bring your own birthday cake for no extra charge.
To learn more or make a reservation, contact us on (03) 9317 4221. | has the ideal space for birthday's, family reunites, a hen's night, work events & more!
Looking for a fun and fabulous place to have a party? Need a room that's ideal for your mate's or your grandma's birthday? Hog's Highpoint have a great private function room to reserve. It's the perfect venue for a wide variety of events, including work Christmas parties, children's parties, your bosses' retirement, or a family reunion! And of course birthday parties! If it's for your child's birthday party (and even if it's not). Plus, Hogster himself can drop by for pictures!
In addition to private parties, it's great for work events too. If you'd like to treat your colleagues or clients to fabulous food during a client presentation, we can offer a polished space that's anything but stuffy. For work presentations, we welcome you to bring any presentation equipment you may require.
Hog's Highpoint's function area caters to a maximum of 60 guests. With a number of delicious party menus and a kids party menu available, you can experience a fantastic range of Hog's cuisine with easy, travelingset menu offerings. All menus include starters, mains and desserts. For cocktail and drink packages, ask our friendly staff for details.No matter what the occasion, Hog's Highpoint is the perfect venue for your next celebration or function Why go travelling to the city and driving in circles to find a park. Enjoy a fantastic atmosphere and delectable food at a wonderful price.
Every child will get a take home kids pack.
and give | 322 |
Tel: +254-2-2227461/2251355/ 0711 9445555/0732 529995 |E-mail: communications@ag.go.ke
UN Experts on Business and Human Rights in Kenya
Home/News and events/UN Experts on Business and Human Rights in Kenya
July 3rd 2018, by Department of Public Communications.
The United Nations Working Group on business and human rights has commended Kenya on the progress made in the development of the first National Action Plan on business and human rights in Africa; a plan<|fim_middle|>TENDER FOR LEGAL SERVICES 052.2018-2019
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Tweets by AGOfficeKenya
Government Of Kenya Ministries And State Departments
Copyright 2016 State Law Office, Department of Justice | All Rights Reserved | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy | that incorporates human rights as part of ethical business practice.
The group is now calling for more assistance to support small business enterprises and local communities to incorporate good business practices; the Group is however, challenging international businesses based in the country to respect human rights by applying best practices as exhibited in their countries of origin.
The delegation of the UN Working Group on business and human rights led by its chair Ms Anita Ramasastry made the observations when they met the Attorney General Kihara Kariuki Monday morning when they paid him a courtesy call.
In his remarks, the government's Chief legal Advisor Kihara Kariuki emphasized that human rights remained a core component of all businesses world-over.
"This is not a strange phenomenon but rather a practice that business enterprises have been implementing indirectly over a period of several years. The public must have faith in government to be able to address the issues that affect them including reviewing the minimum wages, especially in key areas such as in the extractive and agricultural sectors that form the backbone of the country."
He further observed, "In the past businesses viewed people as tools of trade but this has changed with human rights obligations being respected critical components in human resources management within the enterprises." He however challenged business owners to put in place systems that allowed regular interaction with employees as a way of strengthening institutions for the benefit of all.
The meeting with the Attorney General is the first of its official engagement in Kenya to assess efforts to prevent, mitigate and remedy adverse human rights impacts of business operations. The group will be in the country until 11 july 2018.
On her part, Ms Anita Ramasastry, chairperson of the UN Working Group stated, "We are impressed that Kenya has already developed the first National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights in Africa. This plan is aimed at strengthening the capacity of the State to protect against business-related human rights abuses and ensuring that companies respect human rights. We must work to bring change that's beneficial to all people in the economic development of the country."
Kenya is one of the fastest growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa, relying on sectors such as agriculture, small-scale consumer goods, tourism, services, transport, information technology, and a growing oil and mining sector. Many of the business establishments including Small Micro-Enterprises (SMEs) are now members of the UN Global Compact, a UN initiative aimed at encouraging business enterprises to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies that articulate business and human rights.
The Working Group delegation will meet with the Judiciary tomorrow before visiting Turkana, Nakuru, Kiambu and Mombasa, to assess how the Government and businesses are implementing their respective human rights obligations and responsibilities under with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The Guiding Principles, unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011, offer clarity and guidance for governments and companies on how to prevent and address adverse human rights risks and ensure that victims of business-related human rights abuses have access to effective remedies.
statelaw 2018-07-04T08:49:15+00:00
Tender No.051-2018-2019
Tender Notice OAG&DOJ.49-53-2018.2019
| 679 |
Q: Assigning values in Drop Downs from JSON using jQuery I have some JSON in this format:
"states": [
{"state":"AL","stateDescription":"Alabama","featured":"A1"},
{"state":"AK","stateDescription":"Alaska","featured":"B1"}
]
And i'm populating a drop down menu, i've been trying to assign the Option Value to the State, and the Value displayed to the stateDescription, but keep getting errors. I've tried following a few tutorials on here but none seem to work.
This is my code to populate the dropdown:
function populateDropdown(data) {
var info = JSON.parse(data);
var getStateDesc = _.pluck(info.states, 'stateDescription');
var renderOptions = _.map(getStateDesc, function (val) {
return '<option value="' + val + '">' + val + '</option>';
}).join();
$('#myComboBox').html(renderOptions).selectpicker("refresh");
};
So this successfully populates the drop down, however the option value is the same as the description, so when i'm trying to remove it at a later date it's not working, because the values need to be the 'state' not stateDescription.
How do i get the first <option value="' + val + '">' to equal the State?
Thanks
A: Try
$(document).ready(function () {
var data = {
"states": [{
"state": "AL",
"stateDescription": "Alabama",
"featured": "A1"
}, {
"state": "AK",
"stateDescription": "Alaska",
"featured": "B1"
<|fim_middle|> "state": "AL",
"stateDescription": "Alabama",
"featured": "A1"
},
{
"state": "AK",
"stateDescription": "Alaska",
"featured": "B1"
}
]
}
function populateDropdown() {
var output='';
var dat= jso.states;
for(var i in dat)
{
output+= '<option value="' + dat[i].state + '">' + dat[i].stateDescription + '</option>';
}
$('#myComboBox').html(output).selectpicker("refresh");
}
populateDropdown();
DEMO
| }]
}
$(data.states).each(function (i) {
$("#myComboBox").append($("<option/>", {
val: this.state,
html: this.stateDescription
}));
});
});
Html
<select id="myComboBox"></select>
First of all, your json is not valid. You need { and } at start and end. Then you can loop through the json. Use .append() method to add option to select.
Demo
A: Try this
var jso={
"states": [
{
| 110 |
Each day will be filled with a new exploration of the Asian elephants of Thailand. ELEI has chosen Save the Elephant Foundation because we trust the practices and the ways in<|fim_middle|> differs from our other "saddle off programs" as this trip offers just a short walk, ideal for any age group.
An elephant camp neighboring our park has decided to try out our concept of care. So now four lucky female elephants have dumped their trekking seats and their mahout's hooks have been cast aside. Only small groups each day enjoy the honor of observing their freedom and happiness; they walk, they scratch, they swim, they eat, they dust bathe, all at their own pace. May this be the start of a new trend that catches on in the Mae Taeng valley and elsewhere.
We will be staying at The Rim in Chiang Mai. The Boutique resort is built in Lanna-Burmese style which is located in the old city along the fascinating canal in the Chiang Mai.
The Old City which is a square area surrounded by ramparts and moats and believed to be constructed in the reign of the King Mantra. There are five gates around the city, which we are at the Pratu Suan Dok Gate; a few minutes to Chiang Mai International Airport, local temples, museums, historical landmark, the weekend market 'walking streets', the foothills of Doi Suthep and the Chiang Mai Zoo.
Pricing varies upon length of stay and how many be will be traveling.
Thula Thula, a family owned and operated private game lodge, is situated in the heart of Zululand, Kwa-Zulu Natal.
This 4500 ha, malaria free game reserve was established in 1911 and has been operational as Thula Thula since 1999. It is home to a wide variety of game like elephant, buffalo, rhino, leopard, giraffe and birds.
Thula Thula, with its centuries of cultural and wildlife heritage, takes pride in tracing back its origin to the private hunting grounds of King Shaka, founder of the Zulu Empire. The first historic meeting between Shaka and his father (Senzangakhona), which set the stage for the creation of the Zulu nation, took place at the Nseleni River at Thula Thula. The Zulu name Thula Thula literally means peace and tranquillity.
Lawrence Anthony was an acclaimed conservationist and an international best-selling author. He received the United Nations Earth Day medal for his work in Baghdad. He is the author of three books : Babylon's Ark, the incredible wartime rescue of the Baghdad zoo, The Elephant Whisperer, the extraordinary story of one man's battle to save his herd, and The Last Rhino, the powerful story of one man's battle to save a species.
When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them. In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed, he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realise that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom. The Elephant Whisperer is a heartwarming, exciting, funny, and sometimes sad account of Anthony's experiences with these huge yet sympathetic creatures. Set against the background of life on an African game reserve, with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, it is a delightful book that will appeal to animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.
Volunteers will experience living in the African wilderness, sharing experiences with others, growing their skills and making a difference. Programmes will vary slightly throughout the year, as the challenges involved in wildlife conservation are constantly shifting and certain issues may receive more focus than others. Thula Thula offers a well-rounded program aimed at covering both the needs of the reserve and surrounding communities, as well as providing a comprehensive, hands-on learning experience for the volunteers. Volunteers will see themselves as "Assistant Conservation Managers", as all the work done and data collected by them will be utilized by Thula Thula for conservation on the reserve.
Bush walk: - A full day bush walk where we will focus on developing our new volunteers. The day will consist of basic survival skills, snake identification and handling, tracks/ tracking knowledge and overall safety in a large game area.
Bush Work: - Identification of indigenous plants and clearing of invasive plant species. Road works (building water run offs and repairing dongas), fence line patrols, firebreak maintenance, litter clean up.
Reserve Research: - Game count, predator vs prey relationship/numbers.
Soil erosion, grass counts and veld management.
Conservation work: - Focusing on rare and endangered species of Thula Thula. Camera traps. Advanced tracking, game reintroduction programme. Learn how to prepare and cook a traditional Potjie over the campfire while you share stories of the day.
Community upliftment: General work within the local community of Buchanana. Painting, conservation education.
Lodge and Tented camp: Morning bush walk focusing on bird identification followed by general maintenance and project work at the tented camp and main lodge.Volunteers will be assisted in preparing and cooking their final African feast and treated to traditional Zulu dancing.
The Thula Thula volunteers Academy is situated adjacent to our Wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre, in a secure fenced area, with the most magnificent view over the whole game reserve and Mkhulu Dam, the favorite spot for Thula Thula's herd of elephants. Currently a maximum of 8 volunteers can apply per session, one of the volunteers being from the local communities on a complimentary basis.
Accommodation will be basic but comfortable, in 8 double tents, entirely lit by solar lanterns and wooden poles separate ablution area. Accommodation and all meals will be provided during your stay with us.
Breakfasts will include Tea/Coffee and cereals.
Lunches will include sandwiches and fruit.
Dinners will be a variety of simple meals cooked around the camp fire.
Vegetarian and vegan meals will be available on request.
All of our conservation projects, as Wildlife protection and anti-poaching, the Thula Thula Wildlife rehabilitation Centre and our Land expansion project for elephant habitat, are financed through the Thula Thula Non-Profit Organization THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSERVATION FUND. The THULA THULA VOLUNTEERS ACADEMY is a part of the SOUTH AFRICAN CONSERVATION FUND.
You can find more information at http://thulathula.com/conservation-fund-2/. | which the elephants are cared for and how they give back to the local communities. We believe they are leaders in teaching the Thai people a new way to interact and care for their elephants. There are a limited about of Asian elephants (around 30-40,000) left in the wild. The ones that are no longer wild have been domesticated from the tourism and/or lodging industry. The elephants have been rescued from inhumane practices and are living out their days in different projects with Save the Elephant Foundation. Specific projects focus on slightly different aspects of elephant care and integration with the local communities like the Karen tribe. In conservation, we cannot care for the elephants without also taking care of the communities that share the same land. The funds for this trip will be given back to the elephants and the local communities.
During this week, we will explore up to 6 elephant rehabilitation programs in up to 6 different locations including Elephant Nature Park; Karen Experience; Elephant Highlands; Elephant Wellness; Elephant Freedom; and Pamper a Pachyderm.
Discover how to communicate with the elephants and learn with trained staff. Observe the herd at play and watch them interact in each of their social groups. Overnight stays are all about spending time with the herd and do not adhere to a strict schedule; the best way to make the most of your visit is to relax, watch and learn from the elephants.
Enjoy the chance to feed and bathe the elephants, while observing the communications and interactions between them.
For more than 20 years, Karen tribes have rented their elephants to Elephant Camps because they could no longer legally use the Elephants for logging work. The Karen people have traditionally worked with Elephants but now the tradition is fading.
After seeing other Elephant owners change their way of caring for their Elephants, a group of Elephant owners in Mae Wang area, just south of Chiang Mai city, have agreed to stop renting their Elephants to the trekking industry and have committed to care for the Elephants at their homes with the support of Save Elephant Foundation and forget the trekking chairs.
Elephant Wellness is a special, small group "saddle off!" program in cooperation with a Traditional Thai Lanna settlement to the north of Chiang Mai city. Our aim here is to improve the life and treatment of the elephants under the care of these independent owners. This trip is suitable for families and guest of all ages. This is a very unique program, learning how to provide the elephant care with Thai herbal treatment.
Elephant Freedom is a special, small group "saddle off" program in cooperation with a Karen settlement to the south-west of Chiang Mai city. Our aim here is to improve the life and treatment of the elephants under the care of these independent owners. This trip is suitable for families and guest of all ages. This trip | 576 |
When Alison set out to book a once-in-a-lifetime family trip it soon became apparent that the high cost of international travel and her parent's health concerns could jeopardise her plans. However, thanks to the connections she made within the TrustedHousesitters community the family were able to make incredibly special memories tracing their heritage back through the generations to England, UK.
In early 2016 my husband Bruce and I had the most wonderful three month sabbatical in England, mostly due to the fact that we were able to house sit.
We would never have been able to afford a holiday of that length without house sitting. It was such a positive experience that it prompted my parents to ask, "maybe next time you could take us". Both of their fathers were born in England, but mum and dad had never been able to afford to visit.
The idea that perhaps we could all take a trip to England stuck in my mind,<|fim_middle|> us to their lovely neighbours and friends who were all available to help if we needed anything.
When mum ended up in hospital for five days during our stay, they were so kind and thoughtful, offering to help if we needed anything and asking after her welfare. We would never have had that support on an 'ordinary' holiday.
I feel very emotional as I write this story, but its hard to convey just how special it was for us to be able to realise this dream that would have been completely beyond our means without the opportunity to stay for free by house sitting.
We never anticipated that we'd need that little bit of extra support from the folk who so graciously allowed us all to stay in their homes and care for their pets, but I think that when you trust people in this way you build a special friendship and make a much deeper, more meaningful connection.
Thank you TrustedHousesitters for giving my family the freedom to release their dreams of travel.
Read Alison & Bruce's house sitter profile and make your own meaningful memories by searching for your ideal house sit now! | and as both my parents have significant health issues I knew this was likely to be the last chance for them to enjoy an international trip.
Inspired to find our ideal house sit I started to wonder if there were any sits that could cater to five people? Myself and my husband, my parents and our 26 year old daughter who was travelling as their carer made quite the team, but would we be an attractive prospect to home and pet owners seeking a sitter?
I started to apply for housesits that sounded like there might be enough room in the house, and maybe a lot of animals to look after to warrant such a set of sitters. When I responded to each listing I was completely open and honest about my parents' situation and how many of us there were.
Two people replied and wanted to find out more about our unique situation. There were concerns that my parents' poor health might mean that we may have to pull out at the last minute, a very fair point to make as these folk had booked and paid for special holidays themselves.
At that stage my dad's cancer was not affecting his daily life too much and mum was also relatively well, however we were making these plans 6 months in advance! I assured them that if my parents weren't well enough to travel, then we as a couple could still come and fulfil our commitment to them.
We were invited to take on a nine day house sit in Cornwall by a very gracious lady who told us that she realised there would probably be very few places big enough to accommodate five people, however she could. She was also going on a 'three generations' family holiday herself and liked the idea that she would be helping us enjoy the same experience.
It actually proved to be the perfect match as she was a nurse and proved very helpful in finding suitable medical care for my mother during our stay.
Dad's father came from Devon and during our stay we were able to find family graves in a church yard en-route to the house sit in Cornwall which was very special.
During our sit we cared for the four beautiful pets like they were our own, had a fantastic time exploring Cornwall, and left the house nice and clean.
We then took four days to drive up through England (via Shropshire) to our next house sit, a fortnight in Durham. On the way we were able to find and visit the home that my mum's father was born in.
When we arrived in Durham for the handover we discovered that this homeowner actually worked at the local medical centre, so she got mum an appointment for the next day and even sorted out all the necessary paper work for us. They put us in touch with their parents who were living nearby and introduced | 548 |
<|fim_middle|> library would probably do as well.
| Q: software recommandation for green screen photo editing I'm looking for something that would allow me to replace the specific green parts of a still picture (green-screen photo) with another image, all that called from a shell script.
Basically, a command line Chroma key for picture.
I guess Photoshop could do it (with it's weird scripting language), but this project can't afford such an investment (and I'd like to keep it as much Open Source as possible).
I'm pretty sure the GIMP could also handle that, but I know nothing about its scripting capabilities and I suppose there are better software options for such a specific task...
The typical platform would be debian-based, running on an ARM64 (or x64 if no other option).
Any suggestion would be welcome!
A: Gimp is scriptable via python. There's also some macro recording tools, and tools for batch application of operations to images.
GraphicsMagick's gm can probably also do something like that, though I haven't tried. I'd directly go for openCV in the shape of the cv2 python3 library. In your simple case, the PIL / pillow | 233 |
Widely hailed as one of Northern Ireland's leading cake-makers, Karen has been hailed for her ability to create<|fim_middle|>enny's Cakes is a speciality cake shop in Bangor Co.Down. As should be clear from this spectacular cake gallery featuring pet pooches in handbags, Harry Potter's Potions Books and Beetlejuice creations, their mission is to create a cake that will make any celebration special – Your cake. Your way.
And it's fair to say that they have more than succeeded.
Winner of Yelp Belfast's recent cupcake Cupcake-Off, J-Bird also do extraordinarily delicious cakes in all styles, shapes and sizes!
In fact, they can create an order of their gorgeous cupcakes, bakes and treats for weddings, christenings, birthdays or just because! Check out their site at jbirdbakery.com. | 'any design' in an amazing array of tasty flavours.
As you can probably gather from the outstanding creations in the gallery, Cupcakes By K focuses on bespoke cakes and cupcakes. Whether you fancy a Minion topped cake, 3D creation of your choice, free-standing figure, or five-layered-wedding cake, Karen always delivers on quality!
Our minds are truly blown – how does the ice-cream cone stay upright like that?!
Life Is Sweet cakes and treats are made fresh from scratch and baked to order with choice ingredients using their own American recipes, providing you with unbeatable tastes and textures.
From cake and cookie batter to curds and caramels, jams and ice creams to marshmallow and mousses.
Choose from daily menus featuring classic options and original, fun creations. Check out the site lifeissweetni.com for more info.
A regular feature in our lists due to their seriously Delicious Decadent Desserts, we can never stop ogling Treat Boutique's outstanding cakes.
We're seriously considering faking our birthday to our fellow co-workers just to be awarded one of these spectacular cakes a few months early.
These cakes are quite simply, out of this world.
J | 243 |
Back in the day, I was able to convince my bosses to pay for me to take design courses, and it turns out I was pretty creative and had a good design sense. I actually preferred doing it to programming as a way to spend my working day, but computer programming paid a hell of a lot more, and there was a constantly expanding<|fim_middle|>U ideas.
The clean id and class hierarchy of the page elements is perfectly suited to controlling them with JQuery. | pool of jobs. At the Census Bureau they were always creating new programmer positions, but for the talented few in the Graphics shop, somebody literally had to die for them to advance in their government career.
Pretty much every job in my resume was visually oriented – user interfaces, charts and graphs, CAD – but it was always straight-up programming. Fast forward thirty(!!) years later, and there is this thing called the web which seemed to promise that I could finally merge my two interests. But sadly, my start-from-scratch web designs have kinda sucked. My old home page is OK; not horrble, but certainly not sparkling enough for me to suggest with a straight face that you should hire me to design your site.
As part of my recent explosion of technical energy, I decided to differientate my serious web professional site from my express-myself site, and this time it occurred to be to look around for free site designs.
The CSS is mostly well organized and modifying it is a great way to learn how to really tame it for your own uses.
Now that I am into it, the organization of their 2, 3, 4 panel grid layouts turn out to be perfect vehicles for my WFUF | 246 |
The Garden Writers Association Foundation (GWAF) just released its 2013 Winter Gardening Trends Research Report and with it is some food for thought.
"Among the 68 million gardening households that have a lawn, garden or grow plants in containers, 81.5% (~55.5 million households) have grown edible plants (fruits/vegetables/herbs) since 2009. Growing methods used by this group include: 35.3% grew edible plants in the ground; 15.6% grew edible plants in containers; and 30.6% grew edible plants both in the ground and in containers<|fim_middle|>z © (From our photo archives) Cherry Tomatoes – Everyone can grow them! | .
Among the ~55.5 million households that have grown edible plants since 2009, 91.4% (~50.7 million households) grew edibles in 2012. Only 8% of households growing edible plants since 2009 did not grow in 2012, and the main reasons given were: took too much time (40.9%), lost interest (22.5%), efforts were unsuccessful (19.0%), moved to a location where gardening wasn't possible (17.8%), too expensive (12.6%) or too much work (6.4%).
Among all U.S. households, 51.9% (~57 million) report they anticipate growing edible plants this year, representing an expected 11.3% increase in households growing edible plants for 2013.
So for everyone reading, where do you fit with these numbers? Why do you plant the garden edibles or for others, why not? Somehow my guess would be beyond this survey sample that time would be given as the number one reason. And then next in line - losing interest; it seems pretty typical for any hobby one undertakes if you don't ensue it with a spark of enthusiasm. So if you want to be part of the edible trend, commit yourself to a passion well worth the freshness. For everyone else, please support your local farmer.
Of course I must wrap this up with a Friday quote. From one of my favorite musicians, John Mayer. "If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it." How true. So the question is will you be committing yourself to an edible garden in the next two weeks? Planning counts so let's get to it.
Footnote: The above quoted information is an excerpt from a weekly newsletter for +GWA Members, of which our company, Bilowz Associates Inc. are members of and have access to a free copy of all the survey reports.
Image by Ann Bilow | 427 |
Matthijs de Ligt is the signing Manchester United desperately need this summer
The Ajax defender is one of Europe's hottest properties
<|fim_middle|> that Manchester United need to be looking at if they want to get back to the summit of the Premier League and in Europe.
Liverpool vs Man Utd: Gary Neville looses it on commentary as Anthony Martial misses sitter
Liverpool's Alisson has more Premier League assists than Jesse Lingard in 2019/20
Roberto Firmino made a mockery of Aaron Wan-Bissaka during Liverpool vs Man Utd
Liverpool move 30 points clear of Man Utd after Mo Salah secures 2-0 victory
Liverpool goal disallowed by VAR after Virgil van Dijk clashes with David de Gea | By Jason Pettigrove
At just 19 years of age, it's hard to comprehend that Matthijs de Ligt is already a bona fide leader of men.
Not yet out of his teens, the Ajax centre-back has already earned the respect of colleagues much older, and he led the Dutch side by example throughout the 2018/19 season.
Unfortunately for Ajax they remain a selling club and, after losing Frenkie de Jong to Barcelona, they're now on the verge of accepting that De Ligt will ply his trade elsewhere in the upcoming campaign.
The style of play at the Camp Nou would certainly suit the player, and a chance to team up with De Jong again will obviously hold some cachet, however, things are far from cut and dried.
His agent, Mino Raiola, has a fractious relationship with the club, and that's only been exacerbated since the end of the season.
Raiola is demanding somewhere in the region of €10 million euros for himself, out of a transfer operation that's expected to conclude at around the €80m mark.
To genuinely believe that he should take that much out of the total sale price is vulgar and disgusting, but that's never bothered Raiola before, and he always seems to hold the upper hand in negotiations.
To that end, De Ligt has been touted around amongst Europe's best clubs, and, though they don't have Champions League football to offer, it's believed that Manchester United are one of them.
The chance to take the Red Devils back to the promised land is an intoxicating thought for any player, and under a progressive Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, De Ligt will know that he can stake an immediate claim for a starting spot rather than waiting, for example, for Gerard Pique to retire.
United have struggled with their centre-backs recently too. Eric Bailly is probably the pick of the bunch, but injury concerns have always curtailed his progress and he won't be back any time soon.
The less said about Phil Jones the better, while Chris Smalling can be a much better player with a solid partner alongside.
De Ligt is commanding, physical and technically adept, all facets of play that will be manna from heaven for Solskjaer. It's been an awful long time since they've had a ball-playing centre back to bring the ball out of defence too.
More than happy to put a shift in, the youngster will never shirk a tackle, and is rarely beaten in the air either.
A natural determination to win every challenge is the driving force behind the way in which De Ligt goes about his work, inspiring others in so doing.
It's often said that title-winning teams are built on solid defensive foundations.
Though United are far from that at the moment, the building blocks have to be laid at some point, so why not now.
Ed Woodward will be acutely aware that he has to back Solskjaer to the hilt and not do to the Norwegian what he did with Jose Mourinho, turning down the manager once he identifies appropriate talent.
Even if De Ligt costs them a world record price from a defender, given his age and his projection, it will, in time, seem like a bargain fee for a player who is destined to become one of, if not the world's best in his position.
There is no ceiling on what he can achieve, and that is precisely the sort of player | 709 |
savvy navvy secures global partnership with charter company Zizoo
Isabel Johnston
Marine technology company, savvy navvy, has teamed up with Zizoo, the world's largest boat rental platform, helping responsible marine tourism by giving boat holiday makers across the globe access to its "Google Maps for boats" app.
Zizoo, which offers over 44,000 boats across 500 destinations worldwide for both experienced and inexperienced boaters, will integrate savvy navvy's technology as part of its user platforms.
savvy nav<|fim_middle|> savvy navvy has grown rapidly and today has nearly half a million users in more than 100 countries across the globe.
To find out more about savvy navvy - the Boat GPS App visit www.savvy-navvy.com.To book your next boating holiday visit www.zizoo.com .
savvy navvy, the boating app that brings all essential marine information together in one place. Featuring global charts, wind and weather forecasts, tidal graphs, GPS Tracking, automatic weather routing, and marina and anchorage information. It's like Google Maps for boats.
Latest Articles.
savvy navvy gets ready to launch crowdfunding round
All-in-one navigation app savvy navvy is getting ready to launch its next and possibly last crowdfunding round, after its most successful year to date. Pre-registration is now taking place to invest in the innovative navigation app.
Innovative partnership gets more people on the water with enhanced user experience
Innovative partnership gets more people on the water with enhanced user experience A new collaboration sees three global marine companies all aiming to get more people onto the water, working together and further enhancing boaters' experience.
Dorset marine tech founder wins Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2022
Jelte Liebrand, the founder of global marine technology company savvy navvy, has been recognised as one of the most exceptional business leaders in the UK winning 'Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the year' at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2022. | vy, often referred to as 'Google maps for boats', continues to innovate the boating industry and this partnership is the latest in many, enabling more people to confidently and safely enjoy their time on the water.
"Our vision from the outset has been for savvy navvy to be in every boater's pocket, supporting both new and experienced boaters. With boating holidays on the rise across the world, we are delighted to work with Zizoo to support responsible and sustainable marine tourism.
"savvy navvy continues to grow across the globe and partnering with a leading boat charter company, means we can give simplified navigation access to the thousands of people chartering boats and enhancing their sailing experience adding value to us and them," says Jelte Liebrand, Founder and CEO of savvy navvy.
Zizoo caters both to licensed sailors looking to book a boat only, and to those with no sailing experience, interested in hiring a boat together with a captain and optional crew. Their customers will benefit from access to savvy navvy's simplified navigation app and savvy charts™ will be part of Zizoo's itineraries going forward.
"At Zizoo we make it easy for travellers to find the right boat, right location and choose itineraries suited to their level of experience. We are always looking to enhance our customers' experience and ways they can maximise their charter holiday. Our partnership with savvy navvy will definitely do that – as we want to make boating a simpler, more pleasurable and safe experience for anyone navigating the waters," says Anna Banicevic (CEO).
The savvy navvy app takes into account wind, weather, tides, and user preferences to produce the fastest and safest routes available. Since being set up by Jelte Liebrand and co-Founder Kevin O'Neill only five years ago, | 369 |
The "OSTRIA" hotel skiathos complex, on the magnificent island of Skiathos, welcomes you to its comfortable and fully equipped apartments and promises you unique and unforgettable holidays, in an idyllic scenery.
Built on an enchanting location in the Agia<|fim_middle|> good taste, they are ideal for couples and families with children. | Paraskevi or Platanias bay, close to the Chora of the island and beside its most beautiful beaches, it is the ideal accommodation for those that love tranquillity, while it is also the perfect base for tours around the island.
Only 50 meters from the hotel, you can enjoy the wonderful blue sea, the golden sandy beach and the organised beach of Agia Paraskevi. Fans of water sports and other activities, such as diving, can seek information from the hotel, in order to get the appropriate equipment.
The OSTRIA complex is surrounded by an eight-acre area, covered by lawn, creating an oasis, enhanced by the beautiful swimming pool of the complex. Children can enjoy endless hours of fun, in absolute safety.
You will find our excellent service, homemade cuisine, our smiling and responsible staff and the personal care provided unforgettable. The exceptional cleaning of all spaces and the sense of freshness has received positive comments in international tourism websites, such as Trip Advisor.
The 23 beautiful and comfortable apartments and studios of the hotel, with the big terraces and the excellent organisation, guarantee a home away from home on your holidays. Spacious, functional, fully equipped with all the modern conveniences and furnished in | 248 |
Marstrands rådhus är en byggnad vid Rådhusgatan 17 i Marstrand. Den har fungerat som rådhus, stadshotell och stadshus för Marstrands stad och inrymmer numera bibliotek och utställningslokaler. Byggnaden är byggnadsminne sedan den 19 april 1982.
Historia
Efter Marstrands brand år 1643 upprättades en ny stadsplan år 1647, där borgarna förband sig att återuppbygga boningshusen i sten, men den enda stenbyggnad som verkligen blev uppförd var rådhuset, som placerades med gaveln mot torget. Efter freden i Roskilde år 1658 blev Marstrand svenskt och de danska privilegierna upphörde och därmed kravet på stenbyggnader.
I äldre handlingar kan man se att byggnaden då låg med sin längsta fasad mot Långgatan i väster. En ombyggnad genomfördes på 1780-talet varvid rådhuset utvidgades så att ena långsidan kom mot torget och byggnaden fick två fulla våningar och brutet tak. År 1782 använde Karlstens fästning huset som regemente för sina arbetskommenderingar och byggnadens andra våning användes som kronomagasin.
Under 1800-talet expanderade staden och rådstugurätten flyttades ned till en byggnad vid hamnen där även sjötullen hade sin lokal. På 1840-talet förelåg ett förslag till ombyggnad av huset för sjukhusändamål. Mellan åren 1867 och 1970 fungerade byggnaden som stadshotell för att därefter bli lokal för en segelmakare. Vindsplanet inreddes och frontespisen upptogs mot torget. Hotellet inrymde 7 rum. Under 1800-talet uppfördes även en mindre gårdsbyggnad av trä. Vid sekelskiftet utbyggdes verandan och köksdelen mot trädgården. I samband med restaureringen omkring år 1980 revs sannolikt tillbyggnaden mot gården. Det var troligen under hotelltiden som byggnaden fick sin nuvarande nyklassicistiska stil. Efter en omfattande renovering under åren 1982–1983 inrymmer rådhuset främst bibliotek och utställningslokaler. Den nuvarande fasadutformningen med frontespis och rik putsarkitektur tillkom på 1960-talet. Huset nyttjades då som<|fim_middle|> byggnadens mittparti dit huvudentrén är förlagd. Taket har en sadelform och är belagt med tvåkupigt rött tegel. Byggnaden, vars utformning huvudsakligen tillkom i samband med en renovering på 1860-talet, präglas av dekorativa listverk och fönsteröverstycken i form av frontoner på konsoler. En omfattande renovering skedde åren 1982–1983.
Byggnaden präglas av nyklassisk stil med en strängt uppbyggd fasad. De centrala partierna utgörs av långsidans entré och frontespis. Breda putsade väggband utgör kraftiga markeringar mellan de olika våningsplanen. Fönsteromfattningarna har bröstning och frontoner med undantag av de på undervåningen. I släta fält under fönstren på andra våningen finns texten bibliotek, rådhus respektive museum.
Källarvåningen, som är byggnadens äldsta delar, rymmer två rum som finns redovisade på ritningar från 1782 och som ligger under byggnadens västra del.
Referenser
Vidare läsning
Externa länkar
Byggnader i Kungälvs kommun
Byggnadsminnen i Västra Götalands län
Marstrands historia
Rådhus i Sverige | stadshus och stadshotell och den stora salen i övervåningen användes av stadsfullmäktige.
Källaren användes som vinförråd under den period då rådhuset var hotell och fungerade som häkte innan häktet år 1860 förlades till kajområdet. Den har även använts i samband med Trollerikommissionens sammanträden. Bibliotekslokalen användes fram till år 1750 som magistratslokal. I byggnaden ska även under en period fyrmästaren på Karlstens fästning ha bott.
Beskrivning
Rådhuset ligger vid torget i centrala Marstrand och har en i det närmaste kvadratisk form. Huvudentrén vetter mot torget. Det är en av stadens fåtaliga stenbyggnader, uppförd i två våningar med inredd vind. Sockeln är utförd i kalksten och fasaderna är ljusputsade. Bottenvåningen är rusticerad och andra våningen är slätputsad med kannelerade pilastrar. En frontespis mot torget markerar | 283 |
Diverse Cultures United by Eucharist
By Jennifer Powers
ORLANDO – With hundreds of faithful following behind, Bishop John Noonan carried the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament through the Holy Doors of Mercy at<|fim_middle|>Next Next post: St. Maria Goretti Show Us the Way | the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe in Orlando, May 29 to begin the Corpus Christi procession.
Overhead, a canopy protecting the Real Presence was carried by seminarians as the Knights of Columbus led the way. Altars of Repose from the Haitian, Filipino, Brazilian, Hispanic, Korean, Ukrainian, Polish, Vietnamese, and African communities, lined the route, reflecting the rich faith expressions of the universal Church and the cultural diversity of the faithful in the Diocese of Orlando. Bishop Noonan rested the monstrance at each altar as he knelt to offer prayers and blessings, while the respective community played songs of adoration on native instruments and sang in their own language.
Prior to the procession, Bishop Noonan presided at the Mass of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. In his homily, Bishop Noonan said, "We are all searching for a miracle, but we experience one each time we come to Mass. May we be one in the Lord Jesus Christ because of the Word and the Eucharist."
Dating back to the 13th century, Eucharistic processions offer the faithful the opportunity for adoration as one body, regardless of language or culture, and to witness, outside the walls of the church, belief in Christ's presence in the Eucharist.
"This means a lot to us," says Marie Delius of Our Lady of Fatima, a Haitian mission in Orlando. "In Haiti, they go all in the streets, as Jesus went through the community, to show that he wants to be one with us. Like he was on Calvary, he sees the misery of his people. You miss something if you don't know him."
Father Akalue, a native of Nigeria, gathered people from several African nations to be a part of the celebration. "The Eucharist is integral to African Catholic identity. It is the center of our personal relationship with Christ," says Father Emmanuel Akalue, pastor of Our Lady of Grace in Palm Bay. "Through exposition, adoration, and benediction, we feel intimately connected with Jesus; the love and center of our lives," he says.
Each community prepared an altar of repose with fabrics, icons, and other expressions of the faith from their culture. Catholic Filipinos from different parishes throughout the Diocese of Orlando collaborated to prepare their altar and music for the event. "Every year, we are excited to take part in this. It is a team effort," says Mila Ecle, a parishioner from Sts. Peter and Paul in Winter Park. "This (procession) represents our true religion; our devotion and faith in honoring the Body of Christ."
Along with honoring Christ, some altars showed diversity in devotion to the Virgin Mary, with icons such as of Our Lady of Czestochowa of Poland, Our Lady of Perpetual Help of Haiti, and Our Lady of Aparecida of Brazil. Maria and Shawn Williams from Most Precious Blood in Oviedo brought their 6 homeschooled children to participate. Shawn and Marie's son Adam, made his first Holy Communion just weeks before, making this Eucharistic feast day even more special for them as a family. "We wanted them to be a part of the heritage and practice of the Catholic faith," says Shawn. "This was our first time at a processional like this, and we wouldn't have missed it; to see the diverse cultures was really wonderful."
"We are all searching for a miracle, but we experience one each time we come to Mass." – Bishop John Noonan
| 746 |
the wizards of twiddly
an interview by phil howitt
this article first appeared in issue 14 in June 1995
Sometime last year, in a venue in Chester, against a backdrop of a quite stunning RSVP gig, I stumbled across two or three Twiddlys in the crowd. It seemed to happen a lot in those days: I'd come across some of them on a dusty track at Glasto' '93 and again at an Allan Holdsworth gig in early '94, where one of the band was shamelessly heckling Holdsworth with the words 'less notes' !
The Wizards of Twiddly had made the short hop from Liverpool to see how Richard Sinclair (RSVP, Caravan) shaped up, and inevitably talk turned to future plans. Andy Delamere (drums) confided that they'd been thinking of approaching Kevin Ayers, hauling him over to England and offering the services of guitar, bass and drums for a possible tour. It seemed to be one of those perfectly conceived ideas that never actually happen.
Well, this one did. Writing this piece in April ('95) Wizards of Twiddly are just about to head off for Italy, France & Ireland , to build on the success of their first tour with Kevin Ayers. There's talk of a live album, maybe recordings with Kevin as his backing band...the possibilities are endless....!
The tour with Kevin Ayers will certainly have brought the music of The Wizards of Twiddly to a wider audience. And not before time. Quite aside from being the Ayers 'backing band' , they performed for over an hour each night as support with their own brand of delightfully barmy music and will have converted many. There are many who should have been converted long before. The Wizards of Twiddly have been in existence for about seven years, and I'm surely not alone in seeing the Ayers/Twiddly concerts, on musical merit alone, as a double header. Now the difficult bit- what are The Wizards of Twiddly like ? Journos have quoted a long list of soundalikes including Zappa, Gong, Madness, XTC, Ian Dury, The Bonzos, Kinks and still not really got close. Basically they're very much their own fellows.
A musical ensemble that encompasses sax, flute, trumpet, occasional keyboards or trombone, three very fine vocalists, a stunning guitarist and a tight rhythm section tells some of the story. But thats forgetting the compelling stage presence, even without one time 'narrator' Keith Lancaster, who provided a running visual commentary on proceedings with sketch pad, announcements, occasional vocals and disturbed dancing. Anyone not found found grinning their faces off during a Twiddly set has a problem. Their sets can include a repertoire of jazzy TV themes gone haywire, loon tunes about vegetables, yobboik punk numbers, outrageous guitar heroics and the most blissful sixties-drenched pop.
<|fim_middle|>ery. 'Anti septic Tank' when it arrived was more manic, shorter and even more bloody-minded. End of story ? Hardly ! On the Ayers tour the band unveiled 'Anti Tank Tank' with its close harmony massed nasal scat singing (!).
Walking in about fifteen minutes into the bands set in London, I briefly thought they might have gone soft, with new songs such as 'Sounds of Success' and the remarkable vocal harmonies of 'We Are Not Free' almost wowing the audience. Not for long. 'Man made Self' saw to that !
So what, then is the History of The Wizards of Twiddly ?
Try this for size from Andy F '' I bumped into him (Andy D) and then he bumped into Simon, but I had already bumped into Simon without knowing he had already bumped into Simon. Then Simon bumped into Carl, then you (Andy D) bumped into Carl at the same time, so I rebumped into you and then we all bumped into Martin, which was quite a shock for Martin, I think ('because he didn't know he was being bumped into') and that was it really.......('We bumped into each other...' adds Andy D)....and then we all bumped into Keith. Pete bumped into us at our first gig and became our manager. ''
We rehearsed for a year and forgot to gig. We were less a band and more of a travelling laboratory. We used to get together and have rehearsals and sort of do these tunes, but I'm not sure whether that was more important or sitting around in cold flats listening to music was more important'' All members of the band were involved with other bands (one, The Vernons recorded an album on Probe; another featuring the Andys prophetically called Whatevershebringswesing).
The name still raises a smile -back in the early 90's Liverpool seemed to be permenantly festooned with gaudy posters bearing the bands logo. The madcap monicker , an anarchic stage approach and their close links with bands such as Urban Strawberry Lunch (and later the new psychedelic breed such as The Great Imperial YoYo and Kava Kava) has given them a slightly 'crusty' image. In fact the name came from a highly scathing review of Canadian rockers Rush, found by Andy D, who is also responsible for the bands distinctive artwork.
''The first gig,in 1989, was extraordinary'' continues Andy D.''It was at a Liverpool University Common Room . It was one of those where they have a telly in the corner and a bar and comfy chairs. And we just asked our friends down, people who'd been wondering what we'd been up to for months. Loads of people -all mates-turned up. It was really early in the evening, sill light and we only did nine songs but the vibe was amazing. I remember being very excited about the whole thing.....this was something special.''
Andy F. ''Early on we got a residency at a club called Vivaldis. We played once a month for about three months and we built up a following. Those were hard gigs because we packed the place out and we had to think about what we could do next month...a different angle.'' This was probably where the theatrical side of things stepped up a gear. Andy Frizell performs and writes musical material for Liverpool based theatre company Kaboodle (the band played and acted in Kaboodles 'Threepenny Story' touring UK and Germany 1991/2) and an integral part of the band at the time was Keith Lancaster, a most extraordinary individual. By the time I got to see the band he had taken the role of expressionless, silent compere, seated half off stage, equipped with various drawing materials, and an endless supply of paper with which he would solemly inform the crowd of the next number.
With Twiddly songs tending to be on the short side, it was sometimes a race against time. His alter ego was as a psychotic dancer, or, memorably, on the yarn 'Errols last Supper' and the truly surreal 'Slug Alert' (complete with sound effects - have you ever wondered what a slug sounds like? - Keith knows.) as narrator. He was perhaps responsible for the most renowned comment yet made about the band : 'Bonkers jazz-influenced Scousers featuring a 'Bez' with sketchpad and crayons' (NME) that seemed somehow appropriate.
Preceding the 'Keith's got crayons' period (Andy D !) the band had other ways of confusing audiences 'We used to have Valerie Singleton posters and 'The Contraption' ' reveals Andy F 'It was a bicycle upended on its side and on each wheel of the bike we had an an axle and that was attached to another thing. And there was a roll of wallpaper and you turned the wheel and it was like a Camberwick Green thing and the songs came up. But what that meant was that you had to unravel a whole sheet of wallpaper before each gig, painstakingly paint all the songs in the right order, whatever.''
Andy D ''Pete used to do that and he needed about four days notice....you couldn't be spontaneous'' Andy F ''One time we got it wrong in Edinburgh - we were doing a two set gig and got the order wrong. There were only five people in the audience in this tiny cafe. There was a guy from a Radio Station sitting right in front of us, grinning his head off while we did 'Ace of Spades'. There were a lot of people who hadn't seen it happen! In Edinburgh we did about fourteen gigs in a week the majority to about five people !''
''There was one gig at Vivaldis where we decided that we would all march in playing 'Independent Legs'. Meanwhile Carl was onstage with a big cloth over him with hand drawn question marks all over it, ready to be revealed and launch into the next tune. Carl stood there for half an hour while we tried to re access the venue! He had a right cob on!' Andy D '...Those were wild days. Theres a tape from one of the Vivaldi gigs and it sounds like King Crimson's 'Earthbound' album with stupid characters singing. Every song sounds like its sung by a different, weird person. Martins audibly going 'totally pissed ! totally pissed !'' and he was! Every note he plays is wrong - wrong -loud & wrong!''
I asked what had happened to Keith, who's not been seen with the band for a while. Andy D says in funereal tones ''Keiths not with us anymore'' Andy F ''He's moved on. He's doing this that and the other but basically getting on with his acting career. he may have left the band in terms of being a full time band member but he's not getting away with it that easily ! He's excellent and will definitely be on the next album''. Meanwhile the Twiddlys aren't without a convincing visual stimuli. Trumpeter Martin Smith (never shy of unreasonable stage antics) has the hair, general gait and energy to draw your attention - Andy Frizell is close behind with cheesy grin and his straight legged , high stepping progress around the stage. And Simon James continues to terrorise the mike with sax and vocals. I had to point out the contrast with equally exhilarating but somewhat saner sets they did with Kevin Ayers:
Andy F : 'Yeah, but hopefully we can draw all those things together because they're not all that far apart.'' Andy D ''We sat him down at rehearsal and asked if there was anything of ours he'd like to sing? and he said 'I'll have a go' so he sat there while we played him a song and he'd say 'Well it sounds fine when you sing it' We thought it might be good for him to sing 'Man Made Self.''. 'Man Made Self', the title song of their second album, has become practically the Twiddlys anthem, with its over-the-top metal riffing, ranting in unison and condemnation of 2.4 culture ( 'I know exactly what I will be doing a year from now/ I shall be making provision for the year after') It hasn't happened yet but would surely suit the Kevin Ayers growl. There is nothing the Twiddlys would like more than for Kevin to perform one of their songs, or even to write stuff together. Andy D : '' Kevin brought along one of his new songs, or a riff, which was far more exuberant than anything off 'Falling Up'' or 'Still Life With Guitar''. There's stuff from the early years that we'd like to recreate the spirit of..''
In the meantime they'll content themselves with sharing a stage (''There was one rehearsal where Kevin fell on his back and carried on playing !'') fine food and drink (Andy D: ''Within an hour , when we first met him properly, he leaned over to me and asked 'Do you all drink wine?' ) and the Twiddlys shiny 'new' van:
Andy F: ''We've got a big new van, a big police van but its had it's riot shields taken out. It's got little notices by the handles on the doors saying 'Keep Latches Open Except When Under Attack....' .''
Andy D ''......by ex-members of Soft Machine !''
The Wizards of Twiddly can be found at www.wizardsoftwiddly.com, where this interview is also published
New - Blog! | They've been quite my favourite live act since that night a few years back, when, drawn by the absurdity of the name and a quite baffling demo tape, I trekked out to the Witchwood in East Manchester, to see what they were all about. Blown away by the sheer energy, noise and visual confusion of it all, I nevertheless remember writing about their 'terminally glum bass player'. Little known to me, bassist Andy Frizell had taken a visit to the dentist that day, emerged several wisdom teeth lighter and was now neglecting his normally cavalier singing role in favour of a vantage point on top of a rather large speaker cab, looking even more urchin like than usual.
Three years on and it's Andy Frizell , thankfully neither glum nor toothless, and singing drummer Andy Delamere (hereafter referred to as Andy F & Andy D) who I meet up with in a restaurant in the bands native Liverpool. We start talking about the Ayers connection. How had it come about ? ''Well we phoned him up and said 'do you want to play with us?' and he said 'all right then'. That was basically it - its a bit longer than that....'' opens Andy F. Some time after Andy D's prophetic words in Chester there had been talk of Kevin Ayers looking for a few musicians to tour the UK with. Andy D: '' I didn't have The Wizards of Twiddly in mind. I just thought of me, Carl (the guitarist) and Andy. We sent him a CD, then we got that support and then he rang up within about two weeks.''
The support was at the Powerhaus in Islington last autumn ('94) where the band backed Kevin on a couple of numbers and that really open the floodgates. their first 'proper' gig together was in Liverpool in December, that in turn led to a Radio One session with Mark Radcliffe and ultimately a UK tour.
''It was odd'' suggests Andy F '' because I was away with Kaboodle ( Liverpool based theatre company that the band have close links with) in London and I had a bizarre conversation with Andy on the phone because Viv Stanshall had just come down to see the show (King Lear) and ended up working with him ! Whilst I'd been away Kevin had been on the phone and said 'do you want to do some stuff ?' ''
Andy D : ''And I didn't know that he didn't know ! I didn't know he was going to be working with Vivian Stanshall, and I said '' Well you're going to be working with Kevin Ayers as well !'' The tour was booked as well. Kevin said 'I'm coming up in December' and in the space of a month the started to get booked.'' ''We had a a week to get this Liverpool gig together'', says Andy F ''It was supposed to be an incentive to work'' says Andy D. ''and I said to Pete (Twiddly manager) 'I don't need an incentive to work with Kevin Ayers!'
Andy F. It was a day and a half into rehearsals before he started singing.... ( he starts out the intro to 'Why Are We Sleeping?' )...dong,dong, dong , dah-dah....and he was just sitting there and he just stood up and came over to the mike and came in with the first line. And I looked at Andy and just.........' (simulates wobbly legs, jaw dropping and other gobsmacked antics ).
Kevin Ayers can rarely have found such a conducive band to work with - in band terms you could say he's got a new Whole World (Kevin's early 70's combo that included radical busker Lol Coxhill and a teenage Mike Oldfield ) in his hands; in guitarist terms he may have found a new Ollie Halsall. In band terms, whilst the Twiddlys could hardly be called subservient, they have tailored to Kevin Ayers' needs - brass much more likely to be muted trumpet and flute. The Twiddly's two lead vocalists (Simon & Andy F) share backing vox duties with drummer Andy. Its a splendid counterpoint to the classic Ayers songs, topped by the guitar work of Carl Bowry. His work with The Wizards of Twiddly has marked him out as a very gifted musician: he can be so impossibly fast that a major part of the impact is a certain amount of self-caricature. There's a subtlety and a range of styles too, apparent in the Ayers/Twiddly band.
But enough about the Ayers collaborations. OK, so I'm heavily biased, but I came away from each night just as excited by the Twiddly's own sets as their exquisite collaborations with one of my favourite songwriters. On the recent tour with Kevin Ayers the band have showcased hefty slices of new material, interwoven with more familiar blasts from the past. Their forte has always to keep things short and snappy, sometimes outrageously so : a band performing nine new songs and still having time to cram in a dozen oldies clearly don't hang about. There's always an anarchic bent to some of the set, which first became apparent on the thrashy numbers from the first album 'Independent Legs'. 'Shocks,Tyres & Exhausts' 'Inarticulated Lorry' and 'My Sore Head' all struck a discordant chord at a breakneck speed.
The second album 'Man Made Self' may well have featured more 'songs' as well as moments of extended jamming ('Young Man Motorway') but the spirit was kept alive as the band dabbled with their first 'Tanks'. To explain : one of the abiding memories of early gigs was watching song titles appearing on stage in a variety of ways. Some titles too: 'Eye of the Potato' , 'Sex Drugs and Morris Dancing' 'Armitage Shanks' from the first album alone. Then 'SepticTank' started to appear at gigs segued with the equally manic 'Old Crone'. A madcap instrumental with lots of brass blaring and general buffoon | 1,275 |
Now at the Museum
Yukon Spin
20<|fim_middle|>3. Pneumatic tube systems were originally praised for making mail transportation much quicker and more efficient. There was still some desire to see tubes designed for human transport, as seen in Joseph Stoetzel's proposal in 1908 in Chicago that included a demonstration of safety using his son. Despite the renewed interest in the system, it was not to be (yet).
As automobiles became more available and the world developed to accommodate them, pneumatic tube systems became less practical and efficient. We're not at the state yet where people, large freight, or cars zoom through tubes that connect cities and countries, and it's possible we might skip that phase as other transportation methods connect our world. Whether or not we'll see these transport systems widely used in the future is still up for debate!
Article by Jonas Vasseur
Sources and further links are included as hyperlinks.
heather2020-10-17T21:42:27+00:00
A Tip o' the Hat: Doug Bell's Rambling Compendium
Fly Haiku
Sky Road North, a Memoir by Doug Bell
Yukon Aviation Photo Challenge: Summer 2020
April 23rd, 2020 | 0 Comments
Traveling Abroad Right as Covid-19 Hit
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Transportation Stories
A Fabulous Mode of Transportation
A Fabulous Mode of Transportation (of the future?)
Today, we're taking a short dive into one of the more outrageous methods of transportation in history. It hasn't been implemented widely yet, but one could argue that it was first made possible by Otto von Guernicke, who invented the first air-pump and examined the properties of vacuums.
Otto von Guericke's demonstration of the power of air pressure, Regensburg, 1654.
What I'm referring to is a pneumatic transport tube, which can transport items (and people) rapidly through tubes, unimpeded by air friction and rocketed forward by vacuum. In modern concepts these might use tech like maglev (such as the Shanghai Transrapid). One of the current companies that has grabbed on to this hype is Virgin Hyperloop One.
While the implementation of these technologies in the future remains uncertain, the past does have some fantastic examples of this technology in use! In New York City, the first underground transport was "propelled by little more than a gust of wind and gravity." In 1870 a one-block transport system was unveiled by Alfred Ely Beach, who had previously advocated for the construction of underground tunnels for horse-drawn carriages. The Beach Pneumatic Transit could move people down Broadway from Murray Street to Warren Street at a speed of 16 km/h.
This system did not last long and the tunnel was closed in 1873, but pneumatic tubes would see use later, largely in mail systems. For example, a pneumatic postal system was widely used in New York from 1897 until 195 | 439 |
IU journalism grad became 'I Love Lucy' writer
A funny thing happened to Madelyn Pugh Davis on her way to a career in newspaper journalism.
She became a comedy writer instead.
One of the first women to write comedy for television, in fact. One of the three principal writers for "I Love Lucy," among other accomplishments. And a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement in Television Writing award from the UCLA Film School.
Not bad for a self-described "Indianapolis girl" who arrived on the Indiana University campus at age 17, "as green as green can be."
Davis recounts her experiences in the recently published book, "Laughing with Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy." It's an entertaining and informative book whether you loved Lucy, loathed Lucy or simply enjoy a well-written memoir focused largely on one of the most popular television comedies of all-time.
Now retired, the 1942 IU journalism graduate's wit and humor elevates "Laughing With Lucy" well above the standard remembrance fare, which raises the question, why did you wait so long to do it?
"I never thought about such a thing," she said from her Los Angeles-area home last week. "I went to a luncheon for women writers one day and they all made such a fuss over me ... they were all so impressed that I was one of the first women comedy writers in television and everyone kept saying I ought to write a book.
"I thought, 'There have been so many books written about Lucy. Who needs another one?'," Davis said. "But they did convince me to sit down and get started and once I did, I realized that so many people have written about Lucille Ball that didn't work for her that I thought maybe I did have something to offer."
Davis tried, unsuccessfully, to get a job with the Indianapolis Star, News and Times before landing a job at the AM radio station, WIRE. After a brief stint there, she moved to Los Angeles, where she continued to write for radio and had the good fortune of working with Bob Carroll Jr., who became her lifelong writing partner and contributor to "Laughing With Lucy."
Eventually the two writers would be hired to work on the radio program, "My Favorite Husband," which featured Lucille Ball. Once they became familiar with Ball's talents and working style, they became the natural candidates to be the writers, with producer Jess Oppenheimer, for the proposed "I Love Lucy" television program.
"She was remarkable. We were very lucky. She loved doing comedy and anything we wrote, she'd do," Davis said. "We'd say, 'Would you mind working with a horse or an elephant?' or 'Would you mind blacking out your teeth?' and she'd say, 'Is it funny?' and that's about all she wanted to know."
The writers didn't just rely on intuition or confidence. They'd act out what they'd written and often improve scripts in the process. "One time we wrote a scene that involved handcuffs and Bob and I handcuffed ourselves together and we realized how you can't do much of anything with handcuffs on. We tried to take our jackets off and saw what a circus that was and we came up with some of the stage directions just from experiencing that," Davis recalled.
Lucy rarely questioned her writers' work and when she did, her husband and co-star, Desi Arnaz, usually stepped in to alleviate her apprehensions. "Desi was a very charming man and he was great at protecting the writers," Davis said. Once when an advertising agency (agencies had a lot of say about content in those days) called and didn't like our script, Desi called them back and said, 'Don't you ever do that again. You talk to me. You don't talk to my writers.'
"So we were in the enviable position of having a star who'd do anything we wrote and a co-star who would protect us so we could do our jobs," Davis said. "Lucy was wonderful about giving us credit, too. When people would ask her on talk shows, 'Why are you so successful,' she'd say, 'My writers.' A lot of stars would never do that."
Davis said she continues to be amazed at how popular - how remembered - "I Love Lucy" is. "I think part of it is because we picked story lines and ideas that could happen to anybody. We didn't do topical jokes because we didn't particularly care for them and now that seems very wise," she said.
"For example, in one episode, the Mertzes bought the Ricardos' old washing machine and it broke, so everyone knows what that's like. Who hasn't sold a car to a brother-in-law and then found out the engine dropped out? Things like that," Davis said.
Davis and Carroll worked with Lucy for 20 years, including the shows that followed "I Love Lucy." They went on to write for other shows and produce the hit sit-com, "Alice," for eight years.
And despite spending most of her life in Southern California, Davis said on behalf of herself and her Marion-born husband, Dr. Richard Davis (who she dated at IU), "We're still Hoosiers at heart. I mean, I've never thought of myself as anything but a Hoosier living in California."
Everything Lucy Now Has Membership Page!
The Membership page and login for exclusive content is now completed. For those who have registered with Everything Lucy, you can now login to receive content that is customized for you.
Currently the only thing on the page right now is the ability to Update your profile when you registered. But shortly we will be placing links to our ecommerce section where you can find products specifically for members only!
The store is being setup and configured now and will feature those underground products that are not available in the retail market!
Stay tuned as it will be completed shortly for your Christmas orders!
Lucy Comes in Third in Top 100 Entertainment Icons for the Century
Variety, the world's premier source of entertainment news, celebrated its 100th anniversary with the publication on Tuesday of a centennial edition. The centerpiece of this special issue is Variety's list of the Top 100 Entertainment Icons of the Century – the men and women who have had the greatest impact on the world of entertainment in the past 100 years.
The choices were made by Variety's editors, critics and reporters, with input from notables in the global entertainment community.
As mentioned earlier in the Everything Lucy Blog, The Beatles came in on the top spot at #1 followed by Louie Armstrong and then Lucille Ball in the third spot. In fourth place was another favorite of mine, Marlyn Monroe!
Although they were topping the charts in 1963, the Beatles were still considered provincial, faddish and well below the radar of unforgivingly hip London.
But at a show in Bedford, Andrew Loog Oldham, in his '60s memoir "Stoned," remembers the pandemonium: "Onstage, you could not hear the Beatles for the roar of the crowd and the roar I heard was the roar of the whole world. The audience that evening expressed something beyond repressed adolescent sexuality. The noise they made was the sound of the future. I didn't see it – I heard and felt it."
On April 14, 1964, Billboard Magazine reported the Beatles at Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 31, 41, 46, 58, 65, 68 and 79<|fim_middle|> entertainers of the century:
1. The Beatles
2. Louie Armstrong
3. Lucille Ball
4. Humphrey Bogart
5. Marlon Brando
6. Charlie Chaplin
7. James Dean
8. Marilyn Monroe
9. Mickey Mouse
10. Elvis Presley
The remaining entertainers are in alphabetical, not numerical, order:
Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Josephine Baker, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Benny, Irving Berlin, Chuck Berry, Lenny Bruce, James Cagney, Maria Callas, Johnny Carson, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Kurt Cobain, Gary Cooper, Bill Cosby, Walter Cronkite, Bette Davis, Miles Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Kirk Douglas, Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood, Duke Ellington, Federico Fellini, Aretha Franklin, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, D.W. Griffith, Woody Guthrie, Vaclav Havel, Edith Head, Jimi Hendrix, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, Billie Holliday, Harry Houdini, Hope and Crosby, Michael Jackson, Robert Johnson, Al Jolson, Janis Joplin, Gene Kelly, Grace Kelly, Laurel and Hardy, Lassie, Bruce Lee, Jerry Lewis, Little Richard, Sophia Loren, Madonna, Bob Marley, The Marx Brothers, Marcello Mastroianni, Edward R. Murrow, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Laurence Olivier, Pac Man, Edith Piaf, Mary Pickford, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Will Rogers, Rogers and Hammerstein, The Rolling Stones, Mickey Rooney, The Sex Pistols, Tupac Shakur, Frank Sinatra, Steven Spielberg, Jimmy Stewart, Igor Stravinsky, Barbra Streisand, The Supremes, Quentin Tarantino, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Rudolph Valentino, John Wayne, Orson Welles, Mae West, Hank Williams, Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder
I have one complaint - where's Carol Burnett?
TV Guide Era Ends with Lucy Appearing the Most on its' Cover
Small by magazine standards, the digest-size TV Guide nevertheless made an impact on pop culture worthy of a 50-inch, flat-screen plasma TV.
Since its April 3, 1953, beginnings, it did more than provide program listings; TV Guide helped us monitor evolving broadcasting trends and viewing habits, not to mention our collective obsession with all things celebrity.
Now, as it morphs into a full-size magazine, it's time for a station break to observe the passing of an icon. After all, we loved our old TV Guide. (Although we've probably not seen the last of it; the digest remains one of those publications that collectors like to hoard. A recent eBay auction netted $86 for a 1953 issue featuring "Superman" George Reeves on its cover.)
Here are some TV Guide tidbits to remember:
First cover: Lucille Ball and her newborn son, Desi Arnaz Jr.
Cost of the first issue: 15 cents
Going collector's rate for the first issue: $2,000
Most valuable cover: A Jan. 23, 1953, New York regional edition featuring Marilyn Monroe, which is now worth $3,000.
Cost of last digest-size issue: $2.49
Viewers' choices, then: The first TV Guide covered three networks: ABC, NBC and CBS.
Viewers' choices, now: The final digest version, which included various regional and cable editions, covered nearly 400 channels.
TV nation, then: There were television sets in 20.4 million U.S. households during the 1952-53 television season, representing 44.2 percent of American homes.
TV nation, now: During the 2004-05 TV season, there were sets in 109.6 million U.S. households, representing 98.2 percent of American homes.
Repeat performances: Lucille Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide 34 times.
Repeat performances, Part II: Johnny Carson closely follows Ball's record; the late-night talk-show host appeared on the magazine's cover 28 times. Michael Landon and Mary Tyler Moore come in third place, tied at 27 covers apiece.
Three is the magic number: Landon is the only person to have appeared on three consecutive covers of the magazine.
Stage run: With the final, Oct. 9 issue, there have been a total of 2,741 digest covers.
Beatles Beat Out Lucy!
The Beatles were singled out on Friday as the most influential entertainers of the past 100 years, beating out the likes of Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, and Mickey Mouse, according to a survey conducted by show business newspaper Variety.
Behind the Fab Four's first-place finish, were in alphabetical order: jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong, television comedienne Lucille Ball, movie legends Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Charlie Chaplin, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, cartoon hero Mickey Mouse and singers Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Variety said the Beatles were named "Icons of the Century" because they were the entertainment personalities who made the biggest impact on the industry and the world in the past 100 years.
The newspaper published a list of 100 entertainers from all branches of show business, including actors, directors, screenwriters, musicians, television presenters, animals, comedians and cartoon characters. Among other names on the list were Johnny Carson, Johnny Cash and Lassie.
The winners were chosen by Variety editors based on polling of entertainment industry professionals and Variety staff and by online voting by the public on variety.com.
Among the criteria for selection were a performer's commercial, creative, political and social impact and even whether their image was presented -- like James Dean's -- on a t-shirt.
The list was to be published in Variety's Sunday issue to celebrate the paper's 100th anniversary. "It seemed only natural to celebrate 100 of the people who gave us something to talk about," said Steven Gaydos, the paper's executive editor.
Lucie Arnaz To Host Rapaport Center Ribbon Cutting
Lucie Arnaz will be in her mother's hometown this week to host the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Rapaport Center, home of the Desilu Playhouse -- Jamestown's newest Lucy-Desi attraction -- on Friday morning (October 14) at 10 a.m.
The renovation of the former Rite Aid Pharmacy at the intersection of Third and Main Streets in downtown Jamestown was made possible by a generous donation from William and Mary Rapaport of East Amherst, New York. Named for the studio where "I Love Lucy" was filmed, the Desilu Playhouse features exact replicas of the Ricardos' New York City apartment and the Hollywood hotel suite where Lucy set her nose on fire with William Holden, as well as a life-sized wall mural of the original studio audience, a "Vitameatavegamin" opportunity, memorabilia from the 1950s including an "I Love Lucy" bedroom set, and more. The second floor of the Rapaport Center houses the Tropicana Room Conference Center.
As part of Friday's celebration, the Jamestown High School A Cappella Choir Madrigal Singers, under the direction of Norman Lydell, will perform the "I Love Lucy" theme song, and some "surprise" entertainment can be expected. The event is open to the public, and admission to the Desilu Playhouse will be free all day (10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.).
October 15, 2005, is the 54th anniversary of the first broadcast of "I Love Lucy", the most popular sitcom ever on television. According to TV Guide, "Lucy" is on television 24 hours a day, seven days a week, somewhere in the world; it has been broadcast in 77 countries, in 22 languages. TV Guide also recognized Lucille Ball as having the face that has been seen more often by more people than the face of anyone else who ever lived.
For more information about the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center, call or visit the Lucy-Desi Gift Shop, 300 N. Main Street, Jamestown, NY 14701, (716) 484-0800 (toll-free: 1-877-LUCY-FAN) or online at www.lucy-desi.com. Hours for the Lucy-Desi Museum at 212 Pine, the Desilu Playhouse at 2 W. 3rd Street, and the Lucy-Desi Center Gift Shop are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. on Sundays.
Historical Calendar features Lucille Ball
Whether it's a photo of the Rat Pack in the early 1960s on stage at the Sands in Las Vegas or a 1910 shot of the Reno Evening Gazette, the 2006 Nevada Historical Calendar holds many surprises.
The 2006 Nevada Historical Calendar features 13 historical photos. The cover features a fourth anniversary celebration in 1956 of the Sands in Las Vegas. They include (from left) Lucille Ball, Loretta Young, Danny Thomas, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Entratter, Mitzi Gaynor and Esther Williams.
The calendar, published annually for almost 30 years by Nevada Magazine, features 13 historical photos in an oversized 101/2- by 14-inch format, to give people plenty of room to write appointments and notes, said magazine publisher Richard Moreno.
The calendar also includes a photo of snowy streets in 19th-century Virginia City, the Joseph Platt Store in Carson City and the Minden School, circa 1914.
The calendars, which regularly sell for $10.50 each, will be priced at $6 each or two for $10 from Oct. 24 through Oct. 28 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Paul Laxalt Building, 401 N. Carson St.
Teen Star of Movie Remake - Yours, Mine and Ours
To most teenagers, Drake Bell lives the perfect life. He stars on his own TV show, Drake & Josh on Nickelodeon. He just finished his latest movie and a new album.
In November, Bell, 19, will appear in the movie Yours, Mine and Ours, a remake of the 1960s film starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. The movie depicts the life of a family of 18 kids, created after handbag designer Helen North (Rene Russo) marries Coast Guard Adm. Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid). In the movie, Bell plays second-oldest kid Dylan, a graffiti artist who plays guitar.
Growing up in Orange County, Calif., Bell started with roles in Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise, and High Fidelity and The Jack Bull, both starring John Cusack.
In January 2004, Nickelodeon turned his The Amanda Show segment into Drake & Josh. When it premiered, the show gave Nickelodeon its highest-rated live-action launch in 10 years.
Now, after scoring a Kids Choice Award nomination, the show only trails Nickelodeon's Zoey 101 as cable's highest-rated show for teens.
In addition to acting, Bell also has a recording career. His new album, Telegraph, released last month under his own label, contains 12 songs written and produced by Bell. The album also includes I Found a Way, the Drake & Josh theme song. Though the album is classified pop-rock, Bell says his main influence comes from the Beach Boys and the Beatles.
Bell wants to continue his acting career on TV and in the movies. He wants to model his career after Leonardo DiCaprio but said that continuing with his music is the most important thing.
To promote the album, Bell begins a three-state tour on Friday in West Palm Beach and then the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center Saturday. The concert is at 7pm Saturday in Feguson Hall. Tickets are $26. Call 813-299-7827 for more information.
Saturday Marks a Big Anniversary
This Saturday, October 15th marks the big anniversary of the hit "I Love Lucy" TV show, which premiered on CBS on October 15th, 1951 starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz! Visit "Everything Lucy" for a complete history and career of the most famous redhead ever, Lucille Ball.
Mame, Now Opening in June '06
The creative team has been assembled for the upcoming Kennedy Center production of Mame. In addition, the Jerry Herman musical has also pushed back its opening date. It will now open at the Eisenhower Theatre on June 1st after beginning previews on May 27th; it will run though July 2nd. The show was originally to have played its limited engagement from February 18th through March 26th.
Starring Christine Baranski (Rumors, Sweeney Todd at the Kennedy Center, "Cybill") in the title role of the exuberant Mame Dennis Burnside, Max Von Essen (Dance of the Vampires, Les Miserables) as the older Patrick and Emily Skinner (The Full Monty, Side Show) as Agnes Gooch (with more casting underway), the show will be helmed by Eric Schaeffer. Joining him in bringing the show to life will be choreographer Warren Carlyle (associate choreographer of the Oklahoma! revival and The Producers), set designer Walt Spangler (Hollywood Arms), costume designer Gregg Barnes (Side Show, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Tony Award-nominee for the Flower Drum Song revival) and lighting designer Dan Wagner (eight-time Helen Hayes Award winner for Washington D.C.-area shows).
The story of a boy's loving but complex relationship with his unconventional aunt, Mame was first adapted by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee from Patrick Dennis' 1955 fictionalized memoir into a hit play starring Rosalind Russell (who also starred in the film version). Lawrence and Lee, with Herman, refashioned the piece into a musical in 1966, and it starred Angela Lansbury. She, Beatrice Arthur and Frankie Michaels all won Tonys, and the show was nominated for five others, including Best Musical. The musical was then turned into another film starring Lucille Ball, and an ill-fated 1983 Broadway revival that also starred Lansbury folded in a little after a month.
Mame tickets will go onsale to the general public on November 7th. Visit The Kennedy Center for more information.
Pregnancy Considered Top Secret
Early in 1951, when the great funny lady Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz made the pilot episode that sold CBS on 'I Love Lucy,' Lucy was very pregnant with daughter Lucie Arnaz. I Love Lucy was almost cancelled before it even got started! The network couldn't show her pregnant! That just wasn't done! Instead of canceling her show, the network decided that Lucy's stomach would be hidden behind furniture at all times. For the cameras, they hid the pregnancy as much as they could.
A couple of years later, when Lucy was pregnant with son Desi Jr., they realized that they couldn't hide the pregnancy so they took a chance and went a different route. Lucy's pregnancy was mirrored by her TV character's pregnancy. Instead of conforming to society's standards, they revolutionized the entire television industry. TV history was made on Jan. 19, 1953, when the episode that gave birth to 'little Ricky' was watched by 44 million viewers -- or 72 percent of U.S. homes with TV.
My how times have changed!
DVD Release Revisits Golden Age of Comedy
Time-Life transports you back to the golden age of television with the release of a stunning gift-set comprising a 5 Volume DVD collection of classic TV comedy sketches, a 15 track CD album of hit songs of the era and a 16-page colour reference guide to the shows and the stars, available to buy from 17th October 2005!
The Golden Age of Comedy collection chronicles the formative years of live television, a time when a host of comedic talents transferred their craft from the vaudeville stage to become television's first stars. From the wealth of variety shows that dominated the US TV schedules in the '50s sprung an entire generation of comedians who hosted and guest-starred in them.
Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Martin & Lewis, Abbott & Costello, Milton Berle, Sid Caeser, Red Skelton, The Three Stooges, Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz, Phil Silvers and many others conquered the new medium and became television royalty.
Many of the top programmes were broadcast on UK TV and became as popular in Britain as they were at home. Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Abbot & Costello, Red Skelton and Phil Silvers found fame on both sides of the pond, with Bob Hope and Sid Caesar even recording shows for the UK's own ITV and BBC networks.
The legacy of these performers and the recordings that survive them continue to inspire comedians and delight audiences of today, the world over. For many they remain the greatest comedy heroes of all time. Now, Time-Life has scoured the US television archives to track down these classic recordings and restore them for the new 'DVD generation'. With over 8 hours of highlights from thirteen different shows, the Golden Age of Comedy forms one of the most unique and comprehensive compilations of television's earliest and best comic moments.
The bonus audio CD included with the DVD collection is from Time Life's hugely popular Fabulous Fifties series and features 15 hits by top artists from the year 1954. It includes original recordings from Perry Como (Papa Loves Mambo), Alma Cogan (Bell Bottom Blues), Doris Day (If I Give My Heart To You), Billy Eckstine (No-one But You) and Nat King Cole with the evergreen classic Smile; a fitting soundtrack to the DVD series.
Lucy and Desi are featured on Volume 2, "Bob Loves Lucy" on the show The Bob Hope Chevy Show from 21st October 1956!
Lucy Comes in Third in Top 100 Entertainment Icons...
TV Guide Era Ends with Lucy Appearing the Most on ...
Lucie Arnaz To Host Rapaport Center Ribbon Cutting... | .
The music spoke directly to young people's own sense of alienation and disenfranchisement. Most important, it was a joyful noise, a celebration over adversity. It provided a jolt that jump-started a thousand bands.
The Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison – were less concerned about shedding their influences than in finding their own sound.
Louie Armstrong
His smile alone would captivate millions around the world, but it was Armstrong's distinctive trumpet playing and singing style that set him apart from virtually every American musician who came before or since.
The songs Armstrong made between 1925 and '29 include some of the most important recordings in the history of jazz, which was then breaking out as America's most popular music and would become its greatest export to the world. His solos were the models for millions of musicians' solos that followed over the next eight decades.
Armstrong's first recordings as a leader – with his Hot Five – were made in late 1925: "Gut Bucket Blues," "My Heart" and "Yes! I'm in the Barrel." Those discs, along with his sides made with the Hot Seven, have made it through the 78, vinyl album and CD eras. In a world in which each generation discards the pop music of its predecessor, that's a unique achievement.
The Grammy Hall of Fame has inducted eight of his recordings.
The red hair, the giant eyes, the rubber face: Those were the physical tools that Lucille Ball used to ply her comic craft so expertly. In the process of trying to make viewers laugh, she also stole their hearts.
When she died in 1989 at 78, the White House issued a statement noting that "no television program in history was better-named than 'I Love Lucy.' ... She was Lucy, and she was loved."
The depth of feeling for Ball spoke to the power of the medium she helped popularize. Thanks to television, viewers around the world would form an intimate bond with the comedienne, thinking of her not as a star like Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall but as a part of their extended family who dropped by on Monday nights. It's no surprise that the episode including the birth of her small-screen son was seen by more Americans than Eisenhower's inauguration.
But at first she had to fight CBS, who didn't want anything to do with Desi Arnaz, who became one of the top straight men ever to roll his eyes on television. To prove that the audience would accept them as a couple, the pair created a vaudeville act and toured. It got rave reviews – "a socko new act," Variety said – and CBS gave in.
Marlyn Monroe
She first came to notice in a couple of 1950 movies, "Asphalt Jungle" and "All About Eve." The ripe blonde who was supposed to be both ornamental and negligible – a Hollywood cliche. But the moviegoer's eye kept drifting her way. There was something about the lushness of her lips, the glow of her skin and hair, and the delicious, post-coital languor of her eyes, that altogether exuded luminous sensuality. It seemed like her voluptuous image...
Variety's Top 100 Icons of the Century!
These are the top | 692 |
(CNN) — Passengers might be allowed to keep liquids and laptops in their carry-on bags at airport security checkpoints in the United States if screening technology being tested at select airports is widely adopted.
The Transportation Security Administration announced plans Monday to test computed tomography (CT) scanners for carry-on bags, with up to 40 units expected to be in place at US airports by the end of 2018.
The X-ray scanning equipment creates 3D images that can be analyzed on three axes for explosives and other threats. The CT technology is similar to that used for medical imaging. Current screening machines for carry-on bags generate 2D images.
"Use of CT technology substantially improves TSA's threat detection capability at the checkpoint,"<|fim_middle|> in 2017 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and Boston's Logan International Airport. John F. Kennedy International Airport has also received a scanner.
London's Heathrow is among international airports testing the 3D technology. | said TSA Administrator David Pekoske in a statement.
CT technology testing started | 16 |
I will always remember those first days at valle de Bravo learining to sail & race cats, and if I can say something about my sailing/racing is that at least I have a rather good boat handling, thanks to the Hobie 16 school of course.
Early morning rain caused the wind patterns at Gargnano, Lake Garda, for the Hobie Dragoon Worlds, European<|fim_middle|>acing continues at Gargnano, Lake Garda." | Hobie 16 Spinnaker Open and Hobie 16 Open Qualifier to come from a different direction..
Racing stared nearly one hour late while the race committee waited for the wind to settle. The morning northerly wind didn't appear but went to the southerly wind which normally arrives in the afternoon.
All fleets started on the two race courses. In about 8 knots of breeze.
Chloe Swetenham from Jersey racing in the Dragoon World Championships 'it was a lot of fun out there, but also a bit frustrating when the breeze dropped'.
The race committee wisely sent the sailors ashore waiting for the breeze to fill in the afternoon.
On the Hobie Dragoon course two races were sailed with the one on the trapeze weather conditions. Lou Berthomieu (France) had another great day on the race course. They had a first, a fifth which is there discard and finished the day with another first.
Nicklas Heide/Martin Holm from Denmark is having a wonderful regatta in the Hobie 16 with spinnaker. He won the first race of the series, broke his mast, sailed back to the beach and replaced his mast and went out and won the second race of the day. Today they had two wins which gives them a total of 15 penalty points. Second place, Alessandro Cesarini from Italy is sixteen points behind. With three races to sail tomorrow Alessandro will have to work hard to catch the Danes.
The Euro-pean Hobie 16 Qualifiers Didier Arnould from Tahiti has a one point lead from Alexandre Alexandre FRA and a further point lead from Francesco Porro IT. As nobody but a few people in the European Hobie Class Association know the number of qualifiers that will proceed to the Gold Fleet which starts racing on Wednesday. There will be a lot of nervous sailors hoping to make into the Gold Fleet with sailors from Europe already qualified.
R | 401 |
Walking into Canterbury Lane is like walking into a dozen niche boutiques all at once. An expansive variety of gifts for every occasion is beautifully displayed within the four walls of the family-owned and operated shop. Opened<|fim_middle|> out of holiday shopping, you will enjoy their relaxed atmosphere. Visitors can come to explore, build connections, sample food products, reap the open house discounts and leave with every person checked off their shopping list and gifts wrapped, no stress required. | 11 years ago by her mother, now owner Allison Benesh says her favorite aspect of owning the unique store is unpacking new shipments of the ever-changing inventory. With gifts for every imaginable occasion, Canterbury Lane strives to keep up with trends while maintaining timeless classics sure to delight every age. Gifts include holiday selections, baby shower gifts, handmade products, unique body scrubs and washes, candles, sorority themed items, jewelry, jams, and stunning home decor pieces sure to be a conversation starter in any home. Complimentary gift wrapping is a customer favorite, along with the unmatched customer service, drawing visitors back time and again.
For Allison and the staff at Canterbury, each person who walks through the doors is more than a customer. Building connections with customers is one of their top priorities. "We love getting to know our guests and we have repeat customers because they can count on always having a good experience in our store," says Allison. Customers feel as if their shopping trip at this family-owned store is more of a visit with friends while getting amazing, hard to find gifts. Visitors can find the perfect gift for loved ones, or stop in for a quick last minute shopping experience for a company holiday party.
Continuing their annual tradition, this delightful shop is inviting customers, old and new, to two holiday open houses. During the extended hour days, guests will be treated to storewide discounts, and delicious samples of holiday favorites including holiday jam, red pepper jelly, and dessert sauces, and many other tasty gourmet goodies.
Canterbury Lane Gifts is typically open Monday thru Saturday from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, but on Tuesday, November 13th, and Tuesday, December 11th, the store will be open until 7 pm. Taking the stress | 367 |
Remember my 'find of the day' from the MacGrove sales?
I love the delicate proportions of this pretty little desk. Or at least I am calling it a desk. It could be a console table, or a dressing table.
I had originally envisioned a refinished wood top with a chippy white base. But after I'd stripped two layers of paint off the top, I realized that I didn't like the 'wood top look' with the more French looking details on this piece. So after all of that work, I sanded it down and painted the whole thing grey. This is approximately a 50/50 mix of Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in Trophy and Schloss.
And I ended up with no chipping at all. Once again the ability to predict chippy-ness eludes me. I knew I wouldn't get any chipping on the freshly stripped top, but I thought for sure that painting over existing paint would result in some chipping. Nope.
and also to the drawer pulls. Aren't these pretty?
I've played on the classic Grecian urn motif on the hardware, the drawer front and the cross piece at the bottom by hanging my favorite gold framed mirror above it for my photos.
These two pieces pair up so nicely that I've decided to offer the mirror along with the desk.
I never thought I would part with this mirror, but it seems like they belong together.
I almost hate to put a chair in front of this because I feel like it would cover up all of the pretty details. Maybe it would be better as a console table in a foyer after all.
Next the french laundry dresser.
I love both pieces! I would keep both of them! Oh how I wish I lived closer to you! Maybe it's good that I don't.
I suspect that if you lived nearby you would have way too much furniture Shelly 😉 And if I kept every piece that I love, I would also have way too much furniture!
It's very elegant. Maybe a pretty stool in front and use it as a dressing table. Do women still use dressing tables? Anyway it's very pretty. If it were mine I'd probably use it in a foyer.
You know, I have a little gold stool somewhere around here … that's a great idea Becky. I'm going to dig<|fim_middle|> the handles abd accents stand out. And the mirror really does go perfectly with it.
Thanks so much Kim. The woman I purchased it from did mention that she "paid way too much for it" in an antique shop, so hey, you never know. Maybe it does have a distinctive provenance!
Gorgeous pieces! You have brought out the detail beautifully with your choice of colour and the gold rub! So elegant! I hope you have had a great week so far!
Thanks Terry. Today is the last day of my working stay-cation, and as expected I did not get nearly as much done as I had hoped I would. But it has been super relaxing, so I'm good with that.
I'm a Francophile and love anything French or French looking.
I would use as a table.
It seems that most people are leaning towards 'table', and I have to say that I agree!
Hi – I really love this – not much CHIPPINESS thrills me. I could see it in a foyer with the mirror above it. Guess who this is from – Betty from Ontaro,Canada (you knew didn't you?).
Ha, I did know it was you Betty! I'm glad you love how this one turned out. Your comments always make me smile, thanks Betty!
KEEP THE MIRROR…YOU WILL FIND IT A FAB HOME. YOU'LL SEE.
I've had that mirror for years and it used to hang in my dining room. But then I dismantled my wall of mirrors and it got shoved in a closet. I've been trying to find a new home for it ever since, but so far the right spot has not presented itself.
By the way awesome mask! Where on earth did you find it?
I was wondering if anyone noticed that. That is a plague mask and we bought it in Venice. It can be hard to resist the mask shops in Venice!
I figured you picked it up in Europe. Gorgeous Linda. Just looking at it transports one thru time.
I know, it is going to be tough to let the mirror go. It's always been one of my favorites, but yet I haven't found a spot to hang it in. It's been languishing in a closet for over a year. Poor thing. | that out!
Great work Q! This redo is wonderful! It looks like it could have been discovered in a French antique shop and is 200 hundred or more years old! The gold leaf accents finish it off nicely!
That's what I thought too "a find in a French antique shop". Color is perfection gold details like bits of jewelry so very lovely. Wonderful pairing too with the mirror. Like Shelly I would have to have this if I were close enough to snag it. I like it as a console.
I say no chair but maybe a stool. I really like the gold rub to make | 123 |
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Jo<|fim_middle|> Institute of Arbitrators, Resolution, Milton Keynes Collaborative pod, Milton Keynes Resolution committee. | established the practice that has now evolved into Hawkins Family Law in 2001, which is now recognised both locally and nationally as a place to secure sensible and commercial advice across all aspects of family law. Jo has been recognised as a leading individual in the Legal 500 and has been practising exclusively in family law since she qualified in 1992.
Jo specialises in complex financial matters where her pragmatic but commercial approach is best suited, and is passionate with providing clients with a choice of forum for resolution. Jo particularly enjoys the collaborative process as she believes that this enables the clients to become key players in determining their own solution. Jo is firmly client-focused and willing to go the extra mile for clients, which has resulted in her acting for a number of celebrities and high profile professionals both locally and nationally.
Jo settles the vast majority of her cases outside of the Court process, utilising her skills in collaborative work, mediation and round-table meetings. However, where cases have to go to work, she is a determined and effective litigator. Jo's goal is to achieve the best outcome for her clients and to do so in a way that produces a fair and positive result for the family.
Jo believes that choice is key for clients and this is why the practice as a whole is able to offer mediation, collaborative law, arbitration, litigation and negotiated settlements.
Jo also acts on behalf of her clients in respect of private law children matters, whether they involve relocations, child arrangements as to where the child should live or how often they should see their other parent.
Jo trained at Taylor Vinters and Thompson and Co in Cambridge qualifying in 1992. She established the family department at J Garrard and Allen in Olney shortly after qualification and made Partner in 1994 where she continued to build and develop the practice.
Jo trained as a mediator with Resolution in 1996, a collaborative lawyer in 2007 and in 2013 became a family law arbitrator.
In 2001 Hawkins Family Law was established and since has grown from strength to strength and has an 'exemplary team' with Jo at the helm. Hawkins Family Law is "described as a Boutique Family Law firm that punches above its weight" by the Chambers and Partners Guides 2019 this year celebrates 18 years of business.
Chartered | 486 |
Mid May in lockdown still
Double rainbows of hope over the City of London
Everything is now virtual
No one will have missed the fact that<|fim_middle|> Captain Tom Moore | where we cannot meet together face to face, it is happening online. For families and friends that is just about learning a new skill and downloading the App ( and dressing neatly from the waist up). For the City of London Corporation this was a legal impossibility. Like all local authorities it was not allowed for meetings to take place online. For voting and a quorum to count then you had to be physically present in the room. The Coronavirus Act changed this overnight so that local authority meetings and the City Corporation committees can operate remotely. The pattern of such meetings started a couple of weeks ago. As part of most meetings are open to the public then this element had to be made possible and the public element of all committees are live streamed on YouTube. The details of the meetings and the public papers are on the City's website and the link is here, in case you want to tune in. http://democracy.cityoflondon.gov.uk/mgCalendarMonthView.aspx?GL=1&bcr=1
First virtual meeting of Court of Alderman with the Lord Mayor
First virtual Court of Aldermen
Whilst not strictly a local authority meeting, the Court of Aldermen also met in a virtual way on May 12th. This was an auspicious day as it was the International Day of the Nurse in the Year of the Nurse. What a year the nurses and other care workers are having. What you might recall from my book is that one of the roles of the Court of Aldermen is to regulate Livery Companies and to approve new ones. The process involves the organisation being recognised as a Guild, then as a Company without Livery and then as a Livery Company. The Guild of Nurses formed only 4 years ago were ready to move forward to become a Company without Livery. What better date for this to be authorised than the nursing anniversary to beat all – Florence Nightingale's 200th birthday. The members of the new Company were able to watch live on YouTube.
Been to your Library recently?
The City Corporation's library service is now online and e-books are providing a enjoyable way to beat the lockdown. The City of London revealed that the top reads downloaded by bookworms include the memoir by former US First Lady, Michelle Obama, Becoming and the wonderful Neapolitan saga of love, betrayal and friendship by Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend.
Other readers are busy brushing up their languages as well, especially French, German, English, Latin American Spanish, and Italian. Whose knows when they will be able to travel to use these linguistic skills?
There is a music library as well and the top tracks streamed are Artie Shaw, Concerto for clarinet, Saint Saens, Bassoon Sonata in G major op 168, Duke Ellington / Juan Tizol, Caravan, Poulenc, Clarinet Sonata FP 184 and Mendelssohn, Song without words. Quite an eclectic choice.
Whilst home visits to some of the elderly and infirm are suspended, library staff are making weekly befriending calls to the elderly and people who are shielding because of underlying health conditions which could make them vulnerable to coronavirus.
Extra stock has been acquired to help with home schooling and staff are giving people one-to-one IT tuition so they can learn how to get connected with friends and family through conference link ups such as Zoom.
Graham Packham, who chairs the culture, heritage and libraries committee, said: "Our libraries are much more than just places where books are borrowed, and the range of important services that are being delivered since the closures are needed more than ever during these difficult times."
If you want to join in you don't need to live or work in the City you can join here https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/start-using-our-libraries/Pages/Join-a-library.aspx
Preparing for the return to work
Transport for London are making preparations for the return to work and surveying businesses as to their intentions. Local intelligence suggests that the return will be phased with some 20-40% of staff returning on a staggered basis – but not just yet. A paper going before the Planning and Transportation Committee this week (another virtual online meeting) will be looking at how the streets and public spaces in the City need to be reviewed. Pavements may need to be widened to allow social distancing and more space created for a likely influx of cyclists. It even suggests an indicative 15mph speed limit should be observed as the pedestrian numbers might be larger with more walking to work. The City Corporation's business plans are based around Supporting businesses in the immediate crisis; Sustaining the economy through it and Speeding the recovery. The Corporation's website signposts businesses and residents to support and help and the various schemes aimed at assistance. The Lord Mayor and the Chair of Policy and Resources are working closely with businesses and trade groups to listen to the concerns and work with them to provide the engagement needed. The City has bounced back before from terrible situations and its exceptional resilience and its ingenuity is needed above all now.
Freedom of the City for Captain Tom Moore
A virtual freedom ceremony – another first for hero Captain Tom Moore.
You can view it here on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0DhZsmH39M
Virtual ceremony granting freedom of the City of London to | 1,098 |
Heather Hunter • February 22, 2018
Go for GOLD, SES-14!
Imagine, for a moment, that the sun unleashes the strongest solar flare humanity has ever seen. Then, a coronal mass ejection (CME) event follows, releasing a high-velocity stream of magnetized plasma that slams into the Earth's protective magnetosphere. The resulting shockwaves propagate through the near Earth-space environment, jolting communications satellites, low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, global positioning system (GPS) satellites, and the International Space Station. Radio communications cease, electrical transmission lines fail on the Earth's surface, and the world fades to black.
This is, of course, an extreme scenario—we are unlikely to experience an apocalyptic global blackout, even with the strongest solar flare. Yet, the idea that flares and CMEs can disrupt human activity on Earth and space is not fiction, and it does happen with significant frequency. Any electric circuit in space is<|fim_middle|>aul/orbits.html
Read more: Earth observing missions, the Sun, space weather, Earth
Home > Blogs > Guest Blogs > 2018
Ph.D. Student for University of Miami
Read more articles by Heather Hunter
Zorg75: 2019/01/14 08:02 CST
I like that NASA is now seriously involved into checking our atmosphere and the effects of the massive pollution made by people on it. I think that the high level of air pollution (https://www.alternative-energies.net/air-pollution-causes-effects-solutions/) produced by the developing countries in Asia, Europe and America can be seen from the space.
Fun With a New Data Set: The OSIRIS-REx Earth Flyby
News brief: Voyager 2 has passed beyond the heliopause
Imaging the Earth from Lunar orbit
Cees Bassa
Tammo Jan Dijkema | vulnerable to CMEs of measurable magnitude, which means it is in society's best interest to understand how this kind of "weather in space" affects those circuits, namely those belonging to satellites. We increasingly depend on communications and imaging satellites to tell us where we are, guide us to new places, and show us what kind of thunder storms are headed our way.
To begin understanding space weather, it helps to understand the upper layers of the atmosphere and the near Earth-space environment.
The structure of the atmosphere
While we can measure properties of these upper layers using ground-based instruments, satellite-borne remote sensing instruments can give us a more frequent, global, and often higher spatial resolution perspective. And that is precisely what NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission will deliver.
NASA Goddard's Conceptual Image Lab / Chris Meaney
Illustration of SES-14, the satellite that hosts NASA's GOLD instrument
Led by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at University of Colorado-Boulder, with the University of Central Florida as a partner, GOLD's goal is to observe the interactions between the ionosphere and thermosphere and answer a few key questions:
How do geomagnetic storms alter the temperature and composition of Earth's atmosphere?
What is the global-scale response of the thermosphere and ionosphere to solar ultraviolet (UV) variability?
What are the significance of atmospheric waves propagating from the troposphere on the temperature structure of the thermosphere?
Large events in the lower atmosphere, like hurricanes and tsunamis, can create atmospheric waves known as gravity waves that propagate into the ionosphere and beyond. Because the density of the atmosphere decreases with increasing altitude above the ground, the amplitude (or, magnitude) of these gravity waves can increase exponentially as they propagate upward. Further, above the thermosphere, energized particles and solar storms carry electric and magnetic fields and can disrupt the upper atmosphere, including the ionosphere. What kind of an effect do all these things have on us?
So far, we know that 1) there is a relationship between gravity waves in the lower atmosphere and in the upper atmosphere, and 2) this relationship leads to the exchange of natural and human-made chemicals between the layers of the atmosphere. However, overall, most effects are not well-understood, which is why GOLD is so important. All of these factors make it very difficult to predict changes in the ionosphere, yet these changes have an impact on satellites in the near Earth-space environment. With GOLD data, scientists can improve space weather forecasting models and better understand what effect all of these factors have on the satellites on which we rely.
What kind of data will GOLD provide scientists, and what can scientists glean from these data? GOLD is an imaging spectrograph, which is a kind of instrument that breaks light (electromagnetic radiation) down into its component wavelengths and measures their intensities. In particular, GOLD will focus on the UV region of the electromagnetic spectrum, because the interaction between UV radiation and particles of different composition provides information about temperature and relative abundance of different kinds of particles—such as, for example, atomic oxygen and molecular nitrogen. By observing these particles and determining their abundance, scientists can determine how such particles affect ionospheric conditions.
Electromagnetic radiation interacting with the atmosphere
UV radiation enters the atmosphere and is scattered by particles back to space and forward to the surface. Depending on the amount of back scattering a satellite observes, scientists can determine what kind of particle interacting with the radiation.
Another unique aspect of GOLD is that it will be in geostationary orbit (GEO), approximately 22,000 miles (mi) or 35,400 kilometers (km) above the Earth. This orbit is called geostationary because objects in this orbit rotate with the Earth, such that the point directly below the object (called the nadir, for satellites) appears to be fixed, relative to the object. Further, objects in geostationary orbit are directly above the Earth's equator at an inclination (or, angular deviation from the equator) of zero degrees.
Weather satellites are typically in GEO, allowing them a full-disk perspective of the Earth. This means these satellites can see one entire face of the Earth at once. GOLD will, therefore, produce full-disk UV imagery that shows the type and abundance of atmospheric particles across half the globe at any given time.
SES-14 in GEO, capturing a full-disk image of Earth
GOLD was launched on January 25, 2018 from Kourou, French Guiana on an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket as a payload on a communications satellite, built by Airbus, called SES-14. Not everything went according to plan, however. A few seconds after the rocket's upper stage ignited (about 9 minutes after launch), telemetry ceased and Ariane 5's tracking center in Brazil lost contact with the rocket. Presumably, 27 minutes into flight, the SES-14 satellite separated from the rocket successfully, but ground stations could not communicate with SES-14 until 90 minutes later. And where was SES-14, in the end? Not where it was supposed to be.
On its way to GEO, SES-14—as with most GEO satellites—must be placed into a temporary orbit known as the Geostationary/Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). From there, it must make its way to GEO through a series of maneuvers that include circularizing its orbit and reducing the orbital inclination to zero degrees. The larger the initial inclination of the spacecraft in GTO, the greater the change in trajectory the spacecraft must make (as a side note, this is why we usually launch geostationary satellites from the equator).
Schematic of GTO and GEO orbits
How will SES-14 make up for the unfortunate change in its GTO to make it to GEO? The short answer is: electric propulsion. In electric propulsion, xenon gas is ionized and accelerated in an electric field, then ejected at a high speed using electric power supplied by solar cells. This kind of propulsion is already used on most satellites to make minor changes in spacecraft position or in orbit, while chemical propulsion is generally used for larger movements. SES-14, however, is a completely electric satellite (with no chemical propellant), so it must rely on the electric propulsion system to change orbit. This will require a long period of thrust and slow acceleration, meaning that it will take SES-14 3-6 months to arrive in GEO. On top of that, it is expected to take an additional 4 to 4.5 weeks to correct for adjustments made by the launch anomaly.
Eventually, SES-14 will sit in GEO above the Americas at 47.5 degrees west in longitude. On February 13th, 2018, SES-14 was found in an orbit with a perigee of 1,659 km, apogee of 45,858 km, and inclination of 18.8 degrees (for a good description of what these orbit parameters mean, check out link #4, below). For comparison, the planned initial orbit was supposed to be a perigee of 250 km, apogee of 45,000 km, and an inclination of 3 degrees. So, SES-14 is on its way to its home in GEO, but still has some ways to go.
Good luck, SES-14! We're looking forward to GOLD's UV measurements of the atmosphere and a better understanding the dynamics of the upper atmosphere and near Earth-space environment. In the meantime, if you want to track SES-14, here's a couple ways to do it, or if you'd like to learn a bit more about some of the terms involved in discussing orbits:
U.S. Strategic Command's Space Track (requires account, but is free to access): https://www.space-track.org/
Heavens Above (another satellite tracker): http://www.heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=43175
Press releases from SES: https://www.ses.com/news/press-releases
An easy to understand explanation of orbital parameters from Rutgers: https://marine.rutgers.edu/cool/education/class/p | 1,731 |
Whether you are riding, moving fast at work, or working on your Texas two-step, having a comfortable pair of women's pants that stretch with your every move is essential. These Wrangler Women's Tuff Buck WRQ20 TB Q-Baby Ultimate Riding Jeans will do just that. I ... (see full details) (see specifications) #WRGWRQ20TB.
Whether you are riding, moving fast at work, or working on your Texas two-step, having a comfortable pair of women's pants that stretch with your every move is essential. These Wrangler Women's Tuff Buck WRQ20 TB Q-Baby Ultimate Riding Jeans will do just that.
If you like to ride, slip into a pair of these Wranglers before you get back on<|fim_middle|> 3 times and dye is still coming out. My bad for not trying them on before I tossed them in the wash. Just had no idea they would be this horrible. I order this same style and size every year or so and have never had an issue. Working Person's is really not responsible for this mess I did email Wrangler to ask what the heck happened to this style jean. So the bottom line is if you want WRQ20TB's DO NOT ORDER THESE!!
I found Working Person's Store just in the last few months. I have a couple clients with needs, and WPS has been able to fulfill the orders. I love the store. Recently I had orders which surpassed your in-stock quantities. There was some back orders and orders placed on the phone. It got a little confusing. I placed a couple calls over the past week trying to resolve the invoicing and billing as it was not matching up. Sherri was a tremendous help for me. She promised to get back to me. And she did. Within the hour, she got back to me with the invoices I needed, and the resolution to the billing. And, as suspected, there was a discrepancy. Sherri found it and proactively emailed me with the news. Sherri exemplifies great customer support, a can-do attitude and the willingness to take care of the issue now. A special thanks to Sherri.
Wrangler Jeans: Women's Tuff Buck WRQ20 TB Q-Baby Ultimate Riding Jeans is being added to your cart. | that horse. Made from a combination of 99% cotton and 1% spandex, these 12-ounce denim pants provide soft comfort, durability, and a little bit of stretch. You'll love the feel, and the dark blue Tuff Buck color goes with anything.
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Whatever your passion, work in stylish, flexible comfort. These Wrangler Women's Tuff Buck WRQ20 TB Q-Baby Ultimate Riding Jeans are available right here at Working Person's Store. Order today!
These jeans fit perfectly for a woman with curves. They're not too heavy or too light. I'm 5'10" with curves and they fit so comfortably. The size and length are true as well. I pair them up with my new Key Shirts: Men's Blue Cotton 517 45 Chambray Long-Sleeve Shirt and it makes a good-looking outfit. I definitely will be ordering my jeans here in the future.
These are not the same as they used to be and wear out within a few months of wearing them. They still fit nice and look good but do not seem to hold up. I am tired of buying expensive pants that just do not last. The wrangler brand is not the same a it used to be and I am very disappointed and sad to see this happen.
I have lots of WRQ20TB jeans and these are not the same! They are huge in the leg, not fitting like the originals, the 36 length is more like 38, but I need stack for riding horse so that is not a big deal, but the sloppy leg fit is horrible.. Also TB stands for Tough Buck and the color is not TB, they are dark blue and have not been prewashed! Have washed them | 484 |
Christy and Dwayne were married on June 2nd, with a ceremony and reception at the Old Field Country Club, one of our favorite Long Island venues.
We were excited about Christy and Dwayne's wedding particularly because we were recommended to them by Kyle and Chelsea, a past bride and groom of ours. There really is no better feeling than to hear that we have been recommended by old clients, because that tells us that not only did they like our photography but they loved the experience of having us as wedding photographers enough to trust someone else's wedding to us as well. It's a show of trust and appreciation, and we love it.
I was also personally excited because Christy and Dwayne were getting married in one of my favorite towns: Stony Brook, New York. (That is also where we photographed their engagement session at Avalon duck pond You can't go wrong with a spring wedding there, with its beautiful sunsets and parks.
On the day of the wedding, we started at Danford's Inn in Port Jackson with Christy as she got ready. The light in her room was beautiful<|fim_middle|> wall, it was clear everyone was having a blast. The bride and groom were introduced to applause and cheering from the room, but it was like the world fell away during their first dance. Later, family and friends danced the night away.
Thank you, Christy & Dwayne, for letting us be part of your beautiful Long Island wedding. It truly was a special day—and absolutely worth coming up from Florida to see you two become husband and wife! | , as she and her bridesmaids started the day with champagne. The ladies all wore matching floral robes as they helped Christy into her stunning Essense of Australia gown. Meanwhile, Dwayne and the men got ready and looked so handsome in their grey suits.
Once they were ready, we had Christy and Dwayne meet outside in front of the inn for a first look. Just like with their engagement session, we found that these two were so very easy to photograph. After all, they are hopelessly in love—and a fun couple to be around. The way they look at each other with such love and excitement was so wonderful to capture.
The Old Field Country Club only made the whole day better, with a well-mannered staff and delicious food in addition to the breathtaking views. The whole day had a fun, relaxed vibe to it that we really enjoyed. Christy and Dwayne had a Polaroid guestbook so guests could take pictures and stick it right into their book! Such a fun idea! We took family pictures out on the beautiful lawns of the Old Field Country Club before we headed over to the ceremony site.
We continued to take advantage of the beautiful views at the country club as a backdrop for formal wedding photography. Christy and Dwayne had such an easy intimacy and the way they connected was so natural. It made being their wedding photographers so easy!
That casual, fun feeling carried through the day. From the corn hole during cocktail hour to the delicious donut | 300 |
Globalization and the development of new technologies have generated a growth in the complexity of business risks. To respond to the new context, competences able to combine insurance<|fim_middle|> of risk mitigation instruments; participation and diffusion of the culture of risk management; efficiency of processes and controls; effectiveness of the control system as an integrated mitigation instrument for different risk families; reliability and security of company information and IT procedures; compliance with the law, as well as internal policies, regulations and procedures; protection of the value of assets and hedging against losses (in terms of decrease in loss and lower premiums). | advisory and brokerage services are necessary. OXERISK offers Consulting activities aiming at defining a pathway that leads the company to the use of the risk-based approach as an integrated risk management tool. It supports business strategies, and it is congruent with corporate policies as well as in compliance with binding and voluntary requirements.
The achievement of this goal is the conclusion of a path that wants to affect corporate culture through the adoption of concrete tools that present risk management as a common element: risk assessment and risk placement, upgrading to ISO 9001, compliance with the GDPR (new European privacy code) and adoption of security measures, integration of internal control systems.
According to a study carried out by Cineas in 2016 on the diffusion of risk management in medium-sized Italian companies, realities that have adopted an integrated risk management system usually get one-third more of their profits than whom underestimates it.
Achieving of the highest standards of compliance (ISO 9001 and GDPR standards).
These activities lead to expected benefits, such as: the adoption | 214 |
Revolution & evolution
In this article, republished with permission from the Institute of Directors in New Zealand, Martyn Levy speaks to the BoardRoom editor about the lessons New Zealand can learn from Israel, why speaking several languages has helped his career, and why continuous learning matters.
Martyn Levy is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Directors, a non-executive director with Instant Finance and owner of digital marketing and managed services provider Acurix Networks. The former banking lawyer now runs strategic advisory business MilaXAG and was previously board chair of Kadimah School.
As a 20-year old, Levy took a year off university to immerse himself in a Kibbutz-based Hebrew language and geopolitics course in Israel on route to a 3-month Russian language and literature scholarship at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. Levy understood from an early age that to really understand a people and a country you need to immerse yourself in the language and the culture of the place.
At that time, the newly independent Russia was itself in a state of revolution. Around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 around one million Soviet Jews fled to Israel, with the last wave of this coinciding with Levy's time studying at a Kibbutz in Northern Israel. Half the course was made up of people from the former Soviet Union.
Some very talented and qualified people were arriving in Israel with no jobs and no language. Fresh off the boat, they had five months to learn Hebrew and begin a process of accelerated integration into Israeli life. I was living with these new immigrants – working as a fisherman in the morning and studying in the afternoon; by the time I got to Moscow I had mastered Hebrew and my Russian was already that much better." Martyn Levy
Learning from Israel
Levy sees Israel's ability to leverage its talent pool as a great advantage. 60% of immigrants to Israel in the late 80s and early 90s were university-educated, so tech business incubators were created to leverage the skills of the new scientists, engineers and doctors. Six incubators grew to 24 and millions of dollars continue to be invested in this space with these incubators feeding the vibrant and hugely successful venture capital and technology industries in Israel. Just last year, Levy says, Israeli tech companies achieved over US$10 billion in exits. Already in 2017 Intel announced its intention to purchase NYSE- listed Israeli driverless technology firm Mobileye for US$15 billion.
It was very interesting to see all of that happen before my eyes from the beginning; how to integrate people from all over the world into a different society, united by a common bond. Language is critical to engagement and so I've always sought to study as many languages as I can." Martyn Levy
Levy will take part in a cybersecurity delegation to Israel this year, led by National Cyber Policy Office director Paul Ash, and says the lessons to be learned in Israel keep him going back.
I keep going back every year, or twice a year if I can. Israel is a world leader in innovation and commercialisation and they have managed to leverage their unique situation and turn it into a competitive advantage. Plus Israel has such an energy and the people are so passionate about everything they do. It's infectious and worth going there just to soak it up." Martyn Levy
Levy's experiences in Russia also had a big impact. Arriving in Moscow in 1993, he witnessed rioting on the streets and tanks shelling the Russian white house – "This was Yeltsin's way of resolving the constitutional crisis. He was on the outside with the military and all its power and Khasbulatov and Rutskoy were on the inside waiving the constitution," he says.
The chaos, the people, the deep culture, the revolution; rather than scare Levy off, it made him determined to return to Russia for work at some point in his career. That point came sooner than expected.
Back in New Zealand, Levy was working as a banking and finance lawyer at Bell Gully in Auckland when a UK law firm came through Australia and New Zealand seeking western-qualified, Russian-speaking banking lawyers, who weren't Russian.
I had to take it right? That's the first time I really understood, and from a personal perspective, that an in-demand combination of niche capabilities give you an edge." Martyn Levy
Levy stayed in law through the dotcom bubble of the late '90s to early '00s. He saw friends' businesses boom and bust and boom again and decided to move into the venture capital and tech space getting involved with a WiFi equipment vendor, which he grew and sold to US-interests in 2009. Later, while working as Head of Strategy at 2degrees, he again found himself leveraging his unique skillset to make the most of an opportunity.
I was with 2degrees at a conference in Hong Kong, and I met these Russian investors who were looking for a Russian- speaking Westerner with IT and telco start-up experience to execute on some technology and digital propositions for the Russian market. I had just been through eight years of a start-up and then with 2degrees." Martyn Levy
Levy suggested three up-and-coming technology propositions over lunch. "I could see an opportunity here," Levy says, and surely enough an 18-month engagement resulted in a move with his family to Spain and Israel for much of 2013.
I was fortunate to access these opportunities. I think I've had the most fun and challenged myself the most when I have seized opportunities that allowed me to use my strengths and those of the team around me to create value.
"If you're not feeling uncomfortable, then you're not probably stretching or challenging yourself enough. It's good to have specific expertise that is valued – if you can do something you're good at, that is valued, and that you get paid for it, that's Nirvana." Martyn Levy
Talking to robots
Levy is an early adopter of tech, something many might claim but he backs up. His EA Julie, who set up this interview, "is a bot – she's actually an amazing cloud-based artificial intelligence platform developed in France with superb natural language processing capabilities," Levy says.
He also has three home helpers in the form of Amazon's Echo Dot 'Alexa' voice assistant. Like Siri, Alexa has a growing list of commands from basics such as playing media and making lists, to integrating with smart home platforms to perform tasks such as switching on lights or locking doors.
Using technology in his own life has allowed Levy to see where tech advancements can work in business and how technology can help put the customer at the centre of a business, whether at advisory levels with clients, on a board, or the businesses he owns himself.
If you don't use and experiment with new and emerging technologies it's very hard to understand or apply it to other things. By testing it in your own environment you're able to better apply it to a business. For example, AI and deep learning goes hand- in-hand with data analysis now. Businesses need to take that data, structure and analyse it to accelerate the creation of insights and then use those insights to gain a competitive advantage." Martyn Levy
He recognises that there is a real risk when directors do not understand technology, citing cybersecurity as a case study.
Mitigating cybersecurity risk is not simply the case of a board adopting a strategy.
"The cyber risk landscape is changing all the time and requires regular review and consultation with experts. It's not like adopting an accounting standard where you have time to adopt the standard and clearly defined rules to follow. The frequency, ferocity of cyber-attacks is growing exponentially and the attack vectors morph on an almost<|fim_middle|> anti-Jewish conspiracy theory
Radio NZ spreads anti-Israel water libel
Israel's history Part 2 – The Arab historical connection with Palestine
Hundreds of Kiwis protest NZ's anti-Israel UNSC vote outside Parliament
A personal perspective on anti-Semitism in New Zealand
South Africa was an Apartheid State and Israel is not
"Stop telling kids to become lawyers, accountants" – Dov Moran | daily basis.
"I've watched cyber come up and I've watched the IoD push cyber and elevate it onto the boardroom agenda, successfully in my view, for those companies whose directors are in and around the IoD.
"Board members might not understand how some of it works, but they certainly understand risk. Cyber, as an example, is a risk that needs to be mitigated.
"You certainly get some pushback, but increasingly they don't have an option. I think it's just an overwhelming requirement. Cyber knows no borders." Martyn Levy
Levy says New Zealand also needs to make sure it has people graduating into the workforce who can actually work in the cybersecurity sector – we need to build collaboration between the government, intelligence, private and academic spheres. This collaboration is something Israel does very well and from which New Zealand can learn. At another level Levy thinks there needs to be greater focus on tech skills at schools.
Do we have science, technology, engineering and maths coming through schools?" Martyn Levy
Levy was a trustee for a school which now runs a STEAM (STEM plus Arts) integrated curriculum. While no longer on the board, he is a big supporter of this change. Education matters at all levels and as a trustee Levy helped to put clear governance structures in place and focused on getting board training up to standard.
I'm a firm believer in continuing professional development, which is of course the focus of the IoD. It's just so critical." Martyn Levy
Levy recently became a Chartered Member of the IoD and continues to build his governance career and seek out interesting opportunities.
I enjoy helping companies chart the right strategic pathways to achieve a set of business outcomes. I also like sitting across a number of different businesses, verticals and projects as it keeps your mind sharp and provides variation, all while certain horizontal issues such as digital transformation or planning for long-term sustainability remain a constant. You never know what issues are going to come up.
"Governance is another evolutionary part of my career. I've consciously chosen to pursue a governance path alongside my strategic advisory and infrastructure businesses. Down the track, and as my governance experience grows, I'll aim to transition from mid-size companies to the boards of larger companies – that's an exciting and logical career evolution." Martyn Levy
In the space Levy occupies, who knows what sort of conversations will be had around the board table in ten years' time, and that's why Levy says directors have to be constantly looking at new technologies, risks, and opportunities.
As a director you have to have a deep understanding of the industry you're in, the key risks and opportunities, the internal and external landscape and strategic context. You can't just sit and be a passive director; you're an active board member and have to help set the strategy for the business, hold management to account for execution. As directors we need to be prepared to pivot and adapt strategies
and business models to ensure the long- term viability and sustainability of the enterprise no matter the future operating environment in which it will exist." Martyn Levy
– this article was originally published in the June/July 2017 edition of BoardRoom, the magazine of the Institute of Directors in New Zealand, and is reproduced here with permission.
TOPICS:cybersecurity | Innovation | Institute of Directors | IOD | Israel | Kadimah School | Kibbutz | Martyn Levy | Russia
Dominion Post editor launches fanciful anti-Israel polemic
Wanganui Chronicle and NZ Herald spread | 718 |
Malawi - Second rural<|fim_middle|>Evaluation Report en 05230221-EN-MALAWI-SECOND-RURAL-HEALTH-CARE
Evaluation Report fr malawi-second-rural-health-care-pper-9529
Evaluation Report fr viewer | health care project
Signature Date 01 Jul 1985
Planned Completion Date 31 Mar 2000
Last Disbursement Planned Date 31 Mar 2000
The Second Rural Health Care Project has been designed to strengthen the delivery of health care to populations in rural areas of Malawi in line with the Five-Year Development Plan. The project supports the efforts of the Government in providing comprehensive rural health care in order to meet basic health needs identified in rural Malawi. It is intended to improve health facilities and train required qualified staff to man such facilities. The project will consist of the following components: (i) replacement of the existing Ntchisi district hospital; (ii) extension of the existing Blantyre School of Nursing and the Medical Assistants Training School with provisions of equipment and furniture; (iii) establishment of fourteen health sub-centres fully equipped and furnished; (iv) strengthening of communicable diseases programmes through provision ef equipment and supplies and re-training of staff; (v) strengthening of planning capabilities of the Ministry of Health through provision of scholarship for staff training.
The overall objective of this project is to improve the delivery of health care in rural areas of Malawi. This will achieved through replacement/extension of health facilities and training institutions, and support to communicable diseases programmes. Moreover, the project will enhance planning capabilities of the Ministry of Health.
The project will benefit to populations in rural areas of Malawi.
| 298 |
Cleaning out some of the clutter around the house and found some old remnants from my Bemani days, along with a few other things. Most everything has been sitting on a bookshelf for years, so are in largely<|fim_middle|> this list, and therefore the price is higher to cover the shipping. Complete in box, includes artbook, visual works DVD and still-factory-sealed jigsaw puzzle. The outer box has some bent corners, but all of the other stuff is protected inside and is therefore in excellent condtion.
Hardcover artbook featuring the works of long-time Beatmania IIDX artist Goli Matsumoto. Excellent condition.
Softcover. Slight bending on the corners but otherwise in great shape.
Just replying 'cause no one else has and this thread was started on my bday.
Popn and Goli books look pretty sweet. | very good condition aside from a weathered corner or two, or other issues where noted.
Prices are in USD and include shipping within the USA; I'm willing to ship internationally, but it will obviously cost more and I'll have to get an estimate first. If you're buying multiple items and I can package them together, I will likely shave a few bucks off the final price due to the combined shipping. I accept payment via PayPal.
Complete in box, with slight damage on the bottom flap due to protective seal removal. I don't think the contents have ever been taken out of the box.
Covers AC 10-13 and CS Best Hits-12. Includes character art and profiles, e-amuse card artwork, promotional artwork, etc. The slipcover has slightly worn top and bottom edges but otherwise in very good condition.
Much larger and heavier than everything else on | 179 |
Home/Resources/Research Brief/Why Do We Focus on the Prenatal-to-3 Age Period?: Understanding the Importance of the Earliest Years
Research Brief: Why Do We Focus on the Prenatal-to-3 Age Period? (PDF)
Why Do We Focus on the Prenatal-to-3 Age Period?: Understanding the Importance of the Earliest Years
January 6, 2021 Access to Needed ServicesChild CareChild Development and HealthChild-Parent RelationshipsEconomic SupportsEquityParental Health and WellbeingPrenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap
RESEARCH BRIEF | B.001.0121
Investing in Families During the Earliest Years Can Improve Quality of Life in the Short and Long Term
Our health and wellbeing prenatally and during the first three years of life affect all future learning, behavior, and health. This time period is the most sensitive for a child's developing brain and body, yet many families face substantial challenges during these years. Decades of research have shown that babies and toddlers thrive when they have loving, responsive interactions in the earliest years.1 Positive interactions with caregivers can produce long-term benefits not only for families, but also for society.2 But parents need sufficient resources and skills to create the environments that set children up for success. The absence of such conditions can compromise a child's ability to learn and grow throughout life. The research to date yields implications for how to enhance the quality of life for the youngest children and their families. A comprehensive system to support infants and toddlers and their families ensures that parents have what they need to create nurturing environments for their children, that children are born healthy and receive assistance early if problems should occur, and that when children are not with their parents, they are in safe and engaging care environments.
The Earliest Years of Childhood Have a Profound Impact on Lifelong Health and Wellbeing
Our earliest experiences have lifelong consequences for our health and behaviors.3 Scientists studying neuroscience, epigenetics, endocrinology, inflammatory disorders, and other physiological systems have clearly demonstrated that our earliest environments shape the developing brain, influence the expression of our genes, and affect the health of our body's systems.4,5,6
The most rapid period of growth for the human brain occurs in the earliest years of life.
The most rapid period of growth for the human brain occurs in the earliest years of life. The structure and functioning of the human brain are determined not only by our genetics, but also by our interactions with other people and our environment, as the brain molds itself in response to the inputs it receives.7 The brain is also the most plastic during this time; in other words, the brain is the most adaptable to the conditions it experiences during this period of life.8 Because of this plasticity, young children are especially vulnerable to the conditions in their lives and their interactions with key caregivers during the youngest years.9,10,11 Adversity during this time can have far-reaching consequences, but this time can also provide a window of opportunity to build the basis for lifelong resilience.
Safe, stable, stimulating, loving interactions between an infant and a parent or caregiver promote optimal brain and body development in the first three years of life.1 To meet the substantial challenges that parenting brings, parents who have sufficient financial resources, social connections, limited stress, and good physical and mental health are in a better position than parents who struggle to make ends meet, feel isolated or overwhelmed, or have poor mental health.12,13,14
Too many infants and toddlers do not experience the nurturing and responsive environments that positively shape developing brains and bodies, and instead are exposed to early adversity that inhibits optimal growth and development. Having a parent with severe depression, being exposed to violence in one's home or neighborhood, moving from house to house without a place to call home, going without enough to eat for days at a time — these instances of early adversity are far too common among our youngest children, and they disproportionately affect children of color and children whose parents have lower levels of education or income.15 Although children are incredibly resilient, exposure to chronic stressors early in life charts a course for physical, cognitive, and emotional health problems that can be costly for families and society to navigate.13,16 In fact, many disparities in health and wellbeing are rooted in the earliest years of development.13 The cost of inaction is an incredible burden for society to bear, and proactive interventions to support families can help ensure that all children have the best chance at reaching their full potential.
What Conditions Strengthen Family Wellbeing During the Earliest Years?
Drawing on decades of research in child development and early brain science, this brief identifies key universal objectives that can help ensure that our youngest children and their families get off to a strong start. These conditions align with the eight goals identified in the Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap, and they are broadly organized as follows.
Parental Resources, Skills, and Wellbeing:
Parents have the financial and material resources they need to provide for their families, the skills and incentives needed for employment, and the resources they need to balance working and parenting.
Parents are mentally and physically healthy, with particular attention paid to the perinatal period.
Parents engage with their children in the warm, nurturing, and stimulating interactions needed to promote healthy development.
Optimal Child Health and Development:
Children are born healthy to healthy parents, and pregnancy experiences and birth outcomes are equitable.
Children's emotional, physical, and cognitive development is on track, and delays are identified and addressed early.
Institutional Supports:
Families have access to necessary social services through expanded eligibility, reduced administrative burden, and identification of needs and connection to services.
When children are not with their parents, they are in nurturing, safe child care environments.
Undergirding all of these aims is the goal of a more equitable system that eliminates long-standing disparities in access and outcomes based on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. These universal goals pinpoint the conditions that children need to thrive and pave the way for interventions that can support children's growth in the earliest years.
Children Need Healthy, Supported Parents Who Have Adequate Resources and Skills
Healthy parents who are equipped with the resources and skills necessary to care for their children are likely to engage in higher quality interactions with their children. When families face poverty and economic insecurity, the associated chronic stress can affect the quality of relationships between parents and children,17,18 the safety of home environments for children,19 and longer-term child development.20 In contrast, healthy adult-child interactions can buffer young children from the negative effects of stress.11 Adequate household resources, parents' ability to work, and healthy parenting skills help to create the nurturing environments that children need.
Household Economic Security
Experiences of financial hardship during early childhood can disrupt healthy brain development and compromise the foundation for long-term learning, behavior, and health.1 Approximately 1 in 5 young children in the US, or roughly 19.5 percent of children under age 3, live in families with annual household incomes of less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), or $24,300 per year for a family of four.21 These families face great difficulties just with meeting basic needs and are likely to face challenges related to adequate shelter, nutrition, and medical care.18 They also are more likely to experience stress, which can compromise parents' ability to engage in the warm, responsive interactions that are critical to infants' and toddlers' healthy development.22,23
Experiences of financial hardship during early childhood can disrupt healthy brain development.
Furthermore, irregular and unpredictable work schedules, lack of affordable child care, and limited access to paid time off can compromise a parent's ability to maintain stable employment and earn enough income to adequately provide for a family. According to data from the National Survey of Children's Heath, nearly 1 in 10 parents of young children report having to quit, decline, or substantially change a job due to problems with child care.24 For young children in families for whom job instability creates financial hardship, the associated stress on parents can compromise children's physical and mental health, cognitive development, educational achievement, emotional wellbeing, and social adjustment later in life.12,25,26
The financial hardships described above have disproportionate impacts on families of color relative to White families. The poverty rate varies considerably by race and ethnicity.20 Childhood poverty impacts children not only because of the associated deficits in material wellbeing, but also because of the chronic stress poverty imparts on children and their families.27 Financial hardship is a major predictor of food insecurity, which can lead to malnutrition and have negative impacts on children's health.28,29,30 Moreover, families with low incomes are more likely to live in crowded housing, which increases the risk of housing instability or homelessness and is often associated with chaotic environments that do not promote healthy child development.31 Black and Hispanic children are also more likely than their peers to experience early challenges associated with their parents' job instability. In 2019, prior to the collapse of the economy and child care market brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment was higher among Black (7.9%) and Hispanic (5.4%) families than among White (4.5%) and Asian (4.1%) families.32
Parental Health and Wellbeing
Parents' physical and mental health affects their ability to care for their children and engage in the warm, responsive interactions that infants and toddlers need for long-term healthy development. Yet parents often do not have the resources they need to care for themselves adequately while they care for their children, particularly during the perinatal period, which can pose unique health challenges to families. For example, between 7 and 15 percent of postpartum women experience depressive symptoms.33,34 However, not all mothers get the help they need. A study by the Centers for Disease Control found that among women who had recently given birth, 1 in 8 reported that they had not been asked about depression during postpartum visits.35
Parental depression can have a particularly negative impact on the parent-child relationship through lower quality caregiving, as well as a detrimental effect on the relationship between parents.16,17 Parents who struggle with depression may find it more difficult to respond warmly to their children, or to respond at all, which can compromise the security of the attachment bond between infants and toddlers and their parents—the very bond that serves as the basis for children to safely navigate the world and acquire new skills.16 Children may experience long-term consequences if depression interferes with the responsive, nurturing environment that they need.16
Social factors that influence health extend beyond biophysiological factors and also include the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age.36Therefore, parents who experience substantial adversity are at a higher risk of facing both physical and mental health challenges. Whereas various social factors—such as food insecurity, inadequate access to housing, exposure to violence, and availability of transportation—can have a negative impact on parental health, other social factors, such as parental support and community inclusiveness, can have a beneficial effect on parental health and wellbeing.35 Deleterious social factors, such as those listed above, contribute to toxic stress, which negatively impacts health through chronic wear and tear on the body. Because physical and mental health are intertwined, interventions that support parental mental health also can improve physical health outcomes, and vice versa. Whereas some programs impact health directly, such as those that bolster social support among parents, others support parent health indirectly, such as those that ensure adequate financial resources.
Nurturing Child-Parent Interactions
A child's developing brain depends on secure attachments and serve-and-return interactions.
As discussed above, stable, responsive relationships with caregivers during the earliest months and years of a child's life are key to long-term healthy development. A child's developing brain depends on secure attachments and serve-and-return interactions, in which adults reliably and appropriately respond to a child's cries, babbles, and other bids for connection. Persistent absence of warm, reciprocal interaction increases the likelihood that a child will experience poor outcomes of health and wellbeing.22 Neglect—which accounts for the majority of child maltreatment cases—is associated with a particularly wide range of mental and physical health consequences, including behavioral disorders, interpersonal difficulties, chronic illness, and poor school achievement.22
By contrast, daily reading, playing, and talking with a child can support early child development, as can other nurturing behaviors. These interactions shape brain architecture, both providing the positive stimulation children need for typical development and acting as a buffer to stress, protecting the developmental process from disruption.21
However, the critical early years also can be stressful for parents, who may themselves struggle to cope with the demands of parenting and to connect with their children. Also, when families experience adversity related to economic hardship, limited education, or discrimination, the associated stress can interfere with child-parent interactions and perpetuate socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic disparities in children's health risks.3 Children need a safe environment, protected from neglect and other chronic stressors, to truly thrive.10
Given the challenges of parenting through the early years and the critical role parents play in children's development,37 efforts to improve parents' social support, knowledge, and coping and problem-solving skills can promote positive long-term developmental trajectories in children.38 Teaching parents the skills for warm and responsive caregiving can minimize the long-term negative effects of childhood adversity.11
Child Health Begins Before Birth and Requires Tracking Optimal Development and Treating Problems Early
Child health and wellbeing are unmistakably tied to parental health.
Child health and wellbeing are unmistakably tied to parental health. Research demonstrates that childhood health begins with a healthy parent prior to conception. Key aspects of maternal health, such as adequate nutrition39 and exposure to stress in utero,40, 41 impact the development of the human brain during pregnancy. Maternal health prior to and during pregnancy plays a key role in child health at birth, which helps establish the basis for lifelong health and development. Parental mental health also impacts children through the quality of caregiving and the relationship between parents.16,17 Children also need frequent, preventative care throughout their lives to track their social-emotional, physical, and cognitive development, and to identify needs early and address them quickly. Critical and sensitive periods of growth during the earliest years create a window of opportunity for improving a child's lifelong trajectory for growth and development.42
Setbacks and trauma that children and families experience due to pregnancy and birth complications can have enduring, lifelong consequences for children. Many babies in the US are born thriving, but children who are not may need substantial resources, care, and devotion, not just to survive infancy but to meet the challenges beyond, so that they are ready for school, relationships, independence, and eventually adulthood.43 A child who is born prematurely arrives before the 37th week of pregnancy, a time during which the rapidly developing brain and other organs still benefit dramatically from the unique advantages of the intrauterine environment.44 Premature birth increases the likelihood of low birthweight (less than 2,500 grams), which predisposes children to breathing and feeding difficulties, vision and hearing problems, developmental delays, and learning disabilities, among other short- and long-term complications, including chronic diseases such as hypertension and heart disease later in life.42, 45, 46
When mothers have access to health care, both mothers and babies experience positive outcomes. Women need adequate health care over their life course to ensure healthy pregnancies, and disparities can be a reflection of cumulative exposure to adversity across the lifespan.47 Supporting women throughout the life course increases the likelihood that they will have healthy pregnancies, fewer birth complications, and healthier newborns.48 It is particularly important that women also have access to family planning services, preventative health care prior to conception, and prenatal care in the earliest stages of pregnancy. Prenatal care provides a window of opportunity for health care providers to assess and treat health conditions before birth—which can lead to safer births and lower rates of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity.49, 50
Approximately 700 women die in childbirth each year in the US.51 Although maternal mortality has fallen globally, the maternal mortality rate in the US increased between 50 and 70 percent over the past 20 years, and the rate of severe maternal morbidity has doubled.52 Most of these new mothers' deaths—an estimated 60 percent—are considered preventable. Among developed countries, the US stands alone in these troubling upward trends.50 Adverse birth outcomes disproportionately affect Black families. Black infants are more likely than Hispanic and White infants to be born low birthweight,53 and Black mothers are more than twice as likely to die in childbirth.54 or experience severe maternal morbidity49 than White or Hispanic mothers—a racial disparity that persists across socioeconomic status and worsens at the highest educational levels.55,56 High rates of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity in the US, as well as racial inequities in these rates, underscore the importance of access to health care during this critical part of life.
Child Health and Development
Optimal health prenatally and at birth creates a strong foundation for lifelong development, but children also need other factors to truly thrive. Researchers have described health as a "lifelong adaptive process that builds and maintains optimal functional capacity and disease resistance"—influenced by a person's physical, psychological, and social environment.41,57 While traditional health interventions such as good nutrition and immunizations are important for children, so too are the psychosocial contexts of their earliest relationships with key caregivers, which build the basis for social-emotional wellbeing.
Children are more likely to experience abuse and neglect during their first three years of life than at any other age.
Because a child's developing brain is most flexible during the earliest months and years of life, this time period sets the foundation for lifelong health and wellbeing. Adverse experiences and the absence of nurturing interactions during this period increase the likelihood of both physical and mental health difficulties in adulthood, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and respiratory and immunological disorders, as well as challenges with learning and mental wellbeing.4,13,58,59 Despite the importance of this age period, children are more likely to experience abuse and neglect during their first three years of life than at any other age.60 Furthermore, health risk factors, such as low birthweight, as well as social risk factors, such as poverty, can increase a child's risk of disability.61
Healthy child development encompasses physical, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and language development.62 Thus, frequent assessment to track all domains of child development is essential during the earliest years of life. The second year of life, in particular, is the period for the fastest language acquisition as the child's brain develops,63 and research has shown that differences in language skills based on socioeconomic status are already evident in children at 18 months old.64 Identifying and treating early indications of disability or developmental delay during a child's early years can improve childhood outcomes, increasing the likelihood of long-term benefits.65 Such interventions are important because 1 in 6 children in the US has a disability.60 Identifying needs early and addressing them immediately reduces the likelihood of disabilities worsening, decreases the need for later services, and saves money.66
Institutional Changes Can Improve Use of Social Services and Access to Affordable, High-Quality Child Care
Opportunities for institutions to better serve our youngest children and their families, from social service institutions to child care systems, are pervasive in the scientific literature. An important first step for many social service institutions is to ensure that families who are eligible for resources and services actually receive them. Improvements to the early child care and education system can also promote the health and wellbeing of infants and toddlers and their families. Social service institutions and child care systems can impact families in a variety of ways—they can help ensure that parents and children are healthy mentally and physically (e.g., Medicaid, Early Intervention), that parents have skills and resources to care for their children (e.g., home visiting programs, paid family leave, state earned income tax credit), and that parents and other caregivers have the capacity to create the stimulating and nurturing environments that promote learning and growth for our youngest children (e.g., Early Head Start).
Many communities provide a number of benefits and programs to children and families, with varying eligibility criteria and modes of delivery. However, families often do not have equitable access to such services. Three common methods to increase access to services include (1) expanding eligibility criteria, (2) reducing administrative burden (the amount of effort that families must expend to receive a benefit), and (3) screening families for specific needs and then connecting them to precise services.
Eligibility criteria can include the broad or narrow guidelines that allow an individual to qualify for services, as well as guidelines that specifically include or exclude certain populations, such as immigrants. Decisions regarding eligibility criteria drive variation in whether two individuals with similar needs receive similar help. Families of color, in particular, are less likely to receive services, even though they are eligible, as demonstrated by research on programs such as Medicaid, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), and Early Intervention (EI) services.67,68 For example, in a study about EI services, eligible Black children under age 2 were found to be 5 to 8 times less likely to receive services than White children, depending on the eligibility category.69
Administrative burden—or the barriers that increase the time, money, and psychological distress of applying for and maintaining enrollment in any public assistance program—also influences the proportion of families who receive services. Burdensome policies that require recertification of benefits to take place in person rather than remotely, or that require recertification to take place every 3 months rather than 12, or that require a host of documents be presented to prove eligibility, discourage eligible families from receiving services. Burdensome rules can result from intentional or inadvertent features of regulations that states put in place.70 Regardless of the intentions, administrative burden is costly and inefficient, and it reduces services among those who are eligible.
Identifying needs early and addressing them immediately helps to reduce the need for later services and saves money.65 An adequate system for screenings and referrals requires four<|fim_middle|>08). Prenatal exposure to maternal depression, neonatal methylation of human glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) and infant cortisol stress responses. Epigenetics; 3(2):97-106. doi:10.4161/epi.3.2.6034
Brand S.R., Engel S.M., Canfield R.L., Yehuda R. (2006). The effect of maternal PTSD following in utero trauma exposure on behavior and temperament in the 9-month-old infant. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences; 1071:454–458
Halfon, N., Hochstein, M. (2002). Life course health development: An integrated framework for developing health, policy, and research. Milbank Q; 80(3):433-iii. doi:10.1111/1468-0009.00019
National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. (2012). The long-lasting effects of preterm birth. US Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/resources/spotlight/012612-effects-preterm-birth
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Understanding Premature Birth and Assuring Healthy Outcomes. (2007). Preterm birth: Causes, consequences, and prevention. Behrman, R. E., & Butler, A. S. (Eds.). Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11382/
Barker, D.J. (1990). The fetal and infant origins of adult disease. BMJ. 1990;301(6761):1111. doi:10.1136/bmj.301.6761.1111
Luu, T. M., Katz, S. L., Leeson, P., Thébaud, B., & Nuyt, A. M. (2016). Preterm birth: risk factor for early-onset chronic diseases. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal, 188 (10), 736–746. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.150450
Lu, M. C., Kotelchuck, M., Hogan, V., Jones, L., Wright, K., & Halfon, N. (2010). Closing the Black-White gap in birth outcomes: A life-course approach. Ethnicity & Disease, 20(1 Suppl 2), S2–76
The Division of MCH Workforce Development. (n.d.). Life course approach in MCH. https://mchb.hrsa.gov/training/lifecourse.asp
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). Severe maternal morbidity in the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/severematernalmorbidity.html
Creanga, A. A., Bateman, B. T., Kuklina, E. V., & Callaghan, W. M. (2014). Racial and ethnic disparities in severe maternal morbidity: A multistate analysis, 2008-2010. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 210(5), 435.e1-435.e8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajog.2013.11.039
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). Pregnancy-related deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-relatedmortality.htm
Main, E. K., Markow, C., & Gould, J. (2018). Addressing maternal mortality and morbidity in California through public-private partnerships. Health Affairs, 37(9), 1484–1493. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0463
Martin, J. A., Hamilton, B. E., Osterman, M. J. K., Driscoll, A. K. (2019, November 27). Births: Final data for 2018. National Vital Statistics Reports, 68(13). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_13-508.pdf
Hoyert, D. L., & Miniño, A. M. (2020). Maternal mortality in the United States: Changes in coding, publication, and data release, 2018. National Vital Statistics Reports, (69)2. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics
Novoa, C., & Taylor, J. (2018). Exploring African Americans' high maternal and infant death rates. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/02/01/445576/exploring-african-americans-high-maternal-infant-death-rates/
Braveman P. (2011). Black-white disparities in birth outcomes: Is racism-related stress a missing piece of the puzzle? In: Lemelle AJ, Reed W, Taylor S, editors. Handbook of African American health: Social and behavioral interventions. New York: Springer; pp. 155–63
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Hughes M., Joslyn A., Wojton M., O'Reilly M., Dworkin P.H. (2016). Connecting vulnerable children and families to community-based programs strengthens parents' perceptions of protective factors. Infants Young Child 2016;29:116–29.\
Heckman. (n.d.). Why early investment matters. https://heckmanequation.org/resource/why-early-investment-matters/
Stuber, J. P., Maloy, K. A., Rosenbaum, S., & Jones, K.C. (2000). Beyond stigma: What barriers actually affect the decisions of low-income families to enroll in Medicaid? The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/sphhs_policy_briefs/53/
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Feinberg, E., Silverstein, M., Donahue, S., & Bliss, R. (2011). The impact of race on participation in Part C Early Intervention services. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 32, 284–291. https://dx.doi.org/10.1097%2FDBP.0b013e3182142fbd
Herd, P., & Moynihan, D. P. (2018). Administrative burden: Policymaking by other means. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team. (2014, November). Characteristics of center-based early care and education programs: Initial findings from the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) (OPRE Report #2014-73a). Washington DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/characteristics_of_cb_ece_programs_111014.pdf
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Brooks-Gunn, J. (2003). Do you believe in magic? What we can expect from early childhood intervention programs. Social Policy Report, 17(1), 3-15. doi:10.1002/j.2379-3988.2003.tb00020.x
Wright, T. S. (2011). Countering the politics of class, race, gender, and geography in early childhood education. Education Policy, 25(1), 240-261. doi:10.1177/0895904810387414
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Otten, J. J., Bradford, V. A., Stover, B., Hill, H. D., Osborne, C., Getts, K., & Seixas, N. (2019). The culture of health in early care and education: Workers' wages, health, and job characteristics. Health Affairs, 38(5), 709-720. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31059354/
Whitebook, M., McLean, C., Austin, L. J. E., & Edwards, B. (2018). Early childhood workforce index – 2018. Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley. http://cscce.berkeley.edu/topic/early-childhood-workforce-index/2018/
Burchinal, M. (2010). Differentiating among measures of quality: Key characteristics and their coverage in existing measures, OPRE Research-to-Policy, Research-to-Practice Brief OPRE 2011-10b. Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/differ_measures.pdf
Gordan, R. A., Fujimoto, K., Kaestener, R., Korenman, S., & Abner, K. (2013). An assessment of the validity of the ECERS-R with implications for measures of child care quality and relations to child development. Developmental Psychology, 49(1), 146-160. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027899
RESEARCH BRIEF | B.001.202101
Why Do We Focus on the Prenatal-to-3 Age Period? Understanding the Importance of the Earliest Years (PDF)
Through comprehensive reviews of the most rigorous evidence available, the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center identified the most effective policies and strategies that foster the nurturing environments children need during the foundational prenatal-to-3 developmental period. The annual Roadmap explains what they are and tracks where each state is. | components: (1) screening to identify the precise services that are needed, (2) referring and connecting the family to the needed services, (3) serving the family to address the need, and (4) monitoring outcomes to ensure the need is addressed. A breakdown in any of these links to services threatens the health of the system and may compromise improvements in outcomes.
These barriers in social service institutions often inhibit families from getting the help they need. To support families during the earliest years, institutions can expand eligibility criteria, reduce burdensome policies to receive benefits, and identify and address problems as soon as possible, through a strong system of screenings and referrals.
Child Care in Nurturing and Safe Settings
Only 24 percent of infants and toddlers are placed in child care considered to be high quality by established standards.
Nearly 7 million children are enrolled in child care centers in the US, and approximately 60 percent of those children are 3 years old or younger.71 However, data show that only 24 percent of infants and toddlers are placed in child care considered to be high quality by established standards.72 This fact alone illustrates the need for improvements in families' ability to access child care, but other issues further complicate this issue. Affordability and proximity of care each play a critical role in determining families' child care options. Child care typically accounts for a substantial portion of a family's budget, approximating—and often eclipsing—the cost of housing.73 Families who live in low-income neighborhoods typically have fewer child care options than families in other neighborhoods, a factor that limits access to affordable, quality child care—especially for those children for whom quality care is particularly important—and perpetuates existing racial and socioeconomic disparities.74,75,76
Caregivers in child care environments often struggle to obtain adequate resources to provide necessary care. Education and training, financial security, food security, and health and wellbeing all affect caregivers' interactions with children.3,77,78 But research shows that child care workers commonly earn wages insufficient for meeting basic needs and that they experience high rates of food insecurity, as well as poor mental wellbeing.79 Caregivers who work with infants and toddlers typically earn even lower wages than their peers who work with children ages 3 to 5.80
Because serve-and-return interactions with caregivers provide vitally important positive stimulation for young children and buffer the developing brain from the effects of stress,21 interactions with caregivers in the child care setting are just as fundamental to brain architecture as relationships at home. Just as parents need support to focus on connecting with children, so do caregivers in child care settings. However, the current research base remains inconclusive on how best to leverage components of child care—such as subsidy rates, workforce qualifications and compensation guidelines, or class sizes and child-caregiver ratios—to improve the quality of these interactions.
Measuring child care quality is also difficult. Observational tools, such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and Environment Rating Scales (ERS), can be used to track and assess classroom safety and quality, but "process" quality in particular (the richness of classroom interactions and learning experiences) can be difficult to identify and measure, and implementing these assessments can be costly.81 These tools are evolving and improving to accommodate the growing awareness of young children's unique developmental needs,82 but in the meantime working parents still must make decisions about how best to ensure their children receive high-quality care.
Finally, there is an unacceptable lack of rigorous research that establishes causal links between states' policy efforts and child care quality and children's outcomes. Rigorous research that focuses specifically on infants and toddlers is even more sparse. Research is clear that children thrive from high-quality interactions, that teachers need sufficient resources to provide high-quality care, and that families need equitable access to high-quality care, but the solutions for how to measure high-quality care and how to improve the quality of care need much more study. Opportunities for improvement within the child care system are plentiful; as these changes occur, rigorous research should be conducted to help us better understand how to ensure equitable access to high-quality care for all children, especially our youngest ones.
Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center. (2021). Why Do We Focus on the Prenatal-to-3 Age Period? Understanding the Importance of the Earliest Years. Child and Family Research Partnership, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. B.001.0121. https://pn3policy.org/resources/why-do-we-focus-on-the-prenatal-to-3-age-period-understanding-the-importance-of-the-earliest-years
© January 2021, Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, All Rights Reserved. The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at The University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs translates research on the best public investments into state policy actions that produce results for young children and society.
Center on the Developing Child. (n.d.) What is early childhood development? A guide to the science. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/guide/what-is-early-childhood-development-a-guide-to-the-science/
Francis D. D. (2009). Conceptualizing child health disparities: A role for developmental neurogenomics. Pediatrics, 124 Suppl 3(Suppl 3), S196–S202. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-1100G
Shonkoff, J. (2017). Breakthrough impacts: What science tells us about supporting early childhood development. YC Young Children, 72(2), 8–16
Shonkoff, J. (2014). A healthy start before and after birth: Applying the biology of adversity to build the capabilities of caregivers. In K. McCartney, H., Yoshikawa, & L. B. Forcier (Eds.), Improving the Odds for America's Children (pp. 28-39). Harvard Education Press
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2020). Connecting the brain to the rest of the body: Early childhood development and lifelong health are deeply intertwined. Working paper No. 15. www.developingchild.harvard.edu
Wolffe, A.P., Matzke, M.A. (1999, October 15). Epigenetics: regulation through repression. Science, 286(5439):481-6.
Huttenlocher P. (2002). Neural plasticity: The effects of the environment on the development of the cerebral cortex. Cerebral Cortex. Harvard University Press.
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The Urban Child Institute. (2020). Baby's brain begins now: Conception to age 3. http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). Early brain development and health. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/childdevelopment/early-brain-development.html#:~:text=The%20right%20care%20for%20children,brains%20have%20a%20healthy%20start
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2015). Supportive relationships and active-skill building strengthen the foundations of resilience (Working Paper No. 13). www.developingchild.harvard.edu
Shonkoff, J., Richter, L., van der Gaag, J., & Bhutta, Z. A. (2012). An integrated scientific framework for child survival and early childhood development. Pediatrics, 129(2): e460-e472. doi:10.1542/peds.2011-0366
Shonkoff, J., & Garner, A. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics (Evanston), 129(1), e232–e246. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2663
Damron, N., Institute for Research on Poverty. (2015). Brain drain: A child's brain on poverty [Fact sheet]. https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/factsheets/pdfs/Factsheet8-BrainDrain.pdf
Heckman, J.J. (2006). Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science, 312(5782):1900-1902. doi:10.1126/science.1128898
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2009). Maternal depression can undermine the development of young children. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/guide/what-is-early-childhood-development-a-guide-to-the-science/
"Parental Well-Being, Couple Relationship Quality, and Children's Behavioral Problems in the First 2 Years of Life | Development and Psychopathology | Cambridge Core." Retrieved January 28, 2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathology/article/parental-wellbeing-couple-relationship-quality-and-childrens-behavioral-problems-in-the-first-2-years-of-life/14472967C7CC0A4D938B3B08CA724A7C
Shook Slack, K., Holl, J., McDaniel, M., Yoo, J., Bolger, K. (2004). Understanding the risks of child neglect: An exploration of poverty and parenting characteristics. Child Maltreatment, 9(4): 395-408. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077559504269193
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2019). A Roadmap to reducing child poverty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25246
Calculations were done by the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center using the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS), Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS)
Center on the Developing Child. (n.d.) Serve and return. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/serve-and-return/#:~:text=Serve%20and%20return%20interactions%20shape,of%20communication%20and%20social%20skills
Center on the Developing Child. (n.d.) Neglect. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/deep-dives/neglect/
Institute for Research on Poverty. (June 2019). The brain science of poverty and its policy implications [Research policy brief]. UW-Madison. No. 40-2019
Evans G.W., Schamberg M.A. (2009). Childhood poverty, chronic stress, and adult working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 106(16):6545-6549. doi:10.1073/pnas.0811910106
Coleman-Jensen, A., Rabbitt, M. P., Gregory, C. A., & Singh, A. (2017). Household food security in the United States in 2016 (Economic Research Report No. 237). Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture
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Gundersen, C., & Ziliak, J. P. (2014.) Childhood food insecurity in the US: Trends, causes, and policy options. The Future of Children 24(2):1–19
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Oberlander T.F., Weinberg J., Papsdorf M., Grunau R., Misri S., Devlin A.M. (20 | 3,436 |
She was the "Sunday in every week", the poet Austin Clarke called a beautiful looking woman. Back then Sundays were very different though.
All is changed, changed utterly, as the poet said, and has not been replaced by<|fim_middle|> will not find this old Republic closed down totally on what used be properly called the Sabbath day. | a terrible beauty in Ireland. If you were born in Ireland 20 years ago or thereabouts, and if you are returning on vacation soon, do not expect to relive again the suited, sated, somnolence of the kinda sacred Sundays of your youth.
A friend and I talked about the Saturday night scrubbings and shoe polishing and shirt ironing in preparation for Sunday Mass in the morning in the high pomp heydays of the Catholic Church. We both recalled the huge occasion that First Communion was then, and being taught that it was actually sinful to bite the wafer that was placed on your tongue at the climax of the ceremony.
And we both remembered the way the wafer seemed to adhere to the tongue forever before you could swallow it down and relax.
Did that happen to any of ye? I am quite certain it did.
It was our opinion that the popularity of Saturday evening Masses in the years after Vatican Two was the dagger in the throat of the old ritual Sundays. That and the fact that, for a host of reasons we need not detail here, the level of churchgoing by individuals and families has so sharply declined in the last 20 years especially.
Before then it was forbidden to work on Sundays, except for necessary farmwork like milking the cows, for example.
Many countrymen, I recalled, wore their Sunday suits, collar and tie, all day to show they were not working. My friend McAvinney said that much the same happened in his town. And about everywhere else for that matter.
The GAA football matches, both at club and county level were also a huge element of the enjoyment of the traditional Sundays. In fairness, due to the continuing popularity of the GAA the games still draw huge crowds during the championship season and are still family affairs. But it is the commercial backdrop that is so totally different.
Gone are the days when folk could not work on Sundays. They are now one of the busiest and most bustling days of the week. Everything is open and trading away, tills are jangling, supermarkets are full.
The consequences of the tourism industry and the necessity to cope with it together with Irish lifestyle changes means that Sunday is no longer a day of rest. It is far from it.
The fact that both parents of a typical family are now in the workplace means that major shopping expeditions are now more easily feasible on Sundays. The family can be together, really, for the only time of the working week, and the footfall in the malls reflects this. Cafés and pubs and hotel dining rooms benefit.
The trading situation has so totally changed that McAvinney was not one bit surprised when I told him that Mondays are commonly like the old Sundays nowadays because it is then that many traders close their doors for a rest after the Sunday rush!
In a nutshell then, if you arrive here on vacation soon, rest easy that you | 588 |
Home Pop Culture Toys & Games Avalanche
This early Atari title wasn't exactly the black-and-white equivalent of a Swiss Alps nightmare, but it was the closest a video game could come in 1978.
At the top of the screen were several rows of rocks, which could drop at any second. Your task was to manoeuvre your paddles underneath the rocks, catching them before they hit the bottom of the screen.
With its rotating paddle control, Avalanche played like a game of Breakout in reverse – this time, the blocks were trying to clobber you!
As the game went on, the number of paddles under your control dropped, and the rocks began falling faster. To make matters even worse, the later rocks were also smaller, forcing some deft wrangling of the paddle control to keep from missing any.
The concept was entertaining and often challenging, but Avalanche didn't have the impact of other Atari titles like Pong and Asteroids.
The game never made it to home arcades, but Activision's bomb-dropping Kaboom!<|fim_middle|> is at its strongest when you are a child. Good evidence for this theory is provided by the enduring...
As legend has it, an American traveller named George Hansburg was making his way through Burma when he made the acquaintance of a poor...
Communist movement in Cambodia (Kampuchea) formed in the 1960s. Controlling the country between 1974 and 1978, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for mass deportations and... | for the Atari 2600 was a fine substitute.
Like many of its contemporaries, Avalanche has been pretty much lost to the ages, surviving only on PC emulators and in the memories of those who were there when the boulders started dropping.
VS. Series Arcade Games
The 1950s: The teenage lifestyle is born, and with it come bobby socks and boppers, poodle skirts and pompadours. Ballerina Pumps Beehive Hair Bermuda Shorts Bobbie Brooks Bobby Socks Brothel...
1 9 1 6 - 1 9 9 6 François Mitterrand studied law and politics in Paris, and during World War II he came to...
Fisher-Price Little People
Some people believe your imagination | 160 |
Keynote addresses will be delivered by Alexandra Dapolito Dunn and Diana Bauer. Dunn is the executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States. Bauer is the director of the Energy Systems Analysis and Integration at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Paul Ziemk<|fim_middle|>According to the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, thermoelectric power generation accounts for almost 50 percent of water withdrawals in the United States, or over 200 billion gallons per day. Coal mining and natural gas processing use over 500 million gallons per day.
The public is invited to attend the 2015 National Energy Conference and admission is free, however registration is required for the lunch. The conference is also offering Continuing Legal Educationcredit for attorneys for a standard fee.
For more information or to register for the conference, go to https://energy.law.wvu.edu/events/national-energy-conference-2015 or call (304) 293-0064.
Founded in 2011, the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at the WVU College of Law was created to conduct objective, unbiased research and policy analyses; provide a forum for issues to be explored by stakeholders; and to promote policies that strike a balance between the development of energy resources and protection of the valuable air and water supplies upon which future generations will depend. | iewicz, director of WVU's West Virginia Water Research Institute, is among the panelists. He will discuss water use in shale gas development. WVU law professors Alison Peck, Joshua Fershee, and James Van Nostrand, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, are also participating in the conference.
Energy production is dependent upon water by using huge quantities of it to extract and process fuel sources, like coal and natural gas, and to generate electricity at hydro power plants.
| 100 |
Email11
The Siege of Bo<|fim_middle|> several days. After the initial flurry of shooting, Boone urged the Kentuckians to conserve their gunpowder. At night, Native Americans ran up to the walls and attempted to throw burning torches onto the roofs of the houses within. This was ineffective, however, because the warriors made easy targets for the Kentucky marksmen.
On September 11, Antoine Dagneaux de Quindre, in command of the Detroit militia, convinced the Indians to begin digging a tunnel from the bank of the river towards the fort. Known as mining, the goal was to place barrels of gunpowder in the tunnel under a section of the fort's walls. When these barrels were exploded, the wall would collapse, leaving a place for the attackers to rush in.
When the defenders inside the fort heard the digging, they began to dig a countermine, hoping to collapse the attackers' tunnel prematurely. The diggers on both sides began to yell taunts at each other. Heavy rains caused the Indians' tunnel to collapse before it reached the fort.
Boone's brother, Squire Boone, fashioned a makeshift wooden cannon, reinforced with iron bands, which was fired once or twice at groups of Indians before it cracked. Squire Boone also made squirt guns out of old musket barrels, which were used to put out fires on the roofs.
On September 17, the Shawnees launched their final assault, again trying to set fire to the fort. They were beaten back, and a heavy rain helped to put out the fires. The Shawnees lost more men killed in this attack than on all previous days. The next day, they gradually broke off the siege. They separated into scattered war parties and raided other settlements, inflicting far more damage in their traditional mode of warfare than they had done during the siege.
After the siege, Colonel Richard Callaway brought charges against Boone, alleging that Boone "was in favour of the British government." Joining Callaway was Captain Benjamin Logan from nearby Logan's Station. Logan and Callaway both had nephews who had been surrendered by Boone at the salt licks and were still prisoners. In the court-martial proceedings, held at Logan's Fort, there were four charges against Boone:
-Boone had surrendered the salt making party without a fight;
-While in captivity, Boone had promised to surrender Boonesborough to the British;
-After his return, he had led the Paint Lick expedition, which weakened Boonesborough at a time when
Blackfish's army was expected;
-Boone had exposed the officers to ambush by agreeing to meet the Indians at the peace treaty outside the fort.
After listening to all the testimony, the court found Boone "not guilty", and even promoted him to major because of his actions. Despite this vindication, Boone was humiliated by the episode.
Boone then went to North Carolina to retrieve his family, who had returned there during his captivity, believing him to be dead. When Boone came back to Kentucky, he established a new settlement called Boone's Station rather than resettle in the place where he had been court-martialed.
While Boone was in North Carolina, a retaliatory raid was launched against Blackfish's town of Chillicothe in the spring of 1779. Blackfish successfully defended his village but was shot in the leg and later died when the wound became infected.
On March 8, 1780, Callaway was caught outside Boonesborough by Shawnees and was killed, scalped, and mutilated.
11 Email | onesborough
September 8-20, 1778 at Boonesboro, Kentucky
The Siege of Boonesborough was an attack on the Kentucky settlement of Boonesborough was led by Chief Blackfish, a Shawnee leader allied to the British. Months before the battle, Blackfish had captured and adopted Daniel Boone, the founder of Boonesborough. Boone escaped the Shawnees in time to lead the defense of the settlement.
Blackfish's siege was unsuccessful and was lifted after ten days. Boone was then court-martialed by fellow officers who suspected him of having British sympathies. Boone was acquitted, but he soon moved away from Boonesborough.
Facts about the Siege of Boonesborough
Armies - American Forces was commanded by Gen. George Washington and consisted of between 30-40 Soldiers and 135 Settlers. British Forces was commanded by Gen. William Howe and consisted of between 444 Indians and 12 militia.
Casualties - American casualties were estimated to be 2 killed and 4 wounded. British casualties was approximately 37 killed and unknown wounded.
Outcome - The result of the Siege was an American victory. The Siege was part of the Western Theater.
Fort Boonesborough
On September 7, Blackfish's force arrived outside Boonesborough. The former were mostly Shawnees, with a number of Cherokees, Wyandots, Miamis, Delawares, and Mingos. The latter were French-Canadian militiamen from Detroit, former French subjects now fighting on behalf of the British Crown. Although this was the largest force yet sent against the Kentucky settlements, taking a fortified position like Boonesborough would still be difficult without artillery to reduce the stronghold.
Blackfish called Boone out of the fort for a parley and reminded Boone of his promise to surrender the settlement. Blackfish presented letters from Governor Hamilton which proclaimed that the settlers would be well treated and taken to Detroit if they surrendered. If they did not surrender, there were no guarantees.
Boone told Blackfish that he would present the offer to the others. He could not make this decision himself, Boone said, since during his captivity other officers had assumed command.
Back in the fort, Boone outlined the situation. The consensus was to fight rather than surrender. The decision was made to prolong the negotiations with Blackfish as long as possible, since reinforcements from Virginia were expected. Boone and Major William Bailey Smith went outside again and told Blackfish that they feared that the trip to Detroit would be too hard on the women and children.
Blackfish pointed out that he had brought 40 horses to transport those unable to walk. Boone asked for another day to consult with the others. Leaders from the two sides smoked a ceremonial pipe together to mark the peace agreement, and then broke off negotiations for the day.
Over the next two days, settlers in the fort prepared for the siege. Based on faulty intelligence received from Hamilton in Detroit, Blackfish believed that there were at least 200 militiamen in the fort, when in fact there were only about 40 effective gunmen inside. The Kentuckians reinforced the illusion of a greater number of men by having some of the women in the fort carry weapons while dressed in men's clothing.
On September 8, in the evening, Blackfish and Boone met again. Boone told a surprised Blackfish that the fort would not surrender. Blackfish proposed that a formal treaty conference with all of the leaders be held on the next day.
On September 9, the treaty session began with leaders from the two sides sharing a meal outside the fort. Afterwards, the council began. In case of trouble, both sides had gunmen covering the meeting from a distance. Blackfish demanded to know "by what right had the white people taken possession of this country." Boone replied that they had bought the land from the Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals.
A Cherokee chief confirmed that this was true. Blackfish accepted this answer and then proposed that if the settlers would pledge their allegiance to the king of Great Britain, the Shawnees would accept the Ohio River boundary and both sides would live in peace. A treaty to this effect was then signed.
The Shawnees then approached the Americans to shake hands and seal the agreement. What happened next is unclear. According to one popular interpretation, the Shawnees, having failed to secure the surrender of Boonesborough, attempted to seize the American leaders.
A scuffle broke out, and marksmen from both sides opened fire. Despite a few injuries, all but one of the Americans managed to scramble back into the fort-the last one had to take cover next to a tree stump by the main gate. The Indians rushed the gate but were driven back by heavy gunfire. Negotiations were over; the formal siege had begun.
The last delegate spent a harrowing day with the battle raging around him. He finally managed to crawl inside when someone opened the gate slightly after nightfall.
Map of Kentucky
Gunfire was exchanged over the next | 1,030 |
Pediatric Nephrologist Opportunity in a Dynamic Coastal City
Location: Texas-Corpus Christi - CORPUS CHRISTI
Duration: Permanent - Full Time
Category: Nephrology - Pediatric
Practice Type: Hospital
Driscoll Children's Hospital is seeking a fourth BC/BE Pediatric Nephrologist to join an established group. The position offers a sign-on bonus, competitive compensation package, excellent benefits, generous paid time<|fim_middle|> | off, holiday pay, CME and retirement plans. Live and work in a dynamic coastal city!
The successful candidate will participate in patient care, medical student and resident education, and will have opportunities for productive clinical research. The Division provides a full range of clinical services including living and deceased donor transplantation, acute and chronic hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis, plasmapheresis, and CRRT. Driscoll Children's Hospital owns and operates the only freestanding pediatric hemodialysis units in South Texas, with a 5-station unit in Corpus Christi, and a 4-station unit in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, supported by a team of experienced dialysis nurses, and dedicated dietitians, social workers, and child life services. Driscoll Children's Hospital is an active member and participant of NAPRTCS, SCOPE, Midwest Pediatric Nephrology Consortium, CKiD, and has recently joined IROC. Through its dedication to education and research, the Nephrology Division has a long tradition of graduating future Pediatric Nephrology Fellows and Pediatric Nephrologists. Driscoll Children's Hospital is a teaching hospital of Texas A&M University College of Medicine with 45 pediatric residents, 30 bed pediatric intensive care unit, 40 neonatal ICU beds, and specialists on staff covering the full range of pediatric care.
Successful completion of ACGME or AOA- accredited residency in pediatrics followed by successful completion of an accredited fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology.
Board Certified/ Board Eligible Pediatric Nephrology
Company: Driscoll Children's Hospital
Address: ATTN: Lori Smith
3533 S Alameda St.
Corpus Christi TX 78411 | 366 |
Their motto is to offer dishes which even Non-Vegetarian feel tasty.
I myself visited this restaurant and felt even Non-vegetarian can enjoy the dishes here.
It was a few-minutes walk from Mejiro station.
I arrived just before noon.
I went<|fim_middle|> pepper.
I like the taste very much!
Lasagna was also good taste!
I could enjoy tomato taste.
And it was a substantial meal.
You might imagine vegetarian dishes are usually light and plain but here I could enjoy rich flavor.
Their motto is to offer dish even Non-vegetarian can enjoy and after I had the dish I thought that was true.
VEGETARIAN BEAST is not a big restaurant but you can enjoy tasty dishes here.
I recommend you to visit here if you have a chance to come to Ikebukuro station (Mejiro station is just 1 stop from Ikebukuro station).
« Visited Vegan Gourmet Festival Tokyo 2018! | inside and could see dishes on display in a glass case next to the cashier.
I decided to order Combo menu.
2 Dish Combo is 1000 yen (About $9.5) and 3 Dish Combo is 1500 yen (About $14).
You can choose either from bread or brown rice for this Combo menu.
I went for brown rice this time.
For the dish of Combo, you can choose from the dishes displayed in a glass case.
As I ordered 2 Dish Combo, I could choose 2 dishes.
I was torn but decided to order vegan meat sauce Lasagna and vegetable Ario-Orio.
Vegan Hamburger also looked good.
Drink is not included in Combo menu so if you want something to drink, you need to order drink.
But water is, as you know, free here in Japan.
I ordered Red fruit & Aronia Berry Tea for 300 yen (about $2.8).
It was caffeine free tea and actually most of the tea or coffee were caffeine free here.
Looks like I was the first customer today.
I think this restaurant can hold about 15 people inside.
I took counter bar seat.
As I was the only one now, the dish came really fast.
All the vegetables (onion, mushroom, bamboo shoot, paprika, broccoli, etc.) in Ario-Orio were fresh and seasoned with salt and black | 288 |
Barasch high-fives a nearby fan after the impressive snag.
Sportscenter's "Top 10 Plays" typically feature diving catches, swift double plays, and towering home runs. Almost always, these plays involve professional athletes who are performing on the playing field. A couple weeks ago, however, a fan in the crowd broke his way into the Top 10 Plays by making a spectacular snag of a foul ball.
Greg Barasch, a New Yorker with over 1,000 career balls snagged, made a backhanded, leaping grab of a Gaby Sanchez line drive foul ball at Marlins Stadium, wowing both the fans<|fim_middle|> little while later a fan near me (the one who high-fived me in the video) said the play was all over ESPN." | in attendance and those watching at home. The clip of Barasch's snag eventually got so much attention that Sportscenter picked it up.
"Basically, when Sanchez hit the ball there wasn't a whole lot of time to think," Barasch said about the snag. "It was hit too hard for that. I was really only in that section for a potential slicer from a lefty, so it was a surprise to get a chance with the righty batting. All I could do was react, and luckily the ball was within my reach."
Barasch was excited to experience the thrill of a live foul ball snag, but he had no idea that it would get national attention. "The Top Ten thing was awesome and very much unexpected," he said. "I got a text from a college friend a few minutes after the catch who'd seen it live, then a | 178 |
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ARTS IN<|fim_middle|> experiences on the market. Our goal is to bring the global black experience to you in intimate and intelligent ways. We plan the trip and now work with professional agents to implement.
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When you invest in Our Justice, you are working to ensure that all people and communities have the power and resources to make sexual and reproductive health decisions with self-determination and dignity. Your tax-deductible donation will go to ensure reproductive freedom for people living in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin.
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The Cowles Center | 528 Hennepin Avenue | Minneapolis, MN 55403 | Main 612.206.3600 | info@thecowlescenter.org | EDUCATION
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info@alliedchemical.com
528 Hennepin Ave, Suite 511, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Allied Chemical is the physical headquarters for composer, artist, and writer Chris Strouth and his group Paris1919. Strouth's work is about exploration of the new while rooted in tradition. In the six degrees of seperation between John Cage and Judas Priest, Chris Strouth is number three.
Black Label Movement
Dovetail Partners
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Dovetail Partners is a 501(c)3 non-profit providing authoritative information about the impacts and trade-offs of environmental decisions, including consumption choices, land use and policy alternatives.
Illusion Theater
Illusion Theater was founded in 1974 and presents its season on the 8th floor The Cowles Center in downtown Minneapolis. Since the beginning, Producing Directors Michael Robins and Bonnie Morris have led Illusion Theater in illuminating the illusions, myths, and realities of our times and in using the power of theater to catalyze personal and social change. In thirty-five years, Illusion has generated over 500 plays, developed thousands of artists, and created ground-breaking educational works.
Italian Cultural Center
iccmsp@yahoo.com
528 Hennepin Ave Suite 502, Minneapolis, MN 55403
The Italian Cultural Center (ICC), founded in Minneapolis in 2006, is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization open to anyone interested in the unique phenomena of Italian culture. ICC's vision is to establish a multifaceted center in Minnesota for all things Italian; to serve as a beacon for classic and contemporary Italian culture through language, art, music, design, cinema, architecture, and technology. Their mission is to promote the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Italian culture through educational services and cultural events.
James Sewell Ballet was founded in New York City by James Sewell and Sally Rousse and brought to Minnesota in 1993. Combining their expertise, vision and chutzpah they envisioned a close-knit company of dance artists willing to both challenge their physical limits and expand their notions about ballet. Nearly two decades later, critically acclaimed JSB performances move and delight audiences across the country. The embodiment of the original vision is a professional company of nine dancers performing innovative work that explores the technical boundaries of ballet.
Based in the Twin Cities, James Sewell Ballet studios are located at The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts in Downtown Minneapolis. Annual spring and fall JSB performances are currently presented at The Goodale Theater in The Cowles Center. JSB's annual cutting edge "Ballet Works Project," featuring new works by emerging and established choreographers, is presented at the JSB TEK BOX on the second floor of The Cowles Center.
McKnight Artist Fellowship
dkassel@thecowlescenter.org
528 Hennipen Ave, Suite 304, Minneapols, MN 55403
The McKnight Foundation has named The Cowles Center For Dance & The Performing Arts as the new administrative partner for the McKnight Fellowships in Choreography and Dancers. These programs award fellowships to individual mid-career dancers and choreographers who reside in Minnesota.
Minnesota Chorale
we_sing@mnchorale.org
528 Hennepin Ave., Suite 407, Minneapolis, MN 55403
Founded in 1972, the Minnesota Chorale is Principal Chorus of the Minnesota Orchestra and ranks among the foremost professional choruses in the United States. Led by Kathy Saltzman Romey since 1995, the Chorale is best known for its work with the Twin Cities' two major orchestras, but is equally dedicated to fostering and deepening relationships through its award-winning Bridges community engagement initiatives, educational activities including the Minneapolis Youth Chorus, and independent presentations of choral works. A seasoned artistic partner, the Chorale continues to explore new artistic directions and collaborative opportunities, while earning the highest critical acclaim for its work on the concert stage.
Minnesota Dance Medicine Foundation
bradmoser@tcomn.com
The Minnesota Dance Medicine Foundation conducts research, educational conferences and initiatives in dance medicine for the dance community.
Minnesota Dance Theatre
info@mndance.org
528 Hennepin Ave, Suite 606 Minneapolis, MN 55403
For the past fifty years the mission of Minnesota Dance Theatre has been to create masterful and provocative dance performances which entertain and inspire audiences. Minnesota Dance Theatre (MDT) was founded in 1962 by Loyce Houlton, one of the first American women to gain international recognition as a choreographer, teacher and producer. In 1995, Lise Houlton was appointed artistic director, having recently retired from an acclaimed international performing career that included Stuttgart Ballet and American Ballet Theatre.
Minnesota Pollution Control
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Noordijk, Inc.
Tom.Nordyke@noordijkinc.com
Noordijk, inc. is a consultant firm that focuses on building creative communities through the adaptive reuse of historical structures into arts related projects. While our experience is broad, in many ways it all comes back to creating places for the arts to survive and thrive.
Obsidian Arts, Inc.
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From art exhibitions to art workshops to art outings we are building a cohesive community among residents who have a strong and growing interest in black art and culture. Without a doubt Obsidian Arts is developing some of the boldest travel | 1,225 |
Let the birds have a Thanksgiving feast, too.
Give your local birds something to be thankful for by building them a Thanksgiving birdhouse.
Everyone loves a Thanksgiving feast -- even birds.
Wash and dry a large milk carton. On one side, trace and cut out a round hole big enough for a bird to pop through.
Glue a dowel or craft stick below the hole so the birds will have a place to sit outside their house.
Now paint the birdhouse in pretty colors. Write the words "Thanksgiving House" on the sides if you want.
Fill the bottom of the birdhouse with bird seed. Then have an adult poke a hole in the top. Thread the hole with strong string, and tie it to a tree branch that is easy to see from your window. Watch the birds come and celebrate!
You'll probably have a lot of drawings<|fim_middle|> was William Brewster, who was 54 years old. | and art work from all of your holiday crafts. Show them off using the magnets you'll learn about next.
The voyage from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth Harbor took the Mayflower 66 days, but the Mayflower was never used again as a passenger ship. There were 51 men, 22 boys, 20 women, and 11 girls on board the ship. The oldest passenger to participate in the first Thanksgiving | 90 |
And you don't know right from wrong, Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle! When you meet temptation And the urge is very strong, Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle! Not just a little squeak. Pucker up and blow And if your whistle's weak, Yell Jiminy Cricket. Take the straight and narrow path And if you start to slide, Give a little whistle! Give a little whistle! And always let your conscience be your guide." Some people think that's the Christian life – just listen to your conscience. Of course, they replace the word "conscience" with the Holy Spirit. Today's message will help us understand that the Holy Spirit is far beyond any conscience. He is a person whose purpose is much more than to help you take the straight and narrow path and you can't call him by whistling.
Question: Do you have the Holy Spirit? If you're saved, you do. Are you submitted to the Holy Spirit? Are you grieving or quenching him in your life?
Context: As I mentioned last week, when we began planning for the first few weekends in this new sanctuary, we prayerfully decided that the first few messages should be on the foundational beliefs of Clearview Church. With that in mind, I've preached on Prayer, on Unity, on the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Christ, on the Word of God, and today I am preaching on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's role is primary to the success and the growth of our church.In this message, I want to clear up some confusions regarding the Holy Spirit and<|fim_middle|>2"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greaterworksthan these he will do, because I go to My Father." Jesus' departure will not close shop but greater things will come. Some people think that the greater works mean greater miracles. That's not all true if you look at the context.Listen to the next verse – 13And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do,(1stcondition of greater works is that they should be asked in Jesus' Name, as if Jesus were approving)that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (2ndcondition of greater works is that they should bring glory to the Father) 14If you ask anything in My name, I will doit.(Another reminder that our will should align with the will of Jesus)15"If you love Me, keep My commandments. (3rdcondition of greater works is loving obedience)16And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever." Don't miss this. The Greek word is "Paraclete." There's a lot of debate over how to translate it. It has a legal tone to it. It implies someone who is "called alongside" to lead, to guide, and to make appeal for you. The best translation is "Advocate." He is called the "allon parakleton" or "Another Advocate." Who is the first Advocate? Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is not some spiritual genie of the lamp who gives you whatever you want. He is not a spiritual force or power source that you can use on demand. You're not in charge. The Holy Spirit is and he does greater things than Jesus because they work together. What they are, we'll see soon.
Something else: Listen to verse 17the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." The Holy Spirit is not Jiminy Cricket who comes to you when you whistle. He is not just your conscience, that still small voice that talks to you when you "start to slide." The conscience is in every person but not everyone has a Holy Spirit. The conscience is the basic moral code in every human being that comes because we are made in the image of God. But, it can be subdued and retrained.
Illustration: Conscience is like the baby gate. It keeps the baby from getting outside the room and falling down steps or putting their hands in the fire place. But, as the baby grows, the gate cannot stop him/her. If he/she wants to, they can hurt themselves.
Application:Are you living by your conscience or the Holy Spirit? There's a world of difference!
II. LAYOUT HIS TRUE MISSION.
The New Advocate has come to point us back to Jesus and his words.
The New Advocate has come to bear witness of Jesus before the world.
The New Advocate has come to convict the world of what Jesus has done.
John 16 7"Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." The word for convict is "elegcho," which means to convince or to correct. The difference between witness and convict is that witness is passive and convict is active. Listen to the breakdown of each – 9of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. The Jewish disciples of Jesus were familiar with all 3 terms but Jesus redefined them: Sin is rejecting Jesus; Righteousness is what God the Father has done for Jesus; Judgment is what Jesus did by his death and resurrection.
The New Advocate will complete what Jesus has begun and now directs.
Application:How do you view the Holy Spirit and his work? If it does not draw you to focus on Jesus, his work and his words, you have a different Spirit.
How do you see the Holy Spirit? Is he a spiritual genie or Jiminy Cricket?
Is he just a still small voice that guides you or is he the Advocate who points you to Jesus and his words?
Do you love Jesus more and obey him more because of your understanding of the Holy Spirit?
Do you have the Holy Spirit? Are you saved? | layout his true mission.
Background:We're going to read some passages from what is known as the "Farewell Discourse of Jesus" in the Gospel of John. It extends over five chapters from John 13-17. The disciples of Jesus were troubled and grieved because he was talking about leaving them. So, he said all this to comfort and reassure them that he was not going to abandon them. In fact, his going away was going to make things even better! John 14:1 | 106 |
Eric Sanday, A Study of Dialectic in Plato's Parmenides, Northwestern University Press, 2015, 228pp., $79.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780810130074.
Eric Sanday's book is an intriguing monograph with a distinctly challenging, tripartite thesis: Plato's Theory of Forms is true, easy to understand, and relatively intuitive. He locates the evidence for his view in the notoriously obscure yet fascinating dialectical exchange in the latter part of the Parmenides, where he finds Parmenides exemplifying the tools required for resolving the puzzles about the Theory of Forms raised earlier in his conversation with Socrates.
Sanday argues that by dialectical exercise (on his view as a type of education ) and the introduction of scientific philosophy, the Parmenides reveals the "priority of the sources of intelligibility over individual things" (5). What has steered us away from the truth is an implicit metaphysical assumption that privileges individual things over the conditions for their being as they are. Such privileging has a distorting effect on our understanding (or lack thereof) and ignores the ultimate sources and principles guiding our pursuit of material goods -- in other words, the perceptible things subject to becoming, particularly those of value to us -- yet it "fits neatly into the larger attitude according to which human subjectivity imposes meaning on things" (4).
Plato's resolution of this issue includes demonstrating that one must first clear away misconceptions about the nature of "is" (4) by means of dialectic, which is "the project of breaking down basic assumptions in order to recapture the animating source that lives at their core" (8). The lesson of the deductions in the second part of the Parmenides is that forms "enable the spatio-temporal presence of things" yet they retain a "self-concealing presence" that is prior to the perceptibles (174).
Sanday claims that the distinction between humans and the world is both a "threat and well-spring of philosophy" and should be approached in the "attitude of receptivity," where one should see intelligibility supplied by the practice of dialectic as a gift (6). The Parmenides creates "a space within which we can exercise away our dependencies on the spatio-temporal object and actively cultivate receptivity" to dialectic (6). So, he thinks, the Parmenides is more broadly a preliminary guide to the philosopher's new stances toward the study of goodness, justice, and beauty.
Not surprisingly, the book is divided into two sections that reflect the structure of the dialogue. The two chapters of Part I explain what Sanday means by scientific philosophy. Part II, "Exercise and Rehabilitation," covers the strategy of the Hypotheses (read: the deductions from hypotheses in the second part of the dialogue), with most attention paid to Hypotheses 1-2, which Sanday thinks set the stage for the rest. Chapter 1 provides a refreshing historical context for the conversation and introduces the metaphysical themes of the book. On Sanday's view, as a part of teaching dialectic, the dialogue forwards a critique of ordinary, everyday metaphysical assumptions wherein Socrates must "travel down the road of rhetoric and eristic" to detach himself from assuming that forms are fundamentally things (33).
In Chapter 2 Sanday provides even more detail about the nature of what he calls "scientific philosophy" by parsing Parmenides' objections to Socrates' account of forms and participation. So, for example, there is a discussion of part/whole complexity and compositionality, the regress arguments, forms as thoughts, and the greatest difficulty argument. The lesson Socrates must learn, and a lesson for all those training in dialectic, is (a) overcoming the object-paradigm that guides his thinking about the forms, and (b) developing a better account of what he means by participation (64).
Part II (chs. 3-5) opens with a detailed discussion of Hypotheses 1-2 (H1-2). Sanday covers a range of plausible meanings of the opening hypothesis 'ei hen estin' (137e4), which include (a) the one itself, (b) any form or cause itself insofar as it is one, (c) a weave into some unity of distinct forms, (d) a mathematical unity, (e) a continuum in which spatio-temporal individuals stand and take support, and (f) the "all" in which participant things are included (80). He settles with what he considers to be a weaker view that the "one" must refer to any individual just insofar as it is one, in other words, any one qua being one (80, 196 n. 29). This view, then, guides his interpretation of Parmenides' dialectical strategy.
Chapter 3 is a discussion of how the order and organization of the arguments point to a coherent set of metaphysical categories that prepare us to parse the "eidetic structure of the spatio-temporal one" (14). Aristotle's commitment to the being of this "one" constrains him to refer exclusively to the perceptibles or "ones" but in a way that demonstrates his commitment to a conception of being that is independent of space and time.
Chapter 4 takes up H2 that, like H1, is designed to reveal formal structure as a precondition of the perceptibles. The discussion of the addendum and Hypotheses 3-8 is relegated to the final chapter, "Transformed Perspective," and primarily focuses on the content of the addendum and H3, H5, and H7, which are cast as necessary consequences of the lessons learned from H2 and H3. Sanday argues that the notion of "the instant" (H2a [the addendum]), the idea of limit and the unlimited (H3), the idea of veridical predication (H5), and the idea of appearance (H7) necessarily follow from "the transformed understanding of the spatio-temporal 'one' arising from dialectical study" (15).
The book is for the most part well researched and takes into account some of the relevant scholarship. I found the central part the most interesting. Sanday compares the picture of dialectic in Republic VI-VII with the dialectical exchange in the second part of the Parmenides, particularly with respect to H1-H2. On his interpretation, if Socrates is to salvage (Ackrill ; cf. Rickless , ) the Theory of Forms he must start with a critique of our ordinary metaphysical privileging of perceptibles in order to realize that the intelligibility of these things requires "timeless being that structures and conditions becoming" (101). Each deduction, then, presumably takes Aristotle one step closer to an understanding of the "distinct kinds" of "is" and "one" and their interrelation.
The Sun Analogy and Allegory of the Cave in the Republic, as well as the description of dialectic at the end of Republic VI as proceeding according to hypotheses, are where Sanday claims Socrates (a) makes metaphysical distinctions between forms and things (no surprise), (b) employs dialectic to articulate this division in "rigorously discursive terms," and (c) distinguishes unreflective inquiry from dialectical inquiry as, at best, a preparation for the discussion in the Parmenides. Here we find Plato offering a glimpse into the epistemological leap from the perceptibles to their intelligible conditions, which the Parmenides presents in more detail.
Whereas the study of dialectic in the Parmenides concerns what sort of object forms are, the Allegory of the Cave, for example, establishes by image that there are objects towards which dialectic is directed, but leaves open the possibility that the very notion of object that fuels one's anticipation of insight will require substantial critique. Mathematical studies are a preparatory for practicing dialectic and fall short of it by, for instance, remaining tied to the basic spatial and quantifiable structure of individuals.
The parallels here between the Republic and Parmenides are worth considering, and Sanday's development of his thesis in these chapters is certainly compelling, yet I was left wanting a more detailed parsing of the Republic passages and more development of the connections between the two dialogues, and perhaps even connections with the methodology of the Meno and Phaedo. But, that is perhaps another book.
[If] someone, having paid attention to all the present [difficulties] and others of the same sort, will not allow there to be forms of the things that are (eidê tôn ontôn) and will not mark off a form (horieitai eidos) for each one (henos hekastou), he will not have anywhere to turn his thought (dianoian), since he does not allow that for each of the things that are there is an idea that is always the same (idean tôn ontôn hekastou tên autên aei einai), and in this way he will destroy (diaphtherei; cf. Theatetus 157b1) the capacity for dialectic (as Sanday interprets 'dialegesthai') in every way (pantapasi). But I think you are well aware of that.
It is Socrates' forms, beings that by this point in the discussion must merely be one and the same in at least one respect that Parmenides has in mind when proceeding to the dialectical exercise with the one itself (tou henos autou, 137b3) as subject. So, it is not surprising that Parmenides should separate the one as the first being to interrogate in its sundry ways of being and not being. One might be inclined simply to put it this way: one is among those formal conditions necessary for the possibility of dialegesthai itself.
Sanday also claims that the reasons he provides in support of his overall interpretation of the Parmenides do not rest on any supposed chronology of the dialogues because "it will never be decided in what order Plato wrote the dialogues, and even if it were, nothing would follow from that order about the quality of character of the thought Plato would be obligated to have" (11). This blanket statement is unjustified. That some of the dialogues like the Timaeus and Cratylus are more difficult to date than others is no reason to suppose that the dialogues generally cannot be chronologically ordered. Perhaps this is a moot point anyway since Sanday's actual position here is that the Socratic conversations in other dialogues are "preparatory for the metaphysical analysis undertaken in the Parmenides" (7). For instance, he leans on the discussion of dialectic in Republic VI-VII and points out that the notion of "eidetic complex" (forms composed of forms) is taken up later in the Theaetetus and Sophist.
And speaking of the Sophist, if Sanday's rather optimistic reading of section two of the dialogue is correct, particularly the supposed insights into being, participation, and the Theory of Forms, then one wonders what exactly is happening in this dialogue. The Eleatic Stranger offers some insights into Plato's conception of the nature and mechanism of being and not being by appeal to the "very large" kinds, particularly in relation to what he refers to as the forms (toin eidoin, 255d4) "by virtue of itself" and "relative to others," both of which play an important role in the dialectical exercise in the Parmenides -- at least as some have argued. But none of this is by any means perspicuous. Furthermore, I found the discussion of veridical truth and veridical legein primarily<|fim_middle|>55, 159-56, 163-65). Maybe it need not, but I am still puzzled as to whether this is what Plato had in mind for motion in H5.
The [Platonic] text is effectively incomplete in such a way that it will not allow itself to remain unanswered. In the way a good conversation opens by inviting, sometimes demanding, a reply, the dialogues at various levels of depth and scope present themselves as not having said enough, requiring supplement, addition, or recapitulation. In this book I take the stance that the Platonic text will show us how it demands to be read. The truth that emerges from this dialogical reading practice will come as a slowly growing harmony arising between oneself, other people, the text, and the world around us (11).
This is a rather different way of reading the text from what some will be accustomed to, and in principle I have no objections to this approach provided that the interpretation forwards, in this case, one's understanding of Plato's methodology and metaphysics. To be sure, Sandy has made a worthy and interesting contribution to the scholarship on the Parmenides, but at the end of the day, I remain unconvinced that Plato's Theory of Forms is true, easy to understand, and relatively intuitive.
J. L. Ackrill, "ΣUΜΠΛΟΚΗ ΕΙΔΩΝ" (1955), in Ackrill, Essays on Plato and Aristotle (Clarendon Press, 1997), 72-79.
M. L. Gill, Philosophos: Plato's Missing Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2012).
M. M. McCabe, "Unity in the Parmenides: The Unity of the Parmenides," in Form and Argument in Late Plato, ed. C. Gill and M. M. McCabe (Clarendon Press, 1996), 5-48.
S. Rickless, "How Parmenides Saved the Theory of Forms," Philosophical Review 107 (1998): 501-54.
-- -- -- -- -- Plato's Forms in Transition: A Reading of the Parmenides (Cambridge University Press, 2007). | found in H5 rather tough going. He thinks these notions involve what he calls the "motion of truth," but it is not clear that this idea, if I understand it correctly, fits well with the discussion of motion and rest in the Sophist (see 1 | 54 |
Acne can cost you at more than just money. Consistently buying different products from the chemist that show no lasting results, acne needs a dedicated skin routine that takes time to show true results. Here's our top 5 products for acne, spot prone or congested skin.
Every skin routine should start with a well-tailored cleanser. Exfoliating cleanser by ZO Skin Health contains Salicylic acid to chem<|fim_middle|> skin. Pore refiner is also a popular option depending on your own needs.
Book in for a skin consultation with a skin health specialist today to start treating your acne for long-term results. | ically exfoliate and unclog pores, removing excess oils from the skin. Blocked pores spread bacteria and acne so it is vital that pores are kept clear. The exfoliating cleanser also contains Jojoba esters to exfoliate dead skin cells without drying out your skin. Vitamin E is an added antioxidant to help protect your skin from free radicals such as pollution.
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What Is Dementia and How Can Dementia Home Care Help You and Your Loved One in ${custom_wordpress_blog_category}?
By Senior Care Authority Staff / January 27, 2022 April 11, 2022
Dementia is a condition that affects more than 55 million people worldwide. It is important not just to understand causes and symptoms but to help those living with it manage the disease and move through life as independently as possible for as long as possible. Let's look at some common questions and how dementia home care can help.
Dementia is actually not a disease in and of itself but, rather, a syndrome that is characterized by a collection of symptoms affecting cognition and memory, making it hard to remember, think clearly, and make decisions. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, although it's important to note that not all people who have been diagnosed with dementia necessarily have Alzheimer's Disease. Some other types of dementia typically identified are vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontal temporal and mixed dementia.
What Are Some Dementia Symptoms?
All of us have occasional problems recalling a name, accessing an old memory, or remembering where we may have parked our car. But someone living with dementia will exhibit a range of troubling and persistent symptoms that get worse and may include:
Changes in mood and personality
Decreased or poor judgment
Problems speaking or writing
Confusion with time or place
Disruptions in daily life due to memory loss
Difficulty managing everyday tasks
Repetitive behaviors
If your loved one is exhibiting any of these symptoms, it's important to know that it does not necessarily mean a dementia diagnosis; infections and dehydration, vitamin deficiencies, and depression can present many of these signs. However, if any of these symptoms persist or worsen, it's essential that you consult a physician who can make a diagnosis. It's also helpful to know that no single test can make a determination; a diagnosis is based on a range of medical tests, creating a baseline, and an individual's medical history.
How Quickly Does the Disease Progress?
Dementia is a progressive condition — it gets worse over time, not better. For some, the disease progresses rapidly;<|fim_middle|> Help?
If someone has been diagnosed with dementia, it's important to know there are expert resources available to both you and your family members that can help you navigate the progression of the disease. The sooner you familiarize yourself with them, the better. As Certified Dementia Practitioners, the advisors at Senior Care Authority can help you decide on the right help at the right time, including setting up in-home visits, scheduling respite care, learning important communication skills, and helping you decide on an assisted living situation, should that be warranted. It is so important to remember that you are not alone. We have helped hundreds of families respond to the challenges of a dementia diagnosis, and we can do the same for you, too.
To find out more about the symptoms of dementia and how we can help, get in touch with Senior Care Authority today. | in others, it takes years to get to the point where outside help is required. The progression depends largely on the underlying cause, whether it be Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body disease, Parkinson's disease, or some other root condition. While people will experience the stages of dementia differently, most will exhibit some of the symptoms. On average, dementia patients will live four to eight years after their diagnosis, although some live as long as 20 years after being diagnosed.
Does Dementia Only Affect Seniors?
Dementia is more commonly diagnosed in people over 65, but it can affect people in their 30s, 40s, or 50s. The estimated average age of onset of dementia in the U.S. is 83+ years old.
How Can Dementia Home Care | 167 |
Other Games >
Pages: [1] 2 3 All
Author Topic: Celeste (Read 2809 times)
Cuzz
Shuffle iT Username: Cuzz
is amazing. Discuss.
Re: Celeste
I like the part where you are jumping around.
Kuildeous
I looked it up on Wikipedia. Looks promising.
I wonder if it runs fine on my computer. My Alienware died, so I'm using a lesser computer right now.
A man has no signature
I beat it. I may try to get all the strawberries.
I did the first B-Side. Man, I don't think I'm going to get through the rest of those.
But yes, I highly recommend the game. I feel like I got my money's worth just playing through the main plot, and then there's a bunch more content if I want to go back to it.
sitnaltax
I'm enjoying it a lot. I love the short levels. It never feels cruel or unfair, even when it's being difficult.
I also appreciate the way they slowly introduce new challenges. They don't make you feel bad for missing the difficult strawberries and not jumping into the B-sides.
I got all the strawberries and I'm currently 5/8 B-sides, working on Chapter 6. I don't anticipate going for the golden strawberries or C-sides--but then again, I didn't anticipate going for the B-sides either and yet here I am.
Quote from: sitnaltax on March 01, 2018, 03:35:03 pm
If you finish the B-sides I think you will definitely want to do the C-sides, the difficulty ramp from B to C is not that severe. The C-sides are very short and there's essentially just one super long super hard screen. I really enjoyed them, anyway.
Besides the first couple normal levels, I think the golden strawberries are an entirely different (and to me, not appealing) beast. There is a part of me that wants to grind out a few more, though.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2018, 04:49:30 pm by Mic Qsenoch »
blueblimp
Celeste is excellent. I didn't try it right away because it's been compared to Super Meat Boy and I didn't really like that, but turns out I like Celeste anyway. Not sure what's the difference. (Maybe it's mostly that I don't like the SMB aesthetic.)
I've done everything now except 8B (which I did on 50% speed using assist mode) and 3C. Also, not the golden strawberries of course. It's probably my favorite 2D platformer of all time, but I usually don't like 2D platformers so that doesn't mean much. If anyone wants to try only one challenging platformer, this is the one to try.
Another game I've enjoyed recently is the VR game To The Top, which is basically the same genre as Celeste except as a VR game. One thing To The Top does that I wish Celeste did too is to have par times for each chapter. (TTT actually has three times of increasing difficulty.) Also, TTT's stages are more similar in length to Celeste's subchapters. Overall it makes for a more compelling casual speedrunning game. Celeste seems to be a great speedrun game but more for the hardcore crowd.
By the way, this GDC talk by<|fim_middle|>-B and indeed the C-sides seem pretty fair so far--I'm on 4-C right now. They're not as bad as I imagined--some intense maneuvers with no breaks, but the individual pieces are ok. For example, in 3-C (the level where the hotel ghost charges at you) I dreaded having to jump, dash, stomp the ghost to gain altitude/refresh, and dash again. The level doesn't require you to do that, though, which was nice.
For me, 3C was by far the hardest, because I find the Oshiro bop timing really hard. (Well, maybe not the highest deaths since it's not very long, but bopping Oshiro was the single hardest move for me.) The ones most people think are hardest are 5C, 7C, 8C. They're all fair though.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2018, 09:06:00 pm by blueblimp »
Quote from: pacovf on March 17, 2018, 12:20:04 pm
That's the tricky thing about the term "hard". There are a lot of different ways for a game to be hard. I wish there were better terms that more precisely described what makes the game hard, because some forms of hardness I like, and some I don't.
For games with hand-crafted levels, I like Celeste's model a lot (which dates back at least as far as Matt Thorson's early work Jumper (2004)): frequent checkpoints and instant respawn. Maybe it's that I like low stakes games that nevertheless require you to actually spend mental effort to play them.
Quote from: blueblimp on March 23, 2018, 09:04:33 pm
Man, you weren't lying about 5-C. That one took me 658 deaths and I was pretty close to just putting the game down. (The turning point came when I realized you don't have to move laterally at all to do the wall kick move, which let me do it much more consistently.) 6-C, by contrast, was 137 and probably less than an hour.
Last stops are 7-C and 8-C, of course, and the videos for both of them look absolutely insane.
Yeah, 5C requires mastery of the super wall jump. One issue with teaching advanced tech so late in the game (in 7B and 8C) is that they aren't repeated much in less demanding situations, making them hard to learn fully. IMO it would have been better to not bother teaching dash long jump at all, since 8C doesn't use it an interesting way anyway. For the dash wall jump, maybe require it for all B-sides instead so that the player gets more practice with it. (There is the problem though that people might play the B-sides out of order.) | the game's lead dev is a really interesting watch: One of Celeste's many strong points is the excellent level design, and the talk gives a behind the scenes look at how they did it.
Quote from: blueblimp on March 10, 2018, 05:25:20 am
Nice, I'll have to check this out. I really enjoyed the Game Maker's Toolkit video about its Assist Mode specifically, which is how I learned about the game in the first place.
Made it to the end and heading back for B-sides now. I suck so I'm already at over 20 hours and 6k deaths, but as someone who plays like 3 games a year at the most I'm really impressed with just how much it's sucked me in.
popsofctown
Quote from: timchen on September 04, 2015, 11:17:32 am
Also you probably are an expert if you buy two bureaucrats early.
Quote from: popsofctown on March 13, 2018, 10:20:13 pm
Titandrake
I haven't played Celeste yet, but the distinction I've heard is that Super Meat Boy is a precision platformer and Celeste is a momentum platformer. Precision platformers are about hitting very small jump windows, but your movement is very consistent and it depends very little on how you reach the jump point. Momentum platformers give you larger timing windows, but in exchange your movement state matters a lot more, and the game is more about maintaining speed and understanding the movement system.
Dustforce is a momentum platformer and so far everyone in the Dustforce Discord recommends Celeste.
I have a blog! It's called Sorta Insightful. Check it out?
Hm, that's interesting. For an ordinary playthrough (not speedrunning), I don't feel like Celeste puts much emphasis on maintaining speed. Almost the opposite, since you can stop really quickly on solid ground or by grabbing a wall. (Speedrunning is a different story because it uses techniques that you wouldn't use playing through normally.)
That said, the usual way to solve levels is to repeatedly figure out the sequence of moves you want to make to get to the next rest point, then make them in succession. Each move has some slack on it, but you do need to find a reasonable sequence. So if that's what "momentum platformer" means, that sounds accurate.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2018, 05:14:47 am by blueblimp »
I think the grip strength element involves "maintaining speed" to some degree though maybe that's not what they mean.
I did think it was cool in the video above where the creator talks about the "multiple approaches" and making hard levels that aren't reduced to just a sequence of precise inputs. There's always a cushion even if it is very small.
The speed runs of this game are crazy. The fact that there are these ways of moving through levels that you wouldn't find or use in an ordinary play through, but that they are somehow there by design and not a glitch is really interesting. They basically all look like a TAS run.
I tried it for a while, didn't really like it. I think it feels more like a rhythm game in that the gameplay is largely about pressing a specified key at a specified moment, and obviously because I'm a drummer, I always hit the keys too fast.
Quote from: Cuzz on March 14, 2018, 08:57:10 am
Yeah. Actually, considering that there isn't much precision demanded and you're given lots of rest points, it's a bit subtle why the game is hard at all. I think the key is that most generically-reasonable inputs will cause you to die (or otherwise fail to complete the room). That means very few of the rooms can be completed by accident, so you're forced to understand the room so that you can find specific inputs that work for that room. That gives it a slight puzzle-y feel to me, even though it really isn't a puzzle game.
markusin
Shuffle iT Username: markusin
I also switched from Starcraft
I watched the "Best Friends Play Celeste" video on Youtube that I stumbled upon by chance and checked out because of this thread. It was entertaining to watch, and the fluidity in the movement seemed appealing.
I also didn't like Super Meat Boy yet like some games that are very similar to it. There's this one on kongregate I played that's super similar, and I loved the game boy Donkey Kong puzzle platformer, and I've played all sorts of high difficulty platformers and dug them. Spelunky comes to mind.
There's not always time for all the things I want to do but I might wanna check this out.
I saw a crazy platformer during the last summer games done quick or whatever, it had 4 characters and all of them were like, chimney sweeps? it was pretty interesting to watch. Sometimes I feel like maybe they are funner to think about or watch then play..
pacovf
Multiediting poster
Quote from: popsofctown on March 17, 2018, 04:35:50 am
I'd say Spelunky is different. It's less hard than it feels, it's just super high stakes, because if you die, you've got to start completely over. If you had no items and only one hitpoint, but there was a checkpoint after every level, it would be a lot easier.
EDIT: or maybe I just need to git gud
Dustforce?
« Last Edit: March 17, 2018, 12:22:05 pm by pacovf »
Quote from: popsofctown on September 02, 2015, 02:07:20 pm
pacovf has a neopets account. It has 999 hours logged. All his neopets are named "Jessica". I guess that must be his ex.
Quote from: Mic Qsenoch on March 01, 2018, 04:48:28 pm
Thanks for the encouragement. I finally finished 8 | 1,352 |
> Dalziel and Pascoe
Dalziel and Pascoe
Andy Dalziel does not suffer fools gladly, but he has even more trouble with what he calls the "smart arses" of this world. So when the<|fim_middle|>coe.
Dalziel and Pascoe Series Guide
We watch the unlikely friendship unravel from series to series with Daziel and Pascoe.
Currently off air
Judge John Deed
Drama series about an uncompromising High Court judge... | inexperienced, soft-spoken, whiz-kid graduate Peter Pascoe joins his team at Mid-Yorkshire CID, there could be problems. At first Pascoe is somewhat taken aback by his brash and ballsy boss, but it soon becomes apparent there is more to Andy Dalziel than meets the eye.
5 Things You Didn't Know About Dalziel and Pascoe
His name is pronounced Dee-el. OK, so you knew that one...
Dalziel and Pascoe's Funniest Quips And Comebacks
Being able to take the mickey is a vital job skill…
Dalziel and Pascoe's 6 Maddest Cases
Some of the situations they've dealt with have been downright bizarre.
About The Cast
Andy Dalziel's the gruff, politically incorrect embodiment of old-school crime-fighting.
Listen to Colin Buchanan
A Stab in the Dark host Mark Billingham interviews the star of Dalziel and Pas | 189 |
Home/Kazuo Hasegawa
Kazuo Hasegawa
Yasujirô Shimazu – Watashi no niisan AKA My elder Brother (1934)
Kazuo Hasegawa has wild friends and hates being compared to his stepbrother, Reikichi Kawamura, who is steady, works hard at his taxicab business, and is amiable. That's why he left home a year ago. Now he has heard his mother is ill, and wants to come home, but thinks she hates him. That's nonsense, says Kawamura. Hasegawa agrees to reform. Just then two men come in and want to hire a cab. Everyone has gone home for the evening, so Hasegawa shows his willingness to reform by taking the fare. They drive to a distant house. They ask him to wait. While he does so, Kinuyo Tanaka pops out, begs him to help her escape. He does so. The two men are her step-brother, and the man everyone wants her to marry…. except her, of course.Read More »
Tamizo Ishida – Orizo nan henge AKA Seven Changes of a Paper Crane (1941)
Maya Grohn wrote:
The story is based on the serial novel by Tsunoda Kikuo, which was published in a magazine called "KING", the most popular magazine of its time. This type of magazine was deemed too popular for serious literature lovers, who regarded it as beneath them. Once a girl, a long time ago, Maya could not understand it all, but through ageing I have begun to enjoy these thing in a quite different manner.Read More »
Osamu Fushimizu – Shina no yoru aka China Night (1940)
Peter High wrote:
Fushimizu Osamu's immensely successful China Nights works the rich metaphorical possibilities afforded by the commonplace image of China as a disreputable "woman" in need of redemption. As early as 1911, popular historian Yamaji Aizan had characterized the nation as "not a powerless country like a single woman, but an infelicitous one like a prostitute." Although it's discretely muted, the film's first scene introduces Ri Koran's character as something perilously close to a "fallen woman".Read More »
Kon Ichikawa – Yukinojô henge AKA An Actor's Revenge [+Extras] (1963)
Master Director Kon Ichikawa's 1963 classic is considered by many to be one of the finest films ever made in Japan.Kasuo Hasegawa stars as Yukinojo, a talented kabuki actor who specializes in playing female roles (women were not allowed on the stage during the period of the film). But his success on<|fim_middle|>, released. However, like most pre-1945 jidaigeki, it has been seized and re-edited by GHQ during the occupation era. And now, only this truncated version which runs only 97 mins exists.Read More » | the stage is but a means to an end; his true goal is to visit vengeance upon the three ruthless and powerful men who destroyed his family's business and drove his parents to commit suicide.Yukinojo's vengeance will be carefully scripted, and skillfully acted. But the price of admission will be high indeed.Read More »
Teinosuke Kinugasa – Jigokumon aka The Gate of Hell (1953)
In 1159, during an attempted coup, one of the court's ladies in waiting disguises herself as the lord's wife, and a loyal samurai conveys her from the city. This diversion allows the royal family to escape. After the coup fails, the samurai asks his lord to let him marry the woman as his reward. The lord grants the request and then discovers she is already married to one of the ruling family's lieges. The samurai clings to his desire, importuning her to leave her husband, then challenging the husband to release her. Although the husband stays calm and she stays faithful, the samurai remains intemperate and stubborn, with tragic consequences.Read More »
Teinosuke Kinugasa – Yukinojo henge AKA An Actor's Revenge (1935)
Here is the 1935/1936 original version of "An Actor's Revenge", which was hugely popular at that time and a high point in Kazuo Hasegawa's career. In fact, he even chose to remake this film as his 300th film work, helmed by Kon Ichikawa.
The original film has 3 parts and runs 310 mins long | 344 |
Today, our worship gathering was led by children and youth, and among them were Jacob and Valerie, who read "The Big God Story", a quick Bible overview by Michelle Anthony. I then spent a few minutes talking about one integral part of the story, the parting of the Red Sea – from Exodus 14.5-31. Listen below, or watch the Facebook Live video, for which you don't need an account.
Have you taken time to laugh lately?
I don't watch much television; I have<|fim_middle|> "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength" (Proverbs 17.22, NLT).
After all, just because we are disciples of Jesus doesn't mean we can't have fun! Take time to laugh today. You won't regret it. | enough drama in my life! But when I do watch TV, it's either because I want to learn something or I want to laugh.
I spend a lot of time with people whose stories are almost always sad, so I do my best to make time to spend with people who make me laugh. I did this just last week, spending a bit of time with a friend whom I don't see all that often, but when I do, his stories invariably have me laughing almost to the point of tears.
As we encounter news stories, most of them are saddening, disheartening or plain old frightening. It can be depressing to engage in world affairs! But laughter is good for us physically, emotionally, and even spiritually.
The Bible says, | 151 |
Trainer David Elsworth believes Desert Orchid's feat of winning the King George VI Chase four times may never be matched.
Paying tribute to the racing icon who died on Monday, the man who guided his career said: "Racing gets more competitive and it's tougher nowadays, but he was a very good horse around Kempton."
"If they'd run the Gold Cup around there, he would have probably won four Gold Cups as well, but he wasn't as effective on left-handed tracks, despite scrambling home one year."
Elsworth, who revealed that the gelding's health had been deteriorating over the last week, added: "The Irish National win was another heart-stopper as we thought he'd fallen at the last, but he recovered and won well. He surprised me that day."
The sport paid tribute to its greatest equine athlete of the last 30 years.
Martin Broughton, chairman of the British Horseracing Board, said: "Desert Orchid was a wonderful horse of great talent and flair who became an icon for racing.
"He was the best-known and most-loved horse of recent decades and so many of his thrilling, brave victories will live long in the memory. We will all miss him very much."
<|fim_middle|>pton, so that shows that to have one you have to be one of the top performers of all time." | The fact his popularity reached beyond racing was summed up by tributes from two of the biggest names in football.
Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp, a close friend of Elsworth, recalled: "I always loved going to Elsie's when I had a couple of horses with him. It was fantastic to watch Desert Orchid tank up the gallop.
"I backed him many times on Boxing Day when he won the King George and, in 1989, I was lucky enough to back him in the Gold Cup. He was a legend and it was a thrill to take the grandchildren to see him."
BBC commentator John Motson said: "I was down at Cheltenham at the weekend and you can't go there without thinking about him. It's a big loss as he was a true national figure. At least he had a long retirement.
"Arkle has his statue at Cheltenham, Red Rum at Liverpool and Dessie at Kem | 196 |
Play The Diplomat's Quiz: June 30, 2019, Edition
Test your knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region with The Diplomat's weekly news quiz!
By Ankit Panda for The Diplomat
Welcome to The Diplomat's weekly quiz.
Each week, we will curate a list of 10 questions on recent events in the Asia-Pacific region (with occasional historical questions thrown in for variety).
These questions will cover all the topics we cover here at The Diplomat, including the politics, economics, security, culture, and history of the vast Asia-Pacific region.
Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month.
Rest assured, the answers to each question come straight from our pages. Usually, the answer to any given quiz question will be found in a recent article we've run. So, as long as you keep up with The Diplomat, you should be on your way to an easy 100 percent score on each of these quizzes.
You'll get to see your score and the average score across all our readers at the end of the quiz.
Well? What are you waiting for? Have a go at our quiz and find out just how well you know the Asia-Pacific this week.
Who is Hun Manet?
The eldest son of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Set
A Bhutanese painter known for landscapes
The nom de guerre of Myanmar rebel leader
A Laotian politician
Where did a U.S. cruiser and a Russian destroyer nearly collide in the first week of June?
Bering Sea
East China Sea
The Philippine Senate recently approved a maritime boundary agreement with which country?
Which of the following design features is China's new indigenously designed Type 002 aircraft carrier not likely to possess?
Nuclear propulsion
A catapult-based aircraft launch mechanism
A gross tonnage of more than 80,000 tons
An air-wing comprising the J-15
Which country did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit first after his reelection?
Why did North Korean state media criticize the recently released U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy Report?
Because it threatened a U.S. attack on North Korea
Because it criticized Kim Jong Un personally as a "tyrant"
Because it denied that North<|fim_middle|>Play The Diplomat's Quiz: May 26, 2019, Edition
With the ICJ's Verdict on Kulbhushan Jadhav Near, How Will India and Pakistan React?
What will become of Kulbushan Jadhav's case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)?
Heavy Rains Leave Scores Dead in Nepal, India, BangladeshFilipino Women Push for Human Rights Defenders LawUS Unlikely to Mediate in Ongoing Japan-South Korea Export Control SpatThe Socrates Project: The Key to Countering China?Which Countries Are For or Against China's Xinjiang Policies?
India's War on Urdu
Urdu is a long-time part of Indian culture, not an alien presence to be purged.
Read Feature
Saving Asia's DemocraciesThailand's Quiet Crisis: 'The Southern Problem'Urumqi 2009 and the Road to Xinjiang Re-education CentersUnderstanding the US-China Trade DisconnectThe Stalemate Driving Vietnam's Illegal Wildlife Trade | Korea possessed an ICBM capability
Because it called North Korea a "rogue state"
Approximately how many Hong Kongers participated in a June 9 protest against a proposed extradition law according to the protest organizers?
What is the name of the largest disputed South China Sea feature occupied by the Philippines?
Mischief Reef
Thitu Island
Itu Aba Island
Kalayaan Island
Which missile does a new type of ballistic missile tested by North Korea in May 2019 resemble?
The Chinese DF-21
The Russian Iskander-M
The U.S. Tomahawk
The Pakistani Nasr
Where is Lake Baikal?
News Quiz
Play The Diplomat's Quiz: July 14, 2019, Edition
Test your knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region with The Diplomat's weekly news quiz!
Play The Diplomat's Quiz: July 7, 2019, EditionPlay The Diplomat's Quiz: June 22, 2019, EditionPlay The Diplomat's Quiz: June 9, 2019, EditionPlay The Diplomat's Quiz: June 2, 2019, Edition | 249 |
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This tour is the reason why many people come to Panama! You'll be touring Panama City, including the Panama Canal, all the while your expert guide fills you in on the inside scoop and with historical anecdotes. Visit the Miraflores Visitor's Center for the Canal's museum and to witness ships pass through this engineering marvel. Take a ride through the former Canal Zone, prime spots in the city to visit the former capital, Panamá Viejo. Walk through the old plaza ruins, churches and a convent. Head on over to the colonial section of Casco Viejo- a wealth of churches, museums and carefully restored streets in an ongoing<|fim_middle|>.
Features: hotel pick-up/drop-off, transportation, knowledgeable bilingual guide.
** Note: a half-day tour is also available. | restoration process. Your guide will point out nighttime favorite hotspots in this popular section of the city. Enjoy a seaside lunch on the Causeway, four islands connected by dirt and rocks excavated from the Panama Canal that have transformed to popular hang-out spot for shops, restaurants, bars and bike paths for many families along the ocean | 65 |
Personal care is one of those extremely private concerns which we at Living with Disability understand should be treated with dignity and respect. The Uriwell product range is a fantastic set of products which make dealing with urinary or bladder weakness in both adults and children, providing a means of discreetly and comfortably relieving yourself without having to worry about searching for the less than easy to access toilet facilities or when in the car.
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The product exactly as described, my grandson is most willing to use it – its made going for a wee-wee exciting.
Uriwell have also introduced a multipack option: the Happy Family – Multipack Range. This is a 3 pack including a blue Uriwell, a pink Uriwell (an identical design but in pink), and a Happy Pee, the child friendly shape that can, of course, still be used by adults. Repackage these as gifts or use them yourself as a way of getting 3 uriwells at a very low price. One for | 233 |
Subtitles - none
Blurred silhouettes, where otherwise big stars stroll, gray streaks where glamour normally reigns, iconoclasm where strict attention is usually paid to visual staging...
Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Palmes d'Or
The city is a frenetic place, and a reason is needed for asking the people to stop for a moment and stand in front of the movie camera.
Lail<|fim_middle|> author of experimental and short films. Subsequently, he started to shoot documentary films from all corners of the globe...
Michael Glawogger
Planete Doc Film Festival Presents: Masterclass - Michael Glawogger
A love triangle between plastic bags.
Miloš Tomić
Stop-motion film Playground shows a battle between nature and culture, between organic ryegrass and artificial turf. American Football is played on rectangular fields, measuring 120 yards (110 meters) long and 160 feet (49 m) wide. These dimensions defined the framework for this film. Made with images found in Google Earth.
Gerco de Ruijter
Portrait of a Wedding Day (Detail)
Alix Didrich
A film poem. A minimalist reflection on whether inner states are transferable by the film medium.
Jan Šípek
In Psalm, the location is not specified apart from contemporary indicators of sub-Saharan Africa. At the start, from the white background of the screen and as if emerging from an earthy dust, a small cart pulled by a donkey accompanied by ghostly fi gures arrives at a well. Drinking, fussing with a can, is their fi rst action and it is slow, long, necessary and primordial. Then they leave...
Nicolas Boone | a Pakalniņa
Papa Gena
Parallel Space: Inter-View is made with a photo camera. A miniature photo 24 by 36mm is exactly the size of two film frames. Originally, I had a strict, formal concept. The visual space of the Renaissance locked in the optics of the film and still camera...
Parallel Space: Inter-View
The film explores the dozens of moods, rhythms, and pockets of performance coexisting in tight proximity within the park's prismatic social space, capturing waltzing couples, mighty sycamores, karaoke singers, and buzzing cicadas...
Libbie D. Cohn, J. P. Sniadecki
People's Park
An hallucinatory tale which documents a filmmaker's journey to Canada's arctic in search of the Northern Lights.
Peter Mettler
Picture of Light
a ko.incidental walk through omonoia, the central square of athens, four days before the national parliament elections of 2007...
Konstantinos-Antonios Goutos
Michael Glawogger first established himself as an | 232 |
Ascending The Corporate Ladder
Treasury & Risks 2012 picks of outstanding corporate finance executives under the age of 40
By Treasury and Risk | November 01, 2012 at 08:00 PM
The challenges facing corporations seem to grow constantly, whether it's uncertainty created by the European debt crisis, waves of regulatory changes in the U.S. and overseas, or emerging risks such as cyber criminals targeting intellectual property and natural disasters disrupting extended supply chains. Fortunately, corporations keep enlisting new recruits to help them deal with those challenges. This list is an attempt to highlight some of the promising younger executives in corporate finance, treasury and risk management departments. It reflects suggestions from subscribers and treasury and finance professionals. These executives, whose ages range from 31 to 39, already have an impressive list of accomplishments to their credit and no doubt will rack up many more in the years to come.
Continue to the following pages for our profiles…
Martha Bailey 38 VP, finance & corporate controller Kennametal Bailey implemented global standard accounting policies at the $2.7 billion provider of tools, equipment and engineering services, benefiting its P&L, and provided acquisition and integration support for a $380 million transaction. Earlier, she served as controller for the company's metalworking solutions and services group. Prior to joining Kennametal in 2005, Bailey worked at Deloitte & Touche. She has a B.S. in business administration from Duquesne University.
David Calabria 38 Assistant treasurer & VP Avis Budget Group Calabria led the creation and implementation of an international treasury clearinghouse that allows the $7 billion car rental company to move cash in a tax-efficient manner among its overseas units. He's also instrumental in securing financing for the company's fleet in various countries. Prior to joining Avis, he worked at JPMorgan Chase and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Calabria has a B.B.A. in accounting from the University of Notre Dame.
Tre<|fim_middle|> racial diversity on corporate boards, as well. | asury and Risk
Treasury and Risk Staff Writers
Managing Talent Through the Great Resignation
Debra Lopez | October 29, 2021
Companies that don't address the new needs of a fundamentally changed workforce may end up scrambling.
State Street Says Companies Must Have Women on Their Boards
Saijel Kishan | January 12, 2022
In the next proxy season, the asset manager will invest only in businesses with at least one female board member, and will expect | 108 |
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The ambidextrous design features rear-mounted Touch Strips, along with the accompanying Touch Strip Toggle Buttons, which give you control of up to four application-specific Touch Strip functions like brush | 102 |
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Eugene Weekly : Cover Story : 8.5.2010
Archive by EW-staffPosted on 02/24/2012
Taking Mom Home
A Eugene man's journey with his mother to the end
Story and Photos by Ben Fogelson
Susanne Schumann 1937-2010
Putting our heads together
Your own bedding at the hospital doesn't mean you're home
So leave me to die in the comfort … of my own home. — From "Punk as Fuck" by American Analog Set
Pulling the trigger, 9 am Jan. 4, 2010
Killed Mom a few hours ago. I haven't even had my coffee.
Actually, the state of Oregon says I didn't kill her. State says that "Death with Dignity" is not euthanasia. Not "assisted suicide." But the State of Ben says know yer liberties. As individuals, death is nothing if not our own. Call it what you will, there's one thing I know: She wouldn't have done it without me.
Now Mom's the deepest vision of silver-haired sleep, literally chilling on her side next to me in bed, snuggled up like a happy child, my hand on her shoulder, her head, her hair. I call my peeps to tell them it happened, that three months after her diagnosis and the following downhill slide, she rolled over at 3 am last night and woke me with, "I want to do it now."
And so we did it. She swallowed the stuff and died and my friends say wow and what was it was like.
"Amazing." I say. "In-fucking-credible. Insane." And I mean every syllable.
"So where is she now?" They ask.
"Uhh, right next to me." I say. "I'm still sitting here."
Their gasps resound clearly, echoes in empty churches.
I look at myself, still in the bed. "It's too cold to get out from under the covers." I say.
It's not cold, but the lie helps. What am I doing here? For many months I was there for my mom. Now I exist for myself.
I say to my friends that I'm going to put shades on her and a hat and take her for a ride to the incinerator in her convertible, and I almost believe myself. That I might take pictures of Mom and I on Portland bridges, at the Square, that we (I) might get coffee, like two spies passing microfilm but sans microfilm and with a dead mother. But when I gently raise her head and slip the sunglasses over her ears I realize that, despite knowing such an irreverent gesture would have won her complete, enthusiastic and unadulterated approval, she's cooled down now and stiffening, and I can't follow through. Who knows what one will become in times like these?
So … what do I do?
I dial a budget mortuary and a calm male voice answers, pauses, reverent, self-assigned keeper of the gate. There's silence, silence on the line growing into a towering mountain shadowing my world. In the wholeness of one staggering moment my voice struggles up the slope and pours down the other side.
"I want to … schedule a pick-up."
It was …
Pancreatic cancer, caught late. So late they'd shut the doors and posted a guard.
PankC is like that. If not stumbled upon in its infancy, such as birthing itself high up in the organ, initially blocking a bile-duct and painting you jaundiced yellow, there's not much other reason you'd notice its presence while it sets up camp, collects kindling and builds a roaring fire.
"Unfortunately," says my brother Nick, an OB in gynecology, "that's the nature of a lot of cancer."
True that, little brother. Can I get a witness? Mom couldn't. Not in time, anyway. Her cancer was not caught in its infancy at all.
Looking back Mom was losing weight and said she was tired, but she seemed old enough to<|fim_middle|> In Or Are You Out?
Archive 10 years ago
If five beach bums tried to surf their way to the classic California rock sound (The Doors, The Byrds, etc.) but instead got lost in a cloud of pot smoke and found themselves at a goth house party, you would end up with something like The Growlers. The Growlers are from Orange County; they like a little reverb on their guitars; there's a little bit of dark soul in their sound; and they do look and act baked much of the time, but that's where the similarities to those other bands end. Continue reading →
Little Shop of Horrors at Pleasant Hill
Just like the herbaceous monstrosity at the heart of this campy musical romp, the cult appeal of Little Shop of Horrors just keeps on growing. But if you've merely seen the movie starring Steve Martin and Rick Moranis, you only know half the story. Continue reading →
30 Years of PIELC
ArchiveNews 11 years ago
Tell your friends "I'm going to spend the weekend at a law conference" and they'll figure you are in for a really horrible couple days. But when it comes to the UO's Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC), attendees are actually in for some fun and excitement. Continue reading →
Tags: PIELC / Public Interest Environmental Law Conference
Local Beer, Exotic Brats
Rare meats, family recipes and fresh bread set these Bangers & Brew's brats apart from the ones you grill up at home
Chow 2 days ago
Bratwurst is an American staple when it comes to cookouts and pregame tailgates, yet restaurants that serve brats exclusively seem almost unheard of. At least … Continue reading →
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© Eugene Weekly, 2023 | thin out — and coating the growing cracks of her illness was the armored exterior of a multifarious past. Count back from over 70 and imagine a little girl growing up in a loud, incendiary Berlin. She was abused, emotionally and physically, but she hardened up, swam on the German national team and was very smart. She made it to the U.S., got her masters and Ph.D. in psychology but then couldn't make it through her own psychotherapy. These complexities eventually became an attractive and risky — to those who loved her — mixture that made up her duplicitious personality.
In adulthood, her physical frame rebelled. It began with affliction but included addiction. Her spine was the first to cause her physical pain, but her greatest ache lay deeper and would never out. With the help of doctors and her own observations, she tirelessly commanded surgeries on her back, feet, shoulder and hips. Continuously in a state of (self) diagnosis, recovery or both, she somehow, heroically managed to swim national records, have a family and here a widely respected psychology practice. She was proud and loud, a bull in a china shop, and favoring nature over nurture, she believed her path to be set. She charged forward ever scoffing at convention, and was adored and feared for it, as an athlete, an intellectual, an artist and a character.
She was generous and venomous, and she felt she couldn't change. Accepting from Mom came at cost.
"No," she said to me one time, when we were visiting a Hindu temple together. It was a warm sunny morning, and a breeze trailed through ancient stone statues. "I guess I don't."
I'd asked her if she respected me. We were in India together. She asked me to be there. It was only through accepting her invitation that I found myself hearing those words in response to my query. One who feels it knows it, I guess.
As with many of her friends and family before and after me, my role was often the recipient of love disguised as heaping generosity, often a debtor when an un-bidden balance was called due, saddening though unintentional — emotional subterfuge.
So when she said she was feeling tired, no one gave it a second thought. More like, about time. Tired we can deal with.
So no, it was not caught in its infancy.
A shower of good timing, 8 pm, Jan. 2, 2010
We siblings had been taking turns. It was necessary in order to keep up with what Mom needed. But it seemed like the end was nearing.
I was at home in Eugene, and I heard it had gotten bad since I had departed several days before. The following I heard by phone: My sister found Mom wandering about in the middle of the night, delirious, fully dressed for work. Another time, after being put to bed at night, Mom was found at dawn in the bathtub, unable to get out, sitting naked in cold water. And finally, she couldn't always hold herself any more. On a trip to the bathroom she hadn't made it. It was a clean up.
As far as Mom's decision to end her life if things ever got unbearable, there was a line in the sand. She'd told me in her tough, brash way years before, "If I can't shit on my own, that's it. Good-bye."
I knew she'd meant it. I needed to get back up there.
One thought I had was that perhaps she was taking too much morphine. When I showed up, Mom was in bed, literally not knowing day from night. The passage of time had ceased to be part of her conscious program. It was evening and she wailed loudly from her bed about it being tomorrow. She was crying terribly and I soothed her and took over, fearful of and doubting my own ability to handle a long night of the worst, from a couch by her bedside. A night with the kind of stuff I'd heard had happened the last few nights.
Before she went to sleep I got her to understand that if she wanted morphine she'd have to get it on her own. She watched as I pushed the little brown bottle from where it sat directly next to her, to about 10 inches farther away. I had a momentary vision of her drinking the drugs from a dropper held up to her mouth. Now she'd have to reach for it.
I woke early to a clear view of the city through her massive bedroom window, surprised and relieved to have slept a calm night. I went upstairs, knowing that despite continuously claiming a lack of all hunger, Mom had so far devoured whatever vittles I'd put before her. I just didn't know if that would still hold, from what I'd been hearing.
When she woke, this day before her last, she was clear-eyed and smiling, thin, but cognizant and alert. She'd always made the best eggs Benedict and I'd inherited the secret. I put the plate of two English muffins with ham and eggs and drenched in lemony sauce on her lap, and the buttery deliciousness was gone in short minutes. She sat up straight and started going through papers. Mom was back.
What followed was easily one of the best days of our lives. I cooked steak. Made her open-faced sandwiches on dark German bread and small glasses of brown beer. She ate every bite and only occasionally reached over for her dropper of morphine.
The difficulties of the last months were beginning to fade away. I noticed a sense of lightness was becoming pervasive. I smiled deep into her eyes many times and she into mine. We put our heads together. I was doing the best giving I could imagine.
That evening I took her into the shower. I had never wanted to see her naked because I'm still afraid of the path to death and what the vision might mean, so this was always tough for me. This time it was different. The day had been so sublime, it transformed apprehension into action, fear into love. She sat on a stool and let warm water pour down upon her. I handed her soap and massaged her shoulders and scrubbed her hair and played the fool and made her laugh. At last, I wrapped a white towel around her head and she made to rise. Looking at her clear face I said, "Stay there. I need to get the camera."
She hesitated and then followed my command. She could hear in my voice what I had seen, and she always did love to look beautiful.
That night, she told me from her bed, "Tomorrow I want to do it."
I got up off the couch and sat with her and we held hands.
"If you really need to say that, fine," I said, "but you don't have to. If you want me there, and I do want to be there, I don't care where I am. I'll come within a couple hours and you can do it then."
I had no great belief or hope that she would follow through on that the next day, and to an extent I was right. But through that night I slept in her bed with her for the first time in my adult life, amazed at what tomorrow could bring, the great change of a life departing the world, and me left behind to live in it.
We held hands and felt warm and smiled and enjoyed the increasingly buoyant feeling in the room, which was silent until 3 am.
Rude awakening, 3:30 am Jan. 4, 2010
Sleep weighs softly on us. After years of traveling the Third World, Mom knows which back-alley market stalls sell the finest sheets, and we're wrapped in them, thread upon thread, ceaselessly approaching a world beyond our own. And while we sleep, her house floats above Portland on a tall hill. And the walls are all windows and the city lights are a million sparkles beyond the glass, observers of our warmth. And in a single moment, Mom's thin hand reaches over and tussles my dozing shoulder, and I wake beside her in her last hour.
Her voice in the thickening darkness: "I want to do it now."
And I audibly wonder, my eyes widening, "Are you serious?"
"Yes, I want to do it now."
Holy shit.
And I say, "I gotta piss." On my way to the toilet, padding naked across deep carpet I'm caught gliding on a rail, watching the walls float by like some amusement ride of my youth. My brass band heart breaks into a stacato warm-up.
I return, squint at Mom closely in the shadows and say softly, "Are you serious?"
"Yes," she says, her eyes clear in the darkness, sitting up, lucid and fine, her legs swung off the bed.
Holy mother of God. Am I ready for this?
"I gotta get my clothes on." I say. The world as I know it has slowed down and sped up simultaneously, passing us in two directions. The future approaches, hurtling at a meteoric pace, while the present is pleasant, deep and silent. The past is becoming itself, unraveling like the threads on the bed.
"What do we do?" I ask.
She tells me.
Death with Dignity can go like this: You take a few preliminary pills and wait 30 minutes. The fellas kick in, and as I understand it, they keep the body from puking and shitting when death comes knocking. Those buggers put the "D" in dignity. Thirty minutes go by, and you drink a mixture of water and the contents of a butt-load of emptied barbiturate capsules. Then, as in my mom's case, you've got about 90 seconds to make a statement on your way down to the pillow. You paddle for your greatest wave about an hour from then.
"Look, Mom," I say, knowing that throughout her entire life she had a penchant for messing up instructions, "If you want to do it like that, I'm OK with it, but I think maybe I should just read the directions. That OK with you?"
"Yep," she says, but she knows she's nailed it on this one. This is something she paid attention to. "I don't want to wake up in a hospital bed." She adds, looking at me pleadingly and almost sly. "If this doesn't work, you have to figure it out."
"OK, Mom."
She lifts the first pills to her mouth and swallows them, then takes a drink from a glass through a straw.
She tells me to call three of her friends and my sister. They'd have to answer their phones, and then they'd have no more than 30 minutes to make it to Mom's bedroom. She's been dying for a while, and she isn't waiting now.
Death-minus-30. I hold poison in my hands, the great catalyst. Is it poison? It looks normal, a sealed plastic orange container, like a trip to the pharmacist.
The calls made, I go to the bathroom sink to mix the barbiturates. Never before have I been terrified to spill. Scared, yes; terrified, no. Another first. The sink shoots water out faster than I intend, and — my heart almost coming to a stop — some powder blows out over the lip of the container, settling on the counter. My eyes widen. How much? I look in the wet container. Will it matter? I decide it won't. I lick a finger and put it down on the mess on the counter, raise it to my lips. Finger to mouth, the taste of beginning, end, hereafter. Bittered and wincing, I sprint upstairs to the kitchen for some maple syrup. I deliberate for a moment between real and Log Cabin.
I also called the Death With Dignity representative. I would have liked to have been able to verify our understanding of the printed instructions and to ask if maple syrup could possibly botch the job, but one can only let a phone ring so long.
Back to the bedroom, Mom sits quietly. I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening.
Kneeling at the bedside, I hold the cup forward. Mom looks at me and takes it. She pragmatically plugs her nose and raises the container to her lips and drinks until there is no more. Silence. She hands it back to me, and I put it on the table beside her bed, our eyes locked.
She gazes at me with a smile in her eyes and in her heart. She lifts her arms and pulls me down …
I just deleted my "Mom" folder, 4 am
"Tell Liz how much I love her. And tell Nick."
My sister and brother.
"I love you so much. You have done such a good job." Her arms hold me gently and tight, wrapped around my neck as I lean forward onto her from the edge of the bed.
"And now …" She says drowsily and happy, and I realize what the thickness in the air is. Arrives a time when love has weight, is palpable. I'd brought mine to her house above the city and Mom's was flowing from her like a lake turned on end, filling the room from bottom to top. Her floodgates had opened, and our love was mingling and perfect in its existence, content to push sublime serenity into every silent corner. I guess I'd chosen the right syrup.
"You just have to let … go."
And her arms open up around my neck, strangely enough as if she is going to fly away, and those were her last words, and her eyes are closing, and two of her friends come around the corner and make it just in time. She turns on her side and snuggles down into feathers she looks at one friend and takes a kiss, and then her eyelids meet, and we four stay silent in the darkness.
I kneel at her head, the side of the bed, ultra alert, seeming to take notice of every infinitesimal vibration. What happens when the soul floats away? Does it? The friends sit on the floor to my left, crying noiselessly in the peace. The silence is absolute. On my knees and statue-still I stay. Then my arm reaches out and cradles the back of my mom's white-haired head, gently.
She appears to breathe for some time.
Moments tick away. Occasionally I open my eyes, let shapes reestablish themselves in the grey, fuzzy darkness. Does her chest rise and fall? We are tied to earth by fragile tendons. To the left, a family hand takes my own. My knees sink deeper into the carpet and my spine straightens, a line upwards to the ceiling and beyond, and we sit. Breaths long and slow, love in, love out.
After 45 minutes, I feel the almost imperceptible loss of my balance. I open my eyes for a moment, and 5 am is not far away. Make it there, I think, and it will be over. Make it to 5, make it to the end.
"Alright," I say, another quarter hour gone by. "You guys do whatever you want." I mean it. Still on a track, still flowing forward.
"I'm going to sleep." Suddenly so drowsy, I stand and walk around the bed, her friends now lost behind me and dissolving into the mist. And I lift an edge of the covers and slide in next to her and put my head not far from hers and my hand on her shoulder asking for the last of her physical comfort, and I lie that way until the city is touched and then covered in a blanket of sun and the room is bright and airy and I wake in a state of bewilderment and excitement and gratitude.
I think she is gone.
Predicting the unpredictable.
On how not to off one's self.
Saying you'll kill yourself when the last guest leaves is a terrible idea. Who knows how long they'll stay?
"I'm going to do it when the last guest leaves," Mom says two weeks before her going away party.
Mom had been given three-to-six months. My brother the doctor said it'd be like two-to-four. I said what about with good behavior? Obvious point is, use the time you're given. A few months is not a lot to tie up a lifetime of strings, but it's a lot more time than what you get when death comes unnanounced. Given the estimates, we lucky novices (my siblings and I) did manage to intuit that even 60 days would be incalculably precious for setting up for a lifetime of looking back satisfied.
And so we threw a party, one that carried us and killed us.
It was awesome, and everyone pitched in. I printed my Mom's nickname onto shirts in every color the catalogue had, no two the same. The family grumbled at first, but it soon became a tugging-match for shirts as the guests grew into a cheesy-yet-brilliant rainbow, unanimously declaring love and support. Mom sat doped and vibrant on her upstairs couch, smiling and laughing with a large room absolutely jammed with her family and friends, all of them attentively listening to and recounting memories, crying, laughing thunderous. It was perfect, and everyone got the shared farewell they'd expected. I read some writing* to her and bawled like a son losing his mother. I told her, a champion swimmer, how waves were my lover and plaything and how her granddaughter excelled in water.
However, through the laughter and tears, having heard Mom's morbid declaration to depart soon thereafter, many guests thought they were witnessing her final hours. And we siblings felt especially emotional, excited and unfortunately expectant.
"I'm going to do it when the last guest leaves," she told us two weeks earlier.
"OK, Mom," we say. "What do you want to call the party?"
It hadn't occurred to her, and she doesn't care. I suggest "Susanne Schumann 2010: Dangerous," and am serious, but by the look in my sister's eye, I am told someone else will be handling the invites.
As the day approaches, we can only imagine that the weeks of extremely stressful details are winding down. The trips to the emergency room to withstand her pulmonary embolisms, the navigation of hospice care, the oxygen and insurance companies, a deluge of well-wishers, our own sadness-ridden emotions, all spread among three siblings who barely get along, all this must be coming to an end. Because Mom has said she'll dispatch herself after the party.
But she didn't. The party was a humongous shot of adrenaline, far better than any chemo.
After the guests leave and Mom "stays," we children wander around hollow for days, double horrible, crying in contradictory limbo. We humans seek closure. To be denied that blessed finality and hate the resulting anguish is to wish harm on the one whose lost love we predict to grieve.
Don't go there. Mom ended up having some decent weeks, and in the end, she sprung it on me as she should have, with a tap on my shoulder. She, having seen the havoc it wrought, admitted she'd made a bad mistake with her prediction, and if you can't trust a deathbed admission, you're not reading the story; the story's being read to you. We forgave her, of course. However … lesson learned.
Get the medications by the bed, let the loved ones know a time may be picked in the whim of a wondrous moment. At some point, a sense of love and lightness will invade the room, and you'll be the second one to know it.
This story, dedicated to my family, is now finished from Ocean Haven, an awesome hotel on the Oregon Coast. I sit in the same room I slept in after my daughter Quinn's still-birth, and the same room that my wife Meagan's mother Joni stayed in after the death of her own mother.
Letter to Mom, from Ben
Mom, now that all of us have come to this place together, and now that many of your loved ones are gathering to honor and celebrate you, and to soak in your exceptional energy like you used to soak up potato-leek soup with hunks of soft Metropol French bread, I know it is time to recount some moments, share significant memories, invoke selected slices of the past, those which were, are, and always will be, you.
I was 11 years old. Time freezes at a red light. "I will always love you, no matter how. No matter how you turn out: fat, thin, short, tall, black, white, big, small, gay, straight. I will always, always love you. No matter what choice you make in life." That was me, the kid you were talking to, building me up, instilling me with security. That foundation was you.
Next, my hand pressing deep into Andean moss, moist emerald threads of centuries, grey stones and backpacks and chewing coca leaves. That, my friends, and the love we shared and that Peruvian sunrise, was you.
Underwater. I'm off the starting block in a high-school pool, time expands, lengthens, and the plunge envelops me into another world entirely. I'm fast, some naturally but largely by your teaching. Now I'm 90 feet down and in the distance where the crazy deep blueness meets crazier deeper blueness, a giant leopard ray floats by as if on some track, soars by, flapping its wings slowly saying to me you belong, you're OK here. Now I'm in the surf off some Hawaiian island. The waves are large, and I dive barefoot beneath them, or leap over them or plunge through them, their tricky strength has become a part of me, like my dream-self. The joy the water brings is immense. And now my daughter Jun turns heads at the pool through her fearless submarine talents, and Meagan, who once was fearful and could scarcely propel herself in the water, has safely surfed truly large Hawaiian waves with me, to my extreme delight. That is you.
Opal Creek, old forest, center of the center of the center of nature's grace, we hike up and down you and I — you with a walking stick, me with a pack, and finding soft green forest floor three yards thick we make our beds, smoke and eat and talk and laugh, listening to the roaring creek like characters from some fantasy novel, traveling to a hidden land, knowing we would pass along that way but twice, there and back. We shared those secret corners of that place, and that was you.
Your granddaughter Jun: She is you. From taking Meagan in as your daughter, to recognizing her motherly yearning. You didn't judge us, but gave encouragement and money. During the adoption process you placed 1,000 terrible curses on anyone who slowed things down, sent blessings across the seas that would keep Bai Yumei safe and happy until our arrival. After only several dozen steps back on home soil, you were the first to hold dear Jun, and her eyes are still bright to this day with the thought of her "Omi." In that you are hers alone. May a part of her laugh ever be your laughter, for that is you.
India. The Taj Mahal. China, the markets where shopkeepers kept phenomenal animals and potions made from them. South America, Spanish, France, 4 am drunken stops at the first boulangerie open in the morning. Japan, young and scared. As child you had me viewing the world through varied lenses, a small world because of jet airplanes, a large world because of the unfair scattering of resources, a small world because of the best parts of human nature, a small world because I grew to decide me future called for it.
Thank you, Mom, thank you so much. From your beginnings to today, you have saturated the universe around you with your spirit. The fact that everyone here will agree to that does not make it so; it simply is, as you have made it. This is my personal and public acknowledgement of what would not have come to pass, at least not in such a way, all things that I value as much as I value anything in life, without you and your additions. Thanks, Mom.
Are You | 5,091 |
Beaumont, Texas (September 13, 2017) – "He's a scruffy fella." That's how Mona McKenzie described their mobile kitchen mascot. Mona, is a volunteer responding as part of The Salvation Army's Hurricane Harvey relief efforts in Texas' Golden Triangle. She came to Beaumont, Texas to serve from her home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota where she regularly volunteers with The<|fim_middle|> to all who see him.
As of September 12, The Salvation Army has served 485,023 meals, 441,821 snacks, and 549,959 drinks statewide in response to Hurricane Harvey. Emotional Spiritual Care Officers have spoken with 27,167 first responders and survivors. | Salvation Army.
"We needed a mascot, so I looked and looked and found this lion. It was perfect." Mona said. "I named him, Judah. Jesus is the Lion of Judah. And who is the King of The Jungle? Jesus!" Judah watches over the canteen staff and serves as a conversation starter for those who come up to the window for a hot meal.
He's a little lion, but he represents something much bigger. Scruffy Judah stands for the message of strength and hope. This little lion is there to help people open up, to share their story. Judah, through his unassuming presence, relays calm and peace | 136 |
Also by Jonathan Stroud
**The Bartimaeus Books**
_The Amulet of Samarkand
Ptolemy's Gate
The Ring of Solomon_
_The Amulet of Samarkand Graphic Novel_
_Buried Fire
The Leap
The Last Siege
Heroes of the Valley_
About the Endnotes
Bartimaeus is famous for making snarky asides and boastful claims, which you can find in this book's endnotes. To access his comments as you are reading the story, click on the highlighted superscript number and the page will turn to the corresponding note. To return to where you were reading, click on the same number in the endnotes section. This feature works on most devices.
Copyright © 2004 by Jonathan Stroud
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion Books for Children, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN 978-1-4231-4150-1
Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com
_For Philippa_
**The Main Characters**
**THE MAGICIANS**
Mr. Rupert Devereaux | Prime Minister of Great Britain and the Empire
---|---
Mr. Carl Mortensen | Home Secretary
Ms. Jessica Whitwell | Security Minister
Mr. Henry Duvall | Chief of Police
Mr. Marmaduke Fry | Foreign Secretary
Ms. Helen Malbindi | Information Minister
Mr. Julius Tallow | Head of Internal Affairs
Mr. John Mandrake | Assistant to the Head of Internal Affairs
Mr. George Ffoukes | Magician Fourth Level;
Department of Internal Affairs
Ms. Jane Farrar | Assistant to the Chief of Police
Mr. Sholto Pinn | A merchant; proprietor of
Pinn's Accoutrements of Piccadilly
Mr. Quentin Makepeace | A playwright; author of _Swans of Araby_
and other works
_And various other magicians, policemen, and spies_
**THE COMMONERS**
Kitty Jones
Jakob Hyrnek
Mr. T. E. Pennyfeather
Anne Stephens
Frederick Weaver
Stanley Hake
Nicholas Drew
Clem Hopkins
_And other members of the Resistance_
**THE SPIRITS**
Bartimaeus | A djinni—in service to Mr. Mandrake
---|---
Queezle | A djinni—in service to Mr. Ffoukes
Shubit | A djinni—in service to Ms. Whitwell
Nemaides | A djinni—in service to Mr. Tallow
Simpkin | A foliot—in service to Mr. Pinn
_And numerous other afrits, djinn, foliots, and imps_
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue: Prague, 1868
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Three
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Four
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Endnotes
About the Author
Praise for the Bartimaeus Books
At dusk, the enemy lit their campfires one by one, in greater profusion than on any night before. The lights sparkled like fiery jewels out in the grayness of the plains, so numerous it seemed an enchanted city had sprung up from the earth. By contrast, within our walls the houses had their shutters closed, their lights blacked out. A strange reversal had taken place—Prague itself was dark and dead, while the countryside around it flared with life.
Soon afterward, the wind began to drop. It had been blowing strongly from the west for hours, carrying word of the invaders' movements—the rattling of the siege engines, the calling of the troops and animals, the sighing of the captive spirits, the odors of the incantations. Now, with unnatural speed, it died away and the air was steeped in silence.
I was floating high above the Strahov Monastery, just inside the magnificent city walls I'd built three hundred years before. My leathery wings moved in strong, slow beats; my eyes scanned the seven planes to the horizon. It did not make for happy viewing. The mass of the British army was cloaked behind Concealments, but its ripples of power already lapped at the base of Castle Hill. The auras of a vast contingent of spirits were dimly visible in the gloom; with every minute further brief trembles on the planes signaled the arrival of new battalions. Groups of human soldiers moved purposefully over the dark ground. In their midst stood a cluster of great white tents, domed like rocs'eggs, about which Shields and other spells hung cobweb-thick.
I raised my gaze to the darkened sky. It was an angry black mess of clouds, smeared with streaks of yellow to the west. At a high altitude and scarcely visible in the dying light, I spied six faint dots circling well out of Detonation range. They progressed steadily widdershins, mapping out the walls a final time, checking the strength of our defenses.
Speaking of which... I had to do the same.
At Strahov Gate, farthest flung and most vulnerable outpost of the walls, the tower had been raised and strengthened. The ancient doors were sealed with triple hexes and a wealth of trigger mechanisms, and the lowering battlements at the crest of the tower bristled with watchful sentries.
That at least was the idea.
To the tower I flew, hawk-headed, leather-winged, hidden behind my shroud of wisps. I alighted barefoot, without a sound, on a prominent crest of stone. I waited for the swift, sharp challenge, the vigorous display of instant readiness.
Nothing happened. I dropped my Concealment and waited for some moderate, belated evidence of alertness. I coughed loudly. Still no joy.
A glimmering Shield protected part of the battlements, and behind this crouched five sentries. The Shield was a narrow affair, designed for one human soldier or three djinn at most. As such, there was a good deal of fidgeting going on.
"Will you _stop_ pushing?"
"Ow! Mind those claws, you idiot!"
"Just shove over. I tell you, my backside's in plain view now. They might spot it."
"That could win us the battle on its own."
"Keep that wing under control! You nearly had my eye out."
"Change into something smaller, then. I suggest a nematode worm."
"If you elbow me one more time..."
"It's not _my_ fault. It's that Bartimaeus who put us here. He's such a pomp—"
It was a painful display of laxity and incompetence, in short, and I refrain from recording it in full. The hawk-headed warrior folded its wings, stepped forward, and roused the sentries' attention by banging their heads together smartly.
"And what kind of sentry duty do you call _this?"_ I snapped. I was in no mood to mess about here; six months of continual service had worn my essence thin. "Cowering behind a Shield, bickering like fishwives... I ordered you to _keep watch."_
Amid the pathetic mumbling and shuffling and staring at feet that followed, the frog put up its hand.
"Please, Mr. Bartimaeus, sir," it said, "what's the good of watching? The British are everywhere—sky _and_ land. And we've heard they've got a whole cohort of afrits down there. Is that true?"
I pointed my beak at the horizon, narrow-eyed. "Maybe."
The frog gave a moan. "But we ain't got a single one, have we? Not since Phoebus bought it. And there's marids down there, too, we've heard, more than one. _And_ the leader's got this Staff—real powerful, it is. Tore up Paris and Cologne on the way here, they say. Is _that_ true?"
My crest feathers ruffled gently in the breeze. "Maybe."
The frog gave a yelp. "Ohh, but that's just dreadful, ain't it? We've no hope now. All afternoon the summonings have been coming thick and fast, and that means only one thing. They'll attack tonight. We'll all be dead by morning."
Well, he wasn't going to do our morale much good with that kind of talk. I put a hand on his warty shoulder. "Listen, son... what's your name?"
"Nubbin, sir."
"Nubbin. Well, don't go believing everything you hear, Nubbin. The British army's strong, sure. In fact, I've rarely seen stronger. But let's say it is. Let's say it's got marids, whole legions of afrits, and horlas by the bucket-load. Let's say they're all going to come pouring at us tonight, right here at the Strahov Gate. Well, let them come. We've got tricks to send them packing."
"Such as what, sir?"
"Tricks that'll blow those afrits and marids right out of the air. Tricks we've all learned in the heat of a dozen battles. Tricks that mean one sweet word: _survival."_
The frog's bulbous eyes blinked at me. "This is my first battle, sir."
I made an impatient gesture. "Failing that, the Emperor's djinn say his magicians are working on something or other. A last line of defense. Some hare-brained scheme, no doubt." I patted his shoulder in a manly way. "Feel better now, son?"
"No, sir. I feel worse."
Fair enough. I was never much cop at those pep talks. "All right," I growled. "My advice is to duck fast and when possible run away. With luck, your masters will get killed before you are. Personally, that's what _I'm_ banking on."
I hope this rousing speech did them some good, for it was at that moment that the attack came. Far off, there was a reverberation on all seven planes. We all felt it: it was a single note of imperious command. I spun around to look out into the dark, and one by one, the five sentries' heads popped up above the battlements.
Out on the plains, the great army surged into action.
At their head, soaring on the updrafts of a sudden ferocious wind, came the djinn, armored in red and white, carrying slender pikes with silver tips. Their wings hummed; their screams made the tower shake. Below, on foot, a ghostly multitude: the horlas with their carved bone tridents, skipping into the huts and houses outside the walls in search of prey. Beside them, vague shadows flitted, ghuls and fetches, wraiths of cold and misery, insubstantial on every plane. And then, with a great chattering and champing of jaws, a thousand imps and foliots rose from the earth like a dust storm or a monstrous swarm of bees. All these and many others came a-hurrying toward the Strahov Gate.
The frog tapped my elbow. "Good job you had a word with us, sir," he said. "I'm overwhelmingly confident now, thanks to you."
I scarcely heard him. I was staring far off beyond the terrible host, to a low rise near the domed white tents. A man was standing on it, holding up a stick or a staff. He was too remote for me to take in many details, but I could sense his power all right. His aura lit up the hill about him. As I watched, several lightning bolts speared from the boiling clouds, impaling themselves upon the tip of the outstretched staff. The hill, the tents, the waiting soldiers, were briefly lit, as if by day. The light went out, the energy absorbed into the staff. Thunder rolled about the beleaguered city.
"So _that's_ him, is it?" I muttered. "The famous Gladstone."
The djinn were nearing the walls now, passing over waste ground and the wrecks of newly dismantled buildings. As they did so, a buried hex was triggered; jets of blue-green fire erupted upward, incinerating the leaders where they flew. But the fire died back, and the rest came on.
This was the trigger for the defenders to act: a hundred imps and foliots rose from the walls, uttering tinny cries and sending Detonations toward the flying horde. The invaders replied in kind. Infernos and Fluxes met and mingled in the half dark; shadows looped and spun against the flares of light. Beyond, Prague's fringes were aflame; the first of the horlas thronged below us, trying to snap the sturdy Binding spells that I'd used to secure the walls' foundations.
I unfurled my wings, ready to enter the fray; at my side, the frog swelled out its throat and uttered a defiant croak. The next instant a looping bolt of energy stabbed from the magician's staff far off on the hill, arced through the sky and smashed into the Strahov Gate tower, just below the battlements. Our Shield was ruptured like tissue paper. Mortar and stone shattered, the roof of the tower gave way. I was blown spinning into the air—and fell, almost to earth, colliding heavily with a cartload of hay bales that had been drawn inside the gates before the siege began. Above me, the wooden structure of the tower was on fire. I could not see any of the sentries. Imps and djinn milled about confusedly in the sky above, exchanging bursts of magic. Bodies dropped from the sky, igniting roofs. From nearby houses, women and children ran screaming. The Strahov Gate shook with the scratching of the horlas' tridents. It would not hold for long.
The defenders needed my help. I extricated myself from the hay with my usual haste.
"When you've picked the last bit of straw from your loincloth, Bartimaeus," a voice said, "you're wanted up at the castle."
The hawk-headed warrior glanced up. "Oh—hullo, Queezle."
An elegant she-leopard was sitting in the middle of the street, staring at me with lime-green eyes. As I watched, she negligently rose, walked a few paces to the side, sat down again. A gout of burning pitch slammed into the cobblestones where she'd been, leaving a smoldering crater. "Bit busy," she remarked.
"Yes. We're done for here." I jumped down from the cart.
"Looks like the Binding spells in the walls are breaking," the leopard said, glancing at the trembling gate. "There's shoddy workmanship for you. Wonder which djinni built that?"
"Can't think," I said. "So, then—our master calls?"
The leopard nodded. "Better hurry, or he'll stipple us. Let's go on foot. Sky's too crowded."
"Lead on." I changed, became a panther, black as midnight. We ran up through the narrow streets toward Hrad any Square. The roads we took were empty; we avoided the places where the panic-stricken people surged like livestock. More and more buildings were burning now, gables collapsing, side walls falling in. Around the roofs small imps were dancing, waving embers in their hands.
At the castle, imperial servants stood in the square under flickering lanterns, gathering random pieces of furniture into carts; beside them ostlers were struggling to tether horses to the struts. The sky above the city was peppered with bursts of colored light; behind, back toward Strahov and the monastery, came the dull thump of explosions. We slipped through the main entrance unopposed.
"The Emperor's getting out, is he?" I panted. Frantic imps were passing us, balancing cloth bundles on their heads.
"He's more concerned about his beloved birds," Queezle said. "Wants our afrits to airlift them to safety." The green eyes flicked at me in rueful amusement.
"But all the afrits are dead."
"Exactly. Well, almost there."
We had arrived in the northern wing of the castle, where the magicians had their quarters. The taint of magic hung thick about the stones. Down a long flight of stairs the leopard and panther ran, out along a balcony overlooking the Stag Moat, and in through the arch that led to the Lower Workroom. This was a broad, circular room that took up almost the entire ground floor of the White Tower. I had been summoned here often over the centuries, but now the usual magical paraphernalia—the books, the incense pots, the candelabra—had been swept aside, to make way for a row of ten chairs and tables. On each table was a crystal orb, flickering with light; on each chair, a hunched magician peering into his or her respective orb. There was absolute silence in the room.
Our master was standing at a window, staring through a telescope into the dark sky. He noticed us, made a gesture for silence, then beckoned us into a side room. His gray hair had turned white with the strain of the last few weeks; his hooked nose hung thin and pinched, and his eyes were as red as an imp's He scratched at the back of his neck. "You don't need to tell me," he said. "I know. How long have we got?"
The panther flicked its tail. "I'd give us an hour, no more."
Queezle looked back toward the main room, where the silent magicians toiled. "You're bringing out the golems, I see," she said.
The magician nodded curtly. "They will cause great damage to the enemy."
"It won't be enough," I said. "Even with ten. Have you seen the _size_ of the army out there?"
"As ever, Bartimaeus, your opinion is ill considered and unlooked for. This is a diversion only. We plan to get His Highness away down the eastern steps. A boat is waiting at the river. The golems will ring the castle and cover our retreat."
Queezle was still staring at the magicians; they stooped low over their crystals, mouthing continuous silent instructions to their creatures. Faint moving images in the crystals showed each one what his or her golem saw. "The British won't bother with the monsters," Queezle said. "They'll find these operators and kill _them."_
My master bared his teeth. "By then the Emperor will be gone. And that, incidentally, is my new charge for both of you—to guard His Highness during his escape. Understood?"
I held up a paw. The magician gave a heartfelt sigh. "Yes, Bartimaeus?"
"Well, sir," I said, "if I might make a suggestion. Prague's surrounded. If we try to escape the city with the Emperor, we'll all die horribly. So why don't we just forget the old fool and slip away instead? There's a little beer cellar on Karlova Street with a dried-up well. Not deep. The entrance is a bit small, but—"
He frowned. "You expect me to hide in there?"
"Well, it would be tight, but I reckon we could squeeze you in. Your pot belly might give us trouble, but it's nothing a good shove wouldn't fix—Ow!" My fur crackled; I broke off sharpish. As always, the Red-hot Stipples made me lose my train of thought.
"Unlike you," the magician snarled, "I know the meaning of loyalty! I do not need to be compelled to act honorably toward my master. I repeat: you are both to guard his life with your own. Do you understand?"
We nodded reluctantly; as we did so, the floor shook with a nearby explosion.
"Then follow me," he said. "We don't have much time."
Back up the stairs we went, and through the echoing corridors of the castle. Bright flashes illuminated the windows; fearsome cries echoed all around. My master ran on his spindly legs, wheezing with each step; Queezle and I loped alongside. At last we came out onto the terrace where for years the Emperor had maintained his aviary. It was a large affair, delicately constructed from ornate bronze, with domes and minarets and feeding ledges, and doors for the Emperor to stroll between. The interior was filled with trees and potted shrubs, and a remarkable variety of parrots, whose ancestors had been brought to Prague from distant lands. The Emperor was besotted with these birds; in recent times, as London's power grew and the Empire slipped from his hands, he had taken to sitting for long periods within the aviary, communing with his friends. Now, with the night sky rent by magical confrontation, the birds were in panic, swirling around the cage in a flurry of feathers, squawking fit to burst. The Emperor, a small plump gentleman in satin breeches and a crumpled white chemise, was little better off, remonstrating with his bird handlers and ignoring the advisors who massed about him.
The Chief Minister, Meyrink, pale, sad-eyed, was plucking at his sleeve. "Your Highness, _please._ The British are pouring up Castle Hill. We must get you to safety—"
"I _cannot_ leave my aviary! Where are my magicians? Summon them here!"
"Sir, they are engaged in battle—"
"My afrits, then? My faithful Phoebus..."
"Sir, as I have already informed you several times—"
My master shouldered his way through. "Sir: I present Queezle and Bartimaeus, who will assist us in our departure, then save your wondrous birds as well."
"Two cats, man? Two _cats?"_ The Emperor's mouth went all white and pursed.
Queezle and I rolled our eyes. She became a girl of unusual beauty; I took Ptolemy's form. "Now, Your Highness," my master said, "the eastern steps..."
Great concussions in the city; half the suburbs were now alight. A small imp came bowling over the parapet at the end of the terrace, its tail aflame. It skidded to a halt beside us. "Permission to report, sir. A number of savage afrits are fighting their way up to the castle. The charge is led by Honorius and Patterknife, Gladstone's personal servants. They are very terrible, sir. Our troops have broken before them." It paused, looked at its smoldering tail. "Permission to find water, sir?"
"And the golems?" Meyrink demanded.
The imp shuddered. "Yessir. They have just engaged with the enemy. I kept well away from the cloud, of course, but I believe the British afrits have fallen back a little, in disarray. Now, about the water—"
The Emperor gave a warbling cry. "Good, good! Victory is ours!"
"The advantage is only temporary," Meyrink said. "Come sir, we must go."
Despite his protests, the Emperor was bundled away from the cage, toward a wicket gate. Meyrink and my master were at the head of the group, the Emperor behind, his short frame hidden among the courtiers. Queezle and I brought up the rear.
A flash of light. Over the parapet behind us two black figures came leaping. Tattered cloaks whipped about them, yellow eyes burned in the depths of their cowls. They moved across the terrace in great drifting bounds, touching ground only rarely. In the aviary, the birds fell into sudden silence.
I looked at Queezle. "Yours or mine?"
The beautiful girl smiled at me, showing her sharp teeth. "Mine." She fell back to meet the advancing ghuls. I ran on after the Emperor's entourage.
Beyond the gate, a narrow path followed the moat north, under the castle wall. Down below, the Old Town was on fire; I could see the British troops running through the streets, and Prague's people fleeing, fighting, falling before them. It all seemed far away; the only sound that came to us was a distant sighing. Flocks of imps drifted here and there like birds.
The Emperor ceased his loud complaints. The group hurried in silence through the night. So far, so good. We were at the Black Tower now, at the top of the eastern steps, and the way ahead was clear.
A flutter of wings; Queezle landed beside me, ashen-faced. She was wounded in the side. "Trouble?" I said.
"Not the ghuls. An afrit. But a golem came, destroyed it. I'm fine."
Onward down the stairs in the side of the hill. Light from the burning castle was reflected in the waters of the Vltava below, giving it a melancholy beauty. We met no one, no one pursued us, and soon the worst of the conflict was left behind.
As the river neared, Queezle and I gave each other hopeful looks. The city was lost, as was the Empire, but escape here would allow us some small restoration of personal pride. Although we loathed our servitude, we also thoroughly disliked being beaten. It looked as if we were going to get away.
The ambush came when we were nearly at the bottom of the hill.
With a scuttle and a rush, six djinn and a band of imps hopped out onto the steps below. The Emperor and his courtiers cried out and fell back in disarray. Queezle and I tensed, ready to spring.
A light cough behind us. As one, we turned.
A slim young man stood five steps above. He had tight blond curls, big blue eyes, and wore sandals and a toga in the late Roman style. He had a rather sappy, coy expression on his face, as if he couldn't hurt a fly. However, as an extra detail that I couldn't help but notice, he also carried a monstrous scythe with a silver blade.
I checked him out on the other planes, in the faint hope that he might actually be an eccentric human on his way to a fancy-dress party. No such luck. It was an afrit of some potency. I swallowed. This wasn't good at all.
"Mr. Gladstone's compliments to the Emperor," the young man said. "He requests the pleasure of his company. The rest of you rabble can make yourselves scarce."
That sounded reasonable. I looked at my master beseechingly, but he furiously motioned me forward. I sighed, took a reluctant step toward the afrit.
The young man tsked loudly. "Oh, hop it, small-timer. You haven't a chance."
His derision stoked my fury. I pulled myself up. "Beware," I said coldly. "You underestimate me at your peril."
The afrit batted his eyelashes with an ostentatious lack of concern. "Indeed? Have you a name?"
"A name?" I cried. "I have _many_ names! I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni! I am N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes!"
I paused dramatically. The young man looked blank. "Nope. Never heard of you. Now if you'll just—"
"I have spoken with Solomon—"
"Oh, please!" The afrit made a dismissive gesture. "Haven't we all? Let's face it, he got around."
"I have rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Karnak, and Prague—"
The young man smirked. "Prague? What, these ones here? The ones it took Gladstone five minutes to break down? Sure you didn't work on Jericho, too?"
"Yes, he did," Queezle put in. "One of his first jobs. He keeps quiet about it, but—"
"Look, Queezle—"
The afrit fingered his scythe. "Last chance, djinni," he said. "Vamoose. You can't win this one."
I shrugged in a resigned sort of way. "We'll see."
And so, sad to say, we did. Very quickly, too. My first four Detonations were deflected by the twirling scythe. The fifth, which I'd made a real humdinger, rebounded directly at me, sending me crashing off the path and down the hill in a shower of essence. I tried to rise, but fell back in pain. My wound was too great; I could not recover in time.
Up on the path, the imps were pouring onto the courtiers. I saw Queezle and a burly djinni spin past, hands at each other's throats.
With insulting nonchalance, the afrit ambled down the slope toward me. He winked and raised the silver scythe.
And at that moment, my master acted.
He'd not been a particularly good one, all told—he'd been too fond of the Stipples for starters—but from my point of view his last deed was the best thing he ever did.
The imps were all around him, vaulting over his head, ducking between his legs, reaching for the Emperor. He gave a cry of fury and from a pocket in his jacket produced a Detonation stick, one of the new ones made by the alchemists of Golden Lane in response to the British threat. They were shoddy, mass-produced rubbish, inclined to explode too fast, or often not at all. Either way, it was best, when using them, to throw them speedily in the general direction of the enemy. But my master was a typical magician. He wasn't used to personal combat. He gabbled the Word of Command all right, but then proceeded to hesitate, holding the stick above his head and feinting at the imps, as if undecided which one to choose.
He hesitated a fraction too long.
The explosion tore half the stairs away. Imps, Emperor, and courtiers were blown into the air like dandelion seeds. My master himself vanished utterly, as if he had never been.
And with his death, the bonds that tethered me withered into nothing.
The afrit brought the scythe blade down, exactly where my head had lain. It drove uselessly into the ground.
Thus, after several hundred years and a dozen masters, my ties to Prague were broken. But as my grateful essence fled in all directions, and I looked down upon the burning city and the marching troops, on the wailing children and the whooping imps, on the<|fim_middle|> same as us _full-timers."_ He hovered by the door and frowned fiercely down his little nose.
The magician threw himself back into his chair. He was tempted to put his feet up on the desk, but rejected this as being too showy. He restricted himself to a lazy smile. "I've been at an incident scene with Mr. Tallow," he said. "Been working there since six. Ask him if you like, when he gets in; he might tell you a few details—if they're not _too_ secret, that is. What have _you_ been up to, Jenkins? Photocopying hard, I hope."
The secretary made a sharp noise between his teeth and pushed his glasses higher up his nose. "Keep it up, Mandrake," he said. "Just keep it up. You may be the Prime Minister's blue-eyed boy now, but how long's _that_ going to last if you don't deliver? Another incident? The second this week? You'll soon be back scrubbing teacups again, and then—we'll see." With something between a scuttle and a flounce, he departed.
The boy made a face at the closing door and for a few seconds sat staring at nothing. He rubbed his eyes wearily and glanced at his watch. Only nine forty-five. Already it had been a long day.
A teetering pile of papers on his desk awaited his attention. He took a deep breath, adjusted his cuffs and reached out for the topmost file.
For reasons of his own, Nathaniel had long been interested in Internal Affairs, a subdepartment of the sprawling Security apparatus headed by Jessica Whitwell. Internal Affairs conducted investigations into various kinds of criminal activity, notably foreign insurgency and domestic terrorism directed against the State. When he first joined the department, Nathaniel had merely undertaken humble activities such as filing, photocopying, and tea-making. But he did not carry out these tasks for long.
His rapid promotion was not (as his enemies whispered) simply the product of raw nepotism. It was true that he benefited from the goodwill of the Prime Minister and from the long reach of his master, Ms. Whitwell, whom none of the magicians in Internal Affairs wanted to displease. Yet this would have availed him nothing if he had been incompetent or merely average in his craft. But Nathaniel was gifted, and more than that, he worked hard. His elevation was swift. Within months he had maneuvered his way through a succession of humdrum clerical jobs, until—not yet fifteen—he had become assistant to the Internal Affairs Minister himself, Mr. Julius Tallow.
A short, burly man of bullish build and temperament, Mr. Tallow was abrupt and abrasive at the best of times, and inclined to sudden outbursts of incandescent rage, which sent his minions scurrying for cover. Aside from his temper, he was additionally distinguished by an unusual yellowish complexion, bright as daffodils at noonday. It was not known among his staff what had caused this affliction; some claimed it was hereditary, that he was the offspring of a union between magician and succubus. Others rejected this on biological grounds, and suspected he was the victim of malignant magic. Nathaniel subscribed to the latter view. Whatever the cause, Mr. Tallow concealed his problem as best he could. His collars were high, his hair hung long. He wore a broad-brimmed hat at all times and kept a keen ear open for levity on the subject among his staff.
Eighteen people worked in the office with Nathaniel and Mr. Tallow; they ranged from two commoners, who performed administrative duties that did not impinge on magical matters, to Mr. Ffoukes, a magician of the fourth level. Nathaniel adopted a policy of bland politeness to everyone, with the single exception of Clive Jenkins, the secretary. Jenkins's resentment of his youth and standing had been clear from the outset; in turn, Nathaniel treated him with a cheery impudence. It was perfectly safe to do so. Jenkins had neither connections nor ability.
Mr. Tallow had soon realized the extent of his assistant's talents, and directed him to an important and taxing task: the pursuit of the shadowy group known as the Resistance.
The motives of these zealots were transparent, if bizarre. They were opposed to the benevolent leadership of the magicians and eager to return to the anarchy of Commoners'Rule. Over the years, their activities had become increasingly annoying. They stole magical artifacts of all descriptions from careless or unlucky magicians, and later used them in random assaults on government persons and property. Several buildings had been badly affected, and a number of people killed. In the most audacious attack of all, the Resistance had even attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister. The government's response was draconian: many commoners had been arrested on suspicion, a few were executed and others deported by prison hulk to the colonies. Yet despite these sensible acts of deterrence, the incidents continued, and Mr. Tallow was beginning to feel the displeasure of his superiors.
Nathaniel accepted his challenge with great eagerness. Years before, he had crossed paths with the Resistance in a way that made him feel he understood something of its nature. One dark night, he had encountered three child commoners operating a black market of magical objects. It was an experience Nathaniel had not enjoyed. The three had promptly stolen his own precious scrying glass, then very nearly killed him. Now he was keen for a measure of revenge.
But the task had not proved easy.
He knew nothing of the three commoners beyond their names: Fred, Stanley, and Kitty. Fred and Stanley were paperboys, and Nathaniel's first act had been to send minute search orbs to trail all newspaper sellers in the city. But this surveillance had thrown up no new leads: evidently, the duo had changed their occupation.
Next, Nathaniel had encouraged his chief to send a few handpicked adult agents out to work undercover in London. Over several months, they immersed themselves in the capital's underworld. Once they had been accepted by the other commoners, they were instructed to offer "stolen artifacts" to anyone who seemed interested in them. Nathaniel hoped this ploy might encourage agents of the Resistance to break cover.
It was a forlorn hope. Most of the stool pigeons failed to rouse any interest in their magical trinkets, and the only man who _was_ successful vanished without making his report. To Nathaniel's frustration, his body was later found floating in the Thames.
Nathaniel's most recent strategy, for which he initially had high hopes, was to command two foliots to adopt the semblance of orphan waifs and to send them out to roam the city by day. Nathaniel strongly suspected that the Resistance was largely composed of child street gangs, and he reasoned that, sooner or later, they might try to recruit the newcomers. But so far, the bait had not been taken.
The office that morning was hot and drowsy. Flies buzzed against the windowpanes. Nathaniel went so far as to remove his coat and roll up his extensive sleeves. Suppressing his yawns, he plowed through a mass of paperwork, most of which was concerned with the latest Resistance outrage: an attack on a shop in a Whitehall backstreet. At dawn that day, an explosive device, probably a small sphere, had been tossed through a skylight, grievously wounding the manager. The shop supplied tobacco and incense to magicians; presumably this was why it had been targeted.
There were no witnesses, and surveillance spheres had not been in the area. Nathaniel cursed under his breath. It was hopeless. He had no leads at all. He tossed the papers aside and picked up another report. Rude slogans at the expense of the Prime Minister had again been daubed on lonely walls throughout the city. He sighed and signed a paper ordering an immediate cleanup operation, knowing full well the graffiti would reappear as fast as the whitewash men could work.
Lunchtime came at last, and Nathaniel attended a party in the garden of the Byzantine embassy, held to mark the forthcoming Founders Day. He drifted among the guests, feeling listless and out of sorts. The problem of the Resistance was preying on his mind.
As he ladled strong fruit punch from a silver tureen in a corner of the garden, he noticed a young woman standing close by. After eyeing her warily for a moment, Nathaniel made what he hoped was an elegant gesture. "I understand you had some success recently, Ms. Farrar. Please accept my congratulations."
Jane Farrar murmured her thanks. "It was only a _small_ nest of Czech spies. We believe they had come in by fishing boat from the Low Countries. They were clumsy amateurs, easily spotted. Some loyal commoners raised the alarm."
Nathaniel smiled. "You are far too modest. I heard that the spies led the police on a merry dance around half of England, killing several magicians in the process."
"There were a few small incidents."
"It is a notable victory, even so." Nathaniel took a small sip of punch, pleased with the backhanded nature of his compliment. Jane Farrar's master was the police chief Mr. Henry Duvall, a great rival of Jessica Whitwell. At functions such as this, Ms. Farrar and Nathaniel often exchanged feline conversation, all purred compliments and carefully sheathed claws, testing each other's mettle.
"But what of _you,_ John Mandrake?" Jane Farrar said, sweetly. "Is it true that you've been assigned responsibility for uncovering this irritating Resistance? That is no small matter either!"
"I am only amassing information; we have a network of informers to keep busy. It is nothing too exciting."
Jane Farrar reached for the silver ladle and stirred the punch gently. "Perhaps not, but unheard of for someone as inexperienced as you. Well _done._ Would you care for another tot?"
"Thank you, no." With annoyance, Nathaniel felt the color rush to his cheeks. It was true, of course: he _was_ young, he _was_ inexperienced; everyone was watching to see whether he failed. He fought back a strong desire to scowl. "I believe we will see the Resistance broken within six months," he said thickly.
Jane Farrar poured punch into a glass and raised her eyebrows at him with an expression that might have been amusement. "You impress me," she said. "Three years they've been hunted, without anything like a breakthrough. And you will break them within six months! But you know, I believe you can do it, John. You are quite a little man already."
_Another_ flush! Nathaniel tried to master his emotions. Jane Farrar was three or four years older than he was, and just as tall, perhaps taller, with long, straight, light brown hair hanging to her shoulders. Her eyes were a disconcerting green, alive with wry intelligence. He could not help feeling gawky and inelegant beside her, despite the splendors of his ruffed red handkerchief. He found himself trying to justify his statement, where he should have kept silent.
"We know the group consists mainly of youths," he said. "That fact has been repeatedly observed by victims, and the one or two individuals we have managed to kill have never been older than _us."_ (He placed a light stress on this last word.) "So the solution is clear. We send agents out to join the organization. Once they have won the traitors' trust, and gained access to their leader... well, the matter will be over swiftly."
Again the amused smile. "Are you _sure_ it will be so simple?"
Nathaniel shrugged. "I nearly gained access to the leader myself, years ago. It can be done."
_"Really?"_ Her eyes widened, showing genuine interest. "Tell me more." But Nathaniel had regained control of himself. _Safe, secret, secure._ The fewer tidbits of information he divulged the better. He cast his eyes across the lawns.
"I see Ms. Whitwell has arrived unattended," he said. "As her loyal apprentice I should make myself useful. If you would excuse me, Ms. Farrar?"
Nathaniel left the party early and returned to his office in a rage. He promptly retired to a private summoning chamber and blurted out the incantation. The two foliots, still in orphan guise, appeared. They looked disconsolate and shifty.
"Well?" he snapped.
"It's no good, master," the blond orphan said. "The street kids just ignore us."
"If we're lucky," the tousled orphan agreed. "Those that _don't_ tend to throw things at us."
_"What?"_ Nathaniel was outraged.
"Oh, cans, bottles, small rocks and things."
"I don't mean that! I mean what's happened to a spot of common humanity? Those children should be deported in chains! What's the matter with them? You're both sweet, you're both thin, you're both faintly pathetic— _surely_ they'd take you under their wings."
The two orphans shook their pretty little heads. "Nope. They treat us with revulsion. It's almost as if they can see us as we really are."
"Impossible. They don't have lenses, do they? You must be doing it wrong. Are you sure you're not giving the game away somehow? You're not floating or growing horns or doing something else stupid when you see them, are you?"
"No, sir, honest we're not."
"No, sir. Although Clovis _did_ once forget to remove his tail."
"You sneak! Sir—that's a lie."
Nathaniel clapped a hand to his head. "I don't care! I don't care. But it'll be the Stipples for you both if you don't succeed soon. Try different ages, try going about separately, try giving yourself small disabilities to raise their sympathy—but no infectious diseases, as I told you before. For now, you're dismissed. Get out of my sight."
Back at his desk, Nathaniel grimly took stock. It was clear the foliots were unlikely to succeed. They were a lowly demonic rank... perhaps _that_ was the problem—they weren't clever enough to fully impersonate a human's character. Certainly the notion that the children could _see through_ their semblance was absurd; he dismissed it out of hand.
But if they failed, what next? Each week, new Resistance crimes took place. Magicians' houses were burgled, cars robbed, shops and offices attacked. The pattern was obvious enough: opportunistic crimes, carried out by small, fast-moving units who somehow managed to stay clear of patrolling vigilance spheres and other demons. All very well. But still no breakthrough came.
Nathaniel knew that Mr. Tallow's patience was running out. Little teasing comments, such as those from Clive Jenkins and Jane Farrar, suggested that other people knew this, too. He tapped his pencil on his notepad, his thoughts drifting to the three members of the Resistance he had seen. Fred and Stanley... the memory of them made him grind his teeth and tap the pencil ever harder. He _would_ catch them one day, see if he didn't. And there was the girl, too. Kitty. Dark-haired, fierce, a face glimpsed in the shadows. The leader of the trio. Were they in London still? Or had they fled somewhere far off, to lurk beyond the reaches of the law? All he needed was a clue, a single measly clue. Then he'd pounce on them, faster than thought.
But he had nothing whatsoever to go on.
"Who _are_ you?" he said to himself. "Where are you hiding?"
His pencil broke in his hand.
It was a night ripe for enchantment. A huge full moon, resplendent with the tinctures of apricots and wheat, and surrounded by a pulsing halo, held sovereignty over the desert sky. A few wispy clouds fled before its majestic face, leaving the heavens naked, glistening blue-black, like the belly of some cosmic whale. In the distance, the moonlight lapped the dunes; down in the secret valley, the golden haze penetrated the contours of the cliffs to bathe the sandstone floor.
But the wadi was deep and narrow, and to one side an outcrop of rock sheathed an area in inky darkness. In this sheltered place a small fire had been lit. The flames were red and meager; they cast little light. A starveling trail of smoke rose up from the fire and drifted away into the cold night air.
At the edge of the well of moonlight, a figure sat cross-legged before the fire. A man, muscular and bald, with glistening, oiled skin. A heavy gold ring hung from his ear; his face was blank, impassive. He stirred; from a pouch looped around his waist, he took a bottle, fixed with a metal stopper. With a series of languid movements that nevertheless suggested the feral, easy strength of a desert lion, he uncorked the bottle and drank. Tossing it aside, he stared into the flames.
After a few moments, an odd scent extended out across the valley, accompanied by distant zither music. The man's head nodded, drooped. Now only the whites of his eyes showed; he slept where he sat. The music grew louder; it seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
Out from the darkness someone stepped, past the fire, past the sleeper, into the lit ground at the center of the valley. The music swelled; the very moonlight seemed to brighten in homage to her beauty. A slave girl: young, exquisite, too poor to afford adequate clothing. Her hair hung in long, dark ringlets that bounced with every tripping step. Her face was pale and smooth as porcelain, her eyes wide and studded with tears. At first tentatively, then with a sudden loosening of emotion, she danced. Her body dipped and spun, her flimsy drape struggled vainly to keep up with her. Her slender arms wove enticements in the air, while from her mouth issued a strange chanting, heavy with loneliness and desire.
The girl finished her dance. She tossed her head in proud despair and gazed up into the darkness, toward the moon. The music died away. Silence.
Then, a distant voice, as if borne on the wind: "Amaryllis..."
The girl started; she looked this way and that. Nothing but the rocks and the sky and the amber moon. She gave a pretty sigh.
"My Amaryllis..."
In a husky, tremulous voice, she answered: "Sir Bertilak? Is that you?"
"It is I."
"Where are you? Why do you taunt me so?"
"I hide behind the moon, my Amaryllis, lest your beauty burn my essence. Shield your face with the gauze that presently lies so uselessly upon your breast, that I might venture near to you."
"Oh, Bertilak! With all my heart!" The girl did as she was bid. From the darkness came several low mutterings of approval. Somebody coughed.
"Darling Amaryllis! Stand away! I descend to earth."
Giving a little gasp, the girl pressed her back against the contours of a nearby rock. She tossed her head in proud expectation. A crack of thunder sounded, fit to disturb the slumbers of the dead. Open-mouthed, the girl looked up. At a stately pace, a figure descended from the sky. He wore a silvered jerkin across his bare torso, a long flowing cape, puffed pantaloons, and a pair of elegant curled slippers. An impressive scimitar was tucked into his jeweled belt. Down he came, head back, dark eyes flashing, chin jutting forward proudly beneath his aquiline nose. A pair of curving bone-white horns rose from the edges of his forehead.
He landed gently near where the girl was draped against the rock and, with a casual flourish, flashed a gleaming smile. Faint female sighs sounded all around.
"What, Amaryllis—are you struck dumb? Do you forget so soon the face of your beloved genie?"
"No, Bertilak! Were it seventy years, not seven, I could never forget a single oiled hair upon your head. But my tongue falters and my heart pounds with fear, lest the magician wake and catch us! Then he will bind my slender white legs in chains once more, and immure you in his bottle!"
At this, the genie gave a booming laugh. "The magician sleeps. My magic is greater than his, and ever shall be. But the night is growing old, and by dawn I must be away with my brothers, the afrits, riding on the currents of the air. Come to my arms, my darling. In these short hours, while I still have human form, let the moon be witness to our love, which shall defy the hatred of our peoples even unto the ending of the world."
"Oh, Bertilak!"
"Oh, Amaryllis, my Swan of Araby!"
The genie strode forward and enfolded the slave girl in a muscular embrace. At this point the ache in Kitty's bottom became too much to bear. She shifted in her seat.
Genie and girl now began an intricate dance, involving much swirling of clothing and extending of limbs. There was a smattering of applause from the audience. The orchestra set to with renewed gusto. Kitty yawned like a cat, slumped lower and rubbed an eye with the palm of one hand. She felt for the paper bag, tipped out the last few salted peanuts and, cupping them to her mouth, crunched unenthusiastically.
The anticipation that always came before a job was upon her, digging like a knife into her side. That was normal, she expected it. But layered on top of this was the boredom of sitting through the endless play. No doubt, as Anne had said, it would provide a perfect alibi—but Kitty would rather have been working out her tension on the streets, keeping moving, dodging the patrols, not witnessing such awful pap.
On stage, Amaryllis, the Chiswick missionary lass turned slave girl, was now singing a song in which (once again) she expressed her unremitting passion for the genie lover in her arms. She did so with such force on the high notes that the hair rippled on Bertilak's head and his earrings spun. Kitty winced and glanced along the shrouded silhouettes in front until she came to the outlines of Fred and Stanley. Both looked highly attentive, eyes trained on the stage. Kitty curled her lip. Presumably they were admiring Amaryllis.
Just so long as they remained alert.
Kitty's gaze wandered down into the well of darkness by her side. At her feet was the leather bag. The sight made her stomach lurch; she closed her eyes, instinctively patting her coat to feel the reassuring hardness of the knife. Relax... all would be fine.
Would the interval _never_ come? She raised her head and surveyed the dusky reaches of the auditorium, where, on either side of the stage, the magicians' boxes hung, heavy with gold fretwork and thick red curtains to shield the occupants from the commoners'eyes. But every magician in town had seen this play years ago, long before it had opened to the sensation-hungry masses. Today the curtains were drawn back, the boxes empty.
Kitty glanced at her wrist, but it was too dark to make out the time. Doubtless there were many forlorn partings, cruel ravishments, and joyful reunions left to endure before the interval. And the audience would love every minute of them. Like sheep, they thronged here night after night, year after year. Surely all of London had seen _Swans of Araby_ by now, many people more than once. But still the buses puttered in from the provinces, bringing new customers to gasp at all the shabby glamour.
"Darling! Be silent!" Kitty nodded with approval. Nice one, Bertilak. He'd cut her off in the middle of her aria.
"What is it? What do you sense that I cannot?"
"Hist! Do not speak. We are in peril..." Bertilak rotated his noble profile. He looked high, he looked low. He seemed to sniff the air. All was still. The fire had burned right down; the magician slumbered; the moon had been obscured behind a cloud and cold stars twinkled in the sky. Not a sound came from the audience. To her great disgust, Kitty found she was holding-her breath.
Suddenly, with a ringing oath and a rasp of iron, the genie drew his scimitar and clutched the trembling girl to his chest. "Amaryllis! They come! I see them with my powers."
"What, Bertilak? What do you see?"
"Seven savage imps, my darling, sent by the queen of the afrits to capture me! Our dalliance displeases her: they will bind us both and drag us naked before her throne to await her awful pleasure. You must flee! No—we have no time for soft words, though your limpid eyes implore me! Go!"
With many a tragic gesture, the girl disentangled herself from his arms and crept to the left of the stage. The genie tossed aside his cape and jerkin in bare-chested readiness for battle.
From the orchestral pit came a dramatic discord. Seven terrifying imps leaped out from behind the rocks. Each was played by a midget wearing a leather loincloth and a skin-coat of luminous green paint. With horrid whoops and grimaces, they drew stiletto daggers and fell upon the genie. A battle ensued, accompanied by a frenzy of screeching violins.
Vicious imps... a wicked magician... It was a subtle job, this _Swans of Araby,_ Kitty could see that. Ideal propaganda, gently acknowledging popular anxieties rather than denying them flat out. Show us a little of what we fear, she thought, only take away its teeth. Add music, fight scenes, lashings of star-crossed love. Make the demons frighten us, then let us watch them die. We are in control. At the end of the show, all would no doubt be made well. The wicked sorcerer would be destroyed by the good magicians. The wicked afrits would be cast down, too. As for Bertilak, the rugged genie, doubtless he'd be a man after all, an eastern princeling transformed into a monster by some cruel enchantment. And he and Amaryllis would live happily ever after, watched over by the wise council of benevolent magicians....
A sudden sick feeling swelled in Kitty. It was not the tension of the job, this time; it came from deeper down, from the reservoir of fury that bubbled away perpetually inside. It was born of knowing that everything they did was utterly forlorn and useless. It would never change anything. The crowd's response told her this. Watch! Amaryllis has been seized: an imp has her under his arm, kicking and weeping. Hear the crowd gasp! But see! Bertilak the heroic genie has tossed one imp over his shoulder into the smoldering fire! Now he pursues the captor and—one, two—makes short work of him with his scimitar. Hoorah! Hear the crowd cheer!
It didn't matter what they did in the end; it didn't matter what they stole, what daring attacks they made. It would make no difference. Tomorrow the queues would still be forming in the streets outside the Metropolitan, the spheres would still be watching from above, the magicians would still be elsewhere, enjoying the trappings of their power.
So it had always been. Nothing she had ever done had made any difference, right from the beginning.
**T** he noise on the stage receded; in its place she heard birdsong, the hum of distant traffic. In her mind's eye, the darkness of the theater was replaced by remembered light.
Three years ago. The park. The ball. Their laughter. Disaster on its way, like lightning from a blue sky.
Jakob grinning as he ran toward her; the bat's weight, dry and wooden in her hand.
The strike! The triumph of it! Dancing with delight.
The distant crash.
How they ran, hearts thudding. And then—the creature on the bridge...
She rubbed her fingers into her eyes. But even that terrible day—was it truly the beginning? For the first thirteen years of her life, Kitty had remained unaware of the exact nature of the magicians'rule. Or perhaps she was not _consciously_ aware of it, for looking back she realized that doubts and intuitions _had_ managed to negotiate their way into her mind.
The magicians had long been at the zenith of their power and no one could remember a time when this wasn't so. For the most part, they kept themselves removed from the experience of the ordinary commoner, remaining in the center of the city and in the suburbs, where broad, leafy boulevards idled between secretive villas. What lay between was left to everyone else, streets clogged with small shops, waste ground, the factories and brickworks. Magicians passed through occasionally in their great black cars, but otherwise their presence was mainly felt in the vigilance spheres floating randomly above the streets.
"The spheres keep us safe," Kitty's father told her one evening, after a large red orb had silently accompanied her home from school. "Don't be frightened of them. If you're a good girl, they'll do you no harm. It's only bad men, thieves and spies, who need to be afraid." But Kitty _had_ been frightened; after that, livid, glowing spheres often pursued her in her dreams.
Her parents were visited by no such fears. Neither of them was overly imaginative, but they were robustly conscious of the greatness of London and of their own small place in it. They took for granted the superiority of the magicians and fully accepted the unchanging nature of their rule. Indeed, they found it reassuring.
"I'd lay down my life for the Prime Minister," her father used to say. "He's a great man."
"He keeps the Czechs where they belong," her mother said. "Without him, we'd have the hussars marching down Clapham High Road, and you wouldn't want _that,_ dear, would you?"
Kitty supposed not.
They had lived, the three of them, in a terrace house in the south London suburb of Balham. It was a small home, with a sitting room and a kitchen downstairs and a tiny bathroom out back. Upstairs was a little landing and two bedrooms—Kitty's parents'and her own. A long, thin mirror stood on the landing, before which, on weekday mornings, the whole family stood in turn, brushing hair and arranging their clothes. Her father in particular fiddled endlessly with his tie. Kitty could never understand why he kept on tying and untying it, kept on weaving the strip of fabric in, up, around and out, since the variations between each attempt were practically microscopic.
"Appearances are very important, Kitty," he would say, surveying the umpteenth knot with furrowed brow. "In my job you've got only one chance to impress."
Kitty's father was a tall, wiry man, stubborn of outlook and blunt of speech. He was shop-floor manager in a large department store in central London and very proud of this responsibility. He supervised the Leathers section: a broad, low-ceilinged hall, dimly lit by orange lights and filled with expensive bags and briefcases made from cured animal skin. The leather goods were luxury items, which meant that the vast majority of customers were magicians.
Kitty had visited the shop once or twice, and the darkly overpowering smell of the processed leather always made her head spin.
"Stay out of the magicians'way," her father said. "They're very important people, and they don't like anyone getting under their feet, even pretty little girls like you."
"How do I know who's a magician?" Kitty asked. She was seven at the time, and wasn't sure.
"They're always well dressed, their faces are stern and wise, and sometimes they have fine walking sticks. They wear expensive scents, but sometimes you can still catch hints of their magic: strange incenses, odd chemicals.... But if you smell that, the chances are you'll be too close! Stay out of their way."
Kitty had promised faithfully. She scampered to far corners whenever customers entered the Leather hall and watched them with wide, curious eyes. Her father's tips did not help much. Everyone visiting the store seemed well dressed, many carried sticks, and the stench of leather masked any unusual scents. But she soon began to pick out the magicians by other clues: a certain hardness in the visitors'eyes, their air of cool command and, above all, a sudden stiffening in her father's manner. He always seemed awkward when talking with them, his suit newly wrinkled with anxiety, his tie nervously askew. He gave little bobs and bows of agreement as they spoke. These signs were very subtle, but they were enough for Kitty, and they disconcerted and even distressed her, though she hardly knew the reason why.
Kitty's mother worked as a receptionist at Palmer's Quill Bureau, a long-established firm hidden among the many bookbinders and parchment makers of South London. The Bureau provided special quill pens for the magicians to use in their conjurations. Quills were messy, slow, and difficult to write with, and fewer magicians than ever bothered to use them. The staff of Palmer's used ballpoints instead.
The job allowed Kitty's mother glimpses of the magicians themselves, since occasionally one would visit the Bureau to inspect a new consignment of pens. She found their proximity thrilling.
"She was so _glamorous,"_ she would say. "Her clothes were the finest red-gold taffeta—I'm sure they came from Byzantium itself! And she was so _imperious,_ too! When she snapped her fingers, everyone jumped like crickets to do her bidding."
"Sounds rather rude to me," Kitty said.
"You're so _very_ young, love," her mother said. "No, she was a great woman."
One day, when Kitty was ten years old, she came home from school to find her mother sitting tearfully in the kitchen.
"Mum! What's the matter?"
"It's nothing. Well, what am I saying?—I _am_ hurt a little. Kitty, I am afraid... I am afraid that I have been made redundant. Oh dear, _what_ are we going to tell your father?"
Kitty sat her mother down, made her a pot of tea, and brought her a biscuit. Over much snuffling, sipping, and sighing, the truth came out. Old Mr. Palmer had retired. His firm had been acquired by a trio of magicians, who disliked having ordinary commoners on their staff; they had brought in new personnel and sacked half the original employees, including Kitty's mother.
"But they can't _do_ that," Kitty had protested.
"Of course they can. It's their right. They protect the country, make us the greatest nation in the world; they have many privileges"—her mother dabbed at her eyes and took another slurp of tea—"but even so, it _is_ a little hurtful, after so many years...."
Hurtful or not, that was the last day that Kitty's mother worked at Palmer's. A few weeks later, her friend Mrs. Hyrnek, who had also been dismissed, got her a job as a cleaner in a printing works, and life resumed its structured course.
But Kitty didn't forget.
Kitty's parents were avid readers of _The Times,_ which brought daily news of the army's latest victories. For years, it seemed, the wars had been going well; the Empire's territories expanded by the season, and the world's wealth was flowing back into the capital. But this success came at a price, and the paper continually advised all readers to be on the lookout for spies and saboteurs from enemy states, who might be living in ordinary neighborhoods, while all the time quietly working on wicked plots to destabilize the nation.
"You keep your eyes open, Kitty," her mother advised. "No one takes heed of a girl like you. You never know, you might see something."
"Especially around here," her father added, sourly. "In Balham."
The area where Kitty lived was famous for its Czech community, which was long established. The high street had several little borscht cafes, marked by their thick net curtains and colorful flowerpots on the sills. Tanned old gentlemen with drooping white mustaches played chess and skittles in the streets outside the bars, and many of the local firms were owned by the grandchildren of the émigrés who had come to England back in Gladstone's time.
Flourishing though the area was (it contained several important printing firms, including the noted Hyrnek and Sons), its strong European identity drew the constant attention of the Night Police. As she grew older, Kitty became used to witnessing daytime raids, with patrols of gray-uniformed officers breaking down doors and throwing belongings into the street. Sometimes young men were taken away in vans; on other occasions the families were left intact, to piece together the wreckage of their homes. Kitty always found these scenes upsetting, despite her father's reassurances.
"The police must maintain a presence," he insisted. "Keep troublemakers on their toes. Believe me, Kitty, they wouldn't act without good intelligence on the matter."
"But, Dad, those were friends of Mr. Hyrnek."
A grunt. "He should pick his pals more carefully then, shouldn't he?"
Kitty's father was in fact always civil to Mr. Hyrnek, whose wife had, after all, gotten Kitty's mother a new job. The Hyrneks were a prominent local family, whose business was patronized by many magicians. Their printing works occupied a large site close to Kitty's house, and provided employment for many people of the area. Despite this, the Hyrneks never seemed especially well-off; they lived in a big, sprawling, rundown house set a little back from the road, behind an overgrown garden of long grass and laurel bushes. In time, Kitty came to know it well, thanks to her friendship with Jakob, the youngest of the Hyrnek sons.
Kitty was tall for her age and growing taller, slender beneath her baggy school jersey and wide-legged trousers, stronger than she looked, too. More than one boy had regretted a facetious comment to her face; Kitty did not waste words when a punch would do. Her hair was dark brown, veering to black, and straight, except at the ends, where it had a tendency to curl in an unruly fashion. She wore it shorter than the other girls, midway down her neck.
Kitty had dark eyes and heavy black brows. Her face openly reflected her opinions, and since opinions came thick and fast to Kitty, her eyebrows and mouth were in constant motion.
"Your face is never the same twice," Jakob had said. "Er—that's a compliment!" he added hastily, when Kitty glowered at him.
They sat together in the same classrooms for several years, learning what they could from the mixed bag of disciplines on offer to the common children. Crafts were encouraged, since their futures lay in the factories and workshops of the city; they learned pottery, woodcutting, metalwork, and simple mathematics. Technical drawing, needlepoint, and cookery were also taught, and for those like Kitty, who enjoyed words, reading and writing were on offer, too, with the proviso that this skill would one day be properly employed, perhaps in a secretarial career.
History was another important subject; daily, they received instruction in the glorious development of the British State. Kitty enjoyed these lessons, which featured many stories of magic and far-off lands, but couldn't help sensing certain limitations in what they were being taught. Often she would put up her hand.
_"Yes,_ Kitty, what is it _this_ time?" Her teachers' tones often displayed a slight weariness, which they did their best to disguise.
"Please, sir, tell us more about the government that Mr. Gladstone overthrew. You say it had a parliament already.We've got a parliament now. So why was the old one so wicked?"
"Well, Kitty, _if_ you'd been listening properly, you'd have heard me say that the Old Parliament was not wicked so much as weak. It was run by ordinary people, like you and me, who did not have _any_ magical powers. Imagine that! Of course, that meant that they were constantly getting harassed by other, stronger countries, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Now, which was the most dangerous foreign nation in those days... let me see now... Jakob?"
"Don't know, sir."
"Speak up, boy, don't mumble! Well, I'm surprised to hear you say that, Jakob, you of all people. It was the Holy Roman Empire, of course. Your ancestors! The Czech Emperor ruled most of Europe from his castle in Prague; he was so fat he sat on a wheeled throne of steel and gold and was pulled about the corridors by a single bone-white ox. When he wished to leave the castle, they had to lower him out by reinforced pulley. He kept an aviary of parakeets and shot a different colored one each night for his supper. Yes, you may well be disgusted, children. _That_ was the kind of man who ruled Europe in those days, and our Old Parliament was helpless against him. He governed a terrible assembly of magicians, who were wicked and corrupt and whose leader, Hans Meyrink, is said to have been a vampire. Their soldiers rampaged— _yes,_ Kitty what is it _now?"_
"Well, sir, if the Old Parliament was so incompetent, how come the fat Emperor never invaded Britain, because he didn't, did he, sir? And why—"
"I can answer only one question at a time, Kitty, I'm not a magician! Britain was lucky, that's all. Prague was always slow to act; the Emperor spent much of his time drinking beer and engaging in terrible debauchery. But he would have turned his evil gaze to London eventually, believe you me. Fortunately for us, there _were_ a few magicians in London in those days, to whom the poor powerless ministers sometimes came for advice. And one of them was Mr. Gladstone. He saw the dangers of our situation and decided on a preemptive strike. Can you remember what he did, children? Yes—Sylvester?"
"He persuaded the ministers to hand over control to him, sir. He went in to see them one evening and talked so cleverly that they elected him Prime Minister there and then."
"That's right, good boy, Sylvester, you'll get a star. Yes, it was the Night of the Long Counsel. After a lengthy debate in Parliament, Gladstone's eloquence won the day and the ministers unanimously resigned in his favor. He organized a defensive attack on Prague the following year, and overthrew the Emperor. Yes, Abigail?"
"Did he free the parakeets, sir?"
"I'm sure he did. Gladstone was a very kind man. He was sober and moderate in all his tastes and wore the same starched shirt each day, except on Sundays, when his mother cleaned it for him. After that, London's power increased, while Prague's diminished. And as Jakob might realize, if he weren't slumped so rudely in his seat, that was when many Czech citizens, like his family, immigrated to Britain. Many of Prague's best magicians came, too, and helped us create the modern State. Now, perhaps—"
"But I thought you said the Czech magicians were all wicked and corrupt, sir."
"Well, I expect all the wicked ones were killed, don't you, Kitty? The others were just misguided and saw the error of their ways. Now there's the bell! Lunchtime! And no, Kitty, I'm not going to answer any more questions just now. Everyone stand up, put your chairs under your desks, and please leave _quietly!"_
After such discussions in school, Jakob was frequently morose, but his moodiness rarely lasted long. He was a cheerful and energetic soul, slight and dark-haired, with an open, impudent face. He liked games, and from an early age spent many hours with Kitty, playing in the long grass of his parents' garden. They kicked footballs, practiced archery, improvised cricket, and generally kept out of the way of his large and boisterous family.
Nominally, Mr. Hyrnek was the head of the household, but in practice, he, like everyone else, was dominated by his wife, Mrs. Hyrnek. A bustling bundle of maternal energy, all broad shoulders and capacious bosom, she sailed around the house like a galleon blown by an erratic wind, forever uttering raucous whoops of laughter, or calling out Czech curses after her four unruly sons. Jakob's elder brothers, Karel, Robert, and Alfred, had all inherited their mother's imposing physique, and their size, strength, and deep, resounding voices always awed Kitty into silence whenever they came near. Mr. Hyrnek was like Jakob, small and slight, but with leathery skin that reminded Kitty of a shriveled apple's. He smoked a curved, rowan-wood pipe that left wreaths of sweet smoke hanging around the house and garden.
Jakob was very proud of his father.
"He's brilliant," he told Kitty, as they rested under a tree after a game of fives against the side wall of the house. "No one else can do what he does with parchment and leather. You should see the miniature spell-pamphlets he's been working on lately—they're embossed in gold filigree in the old Prague style, but reduced to the tiniest scale! He works in little outlines of animals and flowers, in perfect detail, then embeds tiny pieces of ivory and precious stones inside. Only Dad can do stuff like that."
"They must cost a fortune when he's finished," Kitty said.
Jakob spat out a grass shoot he was chewing. "You're joking, of course," he said flatly. "The magicians don't pay him what they should. Never do. He can barely keep the factory working. Look at all that—" He nodded up at the body of the house, with its slates skew-whiff on the roof, the shutters crooked and ingrained with dirt, the paint peeling on the veranda door. "Think we should be living in a place like this? Come off it!"
"It's a lot bigger than my house," Kitty observed.
"Hyrnek's is the second biggest printer in London," Jakob said. "Only Jaroslav's is bigger. And _they_ just churn stuff out, ordinary leather bindings, annual almanacs, and indexes, nothing special. It's we who deal in the delicate work, the real _craft._ That's why so many magicians come to us when they want their best books bound and personalized; they love the unique, luxurious touch. Last week, Dad finished a cover that had a pentacle fashioned in tiny diamonds on the front. Ludicrous, but there you go; that's what the woman wanted."
"Why don't the magicians pay your dad properly? You'd think they'd worry he'd stop doing everything so well, make it lousy quality."
"My dad's too proud for that. But the real point is they've got him over a barrel. He's got to behave, or they'll close us down, give the business to someone else. We're Czechs, remember; suspicious customers. Can't be trusted, even though the Hyrneks have been in London for a hundred and fifty years."
"What?" Kitty was outraged. "That's ridiculous! Of course they trust you—they'd throw you out of the country, otherwise."
"They tolerate us because they need our skill. But what with all the trouble on the Continent, they watch us all the time, in case we're in league with spies. There's a permanent search sphere operating in Dad's factory, for instance; and Karel and Robert are always being followed. We've had four police raids in the last two years. The last time, they turned the house upside down. Grandmama was taking a bath; they dumped her out in the street in her old tin tub."
"How _awful."_ Kitty threw the cricket ball high into the air and caught it in an outstretched palm.
"Well. That's magicians for you. We hate them, but what can you do? What's the matter? You're twisting your lip. That means something's bothering you."
Kitty untwisted her lip hurriedly. "I was just thinking. You hate the magicians, but your whole family supports them: your dad, your brothers working in his workshop. Everything you make goes to them, one way or another. And yet they treat you so badly. It doesn't seem right. Why doesn't your family do something else?"
Jakob grinned ruefully. "My dad's got a saying: 'The safest place to swim is right behind the shark.'We make the magicians beautiful things and that makes them happy. It means they keep off our backs—just about. If we didn't do that, what would happen? They'd be on us in a flash. You're frowning again."
Kitty was not sure she approved. "But if you don't like the magicians, you shouldn't cooperate with them," she persisted. "It's morally wrong."
"What?" Jakob kicked out at her leg with genuine irritation. "Don't give me that! _Your_ parents cooperate with them. _Everyone_ does. There's no alternative, is there? If you don't, the police—or something worse—pays a visit in the night and spirits you away. There's no alternative to cooperation—is there? _I_ s _there?"_
"S'pose not."
"No, there isn't. Not unless you want to end up dead."
**T** he tragedy had occurred when Kitty was thirteen years old.
It was high summer. There was no school. The sun shone on the terrace tops; birds trilled, light spilled into the house. Her father hummed as he stood before the mirror, adjusting his tie. Her mother left her an iced bun for her breakfast, waiting in the fridge.
Jakob had called on Kitty early. She opened the door to find him flourishing his bat.
"Cricket," he said. "It's perfect for it. We can go to the posh park. Everyone will be at work, so there'll be no one there to clear us out."
"All right," Kitty said. "But I'm batting. Wait till I get my shoes."
The park stretched to the west of Balham, away from the factories and shops. It began as a rough area of waste ground, covered with bricks, thistles, and old rusted sections of barbed wire. Jakob and Kitty, and many other children, played there regularly. But if you followed the ground west, and clambered over an old metal bridge above a railway, you found the park becoming increasingly pleasant, with spreading beech trees, shady walks and lakes where wild ducks swam, all dotted across a great sward of smooth green grass. Beyond was a wide road, where a row of large houses, hidden by high walls, marked the presence of magicians.
Commoners were not encouraged to enter the pleasant side of the park; stories were told in the playgrounds of children who had gone there for a dare, and never come back. Kitty did not exactly believe these tales, and she and Jakob had once or twice crossed the metal bridge and ventured out as far as the lakes. On one occasion a well-dressed gentleman with a long black beard had shouted at them across the water, to which Jakob responded with an eloquent gesture. The gentleman himself did not appear to respond, but his companion, whom they had not previously observed—a person very short and indistinct—had set off running around the side of the lake toward them with surprising haste. Kitty and Jakob had only just made good their escape.
But usually, when they looked across the railway line, the forbidden side of the park was empty. It was a shame to let it go to waste, especially on such a delightful day when all magicians would be at work. Kitty and Jakob made their way there at good speed.
Their heels drummed on the tarmac surface of the metal bridge.
"No one about," Jakob said. "Told you."
"Is that someone?" Kitty shielded her eyes and peered out toward a circle of beeches, partly obscured by the bright sun. "By that tree? I can't quite make it out."
"Where? No.... It's just shadows. If you're chicken, we'll go over by that wall. It'll hide us from the houses across the road."
He ran across the path and on to the thick green grass, bouncing the ball skillfully on the flat surface of the bat as he went. Kitty followed with more caution. A high brick wall bounded the opposite side of the park; beyond it lay the broad avenue, studded with magicians' mansions. It was true that the center of the grass was uncomfortably exposed, overlooked by the black windows of the houses' upper stories; it was also true that if they hugged close to the wall it would shield them from this view. But this meant crossing the whole breadth of the park, far from the metal bridge, which Kitty thought unwise. But it was a lovely day and there was no one about, and she let herself run after Jakob, feeling the breeze drift against her limbs, enjoying the expanse of blue sky.
Jakob came to a halt a few meters from the wall beside a silvered drinking fountain. He tossed the ball into the air and thwacked it straight up to an almighty height. "Here'll do," he said, as he waited for the ball to return. "This is the stumps. I'm in bat."
"You promised me!"
"Whose bat is it? Whose ball?"
Despite Kitty's protests, natural law prevailed, and Jakob took up position in front of the drinking fountain. Kitty walked a little way off, rubbing the ball against her shorts in the way that bowlers did. She turned and looked toward Jakob with narrow, appraising eyes. He tapped the bat against the grass, grinned inanely, and wiggled his bottom in an insulting manner.
Kitty began the run-up. Slowly at first, then building up pace, ball cupped in hand. Jakob tapped the ground.
Kitty swung her arm up and over and loosed the delivery at demonic speed. It bounced against the tarmac of the path, shot up toward the drinking fountain.
Jakob swung the bat. Made perfect contact. The ball disappeared over Kitty's head, high, high into the air, so that it became nothing but a dot against the sky... and finally fell to earth halfway back across the park.
Jakob did a dance of triumph. Kitty considered him grimly. With a heavy, heartfelt sigh, she began the long trudge to retrieve the ball.
Ten minutes later, Kitty had bowled five balls and made five excursions to the other side of the park. The sun beat down. She was hot, sweaty, and irate. Returning at last with dragging steps, she pointedly tossed the ball on the grass and flopped herself down after it.
"Bit knackered?" Jakob asked considerately. "You almost got the last one."
A sarcastic grunt was the only reply He proffered the bat. "Your go, then."
"In a minute." For a time, they sat in silence watching the leaves moving on the trees, listening to the sound of occasional cars from beyond the wall. A large flock of crows flew raucously across the park and settled in a distant oak.
"Good job my grandmama's not here," Jakob observed. "She wouldn't like that."
"What?"
"Those crows."
"Why not?" Kitty had always been a little scared of Jakob's grandmama, a tiny, wizened creature with little black eyes in an impossibly wrinkled face. She never left her chair in the warm spot of the kitchen, and smelled heavily of paprika and pickled cabbage. Jakob claimed she was 102 years old.
He flicked a beetle off a grass stalk. "She'd reckon they were spirits. Servants of the magicians. That's one of their preferred forms, according to her. It's all stuff she learned from _her_ mum, who came over from Prague. She hates windows being left open at night, no matter how hot it gets." He put on an aged, quivering voice." 'Close it up, boy! It lets the demons in.'She's full of things like that."
Kitty frowned. "You don't believe in demons, then?"
"Of course I do! How else d'you think the magicians get their power? It's all in the spell books they send over to get bound or printed. That's what magic is all about. The magicians sell their souls and the demons help them in return— _if_ they get the spells right. If they don't, the demons kill 'em dead. Who'd be a magician? I wouldn't, for all their jewels."
For a few minutes, Kitty lay silently on her back, watching the clouds. A thought occurred to her. "So, let me get this right..." she began. "If your dad, and his dad before him, have always worked on spell books for magicians, they must have read a lot of the spells, right? So that means—"
"I can see where you're going with this. Yeah, they must have seen stuff, enough to know to keep well clear of it, anyway. But a lot of it's written in weird languages, and you need more than just the words; I think there are things to draw, and potions and all sorts of horrid extras to learn, if you're going to master demons. It's not something anybody decent wants to be part of; my dad just keeps his head down and makes the books." He sighed. "Mind you, people have always assumed my family is in on it all. After the magicians fell from power in Prague, one of my grandpapa's uncles was chased by a mob and thrown from a high window. Landed on a roof and died. Grandpapa came to England soon after and started the business again. It was safer for him here. Anyway..." He sat up, stretched. "Whether those crows are demons, I very much doubt. What would they be doing sitting in a tree? Come on—" He tossed her the bat. "Your turn, and I bet I get you out first ball."
To Kitty's vast frustration, this was exactly what he did. And the next time, and the next. The park rang with the metallic _bong_ of cricket ball on drinking fountain. Jakob's whoops resounded high and low. At last, Kitty threw down the bat.
"This isn't _fair!"_ she cried. "You've weighted the ball, or something."
"It's called sheer skill. My turn."
"One more go."
"All right." Jakob tossed the ball with an ostentatiously gentle underarm throw. Kitty swung the bat with savage desperation, and to her vast surprise made contact so firmly that she jarred her arm up to her elbow.
"Yes! A hit! Catch that one if you can!" She began a dance of victory, expecting to see Jakob pelting off across the lawn... but he was quite stationary, standing in an uncertain posture and gazing up into the sky somewhere up behind her head.
Kitty turned and looked. The ball, which she had contrived to swipe high up over her shoulder, plummeted serenely out of the sky, down, down, down, behind the wall, out of the park, into the road.
There followed a terrible smash of breaking glass, a squeal of tires, a loud, metallic crump.
Silence. A faint hissing sound from behind the wall, as of steam escaping from a broken machine.
Kitty looked at Jakob. He looked at her.
Then they ran.
Hard across the grass they went, making for the distant bridge. They ran side by side, heads down, fists pumping, not looking back. Kitty was still holding the bat. It weighed her down; with a gasp she tossed it from her grip. At this, Jakob gave a gulping cry and skidded to a halt.
"You idiot! My name's on it—" He darted back; Kitty slowed, turned to watch him pick it up. As she did so, she saw, in the middle distance, an open gate in the wall, leading to the road. A figure in black limped into view; it stood in the center of the gateway, looking into the park.
Jakob had seized the bat and was coming on again. "Hurry _up!"_ she panted, as he fell in alongside. "There's someone..." She gave up, hadn't the breath to speak more.
"Almost there—" Jakob led the way past the edge of the lake, where flocks of wild fowl squawked and plumed out in fear across the water; under the shadows of the beech trees, and up a slight rise toward the metal bridge. "We'll be safe... once we're over... hide in the craters... aren't far now..."
Kitty had a strong desire to look behind her; in her mind's eye she saw the figure in black running after them across the grass. The image gave her a crawling sensation down the skin on her spine. But they were going too fast for it to catch them; it would be all right, they were going to get away.
Jakob ran up onto the bridge, Kitty following. Their feet pounded like jackhammers, sending up a hollow clatter and the hum of vibrating metal. Up to the top, down the other side...
Something stepped from nowhere onto the end of the bridge.
Jakob and Kitty both cried out. Their headlong rush came to an abrupt halt; they stopped dead, crashing hard against each other in their supreme, instinctive effort to avoid colliding with the thing.
It stood as tall as a man, and indeed carried itself as if this were so, standing upright on two long legs, with arms outstretched, and fingers clasping. But it was not a man; if anything, it looked more like a horribly distorted kind of _monkey,_ oversized and very stretched. It had pale green fur across its body, except around its head and muzzle, where the fur grew dark green, almost black. The malevolent eyes were yellow. It cocked its head and smiled at them, flexing its tapering hands. A slender ribbed tail thrashed behind it like a whip, making the air sing.
For a brief moment, neither Jakob nor Kitty could speak or move. Then...
"Back, back, back!" This was Kitty; Jakob was dumbstruck, rooted to the spot. She grasped the collar of his shirt and pulled him, turning as she did so.
Hands in pockets, tie tucked neatly into a moleskin waistcoat, a gentleman in a black suit stood blocking the other exit from the bridge. He was not the slightest bit out of breath.
Kitty's hand remained clawed in Jakob's collar. She could not let him go. She faced one way, he the other. She felt his hand reach out and, scrabbling at the fabric of her T-shirt, clutch it fast. There was no sound but their terrified breathing and the swishing of the monster's tail through the air. A crow passed overhead, cawing loudly. Kitty heard blood pounding in her ears.
The gentleman did not seem in a hurry to speak. He was fairly short, but stocky and of powerful build. His round face had, at its center, an uncommonly long, sharp nose and, even in those moments of abject terror, suggested to Kitty something of a sundial. The face seemed without expression.
Jakob was trembling at her side. Kitty knew he would not speak.
"Please sir—" she began hoarsely. "W-what do you want?"
There was a long pause; it appeared as if the gentleman was loath to address her. When he did, it was with terrifying softness. "Some years ago," he said, "I purchased my Rolls-Royce at auction. It was in much need of repair, but even so, it cost me a considerable sum. Since then I have spent a great deal more on it, fitting new bodywork, tires, engine, and above all an original front windscreen of tinted crystal, to make my machine perhaps the finest example in London. Call it a hobby for me, a small diversion from my work. Only yesterday, after many months of searching, I located an original porcelain number-plate and affixed it to the bonnet. At last, my vehicle was complete. Today I took it out for a spin. What happens? I am attacked, from nowhere, by two commoners' brats. You smash my windscreen, you make me lose control; I collide with a lamppost, destroying bodywork, tires, and engine, and shattering my number-plate in a dozen places. My car is ruined. It will never run again..." He paused for breath; a fat pink tongue flicked across his lips. "What do I want? Well, first I am curious to know what you have to say."
Kitty looked from side to side in search of inspiration. "Erm... would 'Sorry'be a start?"
"'Sorry'?"
"Yes, sir. It was an accident, you see, and we didn't—"
"After what you've done? After the damage you've caused? Two vicious little commoners—"
Tears studded Kitty's eyes. "That's not so!" she said desperately. "We didn't mean to hit your car. We were just playing! We couldn't even see the road!"
"Playing? In this private park?"
"It's not private. Well, if it is, it shouldn't be!" Against her better judgment, Kitty found herself almost shouting. "There's no one _else_ enjoying it, is there? We weren't doing any harm. Why _shouldn't_ we come here?"
"Kitty," Jakob croaked. "Shut up."
"Nemaides—" the gentleman addressed the monkey-thing on the opposite side of the bridge—"come a step or two closer, would you? I have some business I wish you to take care of."
Kitty heard the gentle tapping of claws on metal; felt Jakob cringing at her side.
"Sir," she said quietly "we're sorry about your car. Truly we are."
"Then _why,"_ said the magician, "did you run away and not stay to admit responsibility?"
A small, small sound: "Please, sir... we were scared."
"How very wise. Nemaides... I think the Black Tumbler, don't you?"
Kitty heard a cracking of giant knuckles, and a deep, thoughtful voice. "Of what velocity? They are of under average size."
"I think rather severe, don't you? It was an expensive car. Take care of it." The magician seemed to feel his part in the matter was concluded; he turned, hands still in pockets, and began to limp off back toward the distant gate.
Perhaps if they could run... Kitty dragged at Jakob's collar "Come on—!"
His face was a deathly white; she could scarcely catch the words. "There's no point. We can't—" He had loosened his grip on her now; his hands hung hapless at his side.
A _tap-tap-tapping_ of claws on metal. "Face me, child."
For a moment, Kitty considered letting Jakob go and running, herself alone, down off the bridge and away into the park. Then she despised the thought, and herself for thinking it, and turned deliberately to face the thing.
"That's better. Direct frontal contact is preferable for the Tumbler." The monkey face did not seem particularly full of malice; if anything, its expression was slightly bored.
Mastering her fear, Kitty held up a small, pleading hand. "Please... don't hurt us!"
The yellow eyes widened, the black lips made a rueful pout. "I am afraid that is impossible. I have been given my orders—namely to effect the Black Tumbler upon your persons—and I cannot reject this charge without great danger to myself. Would you have me become subject to the Shriveling Fire?"
"In all honesty, I _would_ prefer that."
The demon's tail twitched back and forth like that of an irritated cat; it bent a leg and scratched the back of the opposite knee with an articulated claw. "No doubt. Well, the situation is unpleasant. I suggest we get it over with as rapidly as possible."
It raised one hand.
Kitty put her arm around Jakob's waist. Through flesh and fabric, she felt the jerking of his heart.
A circle of billowing gray smoke expanded from a point just in front of the demon's outstretched fingers and shot toward them. Kitty heard Jakob scream. She had just enough time to see red and orange flames flickering in the heart of the smoke before it hit her in the face with a burst of heat, and everything went dark.
**"K** itty... Kitty!"
"Mmm?"
"Wake up. It's time."
She raised her head, blinked, and with a rush awoke to the roar of the theater interval. The lights in the auditorium had come on, the great purple curtain had descended across the stage; the audience had fragmented into hundreds of red-faced individuals filing slowly from the stalls. Kitty was awash in a lake of sound that beat against her temples like a tide. She shook her head to clear it, and looked at Stanley, who was leaning over the stall in front, a sardonic expression on his face.
"Oh," she said, confusedly. "Yes. Yes, I'm ready."
"The bag. Don't forget it."
"I'm hardly likely to, am I?"
"You were hardly likely to fall asleep."
Breathing hard and brushing a loop of hair from her eyes, Kitty snatched up the bag and stood to allow a man to squeeze in front of her. She turned to follow him out along the row of stalls. As she did so, she caught sight of Fred for a moment: his dull eyes were, as always, hard to decipher, but Kitty thought she detected a trace of derision. She compressed her lips and shuffled her way into the aisle.
Every inch of space between the stalls was crowded with people thronging variously toward the bars, the toilets, the ice-cream girl standing in a pool of light against a wall. Movement in any direction was difficult; it reminded Kitty of a cattle market, with the beasts being shepherded slowly through a maze of concrete and metal fencing. She took a deep breath and, with a succession of muttered apologies and judiciously applied elbows, joined the herd. She inched her way between assorted backs and bellies toward a set of double doors.
Midway across, a tap on her shoulder. Stanley's grinning face. "Didn't think much of the show, I take it?"
"Of course not. Dire."
"I thought it had a couple of good points."
"You would."
He tutted in mock surprise. "At least _I_ wasn't sleeping on the job."
"The job," Kitty snapped, "comes now."
With set face and hair disheveled, she spilled out through the doors into the side corridor that looped around the edge of the auditorium. She was angry with herself now, angry for dozing, angry for allowing Stanley to get under her skin so easily. He was always looking for any sign of weakness, trying to exploit it with the others; this would only give him more ammunition. She shook her head impatiently. Forget it: this was not the time.
She weaved her way into the theater foyer, where a good many members of the audience were spilling out into the street to sip iced drinks and enjoy the summer evening. Kitty spilled with them. The sky was deep blue; the light was slowly fading. Colorful flags and banners hung from the houses opposite, ready for the public holiday. Glasses clinked, people laughed; with silent watchfulness, the three of them passed among the happy crowd.
At the corner of the building, Kitty checked her watch. "We have fifteen minutes."
Stanley said: "There's a few magicians out tonight. See that old woman swilling gin, the one in green? Something in her bag. Powerful aura. We could snatch it."
"No. We stick to the plan. Go on, Fred."
Fred gave a nod. From the pocket of his leather jacket he produced a cigarette and lighter. He dawdled forward to a point that gave a view along a side road and, while lighting the cigarette, scanned along it. Seemingly satisfied, he set off down it without a backward glance. Kitty and Stanley followed. The street contained shops, bars, and restaurants; a fair number of people strolled past, taking the air. At the next corner, Fred's cigarette appeared to go out. He paused to relight it, again peering closely in all directions. This time, his eyes narrowed; casually he strolled back the way he had come. Kitty and Stanley were busy window-shopping, a happy couple holding hands. Fred passed them. "Demon coming," he said softly. "Keep the bag hidden."
A minute passed. Kitty and Stanley cooed and clucked over the Persian carpets in the window. Fred inspected the flower displays in the next shop along. From the edge of her eye, Kitty watched the corner of the road. A little old gentleman, well dressed and white-haired, came around it, humming a military air. He crossed the road out of sight. Kitty glanced at Fred. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. Kitty and Stanley remained where they were. A middle-aged lady wearing a large flowery hat appeared around the corner; she walked slowly, as if contemplating the ills of the world. Sighing heavily, she turned toward them. Kitty smelled her perfume as she passed, a strong, rather vulgar scent. Her footfalls died away.
"Okay," Fred said. He returned to the corner, made a quick reconnaissance, nodded and disappeared around it. Kitty and Stanley peeled themselves away from the window and followed, dropping each other's hands as if they had sprouted plague. The leather bag, which had been held under Kitty's coat, reappeared in her grasp.
The next road was narrower and there were no pedestrians nearby. On the left, dark and empty behind a black railing, lay the delivery yard for the carpet shop. Fred was slouching against the railing, looking up and down the street. "Search Sphere's just passed down the end," he said. "But we're clear. Your turn, Stan."
The gate to the yard was padlocked. Stanley approached and examined it closely From an obscure portion of his clothing he drew a pair of steel pincers. A squeeze, a twist, and the chain snapped open. They entered the yard, Stanley in the lead. He was staring hard at the ground in front of them.
"Anything?" Kitty said.
"Not here. The back door's got a fuzz over it: some kind of spell. We should avoid it. But that window's safe." He pointed.
"Okay." Kitty stole to the window, scanned inside. From what little she could see, the room beyond was a storeroom; it was piled with carpets, each rolled and tightly wrapped in linen. She looked at the others. "Well?" she hissed. "See anything?"
"Of course, _this,"_ Stanley said lightly, "is why it's so stupid y _ou_ being in charge. You're helpless without us. Blind. Nope—there's no traps."
"No demons," Fred said.
"Okay." Kitty now had black gloves on her hands. She tensed a fist, drove it into the lowest pane of glass. A crack, a brief tinkling of glass upon the sill. Kitty reached through, flipped the latch, raised the window. She vaulted up and into the room, landing silently, eyes flicking side to side. Without waiting for the others, she passed among the pyramids of linen, breathing the rich fustiness of the shrouded carpets, arriving swiftly at a half-open door. From the bag, a torch: the beam of light illuminated a large, richly appointed office, with desks, chairs, paintings on the wall. In a corner, low and dark, a safe.
"Hold it." Stanley caught Kitty's arm. "There's a little glowing thread at foot-level—runs between the desks. Trip-spell. Avoid."
Angrily, she pulled herself free from his grip. "I wasn't just going to go blundering in. I'm not stupid."
He shrugged. "Sure, sure."
Stepping high above the invisible thread, Kitty reached the safe, opened the bag, produced a small white sphere and laid it on the ground. Carefully, she retreated. Back at the door, she spoke a word; with a soft sigh and a rush of air, the sphere imploded into nothing. Its suction pulled nearby pictures off the walls, the carpet off the floor, the safe door off its hinges. Calmly, stepping over the invisible thread, Kitty returned to kneel by the safe. Her hands moved quickly, piling objects into her bag.
Stanley was hopping with impatience. "What have we got?"
"Mouler glasses, couple of elemental spheres... documents... and money. Lots of it."
"Good. Hurry up. We've got five minutes."
"I know."
Kitty shut the bag and left the office without haste. Fred and Stanley had already departed through the window, and were hovering impatiently outside. Kitty crossed the room, jumped out into the yard, and set off toward the gate. A moment later, with an odd intuition, she glanced over her shoulder—just in time to see Fred tossing something back into the storeroom.
She stopped dead. "What the hell was that?"
"No time to chat, Kitty." Fred and Stanley hurried past her. "Play's starting."
"What did you just do?"
Stanley winked as they trotted out onto the road. "Inferno stick. Little present for them." At his side, Fred was chuckling.
"That wasn't the plan! This was a raid only!" She could smell the smoke already, drifting on the air. They rounded the corner past the front of the shop.
"We can't take the carpets, can we? So why leave them to be sold to the magicians? Can't have pity for collaborators, Kitty. They deserve it."
"We could get caught..."
"We won't. Relax. Besides, a little boring break-in won't make the headlines, will it? But a break-in and fire _will."_
White with rage, fingers clenched on the handles of the bag, Kitty strolled beside them up the road. This wasn't about publicity—this was Stanley challenging her authority again, more seriously than before. It was _her_ plan, her strategy, and he'd deliberately undercut it. She'd have to take action now, no question. Sooner or later, he'd get them all killed.
At the front of the Metropolitan Theatre, an intermittent bell was ringing, and the dregs of the audience were slipping back inside its doors. Kitty, Stanley, and Fred joined them without breaking pace, and a few moments later subsided in their seats once more. The orchestra was warming up again; onstage, the safety curtain had been raised.
Still shaking with fury, Kitty placed her bag between her feet. As she did so, Stanley turned his head and grinned. "Trust me," he whispered. "We'll be front-page news now. There won't be anything bigger than us tomorrow morning."
**H** alf a mile north of the dark waters of the Thames, the merchants of the world gathered daily in the City District to barter, buy, and sell. As far as the eye could see the market stalls stretched, huddled under the eaves of the ancient houses like chicks beneath their mother's wing. There was no end to the richness on display: gold from southern Africa, silver nuggets from the Urals, Polynesian pearls, flakes of Baltic amber, precious stones of every hue, iridescent silks from Asia, and a thousand other wonders. But most valuable of all were the magical artifacts that had been looted from old empires and brought to London to be sold.
At the heart of the City, at the junction of Cornhill and Poultry Streets, the supplicating cries of traders fell harshly on the ear. Only magicians were allowed into this central zone, and gray-uniformed police guarded the entrances to the fair.
Each stall here was crammed with items that claimed to be extraordinary. A cursory survey might reveal enchanted flutes and lyres from Greece; pots containing burial dirt from the royal cemeteries of Ur and Nimrud; frail gold artifacts from Tashkent, Samarkand, and other Silk Road towns; tribal totems from the North American wastes; Polynesian masks and effigies; peculiar skulls with crystals embedded in their mouths; stone daggers, heavy with the taint of sacrifice, salvaged from the ruined temples of Tenochtitlán.
It was to this place that, once a week, late on Monday evenings, the eminent magician Sholto Pinn would make his stately way, to survey the competition, such as it was, and purchase any trifles that took his fancy.
Mid-June, and the sun was lowering behind the gables. Although the market itself, wedged between the buildings, was firmly encased in blue shadow, the street still reflected sufficient warmth for it to be a pleasant stroll for Mr. Pinn. He wore a white linen jacket and trousers, and a broad-brimmed straw hat upon his head. An ivory cane swung loosely in one hand; the other dabbed occasionally at his neck with an extensive yellow handkerchief.
Mr. Pinn's smart attire extended even to his polished shoes. This was despite the filth of the pavements, which were thick with evidence of a hundred hurried meals—discarded fruit, falafel wraps, nut and oyster shells, and scraps of fat and gristle. Mr. Pinn minded it not: wherever he chose to walk, the debris was swept away by an invisible hand.
As he progressed, he inspected the stalls on either side through his thick glass monocle. He wore a habitual expression of bored amusement—protection against the approaches of the merchants, who knew him well.
"Señor Pinn! I have here an embalmed hand of mysterious provenance! It was found in the Sahara—I suspect it to be the relic of a saint. I have resisted all comers, waiting for you..."
"Please halt a moment, Monsieur; see what I have in this strange obsidian box..."
"Observe this scrap of parchment, these runic symbols..."
"Mr. Pinn, sir, do not listen to these bandits! Your exquisite taste will tell you..."
"... this voluptuous statue..."
"... these dragons' teeth..."
"... this gourd..."
Mr. Pinn smiled blandly, scanned the items, ignored the merchants' cries, moved slowly on. He never purchased much; most of his supplies were flown directly to him from his agents working across the Empire. But even so, one could never tell. The fair was always worth a look.
The row ended with a stall piled high with glass and earthenware. Most of the samples were quite obviously recent forgeries, but a tiny blue-green pot with a sealed stopper caught Mr. Pinn's eye. He addressed the attendant casually. "This item. What is it?"
The seller was a young woman wearing a colorful headscarf. "Sir! It is a faience pot from Ombos in Old Egypt. It was found in a deep grave, under a heavy stone, next to the bones of a tall, winged man."
Mr. Pinn raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. Do you have this marvelous skeleton?"
"Alas, no. The bones were dispersed by an excitable crowd."
"How convenient. But the pot: it has not been opened?"
"No, sir. I believe it contains a djinni, or possibly a Pestilence. Buy it, open it, and see for yourself!"
Mr. Pinn picked up the pot and turned it over in his fat white fingers. "Hmm," he murmured. "It seems oddly heavy for its size. Perhaps a compressed spell....Yes, the item is of some small interest. What is your price?"
"For you, sir—a hundred pounds."
Mr. Pinn gave a hearty chuckle. "I am indeed wealthy, my dear; I am also not to be trifled with." He snapped a finger, and with a rattling of pottery and a scrabbling of cloth, an unseen person clambered swiftly up one of the poles that supported the stall, skittered across the tarpaulin, and dropped lightly down upon the woman's back. She screamed. Mr. Pinn did not look up from the pot in his hand. "Bartering is all very well, my dear, but one should always begin at a sensible level. Now, why don't you suggest another figure? My assistant, Mr. Simpkin, will readily confirm if your price is worth considering."
A few minutes later the woman, blue-faced and choking from the grip of invisible fingers around her neck, finally stammered out a nominal sum. Mr. Pinn flipped a few coins onto the counter and departed in good humor, carrying his prize securely in his pocket. He left the fair and strode away down Poultry Street to where his car was waiting. Anyone blocking his path was brushed aside cursorily by the invisible hand.
Mr. Pinn heaved his bulk into the car and signaled the chauffeur to move off. Then, settling back into his seat, he spoke into thin air. "Simpkin."
"Yes, master?"
"I shall not be working late tonight. Tomorrow is Gladstone's Day, and Mr. Duvall is giving a dinner in our founder's honor. Regretfully, I must attend this dollop of tedium."
"Very good, master. Several crates arrived from Persepolis shortly after lunch. Do you wish me to start unpacking them?"
"I do. Sort and label anything of lesser importance. Leave unopened any parcel stamped with a red flame; that mark indicates a major treasure. You will also find a crate of stacked sandalwood slabs—take care with that; it contains a hidden box with a child mummy from the days of Sargon. Persian customs are increasingly vigilant and my agent must become ever more inventive in his smuggling. Is that all clear?"
"Master, it is. I shall obey with zeal."
The car drew up before the golden pillars and bright displays of Pinn's Accoutrements. A rear door opened and closed, but Mr. Pinn remained inside. The car drew away into the Piccadilly traffic. A short while later, a key rattled in the lock of the shop's front door; it opened, then drew softly shut again.
Minutes later, an extensive system of blue warning nodes extended up around the building on the fourth and fifth planes, coiled together at the top of the house and sealed itself. Pinn's Accoutrements was secured for the night.
Evening drew on. Traffic lessened on Piccadilly and few pedestrians passed the shop. Simpkin the foliot picked up a hooked rod in his tail and drew hinged wooden shutters down across the windows. One of them squeaked a little as it descended. With a tut of annoyance, Simpkin removed his semblance of invisibility, revealing himself to be small and lime green, with bow legs and a fussy expression. He located a can behind the counter and extended his tail up to oil the hinge. Then he swept the floor, emptied the bins, adjusted the mannequin display and, with the shop tidied to his satisfaction, dragged several large crates in from the backroom.
Before settling down to his task, Simpkin double-checked the magical alarm system with great care. Two years previously a vicious djinni had succeeded in getting in under his watch and many precious items had been destroyed. He had been lucky that the master had forgiven him, far luckier than he deserved. Even so, the memory of his punishments still made his essence tremble. It must never happen again.
The nodes were intact and vibrated warningly whenever he stepped near the walls. All was well.
Simpkin gained entry to the first crate, and began removing the wool-and-sawdust packing. The first item he came to was small and wrapped in tarry gauze; with expert fingers he removed the gauze and surveyed the object dubiously. It was a doll of sorts, made of bone, straw, and shell. Simpkin scratched a note in the accounts with a long goose quill. _Mediterranean Basin, 4,000 years old approx. Curiosity value only. Of insignificant worth._ He placed it on the counter and continued delving.
Time passed. Simpkin was on the penultimate crate. It was the one stuffed with sandalwood, and he was carefully picking through it in search of the smuggled mummy when he first heard the rumbling sounds. What were they? Car traffic? No—they stopped and started too abruptly. Perhaps rolls of distant thunder?
The noises grew louder and more disquieting. Simpkin laid down his quill and listened, his round head slightly to one side. Strange, disjointed crashes... punctuated by heavy thudding. Where did they come from? Somewhere beyond the shop, that was obvious, but from which direction?
He hopped to his feet and cautiously approaching the nearest window, raised the shutters briefly. Beyond the blue security nodes, Piccadilly was dark and empty. There were few lights on in the houses opposite and little traffic. He could see nothing to explain the sounds.
He listened again. They were stronger now; in fact, they seemed to be coming from somewhere _behind_ him, back within the recesses of the building.... Simpkin lowered the shutter, his tail swishing uneasily. Retreating a little, he stretched behind the counter and retrieved a large and knobbly club. With this in hand, he padded to the storeroom door and peered inside.
The room was as normal: filled with stacks of crates and cardboard boxes and shelves of artifacts being prepared for show or sale. The electric light in the ceiling hummed gently. Simpkin returned to the shop floor, frowning in puzzlement. The noises were quite loud now—something, somewhere, was being smashed. Should he perhaps alert the master? No. An unwise thought. Mr. Pinn disliked being bothered unnecessarily. It was best not to disturb him.
Another reverberating crash and the sound of breaking glass; for the first time, Simpkin's attention was drawn to the right-hand wall of Pinn's, which joined on directly to a delicatessen and wine merchant's. Very strange. He stepped forward to investigate. At that moment three things happened.
Half the wall exploded inward.
Something large stepped into the room.
All light in the shop went out.
Transfixed in the center of the floor, Simpkin could see nothing—neither on the first plane, nor on any of the other four to which he had access. A swath of ice-cold darkness had engulfed the shop, and deep within it, something moved. He heard a footstep, then a horrendous crashing noise from the direction of Mr. Pinn's antique porcelain. Another step followed, then a ripping and a rending that could come only from the racks of suits that Simpkin had so carefully hung that very morning.
Professional distress overcame his fear: he let out a groan of fury and, flexing the club, scraped it accidentally against the counter.
The footsteps stopped. He sensed something peering in his direction. Simpkin froze. Darkness coiled about him.
He flicked his eyes back and forth. From memory, he knew he was only a few meters away from the nearest shuttered window. If he stepped backward now, perhaps he could reach it before—
Something stepped across the room toward him. It came with a heavy tread.
Simpkin tiptoed backward.
There was a sudden splintering noise midway across the room. He halted, wincing. That was the mahogany cabinet that Mr. Pinn was so fond of! Regency period, with ebony handles and lapis lazuli inlays! What a terrible disaster!
He forced himself to concentrate. Only a couple of yards more to the window. Keep going... he was almost there. The heavy tread came after him, each step a ringing concussion against the floor.
A sudden clatter and screeching of torn metal. Oh—now that was _too_ much! Those racks of protective silver necklaces had taken him an age to sort!
In his outrage, he paused again. The footsteps were closer now. Simpkin hurriedly tottered a little farther and his searching fingers touched the metal shutters. He felt the warning nodes vibrating beyond it. All he had to do was break his way through.
But Mr. Pinn had instructed him to remain within the shop at all times, to protect it with his life. True, it was not an official charge, made in a pentacle. He hadn't had one of those for years. So he _could_ disobey it, if he chose.... But what would Mr. Pinn say if he left his post? The idea didn't bear thinking about.
A shuffling step beside him. A cold taint of earth and worms and clay.
If Simpkin had obeyed his instincts and turned tail and fled, he might yet have saved himself. The shutters could have been broken through, the alarm nodes torn open, he could have fallen out into the road. But years of willing subjugation to Mr. Pinn had robbed him of his initiative. He had forgotten how to do anything under his own volition. So he could do nothing but stand and tremble and utter hoarse squeaks of ever escalating pitch as the air about him grew grave-cold and slowly filled with an unseen presence.
He shrank back against the wall.
Right above him, glass shattered; he felt it cascading to the floor.
Mr. Pinn's Phoenician incense jars! Priceless!
He gave a cry of rage and, in his final moment, remembered the club held in his hand. Now, blindly, with all his strength, he swung it at last, lashing out at the looming dark that bent down to receive him.
When dawn broke on the morning of Founder's Day, investigators from the Department of Internal Affairs had long been busy in Piccadilly. Ignoring the conventions of the holiday, which prescribed casual wear for all citizens, the officials were dressed in dark gray suits. From a distance, as they clambered ceaselessly over the rubble of the ruined shops, they resembled ants toiling on a mound. In every direction men and women were at work, bending to the floor, straightening, placing fragments of debris in plastic bags with tweezers or inspecting minute stains upon the walls. They wrote in notebooks and scribbled diagrams on parchment strips. More peculiarly, or so it seemed to the crowd loitering beyond the yellow warning flags, they uttered orders and made curt signals into the empty air. These directions were often accompanied by little unexpected air currents, or faint rushing noises that suggested swift and certain movement—sensations that nagged uncomfortably at the imaginations of the onlookers until they suddenly remembered other engagements and went elsewhere.
Standing atop the pile of masonry that spread from Pinn's Accoutrements, Nathaniel watched the commoners depart. He did not blame them for their curiosity.
Piccadilly was in turmoil. All the way from Grebe's to Pinn's, each shop had been disemboweled, its contents scrambled and disgorged out into the road through broken doors and windows. Foodstuffs, books, suits, and artifacts lay sad and ruined amid a mess of glass, wood, and broken stone. Inside the buildings the scene was even worse. Each of these shops had an ancient, noble pedigree; each had been ravaged beyond repair. Shelves and counters, stands and draperies lay bludgeoned into fragments, the valuable produce smashed and crushed and ground into the dust.
The scene was overwhelming, but it was also very odd. Something appeared to have passed through the partition walls between the shops, in a roughly straight line. Standing indoors at one end of the devastation zone, it was possible to gaze right down the length of the block, through the shells of all five shops, and see workers moving in the rubble at the other end. Also, only the ground floors of the buildings had suffered. The upper reaches were untouched.
Nathaniel tapped his pen against his teeth. Strange.... It was unlike any Resistance attack he had ever seen. Far more devastating, for one thing. And its exact cause was quite unclear.
A young woman appeared amid the debris of a nearby window. "Hey, Mandrake!"
"Yes, Fennel?"
"Tallow wants to speak with you. He's just inside."
The boy frowned slightly, but turned, and treading delicately to avoid getting too much brick dust on his patent leather shoes, descended the rubble into the murk of the ruined building. A short, burly figure, wearing a dark suit and a hat with a wide brim, stood in what had once been the center of the shop. Nathaniel approached.
"You wanted me, Mr. Tallow?"
The minister gestured brusquely all around. "I want your opinion. What would you say happened here?"
"No idea, sir," Nathaniel said brightly. "But it's very interesting."
"I don't care how _interesting_ it is," the minister snapped. "I don't pay you to be _interested._ I want a solution. What do you think it means?"
"I can't say yet, sir."
"What good is that to me? It's not worth a farthing! People are going to want answers, Mandrake, and we have to supply them."
"Yes, sir. Perhaps if I could continue looking around, sir, I might—"
"Answer me this," Tallow said. "What do you think did it?"
Nathaniel sighed. He did not miss the desperation in the minister's voice. Tallow was feeling the pressure now; such a brazen attack on Gladstone's Day would not go down well with their superiors. "Demon, sir," he said. "An afrit could wreak such destruction. Or a marid."
Mr. Tallow ran a yellowish hand wearily across his face. "No such entity was involved. Our boys sent spheres into the block while the enemy was still within. Shortly before they vanished, they reported no sign of demon activity."
"Forgive me, Mr. Tallow, but that can't be true. Human agencies couldn't do this."
The minister cursed. "So _you_ say, Mandrake. But in all honesty, how much have you yet discovered about how the Resistance operates? The answer is not very much." There was an unpleasant edge to his tone.
"What makes you think this was the Resistance, sir?" Nathaniel kept his voice calm. He could see the way this was going: Tallow would do his best to foist as much blame as possible onto his assistant's shoulders. "It's very different from their known attacks," he continued. "A completely different scale."
"Until we get evidence otherwise, Mandrake, they are the most likely suspects. They're the ones who go in for random destruction like this."
"Yes, but just with mouler glasses, small-time stuff. They couldn't wreck a whole block, especially without demons' magic."
"Perhaps they had other methods, Mandrake. Now, run me again through the events of last night."
"Yes, sir; it would be a pleasure." And a complete waste of time. Inwardly fuming, Nathaniel consulted his vellum notebook for a few moments. "Well, sir, at some time around midnight, witnesses living in the apartments across Piccadilly summoned the Night Police, describing disturbing noises coming from Grebe's Luxuries at one end of the block. The police arrived, to find a large hole blown in the end wall, and Mr. Grebe's best caviar and champagne scattered all over the pavement. A terrible waste, if I may say so, sir. By this time, tremendous crashes were coming from Dashell's Silk Emporium two doors down; the officers peered through the windows, but all the lights had been extinguished inside and the source was not clear. It might be worth mentioning here, sir," the boy added, looking up from the notebook, "that today all electric lights are fully functioning in the buildings."
The minister made an irritable gesture and kicked at the remnants of a small doll made of bone and shell, lying in the debris of the floor. "The significance being?"
"That whatever entered here had the effect of blocking out all light. It's another oddity, sir. Be that as it may.... the Night Police commander sent his men inside. Six of them, sir. Highly trained and savage. They entered through the window of Coot's Delicatessen, one after the other, close to where the crashing noise was sounding. After that, it all went quiet.... Then there were six small flashes of blue light from inside the shop. One after the other. No big noise, nothing. All was dark again. The commander waited, but his men didn't come back. A little later, he heard the crashing again, somewhere up near Pinn's. By this time, about 1:25 A.M., magicians from Security had arrived and had sealed the whole block in a nexus. Search spheres were sent in, as you mentioned, sir. They promptly vanished... Not long afterward, at 1:45, something broke through the nexus at the rear of the building. We don't know what, because the demons stationed there have disappeared, too."
The boy closed the notebook. "And that's all we know, sir. Six police casualties, plus eight Security demons gone.... Oh, and Mr. Pinn's assistant." He glanced over at the far wall of the building, where a small heap of charcoal gently smoldered. "The financial costs are of course far greater."
It was not clear that Mr. Tallow had gained much from the account; he grunted irritably and turned away. A black-suited magician with a gaunt, sallow face passed through the rubble, carrying a small golden cage with an imp sitting in it. Every now and then the imp shook the bars furiously with its claws.
Mr. Tallow addressed the man as he passed. "Ffoukes, has there been any word back yet from Ms. Whitwell?"
"Yes, sir. She requests results in double-quick time. Her words, sir."
"I see. Does the imp's condition suggest any pestilence or poison remaining in the next shop?"
"No sir. He is as limber as a ferret, and twice as evil. There is no danger."
"Very well. Thank you, Ffoukes."
As Ffoukes moved off, he spoke sidelong to Nathaniel. "You're going to have to work overtime on this one, Mandrake. The P.M.'s not at all happy, from what I hear." He grinned, departed; the rattle of the imp's cage faded slowly into the distance.
Stony-faced, Nathaniel swept his hair back behind one ear, and turned to follow Tallow, who was picking his way among the rubble of the room. "Mandrake, we will inspect the remains of the police officers. Have you eaten breakfast?"
"No, sir."
"Just as well. We must go next door, to Coot's Delicatessen." He sighed. "I used to get good caviar there."
They came to the partition wall leading to the next establishment. It had been staved clean through. Here, the minister paused.
"Now, Mandrake," he said. "Use that brain of yours that we've heard so much about, and tell me what you deduce from this hole."
Despite himself, Nathaniel enjoyed tests such as this. He adjusted his cuffs and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "It gives us some idea of the perpetrator's size and shape," he began. "The ceiling's thirteen feet high here, but the hole's only ten feet tall: so whatever made it is unlikely to be larger than that. Breadth of hole three and a half feet, so judging by the relative dimensions of height and width, I'd say it could be man-shaped, although obviously much bigger. But more interesting than that is the way the hole was made—" He broke off, rubbing his chin in what he hoped was a clever, mulling sort of way.
"Obvious enough so far. Go on."
Nathaniel did not believe Mr. Tallow had already made such calculations. "Well sir, if the enemy had used a Detonation or some similar explosive magic, the bricks in the way would have been vaporized, or shattered into small fragments. Yet here they are, snapped and broken at the edges certainly, but many of them still mortared together in solid chunks. I'd say whatever broke in here simply pushed its way through, sir, swiped the wall aside as if it didn't exist."
He waited, but the minister just nodded, as if with unutterable boredom. "So...?"
_"So_ , sir..."The boy gritted his teeth; he knew he was being made to do his leader's thinking for him, and resented it with a passion. "So... that makes an afrit or marid less likely. They'd blast their way through. It's not a conventional demon we're dealing with." That was it; Tallow wasn't getting a word more out of him.
But the minister seemed satisfied for the moment. "My thoughts exactly, Mandrake, my thoughts exactly. Well, well, so many questions.... And over here is another." He levered himself up and over the space in the wall into the next shop. Glowering, the boy followed. Julius Tallow was a fool. He appeared complacent, but like a weak swimmer out of his depth, his legs were kicking frantically under the surface, trying to keep him afloat. Whatever happened, Nathaniel did not intend to sink with him.
The air in Coot's Delicatessen carried a strong taint, sharp and unpleasant. Nathaniel reached into his breast pocket for his voluminous colored handkerchief and held it under his nose. He stepped gingerly into the dim interior. Vats of olives and pickled anchovies had been broached and the contents spilled; their smell combined nastily with something denser, more acidic. A trace of burning. Nathaniel's eyes stung a little. He coughed into his handkerchief.
"So here they are: Duvall's best men." Tallow's voice was heavy with sarcasm.
Six conical piles of jet-black ash and bones were dotted here and there across the shop floor. In the nearest, a couple of sharp canine teeth were clearly visible; also the end of a long thin bone, perhaps the policeman's tibia. Most of the body had been completely consumed. The boy bit his lip and swallowed.
"Got to get used to this kind of thing in Internal Affairs," the magician said heartily. "Feel free to step outside if you're feeling faint, John."
The boy's eyes glittered. "No, thank you. I'm quite all right. This is very—"
"Interesting? Isn't it, though? Reduced to pure carbon—or near as makes no odds; just the odd tooth escaped. And yet each little mound tells a story. Look at that one near the door, for instance, spread out more than the others. Implies he was moving fast, leaping for safety, maybe. But he wasn't fast enough, I fancy"
Nathaniel said nothing. He found the minister's callousness harder to stomach than the remains, which were, after all, very neatly piled.
"So, Mandrake," Tallow said. "Any ideas?"
The boy took a deep, grim breath and leafed swiftly through his well-stocked memory "It's not a Detonation," he began, "nor a Miasma; nor a Pestilence—they're all much too messy. Might have been an Inferno—"
"Do you think so, Mandrake? Why?"
"—I was going to say, sir, it _might_ have been an Inferno, except that there's no damage anywhere around the remains. They're all that's burned, nothing else."
"Oh. So what then?"
The boy looked at him. "I really have no idea, sir. What do _you_ think?"
Whether Mr. Tallow would have managed a reply, the boy doubted; the minister was saved from responding by the faint tinkling of an unseen bell and a shimmering in the air beside him. These signs announced the arrival of a servant. Mr. Tallow spoke a command and the demon materialized fully. For unknown reasons, it wore the semblance of a small green monkey, which sat cross-legged on a luminous cloud. Mr. Tallow regarded it. "Your report?"
"As you requested, we have scanned the rubble and all levels of the buildings on each plane at the most minute dimension of scale," the monkey said. "We can find no traces of magical activity remaining, except the following, which I shall enumerate:
> "One: Faint glimmerings of the nexus boundary, which the Security team erected around the perimeter.
>
> "Two: Residual traces of the three demi-afrits that were sent inside the boundary. It seems their essences were destroyed in Mr. Pinn's establishment.
>
> "Three: Numerous auras from the artifacts of Pinn's Accoutrements. Most of these remain scattered in the road, although several small items of value have been appropriated by your assistant, Mr. Ffoukes, when you weren't looking.
"That is the sum total of our researches." The monkey twirled its tail in a relaxed fashion. "Do you require any further information at this stage, master?"
The magician waved a hand. "That will be all, Nemaides. You may go."
The monkey inclined its head. It stuck its tail straight up into the air, clasped it with all four feet as if it were a rope, and clambering up at speed, vanished from view.
The minister and his assistant remained silent for a moment. At last Mr. Tallow broke the silence. "You see, Mandrake?" he said. "It is a mystery. This is not magicians'work: any higher demon would have left traces of its passing. Afrits' auras remain detectable for days, for example. Yet there is no trace, none! Until we find evidence otherwise, we must assume that Resistance traitors have found some non-magical means of attack. Well, we must apply ourselves, before they strike again!"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes...Well, I think you have seen enough for one day. Go and do some research, consider the problem." Mr. Tallow gave him a side glance; his voice held thinly concealed implications. "You are, after all, officially in _charge_ of this case, this being a Resistance matter."
The boy bowed stiffly. "Yes, sir."
The minister waved his hand. "You have my leave to depart. Oh, and on your way out, would you mind asking Mr. Ffoukes to step inside for a moment?"
A thin smile briefly flickered on Nathaniel's face. "Certainly, sir. It would be a pleasure."
**T** hat evening, Nathaniel set off for home in a mood of black despondency. The day had not gone well. A barrage of messages throughout the afternoon had proclaimed the agitation of the senior ministers. What was the latest on the Piccadilly outrage? Had any suspects been arrested? Was a curfew to be enforced on this, a day of national rejoicing? Who exactly was in charge of the investigation? When were the police to be given more powers to deal with the traitors in our midst?
While he toiled, Nathaniel had sensed the side glances of his colleagues and the sniggering of Jenkins behind his back. He trusted none of them; all were eager to see him fail. Isolated, without allies, he didn't even have a servant he could rely on. The two foliots, for instance, had been useless. He had dismissed them for good that afternoon, too dispirited even to give them the stippling they deserved.
What I need, he thought, as he departed his office without a backward glance, is a _proper_ servant. Something with power. Something I know will obey me. Something like Tallow's Nemaides, or my master's Shubit.
But this was easier said than done.
All magicians required one or more demonic entities as their personal slaves, and the nature of these slaves was a sure indicator of status. Great magicians, such as Jessica Whitwell, commanded the services of potent djinn, which they summoned fast as a finger snap. The Prime Minister himself was served by no less than a blue-green afrit—although the word-bonds necessary to snare it had been wrought by several of his aides. For everyday, most magicians made use of foliots, or imps of greater or lesser power, who generally attended their masters on the second plane.
Nathaniel had long been eager to employ a servant of his own. He had first summoned a goblin-imp, which appeared in a yellow guff of brimstone; it was secured to his service, but Nathaniel soon found its tics and grimaces unendurable and dismissed it from his sight.
Next he had tried a foliot: although it maintained a discreet appearance, it was compulsively mendacious, trying to twist every one of Nathaniel's commands to its advantage. Nathaniel had been forced to frame even the simplest orders in complex legal language that the creature could not pretend to misconstrue. It was when he found himself taking fifteen minutes to order his servant to run a bath that Nathaniel's patience expired; he blasted the foliot with hot Palpitations and banished it for good.
Several more attempts followed, with Nathaniel recklessly summoning ever more powerful demons in his search for the ideal slave. He had the necessary energy and skill, but lacked the experience to judge the character of his choices before it was too late. In one of his master's white-bound books, he had located a djinni named Castor, last summoned during the Italian Renaissance. It duly appeared, was courteous and efficient and (Nathaniel was pleased to note) effortlessly more elegant than the ungainly imps of his colleagues in the office. However, Castor possessed a fiery pride.
One day, an important social function had been held at the Persian Consulate; it was an opportunity for everyone to display their servants, and thus their aptitude. At first all went well. Castor accompanied Nathaniel at his shoulder in the form of a fat, pink-faced cherub, even going so far as to wear a drape that matched its master's tie. But its coy appearance aroused the distaste of the other imps, which whispered insults as they passed. Castor could not ignore such provocation; in a flash it bounded from Nathaniel's side, seized a shish kebab from a platter and, without even pausing to remove the vegetables from the skewer, hurled it like a javelin through the chest of the worst offender. In the ensuing pandemonium, several other imps leaped into the fray; the second plane became awash with whirling limbs, brandished silverware, and contorted bog-eyed faces. It took the magicians many minutes to regain control.
Fortunately Nathaniel had dismissed Castor on the instant, and despite an investigation, it was never satisfactorily resolved which demon had begun the fight. Nathaniel would have dearly liked to punish Castor for its actions, but summoning it again was far too risky. He reverted to less ambitious slaves.
However, try as he might, nothing Nathaniel summoned had the combination of initiative, power, and obedience that he required. More than once, in fact, he was surprised to find himself thinking almost wistfully of his first servant...
But he had resolved not to summon Bartimaeus again.
Whitehall was filled with flocks of excitable commoners, straggling down to the river for the evening's naval sail-past and fireworks display. Nathaniel made a face; all afternoon, while he had been hunched at his desk, the sounds of marching bands and happy crowds had filtered through the open window, breaking his concentration. But it was an officially sanctioned nuisance and he could do nothing about it. On Founder's Day, ordinary people were encouraged to celebrate; the magicians, who were not expected to swallow propaganda so wholeheartedly, worked as usual.
All around him were red and shiny faces, happy smiles. The commoners had already enjoyed hours of free eating and drinking at the special stalls set up throughout the capital, and had been captivated by the free shows arranged by the Ministry of Entertainment. Every park in central London contained wonders: stilt-walkers; fire-eaters from the Punjab; rows of cages—some with exotic beasts, some containing sullen rebels captured in the North American campaigns; piles of treasures collected from around the Empire; military displays; fetes and carousels.
A few of the Night Police were in evidence along the street, although even they were doing their best to fit in with the general frivolity. Nathaniel saw several holding sticks of bright pink candy floss and one, teeth bared in an unconvincing smile, posing with an elderly lady for her husband's tourist snap. The mood of the crowd seemed relaxed, which was a relief—the events in Piccadilly had not overly agitated them.
The bright sun was still high over the sparkling waters of the Thames as Nathaniel crossed Westminster Bridge. He squinted up; through his contact lenses, among the wheeling gulls, he saw the demons hovering, scanning the crowds for possible attack. He bit his lip, kicked savagely at a discarded falafel wrap. It was exactly the kind of day the Resistance would choose for one of their little stunts: maximum publicity, maximum embarrassment for the government.... Was it _possible_ the Piccadilly raid had been one of theirs?
No, he couldn't accept it. It was too different from their normal crimes, far more savage and destructive in its scale. And it wasn't the work of humans, whatever that fool Tallow might say.
He arrived on the south bank and turned left, away from the crowds, into a restricted residential area. Below the quay, the magicians' pleasure yachts lay bobbing unattended, Ms. Whitwell's _Firestorm_ the largest and most streamlined of the lot.
As he approached the apartment block, the blaring of a horn made him start. Ms. Whitwell's limousine was parked against the curb, its motor ticking. A stolid chauffeur stared out in front. From a rear window, his master's angular head protruded. She beckoned him.
"At _last._ I sent an imp, but you'd left already. Get in. We're going to Richmond."
"The Prime Minister—?"
"Wants to see us directly. Hurry up."
Nathaniel trotted to the car at speed, heart hammering in his chest. A sudden demand for an audience like this did not bode well.
Almost before he'd slammed the door, Ms. Whitwell signaled to the chauffeur. The car set off abruptly along the Thames embankment, jerking Nathaniel back in his seat. He composed himself as best he could, aware of his master's eyes upon him.
"You know what this is about, I suppose?" she said, dryly.
"Yes, ma'am. This morning's incident in Piccadilly?"
"Naturally. Mr. Devereaux wants to know what we are doing about it. Notice I said 'we,'John. As Security Minister, I'm responsible for Internal Affairs. I will be under some pressure over this. My enemies will seek to gain advantage over me. What will I tell them about this disaster? Have you made arrests?"
Nathaniel cleared his throat. "No, ma'am."
"Who is to blame?"
"We... are not altogether certain, ma'am."
"Indeed. I spoke to Mr. Tallow this afternoon. He blamed the Resistance quite clearly."
"Oh. Is... erm, is Mr. Tallow coming to Richmond, too, ma'am?"
"He is not. I am bringing you because Mr. Devereaux has a liking for you, which may stand in our favor. Mr. Tallow is less presentable. I find him bumptious and incompetent. Hah, he cannot even be trusted to work a spell correctly, as his skin color attests." She snorted down her pale, thin nose. "You are a bright boy, John," she went on. "You understand that if the Prime Minister loses patience with me, I will lose patience with those below. Mr. Tallow is consequently a worried man. He trembles as he goes to bed. He knows that worse things than nightmares can come to a man as he sleeps. For the moment, he shields you from the full glare of my displeasure, but do not be complacent. Young as you are, you can be blamed for things quite easily. Already, Mr. Tallow seeks to displace responsibility onto you."
Nathaniel said nothing. Ms. Whitwell considered him for a while in silence, then turned to glare out at the river, where a flotilla of small naval vessels had begun to pass seaward with much fanfare. Some were ironclads bound for the far colonies, their wooden hulls encased with metal sheeting, others were smaller patrol boats, designed for European waters, but all had sails unfurled, flags waving. On the banks, crowds cheered, streamers were shot high above to fall into the river like rain.
* * *
At that time, Mr. Rupert Devereaux had been Prime Minister for almost twenty years. He was a magician of secondary abilities, but a consummate politician, who had succeeded in remaining in power through his ability to play his colleagues off one another. Several attempts had been made to overthrow him, but his efficient spy network had succeeded in almost every case in snaring the conspirators before they struck.
Recognizing from the first that his rule depended, to some degree, on maintaining a lofty detachment from his lesser ministers in London, Mr. Devereaux had established his court at Richmond, some ten miles from the heart of the capital. Senior ministers were invited out to consult with him on a weekly basis; supernatural messengers maintained a constant flow of orders and reports, and so the Prime Minister kept himself informed. Meanwhile, he was able to indulge his inclination toward fine living, a habit for which the secluded nature of the Richmond estate was admirably suited. Among his other pleasures, Mr. Devereaux had developed a passion for the stage. For some years he had cultivated the acquaintance of the leading playwright of the day, Quentin Makepeace, a gentleman of boundless enthusiasm, who regularly attended Richmond to give the Prime Minister private one-man shows.
As he grew older and his energies lessened, Mr. Devereaux rarely ventured forth from Richmond at all. When he did so—perhaps to review troops departing for the Continent, or to attend a first night theatrical performance—he was accompanied at all times by a bodyguard of ninth-level magicians and a battalion of horlas on the second plane. This caution had become more marked since the days of the Lovelace conspiracy, when Mr. Devereaux had very nearly died. His paranoia had grown up like a weed in good muck, twisting and twining itself tightly around all those who served him. None of his ministers could feel entirely secure with either their employment or their lives.
The gravel road passed through a succession of villages made prosperous by Mr. Devereaux's bounty, before ending at Richmond itself—a cluster of well-appointed cottages set about a broad green dotted with oaks and chestnut trees. At one side of the green was a tall brick wall, punctured by a wrought-iron gate that had been reinforced with the usual magical securities. Beyond this, a short drive between rows of box yew ended at the redbrick courtyard of Richmond House.
The limousine hummed to a standstill before the entrance steps, and four scarlet-coated servants hurried forth in attendance. Although it was still daylight, bright lanterns hung above the porch and shone merrily in several of the tall windows. Somewhere far off, a string quartet played with melancholic elegance.
Ms. Whitwell did not immediately signal for the car door to be opened.
"It will be a full council," she said, "so I needn't tell you how to behave. No doubt Mr. Duvall will be at his most aggressive. He sees last night as a great opportunity to gain a decisive advantage. We must both be suitably composed."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't let me down, John."
She tapped on the window; a servant leaped forward to open the car door. They passed together up shallow sandstone steps and into the foyer of the house. The music was stronger here, drifting lazily among the heavy drapes and Eastern furnishings, swelling occasionally, dying back again. The sound seemed quite close, but there was no sign of the musicians. Nathaniel did not expect to see them. On previous occasions when he had visited Richmond, similar music had always been playing; it followed you wherever you went, a permanent backdrop to the beauty of house and grounds.
A manservant ushered them through a series of luxurious chambers, until they passed under a high white arch and into a long, open, sunlit room, evidently a conservatory appended to the house. On either side stretched brown flowerbeds, neat and empty and decorous, and studded with ornamental rosebushes. Here and there, invisible persons tilled the earth with rakes.
Inside the conservatory, the air was warm, stirred only by a sluggish fan hanging from the ceiling. Below, on a semicircle of low couches and divans, reclined the Prime Minister and his retinue, drinking coffee from small, white Byzantine cups and listening to the complaints of an immense man in a white suit. Nathaniel's stomach churned to see him there: this was Sholto Pinn, whose business had been ruined.
"I regard it as the most despicable outrage," Mr. Pinn was saying. "A gross affront. I have sustained such losses..."
The couch nearest to the door was empty. Ms. Whitwell sat here, and Nathaniel, after a hesitation, did likewise. His quick eyes scanned the occupants of the room.
First: Pinn. Ordinarily, Nathaniel regarded the merchant with suspicion and dislike, since he had been a close friend of the traitor Lovelace. But nothing had ever been proved, and clearly he was the injured party here. His lament rumbled on.
"... that I fear I may never recover. My collection of irreplaceable relics is gone. All I have left is a faience pot containing a useless dried paste! I can scarcely..."
Rupert Devereaux himself lounged on a high-backed couch. He was of average height and build, originally handsome, but now, thanks to his many and varied indulgences, slightly heavier around the jowls and belly. Expressions of boredom and annoyance flitted perpetually across his face as he listened to Mr. Pinn.
Mr. Henry Duvall, the Chief of Police, sat nearby, arms folded, his gray cap resting squarely on his knees. He wore the distinctive uniform of the Graybacks, the elite cadre of the Night Police of which he was commander: a ruffed white shirt; a smog-gray jacket, squared, crisply pressed and decorated with bright red buttons; gray trousers tucked into long black boots. Bright brass epaulettes like claws gripped his shoulders. In such an outfit, his hulking frame appeared even bigger and broader than it was; silent and seated, he dominated the room.
Three other ministers were present. A bland, middle-aged man with lank blond hair sat studying his nails—this was Carl Mortensen of the Home Office. Beside him, yawning ostentatiously, sat Helen Malbindi, the soft-spoken Information Minister. The Foreign Secretary, Marmaduke Fry, a man of capacious appetites, was not even pretending to listen to Mr. Pinn; he was engaged in loudly ordering an extra luncheon from a deferential servant.
"... six croquette potatoes, green beans, sliced lengthways..."
"... for thirty-five years I've built up my supplies. Each one of you has benefited from my experience..."
"... and another cod roe omelette, with a judicious sprinkling of black pepper."
On the same couch as Mr. Devereaux, separated from him by a teetering pile of Persian cushions, sat a short, red-haired gentleman. He wore an emerald-green waistcoat, tight black trousers with sequins sewn into the fabric, and an enormous smile. He appeared to be enjoying the debate hugely. Nathaniel's eyes lingered on him for a moment. Quentin Makepeace was the author of more than twenty successful plays, the latest of which, _Swans of Araby,_ had broken box office records across the Empire. His presence in the company was somewhat incongruous, but not entirely unexpected. He was known to be the Prime Minister's closest confidante, and the other ministers tolerated him with wary courtesy.
Mr. Devereaux noted Ms. Whitwell's arrival and raised an acknowledging hand. He coughed discreetly; instantly Mr. Pinn's flow of grievances ceased.
"Thank you, Sholto," the Prime Minister said. "You are most articulate. We are all deeply moved by your predicament. Perhaps now we may get some answers. Jessica Whitwell is here, together with young Mandrake, whom I'm sure you all remember."
Mr. Duvall grunted, his voice heavy with irony "Who does not know the great John Mandrake? We follow his career with interest, particularly his efforts against the troublesome Resistance. I hope he brings news of a breakthrough in this case."
All eyes fixed upon Nathaniel. He gave a brief, stiff bow as courtesy required. "Good evening, sirs, madams. Erm, I have no firm news as yet. We have been carefully investigating the scene, and—"
"I knew it!" The medals on the Police Chief's chest swung and clicked with the force of his interruption. "You hear that, Sholto? 'No firm news.' Hopeless."
Mr. Pinn regarded Nathaniel through his monocle. "Indeed. Most disappointing."
"It is about time Internal Affairs was taken off this case," Duvall continued. "We at the police could do a better job. It's time the Resistance was crushed."
"Hear, hear." Mr. Fry looked up briefly, then returned to the servant. "And a strawberry roulade for dessert..."
"It certainly is," Helen Malbindi said gravely "I have myself suffered some losses—a valuable collection of African spirit masks was taken recently."
"Some of my associates," Carl Mortensen added, "were burgled, too. And the backroom of my Persian carpet supplier was set on fire last night."
From his corner, Mr. Makepeace smiled equably. "In truth, most of these crimes are terribly small scale, are they not? They do not truly hurt us. The Resistance are fools: they alienate the commoners with their explosions—people are frightened of them."
"Small scale? How can you say that," Mr. Duvall cried, "when one of the most prestigious streets in London has been devastated? Our enemies around the world will be rushing home to communicate the good news—that the British Empire is too weak to prevent attacks on its own doorstep. That'll go down well in the backwoods of America, I can tell you. And on Gladstone's Day, above all."
"Which is a ridiculous extravagance, incidentally," Morten-sen said. "A waste of valuable resources. I don't know why we honor the old fool."
There was a chuckle from Mr. Makepeace. "You wouldn't have said that to his face, Mortensen."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen..." The Prime Minister stirred himself. "We should not bicker. In one respect, Carl is correct. Founder's Day is a serious business and must be done well. We befuddle the population with gaudy trivialities. Millions are taken from the Treasury to finance the free food and games. Even the Fourth Fleet has delayed embarking for America to provide a little extra spectacle. Anything that spoils the effect—and wounds Mr. Pinn into the bargain—needs to be quickly addressed. Currently, it is the job of Internal Affairs to investigate crimes of this nature. Now, Jessica, if you would care to report..."
Ms. Whitwell gestured at Nathaniel. "Mr. Mandrake has been conducting the case with Mr. Tallow. He has not yet had time to report to me. I suggest we hear him out."
The Prime Minister smiled benignly at Nathaniel. "Go ahead, John."
Nathaniel swallowed. His master was leaving him to fend for himself. Very well, then. "It's too early to tell what caused this morning's disruption," he said. "Maybe—"
Sholto Pinn's monocle popped out of his eye. _"'Disruption'?"_ he roared. "This is a catastrophe! How _dare_ you, boy?"
Nathaniel persevered doggedly. "It's too early, sir," he said, "to tell whether this was in fact the Resistance at all. It might well not be. It might be agents from a foreign power, or the pique of a homegrown renegade. There are odd aspects about the case—"
Mr. Duvall held up a hairy hand. "Ridiculous! It's a Resistance attack for sure. It has all the hallmarks of their crimes."
"No, sir." Nathaniel forced himself to meet the police chief's gaze. He was not going to kowtow any further. "Resistance attacks are small-scale, generally involving low-level magical attack—mouler glasses, Elemental Spheres. They are always conducted against political targets—against magicians, or the businesses that supply us—and have a whiff of opportunism about them. They are always hit-and-run. The Piccadilly incident was different. It was ferocious in its intensity and was sustained for many minutes. The buildings were wrecked from the _inside out_ —the outer walls remaining largely intact. In short, I believe something was exerting high-level magical control over the destruction."
Ms. Whitwell spoke then. "But there was no evidence of imps or djinn."
"No, ma'am. We methodically combed the area, looked for clues, and found nothing. There were no _conventional_ magical traces, which seems to rule out the presence of demons; nor was there any sign of human involvement. Those persons present during the attack were killed by strong magic of a sort, but we have been unable to identify its source. If I might speak freely—Mr. Tallow is ploddingly meticulous, but his methods throw up no new leads. Should our enemy strike again, I believe that we will continue to stumble along in his wake, unless we change our tactics."
"We need more power to the Graybacks," Mr. Duvall said.
"With respect," Nathaniel said, "six of your wolves were not enough last night."
There was a short silence. Mr. Duvall's small black eyes appraised Nathaniel up and down. His nose was short, but unusually broad, his chin blue with stubble, protuberant as a snowplow. He said nothing, but the look in the eyes was clear.
"Well, that is plainly spoken," Mr. Devereaux said finally. "So, what is _your_ suggestion, John?"
This was it. He had to seize the chance. They were all waiting for him to fail. "I think there is every reason to believe last night's assailant will strike again," he said. "It has just attacked Piccadilly—one of the most popular tourist destinations in London. Perhaps it seeks to humiliate us, to spread uncertainty among visitors from abroad, to undermine our international standing. Whatever the reason, we need high-level djinn on patrol across the capital. I would station them near other prominent shopping areas, and tourist sites such as museums and galleries. Then, if anything happens, we will be in a position to act quickly."
There were snorts of disapproval from the assembled ministers and a general outcry. The suggestion was ridiculous: vigilance spheres were already on patrol; the police were out in force, too; high-level djinn required much expenditure of energy.... Only the Prime Minister remained quiet—along with Mr. Makepeace, who sat back in his seat wearing an expression of great merriment.
Mr. Devereaux called for silence. "It seems to me the evidence is inconclusive. Is this outrage the work of the Resistance? Perhaps, perhaps not. Would more surveillance be useful? Who knows? Well, I have come to a decision. Mandrake, you have proved yourself more than capable in the past. Now do so again. Organize this surveillance and track down the perpetrator. Hunt out the Resistance, too. I want results. If Internal Affairs fails"—here he eyed Nathaniel and Ms. Whitwell meaningfully—"we will have to let other departments take over. I suggest you head off now and pick your demons with due care. For the rest of us—it is Founder's Day, and we should be celebrating. Let us go to dinner!"
Ms. Whitwell did not speak until the purring car had left Richmond village far behind them. "You have made an enemy in Duvall," she said at last. "And I don't think the others care for you much either. But that is now the least of your worries." She looked out at the dark trees, the rushing countryside at dusk. "I have faith in you, John," she went on. "This idea of yours may bear some fruit. Talk to Tallow, get your department working, send out your demons." She ran a long, thin hand through her hair. "I cannot concentrate on this problem myself. I have too much to do preparing for the American campaigns. But _if_ you succeed in discovering our enemy, _if_ you bring some pride back to Internal Affairs, you will be well rewarded..." The statement held the implication of its opposite. She left it hanging; she did not need to say the rest.
Nathaniel felt impelled to respond. "Yes, ma'am," he said huskily. "Thank you."
Ms. Whitwell nodded slowly. She glanced at Nathaniel and despite his admiration and respect for his master, despite his years living in her house, he suddenly felt that she was eyeing him dispassionately, as if from a great distance. It was the look that an airborne hawk might give a scrawny rabbit, while considering whether it was worth the plunge. Nathaniel was suddenly overly conscious of his youth and frailty, of his raw vulnerability beside her power.
"We do not have much time," his master said. "For your sake, I hope you have a competent demon readily to hand."
**10**
**A** s always, of course, I tried to resist.
I exerted all my energies to counteract the pull, but the wrenching words were just too strong; each syllable was a harpoon spearing my substance, drawing it together, dragging me off. For three short seconds, the gentle gravity of the Other Place helped me hang back... then, all at once, its support weakened and I was torn away like a child from its mother's breast.
With extreme suddenness, my essence was compacted, extended to an infinite length and, a moment later, expelled out into the world and the familiar, hated confinements of a pentacle.
Where, following the immemorial laws, I materialized instantly.
Choices, choices. What should I be? The summons was a powerful one—the unknown magician was certainly experienced, and thus unlikely to be cowed by a roaring buggane or a cobweb-eyed specter. So I decided upon a delicate, fastidious guise to impress upon my captor my formidable sophistication.
It was a snappy piece of work, if I say so myself. A large iridescent bubble, glimmering all over with a pearly sheen, rotated in midair. Soft fragrances of aromatic woods drifted forth, with—faintly, as if borne from a great distance—the ethereal music of harps and violins. Inside the bubble, with little round spectacles perched upon her shapely nose, sat a beautiful maiden. She peered calmly out.
And let off a cry of astonished fury.
"You!"
"Now, hold on, Bartimaeus—"
_"You!"_ The ethereal music cut off with an unpleasant squelch; the soft aromatic fragrances turned rank and sour. The beautiful maiden's face grew crimson, her eyes bulged like a pair of poached eggs, the glass in the spectacles cracked. Her rosebud mouth opened to reveal sharp yellow teeth champing up and down with rage. Flames danced inside the bubble and its surface swelled dangerously, as if about to burst. It spun so fast, the air began to hum.
"Just listen for a minute—"
"We had an agreement! We each made a vow!"
"Now, strictly speaking, that's not quite true—"
"No? Have you forgotten so soon? And it _is_ soon, isn't it? I lose track in the Other Place, but you look barely different from before. You're still a kid!"
He drew himself up. "I am an important member of the government—"
"You're not even shaving. What is it?—two years later, maybe three?"
"Two years, eight months."
"So you're fourteen now. And already you're summoning me again."
"Yes, but wait a minute—I never made a vow back then. I just let you go. I never said—"
"That you'd not call me back? That was the firm implication. I'd forget your true name, you'd forget mine. Deal. But now..." Inside the whirling bubble, the beautiful maiden's face was fast regressing down an evolutionary slope—a prominent beetling brow had appeared, a jagged nose, red feral eyes... the little round glasses were somewhat out of place, and a claw reached up within the bubble, seized the glasses, and shoved them into the mouth, where sharp teeth crunched them into powder.
The boy raised a hand. "Just stop messing around and listen to me for a moment."
_"Listen_ to you? Why should I do that, when the ache from last time has barely gone? I can tell you I was anticipating rather longer than two years—"
"Two years, eight months."
"Two measly human years to get over the trauma of meeting you. Sure, I knew some idiot with a pointy hat would one day call me up again, but I hardly thought it would be the same idiot as last time!"
He pursed his lips. "I _don't have_ a pointy hat."
"You're a fool! I know your birth name and you bring me back into the world against my will. Well, that's fine, because I'm going to crow it from the rooftops before I'm done!"
"No—you vowed—"
"My vow is over, finished, void, annulled, returned to sender marked unopened. Two can play at your game, boy." The maiden's face was gone. Instead, a bestial shape, all teeth and spiny hair, snapped at the bubble's surface as if trying to break free.
"If you'll just give me a minute to explain! I'm doing you a favor!"
"A favor? Oh boy, this is going to be priceless! This I've _got_ to hear."
"In that case keep quiet for half a second and let me speak."
"All right! Fine! I'll be quiet."
"Good."
"I'll be silent as the grave. Your grave, incidentally."
"In that case—"
"And we'll see if you can even remotely come up with an excuse worth hearing, because I doubt—"
_"Will you shut up!"_ The magician raised a sudden hand and I felt a corresponding pressure on the outside of the bubble. I stopped ranting sharpish.
He took a deep breath, smoothed back his hair and adjusted his cuffs unnecessarily. "Right," he said. "I'm two years older, as you so correctly guessed. But I'm two years _wiser_ as well. And I should warn you I won't be using the Systemic Vise, if you misbehave. No. Have you ever experienced the Inverted Skin? Or the Essence Rack? Of course you have. With a personality like yours, it's guaranteed. Well, then. Don't try my patience now."
"We've been through all this before," I said. "Remember? You know my name, I know yours. You fire a punishment at me, I fire it right back. Nobody wins. We both get hurt."
The boy sighed, nodded. "True. Perhaps we should both calm down." He crossed his arms and gave himself over to a few moments'grim contemplation of my bubble.
I regarded him bleakly in my turn. His face still had the old pale and hungry look, or at least the bit I could see did, since half of it was curtained by a veritable mane of hair. I swear he hadn't been within a mile of a pair of scissors since I'd last set eyes on him; his locks cascaded around his neck like a greasy black Niagra.
As for the rest, he was less weedy than before, true, but he hadn't so much gotten bulkier as been clumsily _stretched._ He looked as if some giant had grabbed his head and feet, yanked once, then gone off in disgust: his torso was narrow as a spindle, his arms and legs gangly and ill-fitting, his feet and hands quietly reminiscent of an ape's.
The gangly effect was heightened by his choice of clothes: a swanky suit, so tight it looked as if it had been painted on, a ridiculous long black coat, dagger-sharp shoes, and a flouncy handkerchief the size of a small tent hanging from his breast pocket. You could tell he thought he looked terribly dashing.
There were some cast-iron insult opportunities here, but I bided my time. I took a quick look around the room, which appeared to be some formal summoning chamber, probably in a government building. The floor was laid with a kind of artificial wood, entirely smooth, without knots or defects, evidently perfect for pentacle construction. A glass-fronted cupboard in one corner held an array of chalks, rulers, compasses, and papers. Another beside it was filled with jars and bottles of several dozen incenses. Aside from these, the chamber was completely bare. The walls were painted white. A square window high in one wall looked onto a black night sky; a drab cluster of bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling illuminated the room. The only door was made of iron and was bolted on the inside.
The boy came to the end of his musing, adjusted his cuffs again, and furrowed his brow. He put on a slightly pained expression: he was either attempting to be solemn or had bad indigestion—exactly which was hard to say. "Bartimaeus," he said ponderously, "listen well. Believe me, I profoundly regret summoning you again, but I had little choice. Circumstances have changed here, and we will both benefit from renewing our acquaintance."
He paused, seeming to think I might have a constructive remark to make. Not a chance. The bubble remained dull and motionless.
"In essentials, the situation is simple," he went on. "The government, of which I am now a part, is planning a major land offensive in the American colonies this winter. The fighting is likely to be costly to both sides, but since the colonies are refusing to bow to London's will, there sadly seems little choice but to authorize bloodshed. The rebels are well organized and have magicians of their own, some with power. To defeat them, we are sending out a large force of magician warriors, with their djinn and lesser demons in tow."
I stirred at this. A mouth opened in the side of the bubble. "You will lose the war. Have you been to America? I dwelled there, off and on, for two hundred years. The whole continent is a wilderness—it goes on seemingly forever. The rebels will retreat, draw you into an endless guerrilla campaign, and bleed you dry."
"We will not lose, but you are right that it will be difficult. Many men and many djinn will perish."
"Many men, certainly."
"The djinn fall just as fast. Has it not always been so? You've been in enough battles in your time. You know how it goes. And this is why I'm doing you a favor.
"The Senior Archivist has been through the records and has tabulated a list of demons that might be useful for the American campaign. Your name is among them."
A great campaign? Lists of demons? Sounded unlikely to me. But I trod carefully, tried to draw more out of him. The bubble twitched, an action not unlike a shrug. "Good," it said. "I liked America. Better than this hog-pit of London you call home. No foul urban mess—just great tracts of sky and grassland, with white-peaked mountains rising up forever..." To emphasize my satisfaction, I made a happy buffalo face appear inside the bubble.
The boy gave that old familiar thin-lipped smile that I'd known and disliked so heartily two years before. "Ah. You've not been to America for a while, have you?"
The buffalo eyed him askance. "Why?"
"There are cities there too now, ranged along the eastern seaboard. A couple even approach London in size. That's where the trouble is. Beyond the cultivated strip is the wilderness you refer to, but we're not interested in that. You'll be fighting in the cities."
The buffalo studied a hoof with feigned indifference. "Doesn't bother me none."
"No? Wouldn't you rather work here for me? I can get you off the war list. It would be a fixed term, just a few weeks. Bit of surveillance duty. Far less dangerous than open warfare."
"Surveillance?" I was scathing. "Ask an imp."
"The Americans have afrits, you know."
This had gone far enough. "Oh please," I said. "I can handle myself. I managed to get through the battle of Al-Arish and the Siege of Prague without you there to hold my hand. Let's face it, you must be in big trouble, or you'd never have brought me back. Especially given what I know—eh, _Nat?"_
It seemed for an instant as if the boy was going to explode with fury, but he mastered himself in time. He blew wearily through his cheeks. "All right," he said. "I admit it. I haven't summoned you here just to do you a favor."
The buffalo rolled its eyes. "Well now, there's a shock."
"I'm under pressure here at home," the boy went on. "I need results fast. If not"—he clenched his teeth hard together—"I may be... disposed of. Believe me, I'd love to have summoned a de—a djinni with better manners than you, but there's no time for me to research one properly."
"Now, _that_ has the ring of truth," I said. "That American story is complete cobblers, isn't it? Trying to earn my gratitude in advance. Well, tough. I'm not falling for it. I've got your birth name and I intend to use it. If you've got half a brain, you'll dismiss me pronto. Our conversation is at an end." To emphasize this, the buffalo head raised its muzzle skyward and swiveled haughtily inside the bubble.
The boy was hopping with agitation. "Oh, come _on,_ Bartimaeus..."
"No! Beg all you like, this buffalo's not listening."
"I'll _never_ beg you!" Now his anger was unleashed in all its fury. Boy, it was an awesome torrent of petulance. "Listen closely," he snarled. "If I don't get help, I'll not survive. That may not mean anything to you—"
The buffalo looked over its shoulder, eyes wide. "Such powers! You read my mind!"
"But _this_ just might. The American campaign _does_ exist. There's no list, I admit, but if you don't help me and I lose my life, I'll make sure before I go that your name is recommended to the troops out there. Then you can blab my birth name far and wide for all the good it'll do you. I won't be around to suffer. So those are your options," he concluded, folding his arms once more, "a simple bit of surveillance or exposure to battle. Up to you."
"Is that so?" I said.
He was breathing hard; his hair had flopped down in front of his face. "Yes. You betray me at your peril."
The buffalo turned around and gave him a long, hard stare. In truth, a bit of surveillance _was_ infinitely preferable to joining a war—battles have a nasty habit of getting out of control. And furious though I was with the youth, I had always found him a marginally more sympathetic master than most of them. Whether he was so still was far from clear. As little time had passed, it was possible he had not been wholly corrupted. I unzipped the front of the bubble and leaned out of it, hoof on chin. "Well, seems like you've won again," I said quietly. "Seems like I've got no choice."
He shrugged. "Not much, no."
"In that case," I went on, "the least you can do is fill me in a little. I can see you've gone up in the world. What's your posting?"
"I work for Internal Affairs."
"Internal Affairs? Wasn't that Underwood's department?" The buffalo raised an eyebrow. "Aha.... _Someone's_ following in his old master's footsteps."
The boy bit his lip. "I'm not. That's got nothing to do with it."
"Maybe _someone's_ still a little bit guilty about his death...."
The boy flushed. "Rubbish! It's a complete coincidence. My new master suggested I take the job."
"Ah yes, of course. The fragrant Ms. Whitwell. A delightful creature." I appraised him closely, warming to my task. "Did she advise you on your fashion sense as well? What's with those comical skin-tight trousers, anyway? I can read the label on your underpants right through them. As for those cuffs—"
He bristled. "This shirt was very expensive. Milanese silk. Big cuffs are the latest fashion."
"They look like lacy toilet plungers. It's a wonder you don't get blown backward in a draft. Why don't you cut them off and make them into a second suit? It couldn't be worse than the one you're wearing. Or they'd make a pretty Alice band for your hair."
It was notable that these jibes about his clothes seemed to annoy him more than the Underwood one. His priorities had certainly shifted over the years. He struggled to master his fury, picking restlessly at his cuffs, repeatedly smoothing back his hair.
"Look at you," I said. "So many new little habits. I bet you're copying them off one of your precious magicians."
His hand shot down from his hair. "No, I'm not."
"You probably pick your nose the way Ms. Whitwell does, you're so desperate to be like her."
Bad though it was to be back, it was nice to see him writhe with fury once again. I let him hop about inside his pentacle for a moment or two. "Surely you hadn't forgotten," I said cheerily. "You summon me, the backchat comes free. It's part of the package."
He groaned into his hands. "Suddenly death doesn't seem quite so terrifying."
I felt a bit better now. At least our ground rules were firmly reestablished. "So tell me about this surveillance job," I said. "You say it's simple?"
He composed himself. "Yes."
"And yet your job, your very life, hangs in the balance over it."
"That's right."
"So there's nothing remotely dangerous or complex about it?"
"No. Well..." He paused. "Not much."
The buffalo tapped its hoof grimly. "Go on..."
The boy sighed. "There's something out there in London that's highly destructive. Not a marid, not an afrit, not a djinni. It leaves no magical traces. It tore up half of Piccadilly last night, causing terrible devastation. Pinn's Accoutrements was destroyed."
"Really? What happened to Simpkin?"
"The foliot? Oh, he perished."
"Tsk. That's a shame."
The boy shrugged. "I share some responsibility for security in the capital, and blame has come my way. The Prime Minister is furious, and my master refuses to protect me."
"Are you surprised? I warned you about Whitwell."
He looked sullen. "She'll come to regret her disloyalty, Bartimaeus. Anyhow, we're wasting time. I need you to keep watch and track down the aggressor. I am organizing other magicians to send their djinn out, too. What do you say?"
"Let's get it over with," I said. "What is the charge and what are your terms?"
He glowered at me from between his luscious locks. "I propose a similar contract to last time. You agree to serve me, without revealing my birth name. If you are zealous and keep abusive remarks to a minimum, your duration of service will be relatively short."
"I want a definite duration. No vagaries."
"All right. Six weeks. That's a mere heartbeat to you."
"And my exact duties?"
"General multipurpose protection of your master (me). Surveillance of certain sites in London. Pursuit and identification of an unknown enemy of considerable power. How's that?"
"Surveillance, okay. The protection clause is a bit of a drag. Why don't we leave that out?"
"Because then I won't be able to trust you to keep me safe. No magician would ever take a chance on that. You'd stab me in the back first chance you got. So—do you accept?"
"I do."
"Then prepare to accept your charge!" He raised his arms and jutted out his chin, a pose that failed to be as impressive as intended because his hair kept falling in front of his eyes. He looked every one of his fourteen years.
"Hold on. Let me help. It's late, you should be tucked up in bed." The buffalo was now wearing the maiden's spectacles perched upon its muzzle. "How about this...?" I intoned it in a bored, official voice: "'I shall serve you once again for six full weeks. Under sufferance, I promise not to reveal your name during that time—'"
"My _birth_ name."
"Oh, all right—'your birth name during that time to any human who comes my way.'How about that?"
"Not quite enough, Bartimaeus. It's not a question of trust, more one of completeness. I suggest: '... during that time to any human, imp, djinni, or other sentient spirit, whether in this world or another, on any plane; nor to let slip the syllables of the name in such a way that an echo might be overheard; nor to whisper them into a bottle, cavity, or other secret place where their traces might be detected by magical means; nor to write them down or otherwise inscribe them, in any known language, so that their meaning can be descried.'"
Fair enough. I repeated the words grimly. Six long weeks. At least he'd missed one implication of the phrasing I had chosen: once the weeks were up, I'd be free to talk. And talk I would, if I got the slightest chance.
"Very well," I said. "It is done. Tell me more about this unknown enemy of yours."
On the morning after Founder's Day, the weather took a marked turn for the worse. Drab gray clouds piled over London and a thin rain began to fall. The streets quickly emptied of all but essential traffic, and members of the Resistance, who would ordinarily have been abroad seeking out new targets, congregated at their base.
Their meeting point was a small but well-stocked shop in the heart of Southwark. It sold paints and brushes and other such supplies, and was popular among artistically minded commoners. A few hundred yards north, beyond a row of decrepit stores, the great Thames flowed; beyond _that_ was central London, where magicians thronged. But Southwark was relatively poor, filled with small-time industry and commerce, and magicians rarely set foot in it.
Which suited the inhabitants of the art shop very well.
Kitty was standing behind the glass counter, sorting reams of paper by size and weight. On the counter to one side of her was a pile of parchment rolls, tied up with string, a small rack of scalpels, and six large glass jars, bristling with horsehair brushes. To the other side, rather too close for comfort, was Stanley's bottom. He was sitting cross-legged on the counter, head buried in the morning paper.
"They blame us, you know," he said. "
For what?" Kitty said. She knew quite well.
"For that nasty business up in town." Stanley bent the paper in half and folded it neatly on his knee. "And I quote: 'Following the Piccadilly outrage, Internal Affairs spokesman Mr. John Mandrake has advised all loyal citizens to be alert. The traitors responsible for the carnage are still at large in London. Suspicion has fallen on the same group that carried out a series of earlier attacks in Westminster, Chelsea, and Shaftesbury Avenue.' Shaftesbury Avenue... Hey, that's us, Fred!"
Fred only grunted. He was sitting in a wicker chair between two easels, leaning back against the wall so that it teetered and wobbled on two legs. He had been in the same position for almost an hour, staring into space.
"'The so-called Resistance is thought to be made up of disaffected youths,'" Stanley went on, "'highly dangerous, fanatical and addicted to violence'—Blimey, Fred, is it your mother writing this? They seem to know you so well—'they should not be approached. Please inform the Night Police'... blah de blah... 'Mr. Mandrake will be organizing new nighttime patrol... curfew after 9 P.M. for public safety'.... The usual story." He tossed the paper down upon the counter. "Sickening, I call it. Our last job barely gets a mention. The Piccadilly thing's totally stolen our thunder. It's not good enough. We need to take action."
He looked across at Kitty, who was busily counting sheets of paper. "Don't you reckon, boss? We should load up with some of those goodies in the cellar; pay a visit to Covent Garden or somewhere. Cause a proper stir."
She raised her eyes, glowered at him under her brows. "No need, is there? Someone's done it for us."
"Someone, yes.... Wonder who?" He lifted the back of his cap, scratched with precison. "I blame the Czechs, me." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
He was goading her again, rubbing up against her authority, testing for weaknesses. Kitty yawned. He'd have to try a bit harder than that. "Maybe," she said lazily. "Or it might be the Magyars or the Americans... or a hundred other groups. No shortage of contenders. Whoever it was, they hit a public place and that isn't our way, _as you well know."_
Stanley groaned. "You're not _still_ sore about the carpet fire, are you? Bor-ring. We wouldn't have gotten a mention at all if it wasn't for that."
"People were hurt, Stanley. Commoners."
"Collaborators, more like. Running to save their masters'rugs."
"Why can't you just—" She subsided; the door had opened. A middle-aged woman, dark-haired, with a lined face, entered the shop, shaking droplets off her umbrella. "Hello, Anne," Kitty said.
"Hello, all." The newcomer glanced around, sensing the tension. "Nasty weather having an effect? Bit of an atmosphere here. What's wrong?"
"Nothing. We're fine." Kitty attempted a relaxed smile. It wouldn't do to spread the dispute further. "How did you get on yesterday?"
"Oh, rich pickings." Anne said. She hung her umbrella on an easel and strolled to the counter, ruffling Fred's hair en route. She was dowdy of frame, a little rolling in her gait, but her eyes were quick and bright as a bird's. "Every magician ever spawned was out at the river last night, watching the sail-past. Remarkable how few of them guarded their pockets." She raised a hand and made a quick snatching motion with her fingers. "Nicked a couple of jewels with strong auras. The Chief will be interested. He can show them to Mr. Hopkins."
Stanley stirred. "Got 'em here?" he asked.
Anne made a face. "I stopped at the mews on the way down and left them in the cellar. Think I'd bring them _here?_ Go and make me a cup of tea, you stupid boy."
"It might be the last stuff we get for a while, though," Anne continued, as Stanley hopped down from the counter and disappeared into the back of the shop. "That Piccadilly hit was sensational, whoever did it. Like lobbing a rock into a wasps'nest. Did you see the skies last night? Swarming with demons."
From his chair, Fred growled in agreement. "Swarming," he said.
"It's that Mandrake again," Kitty said. "The paper says."
Anne nodded grimly. "He's nothing if not persistent. Those fake kids—"
"Hold it." Kitty nodded at the door. A thin, bearded man entered from the rain. He browsed awhile among the pencils and notebooks; Kitty and Anne busied themselves about the shop, and even Fred exerted himself to some menial task. Finally the man made his purchases and left.
Kitty looked at Anne, who shook her head. "He was okay."
"When's the Chief coming back?" Fred said, discarding the box he was carrying.
"Soon, I hope," Anne said. "He and Hopkins are researching something big."
"Good. We're just stewing here."
Stanley returned, bearing a tray of cups of tea. With him was a thickset young man with tow-colored hair, one arm supported by a sling. He grinned at Anne, patted Kitty on the back, and took a cup from the tray.
Anne was frowning at the sling. "How?" she said simply.
"Got into a fight." He took a swig of tea. "Last night, at the meeting house behind the Black Dog Pub. Commoners' action group, _so called._ I was trying to get them interested in some real positive action. They were scared; refused point-blank. I got a bit angry, told them what I thought of them. Bit of a scrap." He made a face. "It's nothing."
"You idiot, Nick," Kitty said. "You're hardly going to recruit anyone that way."
He scowled. "You should have heard them. They're terrified."
"Cowards," Stanley slurped loudly from his cup.
"Of what?" Anne asked.
"You name it: demons, magicians, spies, spheres, magic of any kind, police, reprisals.... Useless."
"Well, it's no wonder," Kitty said. "They don't have our advantages, do they?"
Nick shook his head. "Who knows? They won't take risks to find out. I dropped hints about the kinds of thing we did—mentioned that carpet shop the other night, for instance—but they just went all quiet, drank their beers, and refused to answer. There's no _commitment_ anywhere." He plunked his cup down angrily on the counter.
"We need the Chief back," Fred said. "He'll tell us what to do."
Kitty's anger rose to the surface once more. "No one wants to get involved in stuff like the carpet job—it's messy and dangerous and above all it affects commoners more than magicians. That's the point, Nick: we've got to show them we're doing more than just blowing stuff up. Show them we're leading them somewhere—"
_"Listen_ to her," Stanley crowed. "Kitty's getting soft."
"Look, you little creep—"
Anne clinked the edge of her cup twice against the glass counter, so hard it cracked. She was looking toward the shop door. Slowly, without following her gaze, everyone dispersed around the room. Kitty went behind the counter; Nick returned to the backroom; Fred picked up his box again.
The shop door opened and a young thin man in a buttoned raincoat slipped around it. He removed his hood, revealing a shock of dark hair. With a slightly timid smile, he approached the counter, where Kitty was inspecting the receipts in the till. "Morning," she said. "Can I help you?"
"Good morning, miss." The man scratched his nose. "I work for the Security Ministry. I wonder if I might ask you a couple of questions."
Kitty put the receipts down and rewarded him with her full attention. "Fire away"
The smile broadened. "Thank you. You may have read about some unpleasant incidents in the news recently. Explosions and other acts of terror not far from here."
The newspaper was beside her on the counter. "Yes," Kitty agreed. "I did."
"These wicked acts have injured many ordinary decent people, as well as damaged the property of our noble leaders," the man said. "It is imperative we find the perpetrators before they strike again."
Kitty nodded. "Absolutely."
"We are asking honest citizens to look out for anything suspicious—strangers in your area, odd activities, that sort of thing. Have you noticed anything untoward, miss?"
Kitty considered. "It's tricky. There are always strangers around here. We're near the quays, of course. Foreign sailors, merchants... it's hard to keep track."
"You haven't seen anything specific that you can bring to mind?"
Kitty thought hard. "I'm afraid not."
The man's smile turned rueful. "Well, come to us if you _do_ see anything. There are great rewards for informants."
"I most certainly shall."
His eyes studied her face; he turned away. A moment later, he had slipped out and was walking across the street to the next shop. Kitty noticed he had forgotten to pull his hood back over his head, despite the pouring rain.
One by one, the others emerged from aisles and recesses. Kitty gave Anne and Fred questioning looks. They were both white-faced and perspiring. "I take it he wasn't a man," she said dryly. Fred shook his head.
Anne said: "A thing with a beetle's head, all black, with red mouth parts. Its feelers were right out, almost touching you. Ugh, how could you not tell?"
"That's not one of my talents," Kitty said shortly.
"They're closing in," Nick muttered. His eyes were wide; he spoke almost to himself. "We need to do something definite soon, or they'll get us. Just one mistake is all it'll take...."
"Hopkins has a plan, I think." Anne was trying to be reassuring. "He'll get us the breakthrough. You'll see."
"I hope so," Stanley said. He cursed. "I wish I could _see_ like you, Anne."
She pursed her lips. "It's not a pleasant gift. Now then, demon or no demon, I want to itemize the stuff I stole. Who wants to come to the cellar? I know it's wet, but it's only a couple of streets away...." She looked around.
"Red feelers..." Fred gave a shudder. "You should have seen 'em. Covered with little brown hairs...."
"That was _too_ close," Stanley said. "If it had overheard us talking..."
"Just one mistake is all it'll take. Just one, and we'll be—"
"Oh, shut up, Nick." Kitty slammed the counter hatch back and stomped off across the shop. She knew she was only feeling what they all felt: the claustrophobia of the hunted. On a day like this, with the rain drumming endlessly down, they were all reduced to loitering helplessly indoors, a state that exacerbated their permanent sense of fear and isolation. They were cut off from the rest of the teeming city, with wicked, clever powers set against them.
This was no new sensation for Kitty. She'd never been clear of it, not once, for three long years. Not since the attack in the park, when her world turned upside down.
**12**
**P** erhaps an hour had passed before a gentleman walking his dog had found the bodies on the bridge, and contacted the authorities. An ambulance had arrived soon afterward, and Kitty and Jakob were removed from public view.
She had woken in the ambulance. A small window of light switched on far away, and for a time she watched it approaching on a long slow curve through the darkness. Little forms moved inside the light, but she couldn't make them out. Her ears felt as if they were stuffed with cork. The light grew steadily, then with a sudden rush, and her eyes were open. Sound returned to her ears with a painful pop.
A woman's face peered down at her. "Try not to move. You'll be all right."
"What—what—?"
"Try not to speak."
With sudden panic, memory returned: "That monster! That monkey!" She struggled, but found her arms pinned to the trolley.
"Please, dear. Don't. You'll be all right."
She lay back, every muscle rigid. "Jakob..."
"Your friend? He's here, too."
"He's all right?"
"Just try to rest."
And whether it was the motion of the ambulance or the weariness deep inside her, she had soon slept, waking in the hospital to find nurses cutting her clothes away. The front of her T-shirt and shorts were charred and crispy, flaking into the air like wisps of burned newspaper. Once attired in a flimsy white shift, she was, for a short while, the focus of attention: doctors swarmed around her like wasps around jam, checking her pulse, respiration, and temperature. Then they suddenly drew back, and Kitty was left lying isolated in the empty ward.
After a long while, a nurse passed by. "We've informed your parents," she said. "They're coming to take you home." Kitty looked at her with incomprehension. The woman halted. "You're quite well," she said. "The Black Tumbler must have just missed you, caught you only with its aftershock. You're a very lucky girl."
This took a moment to sink in. "Then Jakob's all right, too?"
"He wasn't so lucky, I'm afraid."
Terror welled up inside her. "What do you mean? Where is he?"
"He's nearby. He's being cared for."
She began to cry. "But he was standing beside me. He's _got_ to be all right."
"I'll bring you something to eat, dear. That'll make you feel better. Why don't you try reading something to take your mind off it? There are magazines on the table."
Kitty did not read the magazines. When the nurse had gone, she slipped out of the bed and stood, unsteadily, on the cool wooden floor. Then, step by step, but growing in confidence in her own strength, she crossed the quiet ward, walking through bright patches of sunlight under the tall, arched windows, till she came to the corridor outside.
On the opposite side of the corridor was a closed door. A curtain had been drawn across the inside of its window. Checking quickly left and right, Kitty flitted forward like a ghost, until she stood with her fingers on the handle. She listened, but the room beyond was silent. Kitty turned the handle and went in.
It was an airy room, small, with a single bed in it, and a large window that overlooked the roofscapes of South London. The sunlight blazed a yellow diagonal across the bed, snipping it neatly in two. The upper half of the bed was in shade, the figure lying asleep there likewise.
The room was heavy with normal hospital smells—medicine, iodine, antiseptics—but underlying them all was another scent, a smoky one.
Kitty shut the door, stole on the balls of her feet across the floor, hovered by the bed. She looked down at Jakob, her eyes filling with tears.
Her first thought was anger at the doctors for shaving off his hair. Why did they have to make him bald? It would take an age to regrow it, and Mrs. Hyrnek doted on his long black curls. He looked so strange, particularly with the odd shadows thrown upon his face.... Only then did she realize what the shadows were.
Where his hair had protected him, Jakob's skin was its normal swarthy color. Everywhere else, from the base of his neck right up to his hairline, it was seared or stained with roughly vertical wavy streaks of black and gray, the color of ash and burned wood. There wasn't an inch of his ordinary skin color left on his face, except faintly at the eyebrows. These had been shaved away: two little pink-brown crescents showed there. But his lips, his eyelids, the lobes of his ears were all discolored. It was more like a tribal mask, an effigy made for a carnival parade, than a living face.
Under the bedclothes, his chest rose and fell raggedly. A little wheezing sound came from between his lips.
Kitty reached out and touched a hand lying on the blanket. His palms, which he had raised to ward off the smoke, were the same streaked color as his face.
Her touch aroused a response: the head turned from side to side; discomfort flickered across the livid face. The gray lips parted; they moved as if they were trying to speak. Kitty took her hand away, but bent closer.
"Jakob?"
The eyes flicked open with such suddenness that she could not prevent herself from jerking back in shock, colliding painfully with a corner of the bedside table. She leaned forward again, though instantly aware he was not conscious. The eyes gazed straight ahead, wide and sightless. Against the black-gray skin, they stood out pale and clear like two milky-white opal stones. It was then she wondered if he were blind.
When the doctors arrived, bringing with them Mr. and Mrs. Hyrnek, and Kitty's mother clamoring behind, they found her kneeling by the bedside, hands clasping Jakob's, her head resting against the blanket. It was only with difficulty that they pried her free.
At home, Kitty pried herself in turn from the anguished questioning of her parents and climbed the stairs to the landing of the little house. For many minutes she stood in front of the mirror, looking at herself, at her ordinary, unblemished face. She saw the smooth skin, the thick dark hair, the lips and eyebrows, the freckles on her hands, the mole on the side of her nose. It was all exactly the same as always, as it simply had no right to be.
* * *
The mechanism of the Law, such as it was, swung laboriously into action. Even while Jakob still lay unconscious in the hospital bed, the police called on Kitty's family to take a statement, much to her parents' anxiety. Kitty recounted what she knew tersely and without elaboration, a young policewoman taking notes all the while.
"We hope there'll be no trouble, officer," Kitty's father said, as she finished.
"We wouldn't want that," her mother added. "Really we wouldn't."
"There will be an investigation," the policewoman said, still scribbling.
"How will you find him?" Kitty asked. "I don't know his name, and I've forgotten the name of the... _thing."_
"We can trace him by his car. If he crashed as you say, the vehicle will have been picked up by some garage or other, taken to be serviced. Then we can establish the truth of the matter."
"You've _got_ the truth," Kitty said flatly.
"We don't want any trouble," her father said again.
"We'll be in touch," the policewoman said. She snapped her notebook shut.
The car, a Rolls-Royce Silver Thruster, was quickly located; the identity of its owner followed. He was a Mr. Julius Tallow, a magician working for Mr. Underwood at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. While not particularly senior, he was well connected and a familiar figure around the city. He cheerfully admitted that it had been he who had unleashed the Black Tumbler on the two children in Wandsworth Park; indeed, he wanted it known that he was proud to have done so. He had been peacefully driving past when he had been attacked by the individuals concerned. They had smashed his windscreen with a missile so that he lost control, then approached him aggressively, wielding two long staves of wood. It was evident that they intended to rob him. He had acted in self-defense there and then, striking them down before they had a chance to attack. He considered his response a restrained one, given the circumstances.
"Well, he's obviously lying," Kitty said. "We were nowhere near the road to start with—and if he acted in self-defense at the roadside, how does he explain our being found up at the bridge? Did you arrest him?"
The policewoman looked surprised. "He's a magician. It isn't that simple. He denies your charges. The case will be heard at the Courts of Justice next month. If you wish to take the matter further, you must attend and speak against Mr. Tallow then."
"Good," Kitty said. "I can't wait."
"She won't be attending," her father said. "She's done enough damage already."
Kitty snorted, but said nothing. Her parents abhorred the idea of confrontation with the magicians and strongly disapproved of her act of trespass in the park. On her safe return from hospital, they had seemed almost angrier with her than with Tallow—a state of affairs that had awoken her strong resentment.
"Well, it's up to you," the policewoman said. "I'll send the details anyway."
For a week or more there was little word on Jakob's condition in the hospital. Visits were forbidden. In an effort to get news, Kitty finally plucked up the courage to trudge down the road to the Hyrnek house for the first time since the incident. She walked up the familiar pathway diffidently, unsure of her reception; guilt weighed heavily on her mind.
But Mrs. Hyrnek was polite enough; indeed, she clasped Kitty to her ample bosom and hugged her tightly before ushering her indoors. She led her into the kitchen, over which, as always, the smell of cooking hung strong and pungent. Bowls of half-chopped vegetables sat in the center of the trestle table; across the wall stretched the great oak dresser, laden with gaudily decorated plates. Odd utensils of every description hung from the dark walls. Jakob's grandmama sat in her high chair beside the great black stove, stirring a saucepan of soup with a long-handled spoon. All was as normal, down to the last familiar crack in the ceiling.
Except that Jakob was not there.
Kitty sat at the table and accepted a mug of strongly scented tea. With a heavy sigh and a creak of protesting wood, Mrs. Hyrnek sat opposite her. For some minutes, she did not speak—in itself a unique occurrence. Kitty, for her part, did not feel she could start the conversation. Up by the stove, Jakob's grandmama continued stirring the steaming soup.
At last, Mrs. Hyrnek took a loud slurp of tea, swallowed, spoke abruptly. "He woke up today," she said.
"Oh! Is he—?"
"He's as well as could be expected. Which isn't well."
"No. But if he's woken, that's good, isn't it? He'll be okay?"
Mrs. Hyrnek made an expressive face. "Hah! It was the Black Tumbler. His face will not recover."
Kitty felt the tears welling. "Not at all?"
"The scorching is too fierce. You should know this. You have seen it."
"But why should he—?" Kitty furrowed her brows. "I mean— _I'm_ all right, and I was hit, too. We were both—"
"You? _You_ were not hit!" Mrs. Hyrnek tapped her fingers against her face and looked at Kitty with such ferocious condemnation that Kitty shrank back against the kitchen wall and did not dare continue. Mrs. Hyrnek eyed her for a long moment with a basilisk's gaze, then resumed sipping her tea.
Kitty spoke in a small voice. "I-I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hyrnek."
"Do not be sorry. _You_ did not hurt my son."
"But is there no way of changing it back?" Kitty said. "I mean, surely if the doctors don't have treatments, the magicians could do something?"
A shake of the head. "The effects are permanent. Even if they weren't, they would not choose to help us."
Kitty scowled. "They _must_ help us! How can they not? What we did was an accident. What Mr. Tallow did was a calculated crime." Her anger rose within her. "He wanted to kill us, Mrs. Hyrnek! The Courts _must_ see that. Jakob and I can tell them, next month at the hearing—he'll be better by then, won't he? We'll shoot Tallow's story full of holes and they can take him to the Tower. Then they'll find some way of helping Jakob's face, Mrs. Hyrnek, you'll see."
Even amid the passion of her speech, she was aware of how hollow her words sounded. But Mrs. Hyrnek's next words were unexpected, nevertheless.
"Jakob will not be going to the hearing, dear. And neither should you. Your parents do not want you to, and they are quite right. It is not wise."
"But we _have_ to, if we're to tell them—"
Mrs. Hyrnek reached across the table and laid her great pink hand upon Kitty's own. "What do you think will happen to Hyrnek and Sons if Jakob engages in a lawsuit with a magician? Well? Mr. Hyrnek would lose everything in twenty-four hours. They'd close us down, or transfer their trade to Jaroslav's or another of our competitors. Besides..." She smiled sadly. "Why bother? We wouldn't have any chance of _winning.''_
For a moment, Kitty was too stunned to reply "But I've been requested to appear," she said. "And so has Jakob."
Mrs. Hyrnek shrugged. "Such an invitation can be easily declined. The authorities would prefer not to be troubled by such a trifling matter. Two common children? It is a waste of their precious time. Take my advice, dear. Do not go to the Courts. No good can come of it."
Kitty stared at the callused tabletop. "But that means letting him—Mr. Tallow—off, scot-free," she said quietly. "I can't—it wouldn't be right."
Mrs. Hyrnek stood suddenly, her chair screeching against the tiles on the floor. "It is not a question of 'right,'girl," she said. "It is a question of common sense. And anyway"—she seized a bowl of chopped cabbage in one hand and advanced to the stove—"it is not entirely certain Mr. Tallow is going to get off quite as freely as you think." With a jerk of the wrists, she tipped the cabbage hissing and bubbling into a vat of boiling water. By the side of the stove Jakob's grandmama nodded and grinned through the steam like a goblin, stirring, stirring, stirring the soup with her knotted, bony hands.
**13**
**T** hree weeks passed, in which, through a combination of stubbornness and pride, Kitty resisted all efforts to dissuade her from the path she had chosen. The harder her parents tried to threaten or cajole her, the more entrenched she became: she was determined to attend the Courts on the scheduled day to see that justice was done.
Her resolve was strengthened by word of Jakob's condition: he remained in the hospital, conscious, lucid, but unable to see. His family hoped that his sight would return in time. The thought of the alternative made Kitty tremble with grief and rage.
If her parents had had the power, they would have declined the summons when it arrived. But Kitty was the plaintiff: her signature was needed to halt the case, and this she would not give. The process of Law continued, and on the appropriate morning, Kitty arrived at the Great Gate of the Courts at 8:30 sharp, dressed in her smartest jacket and best suede trousers. Her parents were not with her; they had refused to come.
All about her was a motley throng, jostling and elbowing her as they waited for the doors to open. At the lowest end of the spectrum, a few guttersnipes barged back and forth, selling hot pastries and pies from large wooden trays. Kitty kept tight hold of her shoulder bag whenever they passed near. She noticed several tradesmen too, ordinary people like her, decked out in their best suits, all pale-faced and sickly with nerves. By far the largest group consisted of worried-looking magicians, resplendent in their Piccadilly suits and formal capes and gowns. Kitty scanned their faces, looking for Mr. Tallow, but he was nowhere to be seen. Burly Night Police kept watch on the fringes of the crowd.
The doors opened, a whistle blew; the crowd streamed in.
Each visitor was funneled past an official in a uniform of red and gold. Kitty gave her name; the man scanned a piece of paper.
"Courtroom twenty-seven," he said. "Stairs on the left, hard right at the top. Fourth door along. Hurry along there."
He pushed her forward and she was past him, under a high stone arch and out into the cool marble halls of the Judicial Courts. Stone busts of great men and women gazed down dispassionately from niches in the walls; silent people hurried to and fro. The air hummed with seriousness and hush and a distinct smell of carbolic soap. Kitty climbed the stairs and made her way along a busy corridor until she arrived at the door of Courtroom 27. Outside it was a wooden bench. A sign above instructed all claimants to sit and wait to be called.
Kitty sat and waited.
For the next fifteen minutes, a small, pensive group of people gathered one by one outside the courtroom. They stood or sat in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts. Most were magicians: they immersed themselves in sheaves of legalistic documents, written on paper headed with complex stars and signs. They did their best to avoid one another's eyes.
The door to Courtroom 27 opened. A young man wearing a smart green cap and an eager expression poked his head around it.
"Kathleen Jones!" he said. "Is she here? She's next up."
"That's me." Kitty's heart was pounding; her wrists tingled with fear.
"Right. Julius Tallow. Is he here? We need him, too."
Silence in the corridor. Mr. Tallow had not arrived.
The young man made a face. "Well, we can't hang around. If he isn't here, he isn't. Miss Jones, if you would be so kind..."
He ushered Kitty ahead of him through the door and closed it softly behind them.
"That's your seat over there, Miss Jones. The court's ready to begin."
The courtroom was of intimate size, square, and filled with a stained, melancholy light that filtered in through two giant arched windows of colored glass. The pictures in the windows both depicted heroic knight-magicians. One, encased in armor, was in the process of running a sword through the belly of a great demonic beast, all claws and knobbly teeth. The other, wearing a helmet and what looked like a long white shift, was exorcising a hideous goblin, which was falling through a square black hole that had opened in the ground. The other walls in the room were lined with dark wooden panels. The ceiling was wood, too, carved to resemble the stone vaults of a church. The room was fearsomely old-fashioned. As was perhaps the intention, Kitty felt awed and terribly out of place.
Against one wall ran a high platform, upon which was a huge wooden throne resting behind a long table. At one end of the table was a small desk, where three black-suited clerks sat, busily tapping at computers and leafing through piles of paper. Kitty passed in front of this platform, following the direction of the young man's outstretched arm, toward a solitary high-backed chair silhouetted in front of the windows. Here, she sat. Another similar chair faced her from the opposite wall.
Across from the platform, a couple of public benches were separated from the court by a brass railing. To Kitty's surprise, a few spectators were already gathering there.
The young man consulted his watch, took a deep breath, then yelled so loudly that Kitty jumped where she sat. "All rise!" he roared. "All rise for Ms. Fitzwilliam, Magician Fourth Level and Judge of this Court! All rise!"
A grinding of chairs, a scuffling of shoes. Kitty, clerks, and spectators got to their feet. As they did so, a door opened in the paneling behind the throne and a woman entered, black-robed and hooded. She sat herself on the throne and threw back her hood, revealing herself to be young, with brown bobbed hair and too much lipstick.
"Thangyoo, ladies and gennlemen, thangyoo! All sit, please!" The young man saluted toward the throne and marched off to sit in a discreet corner.
The judge presented a small cold smile to the assembled court. "Good morning, everyone. We start, I believe, with the case of Julius Tallow, Magician Third Level, and Kathleen Jones, a commoner from Balham. Miss Jones has chosen to attend, I see; where is Mr. Tallow?"
The young man leaped to his feet like a jack-in-the-box. "He's not here, ma'am!" He saluted smartly and sat down.
"I can see that. Where is he?"
The young man leaped to his feet. "Haven't the foggiest idea, ma'am!"
"Well, too bad. Clerks, put Mr. Tallow down for contempt of court, pending. We shall begin..." The judge put on a pair of spectacles and studied her papers for a few moments. Kitty sat straight-backed, rigid with nerves.
The judge removed her spectacles and looked across at her. "Kathleen Jones?"
Kitty leaped up. "Yes, ma'am."
"Sit down, sit down. We like to keep it as informal as we can. Now, being young—how old _are_ you, Miss Jones?"
"Thirteen, ma'am."
"I see. Being young, and of common stock as you undoubtedly are—I see here your father is a _sales assistant_ and your mother a _cleaner"_ —she spoke these words with slight distaste—"you might very well be overawed by these august surroundings." The judge gestured at the court. "But I must tell you not to fear. This is a house of justice, where even the less equal among us are welcome, provided they speak truthfully. Do you understand?"
Kitty had a frog in her throat; she found it hard to answer clearly. "Yes, ma'am."
"Very well. Then we shall hear your side of the case. Please proceed."
For the next few minutes, in a rather raspy voice, Kitty outlined her side of events. She began awkwardly, but warmed to her theme, going into as much detail as she could. The court listened in silence, including the judge, who stared at her impassively over her spectacles. The clerks tapped away at their keyboards.
She concluded with an impassioned description of Jakob's condition under the spell of the Black Tumbler. As she finished, a heavy silence filled the courtroom. Someone somewhere coughed. During the speech, it had begun to rain outside. Drops tapped gently at the windows; the light in the room was watery and smudged.
The judge sat back in her chair. "Clerks of the Court, do you have all that down?"
One of the three men in black raised his head. "We do, ma'am."
"Very well." The judge frowned, as if dissatisfied. "In the absence of Mr. Tallow, I must reluctantly accept this version of events. The verdict of the court—"
A sudden ferocious knocking sounded on the courtroom door. Kitty's heart, which had leaped sky-high at the judge's words, descended to her boots in a heap of foreboding. The young man in the green cap sprang across to open the door; as he did so, he was almost bowled off his feet by the muscular entrance of Julius Tallow. Dressed in a gray suit with thin pink pinstripes and with his chin thrust forward, he strode across to the vacant chair and sat decisively upon it.
Kitty gazed at him with loathing. He returned the look with a veiled smirk and turned to face the judge.
"Mr. Tallow, I assume," she said.
"Indeed, ma'am." His eyes were downcast. "I humbly—"
"You're _late,_ Mr. Tallow."
"Yes ma'am. I humbly extend my apologies to the Court. I was kept busy at the Ministry of Internal Affairs this morning, ma'am. Emergency situation—small matter of three bull-headed foliots loose in Wapping. Possible terrorist action. I had to help brief the Night Police on the best methods for dealing with 'em, ma'am." He adopted an expansive posture, winked at the crowd. "A pile of fruit, lathered with honey—that's what does the trick. The sweetness draws them near, you see, then—"
The judge banged her gavel down upon the bench. "If you don't mind, Mr. Tallow, that is quite beside the point! Punctuality is vital for the smooth running of justice. I find you guilty of contempt of court and hereby fine you five hundred pounds."
He hung his head, the picture of bulky contrition. "Yes, ma'am."
"However..."The judge's voice lightened somewhat. "You have arrived just in time to state your side of the matter. We have heard Miss Jones's version already. You know the charges. How do you respond?"
"Not guilty, ma'am!" He was suddenly bolt upright again, swelling with aggressive confidence. The pinstripes on his chest expanded like plucked harp strings. "I'm sorry to say, ma'am, that I have to recount an incident of almost incredible savagery, in which two thugs—including, I am sorry to say, that prim young madam sitting yonder—waylaid my car with intent to rob and injure. It was only pure chance that, with the power I am fortunate enough to wield, I was able to fend them off and make good my escape."
He continued to develop his lie for almost twenty minutes, providing harrowing accounts of the chilling threats made by his two assailants. Frequently he digressed into little anecdotes that reminded the court of his important role in government. Kitty sat white-faced with fury throughout, clenching her fingernails into her palms. Once or twice she noticed the judge shake her head at some unpleasant detail; two of the clerks were heard to gasp in outrage when Mr. Tallow described the cricket ball hitting his windscreen, and the spectators in the gallery oohed and aahed with increasing regularity. She could tell which way the case was going.
At last, when with sickening self-effacement Mr. Tallow described how he had ordered the Black Tumbler to be fired only at the ringleader—Jakob—through his desire to keep casualties to a minimum, Kitty could no longer restrain herself.
"That's another lie!" she cried. "It came straight at me, too!"
The judge rapped the bench with her gavel. "Order in the Court!"
"But it's so obviously untrue!" Kitty said. "We were standing together. The monkey-thing fired at us both, as Tallow ordered. I was knocked out by it. The ambulance took me to hospital."
"Silence, Miss Jones!"
Kitty subsided. "I'm... sorry, ma'am."
"Mr. Tallow, if you would be so good as to continue?"
The magician wound it up soon afterward, leaving the spectators whispering excitedly among themselves. Ms. Fitzwilliam brooded a while on her throne, occasionally bending down to exchange whispered asides with the Clerks of the Court. Finally, she tapped the table. The room fell silent.
"This is a difficult and distressing case," the judge began, "and we are hampered in it by the lack of witnesses. We have only one person's word against the other. _Yes,_ Miss Jones, what is it?"
Kitty had put up her hand politely "There is another witness, ma'am. Jakob."
"If so, why isn't he here?"
"He's not well, ma'am."
"His family could have made a submission on his behalf. They have chosen not to do so. Perhaps they feel their case is weak?"
"No, ma'am," Kitty said. "They're scared."
"Scared?" The judge's eyebrows arched. "Ridiculous! Of what?"
Kitty hesitated, but there was no help for it now. "Reprisals, ma'am. If they speak out against a magician in court."
At this, the room erupted with a barrage of noise from the spectators' benches. The three clerks ceased typing in amazement. The young man in the green cap was gawping in his corner. Ms. Fitzwilliam's eyes narrowed. She had to bang the table repeatedly to quiet things down.
_"Miss Jones,"_ she said, "if you dare utter such nonsense I shall have you up on a charge myself! Do not speak out of turn again." Kitty saw Julius Tallow grinning openly. She fought to hold back the tears.
The judge stared at Kitty sternly. "Your wild accusation only increases the weight of evidence that has already built up so heavily against you. _Do not speak!"_ Overcome with shock, Kitty had automatically opened her mouth again.
"Each time you speak you further damn your case," the judge went on. "Quite patently, if your friend was confident with your story, he would be here in person. Equally patently, you were not hit by the Black Tumbler as you have just claimed, otherwise you could hardly—how shall I put it?—be so well turned out today."
The judge paused to take a sip of water.
"I almost admire your audacity in taking your claim to the court," she said, "together with your temerity in challenging such a prominent citizen as Mr. Tallow." She gestured across at the magician, who wore the complacent expression of a stroked cat. "However, such considerations cannot carry the day in a court of law. Mr. Tallow's case rests on his good reputation and the expensive garage bill required to pay for the damage that you caused. Your case rests on nothing except wild accusations, which I believe to be fabricated." (Gasps from the crowd.) "Why? Simply because if you are mendacious with regard to the Tumbler—which you say hit you, when clearly it did not—there is no reason for the court to accept the rest of your story. Moreover, you can produce no witnesses, not even your friend, the other 'injured party.'As your outbursts have proved, you are clearly of a passionate and turbulent nature, liable to erupt in a rage at the slightest opportunity. When I consider these points, it can only lead me to a glaring fact that I have done my best to ignore. It is this: when all is said and done, you are both a minor and a commoner, whose word can hardly stand against that of a trusted servant of the State."
The judge at this point took a deep breath and a subdued cry of "Hear, hear," rose from the public benches. One of the clerks looked up, muttered, "Well said, ma'am," and buried his nose in his computer again. Kitty slumped in her chair, weighed down by leaden despair. She could not look at the judge, the clerks or, least of all, the odious Mr. Tallow. She stared instead at the shadows of the raindrops trickling across the floor. All she wished for now was to escape.
"In conclusion"—the judge assumed an expression of the utmost dignity—"the court finds against you, Miss Jones, and rejects your charge. If you were older, you would certainly not escape a custodial sentence. As it is, and since Mr. Tallow has already applied his own appropriate punishment to your gangland group, I will restrict myself to fining you for wasting the court's time."
Kitty swallowed. _Please_ let it not be much, please let it not be—
"You are hereby fined one hundred pounds."
Not too bad. She could cope with that. She had almost seventy-five pounds in her bank account.
"In addition, it is customary to transfer the winner's costs across to the losing side. Mr. Tallow owes five hundred pounds for his late arrival. You must pay this, too. The total due to the court is therefore six hundred pounds."
Kitty reeled in shock, feeling the tears coming strongly now. Furiously she fought them back. She would not cry. She _would_ not. Not here.
She managed to turn the first sob into a loud, rumbling cough. At that moment the judge banged the gavel twice.
"Court dismissed."
Kitty ran from the room.
Kitty had her cry in one of the little cobbled side roads running off the Strand. Then she wiped her face, bought a reviving bun from a Persian café on the corner opposite the Judicial Courts, and tried to work out what to do. She certainly could not pay the fine and doubted her parents could either. That meant she had a month in which to find six hundred pounds, or she—and perhaps her parents, too—would be bound for the debtors' prison. She knew this, because before she had managed to exit the echoing courtrooms, one of the black-suited clerks had appeared, tugged respectfully at her elbow, and thrust an order for payment, with the ink still wet upon it, into her trembling fingers. It spelled out exactly what the penalties were.
The thought of informing her parents gave Kitty sharp pains in her chest. She couldn't face going home; she would walk beside the river first.
The cobbled lane ran down from the Strand to the Embankment, a pleasant pedestrianized walkway following the bank of the Thames. It had stopped raining, but the cobbles were dark and flecked with water. On either side the usual shops stretched: Middle Eastern fast-food joints, tourist boutiques stuffed with kitsch memorabilia, herbalists whose cut-price baskets of dogwood and rosemary bulged halfway out into the street.
Kitty had nearly reached the Embankment when a rapid tapping behind her heralded the sudden appearance of a stick, followed by an ancient man, half hobbling, half stumbling out of control down the cobbled slope. She jumped back out of his way. To her surprise, instead of careering onward and ending up in the river, the man halted, with much scuffling and gasping, directly beside her.
"Ms. Jones?" The words wheezed out between each gasp of breath.
She spoke heavily. "Yes." Some other clerk with a new demand.
"Good, good. Let—let me get my voice back."
This took a few seconds, during which time Kitty observed him closely. He was a thin, bony, and aged gentleman, bald on top, with a semicircle of dirty-white hair acting as a ruff to the back of his skull. His face was painfully thin, but his eyes were bright. He wore a neat suit and a pair of green leather gloves; his hands wobbled as he leaned upon his stick.
At last: "Sorry about that. Afraid I'd lost you. Started along the Strand first. Turned back. Intuition."
"What do you want?" Kitty had no time for intuitive old men.
"Yes. Getting to the point. Good. Well. I was in the gallery just now. Courtroom twenty-seven. Saw you in action." He regarded her closely.
"So?"
"Wanted to ask. One question. Simple one. If you don't mind."
"I don't want to talk about it, thank you." Kitty made to move off, but the stick shot out with surprising speed and gently barred the way. Her anger fizzed inside her; in the mood she was in, kicking an old man down the street did not seem beyond possibility. _"Excuse_ me," she said. "I've got nothing to say."
"Understand that. Really. Might be to your advantage, though. Listen, then decide. The Black Tumbler. Sitting at the back of the court. Bit deaf. Thought you said the Tumbler hit you."
"I did. It did."
"Ah. Knocked you out, you said."
"Yes."
"Flames and smoke all around you. Searing heat?"
"Yes. Now I—"
"But, Court didn't accept it."
"No. Now I really must go." Kitty sidestepped the outstretched stick and trotted the last few yards down to the Embankment. But to her surprise and fury the old man kept up with her, continually jabbing his stick out at an angle so that it became entangled with her legs, or tripped her feet, or forced her to take outsize steps to avoid it. At last she could take it no longer; seizing the end of the stick, she yanked hard, jerking the gentleman off balance so that he collapsed against the river wall. Then she set off at a brisk pace, but once more heard the frantic tapping close behind her.
She wheeled around. "Now, _look_ —"
He was hard on her heels, whey-faced, gasping. "Ms. Jones, please. I understand your anger. Truly. But I am on your side. What if I said—? What if I said that I could pay the fine? That the Court has levied? All six hundred pounds. Would that help?"
She looked at him.
"Ah. That interests you. I get a result."
Kitty felt her heart beating wildly in confusion and anger. "What are you talking about? You're trying to set me up. Get me arrested for conspiracy or—or something...."
He smiled; his skin stretched tight against his skull. "Ms. Jones. That is not the idea at all. I am not rushing you into anything. Listen. My name is Pennyfeather. Here is my card." He reached into the pocket of his coat and handed a small business card to Kitty with a flourish. It was decorated with two crossed paintbrushes above the words _T. E. Pennyfeather, Artists' Materials._ There was a telephone number in the corner. Uncertainly, Kitty took it.
"Good. I'm going now. Leave you to your walk. Good day for it. Sun coming out. Ring if interested. Within a week."
For the first time, Kitty made an attempt at being polite, without quite knowing why. "But, Mr. Pennyfeather," she said. "Why should you help me? It doesn't make sense."
"No, but it will. Ahh! What—?" His cry was occasioned by two young men—evidently magicians from the expense of their clothes—who, in striding down the street, laughing loudly and tucking into lentil takeaways from the Persian café, had barged right past him, knocking him almost into the gutter. They proceeded merrily, without a backward glance. Kitty stretched out a hand to steady the old man, but drew back at the flash of anger in his eyes. He righted himself slowly, leaning heavily on his stick and muttering under his breath.
"Forgive me," he said. "Ah, those—they think they own the place. As—as perhaps they do. For the moment." He looked along the Embankment; away into the blue distance people went about their business, visiting stalls or passing up into the cluttered side streets. On the river, four tethered coal barges drifted downstream, the bargees reclining and smoking on the side. The old man bared his teeth. "Few of these fools suspect what flies above them in the open air," he said. "Or guess what hops behind them in the street. And if they guess, they dare not challenge it. They let the magicians strut among them; let them build their palaces upon the broken backs of the people; let them tread all notions of justice into the mud. But you and I—we have seen what the magicians do. And what they do it _with._ Perhaps we are not as passive as our fellows, eh?"
He smoothed down his jacket and grinned suddenly. "You must think for yourself. I will say no more. Only this: I believe your story. The whole of it—of course I do—but most particularly about the Black Tumbler. Who, after all, would be so stupid as to make that point up if they had no injury? Ah, this is what is so interesting. I will await your call, Ms. Jones."
With that, the old man turned on his heel and made off at a brisk pace back up the side street, stick _tap-tap-tap_ ping on the cobbles, ignoring the sharp entreaties of an herbalist standing in the doorway of his shop. Kitty watched him until he turned onto the Strand and out of sight.
Waiting in the darkness of the cellar, Kitty drifted through the events of long ago. How distant it all seemed; how naive she had been, standing in the courtroom demanding justice. She flushed angrily: the memory was painful even now. Justice from the magicians? The very idea was laughable. Clearly, direct action was the only feasible alternative. At least they were doing _something_ now, showing their defiance.
She glanced at her watch. Anne had been gone in the secret chamber some time. In total, eleven new magical artifacts had been stolen on Founder's Day—nine minor weapons and two jewels of unknown purpose. Now Anne was storing them away. Outside, the rain had intensified. During the short walk from the art shop to the deserted courtyard, they had all gotten soaked. Even in the cellar they were not safe from the water: a steady stream of drips was falling from a deep crack in the plaster ceiling. Directly below sat a black bucket of extreme age. It was almost brim-full.
"Empty it out, would you, Stanley?" Kitty said.
Stanley was sitting on the coal bin, shoulders hunched, head pressed on his knees. He hesitated just a moment longer than necessary; finally he jumped down, picked up the bucket and steered it, with some difficulty, to a grille beside the wall. He sluiced the water away.
"I don't know why he doesn't get that pipe fixed," he growled, returning the bucket to its position. The maneuver had taken only a few seconds, but already a small puddle had gathered between the worn bricks of the cellar floor.
"Because we want the cellar to appear unused," Kitty said. "That's obvious."
Stanley grunted. "The stuff's sitting useless in there. It's no place for it."
From his station near the entrance arch, Fred nodded. He was fingering an open flick-knife in his hand. "Should let us go in," he said.
At the far end of the little room, which was only dimly lit by a single bulb, a pile of logs had been precariously stacked. The wall behind it appeared solid, if a little crumbling, but they all knew how the mechanism worked: how a metal lever could be depressed into the floor; how, at the same time, the brickwork above the logs could be made to swing open at a touch. They knew the dull grating noise, the cold, chemical smell emanating from inside. But they didn't know exactly what the secret recess contained, as only Anne, who was the quartermaster of the group, was allowed into their leader's chamber. The others always remained outside, on guard.
Kitty shifted her back against the wall. "There's no point using it all yet," she said. "We need to save as much as possible, wait till we have more support."
"Like that's _ever_ going to happen." Stanley had not returned to the coal bin, but was pacing fretfully around the cellar. "Nick's right. The commoners are like oxen. They'll never do anything."
"All those weapons in there," Fred said wistfully. "We should be doing more with them. Like Mart did."
"Didn't do _him_ much good," Kitty remarked. "Prime Minister's still alive, isn't he? And where's Mart? Food for the fishes."
She'd intended it to wound, and it did. Stanley had been close friends with Martin. His voice rose a pitch, harsh and resentful: "He was unlucky. The sphere wasn't strong enough, that's all. He could have had Devereaux and half the cabinet. Where's Anne? Why can't she hurry up?"
"You're kidding yourself." Kitty pursued the point bitterly. "Their defenses were too strong. Mart never had a chance. How many magicians have we killed in all these years? Four? Five? And none of them any good. I'm telling you, weapons or not, we need a better strategy."
"I'll tell him you said that," Stanley said. "When he gets back."
"You _would,_ you little sneak." Kitty's voice was scathing. Even so, the thought of it made her shiver.
"I'm hungry," Fred said. He pressed the button on the hasp of his knife, flicked out the blade again.
Kitty looked at him. "You had a massive lunch. I saw you."
"I'm hungry again."
"Tough."
"I can't fight if I've not et." Fred suddenly leaned forward; his fingers twisted, blurred; there was a whizzing noise in the air, and the flick-knife buried itself in the cement between two bricks, three inches above Stanley's head. Stanley slowly raised his head and considered the quivering handle; his face was a little green.
"See?" Fred said. "Lousy shot." He folded his arms. "That's because I'm hungry."
"It seemed pretty good to me," Kitty said.
"Good? I missed him."
"Give him his knife back, Stanley." Kitty suddenly felt very tired.
Stanley was struggling unsuccessfully to pull the knife free of the wall when the hidden door opened above the log pile and Anne emerged. The small bag she had taken in with her was nowhere to be seen.
"Squabbling again?" she said tartly. "Come along, children."
The walk back to the shop was just as wet as the outward journey, and the spirits of the group were lower than ever by the time they arrived. As they entered in a gout of spray and steam, Nick ran forward, his face shining with excitement.
"What is it?" Kitty asked. "What's happened?"
"Just got word," he said breathlessly. "From Hopkins. They're coming back within the week. Going to tell us something of the first importance. A new job. Bigger than anything we've ever done."
"Bigger than Westminster Hall?" Stanley sounded skeptical.
Nick grinned. "Saving Mart's memory, bigger even than that. Hopkins's letter doesn't say what, but it's going to shake everything up, he says. It's what we've always wanted, every one of us. We're going to do something that'll transform our fortunes at a stroke. It's dangerous, but if we do it right, he says, we'll knock the magicians off their perch. London will never be the same again."
"About time," Anne said. "Stanley, go and put the kettle on.
Picture the scene. London in the rain. Gray sheets of water tumbled from the sky, breaking upon the pavements with a roar louder than cannon fire. A strong wind buffeted the rain this way and that, blowing it under porches and eaves, cornices and capstones, drowning each possible refuge with a freezing spray. There was water everywhere, bouncing off the tarmac, swilling along the gutters, congregating in basement corners and above the drains. It overflowed the city's cisterns. It cascaded horizontally through pipes, diagonally across roof slates, vertically down walls, staining the brickwork like sweeping washes of blood. It dripped between joists and through cracks in ceilings. It hung in the air in the form of a chill white mist, and above, invisibly, in the black reaches of the sky. It seeped into the fabric of buildings and the bones of their cowering inhabitants.
In dark places underground, rats huddled in their lairs, listening to the echoes of the drumming overhead. In humble houses, ordinary men and women closed the shutters, turned lights on and clustered about their hearth fires with steaming cups of tea. Even in their lonely villas, the magicians fled the endless rain. They skulked to their workrooms, bolted fast the iron doors and, conjuring clouds of warming incense, lost themselves in dreams of distant lands.
Rats, commoners, magicians: all safely undercover. And who could blame them? The streets were deserted, all London was shut down. It was close to midnight and the storm was getting worse.
No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this.
Ho hum.
Somewhere amid the driving rain was a place where seven roads met. In the center of the crossroads stood a granite plinth, topped by a statue of a large man on a horse. The man waved a sword, his face frozen in the midst of a heroic cry. The horse was rearing up, back legs splayed, front legs out. Perhaps it was signaling dramatic defiance, perhaps it was preparing to hurl itself into battle. Perhaps it was simply trying to dislodge the fat bloke on its back. We'll never know. But see: under the belly of the horse, sitting right at the center of the plinth, its tail tucked elegantly against its paws—a large gray cat.
The cat affected not to notice the bitter wind that rippled its sodden fur. Its handsome yellow eyes gazed out steadily into the murk, as if piercing the rain. Only the slight downward tilt of its tufted ears signaled dissatisfaction with its circumstances. One ear flicked occasionally; otherwise, the cat might have been carved from stone.
The night darkened. The rain intensified. I tucked my tail in grimly and watched the roads.
Time trickled on.
Four nights is not a particularly long time even for humans, let alone for us higher beings from the Other Place. Yet the last four nights had really _dragged._ For each one of them I had been patrolling the central regions of London, hunting for the unknown marauder. I'd not been alone, admittedly; I had the company of a few other unlucky djinn and a barrel-load of foliots. The foliots in particular had caused incessant trouble, forever trying to bunk off by hiding under bridges or slipping down chimneys, or getting startled out of their skins by thunderclaps or one another's shadows. It was all one could do to keep them in line. And all the while it had rained continually, hard enough to cause a canker in one's essence.
Nathaniel, needless to say, had not been sympathetic. He was under pressure himself, he said, and he needed results soon. In his turn he was having difficulty marshaling the small group of magicians from his department who were providing the other djinn for the patrols. Reading between the lines, they were openly mutinous, disliking being ordered around by an upstart of a youth. And let's face it, who could blame them? Nevertheless, each night djinn and foliots alike assembled glumly on the gray slate roofs of Whitehall and were directed out on our patrols.
Our aim was to protect certain prominent tourist regions of the city, which Nathaniel and his immediate superior, a certain Mr. Tallow, considered under threat. A list of possible sites was given to us: museums, galleries, swanky restaurants, the aerodrome, shopping arcades, statues, arches, and other landmarks.... Taken in toto, it pretty much accounted for most of London. This meant we had to work our interlocking circuits continuously all night to have any chance of keeping check.
Not only was this tedious and tiring (and very wet), it was also an unnerving business, since the nature of our opponent was both mysterious and malign. Several of the more nervy foliots began a whispering campaign straightaway: our enemy was a rogue afrit; itself was—worse—a marid; it wrapped a cloak of darkness around it at all times, so its victims could not see their deaths approaching; no, it destroyed buildings with its breath; it carried with it the odor of the grave which paralyzed human and spirit alike. To improve morale I tried starting a counterrumor that it was nothing but a small imp with a grouchy personality, but this, sadly, didn't stick; the foliots (and a couple of the djinn) went out into the night wide-eyed and tentative of wing.
One small bonus for me was the appearance, among the djinn, of none other than my old associate from my days in Prague—Queezle. She was newly enslaved to one of the other magicians in Nathaniel's department, a sour and desiccated individual named Ffoukes. Despite his strict regime however, Queezle retained her old vigor. We made it our business to hunt together wherever possible.
The first two nights of hunting, nothing happened, except for two foliots getting swept away while hiding under London Bridge. But on the third night, loud crashing sounds were heard shortly before midnight, emanating from the west wing of the National Gallery. A djinni named Zeno was first on the scene, with me not far behind. Simultaneously, several magicians, including my master, arrived in a convoy; they encased the gallery in a dense nexus and ordered us into battle.
Zeno displayed admirable bravery. Without hesitation, he flew straight to the source of the disturbance and was never seen again. I was close on his heels, but owing to a dicky leg and the complex layout of the gallery corridors, lagged behind, got lost, and didn't manage to reach the west wing until much later. By this time, having wrought considerable damage, the marauder had departed.
My excuses cut no ice with my master, who would have worked some inventive punishment on me had I not had the protection of knowing his name. As it was, he vowed to encase me in an iron cube should I neglect to engage the enemy next time it appeared. I made soothing answers, perceiving he was addled with anxiety: his hair was disheveled, his cuffs hung limp, his drainpipe trousers sagged loose upon his frame as if he had lost weight. I pointed this out to him in a sympathetic sort of way.
"Eat more," I advised. "You're too thin. Currently, the only bit of you that's growing outward is your hair. If you don't watch out, you'll overbalance soon."
He rubbed his red, sleepless eyes. "Will you stop going on about my hair? Eating is for people who have nothing else to do, Bartimaeus. I'm living on borrowed time—as are _you._ If you can destroy the enemy, all well and good; if not, at least get some information about its nature. Otherwise the Night Police are likely to take charge."
"So? What's that to me?"
He spoke seriously. "It'll mean my downfall."
"So? What's that to me?"
"Everything, if I bind you into the iron cube before I go. In fact, I'll make it a silver one—even more painful. And it'll happen, unless I get results soon."
I ceased arguing then. There was little point. The boy had changed somewhat since I'd last seen him, and not for the better. His master and his career had worked an unpleasant alchemy upon him: he was harder, harsher, and altogether more brittle. He also had even less of a sense of humor than previously, which was itself a remarkable achievement. One way or another, I looked forward to the end of my six weeks.
But until then, surveillance, danger, and the rain.
From my position beneath the statue, I could see down three of the seven roads. Each one was lined with swanky shop fronts, dark and shadowy, secured by metal grilles. Frail lamps shone in alcoves above the doors, but the rain was stronger than the light, and their radiance did not travel far. Water sluiced along the pavements.
A sudden movement in the left-hand road: the cat's head turned. Something had dropped onto a first-floor window ledge. It perched there for a moment, a black smudge in the gloom—then, in a single sinewy movement, poured itself over the ledge and down the wall, zigzagging through the grooves between the bricks like a thin rope of hot treacle. At the base of the wall, it dropped onto the pavement, became a small black smudge again, grew legs, and began to splitter-splatter along the pavement in my direction.
I watched all this. I did not move an inch.
The smudge reached the crossroads, waded through the spreading puddles, and jumped onto the plinth. Here it was fully revealed as an elegant spaniel with big brown eyes. She halted in front of the cat, paused, shook herself vigorously.
A shower of water sprayed out and hit the cat directly in the face.
"Thanks for that, Queezle," I said. "You must have spotted I wasn't quite wet enough."
The spaniel blinked, stuck her head coyly on one side, and gave an apologetic bark.
"And you can drop that old routine right now," I went on. "I'm not some human dunderhead who's going to be charmed by limpid eyes and a clot of wet fur. You forget I can see you quite clearly on the seventh plane, dorsal tubes and all."
"Can't help myself, Bartimaeus." The spaniel raised a hind leg and scratched herself nonchalantly behind one ear. "It's all this undercover work. It's becoming second nature to me. You should think yourself lucky you're not sitting under a lamppost."
I did not dignify this remark with a response. "So where've you been?" I said. "You're two hours later than agreed."
The spaniel nodded wearily. "False alarm at the silk warehouses. Pair of foliots thought they'd seen something. Had to search the whole place thoroughly before giving the all clear. Stupid first-timers. Of course I had to reprimand them."
"Nipped their ankles, did you?"
A small crooked smile flickered across the spaniel's muzzle. "Something like that."
I shifted across to allow Queezle a bit of room on the center of the plinth. Not that it was any less damp there particularly, but it seemed a comradely thing to do. She shuffled up and huddled alongside.
"Can't really blame them," I said. "They're jumpy. It's all this rain. And what happened to Zeno. Being summoned night after night doesn't help either. It wears your essence down after a while."
Queezle gave me a side glance out of those big brown puppy-dog eyes. _"Your_ essence, too, Bartimaeus?"
"I was speaking rhetorically. _I'm_ all right." To prove it I arched my back in a big luxuriant cat stretch, the kind that runs from whisker tip to tail tuft. "Ahhh, that's better. Nope, I've seen worse than this and so have you. Just some pumped-up imp lurking in the shadows. It's nothing we can't handle, once we find him."
"That's what Zeno said, as I recall."
"I don't remember what Zeno said. Where's your master tonight? Safely under cover?"
The spaniel gave a small growl. "He claims to be within signaling distance. The Whitehall office, allegedly. In fact, he's probably holed up in some magician's bar with a bottle in one hand and a girl in the other."
I grunted. " _That_ sort, is he?"
"Yup. What's yours like?"
"Oh, the same. Worse, if anything. He'd have girl and bottle in the same hand."
The spaniel gave a sympathetic whimper. I got slowly to my feet.
"Well, we'd better swap circuits," I said. "I'll start by patrolling up to Soho and back. You can head between the posh shops down Gibbet Street to the Museum district behind."
"I might rest a bit," Queezle said. "I'm tired."
"Yes. Well, good luck."
"Good luck." The spaniel rested her head gloomily across her paws. I trotted out into the driving rain, to the edge of the plinth, and bent my legs, ready for the off. A little voice sounded behind me: "Bartimaeus?"
"Yes, Queezle?"
"Oh, nothing."
"What?"
"It's just... well, it's not _just_ the foliots. I'm jumpy, too."
The cat trotted back and sat beside her for a moment, curling its tail around her affectionately "You don't need to be," I said. "It's already past midnight and neither of us has seen anything. On every occasion when this thing has attacked, it's done so by midnight. Your only fear should be the boredom of a long, tedious vigil."
"I suppose so." The rain drummed all around, like a solid thing. We were cocooned within it. "Between ourselves," Queezle said softly, "what do you think it is?"
My tail twitched. "I don't know, and I'd rather not find out. So far it's killed everything it's come across. My advice is keep vigilant watch, and if you see something unusual coming, scamper the other way pronto."
"But we have to destroy it. That's our charge."
"Well, destroy it by running away."
"How?"
"Um... Make it chase you, then lure it into heavy traffic? Something like that. I don't know, do I? Just don't do what Zeno did and attack it head on."
The spaniel heaved a sigh. "I liked Zeno."
"A little too eager, that was his trouble."
There was a heavy silence. Queezle said nothing. The incessant rain beat down.
"Well," I said at last. "I'll see you."
"Yes."
I hopped down from the plinth and ran, tail out, through the rain and across the waterlogged street. A single jump took me up onto a low wall beside a deserted café. Then, in a series of leaps and bounds—wall to porch, porch to ledge, ledge to tiles—I negotiated my athletic feline way, until I had sprung up onto the guttering of the nearest, lowest roof.
I took a quick look back, down into the square. The spaniel was a forlorn and lonely speck, hunched in the shadows beneath the horse's belly. A gust of rain blocked her from my view. I turned and set off along the roof crests.
In that part of town, the ancient houses huddled close together, leaning forward like gossiping hunchbacks so that their gables almost met above the street. Even in the rain, it was thus an easy matter for an agile cat to make its way swiftly in whatever direction it fancied. And so I did. Anyone lucky enough to be peering out of their shuttered window might have glimpsed a flash of gray lightning (nothing more) leaping from chimney pot to weathervane, streaking across slates and thatch, never putting a paw wrong.
I halted for a breather in the valley between two steeply pitching roofs and scanned the skies longingly. It would have been quicker for me to get to Soho by flying, but I had orders to remain near the ground, keeping my eye out for trouble there. No one knew exactly how the enemy arrived or departed, but my master had a hunch it was somehow earthbound. He doubted it was anything like a djinni at all.
The cat rubbed some moisture from its face with a paw and prepared for another jump—a big one this time, a proper road's width. At that moment, everything was illuminated by a sudden burst of orange light—I saw the tiles and chimney pots beside me, the lowering clouds above, and even the raindrop curtains hanging all around. Then darkness fell again.
The orange Flare was the agreed emergency signal. It came from close behind.
Queezle.
She had found something. Or something had found her.
The time for rules was past. I turned; even as I did so, I made the change: an eagle with black crest and golden wingtips launching itself in haste into the sky.
I had traveled only two blocks from the place where the portly horseman guarded the seven roads. Even if she had moved, Queezle would not be far away. It would take less than ten seconds to get back. No problem. I would be in time.
Three seconds later, I heard her scream.
The eagle hurtled down out of the night, angling painfully into the teeth of the gale. Over the roofs to the lonely crossroads, down to the statue, I alighted on the edge of the plinth, where rain spattered harshly against the stone. Everything was exactly as it had been a minute or two before. But the spaniel had gone.
"Queezle?" No answer. Nothing but the howling of the wind.
A moment later, perched on the horseman's hat, I scanned the seven roads on each of the seven planes. The spaniel was nowhere to be seen; nor were there any djinn, imps, hexes, or other magical effusions. The streets were deserted. I was quite alone.
In doubt, I returned to the plinth and subjected it to a minute inspection. I thought to detect a faint black mark upon the stonework, roughly where we had been sitting, but it was impossible to tell whether or not it had been there before.
All of a sudden I felt very exposed. Whichever way I turned on the plinth, my back was vulnerable to something creeping up quietly out of the rain. I took off promptly and spiraled up around the statue, the crashing of the raindrops thrumming in my ears. Up above rooftop level I rose, safely out of reach of anything lurking in the street.
It was then that I heard the crash. It wasn't a nice, restrained sort of crash—like a bottle breaking on a bald man's head, say. It sounded rather as if a large forest oak had been uprooted and tossed casually aside, or an entire building had been swatted impatiently out of the path of something very big. Unpromising, in other words.
Worse still, I could tell the direction from which it came. If the rain had been just a little louder, or the crashing just a little quieter, I might have been able to misjudge it and head off bravely to investigate in the wrong direction. But no such luck.
Anyway, there was always the small possibility that Queezle might still be alive.
So I did two things. First, I sent up another Flare, hoping against hope that it would be spotted by another watcher in our group. The nearest, if memory served, was a foliot, based somewhere down near Charing Cross. He was a meager individual, devoid of valor or initiative, but any reinforcements would be welcome now, if only as cannon fodder.
Next, I proceeded in a northerly direction, at chimney height along the road from which the sound had come. I was heading for the museum quarter. I flew about as slowly as an eagle can without falling out of the air. All the while I scanned the buildings below. It was an area of luxury shops, small, dark, discreet. Old painted signs above the doors hinted at the delights within: necklaces, rolls of silk, jeweled pocket watches. Gold featured prominently in this district, diamonds likewise. It was to these establishments that magicians came to buy those little extras that emphasized their status. Rich tourists flocked here too.
The tremendous crash had not been repeated; all the shop fronts seemed healthy enough, their alcove lights burning, their wooden signs creaking in the wind.
Rain fell around me, down into the street. In places the cobbles had disappeared beneath the stippled surface of the water. There was no sign of anyone, mortal or otherwise. I might have been flying above a ghost town.
The road widened a little, to pass on either side of a small circle of grass and pretty flowers. It seemed an incongruous sight in the narrow street, perhaps a little out of place. Then you noticed the old broken post in the center of the grass, the flagstones hidden among the flowers, and realized its original purpose. Tonight it was all looking very water-blown and windswept, but what interested me, and made me circle around to land upon the post, were the markings in the grass.
They were footprints, of a sort. Large ones. Vaguely spatula-shaped, with the imprint of one separate toe visible at the wider end. They crossed the grass circle from one side to the other, each print driven down deep into the earth.
I shook moisture from my head feathers and drummed my claws against the post. Perfect. Just perfect. My enemy wasn't just mysterious and powerful, he was big and heavy, too. The night was getting better and better.
I followed the direction of the footsteps with my eagle eye. For the first few steps beyond the grass they were still partially visible, as indicated by a desultory trail of deposited mud. Beyond that they disappeared, but it was clear that none of the shops on either side had suffered from the attentions of any marauder. My quarry was evidently heading elsewhere. I took off and continued on along the road.
Gibbet Street came to its end at a wide boulevard that ran from left to right into the darkness. Directly opposite was a tall, imposing fence of metal railings, each post twenty feet high, two inches thick, and of solid iron. There was a set of double gates in the fence, and these were hanging open. In fact, to be accurate, they were hanging open off a nearby lamppost, together with a substantial portion of the adjoining rails. A great twisted hole gaped in the fencing. Something had ripped it in two in its hurry to get inside. How nice to be so eager. By contrast, it was with extreme reluctance that I approached, flying slowly across the street.
I alighted on a wrenched and tortured tip of metal. Beyond the ruined gate was a broad driveway leading up to an expansive flight of steps. Above these was a giant portico of eight imposing columns, attached to a vast building, tall as a castle, dull as a bank. I recognized it of old: the fabled British Museum. It stretched outward in either direction, wing upon wing, farther than my eyes could see. It was the size of a city block.
Was it me, or was _everything_ fairly big around here? The eagle fluffed up its feathers vigorously, but couldn't help feeling rather small. I considered the position. No prizes for guessing why the unknown, big-footed and evidently rather strong enemy had come here. The museum held enough material worth destroying to keep it busy for a week. Whoever wished to heap embarrassment upon the British government had chosen well, and it was safe to say that my master's wretched career would not continue much longer if the marauder completed an uninterrupted night's work.
Which of course meant that I had to follow it inside.
The eagle glided forward, low over the driveway and up over the steps, to land between the columns of the portico. Ahead was the great bronze door of the museum; typically, my quarry had decided to ignore it and had staved its way through the solid stone wall instead. This sort of thing wasn't stylish, but had a bowel-looseningly impressive quality that made me spend a couple of extra minutes engaged in flagrant delaying tactics such as checking the rubble of the portico carefully for danger.
The hole in the building gaped wide and black. From a respectful distance, I peered inside, into a lobby of a kind. All was still. No activity on any plane. A tumble of shattered wood and masonry and a splintered sign cheerfully proclaiming WELCOME TO THE BRITI showed where something had shoveled its determined way. Dust hung thickly in the air. A wall on the left had been broken through. I listened hard. In the distance, behind the pummeling of the rain, I fancied I could hear the distinctive sound of priceless antiquities being broken.
I sent another Flare into the sky in case that shirking foliot chose to glance in my direction. Then I made my change and stepped into the building.
The ferocious minotaur glanced imperiously around the ruined lobby, steam rising from its nostrils, its clawed hands flexing, its hooves pawing at the dirt. Who dared challenge it? No one! Well, because, as expected, there was nothing in the room. Right. Fine. That meant I had to try the next one. No problem. With a deep breath, the minotaur tiptoed tentatively through the debris to the splintered wall. It peeped around with great caution.
Darkness, rain drumming on the windows, amphorae and Phoenician pots lying scattered on the floor. And somewhere distant—breaking glass. The enemy was still several rooms ahead. Good. The minotaur stepped bravely through the hole.
The next few minutes saw a rather slow game of cat and mouse, with this process repeated several times. New room, empty, sounds farther on. The marauder went on its merrily destructive way; I trailed uncertainly in its wake, less keen than I strictly might have been to catch up with it. It wasn't exactly your traditional Bartimaeus panache, I'll admit. Call me overcautious, but Zeno's fate lay heavy on my mind and I was trying to think of a foolproof plan to avoid being killed.
The extent of the carnage I was passing made it seem unlikely that I was dealing with any human agency, so what would it be? An afrit? Possible, but oddly out of style. You'd expect afrits to use lots of magical attacks—high-class Detonations and Infernos, for instance—and there was no evidence of anything here except sheer brute force. A marid? Same again, and surely I'd have sensed their magical presence before now. But I was getting no familiar feedback. All the rooms were dead and cold. This was in line with what the boy had told me about the previous attacks: it did not seem that spirits were involved at all.
To be absolutely sure, I sent a small magical Pulse bubbling ahead of me through the next jagged hole, from which loud noises were emanating. I waited for the Pulse to return, either weaker (if no magic lay ahead) or stronger (if something potent lurked in wait).
To my consternation, it did not come back at all.
The minotaur rubbed its muzzle thoughtfully. Odd, and vaguely familiar. I was sure I'd seen this effect somewhere before.
I listened at the hole; once again, the only sounds were distant ones. The minotaur sneaked through—
And came out in a large gallery, double the height of the other rooms. The rain beat against tall rectangular windows high up on either side, and from somewhere in the night, perhaps some distant tower, a faint white light shone down upon the contents of the hall. It was a room filled with ancient statues of colossal size, all swathed in shadow: two Assyrian gatekeeper djinn—winged lions with the heads of men, which had once stood before the gates of Nimrud; a motley assembly of Egyptian gods and spirits, carved in a dozen kinds of colored stone and given the heads of crocodile, cat, ibis, and jackal; huge carved representations of the holy scarab beetle; sarcophagi of long-forgotten priests; and, above all, fragments of the monolithic statues of the great pharaohs—shattered faces, arms, torsos, hands, and feet, found buried in the sands and carried by sail and steamship to the gray lands of the north.
On another occasion, I could have had a nostalgic trip here, looking for images of distant friends and masters, but now was not the time. A clear corridor had been driven halfway through the hall; several smaller pharaohs had already been bunted aside and lay like ninepins in indignant heaps on the margins, while a couple of gods were in closer proximity to each other than they would have cared for in life. But if these had given little trouble, some of the larger statues seemed to be putting up more resistance. Halfway down the hall, and directly in the path that the enemy was taking, rose a giant seated figure of Ramses the Great, more than thirty feet high and carved from solid granite. The top of its headdress was gently shaking; muffled scraping sounds came from the darkness below, suggesting that something was trying to force Ramses from its path.
Even an utukku would have figured out after a couple of minutes that the easiest thing to do was to walk around something so big and just head off on its travels. But my enemy was worrying away at the statue like a small dog trying to lift an elephant's shinbone. So perhaps (a positive thought) my adversary was very stupid. Or perhaps (less positive, this) it was simply ambitious—intent on causing maximum destruction.
Anyway, it was evidently happily occupied for the present. And this gave me the opportunity to take a closer look at what I was up against. Without a sound, the minotaur minced through the blackness of the hall until it came to a tall sarcophagus that so far remained untouched. It peered around it, toward the base of Ramses' statue. And frowned in perplexity.
Most djinn have perfect night sight; it's one of the countless ways in which we are superior to humans. Darkness has little meaning for us—even on the first plane, which you see, too. But now, though I scrolled through the other planes with the speed of thought, I found I could not penetrate a deep well of blackness centered on the statue's base. It swelled and shrank around its edges, but remained as inkily inscrutable on the seventh plane as on the first. Whatever was causing Ramses to shake was deep within the darkness, but I could see nothing of it.
However, I could certainly judge roughly where it would be, and since it was being good enough to remain stationary, it seemed the time had come for a surprise attack. I looked around me for an appropriate missile. In a glass cabinet nearby was an odd black stone, of irregular outline, small enough to lift, but large enough to brain an afrit nicely. It had a lot of scribbling down one flat side, which I didn't have time to read. It was probably a set of rules for visitors to the museum, since it seemed to be written in two or three languages. Whatever, it would do the job.
The minotaur carefully and quietly lifted the glass case off the floor and over the top of the rock, setting it down again without a sound. It checked across: the blackness still welled aggressively against Ramses'feet, but the statue remained immobile. Good.
With a bend and a lift, the rock was in the minotaur's brawny arms, and I was heading back across the gallery, looking for a suitable vantage point. A smallish pharaoh met my eye. I didn't recognize him: he can't have been one of the more memorable ones. Even his statue had a slightly apologetic expression. But he was sitting high up on a carved throne on top of a dais, and his lap looked big enough for a minotaur to stand on.
Still holding the rock, I hopped up, first onto the dais, then onto the throne, then onto the pharaoh's lap. I squinted over his shoulder; perfect—I was a stone's throw away from the pulsating blackness now, high up enough to get just the right trajectory. I tensed my goat legs, flexed my biceps, gave a snort for luck, and tossed the stone up and over, as if from a siege catapult.
For a single second, maybe two, its inscribed surface flashed in the light from the windows, then it plummeted down in front of Ramses'face, down to the base of the statue and into the center of the black smog.
_Smack!_ A crack of stone on stone, rock on rock. Small black pieces flew out of the smog in all directions, pinging off the masonry and cracking glass.
Well, I'd hit something, and it was hard.
The black cloud boiled as if in sudden rage. Briefly, it drew back; I caught a glimpse of something very large and solid at its heart, thrashing a giant arm about in mindless fury. Then the cloud closed up again and swelled outward, lapping against the nearest statues as if blindly seeking the perpetrator of the crime.
In point of fact, the heroic minotaur had made itself scarce: I was crouching down as low as possible in the pharaoh's lap, peeping out through a crack in the marble. Even my horns had drooped a little so as not to be exposed. I watched the darkness move now, as whatever was inside it began its hunt: it shifted decisively away from Ramses'base, welling back and forth against nearby statues. A series of heavy impacts sounded: the noise of hidden footfalls.
While it is true to say that my hopes for my first attack hadn't been sky-high, given that my adversary was capable of smashing through solid walls, I was a little disappointed that the stone hadn't made more of an impact. But it _had_ given me a tiny glimpse of the creature within, and since—if I couldn't destroy it—one of my charges was to get information on the marauder, this was something worth following up. A small stone had made a small dent in the darkness.... This being so, what would a _large_ stone do?
The billowing cloud was moving off to investigate a suspicious group of statues on the opposite side of the hall. With unlikely stealth, the minotaur descended from the pharaoh's lap and proceeded, in a series of little darting movements between hiding places, across the gallery to where a large sandstone torso of another pharaoh stood beside the wall.
The torso was high—about fifteen feet tall. I squeezed into the shadows behind it, on my way plucking a small burial pot off a nearby stand. Once suitably concealed, I stuck out a hairy arm and tossed the pot to the ground ten feet or so away. It broke with a satisfyingly crisp crack.
Instantly, as if it had been waiting for just such a sound, the cloud of darkness shifted position and began flowing rapidly in the direction of the noise. Eager footfalls sounded; questing tentacles of blackness extended out, whipping against the statues that they passed. The cloud drew close to the smashed pot; it paused there, billowing uncertainly.
It was in position. By this time, the minotaur had clambered halfway up the sandstone torso, braced its back against the wall behind, and was pushing at the statue with all the might of its cloven hooves. The torso began to shift immediately, rocking back and forth, and making a slight scraping sound as it did so. The cloud of blackness caught the noise; it darted in my direction.
Not fast enough. With one final heave, the torso's center of balance shifted irrevocably; down it came, whistling through the dark hall, slap-bang into the cloud.
The force of the impact blew the cloud into a million ragged wisps; they shot out in all directions.
I jumped clear, landing nimbly to the side. I turned eagerly, scanning the scene.
The torso was not flat against the ground. It had cracked across the middle; its top end was several feet off the floor, as if it were resting on something large.
I walked toward it carefully. From my angle I couldn't get a view of what was lying comatose beneath. Still, it looked as if I'd been successful. In a few moments I could head off, signal the boy, and get ready for my dismissal.
I drew close and bent down to look beneath the statue.
A giant hand shot out, faster than thought, grabbed me by one hairy leg. It was blue-gray, possessed of three fingers and a thumb, hard and cold as buried stone. Veins ran through it as through marble, but they pulsed with life. Its grip crushed my essence like a vise. The minotaur bellowed with pain. I needed to change, to withdraw my essence from the fist, but my head was spinning—I could not concentrate long enough to do so. A terrible coldness extended outward, wrapped itself around me like a blanket. I felt my fires dwindling, my energy leaching out of me like blood dripping from a wound.
The minotaur swayed, collapsed like an empty puppet upon the floor. The chilly solitude of death was all about me.
Then, unexpectedly, the stone wrist flexed, the grip was loosed; the minotaur's body was hurled high into the air, in an ungainly arc, to be dashed hard against the nearby wall. My consciousness flickered; I fell, crashing tail over horns to the floor below.
I lay there for a moment, dazed, uncomprehending. I heard scraping sounds, as of a sandstone torso being shifted, and did nothing. I felt the floor shake, as if that torso was being summarily dropped to one side, and did nothing. I heard first one, then another, firm concussion, as of great stone feet righting themselves, and still did nothing. But all the while the hideous burning chill of the great hand's touch was slowly lessening, and my fires were being restoked. And now, as the great stone feet moved purposefully toward me and I sensed something fixing me with a cold intent, enough energy returned for action.
I opened my eyes, saw a shadow looming.
With a tortured effort of will, the minotaur became the cat once more; the cat leaped high into the air, out of the path of the descending foot, which drove deep down into the fabric of the floor. The cat landed a short way off, hackles raised, tail flared like a toilet brush; with a yowl it leaped again.
As it leaped, it looked to the side and caught a view of its adversary full on.
The black wisps were re-forming about it already, gathering like mercury globules into the creature's permanent concealing shroud. But enough remained free for me to see it there, its outline exposed in the moonlight, following my progression with a swift turn of its head.
At first glance, it was as if one of the statues in the hall had come to life: a vast figure, roughly humanoid in shape, standing three meters tall. Two arms, two legs, a hulking torso, a relatively small, smooth head sitting atop it all.
It existed only on the first plane; on the others, darkness was utter and absolute.
The cat landed on the scaly head of Sobek, the crocodile god, and perched there for a moment, hissing defiance. Everything about the figure radiated an alien otherness; I felt my energy being sapped simply by seeing it.
It stepped toward me with surprising speed. For an instant, its face—such as it was—was caught in the light from the window, and that was where the comparison with the ancient statues fell down. Those statues were exquisitely carved, without exception; that was what the Egyptians were really good at, along with organized religion and civil engineering. But aside from its scale, the most obvious thing about the creature was how crude it was, how artificial. The skin surface was covered in irregularities: with lumps, cracks, and flat areas, as if it had only roughly been patted into shape. It had no ears, no hair. Where you'd expect its eyes to be, it had two round holes that looked as if they'd simply been punched in its surface with the blunt end of a giant pencil. It had no nose, and only a great slash of a mouth, which hung slightly open in the stupid, voracious manner of a shark's. And in the center of its forehead was an oval shape that I knew I'd seen before, not very long ago.
This oval was fairly small, fashioned out of the same dark blue-gray substance as the rest of the figure, but was as intricate as the face and body were crude. It was an open eye, without lids or lashes, but complete with crosshatched iris and round pupil. And in the center of that pupil, just before the cloak of blackness swathed it from my view, I caught the flash of a dark intelligence, watching me.
The blackness made a lunge; the cat gave a bound. Behind me, I heard Sobek splintering. I landed on the floor then shot toward the nearest door. It was time to go; I had discovered what I needed. I did not flatter myself I could do anything more here.
A missile of some kind shot over my head, collided with the door, breaking it in. The cat plunged through. Jarring footsteps came behind.
I was in a small, dark room hung with fragile ethnic drapes and tapestries. A tall window at the end promised a way out. The cat ran toward it, whiskers back, ears flat against its head, claws scrabbling on the floor. It jumped, then jerked to the side at the last minute with a very uncatlike curse. It had seen the glowing white lines of a high-strength nexus beyond the window. The magicians had arrived. They'd sealed us in.
The cat wheeled around, seeking another exit. Finding none.
Bloody magicians.
A boiling cloud of darkness filled the doorway.
The cat hunched down defensively, pressing itself against the floor. Behind it, rain drummed against the windowpanes.
For a moment neither cat nor darkness moved. Then something small and white erupted from the cloud, shooting across the room: the crocodile head of Sobek, ripped from its shoulders. The cat sprang aside. The head crashed through the window, fizzing as it struck the nexus. Hot rain drove in through the hole, steaming from its contact with the barrier; with it came a sudden draught. The tapestries and sheets of fabric on the walls fluttered outward.
Footsteps. An approaching darkness that swelled to fill the room.
The cat slunk back into a corner, pressing itself as small as it would go. Any moment now, that eye would see me....
Another gust of rain: the edges of the tapestries flicked up. An idea formed.
Not a very good one, but I wasn't fussy right then.
The cat leaped at the nearest hanging fabric, a fragile piece, possibly from America, showing squareish humans amid a sea of stylized corn. It scrabbled its way to the top, where careful cords attached it to the wall. A flash of claw—the fabric was free. Instantly, the wind caught it; it blew outward into the room, colliding with something in the midst of the black cloud.
The cat was already on the next tapestry, slashing it loose. Then the next. In a moment, half a dozen sheets of fabric had been whipped into the center of the room, where they danced palely like ghosts amid the wind and driving rain.
The creature in the cloud had ripped the first sheet away, but now another was blown upon it. From all sides, fragments of material dipped and spun, confusing the creature, obscuring its view. I sensed the great arms flailing, the giant legs blundering back and forth within the confines of the room.
While it was thus occupied, I aimed to creep elsewhere.
This was easier said than done, as the black cloud now seemed to fill the room, and I didn't want to bump into the death-bringing body within it. So I went cautiously, hugging the walls.
I'd made it about halfway to the door when the creature, evidently reaching a peak of frustration, lost all sense of perspective. There was a sudden pounding of feet and a great blow struck against the left-hand wall. Plaster dropped from above and a cloud of dust and debris fell into the room to join the general whirl of wind, rain, and antique fabrics.
On the second blow, the wall collapsed, and with it the entire ceiling.
For a split second, the cat was motionless, eyes wide, then it curled into a protective ball.
An instant later, a dozen tons of stone, brick, cement, steel, and assorted masonry crashed down directly upon me, burying the room.
The small man gave an apologetic smile. "We have removed most of the rubble, madam," he said, "and have so far found nothing."
Jessica Whitwell's voice was cold and calm. "Nothing, Shubit? You realize what you are telling me is quite impossible. I think someone is shirking."
"I humbly believe that not to be so, madam." He certainly seemed humble enough right then, standing with his bandy legs slightly bent, his head bowed, his cap scrunched tightly in his hands. Only the fact that he was standing in the center of a pentacle revealed his demonic nature. That and his left foot—a black bear's tufted paw poking out from his trousers—which from oversight or caprice he had neglected to transform.
Nathaniel regarded the djinni balefully and tapped his fingers together in what he hoped was a brooding and quizzical manner. He was sitting in a high-backed easy chair of studded green leather, one of several arranged around the pentacle in an elegant circle. He had deliberately adopted the same pose as Ms. Whitwell—straight-backed, legs crossed, elbows resting on the arms of the chair—in an attempt to replicate her air of powerful resolve. He had an uncomfortable feeling it did not begin to disguise his terror. He kept his voice as level as he could. "You must search every cranny of the ruins," he said. "My demon must be there."
The small man cast him a single look with his bright green eyes, but otherwise ignored him. Jessica WhitweH spoke: "Your demon might well have been destroyed, John," she said.
"I think I would have felt its loss, madam," he said politely.
"Or it might have escaped its bonds." The rumbling voice of Henry Duvall rose from a black chair opposite Nathaniel. The Police Chief filled every inch of it; his fingers tapped impatiently on the arms. The black eyes glinted. "With over-ambitious apprentices, such things have been known to happen."
Nathaniel knew better than to rise to the challenge. He remained silent.
Ms. Whitwell addressed her servant once more. "My apprentice is right, Shubit," she said. "You must scan the debris again. Do so, at all speed."
"Madam, I shall." He bowed his head, vanished.
There was a moment's silence in the room. Nathaniel kept his face calm, but his mind was awhirl with emotion. His career and perhaps his life were in the balance, and Bartimaeus could not be found. He had staked everything on his servant, and judging by the expressions of the others in the room, they believed he was about to lose. He glanced around, witnessing the hungry satisfaction in Duvall's eyes, the flinty displeasure in his master's and, from the depths of a leather armchair, the furtive hope in Mr. Tallow's. The head of Internal Affairs had spent much of the night distancing himself from the whole surveillance enterprise, and pouring criticism down upon Nathaniel's head. In truth, Nathaniel could not blame him. First Pinn's, then the National Gallery, now (and worst of all) the British Museum. Internal Affairs was in desperate straits, and the ambitious police chief was preparing to make his move. No sooner had the extent of the damage to the museum become clear than Mr. Duvall had insisted on being present in the cleanup operation. He had watched everything with ill-concealed triumph.
"Well..." Mr. Duvall clapped his hands upon his knees and prepared to rise. "I think I have wasted enough time, Jessica. In summary, following the efforts of Internal Affairs, we have a ruined wing of the British Museum and a hundred artifacts lost within it. We have a trail of destruction across the ground floor, several priceless statues destroyed or broken, and the Rosetta stone pulverized to dust. We have no perpetrator of this crime and no prospect of finding one. The Resistance is as free as a bird. And Mr. Mandrake has lost his demon. Not a wildly impressive tally, but one I must communicate to the Prime Minister nevertheless."
_"Please remain seated,_ Henry." Ms. Whitwell's voice was so venomous that Nathaniel felt his skin crawl. Even the police chief seemed transfixed by it: after a moment's hesitation, he relaxed back into the chair. "The exploration is not yet finished," she went on. "We shall wait a few minutes more."
Mr. Duvall snapped his fingers. A human servant glided forward from the shadows of the chamber, carrying a silver tray with wine upon it. Mr. Duvall took a glass, swilled the wine around it musingly. There was a long silence.
Julius Tallow ventured an opinion from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. "It is a pity _my_ demon was not at the scene," he said. "Nemaides is an able creature and would have managed _some_ communication with me before dying. This Bartimaeus was evidently most feeble."
Nathaniel glared at him but said nothing.
"Your demon," Duvall said, looking at Nathaniel suddenly. "What level was it?"
"Fourth-level djinni, sir."
"Slippery things." He swilled his glass. The wine danced in the neon light of the ceiling. "Guileful and hard to control. Few people of your age manage it."
The implication was clear. Nathaniel ignored it. "I do my best, sir."
"They require complex summonings. Some misquotations kill magicians, or allow the demon to run amok. Can be destructive—result in whole buildings being destroyed..." The black eyes glittered.
"That hasn't happened in my case," Nathaniel said evenly. He gripped his fingers together to stop their shaking.
Mr. Tallow sniffed. "Clearly the youth has been promoted beyond his ability."
"Quite so," Duvall said. "First sensible thing you've ever said, Tallow. Perhaps Ms. Whitwell, _who promoted him,_ has a comment to make on that?" He grinned.
Jessica Whitwell rewarded Tallow with a look of pure malevolence. "I believe _you_ are something of an expert on misquoted summonings, Julius," she said. "Wasn't that how your skin acquired its delightful color?"
Mr. Tallow pulled his hat brim down a little lower over his yellow face. "It was no fault of mine," he said sullenly. "There was a printing error in my book."
Duvall smiled, drew the glass to his lips. "Head of Internal Affairs, and he misreads his own book. Dear me. What hope do we have? Well, we shall see whether _my_ department can shed any light on the Resistance, when it is given its extra powers." He took a short swig, emptied the glass in one. "I shall first suggest—"
Without sound, smell, or other theatrical device, the pentacle was occupied once more. The small, apologetic man was back again, this time with two bear's paws instead of feet. He carried an object delicately in both hands. A bedraggled cat—limp and comatose.
He opened his mouth to speak, then—remembering his affectation of humility—dropped the cat so that it swung from one hand by its tail. He used the other hand to doff his cap in appropriately servile manner. "Madam," he began, "we found this specimen in the space between two broken beams; in a small pore, it was, madam; tucked right in. We overlooked it the first time."
Ms. Whitwell frowned with distaste. "This thing... is it worthy of our attention?"
Nathaniel's lenses, like his master's, could shed no further light: to him, it was a cat on all three planes. Nevertheless, he guessed what he was seeing, and it seemed dead. He bit his lip.
The small man made a face; he swung the cat back and forth by its tail. "Depends on what you call 'worthy,' madam. It is a djinni of a disreputable cast, that's certain. Ugly, unkempt; it gives off an unpleasant stench on the sixth plane. Furthermore—"
"I _assume,"_ Ms. Whitwell interrupted, "that it is still alive."
"Yes, madam. It requires merely an appropriate stimulus to awake."
"See to it, then you may depart."
"Gladly." The small man tossed the cat unceremoniously upward; he pointed, spoke a word. A jarring arc of green electricity erupted from his finger, caught the cat head-on, and held it, jerking and dancing in midair, all its fur extended. The small man clapped his hands and descended into the floor. A moment passed. The green electricity vanished. The cat plummeted to the center of the pentacle, where in defiance of all normal laws it landed on its back. It lay there a moment, legs pointing outward in four directions from amid a ball of static fluff.
Nathaniel rose to his feet. "Bartimaeus!"
The cat's eyes opened; they bore an indignant expression. "No need to shout." It paused and blinked. "What's happened to you?"
"Nothing. You're upside down."
"Oh." With a flurry of motion, the cat righted itself. It glanced around the room, noticing Duvall, Whitwell, and Tallow sitting impassively in their high-backed chairs. It scratched itself carelessly with a hind leg. "Got company, I see."
Nathaniel nodded. Beneath his black coat he was crossing his fingers, praying that Bartimaeus did not choose to reveal anything inappropriate, such as his name. _"Be careful_ how you answer me," he said. "We are among the great." He made the warning sound as portentous as possible for his superiors'sake.
The cat looked silently at the other magicians for a moment. It raised a paw, leaned forward conspiratorially. "Between you and me, I've seen greater."
"So, I imagine, have they. You look like a pompom with legs."
The cat noticed its fluffy condition for the first time. It gave a hiss of annoyance and changed instantly; a black panther sat in the pentacle, smooth-furred and gleaming of coat. It flicked its tail neatly around its paws. "So then, you wish my report?"
Nathaniel held up a hand. Everything depended on what the djinni would say. If it did not have strong insight into the nature of their adversary, his position was vulnerable indeed. The level of destruction at the British Museum paralleled that in Piccadilly the week before, and he knew that a messenger imp had already visited Ms. Whitwell, communicating the Prime Minister's wrath. That boded ill for Nathaniel. "Bartimaeus," he said, "we know this much. Your signal was seen outside the museum last night. I arrived soon afterward, along with others from my department. Disturbances were heard inside. We sealed off the museum."
The panther extended its claws and tapped the floor meaningfully. "Yes, I kind of noticed that."
"At approximately 1:44 A.M., one interior wall of the east wing was seen to collapse. Soon afterward, something unknown broke through the security cordon, killing imps in the vicinity. We have since searched the area. Nothing was found, except yourself—in an unconscious condition."
The panther shrugged. "Well, what do you expect when a building falls on me? That I'd be dancing a mazurka in the ruins?"
Nathaniel coughed loudly and drew himself up. "Be that as it may," he said sternly, "in the absence of other evidence, blame will fall on you as the cause of all this devastation, unless you can give us information to the contrary."
"What!" The panther's eyes widened in outrage. "You're blaming me? After what I've suffered? My essence is one big bruise, I tell you! I've got bruises where bruises don't ought to be!"
"So then..." Nathaniel said, "what caused it?"
"What caused the building to collapse?"
"Yes."
"You want to know what caused all the devastation last night and yet disappeared from right under your noses?"
"That's right."
"So you're asking me for the identity of the creature that arrives as if from nowhere, departs again unseen and, while it's here, wraps a cloak of blackness around it to protect it from the vision of spirit, human or animal, on this and every other plane? That's seriously what you're asking?"
Nathaniel's heart had sunk down into his boots."...Yes."
"That's easy It's a golem."
There was a small gasp from the direction of Ms. Whitwell and snorts from Tallow and Duvall. Nathaniel sat back in shock. "A... a golem?"
The panther licked a paw and smoothed back the fur above one eye. "You'd better believe it, buster."
"You're sure about this?"
"A giant man of animated clay, hard as granite, invulnerable to attack, with the strength to rip down walls. Cloaks itself in darkness and carries the odor of earth in its wake. A touch that brings death to all beings of air and fire like me... that within seconds reduces our essences to smoldering ash. Yes, I'd say I was pretty sure."
Ms. Whitwell made a dismissive gesture. "You may be mistaken, demon."
The panther turned its yellow eyes upon her. For a horrid moment, Nathaniel thought it was going to be cheeky. But if so, it seemed to reconsider. It bowed its head. "Madam, I may. But I have seen golems before, during my time in Prague."
"In Prague, yes! Centuries ago." Mr. Duvall spoke for the first time; he appeared irritated by the turn of events. "They disappeared with the Holy Roman Empire. The last recorded use of them against our forces was in the time of Gladstone. They drove one of our battalions into the Vltava, below the ramparts of their castle. But the magicians controlling them were located and destroyed, and the golems disintegrated on the Stone Bridge. This is all in the annals of the day."
The panther bowed again. "Sir, this may well be true."
Mr. Duvall banged a heavy fist down upon the arm of his chair. "It _is_ true! Since the implosion of the Czech Empire, no golems have been recorded. The magicians who defected to us did not bring the secrets of their construction, while those who remained in Prague were shadows of their predecessors, amateurs in magic. Hence the lore has been lost."
"Evidently not to everyone." The djinni swished its tail back and forth. "The golem's actions were being controlled by somebody. He or she was observing through a watch-eye in the golem's forehead. I saw the glint of his or her intelligence when the black clouds drew back."
"Pah!" Mr. Duvall was unconvinced. "This is fanciful stuff. The demon lies!"
Nathaniel glanced at his master; her face was frowning. "Bartimaeus," he said, "I charge you to speak truthfully. Can there be any doubting what you saw?"
The yellow eyes blinked slowly. "None. Four hundred years ago, I witnessed the activities of the first golem, which the great magician Loew created deep in the ghetto at Prague. He sent it out from its attic of shrouds and cobwebs to instill fear into the enemies of his people. It was itself a creature of magic, but it worked against the magic of the djinn. It wielded the essence of earth with a great weight: our spells failed in its presence, it made us blind and weak; it struck us down. The creature I fought last night was of the same kind. It killed one of my fellows. I do not lie."
Duvall snorted. "I have not lived as long as I have by believing every tale a demon told. This is a blatant fabrication to protect its master." He tossed his glass aside and, standing, glared around at the company. "But golem or not makes little difference. It is clear that Internal Affairs has lost all control of the situation. We shall see whether my department can do any better. I shall apply to the Prime Minister for an interview forthwith. Good day to you."
He strode to the door, straight-backed, the leather on his jackboots squeaking. No one said a word.
The door closed. Ms. Whitwell remained still. The strip lights in the ceiling shone down harshly upon her; her face was more cadaverous even than usual. She stroked her pointed chin thoughtfully, the long nails making a slight scratching noise upon the skin. "We must consider this with care," she said at last. "If the demon speaks truthfully, we have gained valuable insight. But Duvall is right to be skeptical, although he speaks from a desire to belittle our achievements. Creating a golem is a difficult business, considered nigh on impossible. What do you know of it, Tallow?"
The minister made a face. "Very little, madam, thank goodness. It is a primitive kind of magic that has never been practiced in our enlightened society. I have never cared to investigate."
"Mandrake, what of you?"
Nathaniel cleared his throat; he always relished questions of general knowledge. "A magician needs two powerful artifacts, ma'am," he said brightly. "Each with a different function. First, he or she requires a parchment inscribed with the spell that brings the golem to life; once the body has been formed of river clay, this parchment is inserted into the golem's mouth to animate it."
His master nodded. "Exactly. That is the spell that is considered lost. The Czech masters never wrote the secret down."
"The second artifact," Nathaniel continued, "is a special piece of clay, created by separate spells. It is placed in the monster's forehead and helps focus its power. It acts as a watch-eye for the magician, much as Bartimaeus described. He or she can then control the creature through a common crystal orb."
"Correct. So, if your demon speaks truthfully, we are looking for someone who has acquired both a golem's eye and the animating parchment. Who might that be?"
"No one." Tallow interlinked his fingers and, flexing, cracked the joints loudly, like a volley of rifle shots. "It is absurd. These objects no longer exist. Mandrake's creature should be consigned to the Shriveling Fire. As for Mandrake, madam, this disaster is _his_ responsibility."
"You seem very confident about your facts," the panther remarked, yawning loudly and displaying an impressive set of teeth. "It's true that the parchments disintegrate when they are removed from the golem's mouth. And by the terms of the spell, the monster must then return to its master and subside back into clay, so the body doesn't survive either. But the golem's eye is not destroyed. It can be used many times. So there may well be one here, in modern London. Why are you so yellow?"
Tallow's jaw dropped in rage. "Mandrake—keep this thing under control, or I'll make you suffer the consequences."
Nathaniel removed his smirk promptly. "Yes, Mr. Tallow. Silence, slave!"
"Oooh, pardon me, I'm sure."
Jessica Whitwell held up a hand. "Despite its insolence, the demon is correct on one account at least. Golem's eyes _do_ exist. I saw one myself, two years ago."
Julius Tallow raised an eyebrow. "Indeed, madam? Where?"
"In the collection of someone we all have reason to remember. Simon Lovelace."
Nathaniel gave a little start; a cold shiver ran between his shoulder blades. The name still had power over him. Tallow shrugged. "Lovelace is long dead."
"I know..." Ms. Whitwell had an air of preoccupation. She sat back in her chair and swiveled it to face another pentacle similar to the one in which the panther sat. The room contained several, each of subtly different design. She snapped her fingers and her djinni appeared, this time in full bear's guise. "Shubit," she said, "visit the Artifact Vaults beneath Security. Locate the Lovelace collection; itemize it fully. Among it, you will find a carved eye of hardened clay. Bring it to me at speed."
The bear bent its legs and vanished as it sprang.
Julius Tallow gave Nathaniel an unctuous smile. _"That's_ the kind of servant you need, Mandrake," he said. "No glibness, no chatter. Obeys without question. I'd get rid of this smooth-tongued serpent, if I were you."
The panther swished its tail. "Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit."
"The traitor Lovelace had an interesting collection," Ms. Whitwell mused, ignoring Tallow's cries of fury. "The golem's eye was one of several noteworthy items we confiscated. It will be interesting to inspect it now."
With a clicking of hairy joints, the bear was back, landing lightly in the center of its circle. Its paws were empty, except for its cap, which it held in fully humble pose.
"Yep, that's the kind of servant you need," the panther said. "No chatter. Obedient. Absolutely useless. You wait: it'll have forgotten its charge."
Ms. Whitwell gave an impatient signal. "Shubit—you have been to the Lovelace collection?"
"Madam, I have."
"Is a clay eye among the items?"
"No, madam. It is not."
"Was it among the goods labeled in the inventory?"
"It was. Number thirty-four, madam. 'A clay eye of nine centimeters width, decorated with cabalistic symbols. Purpose: golem's watch-eye. Origin: Prague.'"
"You may depart." Ms. Whitwell spun her chair back to face the others. "So," she said. "There was such an eye. Now it is gone."
Nathaniel's face flushed with excitement. "It _can't_ be a coincidence, ma'am. Someone's stolen it and put it to use."
"But did Lovelace have the animating parchment in his collection?" Tallow asked irritably. "Of course not! So where'd that come from?"
"That," Jessica Whitwell said, "is what we need to find out." She rubbed her slender white hands together. "Gentlemen, we have a new situation. After tonight's debacle, Duvall will press the Prime Minister for greater powers at my expense. I must go to Richmond now and prepare to speak against him. In my absence, I wish you, Tallow, to continue organizing surveillance. Doubtless, the golem—if that is what it is—will strike again. I now entrust this to you alone."
Mr. Tallow nodded smugly. Nathaniel cleared his throat. "You, er, you no longer wish me to be involved, ma'am?"
"No. You are walking a tightrope, John. I entrusted you with great responsibility—and what happens? The National Gallery and British Museum are ransacked. However, thanks to your demon, we do have a clue to the nature of our enemy. Now we need to know the identity of whoever controls it. Is it a foreign power? A local renegade? The theft of the golem's eye suggests that someone has discovered the means to create the animating spell. That must be where you start. Seek out the lost knowledge, and do so quickly"
"Very well, ma'am. Whatever you say." Nathaniel's eyes were glazed in doubt. He had not the first idea how to begin this task.
"We shall attack the golem through its master," Ms. Whitwell said. "When we find the source of the knowledge, we will find the face of our enemy. And then we can act decisively." Her voice was harsh.
"Yes, ma'am."
"This djinni of yours seems useful...." She contemplated the panther, which was sitting washing its paws with its back to them, studiously ignoring the conversation.
Nathaniel made a grudging face. "It's all right, I suppose."
"It survived the golem, which is more than anything else has done. Take it with you."
Nathaniel paused a moment. "Sorry, ma'am, I don't think I understand. Where do you want me to go?"
Jessica Whitwell stood, ready to depart. "Where do you think? The historic home of all golems. The place, where, if anywhere, the lore must have been preserved. I wish you to go to Prague."
**18**
**K** itty rarely allowed considerations beyond the group to impinge upon her, but on the day after the rains ceased, she took a trip to see her parents again.
That evening, at their emergency meeting, the Resistance would learn about the great new hope, the biggest job they had ever undertaken. The details remained to be discovered, but an air of almost painful anticipation prevailed at the shop, a weight of excitement and uncertainty that made Kitty beside herself with agitation. Bowing to her restlessness, she departed early, bought a small bunch of flowers from a kiosk, and took the crowded bus to Balham.
The street was as quiet as ever, the little house trim and neat. She knocked loudly, fumbling for her keys in her bag while supporting the flowers as best she could between shoulder and chin. Before she located them, a shadow approached behind the glass and her mother opened the door, peering around it hesitantly.
Her eyes came alive. "Kathleen! How lovely! Come in, love."
"Hi, Mum. These are for you."
An awkward ritual of kissing and hugging ensued, mingled with the flowers being inspected and Kitty's attempting to squeeze past into the hall. At last, with difficulty, the door was shut and Kitty was ushered up and along to the familiar small kitchen, where potatoes were bubbling on the cooker and her father was sitting at the table polishing his shoes. With hands still full of brush and shoe, he stood up, allowed her to kiss his cheek, then motioned her to an empty chair.
"We've got a hot pot on, love," Kitty's mother said. "It'll be ready in five minutes."
"Oh, that's great. Cheers."
"So..." After a moment's consideration, her father placed his brush upon the table and laid the shoe sole-down beside it. He smiled at her broadly. "How's life among the pots and paints?"
"It's fine. Nothing special, but I'm learning."
"And Mr. Pennyfeather?"
"He's getting a little frail. Doesn't walk so well now."
"Dear, dear. And the business? Most importantly, do you have the magicians' custom? Do they paint?"
"Not so much."
" _That's_ where you have to direct your energies, girl. That's where the money is."
"Yes, Dad. We're directing our energies at the magicians now. How's work?"
"Oh, you know. I made a big sale at Easter."
"Easter was months ago, Dad."
"Business is slow. How about a cup of tea, Iris?"
"Not before lunch." Her mother was busying herself collecting extra cutlery and setting the place before Kitty with reverent care. "You know, Kitty," she said, "I don't see why you don't stop here with us. It's not so far. And it would be cheaper for you."
"Rent's not high, Mum."
"Yes, but food and that. You must spend so much on it, when we could cook for you. It's a waste of money."
"Mmm." Kitty picked up her fork and tapped the table with it absently "How's Mrs. Hyrnek?" she said. "And Jakob—have you seen him lately?"
Her mother had on a large pair of oven gloves and was kneeling before the oven; a gust of red-hot air, heavy with the fragrance of spiced meats, belched from its open door. Her voice echoed strangely as she rummaged within. "Jarmilla is well enough," she said. "Jakob works for his father, as you know. I have not seen him. He does not go out. Alfred—could you fetch out the wooden mat? This is piping hot. That's it. Now drain the potatoes. You should visit him, dear. He'd be glad for company, poor boy. Especially if it's you. It's a shame you don't see him anymore."
Kitty frowned. "That wasn't what you _used_ to say, Mum."
"All that business was a _long_ time ago.... You're much steadier now. Oh, and the grandmother has died, Jarmilla says."
"What? When?"
"Last month sometime. Don't give me that look—if you came to see us more often, you'd have known about it earlier, wouldn't you? Not that I can see it matters much to you in any case. Oh— _do_ ladle it out, Alfred. It'll go cold, else."
The potatoes were overcooked, but the stew was excellent. Kitty ate ravenously and, to her mother's delight, plowed through a second helping before her parents had finished their first. Then, while her mother told her news of people she had never met or didn't remember, she sat quietly, fingering a small, smooth, and heavy object in her trouser pocket, lost in thought.
The evening following her trial had been deeply unpleasant for Kitty, as first her mother, then her father, had expressed their fury at the consequences. It was in vain that Kitty reminded them of her innocence, of the wickedness of Julius Tallow. It was in vain that she swore to somehow find the £600 necessary to placate the wrath of the Courts. Her parents were unmoved. Their argument boiled down to a few eloquent points: (1) They did not have the money. (2) They would have to sell their house. (3) She was a stupid, arrogant brat to think of challenging a magician. (4a) What had everyone told her? (4b) What had _they_ told her? (5) Not to do it. (6) But she was too boneheaded to listen. And (7) _now_ what were they going to do?
The encounter had finished predictably, with the mother weeping, the father raging, and Kitty rushing furiously to her room. It was only when she was there, sitting on the bed, staring hot-eyed at the opposite wall, that she remembered the old man, Mr. Pennyfeather, and his strange offer of assistance. It had entirely slipped her mind during the argument, and now, in the midst of her confusion and distress, it seemed altogether unreal. She thrust it to the back of her mind.
Her mother, bringing her a conciliatory cup of tea some hours later, found a chair wedged firmly against the door from within. She spoke through the thin plywood. "I forgot to tell you something, Kathleen. Your friend Jakob is out of the hospital. He went home this morning."
"What! Why didn't you say?" The chair was feverishly removed; a flushed face glared out from under a mane of unkempt hair. "I have to see him."
"I don't think that will be possible. The doctors—" But Kitty was already gone.
He was sitting up in bed, wearing a brand-new pair of blue pajamas that still had the creases in the sleeves. His variegated hands were folded in his lap. A glass bowl of grapes sat untouched upon the counterpane. Two bright white circles of fresh gauze were strapped across his eyes, and a short fuzz of hair was growing upon his scalp. His face was as she remembered, stained by its dreadful wash of gray and black.
As she entered, he broke into a small, twisted smile.
"Kitty! That was quick."
Trembling, she approached the bed and took his hand. "How—how did you know it was me?"
"No one else comes up the stairs like a bull elephant the way you do. You all right?"
She glanced at her unblemished, pink-white hands. "Yes. Fine."
"I _heard_ about that." He tried to maintain his smile, failed narrowly. "You're lucky.... I'm glad."
"Yes. How are you feeling?"
"Oh, knackered. Sick. Like a round of smoked bacon. My skin's painful when I move. And itchy That'll all pass, they say. And my eyes are healing."
Kitty felt a surge of relief. "That's great! When—?"
"Sometime. I don't know...." He seemed suddenly weary, irritable. "Never mind all that. Tell me what's been going on. I hear you've been to the Courts."
She told him the whole story, except her encounter with Mr. Pennyfeather. Jakob sat upright in bed, smoky-faced and somber. At the finish, he sighed.
"You are so stupid, Kitty," he said.
"Thanks for that." She ripped a few grapes off the bunch and stuffed them savagely into her mouth.
"My mum told you not to. She said—"
"She and everyone else. They are all _so_ right and I am _so_ wrong." She spat grape seeds into her palm and threw them into a bin beside the bed.
"Believe me, I'm grateful for what you tried to do. I'm sorry you're suffering on my account now."
"It's no big deal. We'll find the money."
"Everyone knows the Courts are rigged—it's not what you've done that counts there, it's who you are and who you know."
"All right! Don't go on about it." Kitty wasn't in the mood for lectures.
"I won't." He grinned, a little more successfully than before. "I can feel your scowl through the bandages."
They sat in silence for a while. At last, Jakob said, "Anyway, you needn't think that Tallow will get off scot-free." He rubbed the side of his face.
"Don't rub. What do you mean?"
"It's just so itchy! Meaning there are ways other than the Courts...."
"Such as?"
"Ahh! It's no good, I'll have to sit on my hands. Well, come in close—something might be listening.... Right. Tallow, being a magician, will think he's away and clear. He won't give me another thought now, if he ever has. And he certainly won't connect me with Hyrnek's."
"Your dad's firm?"
"Well, whose else is it? Of course my dad's firm. And that's going to be costly for Tallow. Like a lot of other magicians, he gets his books of magic bound at Hyrnek's. Karel told me: he's checked the accounts. Tallow places orders with us every couple of years. Likes a maroon crocodile-skin binding, does Tallow, so we can add lack of taste to his other crimes. Well, we can afford to wait. Sooner or later, he'll send in another book for us to treat, or order something up... Ah! I can't bear it! I've got to scratch!"
_"Don't,_ Jakob—have a grape instead. Take your mind off it."
"It won't do any good. I wake up scratching my face in the night. Mum has to wrap my hands in bandages. But it's _killing_ me now—you'll have to call Mum for some cream."
"I'd better leave."
"In a minute. But, I was saying—it won't just be the _binding_ of Tallow's book that gets changed next time."
Kitty wrinkled her forehead. "What—the spells inside?"
Jakob gave a grim smile. "It's possible to substitute pages, doctor sentences, or alter diagrams if you know what you're doing. In fact, it's more than possible—it's downright easy for people my dad knows. We'll sabotage a few likely incantations and then... we'll see."
"Won't he notice?"
"He'll simply read the spell, draw the pentacle, or whatever it is he does, and then... who knows? Nasty things happen to magicians when spells go wrong. It's a precise art, my dad tells me." Jakob settled back against the pillows. "It may be years before Tallow falls into the trap—but so what? I'm in it for the long haul. My face'll still be ruined in four, five years'time. I can wait." He turned his face away suddenly. "You'd better get Mum now. And don't tell _anyone_ what I've just told you."
Kitty located Mrs. Hyrnek in the kitchen; she was sieving an odd, oily white lotion, thick with dark-green aromatic herbs, into a medicine jar. At Kitty's news, she nodded, her eyes gray with weariness.
"I've made the lotion just in time," she said, stoppering the jar hastily and seizing a cloth from the sideboard. "You'll see yourself out, won't you?" With this, she bustled from the room.
Kitty had taken no more than two trailing steps toward the hall when a low, short whistle halted her in her tracks. She turned: Jakob's aged grandmama was sitting in her usual chair beside the stove, a large bowl of unshelled peas wedged upon her bony lap. Her bright black eyes glittered at Kitty; the numberless crinkles on her face shifted as she smiled. Kitty smiled back uncertainly. A withered hand was raised; a shriveled finger curled and beckoned, twice. Heart pounding, Kitty approached. Never, in all her many visits, had she spoken two words to Jakob's grandmama; she had never even heard her speak. A ridiculous panic engulfed her. What should she say? She did not speak Czech. What did the old woman want? Kitty felt herself suddenly part of a fairy tale, a waif trapped in the kitchen of a cannibal witch. She—
"This," Jakob's grandmama said in a clear, crisp South London accent, "is for you." She delved a hand somewhere into the pockets of her voluminous skirts. Her eyes did not leave Kitty's face. "You should keep it close.... Ah, where is the beggar? Aha—yes. Here."
Her hand, when she raised it to Kitty's, was tightly clenched, and Kitty felt the weight of the object and its coldness in her palm before she saw what it was. A small metal pendant, fashioned in the shape of a teardrop. A little loop at the top showed where it could be affixed to a chain. Kitty did not know what to say.
"Thank you," she said. "It's... beautiful."
Jakob's grandmama grunted. "Huh. It's silver. More to the point, girl."
"It—it must be very valuable. I... don't think I should—"
"Take it. And wear it." Two leathery hands enclosed Kitty's, folding her fingers over the pendant. "You never know. Now, I have a hundred peas to shell. Perhaps a hundred and two—one for each year, eh? So. I must concentrate. Be off with you!"
The next few days saw repeated deliberations between Kitty and her parents, but the upshot was always the same—with all their savings pooled, they were still several hundred pounds short of the Court's fine. Selling the house, with the uncertainty that entailed, seemed the only solution.
Except, possibly, for Mr. Pennyfeather.
_Ring if interested. Within a week._ Kitty had not mentioned him to her parents, or to anyone else, but his words were always on her mind. He had promised to help her, and she had no problem with that in principle. The question was, Why? She did not think he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart.
But her parents were going to lose their house if she did not act.
T. E. Pennyfeather certainly existed in the telephone directory: he was listed as an "Artists' Supplier" in Southwark, alongside the same phone number that Kitty had on the card. So that much of his story appeared to be true.
But what did he want? Part of Kitty felt very strongly that she should leave him alone; another part couldn't see what she had to lose. If she didn't pay up soon, she would be arrested, and Mr. Pennyfeather's offer was the only lifeline she had to seize.
At length, she made up her mind.
There was a telephone box two streets away from where she lived. One morning, she squeezed herself into its narrow, muggy space, and rang the number.
A voice answered, dry and breathless. "Artists' Supplies. Hello."
"Mr. Pennyfeather?"
"Ms. Jones! I am delighted. I feared you would not ring."
"Here I am. Listen, I'm—I'm interested in your offer, but I must know what you want from me before I go any further."
"Of course, of course. I shall explain to you. May I suggest we meet?"
"No. Tell me now, over the phone."
"That would not be prudent."
"It would for me. I'm not putting myself at risk. I don't know who you—"
"Quite so. I will suggest something. If you disagree, well and good. Our contact will be at an end. If you agree, we shall move on. My suggestion: we meet at the Druids' Coffeehouse at Seven Dials. Do you know it? A popular spot—always busy. You can talk to me in safety there. If in doubt I suggest another thing. Seal my card in an envelope together with the information about where we are meeting. Leave it in your room, or post it to yourself. Whichever. Should anything happen to you, the police will find me. That may put your mind at rest. Another thing. Whatever the outcome of our meeting, I shall end it by giving you the money. Your debt will be paid by the end of the day."
Mr. Pennyfeather seemed worn out by this long speech. While he wheezed gently, Kitty considered the offer. It didn't take long. It was too good to resist.
"All right," she said. "Agreed. What time at the Druids'?"
Kitty prepared carefully, writing a note to her parents and slipping it with the business card inside an envelope. She placed it on her bed, propped against her pillow. Her parents would not be back till seven. The meeting was scheduled for three. If all went well, she would have plenty of time to return and remove the note before it was found.
She came out of the tube at Leicester Square and set off in the direction of Seven Dials. A couple of magicians shot past in chauffeur-driven limousines; everyone else struggled along the tourist-cluttered pavements, guarding their pockets against cut-purses. Her progress was slow.
To speed her way, she took a shortcut, an alley that curved off behind a fancy-dress shop and bisected a whole block, opening out again on a street near Seven Dials. It was dank and narrow, but there were no buskers or tourists all along its length, which in Kitty's view made it a grand highway. She ducked down it and set off at a good pace, glancing at her watch as she did so. Ten to three. Perfect timing.
Midway along the alley she had a shock. With a screech like a banshee, a brindled cat leaped off a concealed ledge in front of her face and disappeared through a grating in the opposite wall. The sound of tumbling bottles followed from within. Silence.
Taking a deep breath, Kitty walked on.
A moment later, she heard quiet footsteps stealing along behind her.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She speeded up. Don't panic. Someone else taking a short cut. Anyway, the alley's end was not far off. She could glimpse people moving in the main street beyond.
The footsteps behind seemed to speed up with her. Eyes wide, heart pounding, Kitty began to trot.
Then something stepped out from the shadows of a doorway. It was dressed in black and its face was covered by a smooth mask with narrow slits for eyes.
Kitty cried out and turned.
Two more masked figures, tiptoeing behind.
She opened her mouth to scream, but did not have a chance to do so. One of her pursuers made a quick motion: something left its hand—a small, dark sphere. It hit the ground just at her feet, splintering into nothing. From the place where it vanished a black vapor rose, twirling, growing thick.
Kitty was too frightened to move. She could only watch as the vapor formed itself into a small blue-black winged creature, with long, slender horns and wide red eyes. The thing hovered for an instant, tumbling head over heels in the air, as if uncertain what to do.
The figure that had thrown the sphere pointed its hand at Kitty and cried out a command.
The thing stopped twirling. A grin of wicked glee cracked its face almost in two.
Then it lowered its horns, beat its wings into a frenzy, and with a shrill cry of delight, hurled itself at Kitty's head.
In an instant, the thing was on her, with light glinting on its two sharp horns and its serrated mouth gaping wide. Blue-black wings beat in her face, small callused hands clawed at her eyes. She felt its foul breath on her skin; its keening cry deafened her. She beat at it madly with her fists, shouting out now, screaming....
And with a loud, moist popping sound, the thing burst, leaving nothing but a shower of cold black droplets and a lingering bitter smell.
Kitty collapsed against the nearest wall, chest heaving, looking wildly about her. There was no doubt—the thing had gone, and the three masked figures had vanished too. On either side, the alley was empty. Nothing stirred.
She ran now, as fast as she could, careering out into the busy street and weaving, ducking, dodging her way among the crowd, up the gentle slope that led to Seven Dials.
Seven roads met here at a cobbled roundabout, which was surrounded on all sides by rambling medieval buildings of black wood and colored plaster. In the center of the roundabout was a statue of a general on a horse, below which a relaxed crowd was sitting, enjoying the afternoon sun. Opposite him was another statue, this one of Gladstone in his attitude of the Lawgiver. He was dressed in robes and held an open scroll, with one arm raised as if he were declaiming to the multitudes. Someone—either drunk, or of anarchistic bent—had climbed the great man and placed an orange traffic cone upon his majestic head, giving him the look of a comedy storybook sorcerer. The police had not yet noticed.
Directly behind Gladstone's back was the Druids' Coffeehouse, a meeting place for the young and thirsty. The ground floor walls of the building had been ripped out and replaced with rough stone pillars decorated with curling vines. A series of tables covered with white cloth spilled around the pillars onto the cobbled road in Continental fashion. Every table was occupied. Waiters in blue tunics hurried back and forth.
Kitty came to a halt next to the statue of the general and caught her breath. She surveyed the tables. Three o'clock precisely. Was he...? There!—almost out of sight behind a pillar—the crescent of white hair, the shiny bald pate.
Mr. Pennyfeather was sipping a café latte when she approached. His stick lay flat across the table. He saw her, smiled broadly, indicated a chair.
"Ms. Jones! Right on time. Sit, if you please. What do you care for? Coffee? Tea? A cinnamon bun? They are very good."
Kitty ran a distraught hand through her hair. "Um, a tea. And chocolate. I need chocolate."
Mr. Pennyfeather clicked his fingers; a waiter drew close. "A pot of tea and an éclair. A large one. Now, Ms. Jones. You seem a little breathless. You have been running. Or am I wrong?"
His eyes twinkled, his smile widened. Kitty leaned forward furiously. "It's no laughing matter," she hissed, with a glance at the nearby tables. "I've just been attacked! On my way to see _you,"_ she added, to drive the point home.
Mr. Pennyfeather's amusement did not slacken. "Indeed? Indeed? That is most serious! You must tell me—ah! Here is your tea. What speed! And a most sizable éclair! Good. Have a bite, then tell me all."
"Three people trapped me in an alley. They threw something—a container, I think—and a demon appeared. It leaped at me and tried to kill me and—are you taking this seriously, Mr. Pennyfeather, or shall I get up and leave right now?" His continuing good humor was beginning to enrage Kitty, but at her words his smile vanished.
"Forgive me, Ms. Jones. It is a grave matter. Yet you managed to escape. How did you do so?"
"I don't know. I fought back—hitting the thing when it was gouging at my face, but I didn't do anything, really. It just burst like a balloon. The men disappeared, too."
She took a long drink of tea. Mr. Pennyfeather eyed her calmly, saying nothing. His face remained grave, but his eyes seemed delighted, full of life.
"It's that magician—Tallow!" Kitty went on. "I _know_ it is. He's trying to do me in after what I said in court. He'll send another demon, now that one's failed. I don't know what to—"
_"Do_ have a bite of that éclair," Mr. Pennyfeather said. "That is my first suggestion. Now then, when you are calm, I will tell you something."
Kitty ate the éclair in four bites, washed it down with tea and felt a little calmer. She looked about her. From where she was seated, she had a good view of most of the customers of the coffeehouse. Some were tourists, immersed in colorful maps and handbooks; the rest were young—students probably, along with a smattering of families out for the day. There seemed no immediate likelihood of another attack.
"All right, Mr. Pennyfeather," she said. "Fire away."
"Very well." He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a neatly folded napkin. "I shall return to that... incident in a moment, but I have something else to say first. You will be wondering why I should be interested in your troubles. Well—in fact I am not so much interested in your troubles as interested in _you._ By the way, the six hundred pounds is safely here"—he smiled and tapped his breast pocket—"you shall have it at the end of this conversation. So. I was in the gallery at Court and heard your evidence about the Black Tumbler. No one else believed you—the judge in her arrogance, the rest in their ignorance. But I pricked up my ears. Why should you lie? I asked. No reason. Therefore it must be true."
"It _was_ true," Kitty said.
"But no one who is hit by a Black Tumbler—even by its outer edge—can fail to escape its mark. I know this."
"How?" Kitty asked sharply. "Are you a magician?"
The old man winced. "Please, you may insult me in any way you please—say I am bald, ugly, an old fool who smells of cabbage, or what you will, but do not call me that. It offends my soul. I am certainly _not_ a magician. But it is not only magicians who have knowledge, Ms. Jones. Others of us can read, even if we are not steeped in wickedness like them. Do you read, Ms. Jones?"
Kitty shrugged. "Of course. At school."
"No, no, that is not proper reading. The magicians write the books you see there; you cannot trust them. However, I digress. Trust me—the Black Tumbler taints everything it touches. It touched you, you say, but you were not tainted. That is a paradox."
Kitty thought of Jakob's marbled face and felt a wave of guilt. "I can't help that."
"This demon that attacked you just now. Describe it."
"Blackish wings. A big red mouth. Two thin, straight horns—"
"A broad belly, covered in fur? No tail?"
"That's right."
He nodded. "A mouler. A minor demon of no great power. Even so, it should certainly have rendered you unconscious, owing to its disgusting smell."
Kitty wrinkled her nose. "It smelled bad for sure, but not _that_ bad."
"Also, moulers do not usually burst. They latch on to your hair with their hands and remain attached until their master dismisses them."
"This one just popped."
"My dear Ms. Jones, you must forgive me if I am cheerful again. You see, I am delighted with what you are telling me. It means, quite simply, that you possess something special: a _resilience_ to magic."
He sat back in his chair, summoned a waiter and smilingly ordered another round of drinks and cakes, oblivious to Kitty's look of bafflement. For the entire time it took for the food to arrive he did nothing but grin across the table at her, giggling to himself every now and then. Kitty forced herself to remain polite. The cash was still out of reach, in his coat pocket.
"Mr. Pennyfeather," she said at last. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand you at all."
"It's obvious, surely? Minor magic—we can't be sure about more powerful stuff yet—has little or no effect on you."
Kitty shook her head. "Rubbish. The Black Tumbler knocked me out."
"I said _little_ or no effect. You are not immune. Neither for that matter am I, but I _have_ withstood the assault of three foliots at once, which I believe is quite unusual."
This meant nothing to Kitty. She looked blank. Mr. Pennyfeather made an impatient gesture. "What I am saying is that you and I—and several others, for we are not alone—are able to resist some of the magicians' spells! We are not magicians, but neither are we powerless, unlike the rest of the _commoners"_ —he spat the word out with undisguised venom—"in this poor, godforsaken country."
Kitty's head was spinning, but she was still skeptical; she did not believe him yet.
"It doesn't make any sense to me," she said. "I've never heard of this 'resilience.'All I'm interested in is avoiding jail."
"Is that so?" Mr. Pennyfeather placed his hand lightly inside his jacket. "In that case you may have the money on the instant and be on your way. Fine. But I think you want something more than this. I see it in your face. You want several things. You want revenge for your friend Jakob. You want to change the way things are done here. You want a country where men like Julius Tallow don't flourish and walk tall. Not all countries are like this—some places have no magicians! None! Think of _that_ next time you visit your friend in the hospital. I'm telling you," he went on in a quieter voice, "you can make a difference. _If you_ listen to me."
Kitty gazed into the mess at the bottom of her cup and saw Jakob's ruined face reflected back. She sighed. "I don't know..."
"Be sure of one thing—I can help you with your vengeance."
She stared up at him. Mr. Pennyfeather was smiling at her, but his eyes had the same bright, angry gleam that she had seen when he had been jostled in the street.
"The magicians have hurt you," he said softly. "Together, we can wield the sword of retribution. But only if you assist me first. You help me. I help you. Fair bargain."
For an instant Kitty saw Tallow again, smirking across the courtroom, puffed up with self-confidence and the guaranteed protection of his friends. It made her shudder with disgust.
"First tell me how you need my help," she said.
Somebody sitting two tables away coughed loudly, and, as if a heavy curtain had suddenly fallen away inside her mind, Kitty realized the danger she was in. There she was, sitting among strangers, overtly discussing treason.
"We're mad!" she hissed furiously. "Anyone might hear us! They'll summon the Night Police and carry us away."
At this the old man actually laughed. "No one will overhear," he said. "Do not fear, Ms. Jones. It is all under control."
Kitty scarcely listened. Her attention had been seized by a young, blond-haired woman sitting at a table behind Mr. Pennyfeather's left shoulder. Though her glass was empty, she remained seated, engrossed in her book. Her head was down, her eyes modestly lowered; one hand toyed with the corner of a page. Suddenly Kitty became convinced that this was all a sham. She dimly recalled noticing the woman when she first sat down, sitting in a similar pose, and though Kitty had had her in full view all this while, she did not remember her once actually turning the page.
Next moment, she was sure of it. As if Kitty's gaze had brushed against her, the woman glanced up, caught her eyes, and gave her a cool little smile before returning to her book. There could be no doubt—she had been listening to everything!
"Are you all right?" Mr. Pennyfeather's voice sounded outside her panic.
Kitty could hardly speak. "Behind you..." she whispered. "A woman... a spy, an informer. She's heard it all."
Mr. Pennyfeather did not turn around. "Blond lady? Reading a yellow paperback? That would be Gladys. Don't worry, she is one of us."
"One of—?" The woman looked up again and gave Kitty a broad wink.
"To her left is Anne; on my right—just beyond this pillar—sits Eva. That's Frederick on my left; Nicholas and Timothy are ranged behind you. Stanley and Martin couldn't get a table, so they're in the pub opposite."
In a daze, Kitty looked around. A middle-aged, black-haired woman grinned at her from behind Mr. Pennyfeather's right shoulder; on Kitty's right, a spotty, unsmiling youth glanced up from a dog-eared copy _of Motorbike Trader._ The woman beyond the pillar was obscured except for a black jacket hanging on her chair. Risking a crick in her neck, Kitty checked behind her, catching a glimpse of two more faces—young, serious—staring at her from other tables.
"No need to worry, you see," Mr. Pennyfeather said. "You're among friends. No one beyond them could hear what we say, and there are no demons present or we'd know about it."
"How?"
"Time enough for questions later. First I must make you an apology. I'm afraid you have met Frederick, Martin, and Timothy already." Kitty looked blank again. It was fast becoming a habit. "In the alley," Mr. Pennyfeather prompted.
"The alley?" Wait a minute—
"It was they who set the mouler on you. Not so fast! Do not leave! I am sorry that we scared you, but we had to be sure, you see. Sure that you were resilient like us. We had the mouler glass handy; it was a simple matter—"
Kitty found her voice. "You swine! You're as bad as Tallow! I could have been killed."
"No. I told you—the worst a mouler can do is knock you out. Its stench—"
"And that isn't bad enough?" Kitty rose to her feet in fury.
"If you must go, don't forget this." The old man drew a thick white envelope from his jacket and tossed it contemptuously on the tabletop between the cups. "You'll find the six hundred pounds there. Used notes. I don't break my word."
"I don't want it!" Kitty was livid, incandescent; she wanted to smash something.
"Don't be a fool!" The old man's eyes flared. "Do you want to rot in the Marshalsea prison? That's where debtors go, you know. That packet completes the first part of our bargain. Consider it an apology for the mouler. But it _could_ be just the beginning...."
Kitty snatched up the envelope, almost knocking the cups flying as she did so. "You're crazy. You _and_ your friends. Fine. I'll take it. It's what I came for anyway." She was still standing. She pushed her chair back.
"Shall I tell you how it began for me?" Mr. Pennyfeather was leaning forward now, his gnarled fingers pressing hard against the tablecloth, scrunching it up. His voice was low, urgent; he fought against his lack of breath in his eagerness to speak. "I was like you at first—the magicians meant nothing to me. I was young, happily married—what did I care? Then my dear wife, heaven rest her soul, attracted the attention of a magician. Not unlike your Mr. Tallow, he was: a cruel, strutting popinjay. He wished her for himself, tried to beguile her with jewels and fine Eastern clothes. But my wife, poor woman, refused his advances. She laughed in his face. It was a brave act, but foolish. I wish now—I have wished this for thirty years—that she had gone with him.
"We lived in a flat above my shop, Ms. Jones; each day I worked late into the evening, sorting my stock and completing my accounts, while my wife retired to our rooms to prepare our meal. One night, I was sitting at my desk as usual. A fire was burning in the grate. My pen scratched on the paper. All at once, the dogs in the street began to howl; a moment later, my fire quivered and went out, leaving the hot coals hissing like the dead. I rose to my feet. Already I feared... well, what it was I did not know. And then—I heard my wife scream. Just once, a shriek cut off. I have never run so fast. Up the stairs, tripping in my haste, through our door, into our little kitchen..."
Mr. Pennyfeather's eyes no longer saw her. They gazed at something else, far off. Mechanically, hardly knowing what she did, Kitty sat down again and waited.
"The thing that had done it," Mr. Pennyfeather said at last, "had barely gone. I smelled its presence lingering. Even as I knelt beside my wife upon our old linoleum floor, the gas hobs on the cooker burst back to life, the stew in the pot resumed its bubbling. I heard the barking of dogs, windows down the road banging in a sudden breeze... then silence." He ran a finger among the éclair crumbs on a plate, gathered them up and popped them in his mouth. "She was a good cook, Ms. Jones," he said. "I remember that still, though thirty long years have passed."
On the other side of the coffeehouse, a waiter spilled a drink on a customer: the resulting uproar seemed to detach Mr. Pennyfeather from his memories. He blinked, looked at Kitty again. "Well, Ms. Jones, I shall cut my story short. Suffice it to say that I located the magician; for some weeks I followed him subtly, learning his movements, giving in neither to the ravings of grief nor the urges of impatience. In due time I had my chance; I waylaid him in a lonely spot and slew him. His corpse joined the bobbing filth floating down the Thames. However, before he died, he summoned three demons: one by one, their attacks on me all failed. It was in this manner that—somewhat to my surprise, for I was resolved to die in my revenge—I discovered my resilience. I do not pretend to understand it, but it is a fact. I have it; my friends have it; you have it. It is for each of us to decide whether we take advantage of this or not."
His voice ceased. He seemed all of a sudden worn out, his face lined and old.
Kitty hesitated a few moments before replying. "All right," she said, for Jakob's sake, for Mr. Pennyfeather's sake, and for the sake of his dead wife. "I won't go yet. I'd like you to tell me more."
Over several weeks, Kitty met regularly with Mr. Pennyfeather and his friends, at Seven Dials, at other coffee shops scattered across central London, and at Mr. Pennyfeather's flat above his Artists' Supplies shop, in a busy street just south of the river. Each time, she learned more about the group and their objectives; each time, she found herself identifying with them more closely.
It seemed that Mr. Pennyfeather had assembled his company haphazardly, relying on word of mouth and reports in newspapers to lead him to people with unusual capabilities. Some months he haunted the courtrooms, looking for someone such as Kitty; otherwise he simply used taproom chat to single out interesting rumors of people who had survived magical disaster. His art shop was modestly successful; generally he left it in the hands of his assistants and prowled through London on his surreptitious errands.
His followers had joined him over a long period of time. Anne, a vivacious woman of forty, had met him almost fifteen years before. They were veterans of many campaigns together. Gladys, the blond woman from the café, was in her twenties; she had withstood a side blast from a magicians'duel ten years earlier, when still a girl. She and Nicholas, a stocky young man with a brooding manner, had worked for Mr. Pennyfeather since they were children. The rest of the company were younger; no one older than eighteen. Kitty and Stanley, both thirteen, were the youngest of all.
The old man dominated them all with his presence, which was at once inspiring and autocratic. His willpower was iron-strong and his mental energies untiring, but his body was gradually failing him, and this roused him to outbursts of incoherent fury. In the early days such occasions were rare, and Kitty listened intently to his impassioned accounts of the great struggle in which they were engaged.
Ordinarily, Mr. Pennyfeather argued, it was impossible to resist the magicians or their rule. They did exactly as they pleased, as all the company had discovered to their cost. They ran everything important: the government, the civil service, the biggest businesses, and the newspapers. Even the plays put on at the theaters had to be officially sanctioned in case they contained subversive messages. And while the magicians enjoyed the luxuries of their rule, everyone else—the vast majority—got on with providing the essential services the magicians required. They worked in the factories, ran the restaurants, fought in the army... if it involved real work, the commoners did it. And providing they did it quietly, the magicians left them alone. But if there was even the smallest hint of dissatisfaction, the magicians came down hard. Their spies were everywhere; one word out of place and you were whisked off for interrogation in the Tower. Many troublemakers disappeared for good.
The magicians' power made it impossible to rebel: they controlled dark forces that few had glimpsed but which everyone feared. But Mr. Pennyfeather's company—this small handful of souls gathered up and driven forward by his implacable hatred—was more fortunate than most. And its good fortune came in several forms.
To some degree, all of Mr. Pennyfeather's friends shared his resilience to magic, but how far this stretched was impossible to say. Because of his past, it was clear Mr. Pennyfeather could withstand a fairly strong attack; most of the others, such as Kitty, had only been gently tested so far.
Some of them—these were Anne, Eva, Martin, and the surly and pockmarked Fred—had another talent. Since early childhood, they had each regularly observed small demons traveling hither and thither through the streets of London. Some flew, others walked among the crowds. No one else noticed them, and upon investigation, it appeared that to most people the demons were either invisible or masked by disguise. According to Martin—who worked in a paint factory, and was, after Mr. Pennyfeather, the most fiery and passionate—a good many cats and pigeons were not what they seemed. Eva (brown curly hair, fifteen, still at school) said she had once seen a stickle-backed demon walk into a grocer's and buy a bunch of garlic; her mother, who was with her, had seen nothing but a bent old lady doing her shopping.
Penetrating illusions in this way was a trait that was very useful to Mr. Pennyfeather. Another ability that he highly prized was that of Stanley, a chipper, rather cocksure boy who, despite being Kitty's age, had already left school. He worked delivering newspapers. Stanley could not see demons; instead, he was able to perceive a faint, flickering radiance given off by any object containing magical force. As a small boy, he had so delighted in these auras that he had taken to stealing the objects concerned; by the time Mr. Pennyfeather caught up with him (at the Judicial Courts) he was already an accomplished pickpocket. Anne and Gladys had a similar ability, but it was not nearly so marked as that of Stanley, who could sense magical items through clothes and even behind thin wooden partitions. As a result, Stanley was one of the key figures of Mr. Pennyfeather's company.
Instead of _seeing_ magical activity, the gentle, quiet Timothy seemed able to _hear_ it. As far as he could describe it, he sensed a kind of humming in the air. "Like a bell ringing," he said, when pressed. "Or the sound you get when you tap an empty glass." If he concentrated, and if there wasn't too much other noise around, he could actually trace the hum to its source, perhaps a demon or a magical object of some kind.
When all these abilities were set together, Mr. Pennyfeather said, they formed a small but effective force to set against the might of the magicians. It could not declare itself openly, of course, but it could work to undercut their enemies. Magical objects could be traced, hidden dangers could be avoided and—most important of all—attacks could be made on the magicians and their wicked servants.
From the first, these revelations enthralled Kitty. She observed Stanley as, on a training day, he picked out a magical knife from six ordinary specimens, each one concealed from him in a separate cardboard box. She followed Timothy as he walked back and forth through Mr. Pennyfeather's shop, locating the resonance of a jeweled necklace that had been hidden in a pot of brushes.
Magical objects were at the center of the company's strategy. Kitty regularly observed members of the group arriving at the shop with small parcels or bags that they passed to Anne, Mr. Pennyfeather's second-in-command, to be stowed quietly away. These contained stolen goods.
"Kitty," Mr. Pennyfeather said to her one evening, "I have studied our verminous leaders for thirty years, and I believe I have learned their biggest weakness. They are greedy for everything—money, power, status, you name it—and quarrel incessantly about them all. But nothing arouses their passions more than magical trinkets."
She nodded. "Magic rings and bracelets, you mean?"
"Doesn't have to be jewelry," Anne said. She and Eva were with them in the backroom of the shop, sitting beside stacked rolls of paper. "Might be anything—staves, pots, lamps, pieces of wood. That mouler glass we chucked at you; that counts as one, doesn't it, Chief?"
"It does indeed. Which is why we stole it. Which is why we steal _all_ these things, whenever we can."
"I think that glass came from the house in Chelsea, didn't it?" Anne said. "The one where Eva and Stanley shinned up the drainpipe to the upstairs window while the party was going on at the front of the house."
Kitty was open-mouthed. "Isn't that terribly dangerous? Aren't magicians' houses protected by... all sorts of things?"
Mr. Pennyfeather nodded. "Yes, though it depends on the power of the magician concerned. That one merely had magical tripwires laced across the room.... Naturally, Stanley evaded them easily.... We got a good cluster of objects that day."
"And what do you do with them?" Kitty asked. "Apart from throwing them at me, that is."
Mr. Pennyfeather smiled. "Artifacts are a major source of every magician's power. Minor officials, such as the Assistant Secretary for Agriculture—I think he was the owner of the mouler glass—can afford only weak objects, while the greatest men and women aspire to rare pieces of terrible force. They all do so because they are decadent and lazy. It is much easier to use a magical ring to strike down a foe than it is to summon some demon from the pit to do it."
"Safer, too," Eva said.
"Quite. So you see, Kitty, the more items we can get a hold of, the better. It weakens the magicians considerably."
"And we can use them instead," Kitty added promptly.
Mr. Pennyfeather paused. "Opinion is a little divided on this. Eva here"—he curled his lip back slightly, showing his teeth—"believes it is morally dangerous to follow too closely in the magicians' footsteps. She believes the items should be destroyed. _I_ however—and it is _my_ company, is it not, so _my_ word goes—believe that we must use whatever weapons we can against such enemies. And that includes turning their own magic against them."
Eva shifted in her seat. "It seems to me, Kitty," she said, "that by using such things, we become no better than the magicians themselves. It's far better to remain detached from the temptations of evil things."
"Hah!" The old man gave a disparaging snort. "How else can we undermine our rulers? We need direct attacks to destabilize the government. Sooner or later, the people will rise up in support of us."
"Well, _when?"_ Eva said. "There's been no—"
"We do not study magic like the magicians," Mr. Pennyfeather interrupted. "We are in no moral danger. But by doing a little research—a little reading in stolen books, for instance—we can learn to operate basic weapons. Your mouler glass, Kitty—that required only a simple Latin command. This is enough for small... demonstrations of our displeasure. The more complex artifacts we can stockpile safely, out of magicians' hands."
"I think we're going about it the wrong way," Eva said quietly. "A few little explosions will never make any difference. They'll always be stronger. We—"
Mr. Pennyfeather slammed his stick hard upon his work bench, making both Eva and Kitty jump. "Would you rather do nothing?" he yelled. "Very well! Go back out among the herds of sheep, put your head down and waste your lives!"
"I didn't mean that. I just don't see—"
"My shop is closing! It is late. You are no doubt expected home, Ms. Jones."
Kitty's mother and father had been greatly relieved by her prompt payment of the court fine. In keeping with their incurious personalities, they did not inquire too closely into where the money came from, gratefully accepting Kitty's stories about a generous benefactor and a fund for miscarriages of justice. In some surprise, they watched Kitty's gradual detachment from her old habits as, throughout the summer holidays, she spent more and more time with her new friends in Southwark. Her father, in particular, did not hide his satisfaction. "You're better off keeping away from that Hyrnek boy," he said. "He'll only get you into trouble again."
Although Kitty continued to visit Jakob, her visits were generally brief and unsatisfactory. Jakob's strength was a long time returning, and his mother kept sharp vigil at his bedside, sending Kitty packing as soon as she detected exhaustion in her son. Kitty could not tell him about Mr. Pennyfeather; and Jakob, for his part, was preoccupied with his streaked and itching face. He grew inward-looking and perhaps, Kitty thought, slightly resentful of her health and energy. Gradually, her trips to the Hyrnek household became less frequent, and after some months, they ceased.
Two things kept Kitty involved with the company. First, gratitude for the payment of her fine. She felt herself to be under a definite obligation to Mr. Pennyfeather. For all that he never mentioned it again, it was possible that the old man sensed her feelings on the matter; if so, he did not attempt to gainsay them.
The second reason was in many ways the more important. Kitty wanted to learn more about the "resilience" that Mr. Pennyfeather had discovered in her and to find out what it could do. Joining the company seemed the only way of achieving this; it also promised her a direction, a sense of purpose, and the glamour of a small and secret society hidden from the world at large. It was not long before she was accompanying the others out on foraging expeditions.
At first she was an onlooker, keeping watch while Fred or Eva scrawled anti-government graffiti on walls, or broke into magicians'cars and houses in search of artifacts. Kitty would stand in the shadows, fingering the silver pendant in her pocket, ready to whistle at any sign of danger. Later, she accompanied Gladys or Stanley as they followed magicians home, tracing the aura of the objects they carried. Kitty noted down the addresses in preparation for later raids.
Occasionally, late in the evening, she would observe Fred or Martin departing the shop on missions of a different kind. They wore dark clothes, their faces smudged with soot; they carried small, heavy bags under their arms. No one referred openly to their objectives, but when the next morning's newspaper carried reports of unexplained attacks on government properties, Kitty drew her own conclusions.
In time, because she was intelligent and decisive, Kitty began to assume a more prominent role. It was Mr. Pennyfeather's practice to send his friends out in small groups, within which each member had a different job; after some months, he let Kitty take charge of one such group, consisting of Fred, Stanley, and Eva. Fred's mulish aggression and Eva's outspoken opinions were notoriously incompatible, but Kitty managed to harness their characters with such effectiveness that they returned from a tour of the magicians' warehouses with several choice prizes—including a couple of large, blue orbs, which Mr. Pennyfeather said were possibly Elemental Spheres, very rare and valuable.
For Kitty, time spent away from the company soon became infinitely tedious; she grew steadily more contemptuous of the small-minded outlook of her parents and the propaganda fed to her at school. By contrast, she reveled in the excitement of the company's nightly operations, but these were fraught with risk. One evening, a magician discovered Kitty and Stanley clambering out of his study window with a magical box in their grasp. He summoned a small creature in the shape of a stoat, which pursued them, belching gouts of fire from its open mouth. Eva, waiting in the street below, threw a mouler glass at the demon, which, distracted by the appearance of the mouler, halted for a moment, allowing them to get away. On another occasion, in a magician's garden, Timothy was assailed by a sentry demon, which crept up and embraced him with its thin blue fingers. It would have gone badly for him had Nick not managed to lop off the creature's head with an antique sword he had stolen moments before. Because of his resilience, Tim survived, but complained thereafter of a faint odor he could never shift.
Aside from demons, the police were a continual problem and eventually led to disaster. As the company's thefts grew more ambitious, greater numbers of Night Police appeared on the streets. One autumn evening in Trafalgar Square, Martin and Stanley noticed a disguised demon carrying an amulet that gave off a vibrant magical pulse. The creature made off on foot, but left a strong resonance in its wake, which Tim was able to follow with ease. It was soon cornered in a quiet alley, where the company weathered the demon's most ferocious assaults. Unfortunately, this magical outburst attracted the attention of the Night Police. Kitty and her colleagues scattered, pursued by things that resembled a pack of dogs. The following day, all but one reported back to Pennyfeather. That one was Tim, who was never seen again.
Timothy's loss hit the company hard, and resulted in a second, almost immediate, casualty. Several of the group, Martin and Stanley in particular, called loudly for a more audacious strategy against the magicians.
"We could lie in wait in Whitehall," Martin said, "when they're driving into Parliament. Or hit Devereaux when he leaves his palace at Richmond. That'll shake 'em up, if the P.M. goes. We need something seismic now to start the uprising."
"Not yet," Mr. Pennyfeather said testily. "I need to do more research. Now get out and leave me in peace."
He was a slight boy, Martin, with dark eyes, a thin, straight nose, and an intensity about him that Kitty had never noticed in anyone else before. He had lost his parents to the magicians, someone said, but Kitty never learned the circumstances. He never looked anyone full in the eyes while speaking; always a little down and to the side. Whenever Mr. Pennyfeather refused his demands for action, he would argue his case passionately at first, then suddenly withdraw into himself, blank-faced, as if unable to express the strength of his feelings.
A few days after Tim's death, Martin did not turn up for the evening's patrol; when Mr. Pennyfeather entered his cellar, he discovered that his secret weapons store had been opened. An Elemental Sphere had been taken. Hours later, an attack on Parliament took place. An Elemental Sphere was thrown into the midst of the MPs, killing several people. The Prime Minister himself narrowly escaped. Sometime the next day, the body of a youth was washed up on the shingle of the Thames.
Almost overnight, Mr. Pennyfeather became more solitary and irritable, rarely visiting the shop except on Resistance business. Anne reported that he was throwing himself deeper into his researches in the stolen books of magic. "He wants to access better weapons," she said. "We've only scratched the surface before. We need greater knowledge if we're to get revenge for Tim and Martin."
"How can he manage that?" Kitty protested. She had liked Tim particularly, and the loss had affected her deeply. "Those books are written in a hundred languages. He'll never make head or tail of them."
"He's made a contact," Anne said. "Someone who can help us out."
And indeed, it was around this time that a new associate joined the group. Mr. Pennyfeather valued his opinions highly. "Mr. Hopkins is a scholar," he said, on introducing him to the group for the first time. "A man of great wisdom. He has many insights into the cursed ways of the magicians."
"I do my best," Mr. Hopkins said modestly.
"He works as a clerk at the British Library," Mr. Pennyfeather went on, clapping him on the shoulder. "I was nearly caught when trying to, um... appropriate a book on magic. Mr. Hopkins shielded me from the guards, allowed me to escape. I was grateful; we began talking. I have never met a commoner with so much knowledge! He has taught himself many things by reading the texts there. Sadly, his brother was killed by a demon years ago and, like us, he seeks revenge. He knows—how many languages, Clem?"
"Fourteen," Mr. Hopkins said. "And seven dialects."
"There! How about that? He does not have resilience as we do, sadly, but he can provide back-up support."
"I'll do what I can," Mr. Hopkins said.
Whenever Kitty tried to bring Mr. Hopkins to mind, she found it was an oddly difficult task. It wasn't that he was unusual in any way—quite the opposite, in fact. He was extremely ordinary. His hair, perhaps, was straight and mousy, his face was smooth, clean-shaven. It was hard to say if he was old or young. He had no standout features, no funny quirks or unusual ways of speaking. All in all, there was something so instantly forgettable about the man that even in his company, as he was actually speaking, she would find herself switching off him, listening to the words, but ignoring the speaker. It was a decidedly curious thing.
Mr. Hopkins was treated with some suspicion by the company at first, primarily because, lacking resilience, he did not go out on forays to bring artifacts home. Instead, his forte was information, and in this he quickly proved his worth to the group at large. His job at the library, together, perhaps, with his oddly unmemorable character, allowed him to eavesdrop on the magicians. As a result, he was often able to predict their movements, allowing raids to be carried out on their properties while they were away; he heard tell of artifacts newly sold by Pinn's, enabling Mr. Pennyfeather to organize appropriate burglaries. Above all, Mr. Hopkins uncovered a wider range of incantations, allowing new weapons to be used in a wider range of Resistance attack. The accuracy of his tips was such that soon everyone came to rely on him implicitly. Mr. Pennyfeather was still the group's leader, but Mr. Hopkins's intelligence was their guiding light.
Time passed. Kitty left school at the standard age of fifteen. She had what few qualifications the school provided, but saw no future in the joyless factory work or the secretarial jobs offered by the authorities. An agreeable alternative presented itself: at Mr. Pennyfeather's suggestion, and to the satisfaction of her parents, she became an assistant working in his art shop. Among a hundred other tasks, she learned to keep the ledger, cut watercolor paper, and sort brushes into a dozen varieties of bristle. Mr. Pennyfeather did not pay well, but Kitty was content enough.
At first, she enjoyed the danger of her activities with the company; she liked the warm and secret thrill she got when passing government workers struggling to paint over some grafittied slogan, or seeing an outraged headline in _The Times_ complaining about the latest thefts. After a few months, to escape her parents' scrutiny, she rented a small room in a rundown tenement five minutes from the shop. She kept long hours, working in the shop by day and with the company at night; her complexion grew pale, her eyes hardened by the perpetual threat of exposure and repeated loss. Each year brought further casualties: Eva killed by a demon at a house in Mayfair, her resilience unable to withstand its attack; Gladys lost during a warehouse blaze, when a dropped sphere started a fire.
As the company contracted, there came a sudden sense that the authorities were striving to hunt them down. A new magician, named Mandrake, was active: demons in the guise of children were seen, making inquiries about the Resistance and offering magical goods for sale. Human informers appeared in pubs and cafés, flourishing pound notes in return for information. There was a beleaguered air to the meetings in the backroom of Mr. Pennyfeather's shop. The old man's health was waning; he was irritable and his lieutenants restless. Kitty could see that a crisis was coming.
Then came the fateful meeting, and the biggest challenge of all.
**21**
" **T** hey're here."
Stanley had been keeping watch at a grille in the door, peering out into the main room of the shop. He had been there some time, tense and still; now he sprang into action, pulled back the bolt and opened the door. He stepped aside, pulling his cap from his head.
Kitty heard the familiar slow tapping of the stick approaching. She rose from her seat, arching her back to smooth out the aches and chill. Beside her, the others did likewise, Fred rubbing his neck and swearing under his breath. Of late, Mr. Pennyfeather had grown more insistent on these little courtesies.
The only light in the backroom came from a lantern on the table; it was late, and they did not want to attract the attention of passing spheres. Mr. Hopkins, who came in first, paused in the doorway to let his eyes adjust, then moved aside to guide Mr. Pennyfeather through the door. In the half-light, their leader's shrunken form looked even more diminished than usual; he shuffled in like an animated skeleton. Nick's reassuring bulk brought up the rear. All three entered the room, Nick closing the door softly behind them.
"Evening, Mr. Pennyfeather, sir." Stanley's voice was less chipper than normal; to Kitty's ears it carried a nauseating false humility. There was no reply. Slowly, Mr. Pennyfeather approached Fred's wicker chair; each step seemed to give him pain. He sat. Anne moved across to place the lantern in a niche beside him; his face was wreathed in shadow.
Mr. Pennyfeather rested his stick against his chair. Slowly, one finger at a time, he plucked his gloves from his hands. Mr. Hopkins stood beside him, neat, quiet, instantly forgettable. Anne, Nick, Kitty, Stanley, and Fred remained standing. This was a familiar ritual.
"Well, well, sit, sit." Mr. Pennyfeather placed his gloves on his knee. "My friends," he began, "we have come a long way together. I need not dwell on what we have sacrificed, or"—he broke off, coughed—"for what end. It has lately been my opinion, reinforced by my good Hopkins here, that we lack the resources to carry the fight to the enemy. We do not have enough money, enough weapons, enough knowledge. I believe we can now rectify this."
He paused, made an impatient signal. Anne hurried forward with a glass of water.
Mr. Pennyfeather gulped noisily. "That's better. Now. Hopkins and I have been away, studying certain papers stolen from the British Library. They are old documents, nineteenth century. From them, we have discovered the existence of an important cache of treasures, many of considerable magical power. If we can gain possession of it, we stand to revolutionize our fortunes."
"Which magician has them?" Anne asked.
"At present, they are beyond the magicians' reach."
Stanley stepped forward eagerly. "We'll travel wherever you want, sir," he cried. "To France, or Prague, or... or the ends of the earth." Kitty rolled her eyes skyward.
The old man chuckled. "We do not have to go quite as far as that. To be precise, we only have to cross the Thames." He allowed the ripple of bemusement to subside. "These treasures are not in some far temple. They are very close to home, somewhere we have all passed a thousand times. I will tell you—" He raised his hands to quell the rising hubbub. "Please, I will tell you. They are at the heart of the city, the heart of the magicians' empire. I am talking about Westminster Abbey."
Kitty heard the others' intakes of breath, and felt a shiver of excitement run up her spine. The abbey? But no one would dare—
"You mean a tomb, sir?" Nick asked.
"Indeed, indeed. Mr. Hopkins—if you would explain further?"
The clerk coughed. "Thank you. The abbey is the burial site of many of the greatest magicians of the past—Gladstone, Pryce, Churchill, Kitchener, to name but a few. They lie entombed in secret vaults deep beneath the floors, and with them lie their treasures, items of power that the faltering fools of today can only guess at."
As always when Mr. Hopkins spoke, Kitty scarcely acknowledged _him;_ she was toying with his words, with the possibilities they suggested.
"But they laid curses on their tombs," Anne began. "Terrible punishments await those who open them."
From the depths of his chair, Mr. Pennyfeather let out a wheezing laugh. "Today's leaders—poor excuses for magicians, all—certainly avoid the tombs like the plague. They are cowards, every one. They quail at the thought of the revenge their ancestors might take, were they to disturb their bones."
"The traps can be avoided," Mr. Hopkins said, "with careful planning. We do not share the magicians' almost superstitious fear. I have been looking among the records and I have discovered a crypt that contains marvels you could scarcely dream of. Listen to this..." From his jacket, the clerk produced a folded piece of paper. In dead silence, he opened it, drew a small pair of spectacles from his pocket and perched them on his nose. He read: "Six bars of gold, four jeweled statuettes, two emerald-headed daggers, a set of onyx globes, a pewter chalice, an—ah, this is the interesting bit—an enchanted pouch of black satin, filled with fifty gold sovereigns—" Mr. Hopkins glanced up at them over his spectacles. "This pouch is unremarkable to look at, but consider this—no matter how much gold is removed from the pouch, it never grows empty. An unending source of revenue for your group, I think."
"We could buy weapons," Stanley muttered. "The Czechs would supply us with stuff, if we could pay."
"Money can get you anything," Mr. Pennyfeather chuckled. "Go on, Clem, go on. That isn't all, by any means."
"Let me see..." Mr. Hopkins returned to the paper. "The pouch... ah yes, and an orb of crystal, in which—and I quote—'glimpses of the future and the secrets of all buried and hidden things can be descried.'"
"Imagine that!" Mr. Pennyfeather cried. "Imagine the power _that_ would give us! We could anticipate the magicians' every move! We could locate lost wonders of the past, forgotten jewels..."
"We'd be unstoppable," Anne whispered.
"We'd be rich," Fred said.
"If true," Kitty remarked quietly.
"There is also a small bag," Mr. Hopkins went on, "in which demons may be trapped—that might prove useful, if we can discover its incantation. Also a host of other, lesser items, including, let me see, a cloak, a wooden staff, and sundry other personal effects. The pouch, the crystal ball, and the bag are the pick of the treasures."
Mr. Pennyfeather leaned forward in the chair, grinning like a goblin. "So, my friends," he said. "What do you think? Is this a prize worth having?"
Kitty felt it was time to inject a note of caution. "All very well, sir," she said, "but how come these marvels haven't been taken before? What's the catch?"
Her comment seemed to puncture the mood of elation slightly. Stanley scowled at her. "What's the matter?" he said. "This job not big enough for you? _You're_ the one who's been moaning on about needing better strategy."
Kitty felt Mr. Pennyfeather's gaze upon her. She shivered, shrugged.
"Kitty's point is valid," Mr. Hopkins said. "There _is_ a catch, or rather a defense around the crypt. According to the records, a Pestilence has been fixed to the keystone of the vault. This is triggered by the opening of the door. Should anyone enter the tomb, the Pestilence balloons from the ceiling and smites all those in the vicinity"—he glanced back at the paper—"'to rend the flesh from their bones.'"
"Lovely," Kitty said. Her fingers toyed with the teardrop pendant in her pocket.
"Er... how do you propose we avoid this trap?" Anne asked Mr. Pennyfeather politely.
"There _are_ ways," the old man said, "but at present they are beyond us. We do not have the magical knowledge. However, Mr. Hopkins here knows someone who might help."
Everyone looked at the clerk, who adopted an apologetic expression. "He is, or was, a magician," Mr. Hopkins said. "Please"—his words had sparked a chorus of disapproval—"hear me out. He is disaffected with our regime for reasons of his own, and seeks the overthrow of Devereaux and the rest. He has the necessary skill—and artifacts—to enable us to escape the Pestilence. He also"—Mr. Hopkins waited until there was silence in the room—"has the key to the relevant tomb."
"Who is he?" Nick said.
"All I can tell you is that he's a leading member of society, a scholar, and a connoisseur of the arts. He is an acquaintance of some of the greatest in the land."
"What's his name?" Kitty said. "This is no good."
"I'm afraid he guards his identity very carefully. As should we all, of course. I have not told him anything about you either. But if you accept his assistance, he wishes to meet with one of you, very soon. He will pass on the information we require."
"But how can we trust him?" Nick protested. "He could be about to betray us."
Mr. Hopkins coughed. "I do not think so. He has helped you before, many times. Most of the tip-offs I have given you have been passed on by this man. He has long wished to advance our aims."
"I examined the burial documents from the library," Mr. Pennyfeather added. "They seem genuine. It is too much effort for a forgery. Besides, he has known of us for years, through Clem here. Why does he not betray us if he wishes the Resistance harm? No, I believe what he is saying." He got unsteadily to his feet, his voice turning harsh, congested. "And it is _my_ organization, after all. You would do well to trust my word. Now, are there any questions?"
"Just this," Fred said, snapping his flick-knife open. "When do we start?"
"If all goes well, we shall raid the abbey tomorrow night. It just remains—" The old man broke off, doubled over in a sudden fit of coughing. His hunched back cast strange shadows on the wall. Anne stepped across and helped him sit. For a long moment he was too short of breath to speak again.
"I am sorry," he said finally. "But you see how my condition goes. My strength is lessening. In truth, my friends, Westminster Abbey is the best opportunity I have. To lead you all to—to something better. This will be a new beginning."
And an appropriate end for _you,_ Kitty thought. This is your last chance to achieve something concrete before you die. I just hope your judgment holds up, that's all.
As if he had read her mind, Mr. Pennyfeather's head twisted suddenly in her direction. "It just remains," he said, "to visit our mysterious benefactor and discuss terms. Kitty, since you are so sprightly today, _you_ will go to meet him tomorrow."
Kitty returned his gaze. "Very well," she said.
"Now, then." The old man turned to regard them all, one by one. "I must say I am a little disappointed. None of you has yet asked the identity of the person whose tomb we are about to enter. Are you not curious?" He laughed, wheezing.
"Er, whose is it, sir?" Stanley asked.
"Someone with whom you will all be familiar from your school days. I believe he still figures prominently in most lessons. None other than the Founder of our State, the greatest and most terrible of all our leaders, the hero of Prague himself"—Mr. Pennyfeather's eyes glittered in the shadows—"our beloved William Gladstone."
Nathaniel's plane was due to leave the Box Hill aerodrome at six-thirty sharp. His official car would arrive at the Ministry an hour earlier, at five-thirty. This meant that he had approximately half a day to prepare himself for the most important assignment of his brief career in government: his trip to Prague.
His first task was to deal with his servant and proposed traveling companion. On his return to Whitehall, he found a free summoning chamber and, with a clap of the hands, summoned Bartimaeus once more. When it materialized, it had rid itself of its panther guise, and was in one of its favored forms: a young dark-skinned boy. Nathaniel noted that the boy was not wearing its usual Egyptian-style skirt; instead, it was lavishly dolled up in an old-fashioned tweed traveling suit, with spats, gaiters and, incongruously, a leather flying helmet, complete with goggles, loose upon its head.
Nathaniel scowled. "And you can lose those for starters. You're not flying."
The boy looked wounded. "Why not?"
"Because I'm traveling incognito, and that means no demons waltzing through customs."
"What, do they put us in quarantine now?"
"Czech magicians will be scanning all incoming flights for magic, and they'll subject a British plane to the finest scrutiny of all. No artifact, book of magic, or idiot demon will get through. I shall have to be a 'commoner'for the duration of my flight; _you_ I'll have to summon once I've arrived."
The boy raised its goggles, the better to look skeptical. "I thought the British Empire ruled the roost in Europe," it said. "You broke Prague years ago. How come they're telling you what to do?"
"They're not. We control the balance of power in Europe still, but officially we have a truce with the Czechs now. For the moment, we're guaranteeing no magical incursions into Prague. That's why this trip has to be done subtly."
"Speaking of subtle..." The boy gave a broad wink. "I did pretty well earlier, eh?"
Nathaniel pursed his lips. "Meaning what?"
"Well, I was on my best behavior this morning—didn't you notice? I could have given your masters plenty of lip, but I restrained myself to help you out."
"Really? I thought you were your normal irritating self."
"Are you kidding? I was so oily, my feet practically slipped from under me. I can still taste that false humility on my tongue. But that's better than being popped into one of dear Jessica's Mournful Orbs again." The boy shuddered. _"My_ sucking up only lasted a few minutes, though. It must be horrible kowtowing to them _perpetually,_ as _you_ do, and knowing that you could stop that game at any time you wished, and go your own way—except that you haven't got the bottle to do it."
"You can stop right there. I'm not interested in your opinion." Nathaniel was having none of this—demons often threw half-truths at magicians to disorientate them. It was best to close your ears to their wiles. "Besides," he added, "Duvall, for one, is not my master. I despise him."
"And Whitwell's different, is she? I didn't notice any great love between you."
"Enough. I must pack, and I have to visit the Foreign Office before I go." Nathaniel looked at his watch. "I shall require you again in... twelve hours'time, at my hotel in Prague. Until I summon you again, I bind you into a nexus here. Remain silent and invisible, in this circle, beyond the knowledge or senses of all sentient things, until I send for you."
The boy shrugged. "If I must."
"You must."
The figure in the pentacle shimmered and faded slowly, like the memory of a dream. When it was entirely gone, Nathaniel worked a couple of backup charms, to prevent anyone unknowingly releasing the djinni if they chose to use the circle, and left hurriedly. He had a busy few hours ahead of him.
Before departing for his home to pack, Nathaniel called in at the Foreign Office, a building not dissimilar to the British Museum in size, bulk, and brooding gray power. Here, much of the day-to-day running of the Empire took place, magicians relaying advice and instructions by means of telephone and messenger to their counterparts in smaller offices across the world. As he climbed the steps to the revolving door, Nathaniel looked up at the roof. Even on the three planes that he was able to observe, the sky above the building was thick with the hurrying of insubstantial forms: fleet couriers carrying orders in magically coded envelopes, larger demons acting as their escorts. As always, the sheer scale of the great Empire, which could be sensed only in sights such as this, left him awestruck and a little preoccupied. In consequence, he had some trouble with the revolving entrance door; in pushing vigorously the wrong way, he unfortunately sent an elderly, gray-haired lady sprawling backward into the foyer on the other side, her armload of papers streaming out across the marbled floor.
After negotiating the door successfully, Nathaniel hurried forward and with a dozen flustered apologies, helped his victim to her feet before beginning the task of scooping up the papers. As he did so, accompanied by a continuous volley of reedy complaints from the old woman, he saw a familiar slim form emerge from a door on the opposite side of the foyer and make her way across. Jane Farrar, Duvall's apprentice, as elegant and glisteningly dark-haired as ever.
Nathaniel's face went scarlet; he speeded up frantically, but there were many papers to gather and the foyer was not large. Long before he had finished, and while the old lady was still spiritedly telling Nathaniel what she thought of him, Ms. Farrar had arrived on the scene. He glimpsed her shoes out of the corner of one eye: she had halted and was watching. He could well imagine her air of detached amusement.
With a deep breath, he stood and thrust the papers into the old woman's hands. "There. Once again, I'm sorry."
"I should think so, too—of all the careless, arrogant, most pestilential little—"
"Yes, let me help you through that door..."
With a firm hand he spun her around and, with a guiding shove between her shoulder blades, set her speedily on her way. Brushing himself down, he turned and blinked, as if in vast surprise.
"Ms. Farrar! What a pleasure this is."
She smiled a lazy, secret smile. "Mr. Mandrake. You seem a little out of breath."
"Do I? Well, I _am_ rather urgently engaged this afternoon. And then that poor old woman's legs gave way, so I tried to help..." Her cool eyes appraised him. "Well... I'd better be getting along...."
He moved aside, but Jane Farrar suddenly stepped a little closer. "I _know_ you're busy, John," she said, "but I would _love_ to pick your brains about something, if I might be so bold." She twizzled a strand of long, black hair idly with a finger. "What luck for me. I'm _so_ glad we met by chance. I heard through the grapevine that you managed to summon a fourth-level djinni recently. Is that _really_ true?" She looked at him with wide, dark eyes, brimming with admiration.
Nathaniel took a slight step back. He felt perhaps a little hot, certainly a little flattered, but still very unwilling to discuss matters as private as his choice of demon. It was unfortunate that the incident at the British Museum had been so public—speculation would be rife about his servant now. But it was never wise to be unguarded: _safe, secret, secure._ He gave a harried smile. "It _is_ true. You were not misinformed. It's nothing too difficult, I assure you. Now, if you don't mind—"
Jane Farrar gave a little sigh and adjusted a strip of hair becomingly behind one ear. "You _are_ clever," she said. "You know, I've tried to do exactly that—to raise a demon of the fourth level—but I must be getting muddled somehow, because I just can't do it. I can't _think_ what the problem is. Couldn't you come along with me now, and run me through the incantations? I've got a summoning circle all of my own. It's in my apartment, not far from here. It's very private—we wouldn't be disturbed...." She tilted her head slightly to one side and smiled. Her teeth were very white.
Nathaniel was conscious of a bead of sweat trickling in an ungainly fashion down the side of his forehead. He contrived to smooth his hair back and brush the drip away in what he hoped was a casual motion. He felt distinctly odd: languorous, yet fired up and energetic all at once. After all—it would be an easy thing to help Ms. Farrar. Summoning a djinni was pretty straightforward when you'd done it a few times. It was no big deal. He suddenly realized he rather desired her gratitude.
She touched his arm gently with slender fingers. "What do you say, John?"
"Um..." He opened and shut his mouth, frowning. Something was holding him back. Something about time, or lack of it. What was it? He'd come to the Ministry to—to do what, exactly? It was so hard to recall.
She gave a little pout. "Are you worried about your master? She'll never find out. And I won't tell mine. I know we're not _supposed_ to...."
"It's not that," he said. "It's just—"
_"Well_ then."
"No—I've got to do something today... something important." He tried to tear his eyes away from hers; he couldn't concentrate, that was the problem, and his heart was beating far too noisily for his memory to make itself heard. She was wearing a delightful fragrance, too, not your normal Rowan Tree Rub-On, but a perfume much more oriental and flowery. It was very nice, but a bit overpowering. The scent of her proximity muddled him.
"What _is_ that something?" she asked. "Maybe I can help you with it."
"Um, I'm going somewhere.... To Prague..."
She pressed a little closer. "Are you? What for?"
"To investigate... er..." He blinked, shook his head. Something was wrong.
"Tell you what," she said, "we could sit together and have a nice talk. You could tell me everything you're planning."
"I suppose..."
"I've got a lovely long couch."
"Have you?"
"We can cozy up together and drink iced sherbet and you can tell me all about this demon you summon, this Bartimaeus. I'd be _so_ impressed."
As she spoke the name, a little warning note sounded in his mind, cutting through his luxurious befuddlement. Where had she learned Bartimaeus's name? It could only be from Duvall, her master, who had himself learned it that very morning in the summoning chamber. And Duvall—Duvall was no friend of his. He would want to stymie anything Nathaniel was doing, even his trip to Prague.... He stared at Jane Farrar with growing suspicion. Realization came flooding back, and for the first time he noticed his sensor web emitting a dull pulse in his ear, warning him of the presence of a subtle magic on his person. A Charm, or perhaps a Glamour... Even as he thought this, the luster of her hair seemed to fade a little, the sparkle in her eyes flickered and dimmed.
"I—I'm sorry, Ms. Farrar," he said huskily. "Your invitation is very kind, but I must decline. Please give my regards to your master."
She regarded him silently, the look of doe-eyed admiration replaced, fleetingly, by one of bottomless contempt. A moment later, the familiar, measured coolness had returned to Jane Farrar's face. She smiled. "He will be pleased to receive them."
Nathaniel gave a short bow and left her. When he glanced back, from the other side of the foyer, she had already gone.
He was still a little disoriented by this encounter five minutes later, when he emerged from a lift on the third floor of the Ministry, crossed a broad, echoing corridor, and arrived at the Second Secretary's door. He adjusted his cuffs, composed himself for a moment, knocked, and entered.
It was a high-ceilinged room of oak-paneled walls; light streamed in from elegantly tapering windows overlooking the busy traffic of Whitehall. The room was dominated by three great wooden tables, their upper surfaces inlaid with stretches of stippled green leather. Upon these were a dozen unfurled maps of varying size: some of pristine paper, others of ancient, cracking vellum, all pinned carefully onto the leather tabletops. A small bald man, the Second Secretary of the Foreign Office, was stooped over one such map, tracing some detail with his finger. He glanced up and nodded affably.
"Mandrake. Good. Jessica said you'd be calling. Come in. I've got the Prague maps ready for you."
Nathaniel crossed over to stand beside the Secretary, whose diminutive frame barely reached the level of his shoulder. The man's skin was yellow-brown, the color of sun-stained parchment, and had a dry and dusty quality. He stabbed a finger down upon the map. "Now, that's Prague: a fairly recent map, as you can see—it shows the trenches left by our troops in the Great War. You're familiar with the city in principle, I take it."
"Yes, sir." Nathaniel's efficient mind smoothly accessed the relevant information. "The castle district is on the West Bank of the Vltava, the Old Town on the East. The old magical quarter used to be near the castle, didn't it, sir?"
"That's right." The finger shifted. "Over here, hugging the hill. Golden Lane was where most of the Emperor's magicians and alchemists were based—until Gladstone's lads marched in, of course. Nowadays, what magicians the Czechs _do_ have are barracked out of the town center in the suburbs, so there's little, if anything, going on near the castle. It's all run down there, I believe. The other old magical center"—the finger moved east across the river—"is the ghetto, _here._ That was where Loew created the first golems, back in Rudolf's day. Others in that area continued the practice up until the last century, so I imagine it's there, if anywhere, that the appropriate lore will have been guarded." He glanced up at Nathaniel. "You realize this is a fool's errand, don't you, Mandrake? If they've had the ability to create golems all this time, why haven't they been doing so? Heaven knows, we've defeated them in battle often enough. No, I can't see it, myself."
"I'm only acting on information received, sir," Nathaniel said, respectfully. "Prague seems the appropriate place to begin." His neutral tone and posture concealed the fact that he agreed wholeheartedly with everything the Secretary had said.
"Mm. Well, you know best." The Second Secretary's voice made it clear he thought Nathaniel didn't. "Now... see this packet? That contains your fake passport for the trip. You'll be traveling as Derek Smithers, a young apprentice working for "Watt's Wine Company of Marylebone. Your pack contains documents confirming that, should Czech customs get fussy."
"Derek... Smithers, sir?" Nathaniel did not look too enthused.
"Yes. Only name we could get. Poor lad died of dropsy last month, at about your age; we've since appropriated his identity for government service. Now, you're officially going to Prague with a view to importing some of their excellent beer. I've put a list of brewers in your packet for you to memorize on the flight."
"Yes, sir."
"Right. Above all, you've got to be low-key on this mission, Mandrake. Don't draw attention to yourself in any way. If you have to use magic, do it quietly and do it quickly. I hear you might be using a demon. If so, _keep it under control."_
"Of course, sir."
"The Czechs are not to know that you're a magician. Part of our current treaty with them is that we promise not to conduct any magical activities in their territories. And vice versa."
Nathaniel frowned. "But sir, I heard that Czech infiltrators have been active in Britain recently. Surely they're breaking the treaty."
The Secretary flashed an irritated side-glance at Nathaniel and tapped his fingers on the map. "That is so. They are quite untrustworthy. Who knows, they may even be behind this 'golem incident'of yours, too."
"In that case—"
"I know what you're about to say, Mandrake. Of course, there's nothing we'd like better than to march our armies into Wenceslas Square tomorrow and show the Czechs what's what, but we can't do that right now."
"Why not, sir?"
"Because of the American rebels. We're unfortunately a trifle stretched just at this moment. Won't last long. We'll mop up the Yankees and then turn our attention back to Europe. But just at this point, we don't want anything causing ructions. Got that?"
"Of course, sir."
"Besides, _we're_ breaking the truce in a dozen ways as well. That's diplomacy for you. In truth, the Czechs have been getting above themselves for the last ten years. Mr. Devereaux's campaigns in Italy and central Europe were inconclusive, and the Prague Council has begun to probe our Empire for weaknesses. They're nipping at us the way a flea does a dog. Never mind. All will come right in time...." The Second Secretary wore an expression in which hardness and complacency were equally mingled. He turned his attention to the map again. "Now then, Mandrake," he said, briskly, "you'll be wanting a contact in Prague, I suppose. Someone to help you get your bearings."
Nathaniel nodded. "Do you have someone there, sir?"
"We do. One of our top agents.... His name is Harlequin."
"Harlequin..." In his mind's eye, Nathaniel saw a slender, masked figure, stealing with a dancing step among the shadows, carrying an air of carnival and menace in its wake....
"Indeed. That is his agent's title. His real name I cannot tell you; possibly it is unknown even to himself. If you're visualizing a slender, masked gentleman, colorfully costumed, and spry of foot, then think again. Our Harlequin is a plump, elderly man of funereal temperament. Also, he is given to wearing black." The Secretary made a face of refined distaste. "Prague does that to you, if you stay there too long. It is a melancholy city. Several of our agents have been driven to suicide over the years. Harlequin seems sound enough so far, but he is a trifle morbid in his sensibilities."
Nathaniel swept his hair out of his eyes. "I'm sure I can handle that, sir. How will I meet him?"
"At midnight this evening, leave your hotel and make your way to the cemetery in the ghetto—that is here, by the way Mandrake... see? Just along from the Old Town Square. You are to wear a soft cap, with a blood-red feather in it, and stroll among the tombstones. Harlequin will find you. You will recognize him by the distinctive candle that he carries."
"A distinctive candle."
"That's right."
"What—is it particularly long or wonky, or what?"
"He did not furnish me with that information."
Nathaniel made a face. "Pardon me, but it all seems a bit... melodramatic, doesn't it, sir? All these cemeteries and candles and blood-red feathers. Couldn't he just give me a ring in my hotel room when I've had a shower, and meet me in a café downstairs?"
The Secretary smiled bleakly. He passed the packet across to Nathaniel and made his way behind the farthest table to a plush leather chair, in which he sat with a small sigh. He swiveled it to face the windows, where watery clouds could be seen hanging low over London. It was raining far off to the west: smudged marks in the sky angled down into unseen folds of the city. The Secretary gazed out for a time without speaking.
"Behold the modern city," he said at last, "built to the finest modern templates. Look at the proud buildings of Whitehall: none of them more than a hundred and fifty years old! Of course there are tatty, unreconstructed areas still—that is inevitable, with so many commoners about—but the heart of London, where we work and live, is entirely forward-looking. A city of the future. A city worthy of a great empire. Your Ms. Whitwell's apartment, Mandrake—a fine building; it exemplifies the modern trend. There should be many more like that. Mr. Devereaux plans to bulldoze much of Covent Garden next year, rebuild all those little timber-framed houses as glorious visions of concrete and glass...."
The chair swiveled back toward the room; he gestured at the maps. "Prague now—that's different, Mandrake. By all accounts it is a peculiarly _gloomy_ sort of spot, far too nostalgic for the glories of its vanished past. Bit of a morbid fixation on things that are dead and gone: the magicians, the alchemists, the great Czech Empire. Well, any doctor could tell you that's an unhealthy sort of outlook—if Prague were a human, we'd lock her in a sanatorium. Now, I daresay we could shake Prague out of her daydreams if we chose, Mandrake, but we _don't_ choose. No. Far better to have her mind muddled and mysterious, rather than clear-cut and farsighted like London's. And people such as Harlequin, who keep an eye on things there for us, have to think in the same way as the Czechs do. Or they wouldn't be any good to us, would they? Harlequin is a better spy than most, Mandrake. Hence his colorful instructions. I suggest you follow them to the letter."
"Yes sir, I'll certainly do my best."
I could tell it was Prague as soon as I materialized. The shabby ostentation of the gold chandelier hanging from the hotel-room ceiling; the ornate and grimy moldings around the uppermost edges of the walls; the dusty folds of the drapery above the small four-poster bed; the melancholy tingle in the air—all pointed only one way. As did the expression of foul distemper upon my master's face. Even as he mumbled out the last syllables of the summoning, he was looking around the room as if he half-expected it to rise up and bite him.
"Pleasant journey?" I inquired.
He completed a few protective bonds and stepped from the circle, signaling me to do the same. "Hardly. There were still some magical traces on me when I went through customs. They collared me and took me to a drafty backroom where I had to talk pretty fast—I said my wine warehouse was right next to a government compound and occasional deviant spells permeated the walls. In the end, they bought it and let me go." He scowled. "I can't understand it! I changed all my clothes before leaving home to prevent any traces sticking to me!"
"Underpants, too?"
He paused. "Oh—I was in a hurry. I forgot them."
"That'll be it, then. You'd be surprised what builds up down there."
"And look at this room," the boy continued. "This is meant to be their top hotel! I swear it hasn't been redecorated this century. Look at the cobwebs on those drapes! Appalling. And can you tell what color that carpet's supposed to be? Because _I_ can't." He kicked out at the bed irritably; a cloud of dust ballooned outward. "And what's this stupid four-poster thing, anyway? Why can't they just have a nice clean futon or something, like at home?"
"Cheer up! At least you've got your own facilities." I investigated a forbidding-looking side door: it swung open with a theatrical squeak to reveal a dingily tiled bathroom, lit by a single bulb. A monstrous three-legged bath lurked in one corner; it was the kind brides are bumped off in, or where pet crocodiles grow to vast size, fed on unusual meats. A similarly imposing toilet waited opposite, its chain hanging from the ceiling like a gallows rope. Cobwebs and mold fought keenly for dominion of the far reaches of the ceiling. A complex series of metal pipes wound around each other across the wall, connecting bath and toilet and looking for all the world like the spilled intestines of a—
I shut the door. "On second thought, I wouldn't bother looking in there. Just a bathroom. Nothing special. How's the view?"
He glowered at me. "Check it out."
I parted the heavy scarlet curtains and looked out on a charming vista of a large municipal graveyard. Lines of neat headstones stretched away into the night, shepherded by rows of gloomy ash and larch. At intervals, yellow lanterns hanging from trees gave off mournful light. A few hunched and solitary individuals could be seen wandering the gravel paths between the stones; the wind carried their sighs up to the window.
I drew the curtains smartly. "Yes.... Not exactly uplifting, I admit."
"Uplifting? This is the dreariest place I've ever been!"
"Well, what do you expect? You're British. Of course they'll put you in a lousy room with a view of a graveyard."
The boy was sitting at a heavy desk, inspecting some papers from a small brown packet. He spoke absently "I should get the best room for exactly that reason."
"Are you kidding? After what Gladstone did to Prague? They don't forget, you know."
He looked up at this. "That was warfare. We won, fair and square. With minimum loss of civilian life."
I was Ptolemy at this point, standing by the curtains, arms folded, glowering at him in my turn. "You reckon?" I sneered. "Tell that to the people of the suburbs. There are still wastelands out there, where the houses burned."
"Oh, you'd know, would you?"
"Of course I'd know! I was there, wasn't I? Fighting for the Czechs, I might add. Whereas everything _you've_ learned was concocted by Gladstone's Ministry of Propaganda after the war. Don't lecture me about it, _boy."_
He looked, for a moment, as if he might erupt into one of his old furies. Then a switch seemed to go off inside him, and he instead became all cold and careless. He turned back to his papers, blank-faced, as if what I had said was of no account and even bored him. I would have preferred the anger, somehow.
"In London," he said, almost to himself, "the cemeteries are outside the city boundaries. Much more hygienic that way. We have special funeral trains to take the bodies out.
That's the modern method. This place is living in the past." I said nothing. He didn't deserve the benefit of my wisdom.
For perhaps an hour, the boy studied his papers by the light of a low candle, making small notes in the margins. He ignored me; I ignored him, except to subtly send a breeze across the room to make the candle gutter over his work in an irritating manner. At half-past ten, he rang down to reception and, in perfect Czech, ordered a dish of grilled lamb and a carafe of wine to be delivered to his room. Then he put down his pen and turned to me, smoothing his hair back with his hand.
"Got it!" I said, from the depths of the four-poster, where I was taking my ease, "I know who you remind me of now. It's been bugging me since you summoned me last week. Lovelace! You fiddle with your hair just like he did. Can't leave it alone."
"I want to talk about the golems of Prague," he said.
"It's a vanity thing—must be. All that oil."
"You've seen golems in action. What kind of magician uses them?"
"I reckon it shows insecurity as well. A constant need to preen."
"Was it always Czech magicians who created them? Could a British one do it?"
"Gladstone _never_ fiddled—with his hair or anything else. He was always very still."
The boy blinked; he showed interest for the first time. "You knew Gladstone?"
_"Knew's_ putting it a trifle strongly. I saw him from afar. He was usually present during battle, leaning on his Staff, watching his troops cause carnage; here in Prague, across Europe.... Like I say, he was very still; he observed everything, said little; then, when it counted, every movement was decisive and considered. Nothing like your prattling mages of today"
_"Really?"_ You could tell the boy was fascinated. No prizes for guessing who he modeled himself on. "So," he said, "you kind of admired him, in your poisonous, demonic sort of way?"
"No. Of course not. He was one of the worst. Church bells rang across occupied Europe when he died. You don't want to be like him, Nathaniel, take it from me. Besides"—I plumped up a dusty pillow—"you haven't got what it takes."
Oh, he bristled at that. "Why?"
"You're not nasty enough by a long way. Here's your supper."
A knock at the door heralded the arrival of a black-coated servant and an elderly maid, bearing assorted domed platters and chilled wine. The boy spoke courteously enough to them, asking a few questions about the layout of the streets nearby and tipping them for their trouble. For the duration of their visit, I was a mouse curled cozily between the pillows; I remained in this guise while my master scoffed his food. At last he clattered his fork down, took a last swig from his glass and stood up.
"Right," he said. "No time for talk. It's a quarter past eleven. We've got to go."
The hotel was on Kremencova, a short street on the edge of Prague Old Town, not far from the great river. We exited and wandered north along the lamp-lit roads, making our way slowly, steadily, in the direction of the ghetto.
Despite the ravages of war, despite the dissolution into which the city fell after its Emperor was killed and its power transferred to London, Prague still maintained something of its old mystique and grandeur. Even I, Bartimaeus, indifferent as I normally am to the various human hellholes where I've been imprisoned, recognized its beauty: the pastel-colored houses, with their high, steep terra-cotta roofs, congregating thickly around the spires and bell towers of the endless churches, synagogues, and theaters; the great gray river winding past, spanned by a dozen bridges, each created to a different style by its own workforce of sweating djinn; above it all, the castle of the Emperors, brooding wistfully on its hill.
The boy was silent as we went. Unsurprising, this—he had seldom left London in his life before. I guessed him to be gazing about in dumbstruck admiration.
"What an appalling place," he said. "Devereaux's slum-clearance measures would come in useful here."
I looked at him. "Do I take it the golden city does not meet with your approval?"
"Well... it's just so _messy,_ isn't it?"
True, as you worm your way deeper into the Old Town, the streets become narrower and more labyrinthine, connected by a capillary system of snickelways and side courts, where the gable overhangs become so extreme that daylight barely hits the cobblestones below. Tourists probably find this warren charming; for me, with my slightly more soiled outlook, it perfectly embodies the hopeless muddle of all human endeavor. And for Nathaniel, the young British magician used to the broad, brutal Whitehall thoroughfares, it was all a bit too messy, a bit too out of control.
"Great magicians lived here," I reminded him.
"That was then," he said, sourly. "This is now."
We passed the Stone Bridge, with its ramshackle old tower on the eastern side; bats were swirling about its protruding rafters, and flickering candlelight shone in the topmost windows. Even at this late hour, plenty of traffic was abroad: one or two old-fashioned cars, with high, narrow bonnets and cumbersome retracting roofs, passing slowly across the bridge; many men and women on horseback, too; others leading oxen, or driving two-wheeled carts full of vegetables or beer kegs. Most of the men wore soft black caps in the French style, fashions evidently having changed since my time here so many years before.
The boy made a disparaging face. "That reminds me. I'd better get this charade over with." He was carrying a small leather rucksack; into this he now delved, pulling out a large floppy cap. Further rummaging revealed a curled and rather crumpled feather. He held this up so it caught the lantern light.
"What color would you call that?" he said.
I considered. "I don't know. Red, I suppose."
"What kind of red? I want a description."
"Erm, brick red? Fiery red? Tomato red? Sunburn red? Could be any or all."
"Not blood-red, then?" He cursed. "I was so short of time—that was all I could get. Well, it'll have to do." He pushed the feather through the fabric of the cap and placed the ensemble on his head.
"What's this in aid of?" I asked. "I hope you're not trying to be dashing, because you look like an idiot."
"This is strictly business, I assure you. It's not my idea. Come on, it's almost midnight."
We turned away from the river now, heading into the heart of the Old Town, where the ghetto guarded Prague's deepest secrets. The houses became smaller and more ramshackle, crowded in upon each other so tightly that some were doubtless held up only by the proximity of their neighbors. Our moods shifted in opposite directions as we went. My essence felt energized by the magic seeping from the old stones, by the memories of my exploits of the past. Nathaniel, conversely, seemed to become ever gloomier, muttering and grumbling under his outsize hat like a cantankerous old man.
"Any chance," I said," of telling me exactly what we're doing?"
He looked at his watch. "Ten to midnight. I have to be in the old cemetery when the clocks start chiming." He tutted again. _"Another_ cemetery! Can you believe it? How many _are_ there in this place? Well, a spy will meet me there. He will know me by this cap; I will know him by his—and I quote—'unusual candle.'" He held up a hand. "Don't ask—I haven't got a clue. He may, perhaps, be able to point us in the direction of someone who knows something of golem lore."
"You think some Czech magician is causing the trouble in London?" I said. "That's not necessarily so, you know."
He nodded, or at least his head did something abrupt under his enormous cap. "Quite. An insider must have stolen the clay eye from the Lovelace collection: there's a traitor working somewhere. But the knowledge to use it must have come from Prague. No one in London's ever done it before. Perhaps our spy can help us." He sighed. "I doubt it, though. Anyone who calls himself Harlequin is obviously pretty far gone already."
"No more deluded than the rest of you, with your silly fake names, Mr. _Mandrake._ And what am I to do, while you meet this gentleman?"
"Keep hidden and keep watch. We're in enemy territory, and I'm not going to trust Harlequin or anyone else. All right, this must be the cemetery. You'd better change."
We had arrived at a cobbled yard, surrounded on all sides by buildings with small, black windows. Before us was a flight of steps, leading up to an open metal gate, set in a tumbledown railing. Beyond rose a dark and toothy mass—the uppermost headstones of Prague's old cemetery.
This graveyard was little more than fifty meters square, by far the smallest in the city. Yet it had been used for many centuries, over and over, and this contributed to its distinctive flavor. In fact, the sheer weight of burials in this restricted space had led to bodies being interred one on top of another, time and again, until the surface of the cemetery had risen six feet higher than the surrounding yard. The headstones were packed in likewise, with large ones overhanging small, small half-buried in the ground. With its higgledy-piggledy disregard for clarity and order, the cemetery was exactly the kind of place calculated to unsettle Nathaniel's tidy mind.
"Well, get on with it, then," he said. "I'm waiting."
"Oh, that's what you're doing, is it? I couldn't tell under that hat."
"Turn yourself into a loathsome snake or plague rat, or whatever foul creature of the night you desire. I'm going in. Get ready to protect me if necessary."
"Nothing will give me greater pleasure."
I chose to be a long-eared bat this time, leather-winged, tufted of head. It's a flexible guise, I find—fast-moving, quiet, and very much in keeping with the tone of midnight graveyards. I flittered off into the clotted wilderness of jumbled stones. As an initial precaution, I made a sweep of the seven planes: they were clear enough, though so steeped in magic that each one vibrated gently with the memories of past deeds. I noticed no traps or sensors, though a few protective hexes on buildings nearby implied that magicians of a sort still dwelled here. There was no one about; at this late hour, the graveyard's tangle of narrow paths was empty, swathed in black shadow. Rusty lamps nailed to the railings emitted half-hearted light. I found an overhanging headstone and hung elegantly from it, tucked inside my wings. I surveyed the main path into the cemetery.
Nathaniel stepped through the gate, his shoes crunching gently on the path. Even as he did so, the dozen clocks of the churches of Prague began to chime, marking the beginning of the secret, midnight hour. The boy gave an audible sigh, shook his head disgustedly, and began to stroll tentatively along the path, one hand outstretched, feeling his way between the stones. An owl hooted close by, possibly as a harbinger of violent death, possibly commenting on the ridiculous scale of my master's hat. The blood-red feather waved to and fro behind his head, glimmering faintly in the meager light.
Nathaniel paced. The bat hung motionless. Time passed as slowly as it always does when you're hanging out in cemeteries. Once only was there movement in the street below the railing: a strange four-legged, two-armed creature with a kind of double head came shuffling out of the night. My master caught sight of it and halted in doubt. It passed beneath a lantern, to be revealed as a courting couple, heads resting together, arms entwined. They kissed assiduously, giggled a bit, moved off along the road. My master watched them go with an odd expression on his face. I think he was trying to look contemptuous.
From then on, his pacing, never particularly energetic, became distinctly half-hearted. He scuffed along, kicking unseen pebbles, and wrapping his long black coat about him in a hunched, uncaring sort of way. His mind did not seem to be on the job. Deciding he needed a pep talk, I fluttered over and hovered by a headstone.
"Perk it up," I said, "you're looking a bit lackluster. You'll put this Harlequin bloke off if you're not careful. Imagine you're on a romantic assignation with some pretty, young girl magician."
I couldn't swear to it—it was dark and all—but I think he might have blushed. Interesting.... Perhaps this was fertile ground to furrow, in due time.
"This is _hopeless,"_ he whispered. "It's nearly half-past twelve. If he was going to show, we'd have seen something by now. I think... are you listening to me?"
"No." The bat's keen ears had picked up a scrabbling noise from way off across the graveyard. I rose a little higher, peered out into the dark. "This might be him. Feather at the ready, Romeo."
I banked and swooped low among the stones, taking a circular course to avoid direct collision with whatever it was that was coming our way.
For his part, the boy adopted a more upright pose; with his hat at a rakish angle, hands casually behind his back, he dawdled along the path as if in deep, profound thought. He gave no sign that he noticed the increasingly persistent scuffling sounds, or the strange pale light that now approached him from among the gravestones.
From the corner of his eye, Nathaniel saw the bat flitter away toward an age-old yew tree, which had somehow managed to survive centuries of burials in one corner of the cemetery. A particularly desiccated branch offered a good view of the path. The bat alighted under it and hung still.
Nathaniel took a deep breath, adjusted his hat, and strolled forward as nonchalantly as he could. All the while, his eyes were fixed on something moving in the depths of the cemetery. Despite the profound skepticism he felt for the whole farrago, the dankness and solitude of this lonely place had infected his spirits. Against his wishes, he found his heart thudding painfully against his chest.
What was it that he saw before him? A pale corpse light drifting nearer, a greenish milky white in color, staining the stones it passed with an unhealthy radiance. Behind it came a moving shadow, hunched and shambling, weaving ever nearer through the stones.
Nathaniel narrowed his eyes: on none of the three observable planes could he see any demonic activity. This thing, presumably, was human.
At last, the crunch of gravel indicated that the shadow had stepped out upon the path. It did not stop, but came smoothly onward, a ragged cloak or cape drifting drearily behind. As it drew close, Nathaniel noticed a pair of unpleasantly white hands protruding from the front of the cape, holding something that let off the feeble witch light. He tried hard to make out a face, too, but this was concealed by a heavy black hood that curved down like an eagle's talon. Nothing else of the figure could be seen. He turned his attention to the object held in the pale hands, the thing that shed the strange, white glow. It was a candle, firmly wedged into...
"Euuch!" he said, in Czech. "That's disgusting."
The figure stopped short. A high, thin voice sounded indignantly from under the cowl. '"Ere, what d'you mean?" It coughed hastily; a deeper, slower, altogether more eerie voice emerged at once: "That is to say—What... do you mean?"
Nathaniel curled his lip. "That horrible thing you're carrying. It's foul."
"Beware! It is an item of power."
"It's unhygienic, that's what it is. Where did you get it?"
"I cut it down from a gallows myself, by the light of a gibbous moon."
"I bet it isn't even pickled. Yes! Look—there's bits falling off it!"
"No, there aren't. That's drips of candlewax."
"Well, maybe, but it's still wrong to be carrying it around with you. I suggest you toss it behind those gravestones, then wash your hands."
"Do you realize," said the figure, who now had one fist wedged irritably against his hip, "that you are referring to an object that has the power to send my enemies into a stupor and can detect watchful magic at fifty paces? This is a valuable item. I'm not binning it."
Nathaniel shook his head. "You ought to be locked up. That kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated in London, I can tell you."
The figure gave a sudden start. "London? What's that to me?"
"Well, you're Harlequin, aren't you? The agent."
A long pause. "Might be."
"Of course you are. Who else would be wandering through the graveyard at this time of night? I don't need to see that icky candle thing to know it's you, do I? Besides, you're speaking Czech with a British accent. Enough of this! I need some information fast."
The figure held up its free hand. "One moment! I don't yet know who _you_ are."
"I'm John Mandrake, on government service. As you well know."
"That's not good enough. I must have proof."
Nathaniel rolled his eyes. "See that?" He pointed upward. "Blood-red feather."
The figure considered it. "That looks brick-red to me."
"It's _blood-red._ Or it will be in a minute if you don't stop this nonsense and get down to business."
"Well... all right, then. But first..." The figure adopted an eerie stance. "I must check that no watchers are among us. Stand back!" It held up the object in its hand, spoke a word. Instantly, the pale fire flared outward, becoming a luminous hoop of light that hovered in the air between them. On another command, and with a sudden rushing, the hoop expanded, rippling out in all directions across the graveyard. Nathaniel glimpsed the bat drop like a stone from its perch upon the tree, just before the band of light passed by. What happened to the bat he did not see; the hoop continued out beyond the edge of the graveyard and swiftly faded into nothing.
The figure nodded. "It is safe to talk."
Nathaniel pointed to the candle, which had resumed its previous dimensions. "I know that trick. That's an Illuminated Circlet, triggered by an imp. You don't need a dead man's extremities to pull that off. This gothic stuff is all jiggery-pokery, suitable for gawping commoners. It won't work on me, Harlequin."
"Perhaps..." A gaunt hand disappeared inside the cowl and scratched something ruminatively. "Even so, I think you're being overly fastidious, Mandrake. You're ignoring the fundamental basis of our magic. It isn't so clean and pure as you make out. Blood, ritual, sacrifice, death... they are at the heart of every incantation we utter. We all rely on 'gothic stuff,'when all's said and done."
"Here in Prague, maybe," Nathaniel said.
"Never forget, London's power was built on Prague's. So then..." Harlequin's voice turned suddenly businesslike. "The imp that reached me said you were here on a top secret mission. What is it, and what information do you want from me?"
Nathaniel spoke quickly and with some relief, outlining the main events of the previous few days. The man under the hood heard him out in silence.
"A golem abroad in London?" he said, when Nathaniel drew to a halt. "Wonders _will_ never cease. There's your gothic stuff coming home to roost, whether you like it or not. Interesting..."
"Interesting _and_ intelligible?" Nathaniel asked, hopefully.
"I don't know about that. But I may have some details for you—quick! Duck down!" With the speed of a snake, he threw himself to the ground; without hesitation, Nathaniel did likewise. He lay with his face pressed against the graveyard soil, listening to the sound of jackboots echoing on the cobblestones outside. A faint scent of cigarette smoke drifted on the wind. The sounds faded. After another minute or so, the agent got slowly to his feet. "Patrol," he said. "Fortunately, their sense of smell is deadened by those fags they smoke; we're all right for now."
"You were saying..." Nathaniel prompted.
"Yes. First, the issue of the golem's eye. Several of these objects are kept in magical repositories belonging to the Czech government. The Prague Council prevents any access to them. As far as I know, they have not been used for magical purposes, but they are of high symbolic value, since the golems were instrumental in causing great damage to Gladstone's army back in his first European campaign. Several years ago, one of the eyes was stolen, and the culprit never found. I speculate—and it is only speculation, mark you—that this missing eye is the one later found in the collection of your friend Simon Lovelace."
"Pardon me," Nathaniel said, stiffly, "but he was not my friend."
"Well, he's nobody's friend _now,_ is he? Because he failed. If he'd won, you'd all have been hanging on his every word and inviting him to dinner." The agent gave a long, melancholy sniff of disparagement from somewhere within the hood. "Hang on to this a minute, I need a drink."
"Euuch! It's all cold and clammy. Hurry up!"
"Coming." Harlequin's hands were rummaging within his cloak in a complex sort of way. A moment later, they emerged, holding a dark green bottle with a cork stopper. He pulled out the cork and tilted the bottle into the depths of his cowl. A gulping noise ensued, followed by the smell of strong liquor.
_"That's_ better." Unseen lips smacked, cork returned to bottle, and bottle returned to pocket. "I'll take that back. You didn't damage it, did you? It _is_ a bit fragile. Now," Harlequin went on, "perhaps Lovelace intended to use the eye himself; if so, his plan was thwarted by his death. Someone else, maybe an associate of his—who knows?—has now stolen it from our government, and appears to have got the thing to work....This is where it gets difficult."
"They need the formative spell, too," Nathaniel said. "It is written on a parchment and inserted into the golem's mouth before it comes to life. That's the bit that nobody's known for all these years. No one in London, anyway."
The agent nodded. "The secret _may_ have been lost; equally, it may still be known in Prague, but just remain unused. The Council does not want to enrage London at present; the British are too strong. They prefer to send spies and small groups over to London to work quietly, gathering information. This golem of yours... it's too dramatic a move for the Czechs—they would expect invasion to follow as a direct result. No, I think you are hunting for a maverick, someone working for their own individual ends."
"So where do I look?" Nathaniel asked. He couldn't help yawning as he spoke; he had been awake since the British Museum incident the previous night. It had been a taxing day.
"I must consider..." The agent remained lost in thought for a few moments. "I need time to make inquiries. We will meet again tomorrow night, when I will give you names." He wrapped his cloak about himself with a dramatic sweep. "Meet me—"
Nathaniel interrupted him. "I hope you're not going to say 'in the shadow of the gibbet'or 'at Execution Dock'or anything dreary like that."
The figure drew itself up. "Ridiculous. The very idea."
"Good."
"I was going to suggest the old plague pits on Hybernska Street."
_"No."_
The agent seemed rather miffed. "All right," he growled.
"Six o'clock at the hot-dog stand in the Old Town Square. That mundane enough for you?"
"That'll do nicely."
"Until then, then..." With a billow of the cloak and a creak of hidden knees, the figure turned and swept its way up the cemetery path, its corpse light flickering dimly into the distance. Soon the light was gone, and nothing but a fleeting shadow and a muffled curse when it knocked into a gravestone indicated it had ever been.
Nathaniel sat down on a headstone, waiting for Bartimaeus to show. The meeting had been satisfactory, if a little irritating; now he had plenty of time to rest before the following evening. His weary mind drifted. The memory of Jane Farrar came back to him. How pleasant it had been to have her so close.... It had affected him almost like a drug. He frowned—of _course_ it was like a drug. She'd worked a Charm on him, hadn't she? And he'd nearly fallen for it, completely ignoring his sensor's warning. What _a fool_ he was.
The girl had either wanted to delay him, or learn more about what he knew. Either way, she would be working for her master, Duvall, who evidently did not want Internal Affairs having any sort of success in this matter. When he got back, he would doubtless face more hostility of the same kind. Duvall, Tallow, Farrar... Even his master, Ms. Whitwell, was not to be relied on, if he didn't produce the goods for her.
Nathaniel rubbed his eyes. He suddenly felt very tired.
_"Bless,_ you look ready to drop." The djinni was sitting on an opposite gravestone, in its familiar boy guise. It was crossing its legs in identical fashion to Nathaniel, and pulling an extravagant yawn. "You should have been tucked up _hours_ ago."
"Did you hear everything?"
"Most of it. I missed a bit after he let loose that Circlet. It nearly hit me, and I had to take evasive action. Good job those tree roots had dislodged a few gravestones. I was able to drop into an underground cavity while the probe passed over." The boy paused to shake a bit of gray dust out of its hair. "Not that I generally recommend graves as a place to hide. You never know what you might find. But the occupant of this particular one was quite hospitable. Let me cuddle up to him for a few moments." It gave a knowing wink.
Nathaniel shuddered. "How perfectly foul."
"Speaking of which," the djinni said. "That candle the bloke was carrying. Was it really...?"
"Yes. I'm trying not to think about it. Harlequin is more than half-mad, which is no doubt what comes of living in Prague too long." Nathaniel stood and buttoned up his coat. "But he does have his uses. He's hoping to give us some contact names tomorrow night."
"Good," the boy said, busily buttoning its coat in a similar fashion. "Then perhaps we'll have a bit of action. My recipe for informers is either to roast them over a slow flame or hang them by a leg out of a high window. That usually makes a Czech spill the beans."
"There'll be none of that if we can possibly avoid it." Nathaniel began to walk down the path out of the graveyard. "The authorities mustn't know we're here, so we can't draw attention to ourselves. That means no violence or obvious magic. Got that?"
"Of _course." The_ djinni smiled broadly as it fell in step beside him. "You know me."
**25**
**A** t 9:25 on the morning of the great raid, Kitty was heading down a backstreet in London's West End. She went quickly, almost jogging; the bus had been held up by traffic on Westminster Bridge, and she was running late. A small rucksack bounced on her back; her hair streamed behind her as she went.
At precisely 9:30, disheveled and a little out of breath, Kitty arrived at the Stage Door of the Coliseum Theatre, pushed gently, and found it unlocked. She took a quick look behind her at the rubbish-strewn street, saw nothing, slipped inside.
A drab and dirty corridor was filled with buckets and obscure wooden constructions presumably destined for the stage. A little light filtered through a grubby window; there was a strong smell of paint in the stale air.
Ahead was another door. Obeying her memorized instructions, Kitty soundlessly crossed to it and passed through into a second room, this one filled with quiet racks of costumes. The staleness of the air increased. Someone's bygone lunch—pieces of sandwich and potato chips, and half-filled cups of coffee—lay scattered on a table. Kitty entered a third room and found a sudden change: beneath her feet was a thick carpet and the walls were papered. The air now smelled distantly of smoke and polish. She was near the front of the theater, in the public corridors.
She paused and listened. In all the empty building, not a sound.
Yet somewhere above, someone was waiting.
* * *
She had received her instructions that morning, in an atmosphere of fevered preparation. Mr. Pennyfeather had closed the shop for the day and had retired to the cellar storeroom to begin sorting their equipment for the raid. Everyone else was busy, too, assembling dark clothes, polishing tools and, in Fred's case, practicing knife-throwing in the privacy of the cellar. Mr. Hopkins had given Kitty directions to the Coliseum. The mysterious benefactor, he said, had chosen the disused theater as a suitably neutral venue, a place where magician and commoner might meet on equal terms. There she would be given the assistance they required to break into Gladstone's tomb.
Despite certain misgivings about the whole enterprise, Kitty could not help thrilling to the name. _Gladstone._ Stories of his splendor were legion. Friend to the People, Terror of their Enemies... To desecrate his tomb was an act so unthinkable her mind scarcely comprehended it. And yet, if they succeeded, if they returned home with the Founder's treasures, what wonders the Resistance might yet accomplish.
If they should fail, Kitty was under no illusion about the consequences. The company was crumbling. Pennyfeather was old: despite his passion, despite his fury, his strength was dwindling. Without his stern guidance, the group would splinter—they would all return to their humdrum lives beneath the magicians' heels. But if they had the crystal ball and the magic purse, what then? Perhaps their fortunes might be turned around and new blood won to fight their cause. It made her heart pound to think of it.
But first, she had to meet the unknown benefactor and win his aid.
* * *
Kitty passed a number of half-open doors along the corridor; through them she could see the shrouded reaches of the theater's auditorium. It was very still, every sound muffled by the heavy carpet and the elegant furred paper on the walls. The carpet was a wine-dark red, the wallpaper striped with pink and terra-cotta. Fading theatrical posters and chipped brass candelabras, which emitted a weak, flickering light, were the only decoration. Kitty walked swiftly until she reached the stairs.
Up a long, curving flight of shallow steps, then—doubling almost back upon herself—up a second flight, along a silent corridor and so to the place where six curtained alcoves waited along the left-hand side. Each was the entrance to one of the boxes used by the magicians, overlooking the stage.
Each alcove had a number inscribed on a brass plaque above the curtain. Without pausing, Kitty made her way to the last alcove in the line. This was number 7; the place where the benefactor would be waiting.
As with all the others, the curtain was fully drawn. Kitty stopped outside, listened, heard nothing. A wisp of hair had fallen down over her face. She smoothed it back and, for luck, touched the silver pendant in her pocket. Then she grasped the curtain firmly and stepped through.
The box was empty except for two heavy golden chairs facing the stage. A curtain had been drawn across from the left, shielding the box from the auditorium below. Kitty frowned in perplexity and frustration. Had she mistaken the number, or come at the wrong time? No. More likely, the benefactor had gotten cold feet and hadn't shown up.
A small piece of paper was pinned to the arm of one of the chairs. Kitty stepped over to pull it loose. As she did so, she became aware of a slight shift in the air, the faintest of noises behind her. Her hand jerked to her coat. A small, sharp pressure was applied to the back of her neck. She froze.
A voice, quiet and reflective. "Please do not attempt to turn around at any time, my dear. The pinprick you feel is the tip of a stiletto, forged in Rome for the Borgias. Sharpness is not its only quality—a finger's width up the blade is a bead of poison; should this touch your wound, death will follow in thirteen seconds. I mention this simply so that we observe the proper niceties. Without turning, please take hold of the chair, and align it facing the wall.... Good. Now sit. I shall sit close behind you, then we shall talk."
Kitty dragged the chair to face the wall, moved slowly around, and sat gingerly upon it, feeling all the while the little sharpness on her neck. She heard a rustle of cloth, the squeak of leather shoes, a soft sigh as someone sat and took his ease. She looked at the wall and said nothing.
The voice came again. "Good. Now we are ready and I hope we can do business. You understand that the precautions I take here are merely safeguards? I do not wish you harm."
Kitty remained looking at the wall. "Nor we you," she said levelly. "Nevertheless, we have taken precautions, too."
The voice grunted. "Which are?"
"A colleague of mine waits outside the theater. She carries a small leather bag. Within it are six small demons trapped in an explosive gel. It is, I believe, an effective weapon of war and can level a whole building. We stole it recently from a Ministry of Defense storehouse. I mention this to impress you: we are capable of remarkable acts. But also because, if I do not return within fifteen minutes, my friend will activate the imps and toss them into the theater." Kitty's face was expressionless. This was a complete lie.
A chuckle. "Nicely put, my dear. Well then, we must hurry. As Mr. Hopkins no doubt told you, I am a gentleman of leisure with many contacts among the magicians; I have even dabbled in the art myself upon occasion. However, like you I am sick of their rule!" A note of anger entered the voice. "Owing to a small financial disagreement, the government has robbed me of my wealth and my estates! I am now a pauper, where once I slept on Tashkent silks! It is an intolerable situation. _Nothing_ would give me greater pleasure than to see the magicians fall. That is why I will help your cause."
These remarks had been spoken with great emotion; at each emphasis, the stiletto point jabbed the back of Kitty's neck. She moistened her lips. "Mr. Hopkins said you had valuable information for us."
"I do indeed. You must understand, I have no sympathy for the commoners whose cause you serve. But your activities unsettle the great ones of the government, and that pleases me. So, to business. Hopkins has explained the nature of the proposition?" Kitty nodded carefully. "Well now, through my connections, I have had access to Gladstone's papers and have made some small study of them. By deciphering certain codes, I discovered details of the Pestilence he left guarding his remains."
"That seems a meager defense, for one of his power," Kitty said. "If I may say so."
"You are an intelligent, opinionated girl," the voice said approvingly. "When he died, Gladstone was old and weak, a spindly husk, capable of nothing more than that simple spell. Even so, it has done its job. No one has disturbed it, for fear of being raddled by the Pestilence. However, it can be bypassed, if you bring proper precautions. I can give you that information."
"Why should we trust you?" Kitty said. "I don't understand. What's in this for you?"
The voice did not seem to resent the questions. "If I wished to destroy your group," it said peaceably, "you would have been in police custody the moment you poked your head through this curtain. Besides, I have already told you that I wish to see the magicians fall. But you are right, of course. There _is_ something else in it for me. When I scoured Gladstone's archive, I discovered the list of his grave goods. It contains objects to interest both you and me."
Kitty shifted a little in the broad gold chair. "It will take me at least two minutes to leave the building," she said. "I assure you, my friend is very punctual."
"I will be brief. Mr. Hopkins will have told you of the wonders the crypt contains—you may have them, magical weapons and all. I do not need them; I am a man of peace. But I _do_ collect unusual objects, and I would be grateful to have Gladstone's cloak, which was folded and placed upon his sarcophagus. It has no magical properties, so it is of no use to you. Oh, and if his oaken staff has survived, I would like that, too. It is of negligible magical value—I believe he charged it with a small hex for keeping away insects—but I would be pleased to see it in my humble collection."
"If we get the other treasures," Kitty said, "we will be glad to give those to you."
"Very well, we have an agreement. We will both prosper by it. Here is the equipment you need." With a slight rustling, a small black bag was pushed along the carpet into view. "Do not touch it yet. The bag contains a casket and hammer. These will protect you from the Pestilence. Full instructions are included. Obey them, and you will live. Listen carefully," the voice continued. "Tonight, at eleven-thirty, the curators of the abbey will depart. Go to the cloisters door: I will arrange for it to be left open. A second door bars the way to the abbey itself; ordinarily it is secured by two medieval deadlocks and a drawbar. I will leave this unlocked, too. Find your way to the north transept and locate Gladstone's statue. Behind it, set in a pillar, is the entrance to the tomb. To gain entry, you merely have to turn the key."
Kitty stirred. "The key?"
Something small and glinting fell through the air to land beside the bag. "Guard it well," the voice said, "and _do_ remember to cloak yourself in my magic before opening the tomb, or all this tiresome subterfuge will have been for nothing."
"We'll remember," Kitty said.
"Good." She heard the sound of someone rising from the chair. The voice spoke above her, close behind. "Then that is all. I wish you well. Do not turn around."
The sharp sensation in the back of her neck lessened, but so softly, so stealthily, that Kitty at first was hardly able to detect that it had gone. She waited a full minute, motionless, eyes wide and staring in her head.
Finally, she lost patience.
She turned in a single fluid motion, her knife already in her hand.
The box was empty. And when she ducked out into the silent corridor, key and bag safely in her grasp, she saw no trace of anyone in the vicinity.
**26**
**A** t some time in the distant past, long before the first magicians arrived in London, the great church of Westminster Abbey had exerted considerable power and influence on the surrounding town. Built over centuries by a dynasty of forgotten kings, the abbey and its grounds extended over a wide area, with a population of scholarly monks conducting its services, studying in its library, and working in its fields. The main church rose more than a hundred feet into the air, with snub-nosed towers rising at the west end and at the center of the building, high above the sanctuary. The building was constructed of a strong white stone, which gradually became discolored with the smoke and magical effusions emanating from the growing city.
Years passed; the kings fell from power, to be replaced by a succession of parliaments, which met at Westminster Hall, not far from the abbey. The influence of the church slowly reduced, as did the waistlines of the surviving monks, who now fell on hard times. Many of the abbey outbuildings deteriorated, and only the cloisters—four broad, enclosed walkways around a central open square of grass—remained in good condition. When Parliament was itself taken over by a new authority—a group of powerful magicians, who had little time for the traditions of the Church—it seemed as if the ancient abbey itself might soon fall into ruin.
But one tradition saved the building. The greatest leaders of the country, whether kings or parliamentary ministers, had long been buried in the abbey crypts. Countless tombs and memorials already clustered among the pillars of the nave, while the ground below was honeycombed with crypts and sepulchres. The magicians, who courted eternal renown as much as any king before them, decided to continue this practice; it became a matter of great honor for any individual to be interred within the church.
The remaining monks were cast out, a small clergy installed to conduct occasional services, and the abbey survived into the modern age as little more than a gigantic tomb. Few commoners went there by day, and by night, even its perimeter was shunned. It had an unhealthy reputation.
Security on the building was, therefore, comparatively weak. There was really no likelihood of the company meeting any kind of guard, when, at 11:30 precisely, the first of them arrived at the unlocked door of the cloisters outhouse, and noiselessly slipped inside.
Kitty had wanted to visit the abbey during its opening hours to do a proper reconnaissance and to view the exterior of Gladstone's tomb. But Mr. Pennyfeather had forbidden her. "We must arouse no suspicions," he said.
In fact, Kitty need not have worried. Mr. Hopkins had been his normal useful self during the course of that long and nervous day, rustling up numerous maps of the abbey and its environs. He showed them the layout of the transept, below which most of the tombs were hidden; he showed them the covered cloisters, where once the monks had sat to read or, in bad weather, taken their constitutionals. He showed them the surrounding roads, highlighting guardhouses of the Night Police and known routes of the vigilance spheres. He pointed out the doors that would be unlocked, and suggested, in case of random patrols, that they assemble at the abbey one by one. It was all very well organized by Mr. Hopkins.
"I only wish I had resilience like you," he said sadly. "Then I could take part in the mission myself."
Mr. Pennyfeather was supervising Stanley, who was laboring under a box of weapons taken from the cellar. "Now, now, Clem," he cried. "You have done your part! Leave the rest to us. We are the professionals at theft and stealth."
"Pardon me, sir," Kitty said. "Are you coming, too?"
The old man's face mottled with fury. "Of course! This will be the crowning moment of my life! How dare you suggest otherwise? You think I am too weak?"
"No, no, sir. Of course not." Kitty bent to the abbey maps again.
A great expectancy and unease had stolen across the company that day; all of them, even the normally equable Anne, were tetchy and highly strung. During the morning, the equipment was doled out, and each person prepared their kit in silence. When Kitty returned with the benefactor's gifts, Mr. Pennyfeather and Mr. Hopkins retired to the backroom of the shop to study the instructions. The others prowled among the paints and easels, saying little. Anne prepared sandwiches for lunch.
That afternoon, Kitty, Fred, Stanley, and Nick walked to the cellar to practice their skills. Fred and Stanley took turns throwing discs at a pitted beam, while Nick engaged Kitty in a mock knife fight. When they returned, they found Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Pennyfeather still locked in consultation. At 5:30, in a brittle atmosphere, Anne brought in trays of tea and almond biscuits. An hour later, Mr. Pennyfeather emerged from the backroom. With great deliberation, he poured lukewarm tea into a cup.
"We have deciphered the instructions," he said. "Now we are truly ready." He raised the cup in a solemn toast. "To whatever tonight may bring! We have righteousness on our side. Be confident and keen, my friends. If we are bold and do not falter, our lives will never be the same again!"
He drank, clicked his cup back decisively on its saucer.
The final discussions began.
Kitty was the second of the company to enter the abbey outhouse. Anne had preceded her less than a minute before. She stared into the darkness, hearing Anne's breathing close by. "Shall we risk a light?" she whispered.
"Pencil torch," Anne said. "I've got it."
A thin beam lit the wall opposite, then, briefly, Kitty's face. Kitty blinked and raised a hand. "Keep it low," she said. "We don't know about windows."
Crouching down to the flagstoned floor, Anne swung the torch about her speculatively, casting fleeting light upon piles of paint pots, spades, garden forks, a shiny new lawn mower, and sundry other tools. Kitty shifted her rucksack from her back, plunked it down before her and checked her watch. "Next one's due," she said.
As if in answer, a faint scrabbling sounded somewhere outside, beyond the door. Anne turned off the torch. They crouched in darkness.
The door was opened and closed, accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing. Air drifted briefly through the room, bringing with it a powerful waft of aftershave.
Kitty relaxed. "Hello, Fred," she said.
At five-minute intervals, the remainder of the company arrived. Last to appear was Mr. Pennyfeather himself, already weary and out of breath. He gave a wheezed command: "Frederick Stanley! Lanterns... on! There are—there are... no windows in this room. We have nothing to be afraid of."
In the light of two powerful lanterns, the six of them stood revealed: all carrying rucksacks, all wearing black. Mr. Pennyfeather had even painted his stick black, and had muffled its tip with a plug of fabric. He leaned on it now, scanning the party one by one with slow deliberation, gathering his resources. "Very well," he said, at last. "Anne—headgear, please."
Dark woolen balaclavas were produced and distributed. Fred eyed his distrustfully. "I don't like these things," he growled. "They scratch."
Mr. Pennyfeather clicked his tongue impatiently. "Blackheads alone will not be sufficient tonight, Frederick. It is too important. Put it on. Right—final check. Then cloisters. So, Nicholas—you have the casket with the Hermetic Mantle?"
"I do."
"And the hammer with which to strike it?"
"That, too."
"Frederick—you have the jimmy? Good. And your useful array of knives? Excellent. Stanley—rope and compass? Kitty—sticking plaster, bandages, and ointment? Good, and I have the key to the tomb. As for weapons—we should all have at least one mouler glass and an Elemental Sphere of some description. Very well."
He took a moment to regain his breath. "A couple of things," he added, "before we go through. The weapons are to be used only as a last resort, if we are disturbed. Otherwise, we must be subtle. Unseen. If the door to the abbey is locked, we retreat. In the tomb itself, we locate the treasures; I will divide them out among you. Fill your bags and return the way we came. We will meet back in this room. If anything should go wrong, at the first opportunity make your way to our cellar. Avoid the shop. If, for any reason, I am a casualty, Mr. Hopkins can advise you further. He will wait at Druid's Coffeehouse tomorrow afternoon. Any questions? No? Nicholas—if you would..."
At the end of the outhouse was a second door. Nick passed to it silently and pushed. It swung open; beyond was the ink-blue darkness of the open air.
"We go," Mr. Pennyfeather said.
This was the order they went in: Nick, followed by Kitty, then Fred, Anne, Stanley, and Mr. Pennyfeather bringing up the rear.
With the silence of bats they flitted through the cloisters, flecks of moving graininess against the wall of black. Faint slabs of a lighter shade marked out the arched windows to their right, but the inner court of the cloisters was invisible to them. There was no moon to show the way. Their sneakered feet scuffed the stone slabs with the gentle rustling of dead leaves nudged by the wind. Mr. Pennyfeather's stick, muffled at its padded tip, tapped along behind. Up ahead, Nick's covered lantern swung silently from its long chain, weaving its illumination close to the ground like a will-o'-the-wisp; he carried it low, below the level of the windowsills, for fear of watching eyes.
Kitty counted the arches as she went. After the eighth gray slab, the guide light darted to the right, around the corner of the cloisters. She ducked around, too, and continued on without breaking stride, counting the arches again. One, two... The weight of her rucksack pressed against her back; she heard its contents shifting. She devoutly hoped the spheres were properly protected in their wrapping cloth. Four, five... Automatically, she ran through the position of her other weapons: a knife in her belt, a throwing disc in her jacket. These gave her a much greater feeling of security than any magical weapon: they weren't tainted with the touch of demons.
Six, seven... They were at the end of the northern side of the cloisters. The guide light jerked and slowed. Kitty nearly ran up against Nick's back, but stopped herself in time. Behind, the rustling of feet continued for a moment, then ceased.
She sensed Nick turn his head. His voice carried in a half-whisper: "Nave door. Now we'll see."
He raised the lantern, sweeping it in front of him for an instant. Kitty glimpsed the black surface of an ancient door, heavily pitted and studded with giant nails, their shadows leaping and rotating as the illumination passed. The light was lowered. Darkness, silence, a faint scrabbling. Kitty waited, fingers brushing against the pendant in her pocket. She imagined Nick's fingers running across the dark grain and the imbedded nails, searching for the giant metal latch. She heard a slight scuffle, and the sounds of sustained and suppressed exertion—little gasps and curses from Nick, the rustling of his jacket. He was evidently in difficulties.
"Come _on."_ A soft clink; dim light spread across the flagstones. Nick had lowered the lantern to the floor and was wrestling two-handed with the latch. Close behind, almost directly in her ear, Kitty heard Fred let out a muttered imprecation. She realized that in her tension, she was clamping her teeth together so hard that her jaw ached. Was the benefactor wrong? Was the door still locked? If so, they were stymied good and proper. It was their only way in and the door could not be destroyed. They couldn't risk any kind of explosion.
Something brushed past her; from the scent, she knew it to be Fred.
"Let me. Shift over..." More rustling as Nick stood aside, a short burst of scrabbling, then a grunt from Fred. A loud crack and thud followed instantly, together with a squeal of rusted hinges. Fred's voice held a note of satisfaction. "I thought there was a problem. That wasn't even stiff."
He returned to his position in the line; without further words, the company passed through the door and closed it behind them. With that, they were in the nave of Westminster Abbey.
Nick adjusted the cover on his lantern, restricting it to the smallest of circular glows. They waited a few moments, allowing their eyes to adjust. The church was not entirely dark: gradually Kitty began to glimpse the ghostly shadows of great arched windows opposite them, running along the north wall of the nave. Their outlines grew stronger, lit from outside by distant lights, including passing cars. Strange figures were depicted on the window glass—but the light was not strong enough to see them clearly. No sound came from the roads beyond; she felt as if she were enclosed in a giant cocoon.
Close beside her, Kitty made out a stone column, its upper regions lost in the arching shadows. Other pillars rose at intervals along the nave, surrounded near their bases by hulking patches of black, oddly proportioned and very numerous. The look of them gave her an aching feeling in her gut: they were all memorials and tombs.
A subdued tapping suggested Mr. Pennyfeather was moving on. His words, though whispered from beneath his balaclava, awoke a host of echoes that drifted sighing back and forth among the stones. "Quickly, then. Follow me."
Across the open body of the nave, under the hidden roof, following the glowing light. Mr. Pennyfeather went first, as fast as he was able, the others crowding at his heels. Stanley dawdled to the left. As they passed a shapeless knot of blackness, he raised his lantern curiously—and let out a yell of fright. He jumped back, the swinging light sending shadows racing around them. Reverberations of his yell danced in their ears.
Mr. Pennyfeather spun around; Kitty's knife leaped to her hand; silver discs appeared in those of Fred and Nick. "What _is_ it?" Kitty hissed, above the banging of her heart.
A plaintive voice in the dark. "Right beside us—there... a ghost..."
"Ghosts don't exist. Raise your lantern."
With obvious reluctance, Stanley obeyed. In his trembling light, a stone plinth was revealed nestling in an alcove. It had an arch in its side, from which a skeleton had been carved emerging, wreathed in shrouds and flourishing a spear.
"Oh..." Stanley said, in a small voice. "It's a statue."
"You idiot," Kitty whispered. "It's just someone's tomb. Could you have shouted _any_ louder?"
"Come on." Mr. Pennyfeather was already moving off. "We're wasting time."
As they left the nave and rounded a wide pillar to enter the north transept, the number of visible memorials cluttering the aisles increased. Nick and Stanley raised their lanterns to shed light upon the tombs; it was somewhere here that Gladstone's was to be found. Many of the statues were life-size representations of the dead magicians: they sat in carved chairs, studying unrolled parchments; they stood heroically in long carved robes, their pale, sharp faces gazing sightlessly down upon the hurrying company. One carried a cage with a forlorn frog sitting within; this particular woman was depicted laughing. Despite her steely resolve, Kitty was unnerved. The sooner they left this place, the better.
"Here," Mr. Pennyfeather whispered.
A modest statue in white marble—a man standing on a low, circular pedestal. His brow was furrowed, his face a model of stern preoccupation. He wore a flowing gown, and beneath it an old-fashioned suit with a high starched collar. His hands were loosely clasped in front of him. On the pedestal was one word, engraved deeply in the marble:
GLADSTONE
Something of the reputation of the name cast its power upon them. They held back from the statue, crowding close together at a respectful distance. Mr. Pennyfeather spoke softly: "The key to the tomb is in my pocket. The entrance is on the pillar there. A small bronze door. Kitty, Anne—you have the sharpest eyes. Find the door and locate the keyhole. According"—he suppressed a cough—"according to the records, it should be on the left-hand side."
Kitty and Anne rounded the statue and approached the pillar, Anne training her pencil torch on the stonework ahead. With careful steps they walked around the column until the dull glint of metal showed within the light. They stepped close. The metal panel was small, only five feet high, and narrow, too. It was entirely bare of ornament, except for a seam of tiny studs around its margins.
"Found it," Kitty whispered. A minuscule hole halfway up, on the left-hand edge. Anne held the torch close; the hole was plugged with cobwebs.
Mr. Pennyfeather led the others over: they stood gathered beside the pillar.
"Nicholas," he said. "Get the Mantle ready."
For perhaps two minutes, Kitty stood with them in the darkness, breathing steadily through the woolen fibers of her balaclava, waiting for Nick to prepare. Occasionally a muffled drone indicated the passage of a limousine somewhere out in Parliament Square; otherwise, all was still—except for the sound of Mr. Pennyfeather coughing quietly into his gloves.
Nick cleared his throat. "Ready." At that moment, they heard the scream of sirens, growing louder, then passing drearily over Westminster Bridge into the night. They faded. Finally, Mr. Pennyfeather gave a brief nod. "Now," he said. "Stand close, or the Mantle will not protect you."
Neither Kitty nor the others needed to be told. They crowded close into a rough circle, inward facing, their shoulders touching. In their midst, Nick held a neat ebony casket; with his other hand he flourished a small hammer. Mr. Pennyfeather nodded. "I have the key here. The moment the Mantle covers us, I will turn the key in the lock. When that happens, stand still—no matter what occurs."
Nick raised the hammer and brought it down sharply on the lid of the ebony casket. The lid broke in two; the precise crack it made echoed like a pistol shot. A stream of yellow particles flew upward out of the casket, twirling and twinkling with their own light. They spiraled above the company to a height perhaps of fifteen feet, then arched out and downward like water from a fountain, hitting the stone floor, and disappearing into it. Particles continued to rise from the box, loop up, and rain down, forming a faint glimmering canopy that sealed them in, as if inside a dome.
Mr. Pennyfeather held the tiny golden key. With great speed, he reached out, taking care that his hand did not stray beyond the edge of the glittering dome, and inserted the key into the lock. He turned it, then withdrew his hand as fast as a rattlesnake.
They waited. No one moved a muscle. The sides of Kitty's face were swathed in cold sweat.
Soundlessly, the small bronze door swung inward. Beyond was a black space, and out of this a glowing green bulb of light came slowly floating. As it drew level with the opening, it suddenly accelerated, expanding as it did so, with a peculiarly repellent hiss. An instant later, a bright green cloud had erupted out across the transept, illuminating all the statues and memorials like a livid flame. The company cowered within their protective Mantle as the Pestilence burned the air about them, rising to half the height of the transept walls. They were safe, provided they did not stir outside the dome; even so, a smell of such taint and decay drifted to their nostrils that they struggled not to gag.
"I hope," Mr. Pennyfeather gasped, as the green cloud raged back and forth, "that the Mantle's duration is longer than that of the Pestilence. If not—if not, Stanley, I fear the next skeletons you see will be our own."
It was very hot inside the Mantle. Kitty felt her head beginning to swim. She bit her lip and tried to concentrate: fainting now would certainly prove fatal.
With surprising suddenness, the Pestilence blew itself out. The green cloud seemed to implode, as if—lacking victims—it had been forced to consume its own essence. One moment the whole transept was aglow with its unhealthy light; the next, it was sucked down into nothing and the darkness had returned.
A minute passed. Sweat dripped down Kitty's nose. No one moved a muscle.
Then, abruptly, Mr. Pennyfeather began to laugh. It was a high, almost hysterical sound that set Kitty's teeth on edge. It held a tone of exultation carried slightly beyond the normal bounds. Instinctively, she jerked backward, away from him, and stepped out of the Mantle. She felt a tingle as she passed through the yellow canopy, then nothing. She looked about her for a minute, then took a deep breath.
"Well, the tomb's open," she said.
**27**
**E** vening was drawing closer; the proprietors of the smaller coffeehouses in the backstreets around the square were stirring themselves at last, lighting lamps that hung from door beams, and stacking up the wooden chairs that had spilled out across the pavement through the day. A peal of eventide bells was being tolled beneath the dark black spires of old Tyn Church, where my good friend Tycho lies entombed, and the streets murmured with Prague's people walking home.
For much of the day, the boy had sat slumped at a white-clothed table outside a tavern, reading a succession of Czech newspapers and cheap pamphlets. If he looked up, he had a good view of the Old Town Square, into which the street opened a dozen yards away; if he looked down, he had an even better view of a medley of empty coffee cups and dishes strewn with sausage scraps and pretzel crumbs, the relics of his afternoon's consumption.
I was sitting at the same table, wearing a large pair of dark glasses and a swanky coat similar to his. For token effect, I had placed a pretzel on my plate and broken it into a few pieces, to make it look like I was trying. But of course I ate and drank nothing.
The Old Town Square was one of the largest open areas in the east of the city, an uneven space of bright cobblestone, spotted with pedestrians and flower stalls. Flocks of birds drifted lazily down in front of the elegant five-story houses; smoke rose from a thousand chimneys. It was as peaceful a scene as could be wished for, yet I was not at ease.
"Will you stop _fidgeting?"_ The boy slapped his pamphlet on the table. "I can't concentrate."
"Can't help it," I said. "We're too exposed here."
"Relax—we're in no danger."
I looked around furtively. "So you say. We should have stayed in the hotel."
The boy shook his head. "I'd have gone mad if I'd stayed in that fleapit a moment longer. I couldn't sleep in that bed for dust. _And_ a tribe of bedbugs were feasting on me all night—I heard them popping off me every time I sneezed."
"If you were dusty, you should have had a bath."
He looked embarrassed. "Didn't fancy that tub somehow. It was a bit too... hungry-looking. Anyhow, Prague's safe enough; there's hardly _any_ magic here any more. You've seen nothing all the time we've been sitting here—no imp, no djinni, no spell—and we're in the center of town! No one's likely to see you for what you are. Relax."
I shrugged. "If you say so. It won't be me running around the walls with soldiers jabbing pikes into my trousers."
He wasn't listening. He'd picked up his pamphlet again and was frowning his way through it. I returned to my afternoon's occupation: namely checking and double-checking the planes.
Here's the thing: the boy was absolutely right—we'd seen nothing magical all day. This was not to say the authorities weren't represented: a few soldiers in dark-blue uniforms with shiny jackboots and highly burnished caps _had_ wandered repeatedly through the square. (Once, they had stopped at my master's table and asked for our identification; my master produced his fake ID, while I performed a Glaze upon them, so they forgot the object of their query and wandered on.) But we'd seen none of the magical sorties that were par for the course in London: search spheres, foliots masquerading as pigeons, etc.... It all seemed very innocent.
Yet, having said that, I could feel strong magic somewhere in the vicinity, not far from where we were, operating vigorously on all the planes. Each one tingled with it, particularly the seventh, which is usually where the most trouble comes. It wasn't aimed at us—yet; even so, it made me nervous, particularly because the boy—being human, young, and arrogant—sensed nothing and persisted in acting like a tourist. I didn't like being in the open.
"We should have agreed to meet him in a lonely spot," I persisted. "This is just too public."
The boy snorted. "And give him the opportunity to come dressed as a ghul again? I think not. He can wear a suit and tie like everyone else."
Six o'clock drew near. The boy paid our bill and stuffed pamphlets and newspapers hurriedly into his rucksack. "The hot-dog stand it is, then," he said. "As before, hang back and protect me if anything happens."
"Okay, boss. You're not wearing a red feather this time. How about a rose, or a ribbon in your hair?"
"No. Thank you."
"Just asking."
We parted in the crowd; I peeled off, keeping close to the buildings on one side, while the boy continued on out into the center of the square. Since most of the home-goers for one reason or another kept to the edges, this made him look slightly isolated. I watched him go. A flock of sparrows erupted from the cobblestones near his feet and flapped away toward the rooftops high above. I scanned them anxiously, but there were no hidden watchers among them. All was well, for now.
A gentleman with a small struggling mustache and an enterprising nature had affixed a wheeled brazier to a bicycle and had cycled to a vantage point near the middle of the square. Here, he had set his coals alight, and was busily toasting spiced sausages for the hungry citizens of Prague. A small queue had formed, and to this my master attached himself, glancing casually around for the appearance of Harlequin.
I positioned myself nonchalantly by one of the perimeter walls and surveyed the square. I didn't like it: too many windows ablaze with the light of the dying sun; it was impossible to tell who might be looking down from them.
Six o'clock came and went. Harlequin did not appear.
The sausage queue shortened. Nathaniel was last in line. He shuffled forward, fumbling in his pocket for some change.
I checked out the passersby in all the distant fringes of the square. A small knot stood gossiping below the town hall, but most people were still hurrying homeward, entering and departing down the roads that fed into the square.
If Harlequin was anywhere close, he gave no sign.
My feeling of unease grew. There was no magic visible, but still that tingling sensation on every plane.
Out of habit, I checked each exit road. There were seven.... That at least was good: plenty of avenues of escape, should the need arise.
Nathaniel was now second in the queue. A small girl was ahead of him, demanding extra ketchup on her sausage.
A tall man strode out across the square. He wore a suit and hat; he carried a battered satchel. I eyed him up. He seemed about the right height for Harlequin, though it was difficult to be sure.
Nathaniel had not yet noticed him. He was watching the small girl stagger off under the weight of her vast hot dog.
The man made for Nathaniel, walking fast. _Too_ fast, perhaps—almost as if he had some unseen purpose...
I started forward.
The man passed close behind Nathaniel without giving him a glance. He marched away smartly over the cobbles.
I relaxed again. Perhaps the boy was right. I _was_ a little jittery.
Now Nathaniel was purchasing his sausage. He appeared to be haggling with the vendor about the amount of extra sauerkraut.
_Where_ was Harlequin? The clock on the tower of the Old Town Hall showed twelve minutes past six. He was very late.
I heard a distant jingling, somewhere amid the pedestrians on the edges of the square—faint, rhythmic, like the bells on Lapland sleighs, heard far off across the snow. It seemed to come from all sides at once. It was familiar to me, yet somehow different from anything I had heard before.... I could not place it.
Then I saw the specks of blue weaving their way through the bystanders at the entrance to every one of the seven streets, and understood. Boots slapped on cobblestones, sunlight glinted on rifles, metal paraphernalia jangled on the chests of half of Prague's armed forces as they shouldered their way into view. The crowd melted backward, voices rising in alarm. The soldiers stopped suddenly; solid lines blocked each street.
I was already running out across the square.
"Mandrake!" I shouted. "Forget Harlequin. We have to go."
The boy turned, holding his hot dog. He noticed the soldiers for the first time. "Ah," he said. "Tiresome."
"Too right it is. And we can't go over the roofs, either. We're badly outnumbered there, too."
Nathaniel looked up, treating himself to a grandstand view of several dozen foliots, which had evidently scrabbled up the roofs on the far side, and were now crouching on the uppermost tiles and chimneys of every house in the square, leering down at us and making offensive gestures with their tails.
The hot-dog seller had seen the army cordons; with a yelp of fright, he leaped onto the saddle of his bicycle and veered furiously away across the cobblestones, leaving a trail of sausages, sauerkraut, and hissing red-hot coals behind him.
"They're only human," Nathaniel said. "This isn't London, is it? Let's break our way through them."
We were running now, toward the nearest street—Karlova.
"I thought you didn't want me to use any violence or obvious magic," I said.
"Those niceties are past. If our Czech friends want to start something, we can—oh."
We still had the cyclist in view when it happened. As if crazed with fear, uncertain what to do, he had made two random sorties back and forth across the square; suddenly, head down, feet pumping, he changed tack, charging straight at one of the army lines. One soldier raised a rifle; a shot rang out. The cyclist gave a twitch, his head slumped to one side, his feet slipped from the pedals and jerked and juddered against the ground. Still carried by its own momentum, the bicycle continued forward at a great pace, brazier crashing and banging behind it, until it plowed straight into the breaking line of soldiers and overturned, spilling body, sausages, hot coals, and cold cabbage over the nearest men.
My master halted, panting hard. "I need a Shield," he said. "Now."
"As you wish."
I raised a finger, willed the Shield around us both: it hung there shimmering, visible on the second plane—an uneven, potato-shaped orb that shifted when we moved. "Now," the boy said savagely, "a Detonation. We'll blast our way through."
I looked at him. "Are you _sure_ about that? These men aren't djinn."
"Well, just knock them aside somehow. Bruise them gently. I don't care. As long as we get through unscathed—"
A soldier disentangled himself from the mess of sprawling limbs and took swift aim. A shot: a bullet whistled across the thirty-yard space, straight through the Shield and out again, parting Nathaniel's hair on the crown of his head en route.
The boy glared at me. "And what sort of Shield do you call this?"
I made a face. "They're using silver bullets. The Shield's not safe. Come on—" I turned, reached out for the scruff of his neck, and in the same movement, made a necessary change. The slim, elegant form of Ptolemy grew and roughened; skin turned to stonework, dark hair to green lichen. All across the square, the soldiers had a fine view of a swarthy, bow-legged gargoyle stumping off at speed, dragging an angry adolescent beside him.
"Where are you going?" the boy protested. "We're cut off out here!"
The gargoyle gnashed its horny beak. "Quiet. I'm thinking."
Which was hard enough to do in all that kerfuffle. I sprinted back into the center of the square. From every street, soldiers were advancing slowly, rifles at the ready, boots thudding, regalia rattling. Up on the roofs, the foliots chittered eagerly and began to stalk forward, down the steep inclines, claws on tiles clicking like the sound of a thousand insects. The gargoyle slowed and stopped. More bullets whizzed past us. Dangling as he was, the boy was vulnerable. I swung him up in front of me; stone wings descended about him, blocking off the line of fire. This had the extra advantage of muffling his complaints.
A silver bullet ricocheted off my wing, stinging my essence with its poison touch.
We were surrounded on all sides: silver at street level, foliots up high. Which left only one option. The middle way.
I retracted a wing briefly, held the boy up so he had a quick view of the square. "Take a look," I said. "Which house do you think has the thinnest walls?"
For a moment, he was uncomprehending. Then his eyes widened. "You're not—"
_"That_ one? With the pink shutters? Yes, maybe you're right. Well, let's see..."
And with that, we were off, careering through a shower of bullets—me, beak forward, eyes narrowed; him, gasping, trying to curl up into a ball and shield his head with his arms all at once. On foot, gargoyles can put together a pretty fine turn of speed, provided we pump our wings as we run, and I'm pleased to say we left a thin scorched trail on the stones behind us as we went.
A brief description of my objective: a quaint four-story building, square, broad, with tall arches at its base marking out a shopping arcade. Behind it rose the bleak spires of Tyn Church. The owner of this house loved it. Each window had twin shutters that had recently been repainted a delightful pink. Long, low flower boxes sat on every sill, crammed to bursting with pink-white peonies; frilly net curtains hung chastely across the inside of each window. It was all remarkably twee. The shutters didn't quite have hearts carved in their wood, but it was a close thing.
Soldiers ran forward from two side streets; they converged to cut us off.
Foliots skittered off gutters and descended on looping parachutes of arm skin.
I thought, on balance, the second floor was the one to aim for, midway between our enemies.
I ran, I jumped, my wings creaked and flapped; two tons of gargoyle launched proudly into the air. Two bullets rose to meet us; also, a small foliot, somewhat ahead of his fellows, descended into our path. The bullets shot by on either side; for his part, the foliot was met by a stony fist, which concertinaed him into something round and flat, resembling an aggrieved pie plate.
Two tons of gargoyle hit a window on the second floor.
My Shield was still in force. The boy and I were thus largely protected from the glass and timber, the bricks and plaster exploding all around us. This didn't stop him from crying out in woe, which was more or less what the old lady sitting in her Bath chair did as we flew past her at the topmost point of our arc. I had a brief glimpse of a genteel bedroom, in which ornamental lacework was given undue prominence; then we were out of her life once more, exiting swiftly through the opposite wall.
Down we fell, down into the cool shadows of a backstreet in a storm of bricks, through a tangle of washing that some thoughtless individual had hung on a line outside his window. We landed heavily, the gargoyle absorbing most of the impact in his hoary calves, the boy flung from his grasp and rolling off into the gutter.
I got wearily to my feet; the boy did likewise. The outcry behind us was muffled now, but neither soldiers nor foliots would be long in coming. A narrow street led away into the heart of the Old Town. Without a word, we took it.
Half an hour later, we were slumped in the shady overgrowth of an untended garden, catching our breath. No sounds of pursuit had been heard for many minutes. I had long since returned to Ptolemy's more unobtrusive form.
"So," I said. "That not-drawing-attention-to-ourselves business. How are we doing?"
The boy didn't answer. He was looking at something gripped tightly in his hands.
"I suggest we forget Harlequin," I said. "If he's got any sense, he'll be emigrating to Bermuda after all this fuss. You'll never track him down again."
"I don't need to," my master said. "Besides, it wouldn't do any good. He's dead."
"Eh?" My famed eloquence had been sorely tested by events. It was at this point that I realized the boy was still holding his hot dog. It was looking a trifle forlorn after its adventure, the sauerkraut having been largely replaced by a scrumptious coating of plaster, wood, splinters of broken glass, and flower petals. The boy was staring at it intently.
"Look, I know you're hungry," I said. "But that's going a bit far. Let me find you a burger or something."
The boy shook his head. With dusty fingers he pried apart the bread. "This," he said slowly, "is what Harlequin promised us. Our next contact in Prague." A sausage?
"No, you fool. This..." From underneath the hot dog, he drew out a small piece of card, somewhat bent and ketchup-stained. "Harlequin was the hot-dog seller," he continued. "That was his disguise. And now he's died for his country, so avenging him is part of our mission. But first—this is the magician we must find."
He held out the card. Scrawled on it were just four words:
_Kavka,_
_13 Golden Lane_
**28**
**T** o my great relief, the boy appeared to learn something from our close shave in the Old Town Square. I saw no more of the casual English tourist now; instead, for the rest of that dark, uncomfortable evening, he allowed me to guide him through Prague's maze of crumbling alleys in the appropriate manner—the stealthy, painstaking progress of two spies abroad in an enemy land. We made our way north with infinite patience, dodging the foot patrols that were now radiating out from the square by enmeshing ourselves under Concealments or, on occasion, entering derelict buildings to skulk as the soldiery tramped by. We were aided by darkness and the comparative scarcity of magical pursuit. A few foliots tripped across the rooftops, flashing out questing Pulses, but I diverted these easily without detection. Beyond that, there was nothing: no demi-afrits unleashed, no djinn of any capacity. Prague's leaders were heavily reliant on their unobservant human troops, and of this I took full advantage. Less than an hour after we had begun our flight, we had crossed the Vltava on the back of a vegetable lorry and were making our way on foot through a region of gardens toward the castle.
In the great days of the Empire, the low hill on which the castle stood had been illuminated, each day at dusk, by a thousand lanterns; these changed color, and occasionally position, at the Emperor's whim, casting multifarious light upon the trees and houses clinging to its slopes. Now the lamps were broken and rusted to their posts. Except for a few feeble orange spots that marked out windows, Castle Hill was dark before us, enfolded by night.
We came at length to the base of a steep flight of cobbled steps. Up above was Golden Lane—I glimpsed its lights glinting high against the stars, on the very edge of the cold black slab of hill. Beside the bottom of the steps was a low wall, and behind this was a midden; I left Nathaniel lurking there, while I flew, as a bat, on a quick reconnaissance up the steps.
The eastern steps had changed little, since that distant day when my master's death had released me from his service. Too much to hope that an afrit would leap out to grab my current master now. The only presences I could detect were three fat owls, hidden in the avenues of dark trees on either side of the way. I double-checked; they were owls even on the seventh plane.
Far off across the river, the hunt was still in operation. I could hear soldiers' whistles shrilling with sad futility, a sound that gave a thrill to my essence. Why? Because Bartimaeus was too fast for them, that's why; because the djinni they wanted was far away already, flitting and flapping the 256 steps up Castle Hill. And because somewhere ahead of me in the night silence was the source of the disturbance that I still felt tingling on each plane—the odd, unidentified magical activity. Things were going to get interesting.
The bat passed the tumbled husk of the old Black Tower, once occupied by the Elite Guard, but home now to no one but a dozen sleeping ravens. Beyond it was my objective. A street, narrow and unassuming, walled by a series of humble cottages—all tall stained chimneys, small windows, cracked plaster-fronts, and plain wooden doors leading straight onto the road. The place was always like this, even in the great years. Golden Lane worked under different rules.
The roofs, always sagging, were now beyond repair—a mess of warped frames and loose tiles. I settled on an exposed rib of wood on the endmost cottage and surveyed the street. In the days of Rudolf, greediest of the emperors, Golden Lane was a center of great magical effort, the objective of which was nothing less than the creation of the Philosopher's Stone. Each house was rented to a different alchemist and, for a time, the tiny cottages hummed with activity. Even after the search was abandoned, the street remained home to foreign magicians working for the Czechs. The government wanted them close beside the castle, where it could keep an eye on them. And so the situation remained, right through to the bloody night when Gladstone's forces took the city.
No foreign magicians dwelled here now. The buildings were smaller than I remembered, huddled together like seabirds on a headland. I sensed the old magics, still seeped into the stonework, but little that was new. Except... the faint tremoring on the planes was stronger now, its source much closer. The bat looked about carefully. What could it see? A dog, ferreting in a hole at the foot of one old wall. A lit window, fringed by thin curtains; inside it, an old man hunched beside a fire. A young woman, in the glare of a streetlight, walking carefully along the cobblestones in high-heeled shoes, perhaps making for the castle. Blank windows, shut casements, roof holes, and broken chimneys. Litter blowing in the wind. An upbeat scene.
And number 13, halfway down the street, a hovel indistinguishable from the rest in its griminess and melancholy, but with a glowing green nexus of force surrounding it on the sixth plane. Someone was in, and that someone did not want to be disturbed.
The bat made a quick sortie up and down the street, carefully avoiding the nexus where it curved up into the air. The rest of Golden Lane was dark and quiet, fully obsessed with its little activities of evening. I swooped quickly back the way I had come, down to the bottom of the hill to rouse my master.
"I've found the place," I said. "Mild defenses, but we should be able to get in. Hurry, while no one's around."
I've said it before, but humans are simply useless when it comes to getting about. The _time_ it took for that boy to climb those measly 256 steps, the sheer number of huffs and puffs and gratuitous pauses for breath he needed, the remarkable color he became—I've never seen the like.
"I wish we'd brought a paper bag or something," I told him. "Your face is glowing so much it can probably be seen from the other side of the Vltava. It's not even a very big hill."
"What—What—kind of—defenses are there?" His mind was strictly on the job.
"Flimsy nexus," I said. "No problem. Don't you exercise at all?"
"No. No time. Too busy."
"Of course. You're too important now. I forgot."
After ten minutes or so, we reached the ruined tower and I became Ptolemy again. In this guise, I led the way to a place where a shallow incline dropped down onto the street. Here, while my master gasped and wheezed gently against the wall, we looked out at the hovels of Golden Lane.
"Appalling lack of condition," I commented.
"Yes. They should... knock them all down... and start again."
"I was talking about _you."_
"Which—which one is it?"
"Number thirteen? That one on the right, three along. White plaster front. When you've finished dying, we'll see what we can do."
A cautious walk along the shadows of the lane took us to within a few meters of the cottage. My master was all for marching up to the front door. I reached out an arm. "Stop right there. The nexus is directly in front of you. A fingertip farther and you'll set it off."
He stopped. "You think you can get inside?"
"I don't _think,_ boy. I know. I was doing this kind of stuff when Babylon was a small-time cattle station. Stand aside, watch and learn."
I stepped up to the frail glowing net of filaments that blocked our way, bent my head close. I chose a small hole between the threads and blew gently toward it. My aim was true: the tiny sliver of Obedient Breath passed into the hole and hung there, neither slipping through, nor withdrawing. It was too light to trigger the alarm. The rest was easy. I expanded the sliver slowly, gently; as it grew, it pried apart the filaments. In a few minutes, a large round hole had been created in the net, not far above the ground. I remodeled the Breath into the shape of a hoop and stepped nonchalantly through it. "There," I said. "Your turn."
The boy frowned. "To do what? I still can't see anything."
With some exasperation, I refigured the Breath to make it visible on the second plane. "Happy now?" I said. "Just step carefully through that hoop."
He did so, but still seemed unimpressed. "Huh," he said. "You could be making this up for all I know."
"It's not my fault humans are so blind," I snapped. "Yet again you're taking my expertise for granted. Five thousand years of experience at your command, and not even a thank-you comes my way. Fine. If you don't believe there's a nexus there, I'll happily set it off for you. You'll see the magician Kavka come running."
"No, no." He was hasty now. "I believe you."
"Are you _sure?"_ My finger hovered back toward the glowing lines.
"Yes! Calm down. Now—we'll creep in at a window and catch him unawares."
"Fine. After you."
He stepped grimly forward, straight into the lines of a _second_ nexus I hadn't noticed. A loud siren noise, seemingly consisting of a dozen bells and chiming clocks, went off in the house. The noise continued for several seconds. Nathaniel looked at me. I looked at Nathaniel. Before either of us reacted, the noise was discontinued, and a rattling noise sounded behind the cottage door. The door was flung open and a tall wild-eyed man wearing a skullcap rushed out, shouting furiously.
"I _told_ you," he cried. "This is too early! It will not be ready until dawn! Will you not leave me in ?—Oh." He took heed of us for the first time. "What the devil?"
"Close," I said. "Kind of depends on your point of view." I leaped forward and grappled him to the ground. In an instant, his hands were up behind his back and nicely tied by the cord of his dressing gown. This was to prevent any quick hand gestures that might have summoned something to his aid. His mouth was stuffed with a section of Nathaniel's shirt, in case of uttered commands. This done, I bundled him to his feet and had him back indoors before my master could even open his mouth to speak an order. _That's_ how fast a djinni can act when necessary.
"Look at that!" I said proudly. "Not even any noticeable violence."
My master blinked. "You've _ruined_ my shirt," he said. "You've torn it in half."
"Shame," I said. "Now close the door. We can discuss this inside."
With the door closed, we were able to take stock of our surroundings. Mr. Kavka's house could best be described by the term _scholarly squalor._ The entire floor, and every item of furniture on it, was covered with books and loose manuscripts: in places they formed intricate strata many inches thick. These in turn were covered with a thin crust of dust, scatterings of pens and quills, and numerous dark and pungent items, which had the nasty look of being leftovers from the magician's lunches over the preceding month or two. Beneath all this was a large worktable, a chair, a leather sofa and, in the corner, a primitive rectangular sink, with a single tap. A few stray parchments had migrated into the sink, too.
It seemed that the first floor of the cottage was entirely taken up by the one room. A window at the back looked down onto the hillside and the night: lights from the city far below shone dimly through the glass. A wooden ladder extended up through a hole in the ceiling, presumably to a bedchamber. It did not look as if the magician had gone that way for some time: on close inspection, his eyes were gray rimmed, his cheeks yellow with fatigue. He was also extremely thin, standing with crumpled posture, as if all energy had drained out of him.
Not a particularly imposing sight, then—either the magician or his room. Yet this was the source of the trembling on the seven planes: I felt it, stronger than ever. It made my teeth rattle in my gums.
"Sit him down," my master said. "The sofa will do. Push that rubbish out of the way. Right." He sat on the corner of the worktable, one leg on the floor, the other dangling casually. "Now," he continued, addressing his captive smoothly in Czech, "I haven't much time, Mr. Kavka. I hope you will cooperate with me."
The magician gazed at him with his tired eyes. He gave a noticeable shrug.
"I warn you," the boy went on. "I am a magician of great power. I control many terrifying entities. This being you see before you"—here I rolled my shoulders back and puffed my chest up menacingly—"is but the meanest and least impressive of my slaves." (Here I slumped my shoulders and stuck my stomach out.) "If you do not give me the information I desire, it will be the worse for you."
Mr. Kavka made an incoherent noise; he nodded his head and rolled his eyes.
The boy looked at me. "What's that mean, d'you think?"
"How do I know? I suggest taking out the gag and finding out."
"All right. But if he utters one syllable of any kind of spell, destroy him instantly!" To accompany this, the boy attempted an expression of terrible malignity that made him look as if he had an ulcer. I removed the gag. The magician coughed and spluttered for a time. He was no more coherent than before.
Nathaniel rapped his knuckles on an exposed bit of table. "Pay attention, Mr. Kavka! I want you to listen very carefully to all my questions. Silence, I warn you, will get you nowhere. To begin—"
"I know why you have come!" The voice erupted from the magician's mouth with all the force of a river in spate. It was defiant, aggrieved, endlessly weary. "You do not need to tell me. It is the manuscript! Of course! How could it be anything else, when I have applied my all to its mysteries for the last six months? It has eaten up my life during this time; see—it has robbed me of my youth! My skin shrivels with every scratch of the pen. The manuscript! It could be nothing else!"
Nathaniel was taken aback. "A manuscript? Well, possibly. But let me make myself cl—"
"I have been sworn to secrecy," Mr. Kavka continued; "I have been threatened with death—but what do I care now? Once was quite enough. Twice—that is impossible for any single man. See how my energy has withered—" He held up his bound wrists against the light; they were sticklike and shaking, the skin so thin the light shone through between the bones. _"That_ is what he has done to me. Before this, I burned with life."
"Yes—but what—"
"I know exactly who you are," the man continued, speaking over my master as if he did not exist. "An agent of the British government. I expected you in time, though not, I admit, someone so young and hopelessly inexperienced. If you had arrived a month ago, you might have saved me. As it is, it means little enough. I care not." He gave a heartfelt sigh. "It is behind you, on the table."
The boy looked back, reached out and picked up a paper. As he did so, he cried out in sudden pain; dropped it instantly. "Aahh! It's charged! A trick—"
"Don't show your youth and inexperience," I said. "You're embarrassing me. Can't you see what that _is?_ Anyone with eyes could tell you it's the center of all the magical activity in Prague. It's no wonder it gave you a shock. Use that poncy handkerchief in your pocket and study it more closely. Then tell me what it is."
I knew already, of course. I'd seen such things before. But it did me good to see that trumped-up boy shivering with fright, too startled to disobey my instructions, wrapping his hand in his flouncy handkerchief, and picking the document up again with the utmost care. It was a large-scale manuscript, cut from calfskin, no doubt stretched and dried in accordance with the old methods—a thick, creamy parchment, beautifully smooth and crackling with power. This power came, not from the material, but from the words upon it. They were written in an unusual ink, equal parts red and black, and flowed beautifully from right to left, from the base of the page up toward the top; line upon line of intricate, calligraphic runes. The boy's eyes were wide with wonder. He sensed the artistry, the labor that had gone into this work, even if he could not read the marks. Perhaps he would have articulated this astonishment if he'd been able to get a word in. But the magician, old Kavka, was still singing like a canary, good and true.
"It isn't finished yet," he said. "You can see that. Another half-line needs to be added. A full night's work before me: a night that will be my last in any case, since he will surely kill me, if the ink itself does not drain my blood. You see the space at the top—that small, square box? His employer will write his own name there. That is the only blood _he_ needs to expend to control the creature. It works out very well for _him,_ oh yes. Less so for poor Kavka."
"What _is_ his name?" I asked. Best to get right to the point, I find.
"The employer?" Kavka laughed—a harsh sound, like an insane old bird. "I do not know. I have never met him."
The boy was still staring at the manuscript in a daze. "This is for another golem" he said slowly. "It'll be put in its mouth to animate it. He's giving the paper his lifeblood, which will feed into the golem...." He looked up at Kavka, with horrified wonder on his face. _"Why_ are you doing this?" he asked. "It's killing you."
I made an urgent gesture. "That's not what we need to know," I said. "We've got to find out _who._ Time's running out and dawn's not far off."
But the magician was talking again, a faint dullness in his gaze suggesting he no longer saw us clearly. "Because of Karl, of course," he said. "And Mia. I have been promised their safe return if I create these things. You must understand that I do not _believe_ this, but I cannot give up the one small hope I have. Perhaps he will honor it. Perhaps not. Probably they are already dead." He broke into a hideous, wracking cough. "In truth—I fear this must be so,"
The boy was blank. "Karl, Mia? I don't understand."
"They are the only family I have," the magician said. "How sad it is they have been lost. It is an unjust world. But when you are offered a chink of light, you climb toward it—even you, a cursed Briton, must understand that. I could not ignore the only chance I had to see their faces again."
"Where are they, your family?" Nathaniel asked.
"Hah!" The magician stirred at this; a brief light flared in his eyes. "How do I know? Some godforsaken prison ship? The Tower of London? Or are their bones already burned and buried? That is _your_ province, English boy—you tell _me_. You _are_ from the British government, I suppose?"
My master nodded.
"The person you seek wishes your government no good." Kavka coughed again. "But then—you know this. That is why you are here. _My_ government would kill me, if it knew what I had done. They do not want a new golem created in case it brings another Gladstone down upon Prague, wielding that terrible Staff."
"I take it," the boy said, "that your relatives are Czech spies? They went to England?"
The magician nodded. "And were captured. I heard nothing of them. Then a gentleman came calling, said his employer would restore them to me, alive, if I revealed the secrets of the golem, if I created the necessary parchment. What could I do? What would any father do?"
Uncharacteristically, my master was silent. Uncharacteristically, I was, too. I looked at Kavka's emaciated face and hands, his dulling eyes, saw in them the endless hours spent stooped over his books and papers, saw him pouring his life into the page on the small off chance that his family might be returned to him.
"The first parchment I completed a month ago," Kavka said. "That was when the messenger altered his demands. _Two_ golems were required now. In vain, I argued that it would kill me, that I would not live to see Mia and Karl again.... Ah, he is cruel. He would not listen."
"Tell us about this messenger," the boy said suddenly, "and if your children are alive, I will return them to you. I guarantee it."
The dying man made a great effort. His eyes focused on my master; their dimness was replaced by a searching strength. He appraised Nathaniel carefully. "You are very young to be making such promises," he whispered.
"I am a respected member of the government," Nathaniel said. "I have power—"
"Yes, but can you be trusted?" Kavka gave a heavy sigh. "You _are_ British, after all. I will ask your demon—" He did not look away from Nathaniel as he spoke. "What do you say? Is he trustworthy?"
I puffed out my cheeks, blew hard. "Tricky one. He's a magician. By definition he'd sell his own grandmother for soap. But he's marginally less corrupt than some of them. Possibly. A bit."
Nathaniel looked at me. "Thanks for that ringing endorsement, Bartimaeus."
"You're welcome."
But rather to my surprise, Kavka was nodding. "Very well. I leave it to your conscience, boy. I will not live to see them in any case. In truth, I am worn away. I care not a fig for you _or_ him—you can go on tearing each other's throats out until all Britain lies ravaged. But I will tell you what I know, and let that be an end." He began to cough weakly, his chin low against his chest. "Be assured of one thing. I will not complete this manuscript now. You will not have two golems enlivening the streets of London."
"Now, that _is_ a pity," a deep voice said.
Quite how he had arrived there, Nathaniel could not have said. Neither external nexus had been triggered, and not one of them—Nathaniel, Kavka, even Bartimaeus—had heard him enter the house itself. Yet there he was, leaning casually against the loft ladder, brawny arms folded across his chest.
Nathaniel's mouth opened. No words came out—nothing but a horrified gasp of recognition.
The bearded mercenary. Simon Lovelace's hired assassin.
After the fighting at Heddleham Hall some two years earlier, the mercenary had evaded capture. Government agents had hunted for him high and low, in Britain and across the Continent, but without success—no trace was ever found. In time, the police moved on; they closed their files and gave up the search. But Nathaniel could not forget. One terrible image was seared on his memory: the mercenary emerging from the shadows of Lovelace's study, carrying the Amulet of Samarkand, his coat stained with the blood of a murdered man. For years, the image had hung like a cloud in Nathaniel's mind.
And now the assassin stood two meters away, cold eyes surveying them each in turn.
As before, he radiated a malign vitality. He was tall and muscular, blue-eyed and heavy of brow. He appeared to have trimmed his beard a little, but wore his black hair longer, halfway down his neck. His clothes were jet-black—a loose shirt, a padded tunic, trousers broad above the knee, high boots that swelled about the calf. His swaggering confidence battered against Nathaniel like a fist. Nathaniel was immediately conscious of his own paltry strength, of the weakness of his limbs.
"Don't bother introducing us, Kavka," the man said. His voice was lazy, deep, and slow. "We three are old acquaintances."
The old man gave a long, sad sigh, which was hard to interpret. "It would be pointless in any case. I know none of your names."
"Names have never been an issue for us."
If the djinni was startled, it gave no sign. "You got your boots back, I see," it said.
The dark brows knotted. "I _said_ that you'd pay for that. And so you will. You _and_ the boy."
Until this moment, Nathaniel had been sitting on Kavka's desk, transfixed by shock. Now, in a concerted effort to assert some authority, he pushed forward and stood upright, hands on hips.
"You're under arrest," he said, glaring fiercely at the mercenary as he spoke.
The man returned his gaze with such baleful unconcern that Nathaniel felt himself shrinking and cowering where he stood. In fury, he cleared his throat. "Did you hear what I said?"
The man's arm moved—so fast that Nathaniel barely registered it—and a sword rested in his hand. It pointed lazily in Nathaniel's direction. "Where is _your_ weapon, child?"
Nathaniel jutted out his chin defiantly and jerked a thumb toward Bartimaeus. "There," he said. "He's an afrit at my sole command. One word from me and he'll tear you apart."
The djinni seemed a little taken aback. "Er, yes," it said doubtfully. "That's right."
A glacial smile spread beneath the beard. "This is the creature you had with you before. It failed to kill me then. What makes you think it'll have more luck this time?"
"Practice makes perfect," the djinni said.
"How true." Another flicker of movement, another blur about his person—and in his other hand he held an S-shaped metal disc. "I have practiced long with this," the mercenary said. "It will cut through your essence and _still_ return to my outstretched hand."
"By that point, you wouldn't have a hand left to catch _with,"_ Nathaniel said. "He's fast, my afrit is. Like a striking cobra. He'd have you before that thing left your grasp." He glanced between djinni and mercenary. Neither looked overly convinced.
_"No_ demon is as fast as me," the mercenary said.
"Is that so?" Nathaniel replied. "You just try him."
Bartimaeus raised a hasty finger. "Now look here—"
"Give him your best shot."
"I might just do that."
"See what happens to you."
"Hey, steady on," the djinni said. "This macho posturing is all very well, but leave me out of it, please. Why don't you two have an arm wrestle, or compare biceps or something? Work your tensions out that way."
Nathaniel ignored him. "Bartimaeus," he began, "I order you—"
At that moment something unexpected happened. Kavka stood up.
"Stay where you are!" The mercenary's eyes swiveled, the sword point shifted.
Kavka did not seem to have heard. He swayed slightly where he was, then tottered forward, away from the sofa, across the paper-strewn floor. His bare feet made little crunching noises as he trod upon the parchments. In a couple of steps he had reached the table. A bone-thin arm shot out and seized the golem manuscript from Nathaniel's loose grasp. He stood back, hugging it to his chest.
The mercenary made as if to hurl his disc, but paused. "Put that down, Kavka!" he growled. "Think of your family—think of Mia."
Kavka's eyes were closed; he was swaying again. He raised his face toward the ceiling. "Mia? She is lost to me."
"Complete that paper tonight, and you will see her tomorrow, I swear it!"
The eyes opened. They were dull, but lucid. "What matter? I will be dead by dawn. My life force is already drained away."
A look of intense irritation had appeared on the mercenary's face. He was not the kind of man who enjoyed negotiation. "My employer assures me that they are safe and well," he said. "We can remove them from prison tonight and fly them to Prague by morning. Think hard—do you wish _all_ this work to be wasted?"
Nathaniel glanced at the djinni. It was shifting position slowly. The mercenary did not appear to have noticed. Nathaniel cleared his throat, sought to distract him further. "Don't listen to him, Kavka," he said. "He's lying."
The mercenary flashed Nathaniel a look. "It is a matter of intense displeasure to me," he said, "that you were not caught this afternoon in the square. I gave the police the most careful instructions, yet _still_ they bungled it. I should have tackled you myself."
"You _knew_ we were here?" Nathaniel said.
"Of course. Your timing was most inappropriate. Another day or two and it would have been irrelevant—I'd have been back in London with the completed manuscript. Your investigations would have come to nothing. As it was, I needed to keep you occupied. Hence my tip-off to the police."
Nathaniel's eyes narrowed. " _Who_ told you I'd be coming?"
"My employer, of course," the mercenary said. "I told the Czechs and they followed that bumbling British agent around all day, knowing he would eventually lead them to you. Incidentally, they believe you to be in Prague to plant a bomb. But all that is academic now. They let me down."
He had the sword and disc outstretched as he spoke, his eyes flicking between Nathaniel and the magician. Nathaniel's head was awhirl—hardly _anyone_ had known he was coming to Prague, yet somehow the mercenary had been informed. Which meant... No, he had to concentrate. He saw Bartimaeus still inching sideways, subtle as a snail. A little farther and the djinni would be out of view, in just the right position to attack.
"I see you found another foul traitor to replace Lovelace," he snapped.
"Lovelace?" The man's brows flickered with mild amusement. "He was not my main employer even then. He was nothing but a sideshow, an amateur, much too eager for success. My master encouraged him, as far as it went, but Lovelace was not his only tool. Nor am I his only servant now."
Nathaniel was beside himself with fury. _"Who_ is it? Who do you work for?"
"Someone who pays well. Surely that is obvious. You are a strange little magician."
At that moment, the djinni, which had shuffled successfully to the fringes of the mercenary's gaze, raised its hand to strike. But in the same instant, Kavka acted. All this while, he had been standing beside Nathaniel, holding the golem parchment in his hands. Now, without a word, his eyes tight shut, he tensed suddenly, and ripped the manuscript in half.
The effect was unexpected.
An outpouring of magical force surged from the torn parchment and blasted around the cottage like an earthquake. Nathaniel was tossed into the air amid a maelstrom of flying objects: djinni, mercenary, table, sofa, paper, pens, splashing ink. For a split second Nathaniel could see the three visible planes shaking at different rates: everything was multiplied three times. The walls shuddered, the floor tipped. The electric light crackled and went out. Nathaniel crashed heavily against the floor.
The surge poured away, through the floorboards, down into the earth. The manuscript's charge was gone. The planes steadied, the reverberations died. Nathaniel raised his head. He was slumped beneath the upturned sofa, looking toward the window. The lights of the city still shone through it, but seemed oddly higher than before. It took a moment to grasp what had happened. The entire cottage had tipped, and was perched right on the edge of the hill. The floorboards ran down in a gentle gradient toward the window. As he watched, many little objects came sliding past, to rest up against the tilted wall.
The room was quite dark and filled with the rustling noise of gently settling paper. Where was the mercenary? Where was Bartimaeus? Nathaniel lay very still beneath the sofa, eyes wide as a rabbit's in the night.
He could see Kavka well enough. The old magician was lying faceup on his tilted sink with a dozen sheets of paper floating down upon him in a makeshift shroud. Even from a distance, Nathaniel could see that he was dead.
The weight of the sofa pressed heavily upon one of Nathaniel's legs, pinning it to the floor. He dearly wanted to shift it off, but knew it was too risky. He lay quiet, watched and listened.
A footstep; a figure coming slowly into view. The mercenary paused beside the body on the sink, inspected it for a moment, uttered a quiet curse, and moved on to rummage through the scattered furniture near the window. He went slowly, legs tensed against the gradient of the floor. He no longer held his sword, but something silvery shone in his right hand.
Finding nothing among the debris, the mercenary began to climb back across the room, head swinging methodically from side to side, eyes squinting in the darkness. In horror, Nathaniel saw that he was drawing ever closer to the sofa. Nathaniel could not retreat: the sofa that protected him from view also trapped him. He bit his lip, trying to recall the words of an appropriate summoning.
The mercenary appeared to notice the upturned sofa for the first time. For two seconds, he stood very still. Then, silver disc in hand, he bent his knees and crouched down to lift the sofa from Nathaniel's cringing head.
And Bartimaeus appeared behind him.
The Egyptian boy was floating above the tilted floor; its feet hung limp, its hand was outstretched. A silver nimbus played about its form, flashing upon the white cloth around its waist and shining darkly in its hair. The djinni whistled once, a jaunty sound. In a blur of movement the mercenary spun; the disc left his hand; it whistled through the air, cut through the radiance at Bartimaeus's side and looped out across the room.
"Nah-nah, you missed," the djinni said. An Inferno erupted from its fingers and engulfed the mercenary where he stood. A gobbet of flame enveloped his upper body; he cried out, clutching at his face. He stumbled forward, casting a red-yellow radiance on the room, glaring through his fiery clutching fingers.
The whistling disc reached the farthest point of the room; with a change of timbre, it doubled back, shooting toward the mercenary's hand. En route it sliced through the Egyptian boy's side. Nathaniel heard the djinni cry out; saw the boy's form flicker and shake.
The disc returned to the burning hand.
Nathaniel pulled his leg clear of the sofa; he pushed it frantically from him and, stumbling on the uneven floor, clawed himself to his feet.
The Egyptian boy vanished. In its place, lit by the flames, a limping rat scurried into the shadows. The burning man stalked after it, eyes blinking in the heat. His clothes were blackening on his body; the disc glinted redly in his fingers.
Nathaniel tried to command his thoughts. Next to him was the loft ladder, which had toppled to lodge diagonally against the ceiling. He steadied himself against it.
The rat hurried across an aged parchment. The paper cracked loudly under its feet.
The disc sliced the parchment in half; the rat gave a squeak and rolled to the side.
Burning fingers moved; two more discs appeared in them. The rat scampered away frantically, but was not fast enough. A disc embedded itself in the floorboards, snaring the rat's tail beneath a silver barb. The rat thrashed weakly, trying to pull itself free.
The mercenary stalked over. He raised a smoldering boot.
With a furious effort, Nathaniel dislodged the loft ladder, causing it to fall heavily upon the mercenary's back. Caught off-guard, the man lost his balance and fell sideways in a shower of sparks. He landed on the cottage floor, setting light to manuscripts all around.
The rat gave a great heave, pulled its tail free. With a jerking leap, it landed by Nathaniel's side. "Thanks for that," it gasped. "Did you see how I lined him up for you?"
Nathaniel was staring wide-eyed at the lumbering figure, who was hurling the ladder from him in a spasm of rage, seemingly indifferent to the surrounding flames. "How _can_ he survive?" he whispered. "The fire's all over him. He's burning up."
"Just his clothes, I fear," the rat said. "His body's quite invulnerable. But we've got him by the window now. Watch out."
It raised a small pink paw. The bearded man turned and saw Nathaniel for the first time. He snarled in rage, lifted a hand; something silver sparkled there. He reached back—
And was met with the full force of a Hurricane head on: it rushed from the rat's paw, lifted him off his feet, and sent him backward through the window, surrounded by a glittering cascade of broken glass and burning scraps of paper that were whipped up with him off the floor. Out into the night he fell, outward and far away down the hill into the night, his descent marked by the flames still licking up from his body. Nathaniel saw him bounce once, distantly, then lie still.
The rat was already racing up the sloping floor toward the cottage door. "Come on," it cried. "Think that'll stop him? We've five minutes, maybe ten."
Nathaniel scrambled after it, over piles of smoldering paper and out into the night, triggering first one nexus, then the other. The drone of the alarms rose up into the sky and roused the inhabitants of Golden Lane from their melancholic dreams, but rat and boy were already beyond the ruined tower and racing down the castle steps as if all the demons ever summoned were clamoring at their heels.
Late the following morning, wearing fresh clothes and a milliner's wig, and flourishing a newly stolen pass, Nathaniel crossed the Czech border into British-controlled Prussia. Hitching into the town of Chemnitz in a baker's van, he went straight to the British consulate and explained his position. Phone calls were made, passwords checked, and his identity verified. By midafternoon he was aboard a plane departing the local aerodrome for London.
The djinni had been dismissed at the border, since the stress of the prolonged summoning was wearing Nathaniel out. He had had little sleep for days. The aircraft was warm, and despite his desire to puzzle through the mercenary's words, his weariness and the hum of the engines had their effect. Almost before the plane left the ground, Nathaniel was asleep.
An attendant woke him at Box Hill. "Sir, we have arrived. A car awaits you. You are requested to make haste."
He emerged onto the exit stairs under a light, cold drizzle. A black limousine was waiting beside the landing strip. Nathaniel descended slowly, still scarcely awake. He half-expected to see his master there, but the backseat was empty. The chauffeur touched his cap as he opened the door.
"Ms. Whitwell's compliments, sir," he said. "You are to come to London immediately. The Resistance have struck in the heart of Westminster, and—Well, you will see the results for yourself. There is no time to lose. We have an unfolding disaster on our hands."
Wordlessly, Nathaniel climbed into the car. The door clicked shut behind him.
The flight of stairs kept to the contour of the pillar above, circling down clockwise into the ground. The passageway was tight and the ceiling low. Even Kitty was forced to stoop, and Fred and Nick—who were practically bent double—had to descend sideways, in the manner of two awkward crabs. The air was hot and faintly foul.
Mr. Pennyfeather led the way, his lantern set to its strongest illumination. Everyone else did likewise, their spirits rising with the renewed light. Now that they were safely underground, there was no chance that anyone would see them. The dangerous part was over.
Kitty followed the scuffling Nick, with Stanley treading close behind. Even with his lantern at her back, the shadows seemed intent on closing in; they darted and leaped incessantly at the corners of her vision.
A goodly number of spiders had made their homes in crevices on either side of the stairs. From Mr. Pennyfeather's curses, it was evident that he was having to clear his path through a hundred years of choking cobwebs.
The descent did not take long. Kitty counted thirty-three steps, and then she was stepping through a hinged metal grille and out into an open space, ill defined by lantern light. She stepped aside to allow Stanley to exit from the stairwell, too, then pulled her balaclava off. Mr. Pennyfeather had just done likewise. His face was faintly flushed, his ring of gray-white hair spiky and disheveled.
"Welcome," he whispered, in a high, hoarse voice, "to Gladstone's tomb."
Kitty's first sensation was of the sheer imagined weight of ground above her. The ceiling had been constructed from neatly carved stone blocks; with the passing years, the alignment of these stones had shifted. Now they bulged ominously in the center of the chamber, pressing down against the weak light as if they wished to snuff it out. The air was full of taint, and smoke twirled from the lanterns and wreathed thickly against the ceiling. Kitty found herself clutching instinctively at each breath.
The crypt itself was fairly narrow, perhaps only four meters wide at its broadest point; its length was indeterminate, extending away into the shadow beyond the radiance of their lights. Its floor was flagged and bare, except for a thick carpeting of white mold that, in places, had extended halfway up the walls. The industrious spiders of the stairwell seemed not to have ventured through the grille: there were no cobwebs to be seen.
Cut into the side wall of the chamber; directly opposite the entrance, was a long shelf, bare except for three glass hemispheres. Although the glass was dirty and cracked, Kitty could just make out the remnants of a circlet of dried flowers inside each one: ancient lilies, poppies, and sticks of rosemary, dotted with brackish lichen. The burial flowers of the great magician. Kitty shuddered and turned to the main focus of the company's attention—the marble sarcophagus directly below the shelf.
It was eight feet long and five feet high, plainly carved without ornament or inscription of any kind, except for a bronze plaque that had been affixed to the center of one side. Its lid, also of marble, sat on top, though Kitty thought it looked slightly askew, as if it had been dropped into place hurriedly and left unadjusted.
Mr. Pennyfeather and the others were crowding around the sarcophagus in great excitement.
"It's in the Egyptian style," Anne was saying. "Typical grandiosity, wanting to follow the pharaohs. No hieroglyphs, though."
"What's this say?" Stanley was peering at the plaque. "Can't make it out."
Mr. Pennyfeather was squinting, too. "It's in some devilish tongue. Hopkins might have read it, but it's no good to us. Now—" He straightened and tapped his stick against the sarcophagus lid. "How can we get this thing open?"
Kitty's brow furrowed with distaste and something approaching apprehension. "Do we need to? What makes you think the stuff's in there?"
Mr. Pennyfeather's nervousness revealed itself in his brittle irritation. "Well, it's hardly going to be lying about on the floor—is it, girl? The old ghoul will have wanted it close by him, even in death. The rest of the room's empty."
Kitty held her ground. "Have you _checked?"_
"Ah! A waste of time! Anne—take a lantern and check the far end. Make sure there aren't any alcoves in the far side. Frederick, Nicholas, Stanley—we'll need all our strength to shift this. Can you get purchase on it, your side? We may need the rope."
As the men gathered around, Kitty stood back to watch Anne's progress. It immediately became obvious that Mr. Pennyfeather was correct. After a few steps, Anne's lantern illuminated the far wall of the chamber, a smooth surface of clear stone blocks. She swept the light across it a few times, checking for niches or the outline of doors, but there was nothing to be seen. Shrugging at Kitty, she returned to the center of the room.
Stanley had produced his rope and was assessing one end of the lid. "It's going to be hard to loop it," he said, scratching the back of his head. "Can't wind it around anything. And it's too heavy to lift...."
"We might lug it sideways," Fred said. "I'm game."
"Nah, it's too heavy. Solid stone."
"There may not be much friction," Nick pointed out. "The marble's smooth enough."
Mr. Pennyfeather wiped the sweat from his brow. "Well, boys—we'll have to try. The only alternative is igniting a sphere on it, and that might damage the goods. If you, Fred, set your boots against the wall, we'll get extra leverage. Now, Nick—"
While the discussion proceeded, Kitty bent down to inspect the bronze plaque. It was thickly covered in neat little wedge-shaped marks, arranged together to form what were evidently words or symbols. Not for the first time, Kitty regretted her own ignorance. Knowledge of obscure scripts was not something you were taught at school, and Mr. Pennyfeather had refused to allow his company to study the spell books they had stolen. She wondered idly whether Jakob's father would have been able to read this script, and what it would have told him.
"Kitty, shift out of the way, will you? There's a good girl." Stanley had taken hold of one corner of the lid, Nick was on another, and Fred—who had an end all to himself—had braced a foot against the wall, just beneath the shelf. They were readying themselves for the first effort. Biting her lip at Stanley's facetiousness, Kitty got to her feet and moved away, wiping her face against her sleeve. Sweat was beading her skin; the air in the crypt was very close.
"Now, boys! Push!" With snarls of effort, the men set to. Anne and Mr. Pennyfeather held lanterns up around the three to illuminate their progress. Light glistened on contorted faces, grinning teeth, dripping brows. Just for a moment, a faint grinding noise could be heard above their groaning.
"All right—rest!" Nick, Fred, and Stanley collapsed with gasping cries. Mr. Pennyfeather hobbled around, clapping them soundly on the shoulders. "It moved! Definite movement! Well done, my lads! No sign of the interior yet, but we'll get there. Take a breather, then we'll try again."
And so they did. And yet again. Each time, their gasps grew louder, their muscles cracking with the effort; each time, the lid moved sideways a little more, then stubbornly stopped again. Mr. Pennyfeather urged them on, dancing about them like a demon, his limp almost forgotten, his face contorted in the bouncing light. "Push—that's it!—our fortune is inches below your noses, if you just'll put in the effort! Oh—push, damn you, Stanley! A little further! Break your backs for it, boys!"
Picking up a discarded lantern, Kitty idled about the empty crypt, scuffing her sneakers in the thick white mold, marking time. She dawdled to the far end of the chamber, almost to the wall, then turned and dawdled back.
Something occurred to her, a half-perceived oddity waving vaguely at the back of her mind. For a moment, she couldn't pin down what it was, and the cheer that came from the others after a particularly successful heave provided further distraction. She spun on her heels, looking back toward the far wall, and raised her lantern.
A wall—no more, no less.
Then what was it that...?
The mold. The lack of it.
All around her, underfoot, the white mold stretched; scarcely a single flagstone remained free. And on both sides, the walls had been subjected likewise. The mold was gradually extending up toward the ceiling. One day, perhaps, the whole room would be swathed in it.
Yet on the far wall, there was not a single scrap of mold. The blocks were clean, their outlines as sharp as if the builders had departed that very afternoon.
Kitty turned to the others. "Hey—"
"That's it! One more turn'll do it, lads!" Mr. Pennyfeather was practically capering. "I can see a space now in the corner! Another heave and we'll be the first to see old Gladstone since they tucked his bones away!"
No one heard Kitty; no one paid her the slightest bit of attention.
She turned back to the far wall. No mold at all... It didn't make sense. Perhaps these clean blocks were made of a different kind of stone?
Kitty stepped across to touch the blocks; as she did so, her shoe caught on the uneven floor and she fell forward. She raised her hands to brace herself against the wall—and fell right through it.
An instant later, she crashed hard against the flagstones of the floor, jarring her wrists and knee. The lantern bounced from her outstretched hand and clattered down beside her.
Kitty screwed up her eyes in pain. Her knee was throbbing badly, and all her fingers tingled with the shock of the fall. But her strongest sensation was one of puzzlement. How had it happened? She was sure she'd fallen against the wall, yet she seemed to have passed through it as if it wasn't there.
Behind her came a fearsome grinding, followed by a terrific crash, several whoops of triumph and also, somewhere amid it all, a cry of pain. She heard Mr. Pennyfeather's voice. "Well _done,_ my boys! Well done! Stop sniveling, Stanley—you're not badly hurt. Gather around—let's take a look at him!"
They'd done it. This she had to see. Stiffly, painfully, Kitty raised herself on hands and knees and reached out for the lantern. She got to her feet and, as she did so, the lantern light illuminated a little of the space she was in.
Despite herself, despite the time she had spent out on campaign, despite all the narrow escapes, the traps, the demons, and the deaths of her friends, the shock of what she now saw set her gasping and trembling again like the child she'd been on the iron bridge so many years before. Her pulse thudded in her ears; her head swam. She heard a long, high, piercing wail echoing across the chamber, and jumped, before realizing that it came from her own mouth.
Behind her, the eager celebrations went suddenly silent. Anne's voice. "What was that? Where's Kitty?"
Kitty was still staring straight ahead. "I'm here," she whispered.
"Kitty!"
"Where are you?"
"Drat the girl—has she gone up the stairs? Nicholas, go and look."
"Kitty!"
"I'm right here. At the far end. Can't you see?" She could not raise her voice; her throat felt too tight. "I'm here. And I'm not alone...."
The true end of the chamber was not much farther than the illusory one through which she had fallen, perhaps only three meters away from where she stood. The white mold had disregarded the false barrier and marched straight through: it clad the walls and floor and what lay on the floor, and shone with a sickly radiance in the cold light of her lantern. But despite its thick coating, it did not obscure the objects that lay arranged in a neat row between the walls; their nature was all too clear. There were six of them lying packed together, side by side, their heads flung out toward Kitty, their legs pointing away toward the back wall of the chamber, their bony hands resting quietly on their chests. The sealed conditions of the crypt had ensured that their flesh had not entirely rotted through; instead it had shrunk about the skeletons, so that the jaws of the skulls were drawn downward by the tightening skin, giving them permanent expressions of unbridled terror. The skin itself was blackened like fossil wood or tortured leather. The eyes had entirely shriveled away. All six were clothed strangely, in old-fashioned suits; heavy boots rested on their lolling feet. The ribcage of one poked through his shirt. Their hair remained exactly as it had been in life; it flowed from the dreadful heads like river weed. Kitty noticed that one of the men still had a mop of beautiful auburn curls.
Her companions were still calling out her name; their stupidity amazed her.
"I'm _here!"_ With a sudden effort, she broke through the inertia of her shock, turning and shouting back along the chamber. Nick and Anne were both close by; at the sound of her voice, their heads darted around, but their eyes remained blank and puzzled, passing over Kitty as if she were not there. Kitty groaned in exasperation and stepped toward them; as she did so, a strange fizzling sensation passed across her body.
Nick cried out. Anne dropped her lantern.
"You'd better come and see this," Kitty said tersely; then, when they did not reply: "What the devil's wrong with you?"
Her anger snapped Nick out of his shock. "L-look at you," he stammered. "You're half in, half out of the wall." Kitty looked down—sure enough, from this side, the illusion held quite fast: her stomach, chest, and front foot protruded from the stones as if they sliced right through her. Her body tingled at the margins where the magic touched.
"Doesn't even glimmer," Anne whispered. "I've never seen an illusion so strong."
"You can walk through," Kitty said dully. "There's things behind it."
"Treasure?" Nick was eagerness itself.
"No."
In moments, the rest of the company had approached the wall and, after some slight hesitation, stepped through the illusion one by one. The stones did not so much as ripple. From the other side, the barrier was quite invisible.
All six stared in shocked silence at the illuminated corpses.
"I vote we get out now," Kitty said.
"Look at the _hair,"_ Stanley whispered. "And their nails. Look how long they are."
"Laid out like sardines on a plate..."
"How d'you think—?"
"Suffocated, maybe..."
"See his chest—that hole? That didn't come natural...."
"We don't need to worry. They're very _old"_ Mr. Pennyfeather spoke with hearty assurance, designed perhaps to comfort himself as much as the others. "Look at the color of the skin. They're practically mummified."
"Gladstone's time, you think?" Nick asked.
"Undoubtedly. The style of clothes proves it. Late nineteenth century."
"But, six of them.... One for each of us...."
"Shut up, Fred."
"But why would they be—?"
"Some kind of sacrifice, perhaps...?"
"Mr. Pennyfeather, listen, we really—"
"No, but why conceal them? It makes no sense."
"Grave robbers, then? Punished by entombment."
"We _really_ need to go."
"That's more likely. But again, why hide them?"
"And who did it? And what about the Pestilence? That's what I don't understand. If they triggered it..."
"Mr. Pennyfeather!" Kitty stamped her foot and shouted; the noise reverberated across the chamber. The discussion stopped abruptly. She forced the words out through a tightened throat. "There's something here that we don't know about. Some kind of trap. We should forget the treasure and leave now."
"But these bones are _old,"_ Stanley said, adopting Mr. Pennyfeather's decisive manner. "Calm down, girl."
"Don't patronize _me,_ you little twerp."
"I agree with Kitty," Anne said.
"But my _dears_ —" Mr. Pennyfeather placed a hand upon Kitty's shoulder and rubbed it with false good humor. "This is very unpleasant, I agree. But we mustn't let it get out of proportion. However these poor fellows died, they were placed here a very long time ago—probably while the tomb was still open. That would be why the illusory wall that hides them has got no mold, see? It's all grown up since then. The walls were clean and new when they met their end." He gesticulated at the corpses with his stick. "Think about it. These boys were lying here _before_ the tomb was sealed—otherwise the Pestilence would have been triggered when they broke in. And it wasn't—because we've just seen it and dispersed it."
His words had a muted effect upon the group; there was some nodding and mumbling of agreement. But Kitty shook her head. "We've got six dead men calling out to us," she said. "We'd be fools to ignore them."
"Huh! They're _old."_ From the relief in Fred's voice, it seemed the implications of this concept had only just dribbled through to him. "Old bones." He stretched out a boot and nudged the nearest skull derisively; it rolled to the side, away from the neck, and rocked briefly on the flagstones with a gentle sound like rattling crockery.
"You must learn, Kitty dear, to be less emotional," Mr. Pennyfeather said, removing a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his brow. "We have already opened the old devil's sarcophagus—and the earth's not swallowed us up, has it? Come and _look,_ girl: you haven't seen it yet. A silken winding sheet laid out prettily on top—it alone must be worth a fortune. Five minutes, Kitty. Five minutes is all we'll need to lift that sheet and whisk the purse and crystal ball away. We won't disturb Gladstone's sleep for long."
Kitty said nothing; she turned and stalked white-faced through the barrier and back along the chamber. She could not trust herself to speak. Her anger was directed as much at herself—for her own weakness and unreasoning fear—as at her leader. His words seemed facile to her; too glib and easy. But she was not used to directly opposing his will; and she knew the mood of the group was with him.
The _tap-tap-tap_ ping of Mr. Pennyfeather's stick came close behind her. He was slightly out of breath. "I hope, Kitty dear, that you—you would do me the honor—of taking the crystal ball itself—in your bag. I trust you, you see—I trust you implicitly. We shall all be strong for five minutes more, then leave this cursed place forever. Gather around, and get your knapsacks ready. Our fortune awaits us!"
The lid of the sarcophagus remained where it had fallen, at an angle between the tomb and the floor. A section of one corner had snapped off on impact, and lay a little apart amid the mold. A lantern sat on the floor burning merrily, but no light was cast up into the gaping black interior of the tomb. Mr. Pennyfeather took up position at one end of the sarcophagus, leaned his stick up against the stone, and grasped the marble for support. He smiled around at the company and flexed his fingers.
"Frederick, Nicholas—hold your lanterns up and over. I'd like to see _exactly_ what I'm touching." Stanley giggled nervously.
Kitty glanced back up the chamber. Through the dark, she could just glimpse the impassive outline of the fake wall, its dreadful secret hidden behind. She took a deep breath. Why? It made no sense...
She turned back to the sarcophagus. Mr. Pennyfeather leaned in, took tentative hold of something, and pulled.
The silken sheet rose from the sarcophagus almost soundlessly, with the faintest of dry whispers and a delicate cloud of brown dust that erupted up like spores from a bursting puffball. The dust wheeled in the crowding lantern light, then sank slowly. Mr. Pennyfeather gathered up the sheet and rested it carefully on the marble rim; then, and only then, did he lean forward and look inside.
"Lower the light," he whispered.
Nick did so; everyone craned their heads over and looked.
"Ahh..." Mr. Pennyfeather's sigh was that of a gourmet at his table, whose meal sits before him and who knows that gratification is near. A chorus of gasps and gentle cries echoed him. Even Kitty's misgivings were momentarily forgotten.
Each one of them knew the face as if it were his or her own. It was a centerpiece of life in London, an unavoidable presence in every public place. They had seen its image a thousand times, on statues, memorials, on roadside murals. It was inscribed in profile on school textbooks, on government forms, on posters and placards erected on high billboards in every market. It looked down with austere command from plinths in half the leafy squares; it gazed up at them from the pound notes drawn crumpled from their pockets. Through all their hurrying and scurrying, through all their daily hopes and anxieties, the face of Gladstone was a constant companion, watching over their little lives.
Here, in the tomb, they looked upon the face with a thrill of recognition.
It was fashioned, perhaps, from gold, thinly beaten and finely shaped; a death mask fit for the founder of an empire. While the body still lay cooling, skilled craftsmen had taken the likeness, made the cast, poured in the liquid metal. Upon burial, the mask had been set back on the face, an incorruptible image to gaze forever into the darkness, while the flesh beneath it fell away. It was an old man's face: hook-nosed, thin-lipped, gaunt about the cheeks—where suggestions of the sideburns lingered in the gold—and incised by a thousand wrinkles. The eyes, sunk back deep within the sockets, had been left blank, the gold cut through. Two gaping holes stared blackly at eternity. To the company, gazing open-mouthed, it seemed that they looked upon the face of an emperor from ancient times, wreathed in his awful power.
All about the mask was a pillow of white hair.
He lay neatly, in a pose not dissimilar to the bodies in the secret annex, hands clasped upon his stomach. The fingers were entirely bone. He wore a black suit, still buttoned, taut enough above the ribs, but sagging nastily elsewhere. Here and there, industrious worms or mites in the material had started the process of decay, and small patches of white shone through. The shoes were small, black, and narrow, wearing an additional patina of dust over the dull leather.
The body rested on red satin pillows, on a high shelf that took up half the width of the sarcophagus interior. While Kitty's eyes had lingered on the golden mask, the others'had been drawn to the rather lower shelf alongside.
"Look at the glow..." Anne breathed. "It's incredible!"
"It's _all_ worth taking," Stanley said, grinning stupidly. "I've never seen an aura like it. _Something_ here must be really strong, but it's all got power—even the cloak."
Across the knees, and neatly folded, was a garment of black and purple, topped by a small gold brooch. "The Cloak of State," Mr. Pennyfeather whispered. "Our friend and benefactor wants that. He's welcome to it. Look at the rest...."
And there they were, piled high upon the lower shelf: the marvelous grave goods they had come to find. There was a clustering of golden objects—small statuettes fashioned in the shape of animals, ornate boxes, jeweled swords and daggers, a fringe of black onyx globes, a small triangular skull of some unknown creature, a couple of sealed scrolls. Up by the head sat something small and domed, covered in a black cloth now gray with dust—presumably the prophetic crystal ball. Near the feet, between a flask with a stopper carved like a dog's head and a dull pewter chalice, a satin purse sat inside a glass container. Alongside was a small black bag, fixed with a bronze clasp. Down the whole length of the sarcophagus, close to the body itself, ran a ceremonial sword and, beside it, a staff of blackened wood, plain and unadorned, except for a pentacle carved within a circle at the top.
Even without the others' gifts, Kitty could feel the power emanating from this assembly. It practically vibrated in the air.
Mr. Pennyfeather pulled himself together with a start. "Right, action stations. Bags open and at the ready. We're taking the lot." He glanced at his watch and gave a gasp of surprise. "Almost one o'clock! We've wasted far too much time already. Anne—you first."
He leaned his body against the lip of the sarcophagus, stretching inside and seizing objects in both hands. "Here. Egyptian these, if I'm not mistaken.... There's the purse.... _Careful_ with it, woman! Bag full? Right—Stanley, take her place...."
While the sarcophagus was being despoiled, Kitty stood back, her rucksack open, arms loosely at her sides. The unease that had engulfed her upon the discovery of the bodies drifted in on her once more. She kept glancing over toward the fake wall and back toward the entrance stairs, her skin prickling and crawling with imaginary fears. This anxiety was accompanied by a growing regret at the night's activities. Never had her ideals—her desire to see the magicians vanquished and power returned to the commoners—seemed so divorced from the reality of Mr. Pennyfeather's group. And what a grotesque reality it was. The naked greed of her companions, their excited cries, Mr. Pennyfeather's red, glistening face, the soft clinking of the valuables as they disappeared into the outstretched bags—all of it seemed suddenly repugnant to her. The Resistance was little more than a band of thieves and grave robbers—and she was one of them.
"Kitty! Over here!"
Stanley and Nick had filled their bags and moved aside. It was her turn. Kitty approached. Mr. Pennyfeather was now stretching in farther than ever, his head and shoulders invisible within the sarcophagus. He emerged briefly, handed her a small funerary pot and a jar decorated with a snake head and tipped himself forward again. "Here..." His voice echoed oddly in the tomb. "Take the cloak... and the staff, too. Both those are for Mr. Hopkins's benefactor, who has—oof!—guided us so well. I can't reach the other bits from this side; Stanley, can you take over, please?"
Kitty took the stick and shoved the cloak deep into her bag, recoiling a little from its cold and faintly greasy touch. She watched Stanley raise himself onto the lip of the sarcophagus and swing his top half down, reaching into the depths while his legs waved momentarily in the air. At the opposite end, Mr. Pennyfeather leaned against the wall, wiping his brow. "Just a few things left," he panted. "Then we—oh, drat the boy! _Why_ can't he be more careful?"
Perhaps in an overabundance of enthusiasm, Stanley had fallen headfirst inside the sarcophagus, knocking his lantern backward onto the floor. There was a dull thud.
"You little fool! If you've broken anything..." Mr. Pennyfeather leaned forward to look inside, but could see nothing in the well of darkness. Intermittent rustling sounds came from below, together with sounds of uncoordinated movement. "Pick yourself up _carefully._ Don't damage the crystal ball."
Kitty rescued the lantern from where it was rolling on the flagstones, muttering at Stanley's stupidity. He had always been an oaf, but this was priceless, even for him. She clambered over the broken lid to hold the lantern above the sarcophagus, but jumped back in shock as, with great speed and suddenness, Stanley's head popped up above the rim. His cap had fallen down over his face, obscuring it completely.
"Whoops!" he said, in a high, irritating voice. "Clumsy, _clumsy_ me."
Kitty's blood boiled. "What d'you think you're doing, startling me like that? This isn't a game!"
"Hurry it up, Stanley," Mr. Pennyfeather said.
_"So_ sorry. _So_ sorry." But Stanley didn't seem sorry at all. He didn't adjust his cap or emerge any farther from the tomb.
Mr. Pennyfeather's mood turned dangerous. "I'll take my stick to you, boy," he cried, "if you don't get moving."
"Move? Oh, I can do that." With that, Stanley's head began to jerk to and fro inanely, as if to a rhythm only it could hear.
To Kitty's stupefaction, it then ducked down out of sight, paused a moment and sprang up again with a giggle. This action appeared to give Stanley childish pleasure; he repeated the motion, accompanying it with assorted whoops and cries. "Now you see me!" he cried, his voice muffled behind his cap. "And now... you don't!"
"The boy's gone mad," Mr. Pennyfeather said.
"Get out of there _now,_ Stanley," Kitty said, in an altogether different tone. Suddenly, unaccountably, her heart was beating fast.
"Stanley, am I?" the head said. "Stanley... mmm, suits me, that does. Good honest British name. Mr. G. would approve."
Fred was beside Kitty now. "Hey..." He was unusually hesitant in manner. "How come his voice has changed?"
The head stopped dead still, then tilted coquettishly to one side. "Well now," it said. _"There's_ a question. I wonder if anyone can guess." Kitty took a slow step backward. Fred was right. The voice no longer sounded much like Stanley's, if it ever had.
"Oh, don't try to leave, little girl." The head shook vigorously back and forth. "Then it'll only get messy. Let's take a look at you." Skeletal fingers, extending from a tattered black sleeve, rose from the sarcophagus. The head tipped sideways. With loving care, the fingers removed the cap from the face and placed it on the head at a rakish angle. _"That's_ better," the voice said. "Now we can see each other clearly."
Beneath the cap, a face that was not Stanley's flashed with a glint of gold. A spray of white hair showed all around.
Anne gave a sudden wail and ran for the staircase. The head gave a jerk of surprise. "The bloody cheek! We haven't been introduced! "With a sudden flick of a bony wrist, something was scooped from inside the sarcophagus and hurled forward through the air. The crystal ball landed with a crack at the foot of the stairs, rolling directly in Anne's path. She screamed and collapsed back upon the floor.
Everyone in the company had watched the ball's precipitate flight. Everyone saw it land. Now everyone turned slowly back to the sarcophagus, where something was rising to its feet, stiffly and awkwardly, with a clittering of bones. It stood upright at last, shrouded in darkness, brushing dust from its jacket and tutting away all the while like a persnickety old woman. "Will you _look_ at this mess! Mr. G. would be quite distraught. And the worms have wreaked _havoc_ with his underclothes. There're holes down there where the sun don't shine."
It bent suddenly and extended an arm, long bone fingers plucking a fallen lantern from the floor beside the sarcophagus. This it held up like a watchman, and by its light, considered each horrified face in turn. The neck vertebrae rasped as the skull behind the mask moved, and the golden death mask flashed dully inside its halo of long white hair.
"So then." The voice from behind the mask had no consistent tone. With each syllable it shifted, first high like a child's, then deep and husky; first male, then female, then growling like a beast. Either the speaker could not decide, or relished the variety. "So then," it said. _"Here_ you are. Five lonely souls, far underground, with nowhere safe to run to. What, pray, are your names?"
Kitty, Fred, and Nick were standing motionless, halfway to the metal grille. Mr. Pennyfeather was farther back, shrinking against the wall below the shelf. Anne was closest to the stairs, but sprawling, sobbing soundlessly. Not one of them could bring themselves to reply.
"Oh, come _on."_ The golden mask tipped sideways. "I'm trying to be friendly. Which is exceptionally decent of me, I reckon, given I've just woken to find a leering lout with an outsize cap rifling through my possessions. Worse still—look at this scuff on the funeral suit! He did that with all his thrashing. Kids today, I ask you. Which reminds me. What year is it? You. The girl. The one who isn't mewling. Speak up!"
Kitty's lips were so dry, she barely got the words out. The golden mask nodded. "I _thought_ it had been a long time. Why? Because of the boredom, you'll say. Yes, and you'd be right. But also the ache! Ah, the pain of it you wouldn't believe! It got so's I couldn't concentrate, with the agony and the solitude of it, and the noise of the worms gnawing in the dark. It would have driven a lesser fellow mad. But not me. I solved the pain years ago, and the rest I endured. And now, with a bit of light and some company to chat with, I don't mind telling you, I feel _good."_ The skeleton clicked a bony finger and jigged from side to side. "Bit stiff—unsurprising, no tendons left—but that'll pass. All bones present and correct? Check. All possessions too? Ah, no..." The voice grew wistful. "Some little mice have come and spirited them away. _Naughty_ little mice.... Catch them by their tails and pull their whiskers out."
Kitty had been slowly inserting a hand into her bag, beneath the cloak and other objects, to locate her Elemental Sphere. She had it now, clasped in a clammy palm. Beside her, she sensed Fred doing likewise, but with less precision; she feared his rustling movements would soon be noticed. She thus spoke more as a distraction than with any real hope.
"Please, Mr. Gladstone, sir," she stammered. "We have all your possessions here, and will happily return them to you exactly as they were."
With an unpleasant grinding, the skull swiveled 180 degrees on its vertebrae to look behind it. Seeing nothing, it cocked sideways in puzzlement and swiveled back. "To whom are you referring, little girl?" it asked. "To me?"
"Er—yes. I thought—"
"Me—Mr. Gladstone? Are you mad, or featherheaded as a dabchick?"
"Well—"
"Look at this hand." Five bone fingers were held up to the light and rotated on a knobbly wrist. "Look at this pelvis. Look at this rib cage." In each case, the fingers moved rotting cloth aside to provide a glimpse of yellowed bone. "Look at this face." For an instant, the golden mask was tipped askew, and Kitty caught a glimpse of the skull, with grinning teeth and hollow sockets. "In all honesty, little girl, does Mr. Gladstone look alive to you?"
"Er—not really."
_'"Not really..._ ' The answer's _no!_ No, he doesn't. Why? you ask. Because he's dead. A hundred and ten years dead and rotting in his grave. _Not really._ What kind of an answer is that? You really are clots, little girl, you and your friends. Speaking of which..." It pointed a bony finger down at the bronze plaque on the side of the sarcophagus. "Can't you read?"
Dumbly, Kitty shook her head. The skeleton clapped its fingers to its forehead in derision. "Can't read Sumerian, and she goes ferreting in Gladstone's grave! So you didn't see the bit about 'leaving the Glorious Leader to rest in peace'?"
"No, we didn't. We're very sorry."
"Or the bits about 'perpetual guardian,'or 'savage vengeance,'or 'no apologies accepted'?"
"No, none of that." Out of the corner of her eye, Kitty saw Fred lower his bag a little, his right hand still hidden within it. He was ready now.
"Well, what can you expect, then? Ignorance reaps its own reward, which in this case is an unpleasant death. The first lot apologized profusely, too. You should have seen them get down on their knees and bawl for mercy. That's them over there." It jerked a bony thumb in the direction of the false wall. "They were eager beavers, sure enough. Came within weeks. One was Mr. G.'s private secretary, if I recall, a very loyal specimen; he'd managed to make a duplicate key and stave off the Pestilence somehow. I hid them away, just to be tidy, and if you're good I'll do the same with you. Wait right there."
The skeleton hitched one stiff trouser leg over the side of the sarcophagus. Kitty and Fred caught each other's eye. As one, they drew the Elemental Spheres from their knapsacks and hurled them at the skeleton. It raised a resentful hand; something invisible blocked the spheres' flight; they fell heavily to the floor, where, instead of exploding, they seemed to implode with damp, pathetic squeals, leaving nothing but small black stains upon the flagstones.
"I really _can't_ have a mess being made here," the skeleton said reprovingly. "In Mr. Gladstone's day, guests were more considerate."
From his own bag, Mr. Pennyfeather drew forth a silver disc; leaning on his stick, he threw it at the skeleton from the side. It sliced into the forearm of the dusty suit and stuck fast. The voice emanating from behind the golden mask let out a shrill yell. "My essence! I _felt_ that. Silver is something I really can't abide. See how _you_ like being willfully assaulted, old timer." A bright green bolt erupted from the mask and lanced across into Mr. Pennyfeather's chest, driving him back hard against the wall. He crumpled to the floor. The skeleton gave a grunt of satisfaction and turned back to the others. "That'll learn him," it said.
But Fred was moving again, retrieving from secreted spots about his person one silver disc after another and throwing them in the same blink of an eye. The skeleton ducked the first, leaped over the second and had a lock of hair shaved off by the third. It had extricated itself from the sarcophagus now, and seemed to have rediscovered its power of movement; with every bound and step, it grew more sprightly, until its outline almost seemed to blur. "This is fun!" it cried, as it dodged and twirled. "I really am most obliged to you fellows!"
Fred's supply of missiles seemed inexhaustible; he kept up a constant rain, while Nick, Anne, and Kitty steadily retreated toward the stairs. All at once another green bolt stabbed out and struck Fred across the legs, sending him crashing to the ground. In another moment, he was back on his feet, a little unsteady, brows furrowed with pain, but very much alive.
The skeleton paused in surprise. _"Well, now,"_ it said. "Natural resilience. Deflects magic. Haven't seen that since Prague." It tapped its gold mouth with a bony finger. "What _am_ I going to do, I wonder? Let me think.... Aha!" With a bound it was back at the sarcophagus and rummaging inside. "Out of the way, Stanley; I need to get... yes! I thought so." Its hand reappeared, holding the ceremonial sword. "No magic involved here. Just a length of sturdy Empire steel. Think you can deflect this, Mr. Spotty? We'll see." It flourished the sword above its head and stalked forward.
Fred stood his ground. He drew his flick-knife from his jacket, opened it with a snick.
Kitty was at the metal grille, hovering in doubt at the foot of the stairs. Nick and Anne had already disappeared above; she could hear their frantic ascent. She looked over toward Mr. Pennyfeather, whose own resilience had stood him in good stead. He was shuffling on his hands and knees toward her. Ignoring her instincts, which screamed at her to turn tail and run, she darted back into the vault, grasped Mr. Pennyfeather around his shoulders and, exerting all her strength, dragged him toward the stairs.
Out of sight behind her, she heard Fred give a snarl of fury. There was a whooshing sound, followed by a soft impact.
Kitty pulled Mr. Pennyfeather onward with a strength she didn't know she had.
Through the grille and up the first few steps. She had Mr. Pennyfeather on his feet now; in one hand he still grasped his stick; the other clenched Kitty's jacket. His breathing was rapid, shallow, painful. He could not talk. Neither had a lantern now; they went in utter darkness. Kitty supported herself on the staff from the tomb. It fumbled on each step.
A voice came calling, somewhere behind and below them. "Yoo-hoo! Is anybody up there? Little mice a-scuffling in the wainscot. How many mice? One mice... two. Oh dear, and one of them lame."
Kitty's face was swathed in cobwebs. Mr. Pennyfeather's breathing was now a gasping whine.
_"Won't_ you come down to me?" the voice implored. "I'm lonely Neither of your friends want to talk anymore."
She felt Mr. Pennyfeather's face close to her ear. "I—I—have to rest."
"No. Keep going."
"I can't."
"If you won't come down, then... I'll have to come up!"
Deep down in the earth, the metal grille creaked.
"Come _on."_
Another step. And another. She couldn't remember how many there were; in any case, she had lost count. Surely they were almost there. But Mr. Pennyfeather was slowing; he held her back like a dead weight.
_"Please,"_ she whispered. "One last try."
But he had stopped altogether now; she sensed him crouched upon the stairs beside her, gasping for each breath. Vainly she tugged at his arm, vainly she beseeched him to respond.
"I'm sorry, Kitty..."
She gave up, leaned back against the curving stones, drew her knife from her belt, and waited.
A rustle of cloth. A rattling in the dark. Kitty raised her knife.
Silence.
And then, with a sudden rushing and a single brief and gasping cry, Mr. Pennyfeather was pulled into the darkness. One moment he was there, the next moment he was gone, and something heavy was being dragged away from her and down the steps, _bump, bump, bump._
Kitty was frozen to the spot for perhaps five seconds; then she was careering up the steps, through veils of drifting cobwebs as if they did not exist, knocking repeatedly into the wall, tripping on the uneven stairs; spying at last a rectangle of gray light ahead, falling out into the airy dimness of the nave, where streetlights glittered against the windows and the statues of the magicians gazed down implacably at her hopelessness and distress.
She fled away across the transept, narrowly avoiding several pedestals and actually colliding with a row of wooden chairs; the sound of their brattling collapse boomed back and forth across the enormous space. Passing one great pillar, then another, she slowed and, with the entrance to the tomb now a good way behind her, gave herself up to breathless weeping.
Only then did she realize she might have turned the key in the lock.
"Kitty." A small voice in the shadows. Kitty's heart pounded against her chest; with the knife outstretched before her, she backed away.
"Kitty, it's me." A thin beam of light from the pencil torch. Anne's face, pale, gray-eyed. She cowered behind a high, wooden lectern.
"We've got to get out." Kitty's voice was cracking. "Which way's the door?"
"Where's Fred? And Mr. Pennyfeather?"
" _Which way's the door,_ Annie? Can you remember?"
"No. That is, I think _that_ way, maybe. It's so difficult in the dark. But—"
"Come on, then. Turn off the torch for now."
She went on at a jog, Anne stumbling after her. In the first moments of her panic, Kitty had simply run unthinkingly, with no sense of direction. It had been the foul blackness below ground that had done it—numbing her brain, stopping her from thinking clearly. But now, dark and musty though it still was, the air was at least fresh—it was helping her master her surroundings, orient her position. A line of pale windows shone high above: they were back in the nave again, on the opposite side to the cloisters door. She halted, allowing Anne to catch up with her.
"It's just across here," she hissed. "Tread carefully."
"Where's—?"
"Don't ask." She stole forward a few more steps. "What about Nick?"
"He's gone. I didn't see..."
Kitty swore under her breath. "Never mind."
"Kitty—I dropped my bag."
"Well, that doesn't matter now, does it? We've lost everything." Even as she said it, she suddenly became aware that she was still holding the magician's staff in her left hand. It surprised her somewhat; throughout the desperate flight, she had not been at all aware of it. The rucksack, with the cloak and other valuables, had been lost somewhere on the stairs.
"What was that?"
They stopped dead, in the center of the nave's black space.
"I didn't hear—"
"Something scuttling. Did you—?"
"No... No, I didn't. Keep going."
A few steps more; they sensed a column rising high in front of them. Kitty turned to Anne. "Past the pillar, we'll need the torch to pinpoint the door. I don't know how far we've come."
"All right." At that moment, a skittering rush sounded directly behind them. Both squealed and lurched in opposite directions. Kitty fell half against the pillar, lost her balance and collapsed to the floor. Her knife was jarred out of her grasp. As quickly as she could she got to her feet and turned around.
Darkness; somewhere a faint scraping. The pencil torch was lying on the ground, spilling a miserly beam of light against the column. Anne was nowhere to be seen.
Slowly, slowly, Kitty backed away behind the pillar.
The door to the cloisters was somewhere close, she was sure of it, but exactly where she could not tell. Still holding the staff, she slipped forward, hand outstretched, feeling her way blindly toward the south wall of the nave.
To her surprise and almost unsupportable relief, her fingers touched coarse wood and the cold breath of true fresh air fell upon her face. The door was hanging open, a little; she scrabbled at it desperately to shove it aside, squeeze through.
It was just then that she heard the familiar noise; somewhere behind her in the nave. The _tap-tap-tap_ ping of a lame man's stick.
Kitty dared not breathe; she remained frozen where she was, half in and half out of the abbey door.
_Tap, tap, tap._ The faintest of whisperings. "Kitty... help me..."
It couldn't be. _It couldn't._ She made to step out into the cloisters; paused.
"Kitty... please..." The voice was weak, the footsteps faltering.
She closed her eyes tight; took a long, deep breath; slipped back inside.
Someone was shuffling along in the middle of the nave, tapping hesitantly with the stick. It was too dark to make the figure out; it seemed confused, directionless, wandering this way and that, coughing feebly and calling out her name. Kitty watched it from behind a column, jerking back whenever it appeared to turn toward her. From what she could see, it was the right shape, the right size for him; it moved in the right way The voice sounded familiar, too, but despite all this, her heart misgave her. The thing was trying to trap her, surely. Yet she couldn't just turn and run, and never know for certain that she hadn't left Mr. Pennyfeather there, alone and still alive.
What she needed was the torch.
The meager beam of light was still shining redundantly against the next pillar, Anne's torch lying exactly where it had fallen. Kitty waited until the limping figure had passed a little way along the nave, then she crept forward with feline stealth, knelt, and collected the torch in her hand. She switched it off and retreated into the darkness.
The figure seemed to have sensed the movement. Halfway across the nave, it turned, emitting a quavering sigh. "Is... someone there?"
Hidden behind the pillar, Kitty made no sound.
"Please... it will find me soon." The taps started up once more. Steadily, they came nearer.
Kitty bit her lip. She would dart out, torch on; take a look, run. But fear held her rigid, her limbs refused to move.
_Tap, tap..._ then, with a hollow clattering, she heard the stick fall upon the stones, followed by the muffled impact of a body collapsing to the floor.
Kitty came to a decision. Holding the torch between her teeth, she drew something small from her trouser pocket: Grandmama Hyrnek's silver pendant, cold and heavy in her hand. She grasped the torch once more and stepped out from behind the column. She switched the torch on.
Right beside her, the skeleton leaned nonchalantly against the pillar, hand on hip, gold mask glinting. "Surprise," it said. And leaped at her.
With a scream, Kitty fell back, dropping the torch, thrusting her silver pendant out toward the onrushing blackness. A swirl of air, a creak of bones, a hoarse cry. "Now, _that's_ not fair." The form pulled up short. For the first time, she glimpsed its eyes: two red glowing dots flaring with annoyance.
Kitty backed away, still holding the silver pendant before her. The two eyes crept with her, keeping pace, but wheeling and swerving in the darkness, as she waved the pendant from side to side.
"Put that _down,_ little girl," the skeleton said in a tone of great vexation. "It burns me. Must be good quality to do that, as it's so small."
"Back off," Kitty snarled. Somewhere behind her was the cloister door.
"Now, _am_ I likely to do that? I'm on a charge, you know. In fact, I'm on two. Protect Gladstone's possessions, first of all. Check. Well done, Honorius. No problem there. Destroy all invaders of the tomb, second. Marks so far? Ten out of twelve. Not bad, but room for improvement. And _you,_ little girl, _are number eleven."_ It made a sudden lunge; Kitty sensed the bony fingers swiping in the dark; with a cry, she ducked, held up the pendant. There was a brief flurry of green sparks and an animal howl.
"Ow! Curse you! Put it down!"
"Now, _am_ I likely to do that?" Kitty felt a cold breeze behind her, took two more retreating steps and nearly collided with the open door. She edged around it, down the step and into the cloister.
The skeleton was a shadowy form hunched in the archway. It shook a fist. "I should have brought my sword for you, Kitty," it said. "I've half a mind to go back and fetch..." Then it stiffened and cocked its head. Something had caught its attention.
Kitty backed steadily away along the corridor.
"The stars... I'd quite forgotten." The figure in the arch gave a sudden hop and stood on a ledge, looking up toward the sky. "So many of them... so bright and pearly blue."
Even from the far end of the cloister, several yards away and retreating fast, Kitty could hear it sniffing the air and muttering to itself, and letting out little cries of fascination and delight. It appeared to have entirely forgotten her existence.
"No stone. No worms. What a change that would make! No mold, no deathly dustly silence. No none of it. So many stars... and so much space..."
Kitty rounded the corner and made a dash for the cloister door.
Nathaniel's limousine sped through the outer suburbs of South London, a region of heavy industry, of brickworks and alchemists' factories, where a faint red smog hung permanently around the houses and glowed evilly in the waning sun. For greater speed and convenience, the magicians' highway from the aerodrome had been raised on embankments and viaducts above the maze of polluted slums. The road was little used, and nothing but rooftops stretched around; at times the car appeared to be drifting alone across a sea of dirt-red waves. Nathaniel gazed out across this great expanse, deep in thought.
The chauffeur was of the usual taciturn type, and despite Nathaniel's best efforts, had revealed little of the previous night's disaster. "I don't know much myself, sir," he said. "But there was crowds gathered in the street outside my flat this morning. A lot of panic among the commoners, sir. Very frightened, they were. A disturbance."
Nathaniel leaned forward. "What sort of disturbance?"
"I believe a monster is involved, sir."
"A monster? Can you be specific? Not a big stone man, shrouded in darkness?"
"I don't know, sir. We'll be at the abbey shortly. The ministers are meeting there."
Westminster Abbey? With great dissatisfaction, Nathaniel had settled back in the seat and composed himself to wait. All would be made clear in time. Quite possibly, the golem had struck again, in which case his account of events in Prague would be anxiously awaited. He sorted through everything he knew, trying to make sense of it, setting successes against setbacks in an effort to see whether he came out with credit. On balance, it was a close thing.
On the credit side, he had landed a definite blow against the enemy: with the help of Harlequin, he had discovered the source of the golem parchments and had destroyed it. He had learned of the involvement of the terrible bearded mercenary and, behind him, some other shadowy figure who had, if the mercenary was to be believed, also been involved in the Lovelace conspiracy two years before. The existence of such a traitor was important news. Set against this, however, Nathaniel had not discovered who the traitor was. Of course, it was hard to see how he could have done so, since even the wretched Kavka hadn't known the name.
Here, Nathaniel shifted uncomfortably in his seat, remembering his rash promise to the old magician. The Czech spies, Kavka's children, were—apparently—still alive in a British prison. If so, it would be extremely difficult for Nathaniel to secure their release. But what did it matter? Kavka was dead! It didn't matter to _him_ now one way or the other. The promise could quietly be forgotten. Despite this clear-cut logic, Nathaniel found it hard to dismiss the matter from his mind. He shook his head angrily and returned to more important matters.
The traitor's identity was a mystery, but the mercenary had given Nathaniel one important clue. His employer _knew_ Nathaniel was coming to Prague and had instructed the mercenary to take action. But Nathaniel's mission had been almost spontaneous, and kept very quiet. Hardly anyone was aware of it.
Who, in fact, _had_ known? Nathaniel counted them out on the fingers of one hand. Himself; Whitwell, of course—she'd sent him there in the first place; Julius Tallow—he'd been present at the meeting. Then there was the Second Secretary of the Foreign Office, who'd briefed Nathaniel before the flight—Whitwell had asked him to prepare the maps and documents. And that was it. Unless... hold on... a faint uncertainty nagged at Nathaniel. That encounter with Jane Farrar in the foyer, when she'd used the Charm... Had he let anything slip there? It was so hard to remember; her spell had fogged his mind a little.... No good. He couldn't recall.
Even so, the range of suspects was remarkably small. Nathaniel chewed the edge of a fingernail. He had to be very careful from now on. The mercenary had said something else, too: his employer had many servants. If the traitor was as close as Nathaniel now guessed, he had to watch his step. Someone among the powerful was operating the golem in secret, directing it through the watch-eye. They would not wish Nathaniel to investigate further. Attempts might well be made on his life. He would need Bartimaeus to stick close to him.
Despite these concerns, Nathaniel was feeling fairly pleased with himself by the time the viaducts lowered and the car neared central London. When all was said and done, he had prevented a second golem's being unleashed on the capital, and for that, he would surely receive full praise. Inquiries could be carried out and the traitor discovered. The first thing he would do would be to report to Whitwell and Devereaux. No doubt, they would drop everything and respond.
This happy certainty had begun to ebb a little even before the car drew into Westminster Green. Nearing the Thames, Nathaniel began to notice certain unusual things: pockets of commoners standing in the street, deep in conference; here and there, what looked like debris in the road—smashed chimneys, chunks of masonry and broken glass. Westminster Bridge itself had a Night Police cordon across it, guards checking the driver's pass before allowing him through. As they crossed the river, Nathaniel saw thick smoke rising from an office downstream: a clock-face on the side of the building had been smashed, the hands ripped off and embedded in the walls. Other groups of bystanders loitered on the embankment, in blatant disregard of vagrancy laws.
The car swept past the Houses of Parliament and up to the great gray mass ofWestminster Abbey, where the final remnants of Nathaniel's complacency shriveled down to nothing. The grass before the west end was covered with official vehicles—ambulances, Night Police vans, a host of gleaming limousines. Among them was one with Devereaux's gold standard fluttering from the bonnet. The Prime Minister himself was here.
Nathaniel alighted and, flashing his identity card to the guards on the door, entered the church. Inside, the activity was intense. Internal Affairs magicians swarmed about the nave with imps in attendance, measuring, recording, combing the stonework for information. Dozens of Security officials and gray-coated Night Police accompanied them; the air hummed with muttered conversations.
A woman from Internal Affairs noticed him, gestured with her thumb. "They're up in the north transept, Mandrake, by the tomb. Whitwell's waiting."
Nathaniel looked at her. "What tomb?"
Her eyes were alive with contempt. "Oh, you'll see. You'll see."
Nathaniel walked up the nave, his black coat dragging limply behind. A great trepidation was upon him. One or two Night Police were standing guard beside a broken walking stick lying on the flagstones; they laughed openly as he passed.
He emerged into the north transept, where statues of the Empire's great magicians clustered in a thicket of marble and alabaster. Nathaniel had been here many times before, to look with contemplation upon the faces of the wise; it was with some shock then that he saw that half the statues were now defaced: heads had been ripped off and replaced back to front, limbs had been removed; one sorcerer wearing a particularly broad hat had even been turned upside down. It was an appalling act of vandalism.
Dark-suited magicians thronged everywhere, carrying out tests and scribbling notes. Nathaniel wandered among them in a daze, until he arrived at an open space, where, sitting in a ring of chairs, Mr. Devereaux and his senior ministers were assembled. They were all present: the burly, brooding Duvall; the diminutive Malbindi; the bland-featured Mortensen; the corpulent Fry. Jessica Whitwell was there, too, scowling into space, arms folded. On a chair a little removed from the others sat Mr. Devereaux's friend and confidante, the playwright Quentin Makepeace, his cheery face solemn and anxious. All were silent, gazing at a large luminous orb hovering several feet off the floor tiles. It was the viewing globe for a vigilance sphere, Nathaniel could see this at once; currently it depicted what appeared to be an aerial view of part of London. In the distance, and rather out of focus, a small figure was leaping from roof to roof. Small green explosions erupted where it landed. Nathaniel frowned, stepped closer to get a better look—
"So, you're back from chasing shadows, are you?"Yellowed fingers caught his sleeve; Julius Tallow stood beside him, sharp nose jutting, features arranged in an expression of distaste.
"About time. All hell's broken loose here."
Nathaniel pulled himself free. "What's going on?"
"Did you discover the mysterious mastermind behind the golem?" Tallow's voice dripped sarcasm.
"Well, no, but—"
"How surprising. It might interest you to know, Mandrake, that while you were gallivanting abroad, the Resistance have struck again. Not some mystery golem, not a mystery traitor wielding forgotten powers, but the same human Resistance that you've been failing to deal with all this time. Not content with destroying half the British Museum the other night, they've now broken into Gladstone's tomb and unleashed one of his afrits. Which, as you can see, is now happily at large across the city."
Nathaniel blinked, tried to take it all in. "The Resistance did this? How do you know?"
"Because we've found the bodies. No giant clay golem was involved, Mandrake. You can give that idea up right now. And we'll soon be out of our jobs. Duvall—"
He drew back. Nathaniel's master, Jessica Whitwell, had left her seat and was making her thin and stately way toward him. He cleared his throat.
"Ma'am, I need to speak to you urgently. In Prague—"
"I blame _you_ for this, Mandrake." She bore down on him, eyes flashing furiously. "Thanks to your distracting me with your demon's lies, we look more incompetent than ever! I have been made to look a fool and have lost the Prime Minister's favor. Duvall was given control of my Security department this morning. He has also taken charge of anti-Resistance operations."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but listen, please—"
"Sorry? Too late now, Mandrake. The British Museum debacle was bad enough, but _this_ was the last straw. Duvall has gotten just what he wanted. His wolves are everywhere now and he—"
"Ma'am!" Nathaniel could no longer restrain himself. "I located the Czech magician who created the golem's parchment. He was making a second one—for a traitor in our government!" He ignored Tallow's expressions of incredulity.
Ms. Whitwell regarded him. "Who is the traitor?"
"I don't yet know."
"Have you proof of your story? The parchment, for instance?"
"No. It was all destroyed, but I think—"
"Then," Ms. Whitwell said, with crushing finality, "it is no good to me, and neither are _you._ London is in an uproar, Mandrake, and a scapegoat needs to be found. I intend to distance myself from you—and if Mr. Tallow has any sense, he will do the same."
She turned on her heel and marched back to her chair. Tallow followed, grinning at Nathaniel over his shoulder. After a moment's hesitation, Nathaniel shrugged and drifted closer to the swirling surveillance orb. The demi-afrit relaying the image was attempting to get closer to the bounding figure on the rooftops. The image zoomed in; Nathaniel caught sight of a black suit, white hair, a gold face.... Then, quick as thought, a green light shot from the figure: with an emerald flash, the sphere went dead.
Mr. Devereaux sighed. "A third sphere gone. We'll be running out soon. Right—any comments or reports?"
Mr. Mortensen, the Home Office Minister, stood up and swept a lock of greasy hair over his scalp. "Sir, we must take action against this demon at once. If we don't act, the name of Gladstone will be dragged through the mud! Is he not our greatest leader? The one to whom we owe our prosperity, our dominance, our self-belief? And now what is he? Nothing but a murderous bag of bones dancing across our capital, causing bedlam in its wake! The commoners will not be slow to notice this, you know; nor will our enemies abroad. I say—"
Marmaduke Fry, the Foreign Minister, spoke. "We have had several instances of mass panic, which no amount of strong-arm stuff from Duvall's police has been able to prevent." He cast a sly side glance at the Chief of Police, who grunted angrily.
"The creature is evidently deranged," added the Information Minister, Ms. Malbindi, "and as Mortensen says, that adds to the embarrassment of the situation. We have our Founder's remains capering on rooftops, dangling from flagpoles, dancing down the middle of Whitehall and, if our sources are to be believed, cartwheeling repeatedly through Camberwell Fish Market. Also the thing persists in killing people, apparently at random. Young men and girls, it goes for; mostly commoners, but also people of consequence. It claims it is looking for the 'last two,' whatever that means."
"The last two survivors of the raid," Mr. Fry said. "That's obvious enough. And one of 'em's got the Staff. But our immediate problem is that the commoners know whose corpse they're seeing."
From the edges of the group came Jessica Whitwell's icy voice. "Let me get this clear," she said. "Those really _are_ Gladstone's bones? It isn't just some guise?"
Ms. Malbindi raised two fastidious eyebrows. "They're his bones all right. We've entered the tomb, and the sarcophagus is empty. There are plenty of bodies down there, believe you me, but our Founder is very much gone."
"Strange, isn't it?" Mr. Makepeace spoke for the first time. "The guardian afrit has encased its own essence within the bones. Why? Who knows?"
" _Why_ is not important." Mr. Devereaux spoke with heavy formality, driving a fist into his cupped palm. "Our first priority must be to get rid of it. Until it is destroyed, the dignity of our State is hopelessly compromised. I want the creature dead and the bones back in the ground. Every senior minister must put a demon on the case from this afternoon. That means all of _you._ Lesser ministers have conspicuously failed so far. The thing _is_ Gladstone's, after all; it has some power. Meanwhile, there is the issue of the Staff to consider."
"Yes," Mr. Fry said. "In the long run this is much more important. With the American wars coming up—"
"It mustn't be allowed to get into enemy hands. If the Czechs got hold of it—"
"Quite." There was a brief silence.
"Excuse me." Nathaniel had been listening to everything with silent respect, but his frustration now got the better of him. "This is Gladstone's Staff of Office we're talking about? The one he used to destroy Prague?"
Mr. Devereaux looked at him coldly. "I am glad you have finally deigned to join us, Mandrake. Yes, it is the same Staff."
"So if its Command Words can be mastered, we might harness its energies for new campaigns?"
"We—or our enemies. Presently its whereabouts are unknown."
"Are we sure?" Helen Malbindi asked. "The... skeleton, or afrit, or whatever it is— _it_ doesn't still have the Staff?"
"No. It carries a bag on its back—which we suspect holds most of Gladstone's treasures. But the Staff itself has vanished. One of the grave robbers must have it."
"I've sealed the ports and aerodromes," Mr. Mortensen said. "Spheres are on watch along the coast."
"Pardon me," Nathaniel asked. "But if this Staff has _always_ been in the abbey, why have we not utilized it before?"
Several of the magicians shifted in their seats. Mr. Duvall's eyes flashed. "This is supposed to be a senior meeting of the Council, not a crèche. I suggest, Rupert, that this changeling be removed."
"A moment, Henry." Mr. Devereaux seemed as annoyed as his ministers, but he still spoke civilly. "The boy has a point. The reason, Mandrake," he said, "is for fear of a disaster such as this. On his deathbed, Gladstone swore vengeance on any who disturbed his tomb, and we all know that his power was not easily transgressed. Exactly what hexes he wrought or demons he employed were not known, but—"
"I have done a little research into the business," Quentin Makepeace said, interrupting with an easy smile. "Gladstone has always interested me. At the funeral, the tomb was sealed with a Pestilence inside—a potent little number, but nothing that could not easily be bypassed. But Gladstone had made preparations for his sarcophagus himself; contemporary sources say the aura of magic emanating from his body killed several imps officiating with the candles. If that was not warning enough, not long after his death several magicians in his government ignored his prohibitions and set out to collect the Staff. They froze the Pestilence, descended into the tomb: and were never seen again. Accomplices waiting outside heard something locking the door from within. No one since has been foolish enough to test the grand old man's defenses. Until last night."
"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."
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. 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?"
"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. 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 you 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.
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. It shuffled slowly around the perimeter of the pentacle, testing for weaknesses.
And to its evident surprise, found one.
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**
**T** here 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?"
The imp considered. "Well, all you higher spirits are pretty nasty, of course, but most of you are predictable. This one... it says strange things. And one minute it's happy, the next— _well,_ look what it did to Hibbet."
"He seems happy enough."
"That's Tibbet. It didn't catch Tibbet. Or me. It said it'd get us next time."
"Next time?"
"Yeah, it's been past five times so far. Each time it gives us a really boring lecture, then eats one of us. Five down, two to go. I tell you, the combination of fear and tedium takes some beating. Do you think this toenail's ingrowing?"
"I have no opinion on the subject. When is the skeleton due back?"
"In about ten minutes, if it keeps to his current schedule."
_"Thank_ you. At last—some definite information. I shall await it here."
The gargoyle shrank and dwindled, and became a blue imp only moderately less hideous than the other two. I took myself upwind of them and sat cross-legged on a ledge overlooking the London skyline. Chances were, another djinni would have caught up with the afrit before he returned here, but if not, I'd have to have a go. Quite why he was going around and around the city was anyone's guess; possibly his long vigil in the tomb had sapped his wits. Anyhow, there was plenty of backup in the vicinity: I could see several other djinn drifting about within a couple of streets.
As I waited, a few idle thoughts ran through my mind. No question about it, a lot of funny things were happening in London, all at the same time. First: the golem was causing trouble, instigator unknown. Second, the Resistance had broken into a high-security tomb and made off with a valuable item. Third, and as a direct result of the second, we had an unbalanced afrit loose, too, causing additional mayhem. All this was having a result: I'd tasted the fear and confusion among the magicians during the general summoning. Could it be coincidence? I thought it unlikely.
It didn't seem plausible to me that a bunch of commoners could have gained access to Gladstone's tomb all on their lonesome. I guessed instead that someone must have put them up to it, given them a few tips so they got past the first safeguards and down into the vault. Now, either that very helpful person didn't know about the guardian of the tomb, or maybe he (or she) _did_ ; either way, I doubted very much that the girl Kitty and her friends had much idea what they were going up against.
Still, she at least had survived. And now, while the magicians tied themselves in knots trying to catch up with Gladstone's roving skeleton, the dreaded Staff was at large in the world.
Someone was going to take advantage of this, and I didn't think it would be the girl.
I recalled the unknown intelligence that I'd sensed watching me through the golem's eye, as the creature tried to kill me at the museum. It was possible, if you looked at the whole affair dispassionately, to imagine a similar shadowy presence behind the abbey job, too. The same one? I thought it more than likely.
As I waited, engaged in lots of clever speculation such as this, I scanned the planes automatically, keeping watch for trouble. And so it chanced that, by and by, upon the seventh plane, I saw an amorphous glow approaching through the evening light. It flitted here and there among the chimney pots, sometimes flaring clearly as it passed into the shadows, sometimes getting lost in the red gleam of the sunlit tiles. On planes two to six the glow was identical; it had no obvious form. It was something's aura, all right—the trail of something's essence—but its material shape was impossible to make out. I tried the first plane, and there, drained of all color by the descending sun, I caught my first glimpse of a leaping man-shaped form.
It sprang from gable to weathervane with the precision of a mountain goat, teetering on the smallest crest, spinning around like a top, then bounding on. As it drew nearer, I began to hear thin cries, like those of an excited child, erupting from its throat.
My fellow imps were possessed by sudden eleventh-hour anxiety. They left off picking their toenails and polishing their tails and began to skitter to and fro about the roof, attempting to hide behind each other and sucking in their bellies in an attempt to look less obvious. "Uh-oh," they said. "Uh-oh."
I spied one or two of my fellow djinn following the leaping figure at a cautious distance. Quite why they hadn't yet attacked, I couldn't fathom. Perhaps I would soon find out. It was coming my way.
I got up, tucked my tail over my shoulder for neatness'sake, and waited. The other imps darted around me, squeaking incessantly. Eventually, I stuck out a foot and tripped one up. The other cannoned into him and ended up on top. _"Quiet,"_ I snarled. "Try showing a bit of dignity." They looked at me in silence. "That's better."
"Tell you what..." The first imp nudged the other and pointed at me. _"He_ could be next."
"Yeah. It might take _him_ this time. We could be saved!"
"Get behind him. Quick."
"Me first! After me!"
There followed such an undignified display of scuffling and scurrying, as they fought with each other to hide behind my back, that my attention for the next few moments was entirely taken up with administering some well-deserved slaps, the noise of which echoed around the town. In the midst of this performance, I looked up; and there, standing astride a parapet at the edge of the tower-block roof, not two meters away, was the renegade afrit.
I admit his appearance startled me.
I don't mean the golden mask, shaped with the deathly features of the great magician. I don't mean the wispy hair drifting out behind it on the breeze. I don't mean the skeletal hands resting easily on the hips, or the vertebrae peeping out above the necktie, or the dusty burial suit hanging so limply off his frame. None of that was particularly exciting; I've taken on the guise of a skeleton dozens of times—haven't we all? No, what surprised me was the realization that this was _not a guise,_ but real bones, real clothes, and a real golden mask up top. The afrit's own essence was quite invisible, hidden somewhere within the magician's remains. He did not have a form of his own—on this, or any of the other planes. I'd never seen this done before.
Whatever the skeleton had been getting up to during the course of the day, it had evidently been quite energetic, since the clothes were looking the worse for wear: there was a trendy slit across the knee, a burn mark on one shoulder, and a ragged cuff that looked as if it had been sliced by claws. My master would probably have paid good money for that ensemble if he'd seen it in some Milanese boutique, but for an honest afrit it was a pretty shoddy affair. The bones below the cloth seemed complete enough, however, the joints hinging smoothly as if they had been oiled.
The skeleton regarded the heap of imps with its head cocked to one side. We stood stock still, our mouths agape, frozen in the middle of our scuffle. At last it spoke.
"Are you breeding?"
"No," I said. "Just a bit of rough-and-tumble."
"I mean your numbers. There were two of you last time."
"Reinforcements," I said. "They called me over to hear you speak. And to get eaten, of course."
The skeleton pirouetted on the edge of the parapet. "How charming!" it cried gaily. "What a compliment to my eloquence and clarity! You imps are more intelligent than you look."
I glanced at Tibbet and his friend, who were both standing stock still, mouths wide and dribbling. Rabbits in headlights would have looked on them with scorn. "I wouldn't count on it," I said.
In response to my searing wit, the skeleton gave a trilling laugh and an impromptu tap dance with arms aloft. About fifty yards beyond, loitering behind a chimney stack like two shifty teenagers, I could see the other djinn, waiting and watching. So I reckoned we pretty much had Gladstone's bones surrounded.
"You seem in a very upbeat mood," I observed.
"And why shouldn't I be?" The skeleton came to a halt, clicking its fingerbones like castanets in time to its shoes' final climactic tap. "I'm free!" it said. "Free as can be! That rhymes, you know."
"Yes... well done." The imp scratched its head with the tip of its tail. "But you're still in the world," I said slowly. "Or at least you are from where I'm sitting. So you're not really _free,_ are you? Freedom comes only when you break your bond and return home."
"That's what I _used_ to think," the skeleton said, "while I was in that smelly tomb. But not anymore. Look at me! I can go wherever I want, do whatever I like! If I want to gaze at the stars—I can gaze to my heart's content. If I want to stroll amid the flowers and the trees—I can do that, too. If I want to grab an old man and throw him head over heels into the river—no problem either! The world calls me: Step right on up, Honorius, and do whatsoever you please. Now, imp; I'd call that freedom, wouldn't you?"
It made a menacing sort of scurry toward me as it said this, its fingers making little clutching spasms and a murderous red light suddenly flaring in the blank sockets behind the eyes of the golden mask. I hopped back hurriedly out of range. A moment later, the red light faded a little and the skeleton's advance became a merry dawdle. "Look at that sunset!" it sighed, as if to itself. "Like blood and melted cheese."
"A delightful image," I agreed. No question about it, those imps were right. The afrit was quite insane. But insane or not, a few things still puzzled me. "Excuse me, Sir Skeleton," I said, "as a humble imp of limited understanding, I wonder if you would enlighten me. Are you still acting under a charge?"
A long curved fingernail pointed to the golden mask. "See him?" the skeleton said, and its voice was now saturated with melancholy. "It's all his fault. He bound me into these bones with his last breath. Charged me to protect them forever, and guard his possessions too. Got most of them here—" It swung around to reveal a modern rucksack hanging incongruously on its back. "And also," it added, "to destroy all invaders of his tomb. Listen, ten out of twelve's not _too_ bad, is it? I did my best, but the ones that got away keep nagging at me."
The imp was soothing. "It's very good. No one could have done better. And I suppose the other two were tough nuts to crack, eh?"
The red light flared again; I heard teeth grinding behind the mask. "One was a man, I think. I didn't see. He was a coward; he ran while his comrades fought. But the other... Ah, she was a spry little whippet. I'd have loved to get her white neck between my fingers. But—would you credit such guile in one so young? She had purest _silver_ on her person; gave Honorius such a jarring in his poor old bones when he reached out to stroke her."
"Disgraceful." The imp shook its head sadly. "And I bet she never even told you her name."
_"She_ didn't, but I overheard it—oh, and I so _nearly_ caught her, too." The skeleton gave a little dance of rage. "Kitty she is and, when I find her, Kitty she'll die. But I'm in no hurry. There's time enough for me. My master's dead, and I'm still obeying my orders, guarding his old bones. I'm just taking them along with me, that's all. I can go where I want, eat whatever imp I please. Especially"—the red eyes flared—"the talkative, opinionated ones."
"Mmm." The imp nodded, mouth tight shut.
"And do you want to know the best of it?" The skeleton spun right around (away on the next roof over, I saw the two djinn duck back behind the chimney stack) and bent down close to me. "There is no pain!"
"Mm- _mmm_?" I was still being quiet, but I tried to express sufficient interest.
"That's right. _None at all._ Which is exactly what I'm telling any spirit whom I meet. This pair—" It pointed at the other imps, who had by now summoned enough gumption to creep off to the opposite end of the roof. "This pair have heard it all several times over. You, no less hideous than they, are privileged to hear it now as well. I wish to share my joy. These bones protect my essence: I have no need to create my own, vulnerable form. I nestle snugly within, like a chick inside my nest. My master and I are thus united to our mutual advantage. I am obeying his command, but can still do whatever I wish, happily and without pain. I can't _think_ why no one's thought of this before."
The imp broke its vow of silence. "Here's a thought. Possibly because it involves the magician's being dead?" I suggested. "Most magicians aren't going to want to make that sacrifice. _They_ don't mind that our essences shrivel while we serve them; in fact, they probably prefer it, since it concentrates our minds. And they certainly don't want us wandering about doing any old thing we wish, do they?"
The gold mask considered me. "You are a most impertinent imp," it said at last. "I shall consume you next, since my essence requires some stoking. But you speak sense, nevertheless. Truly I am unique. Unlucky as I once was, trapped for long dark years in Gladstone's tomb, I am now the most fortunate of afrits. Henceforward I shall roam the world, taking my leisurely revenge on human and spirit alike. Perhaps one day, when my vengeance is sated, I shall return to the Other Place— _but not just yet."_ It gave a sudden lunge in my direction; I somersaulted backward, just out of reach, landing with my rear end teetering over the edge of the parapet.
"So it doesn't bother you then that you've lost the Staff?" I said quickly, making frantic signals with my tail to the djinn on the opposite roof. It was time we put an end to Honorius and his megalomania. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the orangutan scratch his armpit. Either this was a subtle signal promising swift aid, or else he hadn't seen me.
"The Staff..." The skeleton's eyes flashed. "Yes, my conscience pricks me a little. Still, what matter? The girl Kitty will have it. She is in London; and sooner or later I will find her." It brightened. "Yes... And with the Staff in my hand, who knows _what_ I could do. Now stand still, so that I can devour you."
It reached out a leisurely hand, evidently not expecting further resistance. I suppose the other imps must have sat quietly, accepting their fate, not being a very decisive bunch. But Bartimaeus was made of sterner stuff, as Honorius was about to learn. I gave a little skip between the outstretched arms, jumped up, and bounded over the horrid white head, ripping the death mask off as I did so.
It came away without difficulty, having been held on by only a few tightened strands of the skeleton's dirty white hair. Honorius gave a yelp of surprise and wheeled around, his leering skull fully exposed. "Hand that back!"
For answer, the imp danced away around the rooftop. "You don't want this," I called over my shoulder. "It belonged to your master and he's dead. Euuch, and he didn't have very good teeth, did he? Look at that one hanging by a thread."
"Give me back my face!"
"Your 'face'? That's not healthy talk for an afrit. Ooops, there it goes. Clumsy me." With all my strength, I spun it away like a small gold Frisbee, off the edge of the building and down into the void.
The skeleton roared with rage and sent three Detonations off in rapid succession, singeing the air around me. The imp flipped and sprang, over, under, over, and down below the parapet, where I promptly used my suckers to cling to the nearest window.
From this vantage point, I waved again at the two djinn lurking over by the chimney, and whistled as shrilly as I could. Evidently, Honorius's proficiency with his Detonations had been the reason for their previous caution, but I was relieved now to see the stilt-legged bird shift itself, followed reluctantly by the orangutan.
I could hear the skeleton standing on the verge above, craning its neck out in search of me. Its teeth snapped and ground in anger. I pressed myself as flat as I could to the window. As Honorius now discovered, one definite drawback to his residency in the bones was that he could not change his form. Any honest afrit would by now have grown wings and shot down to find me, but without a nearby ledge or roof to hop to, the skeleton was stymied. Doubtless he was considering his next move.
In the meantime, I, Bartimaeus, made mine. With great stealth, I shimmied sideways along the window, across the wall and around the corner of the building. There, I promptly clambered upward and peered over the top of the parapet. The skeleton was still leaning out in a precarious manner. From behind it looked rather less threatening than from the front: its trousers were ripped and torn, and sagged so catastrophically that I was treated to an unwanted view of its coccyx.
If it would just hold that position a moment more...
The imp hopped up onto the roof and changed back into the gargoyle, which tiptoed across, palms outstretched.
It was just then that my plan was shattered by the sudden appearance of the bird and the orangutan (now complete with orange wings), who descended in front of the skeleton from the sky. Each fired off a burst of magic—a Detonation and an Inferno, to be precise; the twin bolts slammed into the skeleton, knocking it backward away from the precipice. With the swift thinking that is my hallmark, I abandoned my idea and joined in likewise, choosing a Convulsion for variety's sake. Flickering inky bands swarmed over the skeleton, seeking to shake it to pieces, but to no avail. The skeleton uttered a word, stamped its foot, and the remnants of all three attacks spun away from it, shriveling and fading.
Bird, orangutan, and gargoyle fell back a little on all sides. We anticipated trouble.
Gladstone's skull rotated creakily to address me. "Why do you think my master chose _me_ for the honor of inhabiting his bones? I am Honorius, a ninth-level afrit, invulnerable to the magic of mere djinn. Now—leave me be!" Arcs of green force crackled out from the skeleton's fingers; the gargoyle leaped from the roof to avoid them, while the bird and orangutan tumbled unceremoniously out of the sky.
With a bound, the skeleton dropped to a lower roof and made off on its sprightly way. The three djinn held a hurried midair consultation.
"I don't like this game much," the orangutan said.
"Nor me," said the bird. "You heard him. He's invulnerable.
I remember one time, back in old Siam. There was this royal afrit, see—"
"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.
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. 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.
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.
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 pile 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 open 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...
The young man gestured at the sofa. "Would you like to sit down, Ms. Jones?" he said politely. "We can discuss things in an agreeable manner if you wish." The edges of his mouth twitched. "Or are you going to leap from the window at a single bound?"
By articulating the very thought that was running through her mind, the magician—intentionally or not—caught Kitty off guard. Now was not the time. She flushed, pursed her lips, and sat on the sofa, where she regarded the magician as calmly as she could.
So _this_ was the Mandrake whose servants had pursued the Resistance for so many months. She would have known his profession a mile off; his clothes were the giveaway—a long black coat, a ridiculously tight black suit, shiny patent leather shoes. An outsize red handkerchief rose up from his breast pocket like a leaf of coral. His hair grew long about his face, which was thin and pale. Kitty realized for the first time how very young he truly was: still in his teens, certainly no older than she, perhaps considerably younger. As if to offset this, he had steepled his hands in an assertive manner, legs crossed, one foot twitching with the motion of a lapcat's tail, and adopted a smile that would perhaps have been urbane, had his eagerness not kept showing through.
His youth gave Kitty a little confidence. "What do you want, Mr. Mandrake?" she asked in a level voice.
The magician reached out, picked up the nearest cup and saucer and took a sip of tea. With ostentatious care, he placed the ensemble down upon the armrest of his chair and arranged it carefully. Kitty and her parents watched him in silence. "Very nice, Mrs. Jones," he said at last. "A very tolerable beverage. Thank you for your worthy hospitality." This pleasantry elicited only a small sob from Kitty's mother.
Kitty did not look at her. Her gaze was fixed on the magician. "What do you want?" she said.
This time, he replied. "First to tell you that you are, as of this moment, under arrest."
"On what charge?" Kitty knew her voice was shaking.
"Well, let me see..." The steepled fingers tapped together, beating out the list. "Terrorism; belonging to an outlaw group; treachery against Mr. Devereaux, his government and the Empire; wanton damage of property; conspiracy to murder; malicious theft; desecration of a sacred resting place... I could go on, but it would only distress your mother. It is a melancholy situation that two such honest, loyal parents should have been cursed with a daughter like you."
"I don't understand," Kitty said levelly. "These are serious charges. What is your evidence?"
"You have been witnessed in the company of known criminals, members of the so-called Resistance."
"Witnessed? What does that mean? Who says so?"
"Kathleen, you stupid girl, tell him the truth," her father said.
"Shut up, Dad."
"These known criminals," the magician went on, "were found this morning, lying dead in a vault in Westminster Abbey, which they had previously ransacked. One of them was a Mr. Pennyfeather, whom I believe you work for."
"I always knew he was a bad lot," Kitty's mother whispered.
Kitty took a deep breath. "I regret to hear this, but I can hardly be expected to know everything my employer got up to in his own private time. You'll have to do better than that, Mr. Mandrake."
"Then you deny associating out of hours with this Pennyfeather?"
"Certainly I do."
"What about his fellow traitors? Two youths: Fred and Stanley by name?"
"Many people worked for Mr. Pennyfeather part-time. I knew them, but not well. Is that it, Mr. Mandrake? I don't believe you have _any_ proof at all."
"Well, if it comes to that..." The magician sat back in his chair and grinned. "One might ask why your clothes are so covered in white stains. It almost looks like grave-mold, when seen in a certain light. One might ask why you were not at your employer's shop this morning, when it was your duty to open the doors. One might possibly draw attention to documents that I have just been reading in the Public Records Office. They relate to a certain trial: _Kathleen Jones versus Julius Tallow_ —a most interesting case. You have a previous criminal record, Ms. Jones. Fined a considerable sum for an attack on a magician. And then, not least, there's the witness who saw you fencing stolen goods in the company of the sadly deceased Fred and Stanley; a witness whom you attacked and left for dead."
"And who _is_ this precious witness?" Kitty snarled. "Whoever he is, he's lying."
"Oh, I think he's _very_ reliable." The magician gave a little chuckle and pushed the hair back from the sides of his face. "Remember now?"
Kitty looked at him blankly. "Remember what?"
The magician's forehead runkled. "Well— _Me,_ of course."
"You? Have we met before?"
"You don't recall? Well, it was several years ago; I admit I was different then."
"Less foppish, perhaps?" Kitty heard her mother give a faint moan of distress; the sound had as little effect on her as if it had been uttered by a stranger.
"Don't cheek me, girl." The magician recrossed his legs—with some difficulty, owing to the tightness of his trousers, and smiled thinly. "Mind you—why not? Fire off all the cheap comments you like. It won't make any difference to your fate."
Now that the end had come, Kitty found she had no fear; only an overwhelming sense of irritation at the jumped-up youth sitting opposite. She folded her arms and looked him fully in the face. "So go on, then," she said. "Enlighten me."
The boy cleared his throat. "Perhaps _this_ will refresh your memory. Three years ago in North London... One cold December night... No?" He sighed. "An incident in a back alley?"
Kitty shrugged wearily. "I've had a lot of incidents in alleys. You must have a forgettable face."
"Ah, but I never forgot _yours."_ His anger leaped to the surface now; he leaned forward in his seat, knocking the cup with an elbow, and spilling tea upon the chair. His eyes flashed guiltily at Kitty's parents. "Oh—sorry."
Kitty's mother launched herself at the spot, dabbing with a napkin. "Don't worry, Mr. Mandrake! _Please_ don't worry."
"You see, Ms. Jones," the magician went on, lifting the cup off the chair arm so that Kitty's mother could dab around it more effectively, "I never forgot _you,_ though I saw you only for a moment. Nor did I forget your colleagues, Fred and Stanley, since it was they who robbed me, they who tried to kill me."
"Robbed you?" Kitty frowned. "What did they take?"
"A valuable scrying glass."
"Oh..." A dim memory swam into Kitty's mind. "You were that kid in the alley? The little spy. I remember you now— _and_ your glass. That was a shoddy piece of work."
"I made that!"
"We couldn't even get it to start."
Mr. Mandrake gathered himself with difficulty and spoke in a dangerously controlled voice. "I notice that you have stopped denying the charges."
"Oh, yes," Kitty said, and as she did so felt more consciously alive than she had done for many months. "They're true, all right. All of what you said, and more. I'm only sorry it's all over now. No wait—I deny one thing. You said I left you for dead in that alley. That isn't so. Fred would have cut your throat, but I spared you. Heaven knows why, you miserable little sneak. I should have done the world a favor."
"She doesn't mean this!" Her father had jumped to his feet and was standing between them, as if his body would shield the magician from his daughter's words.
"Oh, but she does, she does." The boy was smiling, but his eyes danced with rage. "Go ahead, let her talk."
Kitty had barely paused for breath. "I despise you _and_ all the other magicians! You care nothing for people like us! We're just here to... to provide your food and clean your houses and make your clothes! We slave away in your factories and workshops, while you and your demons live in luxury! If we cross your paths we suffer! Like Jakob did! You're all callous and wicked and heartless and vain!"
"Vain?" The boy adjusted the tilt of his handkerchief. "How wonderfully hysterical. I'm just well turned out. Presentation's important, you know."
_"Nothing's_ important to you—get _off_ me, Mum." In her fury, Kitty had risen; her mother, half-maddened by distress, was clutching at her from the side. Kitty pushed her away. "Oh" she snarled, "and if you want a tip on presentation, those trousers are far too tight."
"Is that so?" The boy rose too, his coat billowing about him. "I've heard enough. You'll be able to refine your sartorial opinions at leisure in the Tower of London."
"No!" Kitty's mother sank to the floor. "Please, Mr. Mandrake..."
Kitty's father was standing as if his bones pained him. "Is there nothing we can do?"
The magician shook his head. "I'm afraid your daughter has long since chosen her path. I regret it for your sakes, since you are loyal to the State."
"She has always been a headstrong girl," Kitty's father said quietly, "but I never realized she was wicked, too. That incident with Jakob Hyrnek should have taught us something, but we always hoped for the best, Iris and me. And now, with our armies going off to war in America, and threats as never before on every side, to find our girl's a traitor, neck-deep in crime... Well, it's broken me, it really has, Mr. Mandrake. I always tried to bring her up right."
"I'm sure you did," the magician said hastily. "Nevertheless—"
"I used to take her to watch the march-pasts, see the soldiers during the festivals. I had her on my shoulders on Imperial Day, when the crowds in Trafalgar cheered the Prime Minister for an hour. You might not remember that, Mr. Mandrake, you're so young yourself, but it was a grand occasion. And now that little daughter of mine's gone, and in her place is this surly vixen, who's got no respect for her parents, her betters... or her country." There was a catch in his voice as he finished.
"You really are an idiot, Dad," Kitty said.
Her mother was still half-kneeling on the floor, beseeching the magician. "Not the Tower for her, Mr. Mandrake, _please."_
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Jones—"
"It's all right, Mum—" Kitty did not hide her contempt. "You can get off your knees. He won't be taking me to the Tower. I don't see how he can."
"Oh yes?" The boy looked amused. "You doubt that, do you?"
Kitty peered into the far corners of the room. "You seem to be alone."
A faint smile. "Only in a manner of speaking. Now, then. An official car waits in the next street. Are you going to come with me quietly?"
"No, Mr. Mandrake, I am not." Kitty launched herself forward; swung a fist. It caught the boy on his cheekbone with a dull crack; he capsized, sprawling into the chair. Kitty stepped over her prone mother and made for the door, but a firm grasp on her shoulder jerked her back. Her father: white-faced, eyes blank and staring.
"Dad—leave off!" She wrenched at his sleeve, but his grip was iron-strong.
"What have you done?" He looked at her as if she were something monstrous, an abomination. "What have you _done?"_
"Dad... Just let me go. Please, just let me go."
Kitty struggled, but her father only gripped the harder. From her position on the floor, her mother reached out to clutch Kitty's leg halfheartedly, as if uncertain whether she intended supplication or restraint. Over in the chair, the magician, who had been shaking his head like a fuddled dog, turned his gaze toward them. His eyes, when they focused, were venomous. He spoke a few harsh syllables in a strange tongue and clapped his hands. Kitty and her parents stopped their struggle; a brackish vapor seeped from nowhere into the air. At its heart, a dark form: blue-black, with slender horns and leathery wings, appraising them with a wicked leer.
The magician rubbed the side of his jaw and flexed it. "The girl," he said. "Secure her and don't let go. You may grasp her hair as painfully as you wish."
The creature chirruped harshly in answer, beat its wings, and flew out of its vapor nest. Kitty's father gave a low moan; his grasp on Kitty's shoulder loosened. Her mother flung herself back against the corner of the dresser and hid her face.
"Is that the best you can do?" Kitty said. "A mouler? _Please_." She stretched out a hand, and before the startled creature could even reach her, seized it by its neck, swung it around her head a few times, and threw it back into the magician's face, where it burst with a flatulent sound. An eruption of purple, bitter-smelling droplets peppered his suit and coat and the surrounding furnishings. He cried out in shock; reaching for his handkerchief with one hand, he made a mystic sign with the other. Instantly, a small red-faced imp appeared at his shoulder, bounded onto the dresser and opened its mouth. A bolt of orange flame shot out at Kitty, catching her on her chest and knocking her back against the door. Her mother screamed; her father cried out. The imp capered with triumph—and stopped, mid-caper. Kitty was straightening up, dusting off her smoldering jacket and staring at the magician with a grim smile. With a quick movement, she drew her throwing disc from her jacket and flourished it; the magician, who had lurched toward her in his fury, stepped hurriedly back. "You can wear the tightest trousers you please, Mr. Mandrake," she said, "but the fact remains, you're a conceited small-timer. If you follow me, I'll kill you. Good-bye. Oh, and don't worry, Mum, Dad"—she turned to look at each one calmly—"I won't ruin your reputation any further. You won't see me again."
With that, and leaving parents, magician, and imp staring at her back, she turned, opened the door, and passed through. Then she walked slowly and deliberately up the hall and out of the front door into the warm evening. In the street, she chose a direction arbitrarily and walked off, never looking behind her. Only when she had rounded the nearest corner and had begun to run did her tears finally begin to flow.
Nathaniel's fury at the failure of his swoop knew no bounds. He returned to Whitehall in a vicious temper, urging his chauffeur to ever greater speeds and beating the leather seat with his fist at any mild delay. He dismissed the car outside Internal Affairs, and, despite the lateness of the hour, stomped across the courtyard to his office. Here he snapped on the lights, threw himself into his chair, and began to think.
He had badly miscalculated, and the fact that he had been so close to success made his failure all the more galling. He had been absolutely right to check the Public Records in search of Kathleen Jones's name: he'd uncovered the typescript of her trial—together with her home address—in less than an hour. He'd been right; to visit the parents, too. They were malleable fools, both of them, and his original plan—to get them to detain their daughter should she return home, while secretly informing him—would have worked out perfectly, had the girl not arrived back earlier than expected.
Yet even _that_ would have been fine, had she not unexpectedly displayed some kind of personal defense against the minor demons. Perplexing... The parallels with the mercenary were obvious, of course; the real question was whether their powers were their own, or the product of some spell. His sensors had not detected anything.
If Bartimaeus had been with him, it might have shed some light on the source of the girl's power and perhaps prevented her escape. It was a great pity the djinni was on the other mission.
Nathaniel regarded his jacket sleeve, now permanently marked with remnants of the mouler. He muttered a curse. _Conceited small-timer_... It was hard not to admire the girl's strength of character. Nevertheless, Kitty Jones would pay dearly for that insult.
Alongside his anger, he was uneasy, too. He could, with great simplicity, have requested police backup, or asked Whitwell to provide vigilance sphere surveillance of the parents' house. But he had not done so. He had wanted the success for himself and himself alone. Retrieving the Staff would have enhanced his status immeasurably—the Prime Minister would have lauded him to the skies. Perhaps he would have been promoted, allowed to explore the powers of the Staff... Duvall and Whitwell would have been left looking uncomfortably over their shoulders.
But the girl had gotten away—and should anyone learn about his failure, he would be held to account. The death of Tallow had left his colleagues prickly, agitated and even more paranoid than normal. It was not a good time to be found out. He had to locate the girl, and quickly.
At that moment, a ringing in his ear warned him of an approaching magic. He stood alert and, an instant later, saw Bartimaeus materializing in the midst of a blue cloud. It wore its gargoyle form. Nathaniel rubbed his eyes and composed himself.
"Well? You have something to report?"
"Lovely to see you, too." The gargoyle reached down, plumped the cloud into the shape of a cushion, and sat with a sigh. "Yep. _Vent, vidi, vici_ and all that. The afrit is no more. I'm knackered. Though not, possibly, as much as you. You look dreadful."
"You disposed of the demon?" Nathaniel perked up. This was good news. It would count for much with Devereaux.
"Sure did. Drowned him in the Thames. Word is already spreading. And by the way, you were right—it _was_ that Kitty who nicked the Staff. Have you caught her yet? No? Well, better stop making faces and get busy tracking her down. Hey..." The gargoyle peered closer. "You've got a bruise on your cheek. Someone's been fighting!"
"No I haven't. It's not important."
"Scrapping like a street kid! Was it over a girl? A matter of honor? Come on, you can tell me!"
"Just forget about it. Listen—I am pleased at your success. Now we must locate the girl." Nathaniel prodded the bruise gingerly with a finger. It smarted.
The gargoyle sighed. "Easier said than done. Where, pray, do I start?"
"I don't know. I need to think. For the moment, you are dismissed. I'll summon you again in the morning."
"Very well." Gargoyle and cloud drifted backward into the wall and vanished.
When all was still once more, Nathaniel stood beside his desk deep in thought. Night pressed up against the office window; there was no sound from the street outside. He was very weary; his body cried out for its bed. But the Staff was too important to be lost so easily. Somehow, he must trace it. Perhaps a reference book might—
Nathaniel was brought up short by a sudden knocking on the courtyard door.
He listened, heart hammering in his chest. Another three knocks: gentle, but assertive.
Who would be calling at this hour? Visions of the terrible mercenary sprang into his mind; he shrugged them away, squared his shoulders, and approached the door.
Moistening his lips, he turned the handle and swung the door aside—
A short, roundish gentleman stood upon the step, blinking in the light that spilled out from the office. He was dressed in a flamboyant green velvet suit, white spats, and a mauve traveling coat that fastened at his neck. On his head was a small suede hat. He beamed at Nathaniel's discomfiture.
"Hello, Mandrake, my boy. May I come in? It's parky out."
"Mr. Makepeace! Um, yes. Please come in, sir."
"Thank you, my boy, thank you." With a hop and a skip, Mr. Quentin Makepeace was inside. He took off his hat and tossed it across the room, to land with great precision upon a bust of Gladstone. He winked at Nathaniel. "We've had enough _of him,_ one way and another, I think." Chuckling at his little joke, Mr. Makepeace wedged himself into a chair.
"This is an unexpected honor, sir." Nathaniel hovered uncertainly. "Can I get you anything?"
"No, no, Mandrake. Sit down, sit down. I've just popped in for a little chat." He smiled broadly at Nathaniel. "I hope I have not disturbed you in your work?"
"Certainly not, sir. I was just thinking of heading home."
"Very good, too. 'Sleep is so vital, and yet so hard to come by,'as the Sultan says in the bathhouse scene—that's Act II, Scene 3 of _My Love's an Eastern Maid,_ of course. Did you see it?"
"I'm afraid not, sir. I was too young. My previous master, Mr. Underwood, did not attend the theatre as a rule."
"Ah, a crying shame." Mr. Makepeace shook his head sadly. "With an education as defective as that, it's a wonder you've turned out such a promising lad."
"I've seen _Swans of Araby,_ of course, sir," Nathaniel said hastily. "A wonderful work. Very moving."
"Mmm. It _has_ been called my masterpiece by several critics, but I trust I shall outdo it with my next little effort. I have been inspired by the American troubles and turned my attention to the West. A dark continent we know so _little_ about, Mandrake. My working title is _Petticoats and Rifles;_ it involves a young backwoods lass..." As he was speaking, Mr. Makepeace made several intricate signs with his hands; from between his palms rose a scattering of orange sparks that floated up and outward to take up position at points about the room. No sooner were they stationary than the playwright stopped talking in mid-sentence and winked at Nathaniel. "See what I've done, boy?"
"A sensor web, sir. To detect watching ears or eyes."
"Exactly so. And all, for the moment, is quiet. Now then, I didn't come to talk to you about my oeuvre, fascinating though it is. I wanted to sound you out—you being a promising lad—about a certain proposition."
"I would be honored to hear it, sir."
"It goes without saying of course," Mr. Makepeace said, "that the contents of this little talk will be for us alone. It could do us both great harm if a word of it were breathed beyond these four walls. You have a reputation for being just as intelligent as you are young and spry, Mandrake; I'm sure that you understand."
"Of course, sir." Nathaniel composed his features into a mask of polite attention. Beneath this, he was perplexed, if flattered. Why the playwright had now accosted him in such secrecy, Nathaniel could not imagine. Mr. Makepeace's close friendship with the Prime Minister was widely spoken of, but Nathaniel had never thought that the author was much of a magician himself. In fact, on the basis of viewing a couple of the plays he had considered it unlikely: privately, Nathaniel considered them appalling potboilers.
"First, congratulations are in order," Mr. Makepeace said. "The renegade afrit is gone—and I believe your djinni played a part in its removal. Well done! You may be sure the P. M. has taken notice. It is in fact on account of this that I have come to you this evening. Someone of your efficiency may be able to help me in a tricky problem."
He paused, but Nathanel said nothing. It was best to be cautious when confiding in a stranger. Makepeace's objectives were not yet clear.
"You were at the abbey this morning," Mr. Makepeace went on, "and you listened to the debate among the Council. It would not have escaped your notice that our friend the Police Chief, Mr. Duvall, has attained great influence."
"Yes, sir."
"As commander of the Graybacks, he has long been in a position of considerable power, and he makes no secret of his desire to gain more. He has already used the current disturbances to gain authority at the expense of your master, Ms. Whitwell."
"I've noticed some such rivalry," Nathaniel said. He did not think it prudent to say more.
"Very carefully put, Mandrake. Now, as a personal friend of Rupert Devereaux, I don't mind telling you that I've been viewing Duvall's behavior with a good deal of concern. Ambitious men are dangerous, Mandrake. They destabilize things. Boorish, uncivilized individuals such as Duvall—it will shock you to learn he has never attended one of my premieres in his life—are the worst of all, since they have no respect for their colleagues. Duvall has been building up his power base for years, keeping in with the P.M., while undermining other senior figures at the same time. His vaunting ambition has long been obvious. Recent events, such as the unfortunate demise of our friend Tallow, have greatly unsettled our senior ministers, and this perhaps gives Duvall further opportunity to take advantage. In fact—and I don't mind telling _you_ this, Mandrake, since you're so uncommonly clever and loyal—with the amount of power Duvall now has, I fear rebellion."
Perhaps because of his background in theater, Mr. Makepeace had a peculiarly lively way of talking: his voice fluted high and tremulous, then dived to become low and resonating. Despite his caution, Nathaniel was fascinated; he leaned in closer.
"Yes, my boy, you heard correctly: _rebellion_ is what I fear, and as Mr. Devereaux's most loyal friend, I am anxious to prevent it. I am looking for allies in this regard. Jessica Whitwell is powerful, of course, but we do not get on. She is no great lover of the theater. But you, Mandrake, you are rather more my type. I've followed your career for quite some time, ever since that unfortunate Lovelace affair, in fact, and I think we might do admirably well together."
"That is very kind of you, sir," Nathaniel said slowly. His mind was afire: _this_ was what he'd been waiting for—a direct line to the Prime Minister. Ms. Whitwell was no true ally; she'd already made it clear that she planned to sacrifice his career. Well, if he played this carefully, he might gain rapid advancement. Perhaps he didn't need her protection, after all.
But this was dangerous territory. He had to be on his guard. "Mr. Duvall is a formidable opponent," he said blandly. "It is a dangerous thing to act against him."
Mr. Makepeace smiled. "How very true. But haven't you already been doing something along those lines? I believe you paid a visit to the Public Records Office this afternoon—and then set off at speed to an obscure address in Balham."
The words were casual, but they made Nathaniel stiffen with shock. "Forgive me," he stammered, "how did you know—?"
"Word reaches me about many things, my boy. As a friend of Mr. Devereaux, I have long kept my eyes and ears open. Do not look so worried! I have no idea what you were up to, merely that it seemed a _personal_ initiative." His smile broadened. "Duvall is in charge of counterrevolutionary tactics now, but I don't think you informed him of your activities?"
Nathaniel certainly had not. His head reeled; he needed to gain time. "Er, you mentioned us collaborating in some way, sir," he said. "What do you have in mind?"
Quentin Makepeace settled back into his chair. "Gladstone's Staff," he said. "That's it, pure and simple. The afrit has been dealt with, and much of the Resistance is dead too, it seems. All well and good. But the Staff is a potent talisman; it confers great power on its bearer. I can tell you that, as we speak, Mr. Duvall is applying all his efforts to find the person who took it. Should he do so"—the magician fixed Nathaniel directly with his bright blue eyes—"he might decide to use it _himself,_ rather than restore it to the government. I believe the situation is as serious as that. Much of London might be threatened."
"Yes, sir." Nathaniel said. "I have read about the Staff and I believe its energies can be easily accessed by a few simple incantations. Duvall might well use it."
"Indeed. And I think we should preempt him. If you find the Staff and return it to Mr. Devereaux yourself, your standing will be greatly enhanced, and Mr. Duvall will have suffered a setback. I will be content, too, since the Prime Minister will continue to help finance my works worldwide. What do you think of this proposal?"
Nathaniel's head was awhirl. "An... interesting plan, sir."
"Good, good. So, we are agreed. We must act swiftly" Mr. Makepeace leaned forward and clapped Nathaniel on the shoulder.
Nathaniel blinked. In his comradely enthusiasm, Makepeace was taking his acceptance entirely for granted. The proposal _was_ beguiling, of course, but he felt uncertain, outmaneuvered; he needed a moment to work out what to do. Yet he _had_ no time. The magician's knowledge of his activities had caught him horribly off guard, and he was no longer in control. Nathaniel made a reluctant decision: if Makepeace knew of his visit to Balham, there was no point concealing it anyway. "I have already conducted some investigations," he said stiffly, "and I believe the Staff might be in the hands of a girl, one Kitty Jones."
The magician nodded approvingly. "I can see my high opinion of you was correct, Mandrake. Any idea where she might be?"
"I—I nearly caught her at her parents' house this evening, sir. I... missed her by minutes. I don't believe she had the Staff on her at the time."
"Hmm," Mr. Makepeace scratched his chin; he made no attempt to cross-examine Nathaniel on the details. "And now she will have fled. She will be hard to trace... unless we can encourage her out of hiding. Did you arrest the parents? A few well-publicized tortures might draw the girl out."
"No, sir. I did consider it, but they were not close to her. I do not believe that she would give herself up for them."
"Even so, it is an option. But I have another possible idea, Mandrake. I have a contact who has one foot in London's murky underworld. He is acquainted with more beggars, thieves, and cutpurses than you could cram into a theater. I shall talk to him tonight; see if he can give us word on this Kitty Jones. With a bit of luck, we shall be able to act tomorrow. In the meantime, I suggest you go home to get some sleep. And remember, we are playing for high stakes, my boy, and Mr. Duvall is a dangerous rival. Not a word of our little agreement to anyone."
Midday, and the shadows were at their smallest. The sky above was eggshell blue, flecked with amiable clouds. The sun shone pleasantly upon the rooftops of the suburb. It was an upbeat hour, all told, a time for honest enterprises and decent work. As if in proof, a few industrious tradesmen passed along the street, wheeling their barrows from house to house. They doffed their caps to old ladies, patted the heads of little children, smiled politely as they introduced their wares. Bargains were struck, goods and money exchanged; the tradesmen strolled away, whistling temperance hymns.
Hard to believe that anything wicked was about to happen.
Perched in the depths of a tangled elderberry bush set back from the road, a hunched black form surveyed the scene. It was a mess of bedraggled feathers, with beak and legs protruding as if at random. A medium-sized crow: a bird of ill and unkempt omen. The bird kept its bloodshot eyes trained firmly on the upstairs windows of a large and rambling house at the other end of an overgrown garden.
Once again, I was loitering with intent.
The thing to remember about this summoning business is that nothing is ever strictly speaking your own fault. If a magician binds you to a task, you do it—and quickly—or suffer the Shriveling Fire. With that kind of injunction hanging over your head, you soon learn to discard any scruples. This means that during the five thousand years I'd been back and forth across the earth, I'd been unwillingly involved in a good many shabby enterprises. Not that I _have_ a conscience, of course, but even we hardened djinn sometimes feel a little soiled by the things we're called upon to do.
This, on a small scale, was one such occasion.
The crow squatted drably in his tree, keeping other fowl at bay by the simple expedient of letting off a Stench. I didn't want any company just then.
I shook my beak in mild despondency. _Nathaniel._ What was there to say? Despite our occasional differences, I'd once hoped that he might turn out slightly different from the normal run of magicians. He'd shown a lot of initiative in the past, for instance, and more than a crumb of altruism. It had been barely possible that he might follow his _own_ path through life, and not just go down the old power/wealth/notoriety road that every one of his fellows chose.
But had he? Nope.
The signs now were worse than ever. Perhaps still unsettled by witnessing the demise of his colleague Tallow, my master had been curt to the point of rudeness when he summoned me that morning. He was at his palest and most taciturn. No friendly conversation for me, no tactful pleasantries. I received no further praise for my dispatch of the renegade afrit the night before, and despite changing into a few beguiling female shapes, didn't get a single rise out of him. What I _did_ get was a prompt new task—of the sort that fits squarely into the "nasty and regrettable" category. It was a departure for Nathaniel, the first time he'd sunk to these depths, and I must admit it surprised me.
But a charge is a charge. So here I was, an hour or two later, loitering in a bush in Balham.
Part of my instructions was to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible, which was why I didn't just bust my way through the ceiling. I knew my prey was home and probably upstairs; so I waited, with my little beady eyes fixed upon the windows.
No magician's house, this. Peeling paint, rotting window frames, weeds growing through holes in the tiled porch. A sizable property, yes, but unkempt and a little sad. There were even a few rusting children's toys buried in the foot-high grass.
After an hour or more of immobility, the crow was getting twitchy. Although my master had wanted discretion, he had also wanted speed. Before long I would have to stop dallying and get the business over with. But ideally I wanted to wait until the house had emptied, and my victim was alone.
As if in answer to this need, the front door suddenly opened and a large and formidable woman sallied forth, clutching a canvas shopping bag. She passed directly beneath me and headed off down the street. I didn't bother trying to hide. To her, I was just a bird. There were no nexuses, no magical defenses, no signs that anyone here could see beyond the first plane. It was hardly a proper test of my powers, in other words. The whole mission was sordid from beginning to end.
Then—a movement in one window. A patch of dusty gray net curtains was shoved aside and a skinny arm reached through to unlatch the clasp and shove the casement up. This was my cue. The crow took off and fluttered up the garden, like a pair of black underpants blown upon the wind. It landed on the sill of the window in question, and with a shuffle of its scaly legs, inched along the dirty net curtains until it located a small vertical tear. The crow shoved its head through and took a look inside.
The room's primary purpose was evident from the bed shoved up against the far wall: a rumpled duvet indicated that it had recently been occupied. But the bed was now half-obscured by a colossal number of small wooden trays, each one subdivided into compartments. Some held semiprecious stones: agate, topaz, opal, garnet, jade, and amber, all shaped, polished, and graded by size. Others held strips of thin metal, or wisps of carved ivory, or triangular pieces of colored fabric. All along one side of the room a rough worktop had been erected, and this was covered by more trays, together with racks of slender tools and pots of foul-smelling glue. In one corner, carefully stacked and labeled, sat a pile of books with new plain leather bindings of a dozen colors. Pencil marks on the bindings indicated where ornamentation was to be added, and in the center of the desk, bathed in a pool of light from two standing lamps, one such operation was in progress. A fat volume in brown crocodile-skin was having a star-pattern of tiny red garnets added to its front cover. As the crow on the windowsill watched, the final gem had a blob of glue applied to its underside and was set in place by a pair of tweezers.
Deeply engaged in this work, and thus oblivious to my presence, was the youth I had come to find. He wore a rather worn-looking dressing gown and a pair of faded blue pajamas.
His feet, which were crossed under his stool, were encased in a huge pair of stripy bed-socks. His black hair was shoulder length, and on a split hairs-general grease rating put even Nathaniel's noxious mane in the shade. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with leather, glue, and odor of boy.
Well, this was it. No time like the present, etc. Time to do the deed.
The crow gave a sigh, took hold of the net curtain in its beak, and with one quick motion of the head, ripped the fabric in two.
I stepped through onto the inner sill and hopped onto the nearest stack of books, just as the boy looked up from his work.
He was very out of shape; the flesh hung heavily on him, and his eyes were tired. He caught sight of the crow, and ran one hand through his hair in a distracted sort of way. A fleeting look of panic passed across his face, then dulled into resignation. He set down his tweezers on the desk.
"What manner of demon are you?" he said.
The crow was taken aback. "You wearing lenses or something?"
The boy shrugged wearily. "My grandmama always said demons came as crows. And normal birds don't slice their way through curtains, do they?"
This last bit was admittedly true. "Well, if you must know," I said, "I am a djinni of great antiquity and power. I have spoken with Solomon and Ptolemy, and hunted down the Sea Peoples in the company of kings. Currently, however, I am a crow. But enough about me." I adopted a more efficient, businesslike tone. "You are the commoner Jakob Hyrnek?" A nod. "Good. Then prepare—"
"I know who sent you."
"Er... You do?"
"I've guessed this was coming for a long time."
The crow blinked in surprise. "Blimey. _I_ found out only this morning."
"It makes sense. He's decided to finish the job." The boy shoved his hands deep into his dressing gown pockets and sighed feelingly.
I was confused. "He has? What job was this? Listen—stop sighing like a girl and explain yourself."
"Killing me, of course," Hyrnek said. "I assume you're a more efficient demon than the last one. Although I have to admit he _looked_ a lot more scary. You're a bit drab and weedy. And small."
"Just hold hard a moment." The crow rubbed its eyes with a wing tip. "There's some mistake here. My master never heard of your existence until yesterday. He told me so."
It was the boy's turn to do the perplexed bit. "Why would Tallow say that? Is he mad?"
_"Tallow?"_ The crow was practically cross-eyed with befuddlement. "Slow down! What's _he_ got to do with it?"
"He sent the green monkey after me, of course. So I naturally assumed—"
I held up a wing. "Let's start again. I have been sent to find Jakob Hyrnek at this address. Jakob Hyrnek is you. Correct? Right. So far so good. Now, I know nothing about any green monkey—and let me tell you, incidentally, that looks aren't everything. I may not seem much at present, but I'm a good deal more vicious than I appear."
The boy nodded sadly. "I thought you might be."
"Too right, buster. I'm nastier than any monkey you're likely to come across, that's for sure. Now, where was I? I've lost my thread... Oh, yes—I know nothing about the monkey and I certainly haven't been summoned by Tallow. Which would be impossible in any case."
"Why?"
"Because he was swallowed by an afrit last night. But that's by the by—"
Not to the boy, it wasn't. At this news, his face lit up: his eyes widened, his mouth curved up and outward in a long, slow smile. His whole body, which had been slumped over his stool like a sack of cement, suddenly began to straighten and gain new life. His fingers gripped the edge of the desk so hard the knuckles cracked.
"He's _dead?_ You're sure?"
"Saw it with these eyes. Well—not _these_ ones, exactly. I was a serpent at the time."
"How did it happen?" He seemed uncommonly interested.
"A summoning went wrong. The fool misread the words, or something."
Hyrnek's grin broadened. "He was reading from a book?"
"A book, yes—that's generally where incantations are to be found. Now, can we _please_ get back to the business at hand? I haven't got all day."
"All right, but I'm very grateful to you for the information." The boy did his best to compose himself, but kept grinning inanely and breaking into little chuckles. It really put me off my stride.
"Look, I'm trying to be serious here. I warn you to take heed—oh hell!" The crow had taken a menacing step forward and stuck its foot into a glue pot. After a couple of tries, I managed to shake it off across the room, and began to scrape my toes clean against the corner of a wooden tray. "Now, listen," I snarled as I scraped, "I've come here—not to kill you, as you surmised—but to take you away, and I advise you not to resist."
That knocked some sense into him. "Take me away? Where?"
"You'll see. Do you want to get dressed? I can spare you a little time."
"No. No, I can't!" All of a sudden he was upset, rubbing at his face and scratching at his hands.
I tried to be reassuring. "I won't try to harm you—"
"But I _never_ go out. Never!"
"You have no choice, sonny. Now, how about a pair of trousers? Those pajama bottoms look loose, and I fly at speed."
_"Please."_ He was desperate, pleading. "I _never_ go out. I haven't done so for three years. Look at me. _Look_ at me. See?"
I looked at him blankly. "What? So you're a bit podgy. There's worse than you out there walking the streets, and you'd solve the problem fast enough if you did some exercise instead of sitting on your backside here. Embossing spell books in your bedroom is no life for a growing boy. It'll play hell with your eyesight, too."
"No—my skin! And my hands! Look at them! I'm hideous!" He was yelling now, thrusting his hands toward my beak, and flicking his hair back from his face.
"I'm sorry, I don't—"
"The coloring, of course! Look at it! All over me." And sure enough, now that he came to mention it, I did see a series of vertical gray-black bands running up and down his face and across the backs of his hands.
"Oh _that,"_ I said. "What of it? I thought you'd done that intentionally."
Hyrnek gave a sort of silly, sobbing laugh at this, the kind that implies far too much time spent maundering in solitude. I didn't allow him time to speak. "That's a Black Tumbler, isn't it?" I went on. "Well, the Banja people of Great Zimbabwe used to use that—among other spells—to make themselves look more attractive. It was considered very becoming for a young bridegroom to have a full body-coat of stripes before the wedding, and the women went in for it, too, on a more localized basis. Only the wealthy could afford it, of course, as the sorcerers charged the earth. Anyway, from their point of view you look extremely eligible." I paused. "Except for your hair, which _is_ pretty bad. But so's my master's, and it doesn't stop him from flouncing about in broad daylight. Now, then"—amid all of that, I thought I'd heard a door slam somewhere in the house—"it's time to go. No time for trousers, I fear; you'll have to chance your luck with the updrafts."
I gave a hop along the desk. The boy slipped off his seat in sudden panic and began to back away. "No! Leave me alone!"
"Sorry, can't be done." He was making too much noise; I could sense movement in a room below. "Don't blame me—I haven't got any choice."
The crow jumped onto the floor and began to change, swelling to ominous size. The boy screamed, turned, and flung himself at the door. An answering shout came from beyond it; it sounded maternal. I heard heavy feet hurrying up the stairs.
Jakob Hyrnek wrestled with the handle, but never completed a single twist. A giant gold beak descended on the collar of his dressing gown; steel claws rotated in the carpet, slicing up the boards beneath. He was swung up and around, like a helpless cub dangling in its mother's jaws. Mighty wings flapped once, overturning trays and sending gemstones pattering against the walls. A rush of wind; the boy was launched toward the window. A wing of scarlet feathers rose up to enclose him; glass shattered all around, cold air buffeted his body. He cried out, flailed wildly—and was gone.
Anyone arriving at the gaping wall behind us would have seen nothing, heard nothing, except perhaps the shadow of a great bird flitting across the grass and some distant screams ascending into the sky.
That afternoon, Kitty walked past the Druids' Coffeehouse three times. On the first two occasions, she saw nothing and no one of interest, but on the third, her luck changed. Behind a gaggle of excitable European tourists, who took up several outlying tables, she discerned the calm figure of Mr. Hopkins, sitting quietly on his own, and stirring his espresso with a spoon. He seemed engrossed in his occupation, absently adding sugar cube after sugar cube to the dark black mix. But he never touched a drop.
For a long time, Kitty watched him from the shadows of the statue in the center of the square. As always, Mr. Hopkins's face was bland and quite expressionless: Kitty found it impossible to read what he was thinking.
Her betrayal by her parents had left Kitty more exposed than ever, friendless and alone, and a second hungry night in the cellar had convinced her of the need to speak with the one ally she had any hope of finding. Nick, she firmly believed, would have gone deep into hiding; but Mr. Hopkins, always at one remove from the rest of the Resistance, might still be approachable.
And here, sure enough, he was, waiting in the appointed place; yet Kitty still hung back, wracked with uncertainty.
Perhaps it was not strictly Mr. Hopkins's fault that the raid had gone so badly wrong. Perhaps none of the old documents he had studied had mentioned Gladstone's servant. Nevertheless, Kitty could not help but associate his careful advice with the terrible outcome in the tomb. Mr. Hopkins had introduced them to the unknown benefactor; he had helped orchestrate the whole scheme. At the very least, his strategy had been woefully lacking; at worst—he had recklessly endangered them all.
But with the others gone, and the magicians on her heels, Kitty had few options remaining. At last, she stepped out from behind the statue and crossed the cobblestones to Mr. Hopkins's table.
Without a greeting, she pulled out a chair and sat down. Mr. Hopkins looked up; his pale gray eyes appraised her. His spoon made little scratching noises against the edges of the cup as he stirred. Kitty stared at him impassively. A bustling waiter approached; Kitty made a cursory order and allowed him to depart. She did not say anything.
Mr. Hopkins withdrew the spoon, tapped it on the cup's rim and laid it carefully on the table. "I heard the news," he said, abruptly. "I've been looking for you the last day and more."
Kitty uttered a mirthless laugh. "You're not the only one."
"Let me say at once—" Mr. Hopkins broke off as the waiter reappeared, set a milkshake and an iced bun before Kitty with a flourish, and departed. "Let me say at once how... dreadfully sorry I am. It is an appalling tragedy." He paused; Kitty looked at him. "If it is any consolation, my... informant was profoundly upset."
"Thank you," Kitty said. "It isn't."
"The information we had—and which we shared openly and completely with Mr. Pennyfeather—made no mention of a guardian," Mr. Hopkins continued imperturbably. "The Pestilence—yes, but nothing else. Had we known, we would never of course have countenanced such a scheme."
Kitty studied her milkshake; she didn't trust herself to speak. All of a sudden, she felt quite sick.
Mr. Hopkins watched her for a moment. "Are all the others—" he began, then stopped. "Are you the only one—?"
"I would have thought," Kitty said bitterly, "that with an information network as sophisticated as yours, you would _know_ by now." She sighed. "Nick survived, too."
"Ah? Really? Good, good. And where is Nick?"
"I have no idea. And I don't care. He ran, while the others fought."
"Ah. I see." Mr. Hopkins toyed with his spoon again. Kitty stared at her lap. She realized now that she did not know what to ask of him, that he was as nonplussed as she was. It was no good: she was quite alone.
"It is of course inconsequential now," Mr. Hopkins began, and something in his tone made Kitty look up at him sharply. "Given the nature of the tragedy that has taken place, it is inconsequential and irrelevant, of course, but I suppose—what with the unexpected dangers you encountered, and the misfortune of losing so many of your admirable companions—that you did not manage to bring anything of value out of the tomb?"
This statement was so rambling and circuitous that it immediately had the opposite effect of what its cautious speaker intended. Kitty's eyes widened in disbelief; her brows slowly lowered into a frown.
"You're right," she said crisply "It is irrelevant." She ate the iced bun in two mouthfuls and took a sip of her milkshake.
Mr. Hopkins began stirring his coffee again. "But then, nothing _was_ taken?" he prompted. "You were unable..." His voice trailed off.
When Kitty had sat down at the table, she had had the vague intention of mentioning the staff to Mr. Hopkins; it was, after all, of no use to her, and it was possible that the benefactor, who had wanted it for his collection, might be prepared to give her some payment in return—money for survival was now uppermost on her mind. She had assumed, under the circumstances, that Mr. Hopkins would draw a decent line under the whole business; she had not expected to hear him pressing her so openly for booty from the haul. She thought of Anne, death hard on their trail in the darkened nave, agonizing about dropping her bag of treasures. Kitty's lips became a hard line.
"We loaded up with the contents of the tomb," she said. "But we couldn't escape. Perhaps Nick managed to get something out; I don't know."
Mr. Hopkins's pale eyes studied her. "But you yourself—you took nothing?"
"I dropped my bag."
"Ah. Of course. I see."
"I had the cloak in it, among other things. You'll have to apologize most profusely to your informant; that was one of the objects he wanted, wasn't it?"
The man made a noncommittal gesture. "I don't recall. I don't suppose you happen to know what became of Gladstone's Staff, do you? I believe he _did_ have his eyes on that."
"I imagine that was left behind."
"Yes.... Only there was no mention of its being located in the abbey, nor any sign of it in the skeleton's possession as it traveled about London."
"Nick took it then.... I don't know. What does it matter? It's not valuable, is it? According to you." Kitty spoke casually, but she was watching the other's face as she did so. He shook his head.
"No. Quite so. My informant will be disappointed, that is all. He _did_ so have his heart set on it, and he would have paid lavishly to have it in his hands."
"We're _all_ of us disappointed," Kitty said. "And most of us are dead. He can live with it."
"Yes." Mr. Hopkins tapped his fingers against the tablecloth; he appeared to be thinking. "Well," he said, brightly, "what of you, Kitty? What are your plans now? Where are you staying?"
"I don't know. I'll think of something."
"Do you require help? Somewhere to stay?"
"No, thank you. It would be better if we stayed out of each other's way. The magicians have traced my family; I don't want to put you—or your informant—at any risk." Nor did Kitty wish to associate herself any longer with Mr. Hopkins. His evident unconcern at her colleagues' deaths had startled her; now she wished to be as far removed from him as possible. "In fact" —she pushed her chair back—"I should probably leave now."
"Your concern does you credit. I obviously wish you continued fortune. Before you go, however"—Mr. Hopkins scratched his nose, as if wondering how to phrase something a little difficult—"I think perhaps you should hear something I've learned from one of my sources. It affects you quite closely."
Kitty paused in the act of rising. "Me?"
"I'm afraid so. I heard this little more than an hour ago. It is very secret; most of the government doesn't know about it themselves. One of the magicians hunting for you—his name is John Mandrake, I believe—has been researching your past. He has learned that some years back a Kathleen Jones appeared at the Judicial Courts, charged with assault."
"So?" Kitty kept her face still, but her heart was suddenly beating fast. "That was a long time ago."
"Indeed. Going through the record of the trial, he discovered that you had launched an unprovoked attack on a senior magician, for which you were fined. He regards this as one of the first attacks by the Resistance."
"Ridiculous!" Kitty exploded with fury. "It was an accident! We had no idea—"
"Furthermore," Mr. Hopkins went on, "he knows that you did not launch this attack alone."
Kitty sat very still. "What? He doesn't think—"
"Mr. Mandrake believes—whether rightly or wrongly is perhaps beside the point—that your friend... What was his name, now? Jakob something..."
"Hyrnek. Jakob Hyrnek."
"That's it. He believes Master Hyrnek is associated with the Resistance, too."
"That's ridiculous—!"
"Even so, at some point this morning, he sent his demon to take your friend away for questioning. Oh dear; I _thought_ it might upset you."
It took Kitty a few seconds to gather herself. When she spoke, it was haltingly "But I haven't even _seen_ Jakob for years. He knows nothing."
"Mr. Mandrake will doubtless discover as much. Eventually."
Kitty's head spun. She tried to gather her thoughts. "Where have they taken him? Is it... the Tower?"
"I hope, my dear, that you aren't thinking of doing anything rash," Mr. Hopkins murmured. "Mr. Mandrake is considered one of the strongest of the young magicians. A talented boy; one of the Prime Minister's favorites. It would not be advisable—"
Kitty forced herself not to scream. Every moment that they delayed, Jakob might be being tortured; demons worse than the skeleton might be surrounding him, goading him with their claws... And he was wholly innocent; he had nothing to do with her at all. What a fool she was! Her reckless actions over the last few years had endangered someone for whom she would once have given her life.
"I would try to forget young Hyrnek," Mr. Hopkins was saying. "You can do nothing—"
_"Please,"_ she said. "Is it the Tower of London?"
"As a matter of fact, it is not. That would be the ordinary way of things. But I think Mandrake is trying to do things quietly by himself; to get one up on rivals in the government. He has abducted your friend in secret, and taken him to a safe house for questioning. It is unlikely to be heavily guarded. But there will be demons—"
"I have met Mandrake." Kitty interrupted him fiercely. She was leaning forward urgently now, knocking against the milkshake glass, which jerked sideways, slopping liquid onto the cloth. "I have met him, defied him, and walked away without a backward glance. If this boy hurts Jakob," she said; "if he hurts him in any way at all, believe me, Mr. Hopkins, I will kill him with my own hands. Him and any demon who stands in my path."
Mr. Hopkins raised his palms off the table and lowered them. It was a gesture that might have meant anything.
"Once again," Kitty said. "Do you know where this safe house is?"
The pale gray eyes regarded her for a time, then blinked. "Yes," he said blandly "I _do_ know the address. I can give it to you."
Kitty had never been inside Mr. Pennyfeather's secret storeroom, but she knew how to operate the mechanism of the door. She trod down the metal lever hidden among the debris of the cellar floor, and pushed simultaneously against the bricks above the log pile. The brickwork shifted with a slow, weighted inward swing; there was a sudden chemical smell and a crack opening in the wall.
Kitty squeezed through and allowed the door to close behind her.
Utter blackness. Kitty stood frozen. Then she stretched out her hands and felt hesitantly on either side, searching for some kind of switch. First, to her utter horror, she came upon something cold and furred; even as she jerked that hand back, the other closed over a hanging thread.
She pulled it: a click, a hum, and a soft yellow light came on.
The furry object, Kitty was immediately relieved to see, was the hood of an old coat, hung up on a peg. Beside it were three dangling satchels. Kitty selected the largest one, placed the strap over her head, and considered the rest of the room.
It was a small chamber, ringed from floor to ceiling with rough wooden shelves. Here were the remnants of Mr. Pennyfeather's collection: the magical artifacts that Kitty and the rest of his company had managed to steal over the preceding years. Many objects had already been removed for the abbey raid, but there were plenty of items remaining. Neat rows of explosive globes and mouler glasses ran side by side with one or two Elemental Spheres, Inferno sticks, silver throwing stars, and other easily manageable weapons. They gleamed brightly in the light: Mr. Pennyfeather appeared to have kept them well polished. Kitty imagined him descending to the cellar and gloating over his collection alone. For some reason, the thought unnerved her. She set to work, packing as many items as she could in her satchel.
Next she came to a rack of daggers, stilettos, and other knives. Some, perhaps, had magic within them; others were simply very sharp. She selected two, tucking a silver one into a secret casing on the inside of her right shoe, placing the other in her belt. When she stood, her jacket hung down over it, concealing it from view.
Another shelf held several dusty glass bottles, of varying size, mostly filled with colorless liquid. They had been taken from magicians' houses, but their purposes remained unknown. Kitty gave them a glance, then moved on.
A remaining rack of shelves was filled high and low with objects that Mr. Pennyfeather had found no use for: jewelry, ornaments, robes and vestures, a couple of paintings from middle Europe, Asian bric-a-brac, brightly colored shells, and stones with odd whorls and patterns. Stanley or Gladys had observed some kind of magical aura on each one, but the Resistance had been unable to activate them. In such cases, Mr. Pennyfeather had simply stored them away.
Kitty had intended to ignore these shelves, but as she returned to the secret door, she saw, half-hidden at the back, a small, dull disc, heavily covered with cobwebs.
Mandrake's scrying glass.
Without knowing quite why she did so, Kitty picked up the disc and dropped it, cobwebs and all, into the inside pocket of her jacket. Then she turned to the door, which on this side was worked with a conventional handle. She tugged it open and stepped out into the cellar.
The staff was still lying where she had thrown it on the floor that morning. On sudden impulse, Kitty picked it up and carried it back into the secret room. Useless as it was, her friends had died collecting it; the least she could do was stow it away securely. She dropped it in a corner, took a last look around the Resistance's storeroom and clicked the light off. The door creaked mournfully shut behind her as she strode across the cellar toward the stairs.
The safe house where Jakob was being held was in a desolate part of east London, half a mile north of the Thames. Kitty knew the area fairly well: it was a region of warehouses and wastelands, many remaining from the aerial bombardments of the Great War. The Resistance had found it a useful area for operating: they had raided several of the warehouses, and utilized some of the derelict buildings as temporary hideouts. The magicians' presence here was comparatively light, especially after dark. Only a few vigilance spheres tended to pass this way, and those that did could generally be avoided. No doubt this obscurity was exactly why the magician Mandrake had chosen it, too: he wished to conduct his interrogation undisturbed.
Kitty's plan, such as it was, was twofold. If possible, she would extricate Jakob from the house, using her weapons and her natural resilience to hold Mandrake and any demons at bay. She would then attempt to spirit him to the docks, and there take passage to the Continent. Remaining in London was impractical for a time. If rescue and escape proved impossible, her alternative was less pleasant: she intended to give herself up, providing Jakob was set free. The implications of this were clear, but Kitty did not hesitate. She had lived too long as an enemy of the magicians to have qualms about the consequences now.
Keeping to the back roads, she made her way slowly across east London. At nine o'clock, a familiar wailing drone sounded out from the towers of the city: in response to the abbey raid two nights previously, a curfew was in operation. People passed her on both sides of the street, heads down, hurrying home. Kitty paid them little heed; she had broken more curfews than she could remember. Even so, she sat on a bench in a small deserted park for half an hour or more, waiting for the kerfuffle to die away. It was best there were no witnesses when she drew near to her objective.
Mr. Hopkins had not asked her what she planned, and she had not volunteered the information. Other than the address, she wanted nothing more to do with him. His callous indifference at the café had appalled her. From now on, she would rely on nobody but herself.
Ten o'clock came and went; the moon was out now, high and full above the city. Moving cautiously on plimsolled feet, satchel heavy against her side, Kitty flitted through the deserted streets. In twenty minutes she had arrived at her destination: a short, dead-end road, a cul-de-sac, with small factory workshops on either side. Pressed into the shadows at the corner, she took stock of the land ahead.
The street itself was narrow, lit by only two lamps, one a few yards farther on from Kitty's corner, the other away near the end of the road. These, and the white moonlight shining down from above, gave the buildings marginal illumination.
The workshops were generally low, of one or two stories.
Some of them were boarded up; others had their doors and windows caved in, gaping black and open. Kitty stood and watched them for a long time, breathing in the night's stillness. It was a general rule with her that she never passed open, unknown spaces in the dark. But she could see and hear nothing untoward. All was very quiet.
At the end of the road, beyond the second streetlight, was a three-story building, somewhat higher than the rest. Its ground floor had perhaps once been a garage of some kind: there was a wide opening for vehicles to pass through, now poorly covered with netting. Above this, broad blank windows marked out old offices or private housing. All these windows were black and empty—except for one, where a dim light shone.
Kitty did not know which of the buildings was Mandrake's safe house, but this—the only lit window on the entire street—immediately attracted her attention. She kept her eyes fixed on it for a while, but could make out nothing, except possibly some kind of curtain or sheet drawn across. She was too far away to observe it clearly.
The night was cold; Kitty sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Her heart was beating painfully against her chest, but she ignored its protests. It was time to act.
She crossed to the pavement opposite the first streetlamp and stole forward; one hand on the wall, the other resting easily on her satchel. Her eyes were never still: she scanned the road, the silent buildings, the blackened windows up above, the curtained window far ahead. Every few steps, she stopped and listened, but the city was silent, closed in upon itself; she moved on.
Kitty now drew opposite one of the gaping doorways; she kept her eyes firmly on it as she passed, her spine-skin prickling. But nothing stirred.
She was close enough now to see that the lit window up ahead was covered with a length of dirty sheet. Evidently, this was not very thick, because she now made out a shadow passing slowly behind it. Her brain struggled unsuccessfully to make sense of the image; it was human, that much she could tell, but more than that was impossible to say.
She crept a little farther down the street. On her immediate left was a broken doorway, the interior a gulf of solid black. Once again, Kitty's hackles rose as she tiptoed by; once again, she kept her eyes fixed firmly on it; once again, she saw nothing to alarm her. Her nose did twitch at a faint scent, an animal smell drifting from the deserted house. Cats, perhaps; or one of the pariah dogs that plagued the derelict zones of the great city. Kitty moved on.
She drew abreast of the second streetlight, and by its light studied the building at the end of the road. Just inside the lip of the wide garage opening, before the rash of netting, she now saw a narrow door set into the side wall. From this distance, it even looked slightly ajar.
Too good to be true? Perhaps. Over the years, Kitty had learned to treat anything this easy with extreme caution. She would reconnoiter the whole area before finally committing to that extremely inviting door.
She set off once more and, in the next five seconds, saw two things.
The first was up at the lit window. For the briefest of moments, the shadow passed again behind the sheet, and this time its profile was clear. Her heart gave a jolt; she knew it for certain then. Jakob was there.
The second was at ground level, a little way ahead, on the opposite side of the road. Here, the streetlight threw its light in a rough circle, spilling out across the street and onto the wall of the building behind. This wall was punctured by a narrow window and, farther on, by an open doorway, and Kitty now noticed, as she edged a little closer, that light entering the window could be seen through the doorway, stretching in a flat diagonal across the internal floor. She also noticed—and this made her halt, mid-stride—that outlined neatly along one edge of this splinter of light was the silhouette of a man.
He was evidently standing pressed flat against the inner wall of the building, just along from the window, because only the very edges of his brow and nose could be discerned in the silhouette. They were rather prominent features—perhaps they protruded farther than their owner had allowed for, just out into the light. Aside from this, he was doing an extremely good job of lying in wait.
Scarcely breathing, Kitty backed up against the wall. With a crashing weight, the realization came: she had passed two doorways already—both had been broken open—and there were at least two more before the street's end. Chances were, each had its hidden occupant. Once she had reached the house at the end, the trap would be sprung.
But whose trap? Was it Mandrake's? Or—a new and dreadful thought, this—Mr. Hopkins's?
Kitty ground her teeth in fury. If she went on, she would be surrounded; if she retreated, she would be leaving Jakob to whatever fate the magicians planned. The first option was possibly suicidal, but the second could not be countenanced at any price.
She adjusted the satchel strap so that it hung more easily across her shoulder, and flipped the bag open. She took hold of the nearest weapon—an Inferno stick—and edged forward, keeping her eyes fixed on the silhouette in the doorway.
It did not move. Kitty kept close to the wall.
From a concealed place just ahead of her stepped a man.
His dark gray uniform blended perfectly with the night: even in full view, his tall and bulky form seemed only half there, a spirit conjured from the shadows. But his voice, harsh and deep, was real enough.
"This is the Night Police. You are under arrest. Place your bag on the ground and face the wall."
Kitty made no answer. She slowly backed away, angling out into the center of the road, away from the open doorways behind her. The Inferno stick lay lightly in her fingers.
The policeman made no attempt to follow her. "This is your last chance. Stop where you are and lay your weapons down. If you do not, you will be destroyed."
Kitty retreated farther. Then: a movement to her right—the silhouette in the doorway. From the corner of her eye, she saw it shift position. It bent forward and as it did so, the features changed. The protuberant nose began to jut forward alarmingly; the chin swung up to follow it; the bulging brow receded; pointed ears rose from the top of the skull, flexing and shifting. For an instant Kitty glimpsed the actual tip of a jet-black muzzle in the illuminated window, then it dropped to the floor out of view.
The silhouette had vanished from the doorway. From the room came a snuffling, and the sounds of ripping cloth.
Kitty bared her teeth, flicked her eyes back to the policeman in the road. He, too, was altering; his shoulders lurching down and forward, his clothes peeling away from the long, gray bristles erupting along his spine. His eyes shone yellow in the darkness; his teeth snapped angrily as the head descended into shadows.
This was enough for Kitty; she turned and fled.
Something with four feet was pacing at the end of the street, in the dark beyond the lamplight. She saw its burning eyes and, in a gulping mouthful, caught its stink.
She paused, momentarily uncertain. From a doorway to her right stole another low, dark form. It saw her, snapped its teeth and gave a dart in her direction.
Kitty tossed the stick.
It landed on the pavement between the creature's front paws, cracking open and emitting a tall gout of flame. A whimper, a very human squeal; the wolf reared up, front legs pawing like a boxer at the fiery air, and fell back, twisting in retreat.
Kitty already had a sphere—she couldn't tell what type—ready in her hand. She ran toward the nearest closed ground-floor window, threw the sphere against it. An explosion of air almost blew her off her feet; glass shattered, bricks fell down into the road. Kitty vaulted through the newly opened space, snagging her hand on a piece of jagged glass. She landed on her feet in the inner room.
Outside came a snarling and the scrape of claws on cobblestones.
Ahead of Kitty, in an otherwise naked room, a narrow flight of stairs rose in the darkness. She ran for them, pressing her wounded hand against her jacket to dull the fresh pain of the cut.
On the first step, she turned, faced the window.
A wolf leaped through the opening, jaws agape. The sphere hit it mid-muzzle.
Water exploded through the room, knocking Kitty off her feet against the bottom steps, momentarily blinding her. When she could open her eyes, a floodtide was draining away around her feet, filling the air with little gushing, sucking noises. The wolf was gone.
Kitty pelted up the stairs.
The upper room had several open windows: silver moonlight lay unrolled across the floor. Something in the street below howled. Kitty immediately scanned for exits, found none, cursed wildly. Worse, she could not secure her back: the steps had opened directly onto the upper floor—there was no trapdoor or other means of shutting off the route. From downstairs came the sound of something heavy splashing into shallow water.
Backing away from the opening, Kitty approached the nearest window. It was old and rotten, the wood around the pane hung slewed in its frame. Kitty kicked at it with a shoe. Wood and glass fell away into space. Almost before it shattered on the road, she was in the gap, silver light spilling across her face, craning her neck upward, looking for a handhold.
Down in the road below, a dark form wheeled and snapped, heavy feet crunching on glass fragments. She sensed it gazing up at her, willing her to fall.
Something bounded up the stairs with such prodigious strength that it almost careered into the opposite wall. Kitty caught sight of a roughened lintel a foot above the window. She tossed a sphere across the room, reached out and swung herself upward, shoes scrabbling on the window rim, muscles cracking, all the time feeling the stinging pain from the cut in her palm.
An explosion below her. Yellow-green plumes of fire jetted out the window beneath her flailing shoes, and for an instant the road was lit as if by a sickly sun.
The magical light died. Kitty hung on to the wall, searching for another handhold. She spied one, tested it, found it secure. She began to climb. A little way above was a parapet; beyond that, perhaps, a flat roof: this was her objective.
Lack of food and sleep had sapped her energy; her arms and legs seemed filled with water. After a couple of minutes, she paused for breath.
A scratching and scrabbling below her; a slavering, curiously near. Cautiously, fingers digging into the soft bricks, Kitty looked over her shoulder, down along the length of her body toward the distant moonlit road. Halfway between her and the pavement was a rapidly ascending form. For the purposes of its climb, it had reverted a little from its full wolf guise: paws had molded into long clawed fingers; animal forelegs had reacquired human elbows, clambering muscles had snapped back into position around the bones. But the face was unchanged: mouth agape, teeth shining in the silver light, tongue lolling and frothing to the side. Its yellow eyes were on her.
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**
**"W** hat 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 openly 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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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. 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, 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. "Nice effort, but that didn't work on me even in the old days. 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 form—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; 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.
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."
"But we never managed more than eleven! And London's huge!"
"Eleven percent? That's not too bad."
"No. Eleven. That was it."
The boy raised his eyebrows. "Blimey, your recruitment policy can't have been too snappy. But then again, it's early days. How long is it since Gladstone set up shop? Hundred and fifty years or so? Well, that's your answer. Resilience to magic takes a long time to build up in the general population. Magicians had ruled in Rome for five hundred years before the revolutions came. That's an awful lot of magic seeping through the city. Gradually more and more children are born with talents of one sort or another. What else can _you_ do, for instance? See us?"
"No." Kitty made a face. "Anne and Fred could do that. I'm just... good at surviving."
The boy grinned. "That's no mean talent. Don't knock it."
"Stanley could see magic _in stuff_ as well—that's how we knew you had that necklace."
"What? Oh, the Amulet. Yep, that kind of sight's another one. Well, there are probably all sorts of abilities bubbling up in London's population right now. Must be hundreds of people with the power. But you've got to remember, most people won't be aware they've got an ability at all. It takes time for the knowledge to spread. How did you find out?"
It was all Kitty could do to remember that this slight, polite, and very informative boy was actually a demon, something to be loathed and shunned. She opened her mouth to speak and hesitated. The boy rolled its eyes in annoyance and raised its hands. "Look, don't think I'm going to tell anyone this, least of all my master. I don't owe him anything. Still, far be it from me to force it out of you. I'm not a magician." It sounded rather huffy.
"A demon hit me with a Black Tumbler." Her small confidence took Kitty rather by surprise; she found herself saying it without thinking.
"Oh, yes. Tallow's monkey. I forgot." The boy stretched lazily. "Well, you'll be pleased to know Tallow's dead now. An afrit got him. Quite stylishly, too. No—I won't give you the details. Not unless you tell me more about you. What happened after the Tumbler?" And Kitty, despite herself, was soon recounting her story.
At the finish, the demon shrugged ruefully. "You see, the problem with this Pennyfeather was that he was too much like the magicians, wasn't he? Greedy, close, and clasping. Wanted to keep everything nice and secret, all for himself. Small wonder you had only eleven members. If you want to get a revolution going, my tip is to get the people on your side. All those explosions and thefts were never going to get you anywhere."
Kitty scowled. The demon's blithe assurance on the matter rankled. "I suppose not."
" 'Course they weren't. Education's the thing. Knowledge of the past. That's why the magicians give you such ropy schooling. I bet you had endless triumphal stuff about why Britain's so great." He chuckled. "The funny thing is, the people's growing resilience always comes as a surprise to the magicians, too. Each empire thinks it's different, thinks it won't happen to them. They forget the lessons of the past, even recent lessons. Gladstone only got to Prague so fast because half the Czech army was on strike at the time. It seriously weakened the Empire. But my master and his friends have already forgotten this fact. He hadn't a clue why you escaped his mouler the other day. Incidentally, he really _is_ taking ages to bring Hyrnek across. I'm beginning to think something might have happened to him. Nothing fatal, unfortunately, or I wouldn't still be here."
Jakob. Kitty had been so caught up in the demon's words that the thought of her friend had half escaped her mind. She flushed. This was the _enemy_ she was talking with—a killer, an abductor, an inhuman fiend. How could she have forgotten?
"You know," the demon said in a companionable sort of way, "I was wondering about something. Why did you come looking for this Hyrnek? You must have known it was a trap. He said you hadn't seen him for years."
"I hadn't. But it's my fault he's in this mess, isn't it?" Kitty gritted the words out.
"Ye-e-s..." The demon made a face. "I just think it's odd, that's all."
"What can _you_ know about it, demon?!" Kitty was white with rage. "You're a monster! How dare you even _imagine_ what I'm feeling!" She was so furious, she almost lashed out.
The boy tutted. "Let me give you a friendly tip," he said. "Now, you wouldn't want to be called 'female mudspawn,' would you? Well, in a similar way, when addressing a spirit such as me, the word _demon_ is in all honesty a little demeaning to us both. The correct term is _djinni,_ though you may add adjectives such as _noble_ and _resplendent_ if you choose. Just a question of manners. It keeps things friendly between us."
Kitty laughed harshly. _"No one's_ friendly with a demon!"
"Not normally, no. The cognitive differentials are just too great. But it _has_ happened...." It broke off thoughtfully.
"Yeah?"
"Take it from me."
"Such as when?"
"Oh, long ago... It doesn't matter." The Egyptian boy shrugged.
"You're making it up."
Kitty waited, but the boy was studying its fingernails intently. It did not continue.
After a long pause, she broke the silence. "So why _did_ Mandrake save me from the wolves? It doesn't make sense."
The boy grunted. "He wants the Staff. Obviously."
"The staff? Why?"
"What do you think? Power. He's trying to get it before the others." The boy's voice was terse. It appeared to be in a bad mood.
A dawning realization stole over Kitty. "You mean that staff's important?"
"Of course. It's Gladstone's. You _knew_ that, otherwise why break into his tomb?"
In her mind's eye, Kitty saw the theater box again, and the gold key being tossed into view. She heard the voice of their benefactor, mentioning the Staff as if it were an afterthought. She saw Hopkins's pale gray eyes gazing at hers, heard his voice, low amid the bustle of the Druids' Coffeehouse, inquiring after the Staff. She felt the sickness of betrayal.
"Oh. You _didn't_ know." The bright eyes of the djinni were watching her. "You were set up. Who by? That Hopkins?"
Kitty's voice was faint. "Yes. And someone else—I never saw his face."
"Pity. It was almost certainly one of the leading magicians. As to which, you can take your pick. They're all as bad as one another. And they'll always have someone else do their dirty work for them, djinni or human." It blinked, as if a thought had struck it. "You don't know anything about the golem, I suppose?" This word meant nothing to Kitty; she shook her head. "Didn't think so. It's a big, nasty magical creature—been causing chaos around London recently. _Someone's_ controlling it, and I'd dearly like to know who. Nearly killed me, for starters."
The boy looked so put out as it said this that Kitty almost smirked. "I thought you were a noble djinni of awesome power?" she said. "How come this golem beat you?"
"It's resistant to magic, that's why. Saps my energy if I get close. _You'd_ have a better chance of stopping it than me." It made it sound as if this was the most ridiculous thing in the world.
Kitty bridled. "Thanks a lot."
"I'm serious. A golem's controlled by a manuscript hidden in its mouth. If you got close, and whipped the paper out, the golem would return to its master and disintegrate back into clay. I saw it happen once, in Prague."
Kitty nodded absently. "That doesn't sound too difficult."
"Obviously, you'd have to penetrate the choking black mist that hangs about it...."
"Oh... right."
"And avoid its swinging fists that can hammer through concrete..."
"Ah."
"Other than that, you'd be laughing."
"Well, if it's so _easy,_ " Kitty demanded hotly, "how come the magicians haven't stopped it?"
The djinni gave a cold smile. "Because it would require personal bravery. They never do _anything_ themselves. They rely on us the whole time. Mandrake gives me an order, I obey. He sits at home, I go out and suffer. That's the way it works."
The boy's voice had grown old and tired. Kitty nodded. "Sounds tough."
A shrug. "That's the way it works. No choice. That's why I'm interested in you coming out to rescue Hyrnek. Let's face it, it was a stupid decision, and you didn't have to make it. No one's forcing you to do anything. You got it wrong, but for admirable reasons. Believe me, it makes a change to see that after hanging around with magicians for so long."
"I didn't get it wrong," Kitty said. "How long _has_ it been?"
"Five thousand years or more. Off and on. You get the odd break down the centuries, but just as one empire falls, there's always another rising up. Britain's only the latest."
Kitty looked out into the shadows. "And Britain'll fall too, in time."
"Oh, yes. The cracks are already showing. You should read more, you'll see the patterns. Aha... someone's below. At last..."
The boy stood up. Kitty did likewise. To her ears now came scuffling sounds, a couple of whispered curses drifting up the staircase. Her heart began to beat fast. Once more, she wondered if she should run; once more, she quelled the instinct down.
The djinni looked across at her, grinned. Its teeth flashed very white. "You know, I've quite enjoyed our conversation," it said. "I hope they don't order me to kill you."
Girl and demon stood together, waiting in the darkness. Steps ascended the stairs.
Nathaniel was escorted to Whitehall in an armored limousine, accompanied by Jane Farrar and three silent officers of the Night Police. Jakob Hyrnek sat to his left, a policeman to his right. Nathaniel noticed that the officer had great rips and tears in the trousers of his uniform, and that the nails on his great callused hands were torn. The air was thick with the smell of musk. He looked across at Jane Farrar, sitting impassively in the front seat, and found himself wondering whether she was a werewolf, too. Altogether, he doubted it: she seemed too controlled, too slight of build. But then again, you could never tell.
At Westminster Hall, Nathaniel and Jakob were taken straight to the great Reception Chamber, where the ceiling glowed with vigilance spheres and the Prime Minister and his lords sat around the polished table. Unusually, no edible delicacies were on display, indicating the perceived seriousness of the situation. Each minister had only a humble bottle of carbonated water and a glass. The Police Chief now sat in the chair of honor next to the Prime Minister, his face heavy with satisfaction. Ms. Whitwell was relegated to a seat on the margins. Nathaniel did not look at her. His eyes were fixed on the Prime Minister, looking for readable signs; but Mr. Devereaux was gazing at the table.
No one but the chief ministers were there. Mr. Makepeace was not present.
The escorting officers saluted at Police Chief Duvall and, at his signal, shuffled from the room. Jane Farrar stepped forward. She coughed delicately.
Mr. Devereaux looked up. He sighed the sigh of a man about to carry out a regretful task. "Yes, Ms. Farrar? You have something to report?"
"I do, sir. Has Mr. Duvall given you any details?"
"He has mentioned something of the matter. Please be brief."
"Yes, sir. For some days, we have been observing the activities of John Mandrake. Several small discrepancies about his recent affairs made us attentive: he has displayed a certain vagueness and inconsistency in his actions."
"I protest!" Nathaniel interrupted as suavely as he could. "My demon destroyed the renegade afrit—I can hardly be accused of vagueness there."
Mr. Devereaux held up a hand. "Yes, yes, Mandrake. You will have your chance to speak. In the meantime, please be silent."
Jane Farrar cleared her throat. "If I might expand, sir: in the last few days Mandrake has several times embarked on solitary trips across London, at a time of crisis when all magicians were required to remain at Westminster to receive orders. This afternoon, when he once more departed mysteriously, we sent vigilance spheres out to follow him. We traced him to a house in east London, where he met his demon and this unprepossessing youth. They took up station there, evidently waiting for someone. We decided to station officers from the Night Police nearby. Late this very evening, a girl approached the house; challenged by our officers, she proceeded to resist arrest. She was highly armed: two men were killed and four injured in the scuffle. However, our officers were about to effect capture when Mr. Mandrake's demon appeared and helped the suspect escape. At this point, I felt it my duty to arrest Mr. Mandrake."
The Prime Minister took a small sip of water. "This girl? Who is she?"
"We believe her to be a member of the Resistance, sir, a survivor of the abbey raid. It seems clear that Mandrake has been in contact with her for some time. Certainly, he helped her evade justice. I thought it proper that the matter be brought to your attention."
"Indeed." Mr. Devereaux's black eyes scanned Nathaniel for a time. "When your forces encountered her, was the girl carrying Gladstone's Staff?"
Jane Farrar pursed her lips. "No, sir, she was not."
"Please sir, if I may—"
"You may _not,_ Mandrake. Henry, you wish to comment?"
The Police Chief had been shuffling restlessly in his seat; now he leaned forward, placing his great thick hands palms-down on the table. He turned his head slowly from side to side, scanning the other ministers one by one. "I have had my doubts about this boy for some time now, Rupert," he began. "When I first saw him I said to myself: 'This Mandrake, he's talented, all right, and outwardly industrious—but deep too, there's something unfathomable about him.'Well now, we all know his ambition, how he's wormed his way into poor Jessica's affections, how she gave him power in Internal Affairs at a remarkably young age. So what was his brief in that office? To tackle the Resistance, destroy it if possible, and make the streets a safer place for us all. What has happened in recent months? The Resistance has gone from strength to strength, and their terror campaign has culminated in the ransacking of our Founder's tomb. There is no end to the outrages they have committed: the British Museum, the emporiums of Piccadilly, the National Gallery—all have been attacked, and no one has been held accountable."
Nathaniel stepped forward angrily. "As I've said many times, those had nothing to do with—"
An olive-green band of gelatinous substance materialized in midair before him and wound tightly around his head, gagging him painfully. Mr. Mortensen lowered his hand. "Go on, Duvall," he said.
"Thank you." The Police Chief made an expansive gesture. "Well, now. At first, Ms. Farrar and I assumed all this singular lack of success was down to simple incompetence on Mandrake's part. Then we began to wonder: Could there be something more to it? Could this talented and ambitious youth be part of something more sinister? We began to keep an eye on him. After the museum's destruction, he made a surreptitious journey to Prague, where—although his movements are a little uncertain—we believe he met with foreign magicians. Yes, you may well gasp, Ms. Malbindi! Who knows what damage this boy may have done, what secrets he may have exposed. At the very least, one of our best spies in Prague—a man who had served us well for many years—was killed during Mandrake's visit."
At this, many of the ministers set up a low muttering. Mr. Duvall drummed the table with his slablike fingers. "Mandrake has been touting an unlikely story about the London attacks, claiming that a golem—yes, you did hear correctly, Ms. Malbindi, a _golem_ —might be behind them. Ridiculous as this is, he appears to have gulled poor Jessica easily enough, and the golem story served as his excuse to visit Prague. He came back without proof of his wild assertions, and—as we have just heard—has since been caught communing with the Resistance and defying our police. It's clear enough that he wants Gladstone's Staff; it may even be that he directed the traitors to the tomb in the first place. I suggest that we escort Mr. Mandrake forthwith to the Tower of London for proper interrogation. Indeed, I propose to take care of the matter personally."
There was a murmur of assent. Mr. Devereaux shrugged. Of the ministers, Ms. Whitwell remained silent, stony-faced. The portly Foreign Minister, Fry, spoke: "Good. I never liked the boy. His hair is far too long and he has an insolent face. Do you have any methods in mind, Duvall?"
"Perhaps the Well of Remorse? I suggest suspending him up to his nose in it overnight. That usually makes traitors talk, if the eels have left them their tongues."
Fry nodded. "Eels. That reminds me. What about a second supper?"
Mr. Mortensen leaned forward. "What about the Winch, Duvall? That often proves effective."
"A Mournful Orb is the most tried-and-tested method, I find."
"Perhaps a few hours in each?"
"Perhaps. Shall I remove the wretch, Rupert?"
The Prime Minster blew out his cheeks, sat back in his chair. He spoke hesitantly. "I suppose so, Henry. I suppose so."
Mr. Duvall clicked his fingers; from the shadows stepped four Night Police, each one more muscular than the last. They marched in step across the room toward the prisoner, their leader producing a thin silver manacle from his belt. At this development, Nathaniel, who had been wriggling and gesticulating with vigor for some time, set up such an agitated protest that a small muffled yelp escaped his gag. The Prime Minster seemed to recall something; he held up a hand.
"One moment, Henry. We must allow the boy his defense."
The Police Chief frowned with impatience. _"Must_ we, Rupert? Beware. He is a plausible little devil."
"7 shall decide that for myself, I think." Mr. Devereaux glanced at Mortensen, who made a reluctant gesture. The gelatinous gag around Nathaniel's mouth dissolved, leaving a bitter tang. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the perspiration from his face.
"Get on with it then," Duvall said. "And mind, no lies."
Nathaniel drew himself upright and passed his tongue across his lips. He saw nothing but hostility in the eyes of the senior magicians, except—and this was his only hope now—perhaps those of Mr. Devereaux himself. There he discerned something that might have been uncertainty, mixed with extreme irritation. Nathaniel cleared his throat. He had long prided himself on his bond with the Prime Minister. Now was the time to put it to the test.
"Thank you for the opportunity to speak, sir," he began. He tried to give his voice an easy, calm assertion, but fear constricted it into a squeak. Simply the thought of the House of Persuasion, an area of the Tower of London given over to interrogation of prisoners, made him tremble. Bartimaeus had been right: by his actions, he had become vulnerable to his enemies. Now he had to out-talk them. "Mr. Duvall's insinuations are groundless," he said, "and Ms. Farrar is, to say the least, overeager. I hope that there is still time to make good the damage that they have done."
He heard Jane Farrar snort discreetly somewhere beside him. Mr. Duvall emitted a snarl of protest that was cut off by a single look from the Prime Minister. Somewhat emboldened, Nathaniel pressed on. "My trip to Prague and the issue of the girl are two entirely separate things, sir. It is true that I believe many of the attacks in London to be the work of a golem; my investigations into that are not yet finished. Meanwhile I have been using this youth"—he nodded toward Hyrnek—"to lure the traitor Kitty Jones out of hiding. He is her old associate and I guessed she might attempt to save him. Once in my power, she would soon tell me the location of the Staff, which I could then deliver into your hands. The arrival of Ms. Farrar's wolves completely ruined my ambush. I trust she will be firmly reprimanded."
Jane Farrar gave a cry of anger. " _My_ men had the girl trapped! Your demon spirited her away."
"Of course." Nathaniel was urbanity itself. "Because _your_ men would have torn her to pieces. They were filled with bloodlust. How would we have secured the Staff then?"
"They were Imperial Police, directly accountable to Mr. Duvall here—"
"Quite so, and a more crude and haphazard organization would be hard to find." Nathaniel went on the attack. "I acknowledge that I have been secretive, sir," he said sweetly, addressing Mr. Devereaux full on, "but I knew this was a delicate operation. The girl is stubborn and willful. To locate the Staff I had to tread carefully: I had to offer her this boy's safety for its return. I feared lest Mr. Duvall's customary heavy-handedness would jeopardize everything. As, unfortunately, has been the case."
The fury in the Police Chief's eyes was remarkable to behold. His swarthy face went beetroot red, the veins in his neck and hands bulged like mooring ropes, and his fingernails—which seemed slightly longer than a moment previously—jabbed deep into the tabletop. He could barely speak for choking. "Guards! Take this vicious youth away. I shall attend upon him presently."
"You forget yourself, Henry." Mr. Devereaux spoke quietly, but the menace in his voice was clear. " _I_ am judge and jury in this government; it is I who shall decide Mandrake's fate. I am by no means satisfied that he is the traitor you claim. John," he continued, "your demon has the girl, this Kitty Jones, in custody?"
"Yes, sir." Nathaniel's face was taut with tension. He was not free yet; the dark shadow of the Well of Remorse still hovered before him. He had to go carefully. "I sent her to a quiet location, where I might carry out my plan. I hope this long delay has not ruined everything."
"And you planned to restore the Staff to me?" Devereaux regarded him out of the corner of one eye.
"Of course, sir! I hoped I would see it one day sitting next to the Amulet of Samarkand in the government vaults, sir." He chewed his lip, waited. That was his trump card, of course—by retrieving the Amulet he had saved Devereaux's life, and he did not want the Prime Minister to forget it now. "I can still do it, sir," he added. "If I take this Hyrnek to the girl, and promise their mutual safety, I believe she will give me the Staff within the hour."
"And the girl? She will go free?"
Nathaniel smirked. "Oh, no sir. Once I have the Staff, she and Hyrnek can be interrogated at leisure." His smile promptly vanished as Jakob Hyrnek kicked out and made contact with his shin.
"The boy is a consummate liar." Mr. Duvall had regained a little of his composure. "Please, Rupert, you are surely not going to be taken in..."
"I have made my decision." The Prime Minister leaned forward, steepling his fingers into an arch. "Mandrake has proved himself valuable and loyal in the past; we must give him the benefit of the doubt. We shall take him at his word. Let him get the Staff. If he does, his secretiveness in the matter is forgiven. If he does not, I shall accept Henry's version of events and consign him to the Tower. A happy compromise? Is everyone satisfied?" Smiling, he looked from Mr. Duvall's louring disappointment to Nathaniel's sickly green anxiety and back again. "Good. Mandrake can depart. Now, did someone mention food? A little Byzantine wine to begin!"
A warm breeze spun around the room. Invisible slaves stepped forward, bearing crystal glasses and decanters filled with apricot-colored wines. Jane Farrar ducked as a plate of venison sausages swept past her head. "But sir, surely we aren't going to let Mandrake do this alone!"
"Yes—we must send a battalion of troops!" Duvall impatiently swatted a proffered glass aside. "It would be foolish to trust him."
Nathaniel was already halfway to the door. He hurried back. "Sir, this is a situation of great delicacy. A bunch of wolfheads will ruin everything."
Mr. Devereaux was sampling a glass. "Delightful. The essence of Marmara... Well, we shall compromise again. Mandrake will be assigned several vigilance spheres, so we can check up on his movements. Now, can someone pass me that delicious-looking couscous?"
Nathaniel bound Jakob Hyrnek in an invisible bond and, leading him by the arm, departed the hall. He felt no elation. He had stymied Duvall for the moment, but if he did not secure the Staff, and soon, the outlook was bleak. He knew that he had used up all the goodwill the Prime Minister felt for him, and the dislike of all the other ministers was palpable. His career, and his life, hung by a thread.
As they crossed the lobby of the hall, Ms. Whitwell stepped out to intercept them. Nathaniel gazed at her implacably, but did not speak. Her hawk eyes bored into his.
"You may or may not have convinced our dear Prime Minister," she said in a harsh whisper, "and you may or may not acquire the Staff, but _I_ know that you have been acting behind my back, seeking advancement at my expense, and I will not forgive you for it. Our association is at an end, and I wish you no success. You are welcome to rot in Duvall's Tower for all I care."
She hurried away, her clothes rustling like dead leaves. Nathaniel stared after her for a time; then, noticing Hyrnek watching him with grim amusement in his eyes, he gathered himself and signaled across the lobby to the knot of waiting chauffeurs.
As the car drove north, four red vigilance spheres materialized above the entrance to the hall and drifted silently in pursuit.
I saw the way it was the moment they came up the stairs. I could read it in the forced smile of the boy Hyrnek and the reluctance with which he climbed each step. I could see it in the cold, steely look in my master's eyes, and the menacing closeness with which he trod in his prisoner's wake. Oh yes, Nathaniel was trying to make it appear all nice and relaxed, trying to lull the girl into carelessness. Call me intuitive, but I didn't reckon things were quite as rosy as he wanted her to think. Of course, the invisible foliot perched on Hyrnek's shoulders, clutching his throat tightly in its long clawed feet, was a bit of a giveaway, too. Hyrnek's hands were pinned to his side by a thin, scaly loop of tail, so he was unable to speak, cry out, or make any kind of gesture. Thin talons jabbed into his cheeks, encouraging him to maintain his smile. The foliot was busy whispering something in his ear too, and it is unlikely to have been sweet nothings.
But the girl was oblivious to this. She uttered a small cry when she saw Hyrnek appear up the staircase and made an involuntary step forward. My master gave a warning call: "Please stand away, Ms. Jones!"
She stayed where she was, but didn't take her eyes off her friend. "Hello Jakob," she said.
The foliot loosened its claws a little, allowing the prisoner to croak. "Hi, Kitty."
"Are you hurt?"
A pause. The foliot tickled Hyrnek's cheek warningly "No."
She gave a weak smile. "I—I came to rescue you."
A stiff nod was all she got that time. The foliot's claws had reasserted their hold. Hyrnek's fake smile was back, but I could see the desperate warning in his eyes.
"Don't worry, Jakob," the girl said firmly. "I'll get us out of this."
Well, this was all very touching, all very poignant, and I could see the girl's affection for the boy was exactly what my master desired. He was watching their greeting with eager calculation.
"I come in good faith, Ms. Jones," he said, lying blandly. Hanging invisibly around Hyrnek's neck, the foliot rolled its eyes and mouthed a silent chuckle.
Even if I _had_ wanted to tip off the girl about the foliot, it was impossible to speak to her with my master standing right there in front of me. Besides, he wasn't the only problem. I now noted a couple of red spheres hovering high up in the rafters. Magicians were observing us from afar. There was no point asking for trouble. As usual, I stood pathetically by and waited for my orders.
"I come in good faith," my master said again. His hands were outstretched in a sign of peace, palms upward and empty. "No one else knows you are here. We are alone."
Well, that was another fib. The watching spheres nudged coquettishly behind a beam, as if embarrassed. The foliot made a face of mock outrage. Hyrnek's eyes pleaded with the girl, but she noticed nothing. "And the wolves?" she said curtly.
"Are far away—still searching for you, for all I know." His mouth smiled. "You can scarcely want any further proof of my intentions," he said. "Were it not for me, you would be nothing but bones in a back alley by now."
"Last time I saw you, you were scarcely so considerate."
"True." Nathaniel made what he evidently thought was a courteous flourish; with all his hair and cuffs flapping it looked as though he'd tripped. "I apologize for my haste on that occasion."
"You still propose to arrest me? I take it that is why you abducted Jakob."
"I did think it would winkle you out, yes. But arrest you? In all honesty, that is up to you. Perhaps we can come to an arrangement."
"Go on."
"But first—do you require refreshment or first-aid? I see you carry an injury, and you must be weary. I can send my slave"—here he clicked his fingers at me—"to get whatever you desire: food, hot wines, restoratives... Ask, and it shall be done!"
She shook her head. "I want none of your magical filth."
"Surely you have need of something? Bandages? Sweet herbs? Whisky? Bartimaeus can produce it all in the blink of an eye."
"No." She was hard-faced, unmoved by his blandishments. "What is your proposal? I assume you want the Staff."
Nathaniel's complexion changed a little at the word; perhaps he was disconcerted by her bluntness, magicians being rarely that honest and direct. He nodded slowly. "You have it?" His body was stiff with tension; he did not breathe.
"I do."
"Can it be swiftly secured?"
"It can."
He exhaled then. "Good. Good. Then here is my proposal. I have a car waiting below. Take me to the location of the Staff and entrust it into my care. Once I have it safely, you and Hyrnek will be given safe conduct anywhere you choose. This amnesty will last for a day. I assume you will wish to leave the country, and that will give you time to do so. Think carefully on my words! This is a handsome offer to an unregenerate traitor such as yourself. Others in the government, as you have seen, would not be so kind."
The girl was unconvinced. "What surety do I have that you will keep your word?"
He smiled, plucked a speck of dust from a sleeve. "None. You will have to trust me."
"Hardly likely."
"What choice do you have, Ms. Jones? You are already in something of a corner. A savage demon stands guard over you—"
She looked from side to side in puzzlement. I coughed. "That's me," I said.
"—and you have _me_ to contend with too," my master went on. "I will not underestimate you again. In fact," he added, almost as an afterthought, "I'm curious to know the source of your magical defenses. Very curious, in fact. Where did you get them from? Who gave them to you?" The girl said nothing. "If you share this information with me," Nathaniel said, "if you talk candidly about your time in the Resistance, I will do more than set you free." He stepped forward then, put out a hand to touch her arm. She flinched, but did not pull away. "I can give you wealth, too," he said. "Yes, and status beyond your wildest dreams. Commoners such as yourself—with brains, bravery, and aptitude to spare—can win roles at the heart of government, positions of real power. That's no secret. You will work daily with the great ones of our society, and learn such things that will make your head spin. I can take you away from the drabness of your life, give you glimpses into the marvelous past, the days when the magician-emperors bestrode the world. Then you can become part of our own great story. When the current wars are won, for instance, we shall establish a renewed Colonial Office in America, and will need intelligent men and women to enforce our will. They say there are vast estates to be won out there, Ms. Jones, tracts of land with nothing on them but beasts and a few savages. Imagine—you as a great lady of the Empire..."
She moved aside then; his hand dropped from her arm. "Thank you, but I do not think that will suit me."
He scowled. "A pity. What of my first proposal? Do you accept?"
"I wish to talk with Jakob."
"There he stands." Casually, the magician walked away a short distance. I stepped back, too. The girl drew close to Hyrnek.
"Are you truly all right?" she whispered. "You are so silent."
The foliot relaxed its hold on his throat, but flexed its talons before his face as a gentle reminder. He nodded weakly. "I'm fine. Fine."
"I am going to accept Mr. Mandrake's offer. Do you have anything to say?"
The weakest of smiles. "No, no, Kathleen. You can trust him."
She hesitated, nodded, turned away. "Very well, then. Mr. Mandrake, I assume you wish to delay no longer. Where is your car? I will take you to the Staff."
During the journey, Nathaniel was a ripe old mix of emotions. Excitement, agitation, and downright fear mingled unappetizingly in his countenance; he could not sit still, fidgeting on his seat, turning repeatedly to look out of the back window at the passing lights of the city. He treated the girl with a confusing combination of officious politeness and barely concealed scorn, asking eager questions one minute and uttering veiled threats the next. By contrast, the rest of us in the car were grave and silent. Hyrnek and Kitty stared rigidly to the front (Hyrnek with the foliot still entwined about his face), while the chauffeur beyond the glass made stolidity an art form. I—though forced through lack of space to assume the form of a stoic guinea pig crouched between the girl's shoe and the glove compartment—was my usual dignified self.
We drove steadily through the London night. There was nothing on the roads. The stars began winking out above the rooftops: dawn was fast approaching. The car engine hummed drearily. Out of sight of Nathaniel, four red lights bobbed and weaved directly above the roof of the limousine.
In contrast to my master, the girl seemed very self-possessed. It occurred to me that she knew he would betray her—let's face it, it didn't need a djinni's brain to guess that much—but was going to her doom calmly nonetheless. The guinea pig nodded regretfully to itself. More than ever, I admired her resolve—and the grace with which she exerted it. But that's free will for you. I did not have that luxury in this world.
Under the girl's direction, we drove south through the center of the city, across the river, and into a downmarket region of light industry and commerce, where ramshackle tenement housing rose three stories tall. A few hunched pedestrians were already in evidence, stumbling to early shifts. A couple of bored demi-afrits drifted past, and once a portly messenger imp also, laboring under a giant package. At length, we turned into a narrow cobbled lane that ran under a low arch and into a deserted mews.
"Here." The girl rapped on the partition glass. The block of wood pulled over and sat motionless, awaiting orders. The rest of us disembarked, stiff and cold in the first light of the dawn. The guinea pig stretched out its essence and returned to Ptolemy's form. I glanced about, and saw the watching spheres loitering at a distance.
On either side of us were rows of narrow, white-painted mews houses, residential and a little unkempt. Without a word, the girl approached a set of steps leading down to a basement door. Nudging Hyrnek in front of him, Nathaniel followed. I brought up the rear.
My master glanced at me over his shoulder. "If she tries any tricks, kill her."
"You'll have to be more specific," I said. "What kind of tricks? Card, coin, Indian rope—what?"
He gave me a look. "Anything that breaks my agreement with her, with the intention of causing me harm or assisting her escape. That clear enough?"
"Crystal."
The girl had been scrabbling around in the dimness by the door; from some crevice or other she withdrew a key. A moment later, the door scraped open. Without a word, she stepped through; the three of us shambled after.
We twisted and turned through a series of labyrinthine basements, Kitty, Hyrnek, Nathaniel, and I, one close after the other as if doing a slow and dreary conga. She seemed to know her way well enough, flicking light switches on at intervals, ducking under low arches that caused the rest of us to bang our foreheads, never looking back. It was a circuitous route; I began to wonder if my minotaur guise wouldn't have been more appropriate.
Looking back, I saw the glow of at least one sphere trailing in our wake. We were still being observed from afar.
When the girl halted at last, it was in a small side room off the main basement. She switched on a meager bulb. The room was empty, except for a pile of logs in the far corner. Water dripped from the ceiling and trickled in rivulets across the floor. Nathaniel wrinkled his nose. "Well?" he snapped. "I don't see anything."
The girl stepped over to the logs and extended a foot somewhere into the pile. A squeaking; a section of brickwork swung open beyond her. Shadows yawned.
"Stop right there! You're not going in." Leaving Hyrnek for the first time, my master hurried forward to stand between Kitty and the secret door. "Bartimaeus—go inside and report what you find. If the Staff is there, bring it out to me."
Rather more diffidently than is my wont, I approached the door, erecting a Shield about me in case of booby traps. As I drew close, I felt a warning throb on all seven planes, the indication of powerful magic up ahead. I stuck a tentative head through the hole and looked around.
It was little more than a glorified cupboard, a seedy hole half filled with the cheap gimmicks that the girl and her friends had pinched from the magicians. There were the usual glass orbs and metal containers: shoddy stuff all, none of it any good.
The exception to this was the item propped casually in the far corner, incongruously fighting for space with a few explosive lances.
When I'd seen the Staff from afar across the burning roofs of Prague, it had been crackling with a storm's power. Lightning bolts had converged on it from a rent and wounded sky, its shadow extended across the clouds. A whole city was subjugated before its anger. Now it was quiet and dusty and a spider was innocently spinning a web between its carved head and a recess in the wall.
Even so, its energy was still latent within it. Its aura pulsed strongly, filling the room (on the higher planes) with light. Such an object is not to be trifled with, and it was with hooked fingertip and thumb, in the reluctant manner of someone extracting a maggot from an apple, that I carried Gladstone's Staff out of the secret storeroom and presented it to my master.
Oh, he was happy then. The relief just poured off him. He took it from me and gazed at it, and the aura of the thing lit the contours of his face with a dull radiance.
"Mr. Mandrake." That was the girl talking. She was standing next to Hyrnek now, one arm around him protectively. The invisible foliot had swung to Hrynek's opposite shoulder and was eyeing her with profound mistrust. Perhaps it sensed her innate resilience. "Mr. Mandrake," she said, "I have completed my half of the bargain. Now you must set us free."
"Yes, yes." My master scarcely looked up from his appreciation of the Staff. "Of course. I will make the appropriate arrangements. An escort will be found for you. But first, let us get out of this gloomy place."
By the time we emerged, the light of early morning had begun to spill into the corners of the cobbled mews and shone faintly on the chrome of the limousine on the opposite side of the lane. The chauffeur sat stock-still in his seat, gazing out in front; he did not appear to have moved in all the time we'd been gone. Now the girl tried again. She was very tired; her voice did not carry great hope. "You do not have to escort us from here, Mr. Mandrake," she said. "We can make our own way."
My master had just clambered up the steps holding the Staff. He did not appear to hear her at first; his mind was far away, dwelling on other things. He blinked, stopped dead in his tracks, and fixed his eyes upon her as if seeing her for the first time.
"You made a promise," the girl said.
"A promise..." He frowned vaguely.
"To let us go." I noticed her subtly shifting her weight onto the front of her feet as she spoke, readying herself for sudden movement. I wondered with some interest what she planned to do.
"Ah yes." There might have been a time, a year or two back, when Nathaniel would have honored any agreement he had made. He'd have considered it beneath his dignity to break a vow, despite his enmity with the girl. It may be that, even now, part of him still disliked doing so. Certainly, he hesitated for a moment, as if in actual doubt. Then I saw him glance up at the red spheres, which had emerged from the cellar and were once more hovering above. His eyes went dark. His masters' gazes were on him, and that decided matters.
He tugged at a cuff as he spoke, but his resemblance to the other magicians was now deeper than such outward mimicry. "Promises made to terrorists are scarcely obligatory, Ms. Jones," he said. "Our agreement is void. You will be interrogated and tried for treason forthwith, and I shall make it my business to escort you to the Tower myself. Do not try anything!" His voice rose in warning—the girl had slipped a hand into her jacket. "Your friend's life hangs by a thread. Sophocles, reveal yourself!" The grinning foliot on Hyrnek's shoulders shrugged off its invisibility on the first plane, gave the girl an insolent wink and snapped its teeth beside its prisoner's ear.
The girl's shoulders sagged a little; she looked crestfallen. "Very well," she said.
"Your weapon—whatever it is in your coat. Bring it out. Slowly."
She hesitated. "It's not a weapon."
Nathaniel's voice grew dangerous. "I don't have time for this! Show it, or your friend will lose his ear."
"It's not a weapon. It's a present." So saying, she drew forth her hand. In her fingers was something small, circular, glinting in the light. A bronze disc.
Nathaniel's eyes widened. "That's mine! My scrying glass!"
The girl nodded. "Have it back." She flicked her wrist. The disc flew spinning high into the air. Instinctively, we watched. it go: Nathaniel, the foliot, and I. As we watched, the girl acted. Her hands reached out and snared the foliot around its scrawny neck, jerking it backward off Hyrnek's shoulders. It was taken by surprise, its grip was loosened, its talons snicking in midair, but its slender tail looped around Hyrnek's face, fast as a whip, and began to squeeze. Hyrnek cried out, clawing at the tail.
Nathaniel was stepping backward, following the spinning disc. He still held the Staff, but his free hand was stretched out, hoping to catch it.
The girl's fingers bore down upon the foliot's neck; its eyes bulged, its face grew purple.
The tail tightened on Hyrnek's head.
I watched all this with great interest. Kitty was relying on her resilience here, on her power to counteract the foliot's magic. It all depended how strong that resilience was. It was quite possible that the foliot would soon reassert itself, crush Hyrnek's skull, and move on to deal with her. But the girl was strong, and she was angry. The foliot's face swelled; it uttered a reproachful sound. A crisis point was reached. With the sound of a balloon popping, the foliot burst into vapor, tail and all; it dissipated on the air. Both Kitty and Hyrnek lost their balance, tumbled to the ground.
The scrying glass landed safely in Nathaniel's hand. He looked up, and for the first time took in the situation. His prisoners were unsteadily getting to their feet.
He uttered a cry of annoyance. "Bartimaeus!"
I was sitting myself quietly on a post. I looked over. "Yes?"
"Why didn't you act to halt this? I gave you strict instructions."
"You did, you did." I scratched the back of my head.
"I told you to kill her if she tried anything!"
"The car! Come on!" Already the girl was moving, dragging Hyrnek along with her. They scampered across the cobblestones toward the limousine. This was better watching than the Aztec ball game. If only I'd had some popcorn.
"Well?" He was incandescent with rage.
"You told me to kill her if she broke the terms of your agreement."
"Yes! By escaping—as she's doing now! So get to it! The Shriveling Fire—"
I grinned cheerily. "But that agreement is null and void. You broke it yourself, not two minutes ago—in a particularly noxious manner, if I may say so. So she can hardly be breaking it herself, can she? Listen, if you put that Staff down, you can tear your hair out more easily."
"Ahh! I rescind all previous orders and issue a new one, which you cannot misinterpret! Stop them from departing in that car!"
"Oh, very well." I had to obey. I slouched down from the post and set off in reluctant and leisurely pursuit.
All the while we'd been gabbing, Nathaniel and I had been watching our friends' frantic progress across the lane.
The girl was in the lead; now she reached the limo and swung open the driver's door, presumably with the intention of forcing him to drive them away. The chauffeur, who at no point in the proceedings had evinced even the slightest interest in our scuffling, remained staring forward. Kitty was shouting at him now, frantically issuing orders. She tugged at his shoulder. He gave a sort of limp wobble and slipped sideways out of his seat, knocking into the startled girl, before collapsing face down on the cobblestones. One arm lolled discouragingly.
For a couple of seconds, we all halted what we were doing. The girl remained transfixed, perhaps wondering at her own strength. I contemplated the remarkable work ethic of the traditional British workman. Even my master stopped frothing at the mouth for a moment in perplexity. We all edged nearer.
"Surprise!" Up from behind the body of the car popped a smiling face. Well, it was grinning, really—skulls, as we know, don't really smile. Nevertheless, it exuded a certain irrepressible gaiety, which contrasted sharply with the lank white hair flecked with river slime, with the sodden black rags clogged upon its bones, with the fetid graveyard stench now floating on the breeze.
"Uh-oh." Blindingly articulate, that's me.
With a clacking of bones and a gleeful cry, Honorius the afrit leaped upon the bonnet of the car, femurs akimbo, hands on hip bones, skull cocked at a jaunty angle. From there, framed by the light of the new sun, he appraised us one by one.
For the first seconds, Kitty was no longer in the cobbled lane, no longer breathing morning air; she was once more underground, trapped in a black crypt, with the taste of death in her mouth and her friends cut down before her eyes. The terror was the same, and the helplessness; she felt her strength and resolution shrivel into nothing, like scraps of paper consumed by fire. She could scarcely breathe.
Her first thought was anger at the demon Bartimaeus. His claim to have destroyed the skeleton was now revealed as just another falsehood. Her second thought was for Jakob, who stood quivering beside her: because of her actions, he would die—she knew this with utter certainty, and hated herself for it.
Most of the skeleton's clothing had fallen away; what little remained hung shapelessly upon the yellowed bones. The golden mask was missing; tiny red flames burned in the skull's dark sockets. Below, sunlight filtered between the ribs and out through the remnants of the jacket. The trousers and shoes were entirely gone. But the creature's energy was unchanged. It hopped from foot to foot with an appalling jerky swiftness.
"Well, jolly nice, I call it." The merry voice rang clear as a bell from between the dangling teeth. "I couldn't have asked for more. Here I am, happy as a lamb, if a little damp about the cartilage, hard at work. What do I want? Simply to follow the scent of my lost possession, collect it and be off on my way. What do I find? My Staff—yes! Good as new—but more than that... Two _other_ little lambs to play with—two lambs whom I've been thinking about long and hard, as I swilled around the estuary in the cold, cold water, and my beautiful clothes grew rotten on my bones. Oh, don't look so innocent, my dear"—the high voice dropped to a snarl, the skull jutted down toward Kitty—"you're one of them. The little mouse who disturbed my master's rest, who took his Staff and thinks it ladylike to carry vicious silver in her purse. _You,_ I'll deal with last."
The skeleton straightened with a bound, tapped its metatarsals on the limousine bonnet, and jerked out a finger toward Bartimaeus, who still wore the semblance of a dark-skinned boy. "Then there's _you,_ " it said, "the one who stole my face. The one who drowned me in the Thames. Oh, I'm most terrible mad at you."
If it was anxious, the demon was doing a good job of hiding it. "I can understand that," it said coolly "In fact, I'm a little disappointed myself. Mind telling me how you got here?"
The skull gnashed its jaw in fury. "Merest chance saved me from oblivion," it whispered. "As I drifted, helpless in the current and the cold, cold dark, the crook of my elbow snagged in a rusted chain rising from an anchor in the riverbed. In an instant I had seized the chain in my fingers and my jaw; I fought against the pull of the ocean, clambered upward to the light. Where did I come out? An old barge, tethered for the night. As the cruel water dropped from my bones, my strength returned. What did I want? Vengeance! But first, the Staff, to give me back my power. I crept along the shore by night and day, snuffling for its aura like a dog.... And today"—the voice erupted in sudden riotous delight—"I found it, traced it to this yard, waited here in coziness with that fellow on the floor." It indicated the chauffeur's body with a dismissive toe. "I fear he did _not_ have good conversation."
Bartimaeus nodded. "Humans aren't known for their wit. Very dull."
"Aren't they, though?"
"Deathly."
"Mmm. Hey!" The skeleton collected itself indignantly. "You're trying to change the subject."
"Not at all. You were saying you were terribly mad at me."
"Quite. Where was I...? Terribly mad... Two little lambs, a girl and a djinni..." It appeared to have quite lost its train of thought.
Kitty jerked a thumb at the magician Mandrake. "What about him?"
Mandrake gave a start. "I've never seen this excellent afrit in all my life! He can have no grudge against me."
The flames in the skull's eye sockets flared. "Except that you carry my Staff. _That_ is no small matter. And what is more... you plan to _use_ it! Yes! No denials—you are a magician!"
Its outrage was worth building on. Kitty cleared her throat. "He made me steal it," she said. "It's all his fault. Everything. He made Bartimaeus attack you, too."
"Is that so?" The skeleton considered John Mandrake. "How very interesting." It bent toward Bartimaeus again. "She's not correct, is she? Is that fop with the Staff _really_ your master?"
The young Egyptian boy looked genuinely embarrassed. "I'm afraid so."
"Tsk. Dear me. Well, don't worry. I'll kill him—after I kill you."
Even as it spoke, the skeleton raised a finger. Green flame erupted where the demon had stood, but the boy was already gone, somersaulting across the cobblestone to land neatly on a dustbin beside the nearest house. As if propelled by a single thought, Kitty, Jakob, and John Mandrake turned and ran, making for the arch that led out of the mews courtyard to the road beyond. Kitty was the swiftest, and it was she who first noticed the sudden darkening of the atmosphere, a rapid leaching away of the dawn light about them, as if some power was thrusting it bodily away from the ground. She slowed and stopped. Thin tendrils of blackness were waving and probing through the archway ahead, and behind them came a dark cloud. The view beyond was utterly blocked out, the courtyard cut off from the world outside.
What _now?_ Kitty exchanged a helpless glance with Jakob and looked back over her shoulder. The Egyptian boy had sprouted wings and was swooping to and fro across the courtyard, just out of reach of the bounding skeleton.
"Keep away from that cloud." It was John Mandrake's voice, quiet and faltering. He was near them, eyes wide, slowly retreating. "I think it's dangerous."
Kitty sneered at him. "Like you care." Even so, she too backed away.
The cloud extended toward them. A terrible silence hung about it, and an overpowering smell of wet earth.
Jakob touched her arm. "Can you hear...?"
"Yes." Heavy footfalls in the depths of the shadows, something coming closer.
"We've got to get out of this," she said. "Make for the cellar."
They turned and ran toward the steps that led to Mr. Pennyfeather's cellar store. From across the courtyard, the skeleton, which had been vainly firing bolts of magic at the energetic demon, perceived them and clapped its hands. A tremor—the cobblestones rattled. The lintel above the basement door split in two, and a ton of brickwork descended with a rush upon the stairs. The dust subsided; the door was gone.
With a hop and a skip, the skeleton was upon them. "That darned demon is a bit too spry," it said. "I've changed my mind. You two are first."
"Why me?" Jakob gasped. "I've done nothing."
"I know, dear child." The eye sockets glittered. "But you're full of life. And after my time underwater, I frankly need the energy." It reached out a hand—as it did so, it noticed, for the first time, the dark cloud stealing across the courtyard, sucking the light from the air. The skeleton gazed into the blackness, jaw lolling uncertainly.
"Well, well," it said softly. "What's this?"
Kitty and Jakob scuffled back against the wall. The skeleton paid no heed. It swiveled its pelvis and straightened to face the cloud, calling out something in a strange tongue. Beside her, Kitty felt Jakob give a start. "That was Czech," he whispered. "Something like: 'I defy you!'"
The skull rotated 180 degrees and stared at them. "Excuse me a minute, children. I have unfinished business to take care of. I will attend to you in half a jiff. Wait there."
Bones clicking, it moved away, circling out into the center of the courtyard, its eye sockets fixed upon the swelling cloud. Kitty tried to gather her wits. She looked about her. The road was engulfed by shadows, the sun a veiled disc faintly shimmering in the sky. The exit from the mews was blocked by the menacing darkness; on all other sides, blank walls and barred windows stared down. Kitty cursed. If she had a single sphere, she could blast their way out; as it was, they were helpless. Rats in a trap.
A flurry of air beside her, a lightly descending figure. The demon Bartimaeus folded its gauzy wings behind its back and nodded to her politely. Kitty flinched.
"Oh, don't worry," the boy said. "My orders were to prevent your leaving in that car. Go anywhere near it and I'll have to stop you. Otherwise, do whatever you like."
Kitty frowned. "What's happening? What's this darkness?"
The boy sighed ruefully. "Remember that golem I mentioned? It's turned up. _Somebody_ has decided to intervene. No prizes for guessing why. That wretched Staff is the root of all our trouble." It peered out through the smog. "Which reminds me...What's he—Oh, he's _not._ Tell me he's not... He _is_ as well. The little idiot."
"What?"
"My dear master. He's trying to activate the Staff."
Roughly opposite them, not far from the limousine, the magician John Mandrake had retreated to stand against a wall. Ignoring the activities of the skeleton—it was now prancing back and forth across the cobblestone, declaiming insults against the ever-advancing cloud—he leaned upon the Staff, head bowed, eyes seemingly closed, as if asleep. Kitty thought she could see his lips moving, mouthing words.
"This is _not_ going to end well," the demon said. "If he's trying some simple activation, without Reinforcement or Muting spells, he's asking for trouble. He hasn't a clue how much energy it contains. Two marids' worth at least. Overambition, that's always been his problem." It shook its head sadly.
Kitty understood little of this and cared even less. "Please... Bartimaeus—is that your name? How can we get out? Can you help us? You could break through a wall."
The boy's dark eyes appraised her. "Why should I do that?"
"Erm...You... you don't mean us harm. You've just been following orders..." She did not sound very confident.
The boy scowled. "I'm a wicked demon. You said so. Anyway, even if I _wished_ to help you, we don't want to draw attention to ourselves right now. Our friend the afrit has forgotten us for the moment. He's remembered the Siege of Prague, when golems like this one caused havoc among Gladstone's troops."
"It's doing something," Jakob whispered. "The skeleton..."
"Yes. Heads down." For some moments, the cloud of darkness had paused in its advance, as if considering the antics of the capering skeleton before it. As they watched, it seemed to make a decision. Tendrils flowed forward, in the vague direction of Mandrake and the Staff. At this, the skeleton raised an arm: a brilliant stream of pale light shot out and slammed into the cloud. There was a muffled thump, as of an explosion behind strong doors; fragments of black cloud dispersed in all directions, twisting and melting away in the suddenly renewed warmth of the morning sun.
Bartimaeus made an appreciative sound. "Not bad, not bad. Won't help him, though."
Jakob and Kitty caught their breath. Standing in the center of the courtyard they saw revealed a giant figure, man-shaped but much greater, stocky and crude of limb, a colossal slablike head perched upon its shoulders. It seemed put out by the destruction of its cloud; it swung its arms uselessly, as if trying to scoop the darkness back around itself. Failing in this endeavor, and studiously ignoring the whoops of triumph uttered by the skeleton, it set off with lumbering steps across the courtyard.
"Mmm, Mandrake had better hurry with his conjuration..." Bartimaeus said. "Whoops, there goes Honorius again."
"Keep back!" The skeleton's cry echoed across the courtyard. "The Staff is my property! I defy you! I have not guarded it for a hundred years to see some coward rob me. I see you staring through that eye! I shall pluck it out and crush it in my fist!" With this, it fired several blasts of magic at the golem, which absorbed them without any ill effect.
The stone figure strode on. Kitty could see the details of the head more clearly now: two nominal eyes and above them a larger, far more defined third eye, planted in the center of the forehead. This swiveled left and right; it shone like a white flame. The mouth below was little more than a corrugated hole, token and useless. The demon's words came back to her—somewhere in that terrible mouth was the magical paper that gave the monster its power.
A scream of defiance. Honorius the afrit, apoplectic at the failure of its magic, had flung itself forward into the path of the advancing golem. Dwarfed by the great figure, the skeleton bent its knees and sprang; as it did so, magical energies erupted from its mouth and hands. It landed directly on the golems chest, bony arms circling the neck, legs twining around the torso. Blue flames erupted where it touched. The golem stopped dead, raised a massive clublike hand, and seized the skeleton by a shoulder blade.
For a long moment, the two adversaries remained locked, motionless, in utter silence. The flames licked higher. There was a smell of burning, a radiation of the utmost cold.
Then, all at once—a rush of sound, a pulse of blue light...
The skeleton shattered.
Fragments of bone shot out across the cobblestones like a squall of hail.
"Strange..." Bartimaeus was seated cross-legged on the ground. He had the look of a fascinated spectator. "That was really very strange. Honorius didn't need to do that, you know. It was totally foolhardy, a suicidal act—though brave, of course. Despite being mad, he _must_ have known it would destroy him, don't you think? Golems negate our magic, pulverize our essences, even when encased in bone. Very odd. Perhaps he was tired of this world after all. Do _you_ understand it, Kitty Jones?"
"Kitty..." This was Jakob, plucking urgently at her sleeve. "The exit's clear. We can slip away."
"Yes..." She snatched another look across at Mandrake. Eyes closed, he was still reciting the words of some spell.
"Come _on_..."
The golem had been stationary since the destruction of the skeleton. Now it moved again. Its watch-eye glittered, swiveled, fixed upon Mandrake and the Staff.
"Looks like Mandrake's for it." Bartimaeus's voice was neutral, matter-of-fact.
Kitty shrugged and began to inch after Jakob, along the edge of the wall.
Just then, Mandrake looked up. At first he seemed oblivious of the coming danger; then his gaze fell upon the advancing golem. His face broadened into a smile. He held the Staff out before him and spoke a single word. A nebulous light of pinks and purples drifted around the body of the Staff, rising toward its top. Kitty paused in her inching. A soft reverberation, a humming—as of a thousand bees trapped underground—a tremble in the air; the ground shook slightly.
"He _can't_ have," Bartimaeus said. "He _can't_ have mastered it. Not the first time."
The boy's smile widened. He pointed Gladstone's Staff toward the golem, which paused uncertainly. Colored lights played about the carvings on the Staff; the boy's face was alive with their radiance and a terrible joy. In a deep, commanding voice, he uttered a complex charm. The Flux about the Staff flared. Kitty screwed up her eyes, half looked away; the golem rocked back on its heels. The Flux wobbled, sputtered, shot back down the Staff and along the magician's arm. His head jerked back; he was lifted bodily off his feet and straight into the wall behind him with a melancholy thud.
The boy sprawled on the ground, tongue lolling. The Staff clattered from his hand.
"Ah." Bartimaeus nodded sagely. "He _hadn't_ mastered it. Thought as much."
"Kitty!" Jakob was already some way off along the wall. He was gesticulating furiously. "While there's still time."
The giant clay figure had resumed its stately progress toward the prone figure of the magician. Kitty made to follow Jakob, then turned back to Bartimaeus.
"What's going to happen?"
"Now? After my master's little error? Simple enough. You'll run off. The golem will kill Mandrake, grab the Staff, and take it to whichever magician's watching through that eye."
"And you? You won't help him?"
"I'm powerless against the golem. I've tried once already. Besides, when you were escaping just now, my master overruled all his previous charges—which included my duty to protect him. If Mandrake dies, _I_ go free. It's hardly in my interest to help the idiot out."
The golem was drawing abreast of the limousine now, nearing the body of the chauffeur. Kitty looked again at Mandrake, lying unconscious by the wall. She bit her lip and turned away.
_"I_ don't have free will most of the time, you see," the demon said behind her loudly. "So when I do, I'm hardly likely to act in a way that injures myself, if I can help it. That's what makes me superior to muddled humans like you. It's called common sense. Anyway, off you go," it added. "Your resilience might well not work against the golem. It's refreshing to see you doing exactly what I would do and getting out while the going's good."
Kitty blew her cheeks out and took a few steps more. She looked back over her shoulder again. "Mandrake wouldn't have helped _me,"_ she said.
_"Exactly._ You're a smart girl. Off you go and leave him to die."
She looked at the golem. "It's too big. I could never tackle it."
"Especially once it's past that limousine."
"Oh, _hell."_ Then Kitty was running, not toward the stricken Jakob, but out across the cobblestones, toward the lumbering giant. She ignored the pain and numbness in her shoulder, ignored her friend's despairing shouts; most of all, she ignored the voices in her head ridiculing her, screaming out the danger, the futility of her action. She put her head down, increased her speed. She was no demon, no magician—she was better than they were. Greed and self-interest were _not_ her only concerns. She scampered around the back of the golem, close enough to see the rough smears on the surface of the stone, to smell the terrible wet earthen taint that drifted in its wake. She leaped onto the bonnet of the limousine, ran along it, level with the torso of the monster.
The sightless eyes stared forward, like those of a dead fish; above them, the third eye sparkled with malign intelligence. Its gaze was fixed firmly upon Mandrake's body; it did not perceive Kitty, at its side, jumping with all her strength to land upon the golem's back.
The extreme cold of the surface made her gasp with pain: even with her resilience, it was like plunging into an icy stream—her breath left her, every nerve stung. Her head swam with the earthen stench, bile rose in her throat. She flung her good arm around the golem's shoulder, clung desperately. Each footstep threatened to shake her free.
She had expected the golem to reach up and tear her off, but it did not do so. The eye did not see her; its controller could not feel her weight on the creature's body.
Kitty reached forward with her wounded arm; her shoulder throbbed, making her cry out. She bent her elbow, reached around the front of the face, feeling for the great gaping mouth. That was what the demon had said: a manuscript, a paper, lodged inside. Her fingers touched the ice-cold stone of the face; her eyes rolled, she almost blacked out.
It was no good. She couldn't reach the mouth—
The golem stopped. With surprising suddenness, its back began to bend. Kitty was flung forward, almost headfirst over its shoulders. She had a brief glimpse of the lumpen hand below reaching out and down toward the unconscious boy: it would seize him by the neck, snap it like a twig.
Still the back bent. Kitty began to topple; her grip failed. Her fingers slapped frantically against the great flat face and, all at once, lit upon the cavity of the mouth; they thrust inside. Rough cold stone... jagged snags that might almost have been teeth... something else, of a soft coarseness. She grasped at it, and in the same moment, lost all purchase on the creature's back. She tumbled forward over its shoulder, landing heavily on the prone figure of the boy.
She lay on her back, opened her eyes, and screamed.
The golem's face was right above her: the gaping mouth, the sightless eyes, the third eye fixed upon her, alive with fury. As she watched, the fury dimmed. The intelligence went out. The eye in the forehead was nothing but a clay oval, intricately carved, but dull and lifeless.
Kitty raised her head stiffly, looked at her left hand.
A scroll of yellow parchment was clutched between her finger and thumb.
Painfully, Kitty propped herself up on her elbows. The golem was completely frozen, one fist inches from John Mandrake's face. The stonework was cracked and pitted; it might have been a statue. It no longer radiated extreme cold.
"Mad. Quite mad." The Egyptian boy was standing beside her, hands on hips, shaking its head gently. "You're as mad as that afrit was. Still"—it indicated the magician's body—"at least you got a soft landing."
Behind the demon, she saw Jakob approaching diffidently, wide-eyed. Kitty groaned. Her shoulder wound was bleeding again, and every muscle in her body seemed to ache. With laborious care she righted herself and stood, hauling herself up by pulling on the golem's outstretched hand.
Jakob was gazing down at John Mandrake. Gladstone's Staff lay across his breast. "Is he dead?" He sounded hopeful.
"He's still breathing, more's the pity." The demon sighed; looked sidelong at Kitty. "By your foolhardy actions you've condemned me to further toil." It glanced into the sky. "I would take issue with you, but there were some search spheres here earlier. I think the golem's cloud caused them to retreat, but they'll be back—and soon. It would be best if you depart with haste."
"Yes." Kitty took a few steps, then remembered the parchment in her hand. With sudden disgust she loosened her fingers; it drifted to the cobblestones.
"What about the Staff?" Bartimaeus said. "You _could_ take it, you know. No one's here to stop you."
Kitty frowned, glanced back at it. It was a formidable object, she knew that much. Mr. Pennyfeather would have taken it. So would Hopkins, the benefactor, Honorius the afrit, Mandrake himself... Many others had died for it. "I don't think so," she said. "It's no good to me."
She turned away, began hobbling after Jakob toward the arch. She half expected the demon to call to her again, but it did not do so. In less than a minute, Kitty was at the arch. As she rounded it, she looked back and saw the dark-skinned boy still staring after her across the courtyard. A moment later he was out of view.
**46**
**A** sudden ice-cold shock; Nathaniel gasped, sputtered, opened his eyes. The Egyptian boy stood over him, lowering a dripping pail. Freezing water ran into Nathaniel's ears, nostrils, and open mouth; he tried to speak, coughed, retched, coughed again, and rolled onto his side, conscious of a wrenching pain in his stomach and a dull tingling in every muscle. He groaned.
"Rise and shine." That was the djinni's voice. It sounded extremely cheerful.
Nathaniel raised a shaking hand to the side of his head. "What happened? I feel... terrible."
"You _look_ it too, believe me. You were hit by a considerable magical backlash through the Staff. Your brains and body will be even more addled than usual for a while, but you're lucky to be alive."
Nathaniel tried to lever himself into a sitting position. "The Staff..."
"The magical energies have been gradually ebbing through your system," the djinni went on. "Your skin's been steaming gently and the end of each hair's been glowing at the tip. A remarkable sight. Your aura's gone haywire, too. Well, it's a delicate process, ridding yourself of a charge like that. I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered."
"What! How long has it been?"
"Five minutes. I got bored."
Recent memories flooded back into Nathaniel's mind.
"The golem! I was trying to—"
"Overcome a golem? An almost impossible task for any djinni or magician, and doubly so when operating an artifact as subtle and powerful as that Staff. You did well to activate it at all. Be thankful it wasn't charged enough to kill you."
"But the golem! The Staff!... Oh no—" With sudden horror, Nathaniel realized the implications. With both of them gone, he'd have failed utterly, he would be helpless before his enemies. With great weariness, he put his head in his hands, scarcely troubling to stifle the beginnings of a sob.
A hard, firm toe jabbed him sharply on his leg. "If you had the wit to look around you," the djinni said, "you might see something to your advantage."
Nathaniel opened his eyes, peeled his fingers away. He looked; what he saw practically jolted him clear of the cobblestones. Not two feet from where he sat, the golem towered against the sky; it was bent toward him, its clawing hand so close he might touch it, the head lowered menacingly; but the spark of life had vanished from it. It had no more motion than a statue or a lamppost.
And propped up against one of its legs, so casually it might almost have been a gentleman's cane: the Staff of Gladstone.
Nathaniel frowned and looked, and frowned some more, but the solution to this puzzle quite eluded him.
"I'd close your mouth," the djinni advised him. "Some passing bird might use it as a nest."
With difficulty, as his muscles seemed like water, Nathaniel got to his feet. "But how...?"
_"Isn't_ it a poser?" The boy grinned. "How _do_ you think it happened?"
"I must have done it, just before I lost control." Nathaniel nodded slowly; yes, that was the only possible solution. "I was trying to immobilize the golem, and I must have succeeded, just as the backlash happened." He began to feel rather better about himself.
The djinni snorted long and loud. "Guess again, sonny. What about the girl?"
"Kitty Jones?" Nathaniel scanned the courtyard. He had quite forgotten her. "She—she must have fled."
"Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled—"
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
_"Me? Save you?_ Please—someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact... it was the girl and her friend. _They_ saved you. Wait—don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy—incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck."
Nathaniel's eyes narrowed in doubt. "Ridiculous! It makes no sense!"
"I know, I know. Why should she save you? The mind boggles, Nat, but save you she did. And if you don't think it's true, well—seeing's believing." The djinni brought a hand out from behind its back, held something out. "This is what she plucked from the mouth." Nathaniel recognized the paper instantly; it was identical to the one he'd seen in Prague, but this time furled and sealed with a daub of thick black wax. He took it slowly, gazed across at the golem's gaping mouth and back again.
"The girl..." He couldn't accommodate the thought. "But I was taking her to the Tower; I'd hunted her out. No—she'd kill me, not save my life. I don't believe you, djinni. You're lying. She's alive. She's fled the place."
Bartimaeus shrugged. "Whatever you say. That's why she left the Staff with you when you were helpless."
"Oh..." This was a point. Nathaniel frowned. The Staff was the Resistance's great prize. The girl would never willingly give it up. Perhaps she _was_ dead. He looked down at the manuscript again. A sudden thought occurred to him.
"According to Kavka, the name of our enemy will be written on the parchment," he said. "Let's look! We can find out who's behind the golem."
"I doubt you'll have time," the djinni said. "Watch out—there it goes!"
With a melancholy hiss, a yellow flame erupted from the surface of the scroll. Nathaniel cried out and dropped the parchment hastily to the cobblestones, where it juddered and burned.
"Once out of the golem's mouth, the spell's so strong it soon consumes itself," Bartimaeus went on. "Never mind. You know what happens now?"
"The golem is destroyed?"
"Yes—but more than that. It returns to its master first." Nathaniel stared at his slave with sudden understanding. Bartimaeus raised an amused eyebrow. "Might be interesting, you think?"
"Very much so." Nathaniel felt a surge of grim elation. "You're sure of this?"
"I saw it happen, long ago in Prague."
"Well, then..." He stepped past the smoldering fragments of the parchment and hobbled over to the golem, wincing at the pain in his side. "Ahh, my stomach _really_ hurts. It's almost like someone fell on it."
"Eerie."
"No matter." Nathaniel reached the Staff, picked it up. "Now," he said, stepping clear of the golem's bulk once more, "let's see."
The flames died away; the manuscript was nothing but ash drifting in the breeze. An odd dark scent hung in the air.
"Kavka's lifeblood," Bartimaeus said. "All gone now." Nathaniel made a face.
As the last wisp of paper vanished, a shudder ran through the golems transfixed body; the arms wobbled, the head jerked spasmodically, the chest rose, then fell. A faint sighing, as of a dying breath, was heard. A moment's silence; the stone giant was quite still. Then, with the wrenched creaking of an old tree in a storm, the great back rose, the outstretched arm fell against its side, the golem stood straight once more. Its head tilted, as if deep in thought. Deep in the forehead, the golem's eye was blank and dead: the commanding intelligence rested there no longer. But still the body moved.
Nathaniel and the djinni stood aside as the creature turned and with weary steps began to trudge off across the courtyard. It paid no heed to them. It went at the same remorseless pace that it had always used; from a distance, it carried the same energy as before. But already a transformation was taking place: small cracks extended out across the surface of the body. They began in the center of the torso, where previously the stone had been smooth and strong, and radiated toward the limbs. Little pieces of clay broke from the surface and drifted to the cobblestones in the giant's wake.
Behind the golem, Nathaniel and the djinni fell into step. Nathaniel's body ached; he used Gladstone's Staff as a crutch as he went along.
The golem passed under the arch and departed the mews. It turned left into the street beyond, where, ignoring the regulations of the highway, it proceeded to march directly down the center of the road. The first person to encounter it, a large, bald trader with tattooed arms and a trolley of root vegetables, uttered a piteous squeal on its appearance and scampered pell-mell into a side alley. The golem ignored him, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus likewise. The small procession marched on.
"Assuming that the golem's master is a senior magician," Bartimaeus remarked, "just _assuming,_ mark you—we may be heading for Westminster right now. That's the center of town. This is going to cause something of a stir, you know."
_"Good,"_ Nathaniel said. "That's exactly what I want." With every passing minute, his mood was lightening; he could feel the anxiety and fear of the past few weeks beginning to drain away. The exact details of his escape from the golem that morning were still unclear in his mind, but this mattered little to him now; after the low point of the night before, when the massed ranks of the great magicians were set against him and the threat of the Tower hung above his head, he knew he was clear, he was safe once more. He had the Staff—Devereaux would fall at his feet for that—and better, he had the golem. None of them had believed his story; now they would be groveling with apologies—Duvall, Mortensen, and the rest. He would be welcomed into their circle at last, and whether Ms. Whitwell chose to forgive him or not would, in truth, matter very little. Nathaniel allowed himself a broad smile as he stumped along through Southwark, following the golem.
The fate of Kitty Jones was perplexing, but even here things had worked out well. Despite the prompting of practicality and logic, Nathaniel had felt uneasy with his breaking of his promise to the girl. It could not have been helped, of course—the vigilance spheres were observing them, so he could scarcely have allowed her to go free—but the business _had_ weighed a little on his conscience. Now, he did not have to worry. Whether in helping him (he still found this difficult to credit) or in attempting to escape (more likely), the girl was dead and gone, and he did not need to waste time thinking about her. It was a shame in a way.... From what he had seen of her, she appeared to have had remarkable energy, talent, and willpower, far more than any of the great magicians, with their endless bickering and foolish vices. In some odd way, she had reminded Nathaniel a little of himself, and it was almost a pity she was gone.
The djinni walked in silence beside him, as if deep in thought. It did not seem much disposed to speak. Nathaniel shrugged. Who could guess what strange and wicked daydreams a djinni had? Better not to try.
As they went, they crushed small pieces of damp clay underfoot. The golem was shedding its material with increasing speed; clusters of holes were visible across its surface, and the outline of its limbs was a little uneven. It moved at its normal pace, but with a slightly bent back, as if growing old and frail.
Bartimaeus's prediction, that the golem would cause something of a stir, was proved increasingly correct with every passing moment. They were now firmly on Southwark High Street, with its market stalls and cloth merchants and general air of shabby industry. As they went, the commoners fanned out screaming up ahead, driven like cattle to gross and excessive panic before the striding giant. People threw themselves into shops and houses, breaking down doors and smashing windows in their efforts to escape; one or two climbed lampposts; several of the thinnest jumped down manholes into drains. Nathaniel chuckled under his breath. The chaos was not altogether regrettable. It would do the commoners good to be stirred up a bit, have their complacency shaken out of them. They should _see_ the kinds of dangers the government was protecting them against, understand the wicked magic that threatened them on all sides. It would make them less likely to listen to zealots like the Resistance in the future.
A large number of red spheres appeared over the rooftops and hovered silently above the road, regarding them. Nathaniel composed his face into an expression of sobriety, and glanced with what he hoped was patrician sympathy at the broken stalls and frightened faces all around.
"Your friends are watching us," the djinni said. "Think they're happy?"
"Envious, more like."
As they passed the Lambeth rail terminal and headed west, the golem's outline became noticeably more irregular, its shambling more exaggerated. A large piece of clay, perhaps a finger, detached itself and fell wetly to the ground.
Westminster Bridge was up ahead. There seemed little doubt now that Whitehall was their destination. Nathaniel's mind turned to the confrontation to come. It would be a fairly senior magician, of that he had no doubt, one who had discovered his trip to Prague and so sent the mercenary after him. Beyond that, it was impossible to say. Time would quickly tell.
Gladstone's Staff was comfortable in his hand; he leaned heavily upon it, for his side still hurt him. As he went, he looked at it almost lovingly. This was one in the eye for Duvall and the others. Makepeace would be very pleased with the way things had turned out.
He frowned suddenly. So where would the Staff go now? Presumably, it would be placed into one of the government vaults, until someone needed to use it. But who among them had the ability to do so—other than he? Using nothing but improvised conjurations, he'd almost succeeded in using it the first time of asking! He could master it easily, given the opportunity. And then...
He sighed. It was a great pity he could not keep it for himself. Still, once he was back in Devereaux's favor, all things were possible. Patience was the key. He had to bide his time.
They turned at last up a short rise between two glass and concrete watchtowers, onto Westminster Bridge itself. Beyond lay the Houses of Parliament. The Thames sparkled in the morning; little boats meandered with the tide. Several tourists vaulted the balustrade at the sight of the decaying golem and plopped into the water.
The golem strode on, its shoulders slumped, its arms and legs truncated stumps that shed clay in rapid gobbets. Its stride was visibly more disjointed; the legs wobbled unsteadily with each step. As if recognizing its time was short, it had increased its speed, and Nathaniel and the djinni were forced into a half-trot behind it.
Since they reached the bridge, there had been little traffic on the road, and now Nathaniel saw the reason why. Halfway across, a small, nervous unit of Night Police had erected a cordon. It consisted of concrete posts, barbed wire, and a number of savage second-plane imps, all spines and shark teeth, circling in midair. When they perceived the approaching golem, the imps retracted both spines and teeth and retreated with shrill wails. A police lieutenant stepped slowly forward, leaving the rest of his men loitering uncertainly in the shadows of the posts.
"Halt now!" he growled. "You are entering a government-controlled area. Rogue magical effusions are strictly forbidden on pain of swift and awful puni—" With a yelp like a puppy, he sprang sideways out of the golem's path. The creature raised an arm, swatted a post into the Thames and tore through the cordon, leaving small pieces of clay hanging on the ravaged wire. Nathaniel and Bartimaeus sauntered along behind, winking cheerily at the cowering guards.
Over the bridge, past the towers of Westminster, onto the green itself. A crowd of minor magicians—pale-faced bureaucrats from the Ministries along Whitehall—had been alerted to the kerfuffle and had emerged blinking into the light of day. They fringed the pavements in awe, as the shambling giant, now considerably reduced, paused for a moment at the corner of Whitehall, before turning away, left, toward Westminster Hall. Several people called out to Nathaniel as he passed them. He waved a regal hand. "This is what's been terrorizing the city," he called. "I am returning it to its master."
His answer awoke great interest; in ones and twos, and then in a rushing mass, the crowd fell in behind him, keeping always at a safe distance.
The great entrance door of Westminster Hall was ajar, the gatekeepers having fled at the sight of the oncoming creature and the crowd behind. The golem shouldered its way inside, ducking a little under the arch. By now, its head had lost most of its shape; it had melted like a candle by morning. The mouth had merged with the torso; the carved oval eye was skewed, hanging drunkenly midway down the face.
Nathaniel and the djinni entered the lobby. Two afrits, yellow-skinned, with lilac crests, materialized menacingly from pentacles in the floor. They considered the golem and swallowed audibly.
"Yep, I wouldn't bother," the djinni advised them as it passed. "You'll only hurt yourselves. Watch your backs, though—half the city's on our heels."
The moment was coming. Nathaniel's heart was beating fast. He could see where they were going now: the golem was passing along the corridor toward the Reception Chamber, where only elite magicians were allowed. His head spun at the implications.
From a side corridor a figure stepped out—slight, gray-uniformed, with bright green, anxious eyes. "Mandrake! You fool! What are you doing?"
He smiled politely. "Good morning, Ms. Farrar. You seem unduly agitated."
She bit her lip. "The Council have scarcely been to their beds all night; now they have gathered once more and are watching through their spheres. What do they see? Chaos across London! There's pandemonium in Southwark—riots, demonstrations, mass destruction of property!"
"It's nothing that your estimable officers can't control, I'm sure. Besides, I am merely doing what I was... requested to do last night. I have the Staff"—he flourished it—"and in addition, I am returning some property to its rightful owner, whoever that may be. Whoops, that was valuable, wasn't it?" Up ahead, the golem, entering a more constricted section of corridor, had sent a vase of Chinese porcelain smashing to the floor.
"You'll be arrested... Mr. Devereaux—"
"Will be delighted to learn the identity of the traitor. As would these people behind me" He did not need to glance over his shoulder. The hubbub of the pursuing crowd was deafening. "Now, if you would care to accompany us...."
A set of double doors ahead. The golem, now little more than a shapeless mass, stumbling and careering from side to side, broke its way through. Nathaniel, Bartimaeus, and Jane Farrar, with the first of the onlookers close behind, stepped after it.
As one, the ministers of the British government rose from their places. A sumptuous breakfast lay before them on the table, but it had been brushed aside to accommodate the swirling nexuses of several vigilance spheres. In one, Nathaniel recognized an aerial view of Southwark High Street, with crowds milling restlessly amid the debris of the market; in another, he saw the people thronging Westminster Green; in a third, a view of the very chamber they were in.
The golem halted in the center of the room. Breaking through the doors had taken its toll and it appeared to have very little energy remaining. The ruined figure swayed where it stood. Its arms had vanished now, its legs conjoined into a single fluid mass. For a few moments, it teetered as if it would fall.
Nathaniel was scanning the faces of the ministers around the table: Devereaux, whey-faced with weariness and shock; Duvall, scarlet with fury; Whitwell, her features hard and set; Mortensen, lank hair disordered and unoiled; Fry, still peaceably crunching the remnants of a wren; Malbindi, her eyes like saucers. To his surprise, he saw, among a knot of lesser ministers hovering to the side, both Quentin Makepeace and Sholto Pinn. Evidently the events of the early morning had drawn everyone of influence to the room.
He looked from face to face, saw nothing but anger and distress. For a moment, he feared he had been wrong, that the golem would collapse now, with nothing proven.
The Prime Minister cleared his throat. "Mandrake!" he began. "I demand an explanation of this—"
He halted. The golem had given a lurch. Like a drunken man, it wobbled to the left, toward Helen Malbindi, the Information Minister. All eyes followed it.
"It may still be dangerous!" Police Chief Duvall appeared less frozen than the rest. He tapped Devereaux on the arm. "Sir, we must vacate the room immediately."
"Rubbish!" Jessica Whitwell spoke harshly. "We are all aware what is happening. The golem is returning to its master! We must stand still and wait."
In dead silence they watched the column of clay shuffle toward Helen Malbindi, who retreated with shaking steps; all at once, its balance shifted, it tipped sideways and to the right, toward the places of Jessica Whitwell and Marmaduke Fry. Whitwell did not move an inch, but Fry gave a mewl of fright, lurched back and choked on a wren bone. He collapsed gasping into his chair, pop-eyed and scarlet-cheeked.
The golem veered toward Ms. Whitwell; it hovered above her, great slabs of clay sloughing off onto the parquet floor.
Mr. Duvall cried out. "We have our answer and must delay no longer! Jessica Whitwell is the creature's master. Ms. Farrar—summon your men and escort her to the Tower!"
The clay mound gave a strange shudder. It tipped suddenly—away from Ms. Whitwell, and toward the center of the table, where Devereaux, Duvall, and Mortensen were standing. All three started back a pace. The golem was scarcely taller than a man now, a crumbling pillar of decay. It lurched up against the table edge and here it paused again, separated from the magicians by a meter of varnished wood.
The clay fell forward onto the tabletop. Then, with a horrible intentness, it moved, shuffling side to side in weak and painful spasms, like a limbless torso wriggling. It moved among the debris of the breakfast, knocking plates and bones aside; it nudged against the nearest vigilance sphere nexus, which instantly flickered and went out; it clawed its way directly toward the motionless form of the Police Chief, Henry Duvall.
The room was very silent now, save for the quiet choking of Marmaduke Fry.
Mr. Duvall, his face ashen, retreated from the table. He pressed back against his chair, which knocked against the wall.
The clay had left almost half its remaining substance amid the scattered plates and cutlery. It reached the opposite side of the table, reared up, swayed like an earthworm, flowed down upon the floor. With sudden speed it darted forward.
Mr. Duvall jerked back, lost his balance, subsided into his chair. His mouth opened and shut, but made no sound.
The sinuous mass of clay reached his jackboots. Summoning the last of its energy, it rose up in a blunt and swaying tower, to teeter for an instant over the Police Chief's head. Then it crashed down upon him, shedding the last vestiges of Kavka's magic as it did so. The clay split, fragmenting into a shower of tiny particles that spattered down upon Duvall and the wall behind him and sent a small oval piece of material tumbling gently down his chest.
Silence in the room. Henry Duvall gazed down, blinking through a clinging veil of clay From its lodging place on his lap, the golem's eye stared blankly back.
**47**
**T** he uproar that attended my master's unmasking of Henry Duvall was as tumultuous as it is tedious to relate. For a long while bedlam reigned; word spread in ripples out from the magicians' chamber, across the heart of Whitehall and into the extremities of the city, where even the lowliest commoners wondered at it. The downfall of one of the great is always attended by much excitement, and this was no exception. One or two impromptu street parties were held that very evening and, on the rare occasions when they dared show their faces in the ensuing weeks, members of the Night Police were treated with overt derision.
In the immediate term, confusion was the order of the day. It took an age to place Duvall under arrest—this was through no fault on his part, since he seemed stunned by the direction events had taken, and made no effort to resist or escape. But the wretched magicians lost no time in clamoring to take his place, and for some while squabbled like vultures over who had the right to take charge of the police. My master did not take part in the fray; his actions had done the talking.
In the end, the Prime Minister's lackeys summoned a fat afrit, who had been lurking sheepishly in the lobby out of the way of the golem, and with its help achieved order. The ministers were dismissed, Duvall and Jane Farrar taken into custody, and the excited onlookers shepherded out of the building. Jessica Whitwell loitered till the last, shrilly proclaiming her part in Nathaniel's success, but finally she, too, reluctantly departed.
The Prime Minister and my master were left alone.
Exactly what passed between them, I don't know, as I was sent along with the afrit to restore order in the streets outside. When I returned, some hours later, my master was sitting in a side room alone, eating breakfast. He no longer had the Staff.
I took the semblance of the minotaur again, sat myself in the chair opposite, and tapped my hooves idly on the floor. My master eyed me, but said nothing.
"So," I began. "All well?" A grunt. "Are we restored to favor?" A brief nod. "What's your status now?"
"Head of Internal Affairs. Youngest minister ever."
The minotaur whistled. _"Aren't_ we clever."
"It's a start, I suppose. I'm independent from Whitwell now, thank goodness."
"And the Staff? Did you get to keep it?"
A sour expression. He speared his black pudding. "No. It's gone into the vaults. For 'safe-keeping,' allegedly. No one's allowed to use it." His face brightened. "It might be brought out in time of war, though. I was thinking, maybe later in the American campaigns..." He took a sip of coffee. "They've not started too well, apparently. We'll see. Anyway, I need time to refine my approach."
"Yeah, like see if you can make it work."
He scowled. "Of course I can. I just left out a couple of restrictive clauses and a directional incantation, that's all."
"In plain language, you fluffed it, mate. What's happened to Duvall?"
My master chewed meditatively. "He's been taken to the Tower. Ms. Whitwell is head of Security again. She will be supervising his interrogation. Pass the salt."
The minotaur passed it.
If my master was pleased, I had reason to be satisfied, too. Nathaniel had vowed to release me once the matter of the mystery attacker was solved, and solved it undoubtedly had been, although I felt there were still one or two issues that defied ready explanation. However, this was no business of mine. I awaited my dismissal with easy confidence.
And waited.
Several days passed during which the boy was too busy to listen to my demands. He took control of his department; he attended high-level meetings to discuss the Duvall affair; he moved out of his old master's apartment and, using his new salary and a gift from the grateful Prime Minister, purchased a swanky townhouse in a leafy square not far from Westminster. This last required me to carry out a number of dubious chores, which I haven't time to go into here. He attended parties at the Prime Minister's residence at Richmond, held functions for his new employees, and spent his evenings at the theater, watching abysmal plays for which he had acquired an inexplicable taste. It was a hectic lifestyle.
Whenever possible, I reminded him of his obligations.
"Yes, yes," he would say, on his way out in the mornings. "I'll deal with you presently. Now, for my reception-room curtains, I require an ell of oyster-gray silk; make the purchase from Fieldings, and get a couple of extra cushions while you're at it. I could do with some Tashkent enameling in the bathroom, too."
"Your six weeks," I said pointedly, "are almost up."
"Yes, yes. Now, I really must go."
One evening he returned home early. I was belowstairs, supervising the tiling of his kitchen, but somehow tore myself away to press my case once more. I found him in his dining room, an ostentatious space currently without furniture. He was staring at the empty fireplace and the cold blank walls.
"You need a _proper_ pattern in here," I said. "Wallpaper to suit your age. What about a car motif, or steam trains?"
He wandered to the window, his feet tapping on the hollow boards. "Duvall confessed today," he said at last.
"That's good," I said. "Isn't it?"
He was looking out at the trees of the square. "I suppose..."
"Because with my magical powers I detect that you don't seem wildly satisfied."
"Oh...Yes." He turned to me, forced a smile. "It clears up a lot of things, but most of them we knew already. We'd found the workshop in the cellar of Duvall's house—the pit where the golem was made, the crystal through which he controlled the eye. He worked the creature, no question."
"Well, then."
"Today he acknowledged all that. He said he'd long wanted to expand his role, diminish Ms. Whitwell and the others. The golem was his method: it created chaos, undermined the other ministers. After a few attacks, with no solution found and everyone in disarray, Devereaux was only too happy to give him more authority. The police were given more powers; Duvall got the Security post. From there, he'd have been better placed to overthrow Devereaux in time."
"Sounds fairly clear," I agreed.
"I don't know..." The boy screwed down the corners of his mouth. "Everyone's satisfied: Whitwell's back in her old job; Devereaux and the other ministers are heading back to their silly feasts; Pinn's reconstructing his shop already. Even Jane Farrar's been set free, as there's no evidence she knew about her master's treachery. They're all happy to put it out of their minds. But I'm not sure. Several things don't add up."
"Such as?"
"Duvall claimed that he wasn't alone in this. He says someone put him up to it, a scholar named Hopkins. He says this Hopkins brought him the golem's eye, taught him how to use it. He says this Hopkins put him in touch with the bearded mercenary, and encouraged Duvall to send him out to Prague to track down the magician Kavka. When I started investigating, Duvall contacted the mercenary in Prague and told him to stop me. But Hopkins was the brains of the whole thing. This rings true to me—Duvall wasn't bright enough to have worked it all out alone. He was the leader of a bunch of werewolves, not a great magician. But can we find this Hopkins? No. No one knows who he is, or where he lives. He's nowhere to be seen. It's as if he doesn't exist."
"Perhaps he doesn't."
"That's what the others think. They reckon Duvall was trying to shift the blame. And everyone assumes he was involved in the Lovelace conspiracy, too. The mercenary proves it, they say. But I don't know...."
"Hardly likely," I said. "Duvall was trapped with the others in the great pentacle at Heddleham Hall, wasn't he? He wasn't part of that conspiracy. Sounds like Hopkins might have been, though. He's the connection, if you can find him."
He sighed. "That's a big if."
"Perhaps Duvall knows more than he's telling. He might spill more beans."
"Not now." The boy's face sagged insensibly; he suddenly looked tired and old. "On being returned to his cell after this afternoon's interrogation, he transformed into a wolf, overcame his guard, and broke through a barred window."
"And escaped?"
"Not exactly. It was five floors up."
"Ah."
"Quite." The boy was by the great bare mantelpiece now, fingering the marble. "The other question is the Westminster Abbey break-in and the matter of the Staff. Duvall agreed he'd sent the golem to steal it from me the other day—it was too good an opportunity to miss, he said. But he swore he had nothing to do with the Resistance, and nothing to do with breaking into Gladstone's tomb." He tapped his hands on the stone. "I suppose I'll have to be satisfied, like the others. If _only_ the girl hadn't died. She could have told us more...."
I made an affirmative sort of noise, but said nothing. The fact that Kitty was alive was a mere detail—it wasn't worth mentioning. Nor was the fact that she'd told me a good deal about the abbey break-in, and that a gentleman named Hopkins was somehow involved with it. It wasn't my business to tell Nathaniel this. I was nothing but a humble servant. I just did what I was told. Besides, he didn't deserve it.
"You spent time with her," he said abruptly. "Did she talk much to you?" He eyed me quickly, turned away.
"No."
"Too frightened, I suppose."
_"Au contraire._ Too disdainful."
He grunted. "Shame she was so willful. She had some... admirable qualities."
"Oh, you noticed those, did you? I thought you were too busy reneging on your promise to give much thought to her."
His cheeks flushed red. "I had little choice, Bartimaeus—"
"Don't give me anything about choice," I snapped. _"She_ could have chosen to let you die."
He stamped his foot. "I'm _not_ going to have you criticizing my actions—"
"Actions nothing. It's your morals I object to."
"Still less my morals! _You're_ the demon, remember? Why should it matter to you?"
"It doesn't matter!" I was standing, arms folded now. "It doesn't matter at all. The fact that a humble commoner was more honorable than you'll ever be is hardly my affair. You do what you like."
"I will!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
For a few moments there, we'd both been winding ourselves up into full-blown fury, ready to go at it hammer and tongs, but somehow our hearts weren't in it.
After an interlude of his staring at a corner of the fireplace and my gazing at a crack in the ceiling, the boy broke the silence. "If it's of any interest to you," he growled, "I've spoken to Devereaux and have gotten Kavka's children released from prison. They're back in Prague now. Cost me a few favors to get that done, but I did it."
"How noble of you." I was in no mood to pat his back.
He scowled. "They were low-level spies anyway. Not worth keeping."
"Of course." Another silence. "Well," I said finally. "All's well that ends well. You've got everything you wanted." I gestured across the empty room. "Look at the size of this place! You can fill it with all the silk and silver you desire. Not only that, you're more powerful than ever; the Prime Minister is once more in your debt; and you're out from under Whitwell's thumb."
He looked a little happier at this. "That's true."
"Of course, you're also completely friendless and alone," I went on, "and all your colleagues fear you and will want to do you harm. And if you get too powerful, the Prime Minister will get paranoid and find an excuse to bump you off. But hey, we've all got troubles."
He eyed me balefully. "What a charming insight."
"I'm full of them. And if you don't want any more, I advise you to dismiss me on the instant. Your six weeks are up, and that marks the end of my current bond. My essence aches and I'm tired of white emulsion."
He gave a sudden curt nod. "Very well," he said. "I will honor our agreement."
"Eh? Oh. Right." I was a little taken aback. In all honesty, I'd expected the usual bartering before he agreed to let me go. It's like making a purchase in an Eastern bazaar: haggling is inevitably the order of the day. But perhaps his betrayal of the girl had lodged in my master's mind.
Whatever the reason, he silently led me up to his workroom on the second floor of the house. It was decked out with the basic pentacles and paraphernalia.
We completed the initial procedure in stony silence.
"For your information," he said cattily, as I stood within the pentacle, "you do not leave me entirely alone. I am off to the theater this evening. My good friend Quentin Makepeace has invited me to a gala premiere of his latest play."
"How desperately thrilling."
"It is." He did a dismal job of trying to look pleased. "Well, are you ready?"
"Yep." I performed a formal salute. "I bid the magician John Mandrake farewell. May he live long and never summon me again.... By the way, notice something there?"
The magician paused with his arms raised and his incantation at the ready. "What?"
"I didn't say 'Nathaniel.'That's because I see you more as Mandrake now. The boy who was Nathaniel's fading, almost gone."
"Good," he said crisply. "I'm glad you see sense at last." He cleared his throat. "So. Farewell, Bartimaeus."
"Farewell." He spoke. I went. I didn't have time to tell him he'd kind of missed the point.
Mrs. Hyrnek had said her good-byes up beyond the customs house, and Kitty and Jakob walked alone together down to the quay. The ferry was nearing departure; smoke rose from the funnels and a brisk breeze was furling the sails. The last of the travelers were ascending a gaily canopied gangway near the stern, while farther forward a troop of men carried the luggage aboard. Raucous gulls swooped in the sky.
Jakob was wearing a white hat with a broad brim, tipped far forward to shade his face, and a dark brown traveling suit. He carried a small leather case in one gloved hand.
"You've got your papers?" Kitty said.
"For the tenth time, yes." He was still a little tearful after the parting from his mother, and this made him irascible.
"It's not a long voyage," she said peaceably. "You'll be there tomorrow."
"I know." He tugged at the hat brim. "Think I'll pass through?"
"Oh yes. They're not looking for us, are they? The passport's only a precaution."
"Mmm. But with my face—"
"They won't give it a second look. Trust me."
"Okay. Are you sure you won't...?"
"I can always follow on. Are you going to give that guy your case?"
"I suppose so."
"Go and do it, then. I'll wait." With only the briefest of hesitations, he moved away. Kitty watched him pass slowly through the hurrying crowds, and was pleased to see that no one so much as glanced at him. The ship's whistle blew, and somewhere nearby a bell rang. The quay was alive with activity now, with sailors, cargo men and merchants hurrying past, with final orders being given, letters and packets being exchanged. On the deck of the ferry, many of the embarkees were standing at the rail, faces shining with excitement, talking happily to one another in a dozen languages. Men and women from distant lands—from Europe, Africa, Byzantium, and the East... Kitty's heart beat fast at the thought, and it made her sigh. More than a little, she wished to join them. Well, perhaps she would in time. She had other things to do first.
On that terrible morning, they had fled, the two of them, to the Hyrnek factory, where Jakob's brothers concealed them in a disused room hidden behind one of the printing machines. There, amid the noise and fug and the stench of leather, Kitty's wounds were tended, and their strength revived. Meanwhile, the Hyrnek family prepared for the inevitable repercussions, for the searches and the fines. A day passed. The police did not arrive. Word came of the golem's march through London, of the downfall of Duvall, of the boy Mandrake's promotion. But of them—the fugitives—they heard nothing at all. There were no searches, no reprisals. Each morning, magicians' orders arrived at the factory as usual. It was most curious. Kitty and Jakob appeared to have been forgotten.
On the end of the second day, a council was held in the secret room. Despite the authorities' apparent indifference, the family considered it highly unsafe for Jakob and Kitty to remain in London. Jakob, in particular, with his distinctive appearance, was vulnerable. He could not remain in the factory forever, and sooner or later the magician Mandrake, or one of his associates or demons, would find him. He had to go somewhere safe. Mrs. Hyrnek expressed this opinion forcefully and at volume.
When she had subsided, her husband stood up; between puffs of his rowan-wood pipe, Mr. Hyrnek made a calm suggestion. The family's prowess at printing, he said, had already enabled them to bring down vengeance upon Tallow, doctoring his books so that his own spells brought about his destruction. It would be a simple matter now to forge certain documents, such as new identity papers, passports, and the like that would make it easy for both children to leave the country. They could go to the Continent, where other offshoots of the Hyrnek family—in Ostend, Brugges, or Basel for instance—would be happy to receive them.
This suggestion was greeted with general acclaim and Jakob accepted it at once: he had no wish to fall afoul of the magicians again. For her part, Kitty seemed distracted. "That's very kind, very kind of you," she said.
While the brothers set to forging the documents, and Mrs. Hyrnek and Jakob began preparing supplies for the voyage, Kitty remained in the room, lost in thought. After two days' solitary pondering she announced her decision: she would not be traveling to Europe.
The white hat with the broad brim came rapidly toward her through the crowd; Jakob was smiling now, lighter of step. "You gave him the case?" she said.
"Yes. And you were right—he didn't give me a second look." He glanced across at the gangway, then at his watch. "Look, I've got only five minutes. I'd better get on board."
"Yes. Well... see you, then."
"See you Look, Kitty—"
"Yes?"
"You _know_ I'm grateful for what you did, rescuing me and all. But frankly... I also think you're an idiot."
"Oh, cheers."
"What are you doing staying here? The Council of Brugges is made up of commoners; magic hardly figures in the city. You can't imagine the freedoms, my cousin says—there're libraries, debating chambers, stuff right up your alley. No curfews—imagine that! The Empire keeps its distance, most of the time. It's a good place for business. And if you wanted to carry on with your"—he peered cautiously from side to side—"with your _you know,_ my cousin reckons there are strong links to underground movements there, too. It would be far safer—"
"I know." Kitty shoved her hands into her pockets, blew out her cheeks. "You're quite right. All of you are quite right. But that's sort of the point. I think I need to be here, where the magic's happening, where the demons are."
"But why—"
"Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the new identity." She patted her jacket pocket, felt the papers crackle. "It's just, well, some things that demon Bartimaeus said have... set me thinking."
He shook his head. "This is what I can't fathom," he said. "You're going on the word of a demon—one that kidnapped me, threatened you—"
"I know! It's just he wasn't what I expected at all. He talked about the past, about patterns repeating themselves, about the rise and fall of the magicians through history. It happens, Jakob, time and time again. No one manages to break out of the cycle—not commoners, not demons, not magicians. We're all stuck fast, trapped in a wheel of hate and fear—"
"Not me," he said firmly. "I'm getting out."
"You think Brugges is safe? Get real. 'The Empire keeps its distance, most of the time'—that's what you said. You're still part of it, like it or not. That's why I want to stay here, in London, where the information is. There are great libraries, Jakob, where the magicians store their historical records. Pennyfeather used to tell me about them. If I could get access, get a job there somehow... I could learn something—about demons, in particular." She shrugged. "I don't know enough yet, that's all."
He snorted. "Of course you don't. You're not a cursed magician."
"But from what Bartimaeus said, the magicians don't know much either. About demons. They just use them. That's the point. We—the Resistance—weren't getting anywhere. We were just as bad as the magicians, using magic without understanding it. I already knew that, really, and Bartimaeus kind of confirmed it. You should have heard him, Jakob—"
"Like I said, you're an idiot. Listen, that's my call." A deep siren sounded from somewhere up on the ferry; seagulls wheeled into the sky He leaned forward, gave her a rapid hug. She kissed him on the cheek. "Don't get killed," he said. "Write to me. You've got the address."
"Sure."
"I'll see you in Brugges. Before the month is out."
She grinned. "We'll see."
She watched him trot down to the gangway, thrust his papers under the nose of an attendant, receive a cursory stamp on his passport, and clamber up on board. The canopy was removed, the gangway drawn back. Jakob took up position at the rail. He waved to her as the ship moved away. His face, like those of the other travelers, was aglow. Kitty smiled, rummaged in a pocket, and drew out a dirty handkerchief. She waved it until the ship banked and was lost from view around the curve of the Thames.
Then Kitty replaced the handkerchief in her pocket, turned, and set off up along the quay. Quite soon she was hidden by the crowd.
**Don't miss the thrilling conclusion to**
THE
BARTIMAEUS
TRILOGY
BOOK THREE
_Ptolemy's Gate_
**W** ith dawn, the first people returned to the little town. Hesitant, fearful, groping their way like blind men up the street, they began to inspect the damage wrought to their houses, shops, and gardens. A few Night Police came with them, ostentatiously flourishing Inferno sticks and other weapons, though the threat was long since gone.
I was disinclined to move. I spun a Concealment around the chunk of chimney where I sat and removed myself from the humans' sight. I watched them passing with a baleful eye.
My few hours'rest had done me little good. How could it? It had been two whole _years_ since I'd been allowed to leave this cursed Earth; two full years since I'd last escaped the brainless thronging mass of sweet humanity. I needed more than a quiet kip on a chimney stack to deal with _that,_ I can tell you. I needed to go home.
And if I didn't, I was going to die.
It is technically possible for a spirit to remain indefinitely on Earth, and many of us at one time or another have endured prolonged visits, usually courtesy of being forcibly trapped inside canopic jars, sandalwood boxes, or other arbitrary spaces chosen by our cruel masters. Dreadful punishment though this is, it at least has the advantage of being safe and quiet. You aren't called upon to _do_ anything, so your increasingly weakened essence is not immediately at risk. The main threat comes from the remorseless tedium, which can lead to insanity in the spirit in question.
My current predicament was in stark contrast. Not for me the luxury of being hidden away in a cozy lamp or amulet. No—day in, day out, I was a djinni on the street, ducking, diving, taking risks, exposing myself to danger. And each day it became a little more difficult to survive.
For I was no longer the carefree Bartimaeus of old. My essence was raddled with Earth's corruption; my mind was bleary with the pain. I was slower, weaker, distracted from my tasks. I found it hard to change form. In battle my attacks were sputtering and weak—my Detonations had the explosive power of lemonade, my Convulsions trembled like jelly in a breeze. All my strength had gone. Where once, in the previous night's scrap,
I would have sent that public convenience right back at the she-pig, adding a phone box and a bus stop for good measure, now I could do nothing to resist. I was vulnerable as a kitten. A few small buildings in the face, I could stand. But already I was practically at the mercy of second-rate fops such as Ascobol, a fool with no great history to speak of. And if I met a foe with even a grain of power, my luck would surely end.
A weak djinni is a bad slave—bad twice over, since he is both ineffective _and_ a laughingstock. It does a magician no favors to maintain one in the world. This is the reason why they usually allow us back to the Other Place on a temporary basis, to repair our essence and renew our strength. No master in his right mind would permit a djinni to deteriorate as far as I had done.
_No master in his right mind_... Well, that of course was the problem.
Endnotes
Prologue
_The Seven Planes:_ The seven accessible planes are superimposed upon each other, and each reveals certain aspects of reality. The first includes ordinary material things (trees, buildings, humans, animals, etc.), which are visible to all; the other six contain spirits of various kinds going quietly about their business. Higher beings (such as me) can use inner eyes to observe all seven planes at once, but more lowly creatures have to make do with seeing fewer. Humans are remarkably lowly. Magicians use contact lenses to see planes two to three, but most people only see the first plane, and this makes them ignorant about all kinds of magical activity. For example, there's probably something invisible with lots of tentacles hovering behind your back right NOW.
Doubtless, this was where the British magicians were skulking, at a safe distance from the action. My Czech masters were just the same. In war, magicians always like to reserve the most dangerous jobs for themselves, such as fearlessly guarding large quantities of food and drink a few miles behind the lines.
Each sentry was a minor djinni, scarcely better than a common foliot. Times were hard in Prague; the magicians were strapped for slaves and quality control was not what it should have been. The chosen semblances of my sentries proved as much. Instead of fearsome, warlike guises, I was presented with two shifty vampire bats, a weasel, a pop-eyed lizard, and a small and rather mournful frog.
Five heads knocking into one another in quick succession. It was like an unusual executive toy.
i.e., accurate.
They found no one, as their disappointed keening soon attested. The suburbs were deserted. Almost as soon as the British army crossed the Channel, the Czech authorities had begun preparing for the inevitable attack on Prague. As a first precaution, the population of the city was removed to within the walls—which, incidentally, were the strongest in Europe at the time, a marvel of magical engineering. Did I mention I had a hand in their construction?
The telescope contained an imp whose gaze allowed humans to see by night. These are useful devices, although capricious imps sometimes distort the view, or add perverse elements of their own: streams of golden dust, strange dreamlike visions, or ghostly figures from the user's past.
Comparing masters is rather like comparing facial spots: some are worse than others, but even the best don't exactly tickle your fancy. This one was the twelfth Czech magician I'd served. He wasn't overly cruel, but he was a bit sour, as if lemon juice ran in his veins. He was also thin-lipped and pedantic, obsessed with his duty to the Empire.
It was rather catlike in itself, if you get my meaning.
The measliest afrit is worth avoiding, and this one was formidable indeed. On the higher planes, his forms were vast and terrifying, so presumably appearing in such a weedy first-plane guise appealed to his twisted sense of humor. I can't say I was laughing, though.
10
Her face was based on a vestal virgin I'd met in Rome, a woman of admirably independent outlook. Julia used to sneak away from the Sacred Flame by night to bet on the chariots at the Circus Maximus. She didn't really wear spectacles, of course. I added them here to give the face a bit more gravitas. Call it artistic license.
He was right, sadly. I'd suffered both in my time. The Inverted Skin is particularly vexing. It makes motion difficult and conversation almost impossible. Plays hell with your soft furnishings, too.
Which now hung dead still a few feet off the floor. The surface was opaque, the monster inside having vanished in a huff.
Here he smoothed back his hair once more. This act of pompous preening reminded me vaguely of someone, but I couldn't quite think who.
Owing to a complex series of thefts and deceptions, Nathaniel had (more or less) inadvertently brought about his master's demise two years before. At the time, it had preyed on his conscience. I was intrigued to see whether it did so still.
This is called irony. Whitwell was in fact a thoroughly unpleasant specimen. Tall and bone-thin, her limbs were like long dry sticks. I was surprised she didn't catch fire when she crossed her legs.
I meant this wholeheartedly. I'd been robbed of my revenge.
He was wrong there: one magician _had_ dispensed with all protective clauses and put his trust in me. That was Ptolemy, of course. But he was unique. Nothing like that would ever happen again.
15
Where time, strictly speaking, doesn't exist. Or, if it does, only in a circuitous, nonlinear sort of way.... Look, it's a complicated concept and I'd love to discuss it with you, but perhaps now's not quite the best moment. Remind me about it later.
Literally so, I'm afraid. All rather messy and inconvenient.
I've known magicians with similar powers, especially first thing in the morning.
I liked Queezle. She was fresh and youthful (a mere 1,500 years in your world) and had been lucky with her masters. Her first summoning was by a hermit living in the Jordanian desert, who ate honey and dried tubers and treated her with austere courtesy. When he died, she had escaped further service until a female French magician (1400s) uncovered her name. This master, too, was unusually clement and never so much as jabbed her with the Stimulating Compass. By the time she reached Prague, Queezle's personality was thus less embittered than that of hoary old lags like me. Released from service there by the death of our master, she had since served magicians in China and Ceylon, without great incident.
Manifestly untrue. Despite his crimped shirts and flowing mane (or perhaps because of them) I had seen no evidence as yet that Nathaniel even knew what a girl was. If he'd ever met one, chances are they'd both have run screaming in opposite directions. But in common with most djinn, I generally preferred to exaggerate my master's foibles in conversation.
16
If it's possible to flap your wings gingerly, that's exactly what I did.
The name of the road, _Gibbet Street,_ kind of gave the game away, too. The London authorities had always been good at setting examples for the commoners, although in recent years the bodies of felons were hung up only in the prison district, around the Tower. Elsewhere it was thought to deter tourism.
The British Museum was home to a million antiquities, several dozen of which were legitimately come by. For two hundred years prior to the magicians'rule, London's rulers had made it their habit to filch anything interesting they could from countries where their traders called. It was something of a national addiction, based on curiosity and avarice. Lords and ladies taking the Grand Tour of Europe kept their eyes open for small treasures that could be stuffed unnoticed into handbags; soldiers on campaign filled their chests with looted gems and reliquaries; every merchant returning to the capital carried an extra crate of valuables in his hold. Most of these items made their eventual way to the ever-expanding collections of the British Museum, where they were set out on display with clear labels in many languages so that foreign tourists could come and see their lost valuables with minimum inconvenience. In due course, the magicians looted the museum of its magical items, but it remained an imposing cultural charnel house.
Revenge was another motive for me now. I no longer held out much prospect of seeing Queezle alive again.
Guaranteed to strike fear into a human enemy, there's nothing better than a bull-headed minotaur if you want a bit of the old shock and awe. And after centuries of careful honing, my particular minotaur guise was a doozy. The horns had just the right amount of curl and the teeth were nicely sharpened, as if filed. The skin was blue-black ebony. I'd kept the human torso, but had gone for a satyr's goat legs and cloven hooves, which are that bit scarier than pimply knees and sandals.
Marids radiate so much power that it is possible to track their recent movements by following residual magical trails: they leave them hanging in the atmosphere much as a snail deposits slime. It isn't wise to use this analogy to a marid's face, of course.
These were stone representations only; in the glory days of Assyria, the djinn would have been real, asking riddles of strangers in a manner similar to the Sphinx, and devouring them if the answer was incorrect, ungrammatical, or simply spoken in a rustic accent. They were punctilious beasts.
This last one, old Anubis, always unnerves me if I spot it out of the corner of my eye. But gradually I'm learning to relax. Jabor is long gone.
Ramses wouldn't have been surprised that his statue was proving so troublesome; he had the biggest ego of any human it's been my misfortune to serve. This despite being small, bandy-legged, and with a face as pockmarked as a rhino's bottom. His magicians, however, were strong and inflexible—for forty years I labored on grandiose building projects on his behalf, along with a thousand other benighted spirits.
The cartouche on its chest proclaimed it to be Ahmose of the 18th Dynasty, "he who unites in glory." Since he was currently lacking his own head, legs, and arms, this boast rang a little hollow.
My adversary should have borne the principles of leverage in mind when trying to shift Ramses. As I once told Archimedes, "give me a lever long enough and I will move the world." In this case, the world was a tad ambitious, but a six-ton headless torso suited me just fine.
23
This is one of Prague's odd qualities: something in its atmosphere, perhaps caused by five centuries of gloomy sorcery, brings out the macabre potential of every object, no matter how mundane.
See what I mean?
I was involved in constructing the Stone Bridge, the noblest of all, back in 1357. Nine of us performed the task, as required, in a single night, fixing the foundations with the usual sacrifice: the entombment of a djinni. We drew straws for the "honor" as dawn broke. Poor Humphrey is presumably there still, bored rigid, though we gave him a pack of cards with which to pass the time.
In Rudolf's time, when the Holy Roman Empire was at its height and six afrits patrolled the newly fashioned walls of Prague, the Jewish community here supplied the Emperor with most of his money and much of his magic. Forcibly restricted to the crowded alleys of the ghetto, and at once distrusted and relied on by the rest of Prague society, the Jewish magicians grew powerful for a time. Since pogroms and slander against their people were commonplace, their magic was largely defensive in outlook—as exemplified by the great magician Loew, who created the first golem to protect the Jews against attack by human and djinni alike.
Actually, it made me shiver a little, too, but for different reasons. Earth was very strong here—its power extended upward into the air, leaching my energies away. Djinn were not welcome; it was a private place, working to a different magic.
They were weak defenses. An armless imp could have pried his way through. As a center of magic, Prague was a century into a steep decline.
For complex reasons possibly connected with astronomy and the angle of Earth's orbit, it is at the twin points of midnight and noon that the seven planes draw closest together, allowing sensitive humans glimpses of activity that would normally be invisible to them. At these times, therefore, there is the most talk of ghosts, specters, black dogs, doppelgängers, and other revenants—which are generally imps or foliots doing errands in one guise or another. Because night particularly stimulates human imagination (such as it is), people pay less attention to apparitions at noon, but they're still present: flickering figures glimpsed in heat haze; passersby who on inspection lack a shadow; pale faces in the midst of crowds, which, when you look directly, are nowhere to be seen.
27
Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), magician, astronomer, and duelist, perhaps the least offensive of my masters. Well, in fact quite possibly the _most_ offensive, if you were one of his human contemporaries, since Tycho was a passionate fellow, forever getting into fights and trying to kiss friends' wives. That was how he lost his nose, incidentally—it was cut off by a lucky stroke during a duel over a woman. I fashioned him a fine gold replacement, together with a delicate tufted stick for burnishing the nostrils, and with this won his friendship. Thereafter he summoned me mainly when he fancied a good conversation.
Mortal food clogs our essences something chronic. If we _do_ devour anything—such as a human, say—it generally has to be still alive, so that its living essence galvanizes our own. This outweighs the burden of ingesting the useless bone and flesh. Sorry—not putting you off your tea, am I?
As a rough rule of thumb, the jazzier the uniform, the less powerful the army. In its golden age, Prague's soldiers wore sober outfits with little decoration; now, to my disgust, they minced about under a heavy weight of pompous finery: a fluffy epaulette here, an extra brass knobble there. You could hear their metal bits jingling like bells on cats' collars from far off down the street. Contrast that with London's Night Police: their outfits were the color of river-sludge, yet _they_ were the ones to fear.
Just as silver is deeply poisonous to our essences, so is it capable of cutting through many of our magical defenses like a hot knife through butter. Low in magic though Prague had now become, it seemed they hadn't forgotten all the old tricks. Not that silver bullets were mainly used on djinn in the old days—they were generally employed against a hairier enemy.
I could almost hear old Tycho urging me on. He loved a gamble, Tycho did. He once bet me my freedom that I couldn't jump across the Vltava in a single bound on a given day. If I succeeded he was mine to do with as I wished. Of course, the cunning hound had calculated the date of the spring tides in advance. On the given day, the river burst its banks and flooded a much wider area than normal. I landed hooves first in the drink, much to my master's cruel amusement. He laughed so hard his nose fell off.
28
Each lantern contained a sealed glass pod in which an irritable imp resided. The Master of Lamps, an hereditary official among the court magicians, stalked along the hillside each afternoon, instructing his captives in the colors and intensity required for the night to come. By subtle phrasing of each charge, the nuances achieved could be subtle or spectacular, but were always in accordance with the mood at court.
A fabled pebble accredited with the ability to turn base metals into gold or silver. Its existence is, of course, utter moonshine, as might be discovered by asking any imp. We djinn can alter the _appearance_ of things by casting a Glamour or an Illusion; but to permanently shift the true nature of something is quite impossible. But humans never listen to something that doesn't suit them, and countless lives were expended on this futile search.
The magicians came from all over the known world—from Spain, from Britain, from snowbound Russia, from the fringes of the Indian deserts—in the hope of winning incalculable reward. Each was master of a hundred arts, each the tormentor of a dozen djinn. Each drove their slaves for years in the great quest; each, in turn, failed utterly. One by one, their beards turned gray, their hands weakened and palsied, their robes grew faded and discolored from ceaseless summonings and experiments. One by one, they tried to give up their positions, only to find Rudolf was unwilling to let them go. Those who attempted to slip away found soldiers waiting for them on the castle steps; others, attempting a magical departure, discovered a strong nexus around the castle, sealing them in. They did not escape. Many ended in the dungeons; the rest took their own lives. It was, to those of us spirits who watched the process, a deeply moral tale: our captors had been caught in the prison of their own ambitions.
A type of conjuration formed by an expiration of air from the mouth and a magic sign. Not remotely connected to the Noisome Wind, which is created in a rather different way.
Very subtle, it was. Seventh plane only, the thinnest of thin threads. Anyone could have missed it.
He didn't _just_ have a skullcap on; he wore other clothes as well. Just in case you were getting excited. Look, I'll get to the details later; it's a narrative momentum thing.
See? He had a dressing gown on. And pajamas, for that matter. All perfectly respectable.
Also the rude ones, which might have upset the kid.
I speculate that these symbolize the power of earth (black) and the blood of the magician (red), which gives that earth its life. But this is only speculation: I am not privy to golem magic.
33
That used to bring the house down in the Yucatán, where you'd see the priests tumbling down the pyramid steps or diving into alligator-infested lakes to escape my mesmerizing sway. Didn't have quite the same effect on the boy here. In response to my undulating menace, he yawned, picked his teeth with a finger and began scribbling in a notepad. Is it me, or have kids today simply seen too much?
I'd had a few close encounters with Gladstone's afrits during his war of conquest and it was fair to say I wasn't anxious for another. They were a prickly lot, in general, made restless and aggressive by unpleasant treatment. Of course, even if this afrit had started out with the loving personality of a gentle babe (unlikely), it would not have been improved by a century's inhumation in a tomb.
I had no information on the trousers so far.
Several of us hovering nearby had been half-watching with the detached interest of the connoisseur. It's always interesting to study one another's styles when you get the chance, since you never know when you might pick up a new tip on presentation. In my youth, I was always one for the dramatic entrance. Now, in keeping with my character, I gravitate more toward the subtle and refined. Okay, with the occasional feathered serpent thrown in.
This guise suggested the djinni's career had included a spell in the Hindu Kush. Amazing how these influences stay with you.
The words of a summons act as crucial reinforcements of the runes and lines drawn upon the floor. They create invisible bands of power that circle the pentacle, knotting and reknotting, and looping in upon themselves, until an impassable boundary is formed. However, just one word a smidgen out of place can leave a fatal weakness in the whole defense. As Tallow was about to discover.
34
In the 1860s, when Gladstone's own remarkable health and vigor were fading, the old codger had endowed his Staff with considerable power, the better for him to access easily. It ended up containing several entities, whose natural aggression was exaggerated by being cooped up together in a single thimble-sized node within the wood. The resulting weapon was perhaps the most formidable since the glory days of Egypt. I'd glimpsed it from afar during Gladstone's wars of conquest, carving the night with sickle-shaped bursts of light. I'd seen the old man's silhouette, static, high-shouldered, holding the Staff, he and it the single fixed points within the parabolas of fire. Everything within its range—forts, palaces, well-built walls—it pounded into dust; even the afrits cringed before its power. And now this Kitty had pinched it. I wondered if she knew precisely what she'd got herself into.
There were plenty more incredibly intelligent thoughts, which I won't bother troubling your pretty little heads with. Take it from me it was all good, damn good.
It is a simple fact that, upon materializing in the human world, we have to take on _some_ form or other, even if it is just a drift of smoke or a dribble of liquid. Although some of us have the power to be invisible on the lower planes, on the higher, we must reveal a semblance: that is part of the cruel binding wrought by the magicians. Since we have no such definite forms in the Other Place, the strain of doing this is considerable and gives us pain; the longer we remain here, the worse that pain gets, although changing form can alleviate these symptoms temporarily. What we _don't_ do is "possess" material objects: the less we have to do with earthen things the better, and anyway, this procedure is strictly forbidden by the terms of our summoning.
Less trendy was the bony patella poking out.
One was my friend from the mass summoning—the bird with stilt legs. The other was shaped like a pot-bellied orangutan. Good honest traditional forms, in other words; no messing about with moldy bones for them.
You could tell Honorius was far gone by the fact that he evidently hadn't bothered checking through the planes. If he had, he'd have seen that I was an imp only on the first three planes. On the rest, I was Bartimaeus, in all my lustrous glory.
I have to say that his ramblings were not without interest, in an odd sort of way. Since time out of mind, every one of us, from the toughest marid to the smallest imp, has been cursed by the twin problems of obedience and pain. We have to obey the magicians, and it hurts us to do it. Through Gladstone's injunction, Honorius seemed to have found a way out of this cruel vise. But he had lost his sanity in the process. Who would rather stay on Earth than return home?
My six imp's fingers came in handy here; each one had a small sucker on the end.
The lorry, which was delivering a cargo of melons somewhere, careered into the glass front of a fishmonger's, sending an avalanche of ice and halibut cascading out onto the pavement. The trap at the back of the lorry opened, and the melons bounced out into the street, where, following a natural incline, they gathered pace along the road. Several bicycles were upended, or forced sideways into the gutter, before the melons' descent was halted by a glassware store at the foot of the hill. The few pedestrians who managed to avoid the rolling missiles were subsequently knocked flying by the horde of alley cats converging on the fish shop.
Imagine the discomfort of closely approaching a raging fire: this was the effect so much silver had on me—except that it was _cold._
_Cleopatra's Needle:_ a sixty-foot Egyptian obelisk, weighing 180-odd tons, that has nothing to do with Cleopatra at all. I should know, since I was one of the workers who erected it for Tuthmosis III in 1475 B.C. As we'd plunked it in the sand at Heliopolis, I was rather surprised when I saw it in London 3,500 years later. I suppose someone pinched it. You can't take your eyes off anything these days.
37
There was the sad overthrow of Akhenaton, for instance. Nefertiti never forgave me for that, but what could I do? Blame the High Priests of Ra, not me. Then there was that uncomfortable business of Solomon's magic ring, which one of his rivals charged me to pinch and chuck into the sea. I needed some fast talking on that occasion, I can tell you. Then there were all the other countless assassinations, abductions, thefts, slanders, intrigues, and deceits... come to think of it, actual bona fide _nons_ habby assignments are rather few and far between.
Well, all right: perpetual.
I rejected this procedure on aesthetic grounds also. I dislike leaving a mess.
41
This chronic unreliability is one of the reasons werewolves get such bad press. As is the fact that they're ravenous, savage, bloodthirsty and very poorly house-trained. Lycaon of Arcadia assembled the first wolf corps as his personal bodyguard, way back about 2000 B.C., and despite the fact that they promptly ate several of his houseguests, the notion of their fulfilling a useful enforcing role stuck fast. Many tyrannical rulers who had recourse to magic have used them ever since: casting complex transformation spells over suitably brawny humans, keeping them in isolation, and sometimes carrying out breeding programs to improve the strain. As with so much else, it was Gladstone who inaugurated the British Night Police; he knew their worth as instruments of fear.
Indian elephants, usually. The rocs lived on remote isles in the Indian Ocean, appearing inland infrequently in search of prey. Their nests were an acre across, their eggs vast white domes visible far out across the sea. The adults were formidable opponents, and sank most ships sent out to pillage the nesting sites by dropping rocks from great heights. The caliphs paid huge sums for rocs' feathers, cut by stealth from the breasts of sleeping birds.
As exemplified by Icarus, an early pioneer of flight. According to Faquarl, who admittedly wasn't the most reliable of sources, the Greek magician Daedalus constructed a pair of magical wings, each one housing a short-tempered foliot. These wings were tested by Icarus, a fey and facetious youth, who made cheap remarks at the foliots' expense while at several thousand feet above the Aegean. In protest, they loosed their feathers one by one, sending Icarus and his witticisms plummeting to a watery grave.
We were about six feet up. Hey, she was young and bouncy.
If not particularly inventive. I was tired and out of sorts.
Actually, it was grinning already, grinning being one of the few things skulls do really well.
You know the trick. The clever mortal convinces the stupid djinni to squeeze inside a bottle (or some other confined space), then stoppers him up and refuses to let him out unless he grants three wishes, etc., etc. Ho hum. Unlikely as it may seem, however, if the djinni enters the bottle of his own free will this entrapment actually has a fair degree of power. But even the smallest, doziest imp is unlikely to fall for this chestnut today.
Take it as a mark of respect for what he did for me.
Only a few, such as old Faquarl, openly (and hopelessly) plot revolt. But they've been wittering on about it for so long without results that no one pays any attention.
44
Lesser spirits such as this are often small-minded and vengeful, and take any opportunity to discomfort a human in their power with talk of bloodcurdling tortures. Others have an endless roster of smutty jokes. It's a toss-up which is worse.
Unaccountable as this was. He seemed a bit wet to me.
Not that I would have, of course. Humans and their sad little affairs are nothing to do with me. If I'd had the option of helping the girl out or dematerializing straight off, I'd probably have vanished with a ringing laugh and a gout of brimstone in her eye. Charming as she was, it never pays a djinni to get close to people. Never. Take it from one who knows.
What you could see of them under his outsize lacy cuffs, that is.
Again, a bit of an overstatement here, unless you had a particularly gummy, rheumatic eye that took a while to unstick. Given a precise command and a partial retraction of my current charge, I can certainly dematerialize, materialize elsewhere, locate the necessary objects, and return, but this is bound to take a good few seconds—or more if the objects are hard to track down. I cannot just spirit things out of thin air. That would be silly.
A block of wood wearing a peaked cap would have had more verve and individuality.
Rather in the same way that tinned vegetables are never as nice and nutritious as the real thing, Elemental Spheres, or Inferno sticks, or any other weapon formed by trapping an imp or other spirit inside a globe or box, are never as effective or long-lasting as spells worked spontaneously by the spirits themselves. All magicians use them as often as possible, however—it's so much easier than going through the laborious business of summoning.
Recognizable from the dreadful workmanship of the exterior. The cheeky, work-shy imp on the interior is even worse.
47
The vast majority went quickly and without trouble. A few laggards were helped on their way by the application of Infernos to their backsides. A number of pressmen from _The Times,_ who were discovered making detailed notes of the magicians' panic, were escorted to a quiet place, where their reports were channeled more favorably.
They involved whitewash, wallpaper, and copious cleaning fluids. I say no more.
He was no different here from 90 percent of other magicians. When not attempting to stab one another in the back, they spend their time surrounding themselves with the finer things in life. Luxurious pads feature heavily on their wish lists, and it's always the poor djinni who has to do the legwork. Persian magicians were the most extravagant: we had to shift palaces from one country to another overnight, build them on clouds, even underwater. There was one magician who wanted his castle made of solid glass. Aside from the obvious privacy angle, it was a hopeless mistake. We built it for him one evening and he joyfully took possession. Next morning, the sun came up: the walls acted like giant lenses and its rays were refracted through with vigor. By noon the magician and his entire household had been burned to charcoal crisps.
To help carry out the job, he'd presented me with two foliots, which wore the semblance of orphan waifs. They were round-eyed and pitiable enough to melt the hardest of hearts. However, they were also inclined to laziness. I roasted them over a slow flame, and so won their prompt obedience.
Teaser
When goaded into invoking the spell of Indefinite Confinement, magicians usually compress the spirit into the first object they spy close at hand. I once cheeked a master a little too cleverly during his afternoon tea; before I knew it I was imprisoned inside a half-filled pot of strawberry jam and would have remained there possibly for all eternity had not his apprentice opened it by mistake at supper that same evening. Even so, my essence was infested with sticky little seeds for ages after.
The afrit Honorius was a case in point: he went mad after a hundred years' confinement in a skeleton. A rather poor show; I like to think with my engaging personality I could keep myself entertained a _little_ longer than that.
It is a curious fact that, despite our fury at being summoned into this world, spirits such as I derive a good deal of retrospective satisfaction from our exploits. At the time, of course, we do our darnedest to avoid them, but afterward we often display a certain weary pride in the cleverest, bravest, or most jammy events on our C.V Philosophers might speculate this is because we are essentially _defined_ by our experiences in this world, since in the Other Place we are not so easily individualized. Thus, those with long and glittering careers (e.g. me) tend to look down on those (e.g. Ascobol) whose names have been unearthed more recently, and haven't amassed so many fine achievements. In Ascobol's case, I also disliked him for his silly falsetto voice, which ill becomes an eight-foot cyclops.
**About the Author**
Jonathan Stroud is the author of the _New York Times_ best-selling Bartimaeus books: _The Amulet of Samarkand_ , _The Golem's Eye_ , _Ptolemy's Gate_ , and _The Ring of Solomon_ , as well as _The Amulet of Samarkand: A Bartimaeus Graphic Novel_ (written with Andrew Donkin). His other books include _Heroes of the Valley_ , _The Last Siege_ , _The Leap_ , and _Buried Fire_. He lives in England with his family. Visit him online at www.jonathanstroud.com.
**Praise for the Bartimaeus Books**
* "A must-purchase for all fantasy collections." – _School Library Journal_ (starred review)
"Fast-paced excitement." – _Kirkus Reviews_
| death throes of one empire and the bloody baptism of the next, I must say I didn't feel particularly triumphant.
I had a feeling it was all going to get a whole lot worse.
London: a great and prosperous capital, two thousand years old, which in the hands of the magicians aspired to be the center of the world. In size at least it had succeeded. It had grown vast and ungainly on the rich feasts of empire.
The city sprawled for several miles on either side of the Thames, a smoke-bound crust of housing, dotted with palaces, towers, churches, and bazaars. At all times and in all places, it thrummed with activity. The streets were clogged and crowded with tourists, workers, and other human traffic, while the air buzzed invisibly with the passage of imps busy about their masters' errands.
On the crowded quays extending into the gray waters of the Thames, battalions of soldiers and bureaucrats waited to set sail on journeys across the globe. In the shadows of their ironclad sailing ships, colorful merchant vessels of every size and shape negotiated the cluttered river. Bustling carracks from Europe; sharp-sailed Arab dhows, laden with spices; snub-nosed junks from China; elegant, slim-masted clippers from America—all were surrounded and impeded by the tiny river-boats of the Thames watermen, who competed loudly for the custom of guiding them into dock.
Two hearts powered the metropolis. To the east was the City district, where traders from distant lands gathered to exchange their wares; to the west, hugging a sharp bend in the river, lay the political mile of Westminster, where the magicians worked ceaselessly to extend and protect their territories abroad.
The boy had been in central London on business; now he was returning to Westminster on foot. He walked at an easy pace, for though it was still early morning, it was already warm, and he could feel the sweat beading beneath his collar. A slight breeze caught the edges of his long black coat and whipped it up behind him as he went. He was aware of the effect, which pleased him. Darkly impressive, it was; he could sense heads turning as he passed. On _really_ windy days, with his coat flapping out horizontally, he had the feeling he didn't look quite so stylish.
He cut across Regent Street and down between the whitewashed Regency buildings to Haymarket, where the street sweepers were busy with broom and brush outside the theater fronts and young fruit sellers were already beginning to parade their wares. One woman supported a tray piled high with fine, ripe, colonial oranges, which had been scarce in London since the southern European wars began. The boy approached; as he passed, he flipped a coin dexterously into the small pewter bowl hanging from her neck and, with an extension of the same movement, plucked an orange from the top of the tray. Ignoring her thanks, he went his way. He did not break stride. His coat trailed impressively behind him.
At Trafalgar Square, a series of tall poles, each striped with a dozen spiraling colors, had recently been erected; gangs of workmen were at that moment winching ropes into place between them. Each rope was heavily laden with jaunty red, white, and blue flags. The boy stopped to peel his orange and consider the work.
A laborer passed, sweating under the weight of a mass of bunting.
The boy hailed him. "You, fellow. What's all this in aid of?"
The man glanced sideways, noticed the boy's long black coat, and immediately attempted a clumsy salute. Half the bunting slipped out of his hands onto the pavement. "It's for tomorrow, sir," he said. "Founder's Day. National holiday, sir."
"Ah yes. Of course. Gladstone's birthday. I forgot." The boy tossed a coil of peel into the gutter and departed, leaving the workman grappling with the bunting and swearing under his breath.
And so down to Whitehall, a region of massive gray-clad buildings, heavy with the odor of long-established power. Here, the architecture alone was enough to browbeat any casual observer into submission: great marble pillars; vast bronze doors; hundreds upon hundreds of windows with lights burning at every hour; granite statues of Gladstone and other notables, their grim, lined faces promising the rigors of justice for all enemies of State. But the boy tripped with light steps past it all, peeling his orange with the unconcern of one born to it. He nodded to a policeman, flashed his pass to a guard, and stepped through a side gate into the courtyard of the Department of Internal Affairs, under the shade of a spreading walnut tree. Only now did he pause, gulp down the remainder of his orange, wipe his hands on his handkerchief, and adjust his collar, cuffs, and tie. He smoothed back his hair a final time. Good. He was ready now. It was time to go to work.
More than two years had passed since the time of Lovelace's rebellion, and the sudden emergence of Nathaniel into the elite. By now, he was fourteen years old, taller by a head than when he had returned the Amulet of Samarkand to the protective custody of a grateful government; bulkier, too, but still lean-framed, with his dark hair hanging long and shaggy around his face after the fashion of the day. His face was thin and pale with long hours of study, but his eyes burned hot and bright; all his movements were characterized by a barely suppressed energy.
Being a keen observer, Nathaniel had soon perceived that among working magicians, appearance was an important factor in maintaining status. Shabby attire was frowned upon; indeed it was a sure-fire mark of mediocre talent. He did not intend to give this impression. With the stipend that he received from his department, he had bought a tight-fitting black drainpipe suit and a long Italian coat, both of which he considered dangerously fashionable. He wore slim, slightly pointed shoes and a succession of garish handkerchiefs, which provided an explosion of color across his breast. With this outfit carefully in place, he would walk around the Whitehall cloisters with a lanky, purposeful stride, reminiscent of some wading bird, clutching sheaves of paper in his arms.
His birth name he kept well hidden. To his colleagues and associates, he was known by his adult name, John Mandrake.
Two other magicians had borne this name, neither of great renown. The first, an alchemist in the days of Queen Elizabeth, had turned lead to gold in a celebrated experiment before the court. It was afterward discovered that he had managed this by coating gold pellets with thin films of lead, which vanished when gently heated. His ingenuity was applauded, but he was beheaded nonetheless. The second John Mandrake was a furniture-maker's son who had spent his life researching the many variants of demonic mite. He had amassed a list of 1,703 increasingly irrelevant subtypes before one of them, a Lesser Frilled Green Hornetwing, stung him in an unguarded area; he swelled to the size of a chaise lounge and so died.
The inglorious careers of his predecessors did not concern Nathaniel. In fact, they gave him quiet satisfaction. He intended to make the name famous for himself alone.
Nathaniel's master was Ms. Jessica Whitwell, a magician of indeterminate age, with cropped white hair and a frame that was slender, tending to the skeletal. She was reckoned one of the four most potent magicians in the government, and her influence was long. She recognized her apprentice's talent and set about developing it fully.
Living in a spacious apartment in his master's riverside townhouse, Nathaniel led an ordered, well-directed existence. The house was modern and sparsely furnished, its carpets lynx-gray and the walls stark white. The furniture was made of glass and silvered metal, and of pale wood felled in Nordic forests. The whole place had a cool, businesslike, almost antiseptic feel, which Nathaniel came to admire strongly: it signaled control, clarity, and efficiency, all hallmarks of the contemporary magician.
Ms. Whitwell's style even extended to her library. In most magical households, libraries were dark, brooding places—their books bound in exotic animal skins, with embroidered pentacles or curse runes on the spines. But this look, Nathaniel now learned, was _very_ last century. Ms. Whitwell had requested Jaroslav's, the printers and bookbinders, to provide uniform bindings of white leather for all her tomes, which were then indexed and stamped with identifying numbers in black ink.
In the center of this white-walled room of neat white books was a rectangular glass table, and here Nathaniel would sit two days every week, working on the higher mysteries.
In the early months of his tenure with Ms. Whitwell, he had embarked on a period of intensive study and, to her surprise and approval, mastered successive grades of summoning in record time. He had progressed from the lowest level of demon (mites, moulers, and goblin-imps), to medium (the full range of foliots), to advanced (djinn of various castes) in a matter of days.
After watching him dismiss a brawny djinni with an improvisation that administered a slap on its blue rump, his master expressed her admiration. "You're a natural, John," she said. "A natural. You displayed bravery and good memory at Heddleham Hall in dismissing the demon there, but I little realized how adept you'd be at general summonings. Work hard and you'll go far."
Nathaniel thanked her demurely. He did not tell her that most of this was nothing new to him, that he had already raised a middle-ranking djinni by the age of twelve. He kept his association with Bartimaeus strictly to himself.
Ms. Whitwell had rewarded his precocity with new secrets and tuition, which was exactly what Nathaniel had long desired. Under her guidance, he learned the arts of constraining demons to multiple or semipermanent tasks, without recourse to cumbersome tools such as Adelbrand's Pentacle. He discovered how to protect himself from enemy spies by weaving sensor webs around himself; how to dispel surprise attacks by invoking rapid Fluxes that engulfed the aggressive magic and carried it away. In a very short space of time, Nathaniel had absorbed as much new knowledge as many of his fellow magicians who were five or six years older. He was now ready for his first job.
It was the custom for all promising magicians to be given work in lowly departmental positions as a way of instructing them in the practical use of power. The age at which this occurred depended on the talent of the apprentice and the influence of the master. In Nathaniel's case, there was another factor, too, for it was well known about the coffee bars of Whitehall that the Prime Minister himself was following his career with a keen and benevolent eye. This ensured that, from the outset, he was the object of much attention.
His master had warned him of this. "Keep your secrets to yourself," she said, "especially your birth name, if you know it. Keep your mouth shut like a clam. They'll pry it all out of you otherwise."
"Who will?" he asked her.
"Enemies you haven't yet made. They like to plan ahead."
A magician's birth name was certainly a source of great weakness if uncovered by another, and Nathaniel guarded his with great care. At first, however, he was considered something of a soft touch. Pretty female magicians approached him at parties, lulling him with compliments before inquiring closely into his background. Nathaniel fended off these crude enticements fairly easily, but more dangerous methods followed. An imp once visited him while he slept, cooing gentle words into his ear and asking for his name. Perhaps only the loud tolling of Big Ben across the river prevented an unguarded revelation. As the hour struck, Nathaniel stirred, woke, and observed the imp squatting on the bedpost; in an instant, he summoned a tame foliot, which seized the imp and compressed it to a stone.
In its new condition, the imp was sadly unable to reveal anything about the magician who had sent it on its errand. After this episode, Nathaniel employed the foliot to guard his bedroom conscientiously throughout each night.
It soon became clear that John Mandrake's identity was not going to be compromised easily, and no further attempts occurred. Soon afterward, when he was still scarcely fourteen, the expected appointment was made and the young magician joined the Department of Internal Affairs.
In his office, Nathaniel was welcomed by a glare from the secretary and a teetering pile of new papers in his in-box.
The secretary, a trim, well-kempt young man with oiled ginger hair, paused in the act of leaving the room. "You're _late,_ Mandrake," he said, pushing his glasses higher with a swift, nervous gesture. "What's the excuse this time? You've got responsibilities, too, you know, just the | 2,777 |
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Viz.ai Appoints Radiology Advisory Board to Advance<|fim_middle|> of our Board will propel Viz.ai to new heights by driving the development of products that will support radiologists in their work and enhance patient outcomes," said Jayme Strauss, chief clinical officer at Viz.ai. "We are immensely grateful for the expertise, time, and support of our Board members and proud to partner with them on this important endeavor."
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Viz.ai, the leader in AI-powered disease detection and intelligent care coordination, today announced the creation of its Radiology Advisory Board to assist Viz.ai in the development of strategy and products to support radiologists and patients. The Board consists of 14 leading healthcare experts with diverse experience and roles in radiology.
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"The deep expertise | 337 |
Historic place
The Atomium was the main pavilion and icon of the World Fair of Brussels (1958), commonly called Expo 58. It symbolised the democratic will to maintain peace among all the nations, faith in progress,<|fim_middle|>ium - 1020 Laeken
Palace of Charles of Lorraine
L.E.J Lilly Wood and the Prick
Bruxella 1238
City of Brussels Museum
Brussels City Hall
Frànçois and the Atlas Mountains | both technical and scientific and, finally, an optimistic vision of the future of a modern, new, super-technological world for a better life for mankind.
The peaceful use of atomic energy for scientific purposes embodied these themes particularly well and, so, that is what determined the shape of the edifice. At 102 metres high, with its nine interconnected spheres, it represents an elementary iron crystal enlarged 165 billion (thousand million) times. It was dreamed up by the engineer André Waterkeyn (1917-2005). The spheres, though, were fitted out by the architects André and Jean Polak.
The Atomium was not intended to survive beyond the 1958 World Fair but its popularity and success soon made it a key landmark, first of Brussels then internationally.
placesquare de l'Atom | 174 |
Bringing home a new puppy is an exciting time, it's also an important time. Right from the beginning, new owners need to plan how they're going to manage their puppy because the puppy's experiences in the first few months will influence their behaviour for the rest of their life.
I'll never forget the joy of bringing Toby home as a pup, he was so cute and so much fun. It's true puppies are an absolute delight. They're also messy, they chew things they shouldn't, and many will cry at night. Their behaviour can easily become frustrating and confusing for new owners. That's why I always recommend owners plan how they will raise their pup to ensure they become a friendly, well-behaved dog. Following are my five top tips to help you set your new four-legged friend up for success and avoid puppy disasters.
Animal behaviour experts agree that one of the most important factors for all dogs is socialisation from a young age. Socialising is simply a term for activities that introduce puppies to a wide range of experiences in a positive and safe way to help them become confident and friendly dogs. Well socialised puppies grow up to be great pets. Puppies that are isolated<|fim_middle|> on-going training can be. Like humans, dogs experience behavioural changes through adolescence. This can result in behaviour issues from 6 to 18 months of age. It's important to keep up the training throughout this period, even a few minutes a day will provide mental stimulation and help stop boredom. | or have negative experiences, are more likely to be fearful or aggressive adults. The first few months are the most critical developmental period in every dog's life. During this time, it's vital to expose them to as many people, places and 'things' as possible – children, trucks, skateboards, other animals, veterinarians, slippery floors, loud noises etc. These experiences will play an important part in shaping their behaviour as an adult dog.
Owners should never tolerate bad behaviour, even when it seems cute and harmless. Behaviour that's amusing in a tiny puppy, can become a real problem in a large adult dog. Always strive to reward good behaviour and ignore bad behaviour. When puppies misbehave they often receive attention, and they may view that attention as a reward, so take care not to accidentally reinforce poor behaviour. Reward your puppy for calm, relaxed behaviour, even when they're just sitting quietly, a small treat or praise will reinforce their understanding that calm and quiet is good.
Puppies need loads of companionship and training, but they also need to learn to spend time on their own. A puppy pen will minimise toileting accidents in inappropriate places and provide security and keep them out of mischief when you're unable to supervise them. It can be tempting to carry your puppy around or let them follow you about all day, but this can lead to them becoming overly dependent on you and potentially anxious when left alone.
Most owners are aware of the necessity of training puppies, but don't realise how valuable | 303 |
Dining on the Rocks sits in the upscale Six Senses Samui Resort, and is dedicated to fusion cuisine. You can expect an emphasis on sustainable and organic produce, and the food here encompasses both regional and international cuisine. The settings of the restaurants are simply outstanding. Hence its name, Dining on the Rocks hosts a large wooden<|fim_middle|>starting from THB 4,000) that comes with a Duo of Tuna and Beef Cheek, or the Extremity Menu (starting from THB 13,000 for two people) which features Lamb Rack and Smoked Duck Breast. There are also vegetarian and vegan options available such as the Vegan Society Menu. You can also order à la carte. | terrace built on the rocks, as well as an open-sided dining room, both of them overlooking the sea.
There is a good range of menus to chose from, each of them with the option to be paired with wine. These include the Interpretations Menu (THB 3,400 per person or THB 5,700 with wine) which has highlights such as Hokkaido Scallops and Turbot with a lettuce jus and almond mashed potatoes.
The Sensibility Menu features Prawn and Sea bass Ceviche with sweet potato sheets and lemon grass vapour. It also comes with Pork Belly with a pear-juniper jam and red cabbage and comes in at THB 3,800 per person or THB 6,300 with wine.
Other menus include the Expressions Menu ( | 171 |
Mutts turn mangy. Kittens' chins break out in pimples. Dogs pepper the rug with dandruff. Cats scratch themselves at a feverish pitch.
Our pets are susceptible to hundreds of bacterial and fungal infections, parasites and autoimmune disorders of the skin—ranging from the merely annoying to<|fim_middle|> says Linda Frank, V85, a veterinary dermatologist at the University of Tennessee's Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
The most common cause of insect allergy in horses is Culicoides biting midges, which feed at night, Frank says. She recommends that owners keep their horses inside from an hour before dusk to hour after dawn and spray them nightly with insect repellant. Installing a fan in the barn is also helpful, because these insects are less likely to hang around if there's a breeze. And be sure to eliminate pools of standing water, where the bugs breed. | the downright deadly. So it's no wonder that dermatological issues are the number one reason that dogs and cats end up at the vet.
"The skin is an organ we can see," says Lluis Ferrer, who oversees the veterinary dermatology service at Tufts. So although you can't tell whether your dog has a headache or tightness in the chest, an itch that won't quit is easy to spot. "If your cat has a growth on her face, you are going to notice that immediately, versus a growth on her pancreas, which you won't be aware of until after it starts causing some serious problems," says Ferrer.
Owners often worry that a pet's skin condition might be contagious—and rightly so, in some cases. You can get ringworm, an itchy fungal infection, from your cat.
The bottom line is that healthy skin is important to your pet's well-being. Essentially an envelope for the body, the skin keeps good things in (water and electrolytes) and bad things out (toxins, germs and UV rays from the sun). It also helps your pet maintain a healthy body temperature by regulating blood supply and sweat gland function.
When it comes to all things lumpy, bumpy, red and spotty, pet owners often assume a veterinarian will be able to diagnose a skin disease just by looking at it. Not so, says Ferrer, who goes beyond skin deep to try to identify the molecular causes of many dermatological conditions—from why Shar-Peis' skin is wrinkled and prone to chronic infections to why certain dogs die from infestations of the typically harmless parasitic mites known as Demodex, which live in the hair follicles of most mammals, including humans.
Despite the mind-boggling number and diversity of dermatological problems in animals, the skin has a limited repertoire of signals—itching, hair loss, bumps and scales—to give owners and veterinarians clues into what's going on. Getting to the right diagnosis is important.
"First, we want to make sure it's not something that can be easily treated," says Andrea Lam, a board-certified veterinary dermatologist who works with Ferrer at Tufts' Foster Hospital for Small Animals and at the Tufts VETS clinic in Walpole, Mass.
Symptoms such as itchiness, hair loss, smelly ears, head shaking, foot licking and skin lumps could signal a skin problem.
Fleas and other contagious parasites—such as sarcoptic mange mites, which a dog can pick up if coyotes and foxes live nearby—are common and easily treatable causes of extreme itchiness and hair loss. A bacterial or yeast infection can be cured with antibiotics or antifungal drugs.
To diagnose an infection, a veterinarian presses a glass slide directly onto a lesion or sticks a piece of tape to the affected area. "Then we can look at it under a microscope in the exam room and show the owner the yeast or bacteria right there on the spot," says Lam.
By far, the most common cause of skin infections in otherwise-healthy animals is allergies, which can morph that body-protecting envelope into a sieve.
"If you think about your skin, its structure is like a brick wall—nothing penetrates it," says Lam. "But an allergic dog has skin that's more like a crumbly stone wall. There are all these tiny gaps where environmental allergens like dust or mold can seep through and cause an inflammatory reaction." The warmth of inflamed skin creates the perfect breeding environment for the normal supply of yeast and bacteria living on the skin to multiply, she says.
Although there is little research data on pet allergies for comparison, it appears that atopic dermatitis—a.k.a. eczema, the itchy, scaly skin caused by allergies—is far more prevalent in dogs and cats than it was a few decades ago, according to Ferrer.
"The situation is similar to that in children," says Ferrer, who notes that as many as 10 percent of all dogs and between 10 and 15 percent of children suffer from atopic dermatitis.
It is not known why more pets (and kids) have allergies. One explanation, Ferrer says, is the "hygiene hypothesis," which suggests that Western society's obsession with disinfecting every surface in sight has made animals' immune systems hypersensitive to foods and other allergens. Other suspects include environmental and chemical pollution, which may harm the immune system, and genetic changes that have occurred over generations.
Because dogs and cats can be allergic to many things, identifying the culprit requires time and a bit of trial and error. Until an allergen is confirmed, your veterinarian may recommend antihistamines, such topical treatments as shampoos and sprays and even steroids to keep your pet comfortable.
If a pet's symptoms diminish, the owner is instructed to give the pet its old food once more to see whether symptoms get worse. "Animals with food allergies will have a reaction within days, sometimes within hours," Lam says.
If the dietary regimen doesn't work, the next target is environmental allergies. Tufts veterinary dermatologists perform a blood test in combination with a skin allergy test, which is similar to the prick test for people suspected of having allergies.
Lam says that roughly 25 percent of her patients with environmental allergies test positive for an allergy to human dander. Unlike people with pet allergies, dog and cats typically do not experience respiratory problems as a result of human dander, but they can become extremely itchy and develop secondary infections just by being around us.
Fortunately, your veterinarian will never tell your dog or cat to find you a new home. Instead, a vet can develop an immunotherapy regimen for your pet's most serious allergens. Administered as a series of injections over many months, these allergy shots contain minute diluted amounts of substances to which your pet is allergic.
"Each pet has a totally customized plan," says Lam, noting that immunotherapy improves symptoms in about 70 percent of cases. "If a client is very lucky, the pet will improve in the first three months, but results can take a full year," she says. However, most owners say their pets' comfort outweighs the lengthy treatment.
Allergies are not as common in horses as they are in small animals, but diagnosing and treating them is tricky.
Environmental allergies in horses are quite common, caused by dust, pollen and molds, which thrive in the fields and stables where they spend most of their time.
In addition, "a lot of horses are extremely sensitive to insect bites," says Londoño.
There are a number of steps owners can take to lessen animals' exposure to bugs, | 1,371 |
Stuard takes one-shot lead at wet Zurich Classic
AVONDALE, La. - Brian Stuard completed his second straight bogey-free round to take a one-shot lead in the waterlogged Zurich Classic.
Stuard played just six holes Saturday, completing his second round with a 4-under 68 to reach 12 under at TPC Louisiana. Jamie Landmark and Jhonattan Vegas were tied for second.
They finished the second round Friday.
The 33-year-old Stuard, winless on the PGA Tour, continued his steady play with two birdies Some players were able to begin the third round on Saturday before thunderstorms swept through the area, but the leaders haven't teed off.
Top-ranked Day was five strokes behind Stuard after shooting a 68 in the second round.
Rain delays have interrupted two out of three days of<|fim_middle|> the threat of impending rain won't affect how he plays when, or if, he's able to get on the course Sunday.
"I think you've just got to go out and play it one shot at a time and whatever happens, happens," Stuard said.
Lovemark and Vegas didn't play at all Saturday, getting some rest after a long Friday.
Lovemark played 27 holes on Friday to jump into contention with a second-round 66. Vegas completed 30 1/2 holes and finished the second round with a 69.
Stuard, Lovemark and Vegas have a sizable jump on the rest of the field. Six players, including Charles Howell III, were four strokes back at 8 under.
Day was among a dozen players five shots behind Stuard.
The Australian said the stop-and-start nature of the tournament can makes things difficult, but he's pleased with the way he's played through two rounds.
"You've got to try and stay in the right frame of mind mentally," Day said.
"Try and keep yourself loose. Because there is a lot of sitting around, a lot of eating, and all that other stuff. But you've got to try and remind yourself that you need to stay sharp." | the tournament. More rain is forecast for Sunday.
It's just the second time in Stuard's career that he's had the lead after 36 holes.
He said | 35 |
Blessing –<|fim_middle|> 2010 presented me with growing areas of opportunity and responsibility. I'm serving in leadership with local, state, and national organizations of various kinds. I'm excited about the purposes and potential these opportunities present, but they are responsibilities with which I have been entrusted and that I take seriously.
Communication – One of the big themes in my spiritual life this year was learning to listen more carefully to and walk more purposefully with the Holy Spirit. I have to be careful not to be so intent on my task of leading that I fail to listen and look to see where God is leading. But I also found that I didn't do as good of a job as I should have in communicating in some of my areas of responsibility. There were times when I wasn't on the same page as those working with me because I didn't do a good enough job of casting vision and clarifying purpose.
Harried – Because of the blessings, opportunities, and responsibilities I have sometimes felt harried and scattered. As a result, I have often let urgent needs crowd out the important values of my life and ministry. I haven't always been able to do things to the best of my ability because I have been trying to do too many things.
Those are the themes I see as I look back on my 2010. What about you? Looking back, what do you see as recurring themes of your past year? What things did God try to communicate to you? | It was a year of being blessed beyond what I deserve. That starts, of course, with God's grace for a sinner like me. More and more I'm aware of my dependence on Him. It includes my family – from my beautiful, gracious, and patient wife to my wonderful daughters (and the men they married). It includes my ministry: Seeing God work in the lives of students from around the world and sharing that experience with a great staff, some incredible students, and prayer and financial partners - people and churches who share our vision of reaching students and influencing the world. It also includes what I do with track and field: From getting to head events in 2010 where World and American records were set to being selected for a couple of prestigious honors by USA Track and Field. On top of all of that, the response of friends and family to my birthday water project was overwhelming. Almost 70 people gave $5052 to help provide clean drinking water in a developing nation. In 2010, my cup definitely overflowed.
Responsibility – | 220 |
It takes a whole lot of volunteers to host the 2019 Canadian Tire National Skating Championships — 225 to be exact.
Among them are three generations of the Durelle family — a daughter, mother<|fim_middle|> mom and daughter volunteer together because they're passionate about sport and about volunteering as well," Taylor said.
She said she sees three-generation teams every now and then.
"They're great assets to the competition," she said.
But all volunteers are indispensable, Taylor said.
"We could not run the competition without them."
Jenna said that as a skater, she's taking many lessons out of this volunteer experience.
"Definitely motivation to skate harder and train harder, and just never forget to do your best," she said. | and grandmother, who say they're volunteering at the championships in Saint John this week because they love the sport and their family.
"I like being part of things, I like giving my time to make things better and make it available to the children in our city," said grandmother Della Durelle, who's been volunteering for various causes for more than 50 years.
About 250 athletes are in Saint John for the figure skating competition, joined by coaches, physiotherapists, officials, families and fans.
Big names like Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue and Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford have previously competed in these championships and won.
The Durelles have been prepping tags and helping organize events during the championships, which began last Sunday and through this Sunday.
What sparked the interest in figure skating volunteerism is the sport itself. Daughter Jenna Durelle has been skating for years, and she's been the one handing flowers to winners.
"To be here with my family means a lot," said Jenna. "We're close and they've always been here for me through my skating career."
Her mother, Michelle Durelle, said Jenna's passion for figure skating makes volunteering a family affair.
"We are a close family so it's great to be able to do this together and to enjoy it together as we have for the past 11 years," said Michelle.
Susan Taylor, event co-chair, said it's not uncommon to see mother-daughter volunteer teams, as a lot of the volunteers have a connection with the sport.
"Often the | 322 |
Migraines are often caused by stress, but how can they be treated without<|fim_middle|> days per week.
The duration of migraines, their frequency and severity was measured using headache logs throughout the trial.
"We found that the MBSR participants had trends of fewer migraines that were less severe.
Secondary effects included headaches that were shorter in duration and less disabling, and participants had increases in mindfulness and self-efficacy — a sense of personal control over their migraines.
The study also showed that MBSR techniques were effective in reducing headache duration and disability.
Participants also reported greater self-efficacy and levels of mindfulness. | drugs?
Meditation might be a path to migraine relief, reports a new study in the Journal of Head and Face Pain (Wells et al., 2015).
About 36 million Americans suffer from migraines, but the treatment strategies are mainly focused on taking pharmaceutical drugs.
A safer alternative is mind/body interventions which can reduce the impact of migraines.
The new study used a standardised meditation and yoga intervention known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).
People were taught MBSR techniques during eight weekly classes and instructed to practice on their own for 45 minutes on five additional | 124 |
Omada appoints Senior VP of Global Marketing
Omada appoints Senior VP of Global Marketing to support ambitious international growth plan
Omada, a leading provider of Identity & Access Governance solutions with offices in Europe and North America, appoints new VP of Global Marketing Anne Dorthe Gyldenkærne. Anne Dorthe has more than 18 years of experience working within the IT industry. She comes from a position as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at the IT Security company Dubex.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March, 2017 - "Omada enables our customers to comply with data protection requirements related to identity and access," says Morten Boel Sigurdsson, CEO at Omada. The market experiences significant growth, and Marketing is a key area for Omada to support our global growth strategy ramping up markets in Europe and US. "I am happy to welcome Anne Dorthe onboard the Omada team". "As VP of Global Marketing, Anne Dorthe will lead Omada's Global Marketing strategy and execution. Anne Dorthe's tasks will also include<|fim_middle|>Anne Dorthe Gyldenkaerne
Vice President, Marketing
More Omada press releases | the expansion of Omada's Global Marketing organization", he continues.
"Omada is an amazing growth company with a unique value proposition to its customers", says Anne Dorthe Gyldenkærne, "I envision a fantastic opportunity to broaden the markets understanding of Omada's unique capabilities by expanding the company's brand position to gain significant market shares globally." She continues, "Omada provides the most flexible, future proof and best-of-value IAG product in the market. The company's growth vision is backed up with a strong position in the "Challenger" quadrant in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Identity Governance and Administration. I am looking forward to an exciting journey being part of the Omada team"
About Omada
Founded in 2000, Omada is a fast-growing, independent IT company. Omada provides identity management and access governance solutions and services. The company's innovative product portfolio offers customers an integrated set of core services including identity lifecycle management, compliance control, provisioning, and access risk management.
Omada provides its innovative identity and access governance solutions and services to an extensive customer portfolio of large and midsize enterprises within banking, utility, public sector, securities and insurance, healthcare, and other verticals - enabling its customers to achieve compliance, reduce risk exposure, and maximize efficiency. Omada's customers are predominantly based in Europe and North America.
| 283 |
Tag: Merchandising
Pandemic Publishing Roundtable: One Source Magazine Wholesale – Front End Merchandising With a Twist
Article by Linda Ruth
Last week, at the Publishing Pandemic Roundtable—Bo Sacks, Gemma Peckham, Joe Berger, Samir Husni, Sherin Pierce, and me— spent our hour with Gregg Mason of One Source, the distributor to major Natural Food specialty retailers, discussing the unique nature of the One Source checkout program, the changes that the pandemic has brought, and what we might anticipate for 2021.
Joe: Can you give us some background on One Source and your role in the company?
Gregg: One Source is a traditional direct distributor, in that it orders its product from publishers and ships to one location for pick and pack. We service primarily the natural food segment, with close to 2000 retailers nationwide. Our largest chain is Whole Foods, with 500 stores, followed by Sprouts with 365 locations. We also service a small sports retail segment. One Source started small when the chains were small and grew along with them. Our approach to magazine merchandising is unique—we don't have mainlines. We are front-end focused with pockets at the checkout-only, and with non-logo'd pockets. Without logos, it allows dynamic movement of magazines which caters to the impulse buy of shoppers. We can sell more of what sells and the fixture presentation changes often. When our retailers wanted a magazine program and looked at what traditional grocers had, they wanted something different, something fluid and dynamic. Something that would appeal to both new and returning customers; something that had the ability to drive high efficiencies. This fluid checkout was the solution.
Bo: Does the fluidity you exercise with different titles in the pockets create a better sell through?
Gregg: Having the titles move around drives greater sales and sell through as they do stay in store but get shifted. Older product moves down, newer product comes in at the top of the rack. Titles with enough product at release for two pockets consolidate down to one over time. In this way we can extend shelf life for high-selling magazines. Our best-selling regular-frequency titles are all either bi-monthlies or quarterlies, we're able to give them their full on-sale period.
Joe: Traditional retail stores don't always follow their so-called "fixed" planograms; you can spend a lot of money participating and find you're not in the program you paid for. In the One Source program you have opportunity to show if you're capable of performing; though, on the other hand, these efficiencies can regulate a title out in the end.
Gregg: Yes, it's somewhat Darwinian; we look for not only high sell through but high sales per store. As draws come down, it's hard to maintain the volume needed to stay in the stores, which can be frustrating to publishers. On the other hand, we don't charge for the up-front placement; so if a title can perform, it will do well. For example, city titles can be the highest sellers in their home markets; so we created a city magazine placement at the front end. Recently the efficiency rates have come down somewhat with the shift to high-priced, low-frequency bookazines. It's amazing how the migration from regular frequency magazines to the bookazine model has dominated the business direction. With high-frequency mags, a normal order regulation system works; but with bookazines, different topics on same bipad can have widely different sales. For every single bookazine we order, we create an individual distribution for it, from the ground up.
The Pandemic Publishing Roundtable from top left: Linda Ruth, Joe Berger, Gregg Mason (of One<|fim_middle|> boost impulse sales over a busy holiday weekend. But to me, it's a chilling reminder of how tenuous our hold on the checkout is. It also makes you wonder why our industry didn't approach them with an idea for the busy holiday weekend.
The local Jewel Supermarket was selling t-shirts at their checkouts.
Go Cubs Go!
As bricks and mortar retailers come under increasing pressure from on-line retailers and changing customer patterns, our industry would be wise to continue to reinvent how we do business. John happens to be right. We need to experiment more.
But we also need to make sure that there are fewer things in front of the magazine rack.
Posted on January 22, 2014 October 4, 2014
A Bounty of Book A Zines
We've seen numerous reports of the remarkable growth of the Book A Zine category since the beginning of this no longer new decade. Most of the reports marvel at the tremendous elasticity of the category, the unit sales growth and the wide variety of titles that publishers are pumping out.
But unless you really go and look at a magazine rack today, you wouldn't really see and feel the impact of what this "new" category is doing to the rack.* Oh you can talk about it and read all about it, but until you really go and look and see, you might not understand it.
As our former Secretary of Defense and eloquent wordsmith Donald Rumsfeld once said:
When there were more wholesalers to visit, distributions to work and territories to see, I always made it a point to spend a few hours at retail. Unlike some of the traveling pooh-bahs of the time, my goal wasn't to find an issue to use as a cudgel on the local rep. I really wanted to see and know the town. It was the only way I felt that I could know, understand and own what I was working on. The only way to know what I knew and know that I didn't know what I didn't know.
If you know what I mean. Because otherwise it was just a bunch of numbers.
We don't have that today. When was the last time someone other than the local merchandiser was in the Martin's on Route 20 in South Bend, IN?
The other day I spent some time getting acquainted with a new supermarket in the wake of my neighborhood store closing. While I still go out to retail, these days I'm usually just looking for one or two client titles. It was good to really stop, look, absorb, and spend time at the rack. It's a great way to learn a store.
And look how these "zines" have taken over the rack:
Who said "General Interest" is dead?
Cooking, cowboys…and ice fishing? Well, it is January, this is the Midwest.
Maybe there was nowhere else to drop the bridal mag?
While this part of the market is doing well, they can strain the distribution chain. If the store is part of chain that has "SBT" (Scan Based Trading), then the wholesaler owns that merchandise. These are annuals. Those are high cover prices and a long on sale. That's a lot of inventory to own.
There are fewer turns on the rack unless the publisher is pumping out a bunch of 'Zines. And while some publishers are (cough, cough) pumping out a ton of 'zines, it's not enough to replace the lost sales we see in the higher volume categories.
Lastly, not all magazine categories are naturals for these "Zines." And, more importantly, there are some economic issues to be concerned with. Without some existing clout behind you, a brand that is well established and has a significant newsstand presence, these aren't that cheap to produce nor are they that cheap to launch in the blind.
In the comments section of Dead Tree Edition's post about Book A Zines, industry guru Bo Sacks wondered if we would get too greedy and kill the category. I'm inclined to think not. Unlike a regular frequency title, you don't repeat a special edition if it doesn't work. It's just too costly. Unlike a monthly, you're not going to leave it on life support because there's no ad or subscriber revenue to prop it up.
Where will the category go? I don't know. But it was nice to stop and look, really look at the rack.
*For the record, back in the day, we called them annuals or SIPS. There just weren't as many of them, and they didn't have good press.
Join, Or Die
Editor's Note: Over the holiday break, I spent a few millennia sitting on a plane reading articles about the Tea Party and looking at photos of some of their paraphernalia. While you don't want my opinion about the current state of their union, the images they used, especially the "Join, Or Die" flag, got me contemplating Walter Issacson's excellent biography, "Benjamin Franklin-An American Life". Somehow, that led me to this image which I offer to you readers.
Illustration by E. Berger
There are enough writers now who scoff at the notion of print magazines going the way of the dinosaur that we can drop the whole "going the way of the dinosaur" or "buggy whip" analogy. In any event, while there are no dinosaurs around these days, they are a pretty big business. And, while there aren't too many horse drawn carriages rolling around major American cities, there are still buggy whip manufacturers.
The current state of the newsstand distribution business is an altogether different nest of dinosaur eggs.
In theory, the consolidation of the newsstand distribution business should have been a good thing for everyone. For publishers, piecing together a print order became much simpler because there are fewer wholesalers of wildly varying sizes and fewer people with wildly different agendas to negotiate with.
For wholesalers, the elimination of some nearby competitors and the consolidation of their presence in key regions should have made life easier. It also provided a chance to create firmer relationships with major national retailers. There was the possibility of breaking into new national markets.
Retailers were finally able to consolidate their service levels, streamline their invoicing and payments and bring magazine distribution up to levels comparable to their other DSD delivery agents.
Some of that happened and whether or not any of it is a good thing most likely depends on which side of the table you sit on. Are you a glass half full or half empty kind of person?
What more than fifteen years of consolidation has not done is streamlined how we measure success in our business. All the links in our distribution chain look at it differently.
For an SBT retailer, a 35% sell through should be meaningless because they only paid for what they sold and they never carried the other 65% on their books (Although the savvier ones should wonder what could have sold in the space where those returns came from).
For a publisher, a 35% sell through can mean a profit if their production costs were not too high. It can also be a break even point. Or it can be a loss. It all depends on those pesky printing and shipping costs. Plus whatever else the wholesalers, retailers and national distributors tack onto the final bill. Those add ons can add up.
For a national distributor, selling a magazine at 35% is pretty much the same as a national distributor that sells it at 55% or 15%. For them, the only difference in many cases (Unless the contract is creative and has efficiency tied in) is the volume of sales. A publisher client with a 15% sell through is either on the way out of business, or about to get a lot of hand holding if they still have a stack of cash and the will to fix what is wrong. Hand holding a publisher can be expensive. On the other hand, a lot of hand holding for a +50% client at least means there's money coming in, and the potential for more.
But in the end, what about the reader? After all, our goal here, in this little brackish, increasingly shallow tidal pool of the publishing industry is to sell as many copies of as many magazines as possible. Isn't it?
Is the solution to meld the national distributors (ND's) and wholesalers together? I've heard this idea kicked around. Ideally the goal of the ND's is to market and advocate for the publishers to the wholesaling and retailing community. If ND's are not there, who advocates for the publisher? Wholesalers should be invested in the success of the products they market but it often seems as though it's simpler for them to push a button and say "No" than to dig in and try to understand what is presented to them. To be fair, many on the publishing side still don't really understand what is involved in wholesaling magazines.
And distributing magazines to the newsstand, in spite of all of the technological advances we've seen over the last twenty years is still very labor intensive. We don't see as much local knowledge of the stores and markets serviced as we should expect.
There's no denying that readers have not been picking up newsstand copies in the quantities that they used to. Sales have been declining for many years. We've seen some positive trends like the successful launches of HGTV Magazine and Food Network Magazine. There's great news on the specialty front as Book A Zines and specials bring in high cover prices and high sales. Mr. Magazine ™, Samir Husni counted 242 regular frequency magazine launches in 2012.
At the same time, we have seen the declines in traditionally strong categories as well as the near elimination of some categories that were traditionally industry leaders in the last two decades. These declines wipe out the gains that have been hard won.
Maybe we've lost our way. In all of our obsessing over consolidating, efficiency, will we or won't we survive, we've forgotten that this is a hand sell, one at a time, get the people into the stores kind of business. There don't seem to be any short cuts to achieve that end. There are a lot of great tools these days that should make our job more efficient. But we still have to get readers to find the rack, stop in front of the rack, pick up a magazine and then make the decision to buy the magazine. We know people like magazines, we just have to get them to buy them. | Source Distributing), Bo Sacks, Sherin Pierce, Gemma Peckham. Missing: Samir Husni.
Joe: Isn't that considered bipad packing?
Gregg: It would be in certain circumstances. What I'm referring to is a loose overarching editorial focus with different subjects under one brand. It's literally a full-time job, managing these releases; but it's necessary to garner volume sales.
Joe: What changes did you see as a result of the pandemic?
Gregg: We were lucky; our retailers stayed open. Sales were hit hard in the spring; since then it's been a climb and partial recovery—creeping up, flattening out several times over. People have been gradually returning to more normal patterns. Our largest category is food and cooking; and those titles did well during the pandemic. We all cooked a lot more this year and turned to titles that can help. And publishers stuck with us. The children's category, almost non-existent before the pandemic, took off like gangbusters. We found that the product couldn't be too educational; it had to have a fun presentation. We partnered with a publisher who collaborated with PBS kid shows—the product was just educational enough, just fun enough. Also the Highlights bookazines were hugely successful. Shelter was a pleasant surprise. Domino took off, along with other shelter titles, primarily lower frequency titles and bookazines. One area that has continued to lag are the city titles. They have not come back yet. Our stores are firstly suburban, secondly urban, and the urban stores are slower coming back. The commuting stores that cater to the people who work in the area have yet to come back; the residential area stores have.
Joe: How are the indies and smaller chain stores doing?
Gregg: We service Fresh Market and Natural Grocers, 160 stores each, they carry narrow edit, mostly just food, cooking, and health. Because they're primarily suburban, they came back pretty well. And the independents have very loyal customer bases, so they also held up well.
Sherin: Can you tell us a little more about Sprouts, what sells well?
Gregg: They are located overwhelmingly in California and throughout the southwest. Their shoppers tend to be more price-sensitive, although certain higher-priced titles do very well, such as Willow and Sage at $14.95. Sprouts also tends to do very well with the vegetarian and Vegan titles.
Sherin: What about getting their magazines on drop-down menus for online shopping?
Gregg: We're exploring and looking to move in that direction.
Joe: MBR has started an initiative where they are talking to retailers about including magazines with electronic orders. You should be in that discussion. They've signed an agreement with an electronic platform, all the wholesalers should be at the table with this.
Bo: Home delivery is not going away. We've retrained the consumer on how to shop, and that's going to continue. Magazines need to be involved in this system.
Gregg: Agreed, grocery was a last bastion of retail where people went to the store. Now many more people are getting delivery, and that won't go away. And yet, although sales haven't returned to where they were, they're better than we expected, one year later. But you can't make up for lost foot traffic.
Joe: How do we get people back into the stores, or encourage them to find and buy the magazines?
Gregg: We encourage our publishers to promote on their sites and social media platforms, to let them know we have their product, that it is available. In the stores, our biggest challenges are maintaining our pockets and keeping them open. The product that blocks the checkout are often at lower price points, lower profit. The migration to bookazines has helped show the financial impact of magazines, and what they bring to the retailer.
Sherin: The Old Farmer's Almanac has listings online of where to buy; we have robust PR when we go on sale; and we provide floor displays to appeal to consumers.
Joe: What are you looking forward to in 2021?
Gregg: We're hoping to avoid a repetition of 2020's peaks and valleys—and that the distribution of the vaccine will get people back in the stores. We're prepared for an uptick in the city stores. We're poised to respond to changes as quickly as we can.
Posted on July 7, 2016 August 12, 2017
Things Placed (Yet Again) In Front Of The Magazine Rack
There are admittedly many advantages to the way the newsstand sales business is organized these days. For example, if I have a decent wi-fi signal I can quickly find out exactly where my magazine is selling. And where it isn't. With a few mouse clicks I can download sales history, competitive sales history, class of trade data, top performing stores and more. With a few more mouse clicks I can send off a note to a distributor or retailer and make a presentation about why my ranking should be changed or a certain issue is being promoted.
On the other hand, there are few compelling reasons outside of curiosity or a desire to travel, for me to get into a car or board an airplane and jet off to Louisville, KY (Once the home of a decent sized wholesaler) to see what the displays in that town look like.
So I was pretty thrilled a few weeks ago to get in my car and drive for a few hours to meet with a regional publishing client face to face. In fact I was so happy to get out of my oddly shaped office that the day before the appointment I did something I hadn't done for years outside of my own home base: I set up a retail check-up route, left hours before the appointment and spent the morning checking stores.
The trip had some nostalgia to it because this town was once home to one of my favorite wholesalers. To be fair, the wholesalers who now manage the retailers in this town do a good job. Most displays were perfectly fine.
Got milk. But got no magazines!
And then there was this:
No whining just because you can't get to your favorite magazine now…
And a few others I didn't capture very well on camera. To be fair, most displays were perfectly fine. But the ones above are memorable and they occur far too frequently for comfort in an industry that is constantly under assault.
A few weeks ago, fellow consultant John Morthanos put up a post on Publishing Executive where he argued for expanding the title mix at checkout. He posited, correctly I think, that the checkout was dominated by seven publishers. Most of these titles had experienced significant circulation declines so wouldn't it make sense to experiment? Try out new titles, new categories? Shouldn't we make the checkout more, well, democratic and meritorious (my interpretation)? He went so far as to suggest, to the apparent horror of some of our colleagues, that one checkout in each store should be designated for these up and coming titles.
John is on to something. Without diving deep into the data, it's probably fair to say that the crash of newsstand sales over the past seven years has come mostly from the checkout. The celebrity weeklies are the biggest culprits. The uptick we see in the sales of book a zines, adult coloring books, and niche titles like The Backwoodsman and so many regional city books, guns and survivalist titles can't make up for the hundreds of thousands of lost units in weekly celebrity and women's service magazines if these trending titles are relegated to the back row of a twelve-foot mainline.
There are opportunities opening up in some chains. Over the past few years, most Kroger owned banners have either re-racked their stores or opened them up to a program called "Pay to Stay". For the record, that title, "Pay to Stay" is not nearly as ominous as it sounds. "Pay to Stay" or PTS for short, is a one-year checkout program where the retailer does not install new racks, but does ask all the titles on the rack to pay for a relogo program – or give up their space. Open pockets are then offered to other titles – often titles that are growing and ranked highly on the mainline.
The cost for this program is significantly less than a new rack program. In the last cycle, I was able to move a client who had a national publication and multiple regional titles into many markets where in the past we were relegated to the mainline and could only dream of putting the titles onto the checkout.
The program is managed by TNG's RS2 division. It is interesting to note that the program is billed in quarterly increments and publishers can opt out if they give notice one quarter in advance. This was a huge plus in gaining the participation of my client. And no, they didn't opt out.
Since then I have come across more programs like this. You don't always get in. You don't always get what you want. But it's a small step in the right direction.
I am seeing more and more requests from retailers for publishers to be more active in promoting their titles on the newsstand and partnering with the retailers to promote their magazines in their stores. A recent letter from the Costco buying team comes to mind.
For my part, I have always encouraged the publishers I work with to announce the on-sale dates of their titles, feature their cover images and stories and promote the availability of the magazine in national and local retailers in their social media feeds and e-blasts. Why wouldn't you try to make a sale?
Of course, we can and should do more. No matter how wonderful home delivery, drone delivery and and driverless cars may be and become, people are social animals. We need to interact. We like to get out of our homes from time to time. Anyone who works from a home office can tell you about that.
In the meantime, a recent tour of some local retailers over the July 4th weekend showed that we still have a long way to go.
While Whole Foods, has and always will get props from me for their unlogo'd checkouts, last weekend they popped a bunch of mobile carts in front of their checkouts. On the one hand, you can't blame a retailer for wanting to | 2,110 |
Published: September 2, 2021, 6:17 PM
Updated: September 3, 2021, 1:58 PM
Tags: Florida, Orange County, Travel,<|fim_middle|> come on with their mask on and if they need one, we will give it to them."
They told News 6 they expect to see about 50% more people this Labor Day holiday weekend, compared to last year. | OIA, Orlando, Coronavirus
Orlando airport crowds forecast to exceed pre-pandemic pack
7% increase above Labor Day 2019 expected at OIA
Published: September 2, 2021, 6:17 PM Updated: September 3, 2021, 1:58 PM
ORLANDO, Fla. – Traffic at Florida's busiest airport this holiday weekend is forecast to exceed pre-pandemic crowds.
Officials at Orlando International Airport said Wednesday that this Labor Day weekend they are expecting more than 303,000 departures, a 7% increase above Labor Day weekend in 2019.
If it pans out, that forecast will be more than double what the Orlando airport experienced during the Labor Day weekend travel period last year.
The official holiday travel period starts Thursday and ends next Tuesday.
The busiest travel day of the holiday weekend is expected to be on Saturday when Orlando International Airport is forecast to have more than 53,000 departures.
Before the pandemic started in the U.S. in March 2020, the theme park mecca was the most visited place in the U.S., with 76 million visitors in 2019. That figure fell to 35.3 million visitors last year.
"This holiday it appears many travelers are soaking in the last bit of summer by taking a trip to Orlando," the airport said in a statement.
News 6 spoke with Glynesa Redfield and her two kids at the Orlando International Airport Thursday. They said they're happy to spend their Labor Day weekend in Orlando.
"We just really excited to get to come," Redfield said. "We're going to Disney. We haven't been on vacation in two years. We couldn't do anything last year of course because of COVID."
We also spoke with Maggie Karnes and her two sons visiting from Chicago.
"Yes, very excited, Although we can turn down the heat a little bit, it's a little hot," Karnes said.
Meantime, over at Icon Park on International Drive, leaders said they welcome the crowds.
"We're very happy, we look forward to the weekend," Icon Park President & CEO Chris Jaskiewicz said. "We're cleaning the capsules and we're making sure everyone has their own private capsules," said Jaskiewicz.
He said they're putting safety first, including encouraging many of their outdoor activities. He said since the pandemic, Icon Park has increased its outdoor shopping kiosks from 15 vendors to 40.
"We're encouraging everyone to stay five or six feet from each other. All of our employees that are guests facings wear masks," Jaskiewicz said.
He said they're also offering incentives this weekend.
"For children who ride the wheel, they are going to be able to participate in this mining experience for free."
At nearby Andretti Indoor Karting and Games on Universal Boulevard, General Manager Johnathan Levine said safety is key.
"Our team members come through a rigorous temperature check, and they're required to wear masks," Levine said.
He said there are plenty of sanitizing stations throughout the property and their COVID prevention team of workers use foggers to regularly disinfect games, rides, and surfaces throughout the building to ensure both a fun, yet safe experience.
"We're promoting social distancing and trying to do everything we can to navigate the COVID landscape," said Levine. "We strongly recommended that guests | 712 |
Marty: Pimp my ride!
By Dana Rubinstein Posted on February 16, 2008
The Brooklyn Paper / Tom Callan
Coney Island's historic Parachute Jump needs even more "bling."
Borough President Markowitz is so under-whelmed by the $1.45 million his office spent to light up the landmark ride in 2006 that he has convinced the mayor and City Council to toss in $2 million toward yet another new lighting scheme for the long-defunct amusement.
Markowitz made the announcement of "Phase II" of the illumination project at his State of the Borough address on Feb. 7.
Markowitz spokesman Mark Zustovich explained that his boss was not the only one displeased with the first effort.
"Other people were [also] not happy with the artsy look to it," said Zustovich, referring to the much-ballyhooed lighting that Markowitz unveiled in July 2006.
Markowitz's disappointment is news to the original lighting designer, Leni Schwendinger.
"My design has been celebrated in publications worldwide, as well as receiving awards from professional engineering, construction, lighting and landmark associations," she said in a statement that referred, in part, to her receipt of a Landmarks Conservancy award last year.
Indeed, when Schwendinger's lighting scheme was unveiled, Markowitz said it signaled the Parachute Jump's "return as a luminous landmark of the Brooklyn of today and generations to come."
But within months, Markowitz started having buyer's remorse.
"He wanted a little more of what he calls 'bling,'" Zustovich said on Monday. "He wanted the Parachute Jump not only to be Brooklyn's Eiffel Tower, but also to reflect the aesthetic of Coney Island."
In February 2007 — just seven months after the initial unveiling — Markowitz told The Brooklyn Paper that the original lighting "was just Phase I — and the real bling-bling is in the works."
By "in the works," Markowitz meant he was busy convincing Mayor Bloomberg to allocate $1.4 million to the project. Councilman Domenic Recchia (D–Coney Island) got<|fim_middle|>. For 40 cents, visitors would plummet for 15 seconds from the top of the jump to the ground below.
It closed in 1965 and was declared a city landmark in 1988. | the Council to chip in another $501,000.
The winning proposal won't do away with Schwendinger's Phase I lighting, but merely "enhance it," according to the city "request for proposals" that was issued on Feb. 7.
Schwendinger's design festooned the tower with 17 lamps and 150 lighting fixtures featuring 450 light-emitting diodes. She programmed the lights to run through six lighting schemes that span the spectrum from red-orange to green to blue, according to the seasons and holidays.
Two of those color schemes have already been disabled because they are "not bright enough," according to the RFP, which calls for "a much brighter and very dramatic illumination of the Parachute Jump."
Schwendinger remains less-than-pleased with an art critique from Markowitz.
"When a politician flies in the face of all this goodwill to divisively demand more 'bling' and less 'art,' New Yorkers should ask themselves: What's wrong with this picture?"
Marty Levine, a member of the Community Board 13 and the Coney Island Local Development Corporation, said he'd rather see the money invested in something more pressing, like the dilapidated Boardwalk.
"More people use the Boardwalk than the Parachute Jump," said Levine. "The $1.5 million could go a long way toward making [the Boardwalk] safer."
The 262-foot-tall Parachute Jump was built for the 1939 World's Fair, and relocated to Coney Island in 1941 | 333 |
Mad Merx: Nemesis is an Action-Adventure, Shooter, Open-world and Multiplayer video game by Triniti Interactive Limited. It is the best game for those players who want shooter games which they can play against or with his friends. The game offers four different character classes such as Sniper, Commando, Scout, and Raider choose one of them and dive into the world where the player can start<|fim_middle|> video game to play and enjoy. | his adventure with the massive force of enemies or his friends. There are series of modes such as Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch as well as PvP actions. During the action, the player is able to freely navigate in the game world collect lots of resources and eliminate all the enemy creatures to advance in the game. At the start, the player contains few weapons, but after the progress the game allows the player to unlock new ammo by using his experience points. Mad Merx: Nemesis also offers key features such as addictive tactical team combat, fast fluid controls, 3D environment, four different classes and unlockable Achievements, etc. With immersive mechanics and smooth controls. Mad Merx: Nemesis is a wonderful Multiplayer Shooter | 147 |
Colette a écrit cinq Claudine :
Claudine à l'école
Claudine à Paris
Claudine en ménage
Claudine s'en va
La Retraite sentimentale
Adolescente malicieuse qui est laissée libre par son père, l'héroïne grandit au fil des romans. On la retrouve également évoquée dans La Maison de Claudine (même s'il s'agit plus d'un ouvrage autobiographique sur l'enfance de Colette).
Claudine à l'école
Claudine à l'école est paru en 1900, d'abord sous la signature de Willy (le mari de Colette). Ce roman au nouveau style (pour l'époque) naturel fit un véritable scandale.
Claudine, , vit à Montigny avec son père, homme distrait, plus préoccupé par les mollusques que par l'éducation de sa fille. Celle-ci fréquente la petite école du village, cadre principal des aventures décrites dans ce livre, présenté comme le journal intime de la jeune fille. Son quotidien est rythmé par les promenades avec sa sœur de lait Claire, qui lui raconte sa vie amoureuse, les apparitions du docteur Dutertre, le médecin scolaire qui ent<|fim_middle|>lant en France
LGBT dans la littérature française | retient Sergent et qui lorgne d'un peu trop près les grandes, et les leçons de musique avec Antonin Rabastens qui lui fait la cour. Mais des évènements non moins intéressants viennent l'agrémenter : voilà l'école tout en émoi en raison de l'arrivée de la nouvelle institutrice, Sergent, et de son assistante Aimée Lanthenay et des instituteurs des garçons, MM. Duplessis et Rabastens. Alors que Claudine se lie d'amitié avec Aimée, Sergent fait comprendre à cette dernière qu'elle ne doit plus voir Claudine, tout en lui accordant de nombreuses faveurs. Claudine, se sentant trahie, mène la vie dure aux deux femmes, dont elle trouve les manifestations d'affection repoussantes, en compagnie de la grande Anaïs et de Marie Belhomme. Arrive Luce, sœur d'Aimée, que Claudine commence par maltraiter avant de lui accorder son amitié. L'année s'écoule doucement, avec à l'horizon le brevet élémentaire, que les jeunes filles ont à cœur de réussir, et surtout, la fête de fin d'année et le bal qui sera donné en l'honneur d'un ministre qui vient visiter la ville…
Claudine à Paris
Claudine et son père ont quitté leur village de Montigny pour s'installer à Paris, où la jeune fille se remet d'une maladie qui lui a coûté ses beaux cheveux longs. Lorsque Claudine reprend du poil de la bête, c'est pour relater dans son journal les exploits de sa chatte Fanchette, ses explorations dans la capitale et, surtout, ses nouvelles rencontres. Elle fait ainsi la connaissance de sa tante Cœur, de son neveu Marcel, dont elle se fait rapidement un ami, et du jeune père de ce dernier, Renaud, qui ne la laisse pas indifférente…
Claudine en ménage
Claudine s'est mariée avec Renaud et tous deux se sont installés ensemble. Ce dernier mène une vie mondaine. Mais l'arrivée d'une jeune femme, Rézi, vient perturber l'équilibre du couple. Attirée par Rézi, Claudine finit par entamer une liaison avec la jeune femme, tandis que Renaud ferme les yeux sur l'adultère.
Claudine s'en va
Claudine s'efface pour laisser place à une nouvelle héroïne, Annie. Entièrement soumise à son mari, Alain, Annie est bouleversée par le départ de ce dernier, qui l'abandonne aux mains de sa sœur Marthe, femme libre et volontaire. Pourtant, au contact de celle-ci, de Claudine et d'autres femmes de caractère, Annie commence à s'affirmer et à s'interroger sur son mariage et sur celui qui lui dictait jusque-là ses moindres gestes.
A noter que la même histoire, racontée par Maugis, a été publiée par Willy sous le titre "Maugis amoureux" (Albin Michel, 1905)
La Retraite sentimentale
Claudine habite maintenant chez Annie à Casamène, tandis que Renaud, malade, est en sanatorium. Ce roman fait une sorte de bilan des aventures sentimentales de la série : Annie, qui s'est libérée de son mariage, mène une vie d'aventures sentimentales sans lendemain comme on s'adonnerait à une drogue ; Marthe, Léon et Maugis forment une sorte de ménage à trois plus ou moins apaisé ; Marcel connaît les prémices d'un vieillissement qui va s'avérer difficile ; Claudine apprend à vivre sans Renaud, dans l'amour de la nature, des animaux, et de la solitude.
Voir aussi
différentes adaptations du roman
Liens
L'adaptation en série par Édouard Molinaro sur ina.fr
Suite romanesque
Roman de Colette
Bisexualité dans la littérature
Œuvre littéraire se dérou | 950 |
Actress Esha Deol thanked her younger sister Ahana for hosting the "most fun-filled baby shower" for her.
Esha, who is expecting her first child with husband Bharat Takhtani, tweeted a photo of the couple in which she is seen kissing him.
"Ahana thanks for hosting the most fun filled baby shower! And all my friends a big hug for making it a superhit," Esha captioned the image which she posted on Twitter on Tuesday.
Ahana, along with their common friend Varun Kapoor, hosted the party on August 27 setting the theme of the party to 1970s to 1990s retro music.
They planned it with lavender themed invites, balloons, floral arrangements, assorted candies and personalised banners with a special lavender-based chocolate Belgium cake, with a miniature version of a vintage perambulator o top.
Hydro-mocktails<|fim_middle|> The theme included guests wearing blue if they guessed it was a boy or pink if they guessed it was a girl.
Ahana also ensured return gifts for the guests like customised bracelets for all, pocket square for boys and scarf for girls, special double Chocó-chip and salted caramel cookies. | and cocktails, with Awadhi and Mughlai dishes were also served.
The special thematic baby shower party also included fun games like tug of war, measure the mummy's waist guess, diaper pasting games and more. | 47 |
Travels in Middle-earth 74: The Orocarni
Long ago, in an Age of the Sun far removed from our own, our world was a place of enchantment and lure undreamed of to our current race of Men. However, not all of its wonders have been lost to the mists of time. In this series, I will use advanced crypto-historic techniques to transport you to an elder time–a time of wonder and heroic adventure. For today's travels, we will journey far to the East, all the way to the Great Red Mountains, the Orocarni.
And on a time it chanced that Oromë rode eastward in his hunting, and he turned north by the shores of Helcar and passed under the shadows of the Orocarni, the Mountains of the East. Then on a sudden Nahar set up a great neighing,<|fim_middle|> of the hubris of the Gods, summoned the elves to come dwell with him in Aman, there were those who refused his prideful call:
Many refused the summons, preferring the starlight and the wide spaces of Middle-earth to the rumour of the Trees; and these are the Avari, the Unwilling, and they were sundered in that time from the Eldar, and met never again until many ages were past.
The Avari recognized the beauty of that wild land, and respected their starlit corner of the world beyond all else, even the tree-wrought light of the Valar themselves.
Spotlight Posts / Tolkien / Travels in Middle-earth | and stood still. And Oromë wondered and sat silent, and it seemed to him that in the quiet of the land under the stars he heard afar off many voices singing.
Thus it was that the Valar found at last, as it were by chance, those whom they had so long awaited. And Oromë looking upon the Elves was filled with wonder, as though they were beings sudden and marvellous and unforeseen; for so it shall ever be with the Valar. From without the World, though all things may be forethought in music or foreshown in vision from afar, to those who enter verily into Eä each in its time shall be met at unawares as something new and unforetold.
Though few maps of the elder days detail the lands east of the Sea of Rhûn, last (with the possible exception of the Sea of Nurnen) remnant of the once great Sea of Helcar after the destruction of the War of Wrath, we do have many clues as to its general features, all of which seem to support a recently released reconstruction of the region:
Noted crypto-historians, utilizing primary sources, have noted that the four "lost" clans of Dwarves who dwelt in the Eastern Mountains (Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks, and Stonefoots) were separated from their Gundabad bretheren "at distances as great or greater than that between the Blue Mountains and Gundabad." Combining this information with the few surviving maps of the region and it becomes evident that these dwarven clans dwelt in the Orocarni (The Red Mountains), that ancient range of mountains upon whose southwestern foothills awoke the very elves themselves, far back at the dawn of the world as we know it:
By the starlit mere of Cuiviénen, Water of Awakening, they rose from the sleep of Ilúvatar; and while they dwelt yet silent by Cuiviénen their eyes beheld first of all things the stars of heaven. Therefore they have ever loved the starlight, and have revered Varda Elentári above all the Valar.
In the changes of the world the shapes of lands and of seas have been broken and remade; rivers have not kept their courses, neither have mountains remained steadfast; and to Cuiviénen there is no returning. But it is said among the Elves that it lay far off in the east of Middle-earth, and northward, and it was a bay in the Inland Sea of Helcar; and that sea stood where aforetime the roots of the mountain of Illuin had been before Melkor overthrew it. Many waters flowed down thither from heights in the east, and the first sound that was heard by the Elves was the sound of water flowing, and the sound of water falling over stone.
The forest that blanketed its southern and western slopes was called the Wild Wood, and it was a place of verdant greenery thriving atop new, hungry roots, every burrowing down to those places where no frost can reach. So beautiful was this forest, that, when Oromë, full | 645 |
The Pessimist's Take – A Starting Role For Arthur Moats
Posted on February 19, 2015 at 5:25 am
While the Pittsburgh Steelers may have gained some tangible evidence of improvement, improving their win total by three games and hosting a playoff game as a division champion for the first time in four seasons, there is no doubt that the team is far from a finished product.
No team, of course, is a finished product in the offseason. Every team loses players to free agency and retirement, and replaces them through the same free agency process, as well as the draft.
With all of the change that occurs during the offseason, it's often difficult to predict how a particular team might fare. They may wind up holding the Lombardi trophy or the first overall draft pick when all is said and done.
In order to gain a better feel for not only the issues facing the team this year, but how those issues might play<|fim_middle|> stretch of each of the past two seasons.
It's hard to say that the Steelers would actually be able to improve with Moats as a full-time starter playing starter's snaps. For that reason, I feel that, if that should be the case, the team would be likely to have a Plan B handy if he shows that he can't hold up under the workload.
Related Items:Arthur Moats, James Harrison, Jarvis Jones, Jason Worilds
Arthur Moats: Steelers Still 'Another Year Or Two Away' From Competing With Top Teams
Arthur Moats Explains Why George Pickens Is Young Steelers Star Most Likely To Become Elite
Kenny Pickett 'Absolutely' Can Make Every Throw Joe Burrow Does, Arthur Moats Says | out, it's useful to take the devil's advocate approach. This is the pessimistic side of the coin.
Question: Can the Steelers defense improve and be successful with Arthur Moats as a full-time starter?
The Steelers have certainly not hidden their concerns about the current state of their pass rush, and that of course relates directly to their outside linebacker roster, which is the primary pass-rushing position in their defensive system.
The only rusher from the previous season that is currently under contract for 2015 or beyond is Jarvis Jones, the team's former first-round draft pick entering his third season. Their sack leader from each of the previous two seasons, Jason Worilds, seems poised to test the free agent waters in less than a month.
James Harrison's future, in the meantime, remains unclear, though he promises an announcement in the near future regarding his intentions for 2015. Even if that should happen, the veteran will be 37 this season and does not represent any type of longevity.
That leaves Arthur Moats, who actually started for most of the season and played well, albeit in a limited role. While he was technically the starter, he was immediately placed into a rotation with Harrison, which limited him to slightly more than half to eventually only a few snaps a game as Harrison surpassed him as the starter.
While Moats did perform in his limited role, there has to be concerns about whether or not that can be sustained on a more prolonged basis. It's easier, for example, for pass rushers who are more on spot duty to find a higher percentage of success. Moats rushed the passer more than three quarters of the time on passing downs.
Whether or not he can consistently hold up against the run if he's playing 1000 snaps a season is also a question that would need to be answered. Worilds actually played the run surprisingly well, particularly down the | 390 |
Chinese Bloggers and the Roots of the Free Society
by Ray Nothstine • January 24, 2013
Is Christianity and the Christian worldview the path to a free society? Chinese bloggers are asking that question. Many believe the fascination with American politics and democracy is at an all time high in China. Technology and internet access is surely responsible for much of the trend. From one report,
Obama's inauguration was a top trending topic on Sina Weibo, China's massive microblogging site, with over 25 million posts on Jan. 21. Of these, one comment by a Weibo user by the name Wugou1975 was forwarded over 2,000 times, garnering over 500 comments. The blogger posted a photo of Obama taking the presidential oath with Supreme Court Justice John Roberts:
'Some Chinese find it unbelievable that this secular country's democratically elected president was sworn in with his hand on a Bible, not the Constitution, and facing a court justice, not Congress. But actually, this is the secret of America's constitutional democracy: It's not just the Constitution or the government's "separation of powers." Above that is natural law, guarded by a grand justice. And below is a community of Christians<|fim_middle|>. the State in Indian and Chinese Entrepreneurship
Os Guinness on Virtue in a Free Republic
Will Free Markets Bring Religious Freedom to China?
Madison on Religious Conscience | , unified by their belief.'
Undeniably, there has been and continues to be a systematic attack upon the Christian roots of the West and this nation. Marcello Pera, who teaches at the Pontifical Council in Rome, sums it up well:
"With its words, liberal secularism preaches freedom, tolerance, and democracy, but with its deeds it attacks precisely that Christian religion which prevents freedom from deteriorating into license, tolerance into indifference, democracy into anarchy."
There is a level of irony in Chinese bloggers recognizing the significance of the religious foundations of democracy, while many Western scholars have abandoned or even attacked such notions. America's religious heritage is vibrant and was a unifying factor promoting shared values and purpose throughout its history. The American framers knew religious vibrancy was required for ordered liberty and virtue to reign and prosper throughout society. Alexis de Tocqueville praised these characteristics and noted it was the foundations of America's freedom and strength of its people. When it comes to the basis of our rights and foundations of government, Jefferson asked,
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?"
Ray Nothstine
Ray Nothstine is editor at the Civitas Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina. Previously, he was managing editor of Acton Institute's Religion & Liberty quarterly. In 2005 Ray graduated with a Master of Divinity (M.Div) degree from Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. He also holds a B.A. in Political Science from The University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Posted in News and Events, Religious LibertyTagged alexis de tocqueville, american founding, china, Christianity in China, founding fathers, Ordered Liberty, secularism, Thomas Jefferson, united states
Family vs | 394 |
DVB-SI és l'acrònim de Digital Video Broadcasting-Service Information (Servei d'Informació per a la Retransmissió de Vídeo Digital), és l'estàndard de transmissió de dades en les emissions de televisió digital. Aquest sistema d'informació és un servei per facilitar a l'usuari la navegació a través del medi DVB, sobre una plataforma de televisió digital.
Aquesta normativa està definida en el document de la ETSI EN 300 468, creat a l'octubre de 1995, tot i que ha estat modificat en múltiples ocasions.
Existeix, a part, un escrit tècnic, també de la ETSI, que ampla la informació del document que el defineix, aquest escrit és l'ETR 211.
DVB-SI treballa sobre MPEG-2 com a complement de la Informació Específica de programa (PSI). Aquest servei proporciona a l'usuari i al descodificador la facilitat de navegar a través de la cadena de serveis oferts.
El procés comença quan MEG-2 PSI (Program Specific Information) proporciona una clau a l'IRD (Integrated Reciver Decoder) o Descodificador extern perquè es configuri automàticament. Aleshores DBV-SI afegeix informació que permet l'IRD del DVB sintonitzar determinats serveis o mostrar agendes de programes d'interès.
Degut a la possible complexitat que suposaria per als usuaris el fet de navegar a través dels nous serveis de televisió digital, DVB-SI proporciona els element necessaris per a desenvolupar la Guia Electrònica de Programes (EPG).
Com que la quantitat de dades que s'han d'enviar per l'EPG és molt gran la EACEM (European Association of Consumer Electronics Manufactures) va desenvolupar una especificació amb els formats de dades més convenients, continguda a [ETS 300 707], així com un document guia que facilita la interpretació de l'especificació que està continguda a [ETR 288].
DVB-SI està format, principalment, per quatre tipus de taules d'informació de servei, així com un conjunt de taules addicionals, que fan possible la seva utilització. A diferència de les taules MPEG-2 PSI que només subministren informació del Transport Stream (TS) en la qual estan ubicades, en canvi, les taules DVB-SI també poden donar informació de serveis i esdeveniments transportats per altres TS, fins i tot TS's transmitides per altres xarxes.
Això permet la comunicació de l'IRD entre diferents TS's de forma inapreciable per a l'usuari.
Taules d'informació de serveis
Taules Principals
Taula d'Informació de Xarxa (Network Information Table NIT): aquí s'exposa la informació necessària per a la sintonització dels canals d'un servei proveïdor. L'IRD empra aquesta informació durant la seva càrrega. Addicionalment, aquestes taules es fan servir per senyalitzar un canvi de sintonització.
Taula de Descripció del Servei (Service Description Table SDT): llista dels paràmetres associats a cada servei, en particular, amb el múltiplex MPEG.
Taula d'Informació de l'Esdeveniment (Event Information Table EIT): transmet informació agrupant tots els esdeveniments que s'esdevenen i que s'esdevindran sobre el múltiplex MPEG. A més a més, conté informació sobre el Transport actual i altres fluxos de transport que pugui rebre l'IRD
Taula d'hora i data (Time of Date and Table TDT): es fa servir per ajustar el rellotge intern de l'IRD.
Taules addicionals
Taula d'Associació de Bouquet (Bouquet Association Table BAT) podria ser una ajuda per l'IRD per mostrar els serveis disponibles d'una forma comprensible per a l'usuari.
Taules d'Estat d'Execució (Running Status Table RST) es fa<|fim_middle|> difusió, si és que n'hi ha.
Totes les seccions de la BAT han de ser transmeses, com a mínim, cada 10 segons, si és present.
Totes les seccions de la SDT del multiplexat actual han de ser transmeses cada 2 segons, com a mínim.
Totes les seccions de la SDT d'altres TS s'han de transmetre, com a mínim, cada 10 segons.
Totes les seccions de la EIT dels esdeveniments actuals i següents del TS actual s'han de transmetre cada 2 segons, com a mínim.
Totes les seccions de la EIT dels esdeveniments TS s'han de transmetre cada 10 segons, com a mínim, si és que existeixen.
Totes les seccions de la programació de la EIT dels 8 primers dies s'han de transmetre, com a mínim, cada 10 segons.
Totes les seccions de la programació de la EIT de dies més enllà del vuitè s'han de transmetre cada 30 segons (incloent-hi les dels altres TS), si és que existeixen.
La TDT s'ha de transmetre cada 30 segons com a mínim.
Pel que fa a les emissions de televisió digital terrestre, l'amplada de banda és molt limitada per a la quantitat d'informació que s'ha de transmetre, i es defineixen els següents períodes de repetició, tenint en compte que per a les taules NIT, BAT, SDT i TDT han de complir els mateixos mínims que per cable o per satèl·lit.
Totes les seccions de la EIT dels esdeveniments actuals i següents del TS actual s'han de transmetre cada 2 segons, com a mínim.
Totes les seccions de la EIT d'esdeveniments d'altres TS s'han de transmetre cada 20 segons, com a mínim, si és que existeixen.
Totes les seccions de la programació de la EIT del dia actual d'un altre TS s'han de transmetre cada 30 segons.
Totes les seccions de la programació de la EIT del dia actual s'han de transmetre, com amínim, cada 10 segons, si és que existeixen.
Totes les seccions de la programació de la EIT dels TS s'han de transmetre, com amínim, cada 30 segons, si és que existeixen.
Totes les seccions de la programació de la EIT d'altres TS s'han de transmetre, com amínim, cada 30 segons, si és que existeixen.
Imprescindible per Implementar
La localització de programes
La sintonització automàtica de l'IRD segons el servei seleccionat.
La Application Programing Interface (API): és el sistema que ofereix connexió entre les aplicacions de software i hardware, és l'equivalent al Sistema Operatiu de l'IRD.
La Guia Electrònica de Programes (EPG): aplicació de software creada pels proveïdors de continguts, per facilitar la presentació dels serveix que oferten i ajudar, a la vegada, l'espectador a escollir.
Accés condicional (CA)
Aplicacions específiques
La Informació de Serveis (SI) de DVB ha estat dissenyada per a treballar sobre una gran marge d'aplicacions. Aquestes són algunes de les més destacades:
Near Video On Demand: que significa "Video Gairebé Sota Demanda", es defineix com la repetició del mateix programa durant tot un dia, però desplaçat en instants de temps diferents. Veure VoD
Mosaic: està compost per una sèrie de petites imatges de diferents programes, totes sobre un mateix canal. Aquestes imatges es codifiquen de tal manera que cadascuna ocupa una posició sobre una imatge de fons, és a dir, mostra en forma de mosaic una petita imatge de cada canal.
Estàndards de televisió | servir per a actualitzar l'execució d'un programa. Les seccions d'estat d'execució són enviades una sola vegada a l'exterior i, més endavant, si es produís algun canvi. Això no passa amb la resta de taules SI, que s'envien contínuament.
Taules de Farciment (Stuffing Table ST): poden ser emprades per a reemplaçar alguna subtaula que sigui errònia.
Taula de Discontinuïtat d'Informació (Discontinuity Information Table DIT): es fa servir en els punts de transició quan la informació es discontínua, per exemple, quan hi ha un canvi a la xarxa.
Taula de Selecció d'Informació (Selection Information Table SIT): conté un resum de tota la informació important que hi ha en el canal de transmissió.
Freqüència de repetició de les taules
Cal distingir dues classes d'emissions de DVB, les de cable (DVB-C) i satèl·lit (DVB-S) de les terrestres DVB-T o TDT. Per als dos primers sistemes se suposa que l'amplada de banda del canal és suficient per al transport de tota la informació necessària. Aquestes són les seves freqüències de repetició:
Totes les seccions de la NIT han de ser transmeses, com a mínim, cada 10 segons, incloses aquelles que viatgen per altres camins de | 378 |
North India Tour –...
Itinerary: (About 2 weeks)
Delhi (2 days)
Varanasi (3 days)
Agra (1 day)
Ranthambore National Park (2 days)
Jaipur (2 days)
Udaipur (2 days)
Day 1: Stop over in San Francisco.
We had not allowed ourselves to get very excited about our forthcoming trip and instead buried ourselves in the business of family life and the usual rush of activities that come with our jobs in the run up to Christmas. This resulted in leaving some of the preparations until the very last day or two before departing; including packing.
I had decided to invest in a couple of new suitcases, one bright orange and the second in Karen's favorite shade of blue. When they arrived from Amazon we were very excited … these were our first new cases for about 10 years and they had those wonderful roller wheels, a new luxury for us! They looked huge, at least until we started to pack them with clothing for two weeks of traveling. For what had looked voluminous now looked to be sadly lacking, particularly in anticipation of the hoard of gifts and treasures we planned to bring back. No way was there room for a carved elephant! So, a last minute decision led me to head out to the local Ross store. I wanted to make sure we still had a bag that was quickly recognizable as it trundled its way around the airport carousel. Unfortunately, there was a limited choice and I found myself walking out with a case in a subdued color of blue but decorated with white flowers complemented with gold zippers and trim. I amused myself with the thoughts that Karen was going to hate this. So, I went home and re-packed her bags, loaded them into the car and set off with Jack to pick her up from work to head out to the airport.
We were only flying down to San Francisco then stopping overnight. Last year at this time the weather had been awful, and we'd had real problems bringing Laura (now Chloe) in and out of Bend, which is a long and painful story in itself, which I won't go into here. So, my thought had been that if flights got delayed due to inclement weather we'd still have time to drive down to San Francisco. In practice I am not sure how this would have turned out, driving 700 miles in a blizzard, but it made me feel better to have a plan B.
Luckily, there was no need for alternatives and our flight was on time and by late afternoon we were checked into our hotel. We felt it would be a bit disappointing to spend the first night of such an exciting holiday stuck in our hotel, so we decided to head into downtown San Francisco and get a bite to eat. My first instinct had been to get the shuttle back to the airport and get BART to downtown, which turned out to be pricey and would have taken an eternity. Instead, after Karen chatted to one of the hotel's doormen, we opted to take our first Uber ride. It worked out really well for us. As always Karen preferred to find out the life history of our driver rather than wallow in the back of the car contemplating one's own navel (which is my preferred option). The driver turned out to be a Mongolian doctor who had come to the US on a student visa. He had come the US to study at UCSF and ended up working as a supervisor in the medical center. Sadly, the change in administration with Donald Trump becoming President, had changed the landscape for immigrant workers and this poor man had been told he could no longer continue in his role at medical center. Now he works as an Uber driver to earn money whilst he works out his future.
This fueled our passion about Dreamers and welcoming immigrants further.
Union Square in San Francisco was bustling, as this was the last weekend before Christmas. The enormous tree at the center of the square was dazzling with its thousands twinkling lights. By this time we were hungry, so our minds were focused on appeasing our bellies and not feasting our eyes on seasonal decorations. Since we had become vegan three months earlier the choices were more limited, but I had found an app for my phone called "Happy Cow" which not only lists vegan and vegetarian restaurants and stores but also has mapping and location services to help you get there. Not wanting to go far we found a fast food place, the Loving Hut (owned and run by a cult), inside a shopping mall. This was not haute cuisine, but it was fast and filled our bellies. Although now satiated we were cold and had turned out thoughts to tomorrow's travel, so after a quick stop at Trader Joe's to pick up some snacks for our journey we headed back to the hotel. After our earlier great Uber experience we decided to hail another ride back.
This time the car was full. The couple who shared our Uber ride were not chatty, so we filled the time talking to the driver. This time the driver was born and bred in San Francisco, nonetheless he still had an interesting story to tell and we easily filled the time during the 30 minutes back to the hotel.
Day 2 – Flight to Delhi.
Today, we were excited to start our journey to India for real, the only thing tempering our enthusiasm was the thought of spending nearly 16 hours on a plane. Everything went smoothly with checking, which is always nerve wracking when you are traveling on a visa.
I was curious to follow the route of our flight and had expected to be headed out west up and over the arctic. Therefore, I was surprised when we ended up over Idaho, crossing the Rockies, heading towards Canada. Our final journey took us over Canada and Greenland, north of Iceland and into Europe via Sweden and Norway. The last leg was across Russia and Pakistan … which was slightly concerning considering the fractious relationship between Pakistan and India.
Air India seating
I had never traveled on Air India before, so I had no idea what to expect. The aircraft itself was a Boeing 777, so relatively modern, but the inside was tired to say the least. Things didn't work well. The seats had plenty of leg-room, which was good, but they were uncomfortable and lacked padding. Also, there were issues with seats reclining, the sinks in the toilets didn't let the water drain and the entertainment system was crappy. Not only were there not many movies to watch, the system itself kept crashing and you had to go back to the beginning of the movie and fast forward. In some ways we were lucky with our entertainment system in that it worked, other peoples' systems did not, to the point they could not even switch it off!
In addition to equipment malfunction, the overall service was not much to write home about. The air crew was surly and not very attentive. On a flight of this length they usually come around many times with water to help you keep hydrated, something that is recommended to prevent deep-vein thrombosis. I only remember seeing them a couple of times. Then there was the food. We took the vegan option, which came with butter and dairy creamer with our first meal. The food was also bland, some soggy veggies and plain rice. Very disappointing! It was interesting to see how more relaxed things were when it comes to inflight safety compared to US airlines. When the seat belts lights came on people continued to wander around without being assaulted by the air stewards, overhead lockers were left open and even we came into land people were up and down until a few minutes before landing.
Delhi airport was very much like any airport in the world, apart from the fact that there was about four times the number of porters you would see anywhere else. It was wonderful to come from the limited racial diversity of Oregon to somewhere that you actually feel foreign. We have missed that feeling. One thing we were not expecting was any sign of Christmas in a country so dominated by Hinduism, so we were totally surprised by the large Santa Claus standing beside the "Welcome to India" sign.
After being welcomed by our host we jumped into our car and set off for the hotel. Having been to India before I knew what the traffic and driving would be like, and despite the warning Karen was still shocked … almost to silence (and that is rare!). It was very interesting to see seven cars side by side on a road with three lanes. It was exciting to see all the cars, trucks, auto-rickshaws and motorbikes trying to squeeze into the smallest gaps. Karen winced every few minutes as she watched the death-defying antics of the motor cyclists, many not wearing helmets, talking on a cell phone and carrying passengers with huge packets of various shapes and sizes under each arm. The cacophony of horns did become a bit wearing after a while, especially as by now we were beginning to feel the effects of the long journey. As always it is interesting to see a new city, especially a metropolis of 20 million people. In the space of an hour you get to see the best and the worst, from Marks and Spencer's and other upscale retail establishments to piles of rubbish, the squalor, the tumbled down buildings and emaciated young children tapping on your windows every time you stop at traffic lights.
Finally, we reached our hotel, the Manor, which is situated in a relatively calm private community. It was difficult to completely escape the hubbub of the world outside, as witnessed by the occasional the sound of train and truck horns that broke the peaceful silence. Our bodies believed it to be 3am in the morning, but the lack of a decent meal in the last 24 hours or so had left us feeling hungry. So, after a quick shower we went to the hotel's restaurant for a quick bite to eat. The vegan options were limited so we shared an eggplant curry and a spinach dahl. For some reason there were a lot of tough, unidentified stalks in the eggplant curry; which almost caused Karen to die of choking on our very first night, which would have put a bit of a damper on the holiday! We decided that for the restof our time in India rather than live in a desert of vegan options we'd suspend our veganism but stick to a vegetarian diet … hoping our digestive systems would not go into to shock from the dairy food being lobbed in their direction.
The food was excellent, and the service was the antithesis of Air India's, almost to the point of being overly intrusive.
The summary of the day is:
Flying for 15 hours is horrible
Don't fly Air India
Don't ride a scooter in Delhi without excellent life insurance
Appreciate, without prejudice, the diversity in India
Eggplant curry is delicious but try not to swallow the stalks
Day 3 – New Delhi
Today was Christmas Day, which is not a major celebration in Hindu majority India, but it was still a public holiday.
Our tour operator, Audley, had set out a fairly leisurely schedule for the day with us not planned to set out on a tour until noon. So, we spent our morning getting settled in and having a civilized, mainly Indian breakfast.
Before setting out to India we had been worried about the pollution levels in Delhi, which has developed an unwanted reputation as one of the World's most polluted cities. Earlier in November the pollution levels had reached very dangerous levels, due to the four million cars on Delhi's roads, particulates from construction, coal fired power plants and farmers burning their crop stubble. Our concern had been serious enough for us to pack face masks. Luckily, the pollution levels had improved, but there was still a haze and you could smell and taste the air.
Our driver and the guide for our two days in Delhi, Zupaigh (I was not sure of the spelling), arrived to collect us. With the traffic delay, albeit lighter than usual due to the holidays, we still had plenty of time to chat about Indian culture and politics. Karen and I consider ourselves worldly, but we still love to discover more. It was fascinating to get a better understanding of the caste system, which is still deeply rooted in Hindu culture.
The first stop of our day was the Qutab Minar. Being a holiday, everything was crazier than usual, with people and cars everywhere. We were slowly getting used to how things worked but it was nonetheless amusing to watch the seething mass of humanity squeeze into such a tiny space. Fortunately, there is a rule that has foreign visitors paying ten times the entrance fee of Indian Nationals but this gets you priority entry. So, instead of queuing for 2 hours we walked straight in.
A lot of hustle and bustle outside the Qutab Minar Complex
Qutab Minar is a minaret that forms part of the Qutab complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The minaret is a 73- metre (239.5 feet) tall tapering tower consisting of 5 storeys, with a 14.3 metre (47 feet) base diameter, that reduces to 2.7 metres (9 feet) at the peak. The base of first storey has alternate angular and circular flutings, the second one is round. The third storey of the Qutub Minar has angular flutings. The top storeys have totally different designs as they were added later. When viewed from above the Minar looks like a lotus flower, which is sacred in Indian culture.
Beautiful sandstone carvings at the Qutab Minar
A stunning colonnade of sandstone columns
Stunning patterns in the sandstone
Amazing coloured sandstone
The Minar is constructed from very durable and beautiful sandstone. The minaret itself is hollow and has a spiral staircase that takes you to the top, providing spectacular views across Delhi. Sadly, we couldn't experience this view, which would have anyway been obscured by the smog, because the public are not allowed to climb the stairs. Before 1974, the general public was allowed access to the top of the Minar via the internal staircase. On 4 December 1981, the staircase lighting failed and between 300 to 400 visitors stampeded towards the exit. 45 were killed in the crush and many were injured; most of these were children. Subsequently, public access to the inside of the tower has been stopped.
The Qutab Minar was established along with Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque around 1192 by Qutab-us-din Aibak, first ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. The mosque complex is one of the earliest that survives in the Indian subcontinent. The Minar's ground storey was built over the ruins of the Lao Kot, the citadel of Dhillika .Aibak's successor, lltutmish, added three more storeys. The Minar's topmost storey was damaged by lightning in 1369 and was rebuilt by Firoz Shah Tughlaq, who added another storey. In 1505, an earthquake damaged Qutab Minar; it was repaired by Sikander Lodi. On 1 September 1803, a major earthquake caused serious damage. Major Robert Smith of the British Indian Army renovated the tower in 1828 and installed a pillared cupola over the fifth story, thus creating a sixth. The cupola was taken down in 1848, under instructions from The Viscount Hardinge, then Governor General of India. It was reinstalled at ground level to the east of Qutab Minar, where it remains. It is known as "Smith's Folly".
Qutab Minar in the misty background
A closer view of the Minar
Carvings on the base of the Minar
Beautiful design work – the engineering work is amazing
Getting out was made easier by the expertise of our guide and driver, and we were soon on our way to stop two, Humayun's Tomb. On the journey we had more time to find out more about Delhi. One thing that I was particularly curious about was how the Delhi and the National Indian governments were going about tackling the crippling pollution that envelops the region every winter. To try and mitigate the air quality they have designated Delhi to become a green city and planted a lot of trees. Each tree is painted and numbered, and someone has to go around and count the trees and make sure no one has come along in the night and had away with one. Also, they have built some of the coal powered fire stations hundreds of kilometers from Delhi and transport the power back, which doesn't sound hugely efficient. It might also explain the frequent power outages. We also got to discuss the caste system, which for those of us who are not Hindu is hard to fathom.
The system divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (duty), and is generally accepted to be more than 3,000 years old.
The four main castes are: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and the Shudras. Many believe that these groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation.
At the top of the hierarchy are the Brahmins who are mainly teachers and intellectuals and are believed to have come from Brahma's head. Then there are the Kshatriyas, or the warriors and rulers, supposedly from Brahma's arms. The third slot went to the Vaishyas, or the traders, who were created from his thighs. At the bottom of the heap were the Shudras, who came from Brahma's feet and did all the menial jobs.
The main castes are further divided into about 3,000 castes and 25,000 sub-castes, each based on specific occupations.
Outside of this Hindu caste system are the achhoots – the Dalits or the Untouchables.
For centuries, caste dictated almost every aspect of Hindu religious and social life, with each group occupying a specific place in this complex hierarchy.
Rural communities were long arranged on the basis of castes – the upper and lower castes almost always lived in segregated colonies, the water wells were not shared, Brahmins would not accept food or drink from the Shudras, and one could marry only within one's caste.
When India gained independence in 1949 the new constitution banned discrimination on the basis of caste. In 1950, in an attempt to correct historical injustices and provide a level playing field to the traditionally disadvantaged, the authorities announced quotas in government jobs and educational institutions for scheduled castes and tribes, the lowest in the caste hierarchy.
With these lessons on history and culture the time soon passed, and we arrived at Humayon's Tomb to see another throng of people. Just like at Qutab Minar, we were able jump the extremely long lines.
Entrance to Humayon's Tomb
The tomb itself is set within a complex with extensive and lush gardens, amongst which are scattered several elaborate tombs. The largest structure is Humayan's Tomb, a phenomenal structure which is believed to have been the template for the Taj Mahal. Humayun's Tomb is the tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun which was commissioned by Humayun's first wife and chief consort, Empress Bega Begum (also known as Haji Begum), in 1569- 70. It was designed by Mirak Mirza Ghiyas, a Persian architect chosen by her. The circumstances behind Humayan's death were unusual. On 27 January 1556, Humayun, with his arms full of books, was descending the staircase from his library when the muezzin announced the Azaan (the call to prayer). It was his habit, wherever he heard the summons, to bow his knee in holy reverence. Trying to kneel, he caught his foot in his robe, tumbled down several steps and hit his temple on a rugged stone edge. He died three days later.
Humayon's Tomb
A screen carved from a single piece of sandstone
We were given time to walk around the tomb and admire the surrounding views, with the minarets of the other tombs peeking above the trees. Leaving the complex, we did a quick detour to see the octagonal Isa Khan Niyazi Tomb, which pre-dates Humayan's Tomb by 15 years.
Isa Khan Niyazi Tomb
By this time, we were getting peckish, so we set off to find somewhere to grab a quick bite. We ended up a restaurant for a full sit-down meal. To my delight they had pickled onions within the pickle selection, which was very fitting for Christmas Day (a Hobbs family tradition). A mushroom tandoori and saag dahl later we were stuffed and shortly after we started to enter a food coma. We made a quick stop at a store to look for gifts, but this turned out to be disappointing and we left empty handed. By now we were totally exhausted and were grateful to be returned to our hotel for a snooze before dinner.
Delhi pollution is unbelievable – and we had missed the worst of it
The early rulers of Delhi loved their tombs and monuments
Curry for Christmas Day lunch is perfect
Day 4 – Old Delhi
The plan for our second day in India was to visit some of the sites of Old Delhi.
New Delhi is distinctive from Old Delhi and is the modern-day capital of India and one of Delhi city's 11 districts. The foundation stone of New Delhi was laid by George V, Emperor of India during the Delhi Durban of 1911. It was designed by British architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy and Governor General of India Lord Irwin. The design of New Delhi is based on wide roads, elegant homes and large green spaces. In contrast Old Delhi and is made up of narrow, filthy streets and compact living spaces. It was founded as Shahjahanabad in 1638, when Shah Javan, the Mughal king at the time, decided to shift the Mughal capital from Agra.
We had discovered that the traffic in Delhi is crazy whatever time you are unlucky enough to find yourself traveling. It is surprising that anyone gets anywhere, but things kept moving, albeit chaotically! I am not sure why they bothered to paint the white lines on the road as nobody actually takes any notice of them! Somehow cars squeeze into the smallest of spaces, inching their way through, whilst the motorbikes and scooters, loaded with people, teeter and weave their way courageously in and out. We asked why, in the dusty atmosphere of Delhi, why so many cars are white, and we were told firstly, white reflects the heat, and secondly, everyone owns a can of white paint.
The craziness of rush hour in Delhi
Today, we had hit rush hour, which for India is later than we are used to in Europe and America, with many private companies starting at 9:30am and government offices starting at 10:00am. Fortunately one of the nice things about the slow progress of our commute was that we were able to experience more of the mêlé of day-to-day Delhi street lift. Although it felt that all of Delhi's multitudes had descended on the streets simultaneously in their cars, autorickshaws and scooters many do use public transport. The buses, looking tired and battle-worn, their shell pockmarked with a multitude of dinks, were packed with people. Also, Delhi has a metro system which continues to grow. On this very day the Prime-Minister of India, Narendra Modi, was opening a new metro line; the Magenta Line.
Even this was controversial as Mr Modi declined to invite Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was not a member of his BGP (Bharatiya Janata Party) party. In fact, rail travel is a much bigger deal altogether in India than it is the USA.
Although the USA has much more track it carries far fewer passengers; Thirty million on Amtrack and about one billion commuter travelers. In comparison in India in 2015 eight billion people traveled on India's trains! It is also the world's eighth largest employer, with 1.3 million employees (the largest is the US department of defense with three million. Wow!). During this trip to Old Dehli we got to see some of the more unusual forms of transport, including an ornately decked wedding horse being returned, and an elephant crossing the road (definitely not something you would not see in Bend, Oregon).
Our first port of call was the Masjid-i Jahān-Numā (World-reflecting Mosque), commonly known as the Jama Masjid of Delhi. This great mosque of Old Delhi is the largest in India, with a courtyard capable of holding 25,000 devotees. It was begun in 1644 and ended up being the final architectural extravagance of Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. The highly decorative mosque has three great gates, four towers and two 40m high minarets and is constructed of strips of red sandstone and white marble. Before entering the mosque, we had to pay the 150 rupees to bring in our camera, remove our shoes and Karen had to dress in a rather fetching robe (if you see the pictures you note the heavy sarcasm in this statement!) The façade of the mosque is spectacular, but it is only a few tens of feet deep. We snapped away, getting the most of our 150 rupee camera fee, despite the air quality being poor – this only seemed to add to the atmospheric ambiance. Milling around the Mosque was interesting; it was yet another great opportunity to people watch – both the visitors and worshipers.
Masjid-i Jahān-Numā (World-reflecting Mosque)
The smog seems to add to the atmosphere
Karen in a fetching gown with a female devotee praying (an unusual site in a mosque)
The large area outside the mosque that holds 25000 people
View from the steps of the mosque into Old Delhi
Passing the time of the day outside the mosque
The next stop, the Red Fort, was the other side of Old Delhi and we had to decide our mode of transport. We were offered the chance to go by cycle rickshaw through the narrow streets. This was an opportunity not to be missed. As I climbed in I discovered that I was not ideally designed for the rickshaw of old Delhi, my head resting firmly on the roof. There was no seat belt or much of anything to hang on to, apart from each other, and having any part of your body hanging out was definitely a bad idea if you wanted to keep it attached to your body. Anyway, there was no time worry about such things as we headed off. The alleys were extremely narrow; probably six to eight feet wide and bustling with pedestrians, other rickshaws and motorbikes and scooters. This was not a ride for the faint hearted and was as much of a thrill ride as you would find at a Six Flags resort. It was truly exhilarating to speed (relatively) through the alleys dodging oncoming traffic, to the point Karen and I were in a state of nervous hysteria. Karen told me to take as many pictures as possible, which was not easy as we jerked from side to side. The engineer in me was particularly taken with spaghetti of power lines running across the tops of the alleys … if anything went wrong with one of those circuits I could not image how they would get fixed. Towards the end of our trip our guide Zupaigh pulled the rickshaws over to point out a couple of things.
Not sure I would go up that ladder
Catching up with the news
Pretty much anything goes when it comes to tranporting
The fruit and veg look pretty good
Not sure how you would repair this if anything went wrong
Passing snapshot from the rickshaw
Busy streets of Old Delhi
In our cycle rickshaw posing with our guide Zupaigh
The ear cleaning caste (in red turbans) working outside McDonalds
The first thing was two co-located temples, one a stunning white marble Hindu Temple (much more on Hinduism later), Gauri Shankar Mandir, and the second Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir, a Jainist Temple. Jainists form a small percentage of the religious makeup of India (0.4%), which is likely why I have never heard of them. Jainism is an ancient Indian religion. Followers of Jainism are called "Jains", a word derived from the Sanskrit word jina (victor) and connoting the path of victory in crossing over life's stream of rebirths through an ethical and spiritual lift. Jains trace their history through a succession of twenty-four victorious saviors and teachers known as Tirthankaras, the first who is believed to have lived millions of years ago, and twenty-fourth being the Mahavira around 500 BCE.
Coming back to why we stopped! The second thing to be pointed out was a small group of men standing outside a McDonalds in red turbans. These were not burger flippers or Ronald's helpers, but were in fact a caste with a specific role in life. Their sole job was to clean people's ears. No joke! A skill that is passed down from father to son – not sure what the prospects are for someone born into that caste!
A few hundred yards further down the road our journey ended at the entrance to Red Fort.
The Red Fort is a large complex in the center Old Delhi, and for 200 years, until 1857, was the main residence of the Mughal emperors. In addition to accommodating the emperors and their households, it was the ceremonial and political center of the Mughal state and the setting for events critically impacting the region. Sadly, the Red For today is not what it was once was. The fort was plundered of its artwork and jewels during Nadir Shah's invasion of the Mughal Empire in 1747. Most of the fort's precious marble structures were subsequently destroyed by the British following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. The fort's defensive walls were largely spared, and the fortress was subsequently used as a garrison. The Red Fort was also the site where the British put the last Mughal Emperor on trial before exiling him to Rangoon in 1858.
As we walked up to the entrance I was drawn to a couple of things, the first being the many stray dogs hanging around and secondly the ramshackle framework that was being used by the men working on the renovation of the walls. These were not the solid looking metal scaffolding that are used by workmen in the US and Europe but were instead were made from bamboo (which to be fair is very strong) and lashed with rope. I can only imagine what health and safety would say if you tried to suggest using this type of framework on a building site back home.
Working on the Fort renovation on some very rickety looking scaffolding
Somewhat iconic view of India; birds flying against a building shrouded in mist (or in this case smog)
High security at the Fort
Feral dogs can be seen everywhere and seem to be tolerated, if not revered, by the locals, who feed them tidbits. It is a part of the culture to give scraps to the feral animals, because when you pass into the afterlife these kindnesses will be rewarded. Apparently, there are some 30 million feral dogs in India, which is all well and good, but 20,000 people die each year from rabies, which means that 35% of human deaths from rabies happen in India. Sounds like a problem! On the other hand, cats are thought to be unlucky, by some, so you don't see so many of those around.
One of millions of feral dogs in India
Security at the Red Fort was tight, evidenced by the many armed soldiers and armored vehicle on the approach to the entrance. The reason for this level of security is the fact the Red Fort is an active military base and reflects the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan – terrorist attacks in India are sadly too common. At the entrance two lines formed; one for men and one for women. The men have to climb on to a platform where you get to be frisked by a gruff soldier, whilst the ladies, to protect their modesty, get to stand behind a curtain, where they are frisked by an equally gruff female soldier. Once inside you get to appreciate the scale of the complex, with elegant gardens and numerous stately buildings. Sadly, many of the original structures were demolished by the British and replaced with barracks buildings. What remains of the original Mughal buildings are the imperial apartments, consisting of a row of pavilions connected by a water channel known as the "Stream of Paradise!" These buildings had been allowed to fall into a bad state of repair, but the government has stepped into refurbish them. Unfortunately, they are closed to visitors, so we could only stand and admire them from the outside.
Red Fort entrance
Stunning carving in sandstone
Mughal pavilion in the mist
Mughal reception palace – with graceful Islamic arches
Gateway to main palace area (in the distance)
Posing by a gnarly tree
Mughal royal palace, cooled by cold water passing through in a water channel
Renovation work and another dodgy looking scaffold
We love our doors!
Exiting the Red Fort, we risked life and limb to reunite with our driver, to continue our journey, stopping next at a memorial to the great Mahatma Gandhi, which marks the spot where he was cremated shortly after his assignation on 30th January 1948.
One of several plaques quoting Gandhi on the path leading to the memorial
Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat and trained in law in London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, where the resident Indian communities struggled for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for various social causes and for achieving self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient community.
Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to new lands, religious violence broke out. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating in agreeing the division of India. Among them, was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu Nationalist who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948, firing three bullets into his chest. Godse was found guilty and executed the following year.
The monument itself is very simple; a black marble slab on a plinth, lovingly decorated with fresh flowers. Many Indians come to this site in reverence to Gandhi, and today was no exception. This was also our first experience of the locals wanting to take a selfie with us, in fact we ended up taking several just at this monument. This was very much a hit and run visit as we had a couple more photo opportunities stops to make before the end of the day.
Next was India Gate. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, India Gate is a memorial to 70,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died in the period 1914–21 in the First World War and elsewhere in the Near and the Far East, and the Third Anglo- Afghan War. 13,300 servicemen's names, including some soldiers and officers from the United Kingdom, are inscribed on the gate. The India Gate, even though a war memorial, evokes the architecture of the triumphal arch in the style of the Arc de Triomphe.
As it was still school holiday time the park area surrounding was full of people enjoying themselves, but we managed to run the gauntlet of small kids weaving around in giant remote controlled cars to take a few photos and hop back into the car and head to our final destination, the Presidential Palace.
Partially set aside as the Indian Prime Minister residence, the Presidential Palace is a truly enormous complex which faces India Gate in the distance along an elegant mall. 'Enormous' does not do justice to its size; it makes Buckingham Palace look like a 3 bed, semi-detached house and the White House a dolls house. The Palace is officially known as Rashtrapati Bhavan and was previously the home of the Viceroy of India (how he was allowed to have a larger pad than the Monarch is hard to fathom!). At the far west end is the 340 room, main building where the President gets to live. In total the Presidential estate extends to 320 acres including a number of large buildings and formal gardens.
The Prime Minister's residence
The buildings of the Presidential Palace – used by the ministries of India
By now we were exhausted and were glad to fight our way through the traffic back to the hotel and ready ourselves for our trip to Varanasi.
Lessons for the day:
Cycle rickshaws are not for the faint hearted
Don't work for the local electricity company
Still happy eating curry 3 times a day!
Be prepared to be in selfies with complete strangers
Day 5 – Varanasi
We made an early start to get to the airport for our flight. The sun was yet to rise, and luckily, so had many of the residents of Delhi, making our journey to the airport less frenetic than the way in. The security was tight getting into the terminal building, but we were soon checked in, only to find our flight had been delayed (a common occurrence in India).
The flight was short, and we were soon in our car on the way to our hotel. The airport is around 35km from the centre of the city and the first part of the journey was relatively calm. They are in the process of constructing a new road from the city to the airport, which will be great when it is finished, but for now it was a cause for chaos (a taste of what was to come). Where buildings had been in the path of the road, they had simply knocked down the part that was in the way, leaving the rest of the building intact with people living in whatever had been left behind.
Amazing! As we had previously discovered there is no lane discipline in India, so when parts of the road ran out vehicles simply crossed to the other side and navigated their way through the oncoming traffic, using their horns to announce their presence. The basic rule seems to be if something bigger than you is coming in your direction get out of the way. All the lorries carried a painted sign – "Blow Horn, Please!"
A colourful truck on the road to Varanasi
Animals on the road are a major hazard in India
Roadside barbers
Never ceases to amaze me how rickety the scaffolding is
The manikin 3rd from the right has a frightening resemblance to Joker's Batman
By the time we reached the city the traffic in Varanasi was in full flow. We have never seen anything like it, in fact it impossible to describe the total madness with experiencing it for yourself. Somehow everything worked, and we reached our point of departure from the car. The last quarter of a mile to our hotel, Suryauday Haveli, had to be traversed on foot. Luckily, our tour guide had called forward and some porters were on hand to carry our bags.
Now for a bit of background to Varanasi!
Varanasi, one of the world's oldest living cities, is rightly called the religious capital of India. Also known as Banaras or Benaras, this holy city is located in the southeastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. It rests on the left bank of the holy river Ganga (Ganges) and is one of the seven sacred spots for Hindus. Every devout Hindu wishes to visit the city at least once in a lifetime, take a holy dip at the Ghats of the Ganga (the famous steps leading down to the water), walk the pious Panchakosi road that bounds the city, and die here in old age. Many tourists come to Varanasi, but also many avoid it due to its reputation for being dirty and packed with people (all of which is true), preferring to stick to the golden triangle (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur). But it was one of the places I wanted to include on the tour precisely due to the reasons people miss coming – this is real India!
We had a warm welcome waiting for us. The service in hotels and restaurants (at least the ones we went to) was amazing; sometimes almost too much. For the first night we were given a suite, and after dropping our bags in the room we headed to the roof terrace. The Suryauday Haveli overlooks the river Ganges, and we had fabulous viewpoint to observe everything going on around us, both on and off the river. Below us was a Ghat, a series of steps that ran down to a small beach, with groups of people milling around. A small herd of water buffalo also seemed to live there, and occasionally got it in their mind to chase a person. The Ganges often floods during the monsoon season filling up the whole river basin (and parts of Varanasi), this being December the width of the river was more modest, but nonetheless inspiring due to its iconic status. We ordered some lunch and when it arrived we had to sit on guard to protect it from the local, marauding monkeys. We needn't have worried too much, because as soon as they got too close a member of the hotel staff appeared from nowhere to chase them off with a big stick.
A creative use of swans to decorate the bed
View on to the Ghat below our hotel
A splendid view across the River Ganges
Water buffalo milling around the Ghat
A cheeky monkey
Refreshed, we decided to head out along the river, where it is possible to walk for four and half miles. Not long after leaving we came to one of the Ghats where the Hindus cremate their dead. Coming from a culture where putting your loved ones on what is essentially a bonfire (in fact some looked more like barbeques) it felt a very alien practice.
Just as we arrived we saw a group of men carrying a body on a stretcher down to the area where the cremations took place. We had not been there more than an hour or so and we were already being confronted with a dead body, which did make us feel a bit awkward. Although we were carrying our cameras, it didn't seem appropriate to take pictures (the family were taking pictures as though it were a wedding), but nonetheless a tiny man approached us and told us to be respectful and not take any photos. He took us to one side and started to tell us about the ritual itself.
A water buffalo
A view along the Ganges
Taking a nap!
A body being carried down to the cremation ground (in the orange shroud)
Looking down on the cremation grounds
Stacks of wood for the pyres
Our tiny new friend – I am not sure what to make of the two fingers
For the Hindus, Varanasi is very special, and many hope to spend their final days and hours in the city, so they can have their cremation by the Ganges and their ashes cast in the river. The cremations take place within hours of the person's death. As we had observed the bodies are carried down to river, by an all-male wedding cortege (apparently women get too emotional), their bodies wrapped in white cloth, a simple garland around their necks and covered with a brightly covered drape. The bodies are washed in the water of the Ganges and are carried back and placed on the funeral pyre. The chief mourner, will be the older son in the case of the father or the youngest son in the case of the mother, if there are no sons, other rules apply. He has his head shaved and wears a simple white robe. They perform the rites of washing the body and setting the fire on the pyre. Everyone hangs around until the body is fully burnt, which can take three or four hours, at which time ashes are taken and cast into the Ganges along with a major bone which has not been consumed in the fire. In the case of a women this would be a hip bone and in the case of a man his sternum. After this there is then a process of mourning.
We learnt that there are groups of people who are considered to be already spiritually clean and therefore do not require to be cremated. This includes pregnant women, holy men, children under two, lepers and those who die of snake bites. Instead of cremation these people are weighted down and dropped into the Ganges. The cremations in Varanasi take place 24 hours a day, and total somewhere in the order of 200 each day.
Our new friend also explained that his family was a member of a caste, the Doms, that is responsible for maintaining the cremation grounds and the holy fire that was used to light the pyres. This fire has been maintained for thousands of years and it is only this fire that the Hindus believe can be used to light a pyre. The Doms make their living from death and cremation, charging families for their services. They are considered as Untouchables, but everyone, even the rich, wanting to use the cremation grounds and the sacred fire has to employ their services. From the cremation grounds by the river our "friend" took us up the street past the huge piles of wood provided to mourners, for a fee, to use on the pyres. There are different types of wood depending on what could be afforded, the most expensive being sandlewood, which provides a sweet smell (better for masking the smell of burning flesh). We were also shown a more traditional crematorium. From here we were led through some very narrow alleys. I was becoming a bit concerned about being mugged or killed, but eventually arrived at small house where we could hear the clacking of a loom. Varanasi is famous for the production of very fine silk cloth, and our informal guide took us into to see the loom at work (more on silk cloth production later). He then led us some narrow stairs into a room, with a mattress covered floor and shelves packed with silk scarves, bed linen, table clothes and pashminas. As from nowhere another man appeared; an enthusiastic sales man with good English. From that point on we were shown dozens of products of all shapes and sizes. Karen selected a few items, we paid our money and our "guide" took us back to our hotel. It was obvious to us by this stage that we had been taken for a ride, and had not heeded the warning about hawkers,but having said that we had learned some interesting facts about the Hindu culture and its links to the Ganges and Karen did get a couple of silk scarves.
Silk weaving looms
Piles of silk – saris, scarfs and linens
Our evening plans were an official tour, consisting of a boat ride on the river Ganges, followed by dinner. We were met by our guide around dusk and taken down the Ghat below our hotel and onto our boat. This was not a motor powered boat, but instead was propelled by a young man with a set of oars that looked cobbled together with bits of drift wood, but they worked fine. We travelled down the river to the main cremation ground where about 15 cremations were in progress. We watched in fascination at the rituals. The ceremonies were at various stages, we saw one body being washed, another pyre being set and others in full flame. One cremation had completed it cycle and the chief mourner collected what looked like a hip bone, walked down to the river and cast it into the water.
By this stage it was dark, and we set off down the river to the main event of trip, the Aarti, a religious ceremony held nightly at the Dashashwamedh Ghat. Before setting out on our trip we had bought some candles set in a cup of leaves from one of the small children hawking on the Ghat below the hotel. As we traveled towards the Aarti we lit these candles, tributes to family and friends struggling with illness, and set them afloat on the river. This was a truly profound spiritual moment.
Taking a boat down the Ganges at dusk
A posh hotel on the banks of the Ganges
One of the larger cremation grounds with several cremations on the go
Our candle floats just before launch
The waters around Dashashwamedh Ghat were packed with boats full of tourists and pilgrims. The Ganga Aarti is a colourful ceremony that pays homage to the Lord Shiva. The Aarti is performed by seven young priests who are pursuing their Vedas and Upanishads. The priests stand on highly decorated dias and follow a highly choreographed ceremony involving mantra chants, conch blowing, incense and a seven-layered camphor lamp (something resembling an inverted chandelier with flames). The whole thing lasted 45 minutes and was fascinating to watch.
Equally fascinating was to watch the people and boats around us, it was somewhat chaotic as boats shuffled positions to get the best views, and at the same time young men leapt, risking life and limb, from boat to boat trying to sell trinkets to the passengers. When all was done the armada of vessels set off in every direction, through which our oarsmen skillfully navigated our safe passage back to the hotel.
Boats gathering for the Aarti
The Aarti in full flow
A highly choreographed ceremony
There was nothing else left for us to do except eat another tasty Indian meal. We dined in the hotel courtyard where the hotel had organized a group of musicians to play traditional Indian music. It was good, apart from the instrument that occasionally made the sound of a distressed mosquito. Karen, as is her want, went up to the band members to find out more about their craft and ended up singing some scales with them. Our waiter noticed Karen's interest and said he could get hold of CDs of their music, we tried to ignore his offer and finished our meal and headed off to our room.
Day 6 – Varanasi (Day Two)
Still struggling with jet-lag we woke up early, so Karen decided to do the yoga class on the roof of the hotel. As is turned out it was a just her and the yogi, but it was a unique experience to be able to do yoga with the sun rising over the Ganges!
Today was organized into three different tours and was heavily focused on a deep dive into Hindu culture. Our guide collected us and took us a few steps down the road to the door step of a temple. There are somewhere in the order of 23,000 temples in Varanasi, so if you stop anywhere you are likely to be on a door step of a temple. After a short introduction we headed down the streets passing several more temples. Walking around Varanasi you start to appreciate the density of this city of 1.2M people. The streets are narrow and are challenging to navigate as you have to avoid piles of rubbish, cows and dogs (and their excrement) and crazy scooter drivers. Surprisingly, you don't see too many people!
A temple close to our hotel
A symbolic design painted on the street
A cycle rickshaw is the perfect way to get around Varanasi
Anyway, back to Hinduism. Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, according to many scholars, with roots and customs dating back more than 4,000 years. It is the world's third largest religion; numbering about 1.15 billion, or 15-16% of the global population, with 90% living in India. There are said to be 33 million gods in Hinduism symbolizing one abstract Supreme Being, but there are ten main Hindu deities that are more commonly celebrated.
BRAHMA – The first deity of the Hindu trinity, Lord Brahma is considered to be the god of Creation.
VISHNU – The second deity of the Hindu trinity, Vishnu is the Preserver (of life).
SHIVA – The final deity of the Hindu trinity is Shiva, also known as the Destroyer.
GANESHA – One of the most prevalent and best-known deities is Ganesha, easily recognized by his elephant head.
HANUMAN – Another easily distinguishable god is Hanuman, the deity depicted as a monkey.
KRISHNA – Lord Krishna is one of the most powerful incarnations. He is kept very near to many Hindus' hearts, as he is not only viewed as a hero and leader but also as a teacher and a friend.
KALI – Perhaps one of the fiercest deities is Kali, also known as the Dark Mother. Kali is known for her tongue protruding from her mouth, her garland of skulls, and her skirt of bones.
RAMA – Rama is the model of reason and virtue and is often considered to be the ideal man due to his compassion, courage, devotion and adherence to dharma.
SARASWATI – Saraswati is the goddess of learning, music, art and wisdom.
DURGA – The goddess Durga is an important representation of the Divine Mother, also known as 'the Invincible'. She is said to protect mankind from evil and misery, and does so as the destructive force of jealousy, prejudice, hatred and ego.
There are some additional key things to know about Hinduism:
Hinduism embraces many religious ideas. For this reason, it's sometimes referred to as a "way of life" or a "family of religions," as opposed to a single, organized religion.
Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic, which means they worship a single deity, known as "Brahman," but still recognize other gods and goddesses. Followers believe there are multiple paths to reaching their god.
Hindus believe in the doctrines of samsara (the continuous cycle of life, death, and reincarnation) and karma (the universal law of cause and effect).
One of the key thoughts of Hinduism is "atman," or the belief in soul. This philosophy holds that living creatures have a soul, and they're all part of the supreme soul. The goal is to achieve "moksha," or salvation, which ends the cycle of rebirths to become part of the absolute soul.
One fundamental principle of the religion is the idea that people's actions and thoughts directly determine their current life and future lives.
Hindus strive to achieve dharma, which is a code of living that emphasizes good conduct and morality.
The Om and Swastika are symbols of Hinduism. The Swastika, which represents good luck, later became associated with evil when Germany's Nazi Party made it their symbol in 1920.
Hindus revere all living creatures and consider the cow a sacred animal.
Food is an important part of life for Hindus. Most don't eat beef or pork, and many are vegetarians.
Hinduism is closely related to other Indian religions, including Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.
Now back to our tour. From the center of Varanasi old town we headed to Banaras Hindu University, which was established in 1916 by Madan Mohan Malaviya. More specifically we were heading to the New Vishwanath Temple, located in the centre of the campus. The temple itself was spectacularly large and is an oasis in the chaotic centre of Varanasi. After leaving our shoes at the shoe parking place we headed into the temple itself, which like many Hindu temples was lavishly decorated. The halls were filled with the sounds of chanting, which we thought were recorded, but it turned out to be a live group of musicians. Our guide took us through several rooms and gave us more insight to the Hindu faith, including some rooms with shrines.
Statue of Madan Mohan Malaviya
Outside the Hindu Temple at the University
The Swastika is a commonly used symbol in Hindu culture
I am not sure how well paid this gig is. These musicians play throughout the day in the temple
View from the balcony of the Hindu Temple
Preparing food bucket style – my kind of cooking!
From the Hindu University we crossed town to the Sankat Mochan Hanuman (the god depicted as a monkey) Temple. Here the security was far greater than we had seen anywhere else in Varanasi, and this was due to a bombing at the temple in March 2006 which resulted in the death of 10 pilgrims, with another 40 people being injured.
We then headed back towards our hotel, and were dropped off a short distance away,
Lord Jagannath idols
allowing us to take a walk through the streets and visit more sites. First stop was a school for Brahman priests, who were deep into their studies when we arrived. Finally, we visited the Shri Jagannath Ji Mandir Nrusinh Bhagwan Temple, set within a small compound. The shrine had a very simple wooden structure, and pays homage to the (the symbols representing this deity are very curious), who is believed to be "Lord of the Universe" and is considered a form of Vishnu. Within the grounds live several families and devotees, who serve and maintain the temple, and live a very simple life.
Brahman priests in training – the roof is looking a bit dodgy
Gotta love this delivery vehicle – especially the last line!
Someone's home – for many in India life in India is a hardship
Varanasi is a dirty city – plastic is a real issue here (and many other places)
Feral dogs – a mummy with her pups
A lady selling veggies
Not long after our return to the hotel we were picked up by the guide for our next tour (it was the same person who had taken us on the boat ride the night before). This was to be a break from the Hindu culture lessons for the day, as we were heading to the Muslim districts of Varanasi where the main silk cloth production takes place. This area is very different to those that border the river Ganges; it has the same narrow streets, but the extreme poverty of the area was soon apparent and was especially evident amongst the children. All around us we could hear the clicketyclack of looms, sounding like an approaching army of giant crickets. We followed the guide as he darted through the narrow passage ways, avoiding numerous human and animal obstacles en route, finally ending up at a single room shop where a man was diligently working on a decorative ceremonial turban. From here we sped through more alleys and into workshop of a weaver. The room was small, dark and filled with the sounds of working looms. How people could bear this is difficult to fathom, as there is obviously no health and safety inspectors to insist on protection for the workers hearing. It was hot as well, but this was December and a cool day at that. I can't imagine what it would be like on a hot summer's day when the outside temperatures reach 45oC. Having seen how the stuff is produced our guide took us to a sales room with another slick tongued salesman. Luckily, the experience of the previous day prepared us for what was to come, but we did end up leaving with a few items (I count this as a lucky escape as Karen had her eyes on quite a number of items).
Making turbans
A selection of wedding turbans
The narrow streets of the Muslim quarter
A smiley young lady feeding her goats
There is a low of poverty in the weavers district
Admiring the delicate sil
Silk bobbins
Young men making patterns for the weaving looms
By now we were getting hungry, so as soon as we got to the hotel we headed for the roof top terrace and ordered ourselves some food in preparation for the last tour of the day. What a view!
The evening tour was into the bazaars of the old city. As we passed through the narrow streets we were regaled by a multitude of colours, sounds and smells; it was a total sensory overload. There were a multitude of small shops selling saris and cloth on bolts which were stacked from floor to ceiling. It is hard to believe that all these stores selling the same goods can survive. We did wonder how you decide which of these many stores to shop in, realizing it is probably a matter of wandering and checking in on each and then going back to the one that best fitted your needs. This would be my idea of hell! Amongst the fabric vendors were shops selling religious paraphernalia and food (which we had been warned about eating). We saw the occasional artisan, including a man who was working on an intricate metal panel relief design, which he was labouriously creating by hitting the panel with a metal punch and hammer.
A small Hindu temple
Nandi the bull gate guardian watching the entrance to the temple
The hubbub of the bazaar
Dozens of shops selling exactly the same items!
So many brightly coloured materials to chose from
A book store – the booklets at the front are horoscopes; important info for births and marriages
Food store selling lots of staples for the preparation of meals
I just love pickles
Ornate door – just love the scrappy surroundings
Artisan at work on a relief sculpture of a religious decoration
After the tour we returned to our hotel room to get ready for dinner. As we prepared there was a knock on the door.
It was the creepy waiter from the night before, who invited himself in and discretely pulled out some CDs from the musicians who played in the evenings at the hotel. Being British we were too polite to tell him to piss off, so we ended up with some more souvenirs of our trip … in this case not ones we wanted. Just a warning that if you go to a charity store in Bend, Oregon don't be surprised to find a copy of traditional Indian music from a band based in Varanasi!
Day 7 – Varanasi (Day Three)
When we rose this morning and looked out of the window all we could see was a thick blanket of fog; our view of the Ganges, only a hundred feet or so away, had disappeared overnight. The plan for the morning was another boat ride on the Ganges to view the morning rituals of the devotees and pilgrims who come down daily to the river to wash in the holy waters. The prospect for this did not look great! So, after breakfast we were surprised to see our tour guide.
We had thought the trip might get cancelled. Anyway, we headed down the river, where Karen managed to find a very slimy patch (probably a patty from a passing water buffalo moistened by the mist) to slip in and crash to the ground. It was not a great day for being wet and stinky on a boat (although the general smelly atmosphere would have covered the evidence of the fall) – so she popped back the room to change. Take 2! We went down to the dock again, being careful this time where we were treading, and boarded our little rowing boat. Casting off down the river, we travelled close to the shore as the fog still persisted! Through the gloom we could just make out people on the Ghats bathing in the water. Although the weather was not ideal it certainly added to the atmospheric drama of the experience. After we had gone half a mile or so, the guide ordered our oarsman to take us ashore, so we continue the rest of the tour on foot.
A gloomy day in Varanasi
Cleaning the candle holders from the Aarti
Devotees bathing in the Gangees
A Holyman waiting for the day to warm up
We climbed up the steps of a Ghat (there were a lot of them) and continued through a narrow, covered passage way, passing by several holy men sitting cross legged and obviously meditating, and then out on to the narrow streets. A short time later we found ourselves in the same bazaar area we had visited the night before, which was already bustling with people. Our guide pointed out the many heavily armed soldiers hanging around the narrow streets; these are now a constant presence due to the terror attacks a few years back. The reason we were here was to see the mosque and the golden temple (a Hindu temple), which are hard to see in this district, where the buildings are densely packed. What is amazing is that Hindus and Muslims coexist as neighbours in such close quarters! We could have waited for hours in the lines to get in to the compounds for these temples, and on this dismal day it was hard to say how much we would actually see. Instead our guide took us in to a small shop selling various religious items, where we were offered a nice cup of hot masala chai tea. Subtly, one at a time, the owner took us to the back of the store and asked us to climb on a ramshackle box and look out of a small window. From here you could see both the mosque and the golden temple, but as we suspected there was not much to see on this foggy day. After the excitement of this experience (note the sarcasm) we were taken to a crossroad in the alleys, where the guide pointed out a small shop called Blue Lassi, which apparently is mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. Lassi is a desert dish (but is also great for breakfast) that is made from blending yoghurt, water and spices. To make it all the more yummy, you can add in fruit. Whilst we had been discouraged from eating street food our guide assured us it was safe to eat, so we ordered a couple of different flavours and sat down and waited. The lassi was being prepared by a sallow looking gentleman in a bowl on the side of the street. It didn't feel very hygienic – but when in Rome! As we waited we got talking to a group of three young western looking people, who from their raggedy appearance had obviously been traveling from sometime, which made it difficult to tell where they were from. As it turned out they were from Portland, Oregon and knew Bend fairly well – it is a small world, but I will not harp on too long about this as it gets Karen going on her deep beliefs in the six degrees of freedom mumbo-jumbo. Soon our lassi was ready, and it was delicious. This was just the beginning of our love affair with lassi during our stay in India!
The Blue Lassi owner preparing our food
Me waiting for my lassi
Nourished, we headed back to our hotel. The fog had still not lifted and our next scheduled tour was a photographic tour of Varanasi, which seemed a bit pointless as there was not much sign of an improvement in the weather. So, we decided to cancel the tour and hang out in our hotel and rest a little.
A couple of hours later, miraculously, the sun came out. We decided to go out and walk down the river front toward the main funeral Ghat, which was a couple of miles downriver. By the time we set-off the weather was fabulous, and we got some great photographs of people washing their bed linen in the river and drying them on the steep banks of the Ghats, holy men and their disciples chewing the fat and various scenes of people and animals going about their daily business. Before long we had reached our destination. As expected there were several cremations in various stages of progress. We walked amongst the huge stacks of wood and little shops selling everything you need for a Hindu funeral. Amongst all this humanity, the animals of Varanasi carve out a little slice of life for themselves. Things don't always work out for these creatures, and one example presented itself to us in the form of the tinniest, scrappiest little puppy we had ever seen. It had got lost from its family, but Karen came to the rescue, picking up the puppy and reuniting it with a mummy and group of puppies, who seemed to be thriving better (we assumed this was its family, if not hopefully it would be adopted!) As providence would have it we were about to rescue another lost soul, this time in the form of an elderly, well spoken English lady from Devon. She was with her travel partner, also an elderly English lady, and seemed overwhelmed by all that was going on around her with the cremations taking place.
We did our second good deed for the day and guided them back to a place along the river they recognized and could navigate their way back to their hotel from.
A Holy man with his disciples
Steep steps on a ghat
Busy doing the laundry
Cuties but not so many smiles on show
More wood piles for the funeral pyres
Everything the mourner might need to their family members's cremation – lots of scented woods
This man needs a more portable music player
Resting after a hard day of praying
We returned to hotel for some afternoon vittles and a rest, with a plan to return to see the Aarti in the evening. This time from the shore!
The walk to site to Aarti was only a short stroll from our hotel and we arrived in plenty of time to get a prime place on the steps of the Ghat. Once settled in, we spent our time people watching. Viewing the Aarti close up was a very different experience to watching from a boat on the river. This was a more intimate experience and we were able to observe more of the detail and intricacies of the ceremony. The procedural sequences were well rehearsed, with the four priests (one who remarkably looked like Jon Snow – a.k.a Kit Harington – from the "Game of Thrones" TV series) synchronously moving through the various phases – it was truly mesmerizing, and the forty-five minutes passed by so quickly. Afterward there was nothing to do except to return to our hotel and prepare for the journey to our next destination, Agra.
The crowd gathering for the Aarti
A Holy man looking forward to the Aarti
The Aarti begins
Hari Krishna devotees after their celebration
The high water marks of the Ganges floods
A family gathering
A receptacle for all the holy garbage
The musicians playing at our hotel
When we reached the top of the steps of the Ghat just below our hotel, we noticed marks on the side of the wall recording the height that flood water had reached over the years. Amazingly, over 100ft above our heads was the mark for the catastrophic flood of 1978. Very scary!
Lessons learnt at Varanasi:
Never try and drive in Varanasi unless you are crazy
Always look down while you are walking as you'll never know what you are stepping in
Don't stop and talk to locals at the main tourist areas – they want to sell you something
Don't wash, drink or clean your teeth in the Ganges
Cow dung and water makes a slippery hazard
Lassi is very tasty
Day 8 – Agra
Today, we were off to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. We woke to yet another pea-soup of a fog, which suggested that our flight from Varanasi to Agra would be problematic. After another exciting journey through the chaotic Varanasi traffic, our prediction of a delay turned out to be true. That said they are used to smog and fog in this part of the world so the delay was not horrendous and it was not too long before we were on our way.
One of the nice things about flying in India is that they have not yet caught on to all the cost saving measures that the airlines in the United States have imposed, such as charging for snacks on the flight.
The flight was short, and we were soon landing in Agra. The airport in Agra is actually an air force base and there are limited flights in and out, in fact our flight from Varanasi was only one of two that happen each week. So, not being a commercial airport, the facilities at the Agra airport were very basic but due to its lack visitor traffic we were soon out.
We were met by a tour company representative and our driver PK, who was to be our constant companion for the rest of our stay in India. As we traveled we discussed how our time in Agra was to be spent. The plan had been to tour the Taj Mahal at day break the next day, but there was concern that it could be very foggy, as it had been that day, so the plan changed and it was decided we'd go straight to the Taj there and then.
It was still the holidays in India so the whole area around the Taj was super busy with international and domestic tourists. Somehow, we managed to meet up with the guide who was going to take us around the Taj. We waited while he disappeared off to get the entry tickets. The wait was quite long even though he was in the line for international visitors, with the jacked-up price, fast-pass tickets. Eventually he returned and we joined the lines to get in, again in the fast track lane, but there was a security check where everyone came together so it still took a while to get into the complex.
Crowds at the entrance to the Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal (meaning Crown of the Palace) is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river. It was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, to be built in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, a Persian princess who died (probably of exhaustion) giving birth to their 14th child. Construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632. The imperial court documenting Shah Jahan's grief after the death of Mumtaz Mahal illustrated the love story held as the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. The principal mausoleum was completed in 1643 and the surrounding buildings and garden were finished about five years later. The remains of the princess were transferred from their temporary setting to the Taj Mahal on its completion. Myth has it that Shah Jahan planned to build another mausoleum in black marble similar to the Taj Mahal on the opposite side of the river (there are some workings that purport to be the start of the construction) but the work was never completed as he was deposed by his dastardly son and ran out of money.
The entrance gate leading to the Taj Mahal is impressive in its own right, and as you pass through its impressive arch you get your first sighting of the Taj. It is truly a majestic building of a colossal scale; pictures do not it justice. Having been recently cleaned it was stunning and shimmered in the hazy sunlight. The crowds were enormous, and as we walked down the avenue towards the Taj you could see hundreds of people milling around the balcony surrounding the Taj like an invading army of ants. There were plenty of photoshoot opportunities but with the volume of visitors none were quite as impressive as the iconic photos that were taken when Princess Diana visited many years prior to our visit, when they closed the grounds to visitors and she had the whole place to herself!
Entrance gate to the Taj
On reaching the base of the Taj we were able to once again jump the line to get to up to the balcony level, but it was still a crush. The soldiers on duty tried their best to keep order but the crowds were overwhelming. Once on the spacious balcony area things opened up and we were able to enjoy the splendor of the Taj. Sadly, the entrance to mausoleum had been closed due to the number of visitors but we were able to walk around the outside and enjoy the amazing craftsmanship that went into construction of this Wonder of the World. To the east and west are two more impressive identical structures; to the west in the direction of Mecca is a large mosque, reflecting the strong Islamic beliefs of the Mughal rulers. To the left the mosque's sister building is a faux structure that was built purely for symmetry. Getting down from the balcony was even worse than getting up, and it is easy to see how a simple event could cause a mad panic, leading to people dying in the proceeding crush.
First view of the Taj – it was a very misty day!
The Taj Mahal in all its splendour
The mosque adjacent to the Taj
The elaborate designs of the Taj Mahal
As we left the Taj behind we passed by a long, snaking line of domestic visitors, numbering thousands, waiting to get to the Taj. The likelihood of them all getting in before the close at sunset was very slim.
From the Taj we were taken to our accommodation for the evening, not a hotel this time but a homestay. This was not your typical Blackpool bed and breakfast, it was a large building set in very exotic gardens; the building's design was very quirky, definitely eclectic and tricky to describe or classify. Our room was up three floors at the very top. We did a very quick turnaround and headed out to a local restaurant called a "Touch of Spice" which turned out to be wonderful – even after a week of eating Indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner we were yet to get bored.
Returning to the homestay we found a group of people sitting around the fire pit, so we grabbed a beer and joined them. There was a couple from South London who were visiting India with their three children ranging from a teenage daughter to two sons in their twenties. The daughter apparently had hated every minute of the trip and the sons were enjoying themselves greatly! The dad was a fireman, so we shared some stories of wild fires in the western United States before moving on to our hatred of President Donald Trump and the state of affairs in the US and Europe. It was a good end to the day and we headed off to bed feeling nourished spiritually and nutritionally.
Unfortunately, the bed was rubbish, so we didn't get the rejuvenating night's sleep we had hoped for.
Day 9 – Agra to Ranthambore
We rose knowing today was going to be a long, but fun filled day as we transferred from the busy settings of Indian cities to rural Rajasthan for our tiger safari at Ranthambore National Park. Breakfast was served at the homestay, but it was disappointing compared to the yummy breakfasts we had been served previously. That said we had a chance to talk to a French couple who had traveled to India to attend a wedding and were tacking on a few days to do some touristy things.
The decision to do the Taj Mahal the previous day was a good one as a thick fog had once again descended. The plans for the day had a lot of variety built in as we travelled to Ranthambore.
The first of these was to visit a local village to get a sense of Indian village life. We drove out into the countryside and through some small towns, past a truck stop and after which we pulled to the side of the road next to some fields.
Not for the first time on this trip a thought crossed my mind that we might get dragged out of the car and get shot! Anyway, there was a nice young man waiting for us who was to be our guide. We were taken across the fields where freshly planted crops were sprouting and came across a family busily working on preparing food in a basic lean-to attached to their house, which was currently undergoing some building work. It was quite chilly in the morning fog, so they were warming themselves by a small fire. Further on we came into the main part of the village. As it was Sunday the children were not at school so they were entertaining themselves playing badminton (no mobile phones or TV for these kids) and they seemed to be full of joy with beaming smiles on their faces. All through our journey through India we would experience young children, who despite the poverty and squalor they were living in, seemed to be happy. As we strolled through the village we passed small shops selling their wares and people going about their daily business. It was somewhat surreal as our presence was largely ignored (apart from the small children) despite being total aliens in these surroundings. Our guide took us to a very ancient mosque in the village which apparently served Muslim communities from all around the area. He proudly pointed out two public toilets (there were no sewage services to any of the houses) which served the 500 or so people living in the village. Having public toilets in a village is such a rarity still in India. For our final stop we were taken into a small building that showed the work that NGOs were doing in this village, with a strong focus on health care education. Having spent much of our time so far in big cities and visiting tourist areas it was really a great privilege and experience to spend time in a village and see how most of India's population live.
Cow lying next to a large pile of drying cow poop
A happy child
Keeping warm on this chilly morning
A music machine – used at weddings and festivals
A busy truck stop
We met back up with PK and our guide to take us onwards to visit the fort at Fateh Sikri. The journey took about 90 minutes, and by the time we reached there the fog had finally began to clear and the sun had peeped its head from behind the misty shroud. To access the fort we had to take a bus from the parking area. Unfortunately, we had to run the gauntlet of hawkers who, like sirens tempting passing unsuspecting mariners, tried to lure us into the gift shops adjacent to the car park. There was one very persistent man who we fobbed off saying we'd look on the way back, hoping he would not remember us.
The ancient city of Fateh Sikri was founded by Emperor Akbar as the capital of Mughal Empire in 1571. Akbar's son Jahangir was born at the village of Sikri in 1569 and that year Akbar constructed a religious compound to commemorate Sheikh Salim who had predicted the birth. After Jahangir's second birthday, he began the construction of a walled city and imperial palace here. The city came to be known as Fatehpur Sikri, the "City of Victory", after Akbar's victorious Gujarat campaign in 1573.
The first courtyard at Fateh Sikri
One of the palaces
The Imperial complex was abandoned in 1585, shortly after its completion, due to the exhaustion of the small, spring-fed lake that supplied the city with water, and its proximity to Rajputana, with whom the Mughal Empire was often at war. The capital was shifted to Lahore so that Akbar could have a base in the less stable part of the empire, before moving back to Agra in 1598. Because the palace area has been in nearly continuous use over the centuries, much of the imperial complex which spread over nearly two mile long and one mile wide area is largely intact. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the rest of the city which, after it was abandoned in 1610, has fallen into a state of ruin.
The fort, a listed UNESCO World Heritage site, is a wonderful complex of buildings, constructed from local red sandstone, sitting on a rocky ridge with excellent views of the surrounding areas. The complex has several sections starting with the public spaces where the Mughal emperor and his consorts would meet with the local people and then progressing into to private spaces when the royal family lived.
The most impressive of the buildings are set around the palaces of the royal family. The Buland Darwaza or the loft gateway at Fatehpur Sikri was built by the great Mughal emperor, Akbar in 1601. Akbar built the Buland Darwaza to commemorate his victory over Gujarat. The Buland Darwaza, approached by 42 steps is 53.63m high and 35 meters wide and is the highest gateway in the world. The most striking of all the buildings at Fateh Sikri is the Panch Mahal, a five storey building that provided shelter to the royal ladies and mistresses. The top story of the building offers a panoramic view of the surrounding area.
Delicate sandstone carvings
All too soon it was time to return to the car and continue our journey to catch the train to Ranthambore. Departing the bus, we rushed to get to our car but our hope that the hawker we met on the way in would forget us was dashed as he clearly remembered our promise, so Karen felt obliged to at least look in his shop. After perusing for ten minutes nothing really caught our eye so we left and carried on our journey.
Now we were heading into Rajasthan for the first time<|fim_middle|> the place where armies would hold victory parades with war bounty on their return from battles, which were witnessed by the Royal family's women folk, who could peer unseen through the latticed windows.
Elephants carrying people to the fort
The first courtyard of Amer Fort
We climbed to the second courtyard up a set of stairs, passing through another impressive gate. This section was where the royal family would hold its public audiences. The main feature of this area is the Diwan-i-Aam or the Public Audience Hall. The roof of the Diwan-i-Aam is supported by double column supports, over which are classic scalloped Islamic style arches. It really was very beautiful.
The entrance to the next courtyard took us through the spectacularly decorated gate, the Ganesh Pol. This third courtyard is where the private quarters of the Maharaja, his family and attendants were located. The courtyard has two buildings, one opposite to the other, separated by a Murgal style garden. The building to the left of the entrance gate is called the Jai Mandir (or Sheesh Mahal, the mirror palace), which is exquisitely embellished with glass inlaid panels and multi-mirrored ceilings. It was truly one of the most beautiful buildings we had even seen! It would have been wonderful to be there at night and have lit candles inside the palace and watch the shimmering reflections from the thousands of mirrors covering the walls and ceiling. We had to settle for a cute photo shoot opportunity our guide pointed out, getting a picture of the two of us framed in one of the larger mirrors. Of course, having discovered this, Karen felt obligated to point out this photo opportunity to all the other tourists in a 40 foot radius!
Jai Mandir (or Sheesh Mahal, the mirror palace)
The second building in this courtyard is known as the Sukh Niwas or Sukh Mahal (Hall of Pleasure). This hall is approached through a sandalwood door with marble inlay work with perforations. A piped water supply flows through an open channel that runs through this building which provided some air-conditioning for those hot summer days.
The exit to the fourth courtyard is through the Lion Gate, which leads the private quarters of the royal family. This courtyard is where the Zenana (Royal family women, including concubines or mistresses) lived. This courtyard has many chambers where the queens resided. The king would visit the women at night, passing along a common corridor to these rooms, selecting the queen or concubine of his choice, without the others knowing who! At the centre of the courtyard is covered structure where the wives and concubines could hang out in their spare time (of which I am sure they had a lot!)
This concluded our tour, which had taken about 90 minutes. Next on the schedule was a return to Jaipur to visit more of the sites of the city.
We stopped to take a picture of this elephant on our return to Jaipur
We saw a lot of improvised forms of transport
An exclusive hotel in the background
Firstly, we stopped at Jantar Mantar, a monument which houses a collection of nineteen architectural astronomical instruments. Built by the Rajput king Sawai Jai Singh II, and completed in 1734, it features the world's largest stone sundial, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The instruments are constructed from masonry, stone and brass and were built using astronomy and instrument design principles outlined in ancient Hindu Sanskrit texts. The instruments allow the observation of astronomical positions with the naked eye; the scale of the structures was very impressive. As well as instruments of various sizes (and accuracy) for telling time there were a number set aside for astrology, which is very important in Hindu culture, especially when it comes births and marriage.
Jantar Mantar – optical instrument
The World's Largest Sundial
This is an astrological instrument
A short distance from the Jantar Mantar is the City Palace complex, which includes the Chandra Mahal and Mubarak Mahal palaces and other buildings.
The Chandra Mahal palace now houses a museum, but the greater part of it is still a royal residence.
Mubarak Mahal, meaning the 'Auspicious Palace', was built with a fusion of the Islamic, Rajput and European architectural styles in the late 19th century by Maharaja Madho Singh II as a reception centre. Today, it is a museum with exhibits of textiles and carpets from the royal family's collection. Our guide was particularly enthusiastic about the display of the voluminous clothes worn by Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh I, who was a mind-boggling seven feet tall, 4 feet wide and weighed 550lb and had 108 wives (most probably died from being crushed or suffocated!)
City Palace Museum
Entrance gate to the Chandra Mahal
From the Mubarak Mahal we passed through another gate into the courtyard of the Chandra Mahal, at the centre of which is the Diwan-i-Aam, the Hall of Public Audience, a marble floored chamber located between the armoury and the art gallery. On display are two huge sterling silver vessels 5.2 feet high and each with capacity of 4000 litres and weighing 750lb.They are made from 14,000 melted silver coins and are from a single cast and hold the Guinness World record for the world's largest sterling silver vessels. This inner courtyard provides access to the Chandra Mahal. There are four small gates that are adorned with themes representing the four seasons and Hindu gods. The gates are the Northeast Peacock Gate representing autumn and dedicated to Lord Vishnu; the Southeast Lotus Gate for the summer season and dedicated to Lord Shiva-Parvati; the Northwest Green Gate, also called the Leheriya (meaning: "waves") gate, in green colour dedicated to spring and Lord Ganesha, and lastly, the Rose Gate with repeated flower patterns representing winter season and dedicated to Goddess Devi.
Home the World's largest silver sterling vessels
The guards resplendent in pink
The fabulous doorway into the Palace
At the far end of the Chandra Mahal is seven storey building which is primarily used by the Royal Family as its primary residence.
The home of the Royal Family
By this time, it was getting late in the day and we still had one more visit to make. Our final destination was Elefantastic, which was located back towards to Amer, and we had to be there by 3pm. Going anywhere in India is very often problematic but it was not too long before we reached the village where Elefantastic was located. This village was where all the elephant farms are located. We met the representative of Elefantastic on his moped and followed him through the backstreets, along some sketchy roads. Eventually we arrived at our destination and there was a small group of waiting elephants with their mahouts. The farm itself was very rustic but the elephants seemed happy and well treated, and we were told that the farm is more of a sanctuary than a farm for breeding elephants for tourist rides, although local regulations mean they have to provide some elephants for the tourists.
After a shortbriefing we were introduced to "our" elephant, Sampa, and her mahout. For the next hour and half we got to feed Sampa sugar cane branches at the same time stroking and rubbing around his ears and face. She seemed to be very happy tucking into the sugar cane, her powerful jaws making short work of the tough branches – indeed it appeared Sampa could have spent the rest of the day contentedly eating there but we had other plan in store!
The second part of our visit was to paint her. Elephants in India are commonly used for ceremonies and for these events they are decorated with garlands and other drapery, in addition to which they are painted. So, it was now our opportunity to try our hands at elephant painting. On the positive side elephants are a large canvas and in Sampa's case a largely stationary target. On the downside, their hide is most definitely not a smooth canvas, so getting to a high level of detail was challenging – well that is our excuse. Anyway, we dived into the task with gusto and attempted to come up with some designs that worked. Karen took it one step further and painted Sampa's toenails (I am not quite sure what they are called on an elephant!). Our neighbours were painting a date on their elephant. They had just become engaged! After we were done it was time to wash the paint off. In the summer you can spray the elephants down, but this being winter we had to use scrubbing power to wash off the paint.
Karen painting Sampa's toenails
We soon had a clean, fresh looking elephant. For the last part of this tour we got to ride Sampa. There was no nice, comfortable saddle for us. They simply tossed a blanket over her and tied it on with rope, which was our only method of hanging on. We climbed some stairs and scrambled aboard. From the ground Sampa did not seem that tall, but on her back it felt a lot higher! So off we went. Karen was a lot more comfortable riding Sampa than I was: my knuckles were white with the strain of gripping onto the rope. We left the compound and went out into the open ground. By this time the sun was going down and this added greatly to the amazing ambience. The ride went on for around 30 minutes and I could feel an uncomfortable tension building in my thigh muscles from the strain of gripping to the elephant. It was a welcome relief to climb down, albeit with a somewhat wobbly gait. What a fabulous experience. We sadly had to say goodbye to our new four-legged, trunked friend and return to the hotel.
It had been a long but rewarding day and it would have been nice just to chill out at the hotel, but PK, our driver had made reservations at a local restaurant, the Spice Court. When we got to the restaurant it was not the most atmospheric of places, which was disappointing, and we felt cold due to the fact we were very tired. One of the features of the restaurant is that it has performances of traditional dance, but these were outside, and we were not up to venture out, which is unusual for us. Sadly, the food wasn't the best we had tried during our stay either and it wasn't long before we called PK to rescue us and take us back to the hotel.
Day 11 – Jaipur to Udaipur
Sadly, we were leaving Jaipur today. After an admittedly small sample of destinations in India I feel it would be a challenging place to live, but of all the places we visited Jaipur could be one city where we could make it work. We still have fantasies of the lifestyle of Jaipur life that is portrayed in the "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" films, but as always, the reality of life is more complex than what is presented on the silver screen! Anyway, it was time to satisfy more immediate needs, such as filling bellies. Our wonderful host was at breakfast to greet us again, and as promised he had sourced the "Marmite" like spread that his grandmother said had marvelous properties which promoted health and longevity.
Chyawanprash, had a consistency very like Marmite, but tasted much sweeter and was not unpleasant. With a little persuasion all the guests in the dining room got to taste it, and their reaction, much like Marmite, was mixed. Anyway, I am sure it will be available on Amazon back in the US so we might just get a tub to try it again.
Before leaving Jaipur, PK our driver promised to take us to a warehouse in a less touristy part of the city to see if we could find some bargains. Jaipur is famous for its fabrics and textiles and this was likely to be our last opportunity to buy some souvenirs to take back home.
Receiving our gift
Once we arrived at the factory-warehouse we were whisked upstairs and seated. Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so we were shown a huge array of textiles; from bedspreads to table placements. The choices were mindboggling but eventually we settled on an ornately decorated bedspread, some table mats and a few other items. As always, the enthusiastic salesman was keen to thrust more on us but we were limited on what we could physically take home (the answer to which of course was they could ship!). By this stage of our trip we had got pretty good at saying no.
So much to chose from
Soon, we were off on our 5 hour journey to Udaipur. As we left the factory-warehouse I was starting to feel unwell, perhaps the effect of having spent so much money on a bed spread or a reaction to the Chyawanprash. The further we went the worst I started to feel! I closed my eyes and tried to sleep it off. After a couple of hours, we pulled off the road to get something to eat, and I was by now feeling very, very sick. Food was the last thing I wanted (Karen will tell you this is totally out of character for me!) and all wanted was to spend time in the restroom, and if you have experienced restrooms in India you get a sense of my desperation. The rest of the trip to Udaipur was very much a blur, all I can remember is passing dozens of roadside businesses selling marble. Eventually we arrived at our hotel, Fateh Garh. This was the most luxurious place we had stayed in India, but I was in no state to appreciate it. I was extremely happy to get to our room, which was in the corner of the hotel and offered spectacular views from two sides across the hills. The sun was starting to set and the vista was truly amazing! I would have loved to spend longer appreciating the surrounding landscape, but I had to beat a retreat to the bathroom. I would get to know the surrounds of this room over the next 48 hours. Sadly, I was not much company for Karen in this state, so she had to go down to dinner on her own. It turned out there was a Hindu wedding taking place in the hotel. Indeed, we were the only guests in the hotel who were not part of the wedding the party! The bride and groom lived in the United States and had had their civil wedding there but had come to India to have a religious celebration with all their family present. Karen was invited to join them but felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea of gatecrashing. I think if I had been not so incapacitated we may well have become temporary family members!
Hindu wedding at our hotel
Memories of Jaipur:
Don't get too close to the snake charmers and their cobras!
Elephants love having their faces rubbed, but they could do with some lotion to help with their rough skin.
Indian pickles are wonderful (hopefully that was not what upset my tummy)
On that note Delhi belly is horrible – really be careful what you eat
Leave more room in your suitcase for souvenirs
Marmite is better than any of its pretenders (e.g. Chyawanprash and Vegemite)
Day 12 – Udaipur
Next day I was feeling no better and had spent the better part of the night commuting from the bed to bathroom to commune with my maker on the big, white porcelain telephone. The thought of Indian food made my stomach churn. In fact the thought of any food made me feel nauseous.
We had a day tour planned, which I was in no state to join, so Karen went by herself. I don't remember much of that day, but Karen had a wonderful time visiting the sites of Udaipur in near perfect weather. From the pictures she and the guide took it looked wonderful, so we will just have to come back again!
Day 13 – Udaipur to Delhi and home
Today was our departure day, and luckily, I had started to feel better. We were scheduled for another morning tour of Udaipur but I thought I wouldn't risk leaving the comfort of my hotel room and its lovely bathroom. A sign of my improving health was that I was hungry again, although my appetite for Indian food had yet to come back, so I stuck to fruit and toast. By the time Karen returned at lunchtime I was much better, had packed my bags and was ready to go.
Feeling better – packed and ready to go
The airport was only a short distance from the hotel, so we were soon in line waiting to check in. Our journey back took us first to Delhi and then to Singapore, with a short layover before 14 hour flight back to San Francisco.
The internal flight to Delhi had been booked by the tour company and I had booked the flights to and from Delhi myself. The lady at the check-in desk tried to check us in all the way through to the US, but had some issues doing this. She believed this was due to one ticket being booked as MARK HOBBS and KAREN HOBBS and the other booked as HOBBS, MARK and HOBBS, KAREN. So after twenty minutes she gave up and told us to collect our bags in Delhi and check-in again when we were there. We should probably have guessed at this point something was wrong!
Our flight to Delhi went without incident so, as instructed, we collected our bags and went to the check-in desk. The gentleman on the desk was helpful but he again had trouble booking us all the way through to San Francisco. The flight to Singapore was on Air India, but the second leg was a Singapore Airlines flight with which Air India had a code share. Again, we had no boarding pass for our next flight, and were instructed to go the Singapore Airlines desk when we got there. By this time we were hungry (I had couple of days of missed meals to catch up on) so we went and found the food court to get some nourishment.
The flight Singapore was ONLY five hours long, which feels like a lifetime on Air India. Luckily the entertainment system on this aircraft worked which helped pass the time and take our minds off the forgettable inflight food and the tasteless décor. By the time we got to Singapore we were exhausted yet looking forward to being on a different airline despite the prospect of a 14 hour flight. So, we went off to find the Singapore Airlines transfer desk. We were greeted by a somewhat officious lady, our impressions of her manner most likely exaggerated by our tiredness, who told us we did not exist in their system and indeed the flight itself did not exist. She also told us that there was no code share with Air India. Well, we were not very happy as she told us there was nothing she could do and that we needed to go and talk to Air India. So, off we went. It took some time for us to get served and when we did they seemed to be as confused as we were and said they had to get hold of the local Air India manager who was at that time assisting on a departing flight. So, we waited.
Eventually, Mrs. Kumar, the local Air India manager turned up and was very apologetic. She gave us passes for the lounge, so we could freshen up and get some refreshments whilst she went to find us a flight. From this point it was a waiting game as we were now on standby. Unfortunately, we were traveling back at the end of the holiday season, so things were busy, busy. Some seven hours later we were still in the lounge waiting and it was becoming obvious that we were not going to get out of Singapore that day, and Mrs. Kumar admitted defeat. So, Air India booked us into a hotel close to the business district and shipped us off in a taxi. Karen had spent some time in Singapore when she was younger when her father was stationed there with the Royal Air Force, so she was curious to see the Singapore of today. It is fair to say it is very different!
We were put up in a five-star hotel, which was very nice. After a quick change we headed out and followed the riverside walk down towards the harbor. With Singapore located pretty much on the equator the weather is largely the same all year – hot and humid, and it wasn't long before we were hot and sticky. After walking for two or three miles we decided to head back to the hotel for dinner, which was being paid for by Air India. On reaching the hotel we had a nice surprise, Mrs. Kumar had managed to get us two seats on a United Airlines flight to San Francisco the next morning. We were happy bunnies (at least happier than we had been a couple of hours earlier). Instead of reporting to the airport at 7am – as instructed – we would actually be flying home! Hurrah!
Day 14 – Singapore to Home (unplanned extra day!)
The journey home was uneventful but very long. Some twenty hours after leaving Singapore we arrived in Redmond, Oregon where we were met by our friend Nan. She had kindly offered to pick us up at the airport.
We had really loved our trip to India. It was everything we had expected and more. Having only scraped the surface of this huge country we are already plotting our return to hopefully do a more in-depth exploration.
A couple of days after getting home I started to get pains in my right calf so I headed off to urgent care where I was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) which is a common condition developed during long distance travel. So, I was prescribed three months of blood thinners to break up the clot.
The advice of doctors to avoid DVT is to get up regularly, move around and do some exercises to encourage blood flow. Stupidly, I had ignored this advice and had only got up once during the fourteen hour flight from Singapore.
Karen tried her best to make me get up regularly during the flight, but I had ignored her too. The positive thing from her perspective was that me developing DVT provided her with one of those rare "I told you so moments", which she can use against me for years to come! | during our trip, our destination being the city of Bharatpur where we would catch our train for the two-hour journey to Ranthambore. On reaching Bharatpur we were met by the local representative of the tour company who told us that our train was running at least a couple of hours late.
He gave us a couple of options, one of which was to visit the close-by Keoladeo National Park.
Keoladeo National Park is a man-made and man-managed wetland which protects Bharatpur from the frequent floods, provides grazing grounds for village cattle, and in earlier times was used as a waterfowl hunting ground. Unfortunately, there had been several years of drought, but due to the importance of the park water had been allowed to flow to the park from the local supply.
The 30km2 park is a mosaic of dry grasslands, woodlands, woodland swamps and wetlands providing habitats to 366 bird species, 379 floral species, 50 species of fish, 13 species of snakes, 5 species of lizards, 7 amphibian species, 7 turtle species, and a variety of other invertebrates.
Every year thousands of migratory waterfowl come to this park for wintering and breeding and we were lucky enough to be visiting during the prime time. The sanctuary is one of the richest bird areas in the world and is known for nesting of resident birds and visiting migratory birds including water birds. According to founder of the World Wildlife Fund Peter Scott, Keoladeo National Park is one of the world's best bird areas.
As our time was limited we hired a guide and a horse drawn cart to take to the best viewing areas of the park. The long causeway that runs like a spine through Keoladeo is several miles long, so walking was not an option. Our guide was fantastic, and we made frequent stops along the way to see the wildlife and take some photos. For us the most exciting birds for us were the brightly coloured kingfishers, of which there were quite a few to see; this was a delight as I had never seen one in the wild before! We got to see two of the five types of kingfisher that are found in the park; the larger white throated kingfisher and the smaller common kingfisher (which are also found in the UK but are rare).
A White throated kingfisher
The common kingfisher
Our driver and cart
This unplanned visit to Keoladeo was wonderful and we were really glad to have had the chance to go there during the winter season when all the migratory birds were in residence. For once were pleased that our train was running late!
When we got back to the car our guide said that the train had made up some of its lost time, so it was now a bit of a rush to get to the station. We need not have worried, because like most things in this country time is a loosely bounded variable. One sad thing was experienced whilst waiting on the platform was a man begging with no legs.
Rather than sitting still he was dragging himself around and going up to anyone who looked like a tourist. We had got hardened to the begging and followed the advice we had been given by several of our guides not to make eye contact. But with this man it was really hard!
Eventually our train did arrive. We had reserved seats which was great because this was a holiday (it was New Year's Eve) and the train was packed. There was no space in the overhead rack for our large suitcases. After a bit of shuffling and tugging I got one bag up, the second had to sit in the aisle. This was India so no one, including the frequently passing train inspectors, seemed to care that we were blocking the exit in case of emergency.
Our carriage was near the front of train, so we were in one of the better classes. I had envisioned that we'd be sharing our carriage with goats and chickens, but none of that here; the carriage was full of middle class Indians on their way home or to visit friends and family. A little disappointing! The journey was long, but we filled the time with people watching. For me the most interesting sight was the constant flow of people wandering through the carriage selling food and drinks; from bags of biscuits and crisps to hot chai tea and soup. Literally every five minutes someone would pass selling something.
Three hours later than planned we reached our destination. It was now past 10pm and we were worried that there would be nothing for us to eat at the resort we were staying at. We had not eaten anything on the train apart from a packet of biscuits we had bought from a vendor. Luckily, the tour company representative had kept the resort up to date with the progress of our travel, so when we arrived some twenty minutes later the restaurant was still open.
Our bags were taken from us and we went straight in for the kill on some thali and naan bread. It had been a long day but everything felt much better the other side of a thali!
We were shown to our accommodation for the next three nights – a luxurious tent. The setting was delightful, and the ambiance was further enhanced by a spectacular full moon. This was not so much camping as it was extreme 'glamping'. The tent was huge, with a fantastic king-sized bed and it was tastefully decorated and lit, creating a spa-like feel. The same went for the bathroom, which had an enormous shower. We both felt we could live somewhere like this permanently. After doing our ablutions we climbed into bed and were very happy to find that the night staff had furnished our bed with his and hers hot water bottles – there are still some nice leftovers from British colonialism!
Our tent in Ranthambore
Things learnt today:
Don't show any interest whatsoever – including eye contact – with the street vendors because once they have seen a chink in your armour you are doomed.
Being late doesn't necessarily mean a disaster – it can sometimes lead to a good result.
Trains in India are entertaining (but we'd still like to try a travel a lower class of service to see what that's like!)
Camping can be fun and comfortable, and you can't beat hot water bottles.
Day 8 – Ranthambore
We woke to a rather chilly morning, but we felt very snug in our tent. We were setting out early on our first tiger safari of the day, so there was no time for breakfast, but there was coffee waiting at the reception area. Before we departed the hotel kindly provided us with some important provisions: A sandwich, some water, a blanket and a hot water bottle. Morning temperatures in Rajasthan can be cold in January, especially when you are traveling around in the back of an open top truck!
Our naturalist guide was a lady, rarer in the park than the tigers themselves … indeed she was the only one of her kind! The drive to the entrance of Ranthambore National Park was quite short, but once we reached the gates we were confronted by a large crowd of people who were walking along the same road that we were traveling. They were heading up a steep road towards Ranthambore Fort. It was January 1st and a National holiday, and these were Hindu devotees on their way to pay respect to the gods whose shrines were within the walls of the fort. Luckily, our route veered off and we were soon in the relative calm of a scrub like jungle, bumping up and down on rough tracks in search of tigers. It should be said at this point that finding tigers in a huge tract of land such as Ranthambore is not easy. For one thing they are mostly solitary animals, so there is usually just one to find (unless there is a female with cubs) and their territories are large (a tigress may have a territory of 20km2 and a male's territory can be up to 60km2 to 100km2) and they are well camouflaged in the long grass!
After a short-time the cold was setting in, despite having a blanket and hot water bottle. It was a pleasant surprise when pulling over to eat our sandwiches our guide pulled out a flask of hot chocolate and some cake to share with us. She had made these home comforts for us!
We got to see a lot of deer and antelope, which was not necessarily good as they seemed to be happy munching on grass and bushes; if there were tigers around they would have been long gone. There were also some alligators sitting near a dried-up waterhole. A couple of hours later we still had not seen a tiger and it was time to head back to the hotel. It was disappointing not to have had a sighting of a tiger, but we were still having a good time just being on safari. As we were on the way to the entrance one of our fellow passengers spotted a stripy creature moving in the bush not too far from us. Sadly, not a tiger, but it was a pair of mating hyenas. Yes, animal porn! To some this might be a lesser experience than seeing a tiger, but our guide was tremendously excited. Hyenas are nocturnal animals, so to see them during the day is extremely rare. There are only a small number of hyenas in the park, and when we showed the naturalist back at the resort the pictures she was also very excited and asked Karen to send her some of the pictures to put on their website.
One of many deer we saw in Ranthambore
A rare sight in Ranthambore – mating hyenas
We were tired and hungry when we got back to the resort, so it was a treat to use the fabulous shower in our tent and take some breakfast. As we were in such an exotic location and due our bodies being bashed and bumped on the safaris we decided to book ourselves in for a couples' massage in the evening.
In the afternoon we had a second safari lined up. We were traveling with the same English family we had met in the morning, minus the mum who was not feeling so well, and a young local man who just enjoyed coming to the park to take photos of tigers. He shared some of his photos with us during the journey (he also has a website where he posts the pictures to). The sector of park we covered on this safari took us over mountainous ridges into a lush valley with more water, including a large wetland area. If we thought the morning's trek had been bumpy, this was even more so. The evening's massage loomed large in our minds! There was again plenty to see in terms of antelopes, deer and more alligators. For a second time we were to be disappointed with the tiger viewing opportunities, so there was nothing more to be done than head back to the resort for a shower, dinner and a massage. There was still a final safari trip tomorrow to finally break our tiger duck!
A cormorant sunning itself
Bathing crocodiles
Sunset over Ranthambore
Day 9 – Ranthambore and travel to Jaipur
Today our old friend the fog was back in town. It didn't look very hopeful for spotting tigers, but nonetheless we followed the previous day's routine, except we put on as many layers of clothes as we could comfortably manage without resembling the Michelin man. Even with these clothes on and the blankets and hot water bottles, it was still cold.
Our journey today took us to another sector of the park. Ranthambore National Park is vast, covering approximately 110 square miles, and is home to 60 or so tigers. There are no fences or walls around the park to contain the tigers, they are truly wild. Indeed, during our stay at the resort fresh tiger paw prints were found not too far from the tents and cabins! The drive was about 30 minutes, taking us through a local town, which again presented us with further evidence of the harsh life led by those living in rural India. By the time we entered the park the fog had lifted, and we were feeling a little warmer, but still grateful for the extra layers of clothing we had decided to wear. This section of the park felt like it had previously been a used as a residence as there were many signs of man's occupation. The tall grasses and scrub gave way to a more rugged landscape and soon we had climbed high above the valley floor and were treated to spectacular views across mountainous terrain. The trail was bumpy, but it made it all the more fun to be jiggled and tossed as we worked our way up and over the hill. On the other side we ran to the boundary of the park and the perimeter wall. Here there was a quarry with a watering hole, apparently a popular haunt for the tigers … but not today. A short distance from the quarry we entered a lightly wooded area where we came to relatively close quarters with a sloth bear, which are quite large. For most people this was exciting but having got up to within a few feet of grizzly bears in the US it was not quite as thrilling for me! It was now getting towards time to return back to the resort and we had yet to see even a glimpse of a tiger – disappointing yes, but we had still enjoyed our time in Ranthambore.
Pigs running wild in the streets
Once we got back to the resort we just about had enough time for a shower, pack away our things and get a quick bite to eat.
A village close the entrance to Ranthambore National Park
The drive to Jaipur was going to take to four or five hours, taking us deep in to the heart of rural Rajasthan passing through many small villages. PK was a careful driver but there is were still a few occasions where we found ourselves headed directly towards another vehicle, but after a week in the country we were starting to feel a bit more relaxed in these life-threatening situations. It did not feel too long before we found ourselves heading into the vibrant capital of Rajasthan, with its population of around 3½ million. Our hotel was situated in to old city, which took us a further 45 minutes to reach. As we passed through the gate that took us beyond the wall that surrounds the old city it was clear to see why Jaipur is known as the "Pink City", with the walls of every building painted in a terracotta pink colour. The traffic came to a standstill and we soon discovered why as a procession approached us led by a very enthusiastic band. We were very excited to see an elephant in the parade decorated in bright cloth and paint. This was only the second elephant we had seen! At the rear of the procession was a float on which sat, cross-legged, a very stately looking Hari Krishna holy man, who was apparently very famous. Once the procession passed the traffic cleared quickly and we soon reached our hotel for the next two nights, the Dera Mandawa.
A gravity defying load!
Passing a camel drawn cart
One of the gates to Jaipur
A decorated elephant leads the parade
The main float with the Holy man on board
Hidden behind a wall, sheltering it from the chaos of the surrounding city, the Dera Mandawa is a peaceful oasis. It has a wonderful courtyard with lots of welcoming nooks with comfy seating; we felt at peace as soon we entered. We were greeted by the owner, a tall stately gentleman with a fabulous moustache, looking as if he had stepped straight from the set of a BBC period drama on the British Raj. His English was immaculate, a result of being taught in a boarding school with teachers from dear old blighty. Our conversation could have gone on for many hours, but we had to get ready for our evening tour of the bazaar. On entering our room, we were stunned! It was huge with an enormous bed at its center. There was a large window seat with a long cushion covered in silk and above the bed was a balcony overlooking the whole room. It seemed a shame that we were only staying for two nights with a busy schedule – there would be no chance to take the opportunity of this most romantic of rooms!
Our room at Dera Mandawa
After a quick turn-around we set out to meet up with our guide for the evening. PK dropped us off outside the 'Palace of Winds' where we met up with a clean-cut young man, who was going to take us around the bazaars of Jaipur. We were really looking forward to this tour! Before setting out to the bazaar our guide gave us some history to the Wind Palace and Jaipur.
The Palace of Winds
Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan state, was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Jai Singh II who ruled Jaipur State from 1699 – 1744. Initially his capital was Amber, some 11 km from Jaipur. He felt the need to shift his capital city as its population increased beyond the resources around Amber, especially the scarcity of water. Jaipur was the first planned city of India and the Maharaja took great interest in its design. He consulted several books on architecture and architects before deciding on the layout of Jaipur. The Maharaja created free housing to encourage traders and business people to move to the city. In 1876, when the Prince of Wales visited Jaipur, the whole city was painted pink to welcome him and after that Jaipur was referred to as the 'Pink City'. The paint is renewed on a strict cycle to keep it looking fresh.
Hawa Mahal ('Palace of Winds' or 'Palace of the Breeze') is a five storey structure made from pink and red sandstone. It was built in 1799 by the Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh to allow the female members of the royal family to watch the processions and events happening in the streets below without being observed by the common folk. It is a very shallow building with many rooms that have ornately latticed windows through which the ladies could observe what was going on outside.
From the 'Palace of Winds' we stepped through the tight alleys into the bazaar. There were hundreds of tiny shops selling a multitude of brightly coloured garments and trinklets. The sights, sounds and smells were overwhelming.
During our visit to India we had been discouraged from eating the street food but on this occasion our guide took us to a handful of food stands where we were able to try the delicious savory and sweet dishes on offer. We passed by a small shop selling pickles and tried their gooseberry pickle – scrumptious! The bazaar was extensive, with specific areas set-aside for specialist retailers. The most lavish of these were the shops selling products for weddings; saris, turbans and every possible accoutrement needed for the Hindu nuptials. The Hindu wedding is often a lavish five-day affair that will cost the bride's family two or three times more than a typical western style wedding.
Must have taken sometime to stack that fruit
A bubbling vat of hot oil – looks dangerous
All look delicious
So many pickles to choose from
Another scary manikin
So many shops selling fabrics. This is our guide in the foreground!
A garland of money to hang around a brides neck
Two hours later our tour was done and as we had given PK, our driver, the night off we had to make our own way (with help from our guide)back to the hotel and our chosen mode of transport was the tuk-tuk. As our guide went to hail a tuk-tuk (I don't think there is an Uber for tuk-tuks) Karen noticed a man lying in the middle of the very busy road; cars, buses and motorbikes weaving their way around him. It was almost as if he was invisible! Sadly, India has a large problem with substance abuse, and in this case the man had apparently passed out from drink. There was no way Karen was going to leave him, so the guide, myself and a couple of passing men lifted the man and deposited him to the relative safety of the pavement. We made sure to use lashing of hand sanitizer when we were done. So, having done our good deed for the day we took the short tuk-tuk ride back to the hotel. For dinner we decided to eat at the hotel and chose a thali – which turned out to be delicious. Once again, we had a chance to talk to the owner who regaled us with more stories of his personal history and explained the history behind the family portraits that lined the walls of the dining room.
We had a busy schedule planned for the next day, so we were soon headed off back to our delightful room.
Tigers are very elusive so if you go on safari to see them don't raise your expectations too high – just enjoy the experience!
Driving in India is very different from the USA and Europe (for the most part … Italy could be an exception) so try and relax and not panic when another vehicle is headed your way.
Street food is delicious – but buyer beware! The pickles are especially good!
Day 10 – Jaipur
At breakfast we got talking to the other guests in the hotel. It is always fun to share stories of traveling and from back home. Such chats give Karen a chance to harp on her two favourite subjects; her hatred of President Donald Trump and the virtues of Marmite. Sadly, they had no Marmite on offer to try the "hate it or love it" test, but the hotel owner told us about a similar spread that is very popular in India – which again they didn't have in, but he would get for it us to try the next day. So, very kind!
After breakfast we were met by our guide for the day. He was a short, sharply dressed man who was obviously very particular about how he appeared. Our first stop was back at the 'Palace of Winds' to get some those iconic photographs. This required us to take our lives into our hands and cross the street in rush hour. Traversing the roads in an Indian city during the peak traffic hours, or pretty much any time of day, is not for the faint hearted. It essentially requires you to look into the eyes of the driver of the oncoming vehicle and watch for any hint of hesitation. As soon as you see the hesitation you simply leap in front of them and pray that they take pity on you and stop. Luckily this seems to work, and no one gets annoyed when you do this and somehow it all seems to work and not as many people end up dying as you might expect (about 16.6 people die in road fatalities per 100,000 of population). Anyway, we got our photos and with great relief returned to the other side to meet back up with PK and our car.
Palace of Winds
Looks like hard work
Next up was the Amber (or Amer) Fort located in the town of Amer (or Amber), 11km from Jaipur high up in the hills.
This was the original capital city of Maharaj Jai Singh II. The approach to the fort takes you through the a gate in the imposing wall that surrounds the city of Amer, which stretches for miles around the area, snaking as it follows the undulations of the hills, like some mini-me version of the Great Wall of China.
As we approached the Fort we were stunned by its beauty, sitting on a hill above the man-made lake and gardens. Even from the outside the scale of the Fort complex is very impressive. We stopped briefly to snap some photos, although conditions were not great with the lingering fog. Close by our stopping place was an opportunistic snake charmer, who, for a few rupees would charm his cobra from its basket and let you take a picture of him and his serpent companion. Karen, ever curious went over to check it out and get a sneaky snap shot on the sly. She obviously caught the cobra's eye, or perhaps it was trained to bite people who didn't pay up, but it suddenly darted in her direction. You will never have seen a nearly 60 year old woman with two replacement hips move so quickly or squeal so loudly. It was quite impressive really! From where we were we had a few options to get to the Fort.
We could walk, which would have added time and meant there could be longer queues at the top)
We could pay for a ride on an elephant up to the Fort, but we were having time with elephants later!
We could take the car to the entrance
So, not wanting to spend the extra money or time on option 1 and 2, we took the car ride through the old town and up the winding route up to the Fort Entrance.
Amer Fort (or Palace), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was built around 1592 and is constructed mainly of red sandstone and marble. The Palace is divided into four main sections each with its own entry gate and courtyard. The main entry point is through the Suraj Pol (Sun Gate), where the elephant rides enter, which leads to the first main courtyard. This was | 5,225 |
While the pop of the US tech bubble was still putting a damper on Internet growth, some Kiwis were partying it up in Amsterdam as if our smaller bubble would never end<|fim_middle|> of the Blogger website. It was resurrected from Blogger's graveyard recently much to my delight. http://77degreesouth.blogspot.co.nz/
Kim - Tuesday 9/7
Southern Cross cables lands on North Shore beach bringing new high-speed international link.
I first used the internet in 1999 and by 2001 I was ready to harness its capacity to network: Books Without Borders is a project that began that year and has since shipped more than 60 tonnes of books to Nigeria and throughout the Pacific. The Global Bridge were the emedia professionals who built the original website for gratis, saving me from pursuing the technique I'd been using of sending individual e-mails from my home address. Thousands and thousands of people have contributed to those shipments, which still continue, and I have met very few of them. Now and then an e-mail comes from a recipient and the internet makes a full circle from the days when Philip Emeagwali left Biafra and got computers chatting to each other, right through to today when we can work behind the headlines to do what is right and good, with very little effort. 2001 was a year of mind-blowing wonder as ordinary people around the world and across Aotearoa New Zealand helped me fill that first container.
Fiona Lovatt Davis - Tuesday 2/11
I really wanted to work for Webmedia and was close to sending off my CV, only to be thwarted by their collapse. Kiwiflatmates was hilarious. I remember the organiser being annoyed that the girls were wearing bikinis in the shower. Who will pay for the sexy live streams then? (And again I lament that NZ never had a proper Big Brother show...)
Robyn - Sunday 24/10
In 2001 the Illy Group (a bunch of IT and creative types meeting in the former Illy Café in Blair Street) had come up with the idea of using Wellington's CityLink and connected computers as a virtual computing grid. The RingRoad project was completed over Easter weekend 13-16 April 2001 with the help of John Hine from VUW. We were able to create a stable software platform computing a 3-D weather simulation running five Sun work stations in parallel across the broadband fibre network. Crosstalk and software shaping issues created significant commercialisation issues, but it was an early and impressive example of grid computing.
Chris Lipscombe - Sunday 24/10 | . It did.
HDU - Schallblute (Fire Works - 2001)
Originally known as High Dependency Unit, as they honed their name down to the acronymatic HDU so too was their sound refined and perfected. "Schallblute" kicks off on one memorable guitar riff soon joined by a gentle bass underhinge and sharp precise drumming. Then the foot is removed from the pedal (but which one? there are so many) before the final onslaught builds and some distant vocals dramatically fade into consideration. Watch the great but little viewed video. - Roger Shepherd
The sound of a small bubble popping
Despite our own '90s tech boom never escalating to anywhere near the heights of the USA, a year into the new millennium the after effects of overseas markets contracting hit home for some local Internet companies. This was particularly the case for those that had grown through offshore expansion.
One high-profile example was the web design company WebMedia. Back when most company websites were still being built by the owner's tech-savvy nephew for a pittance, a few large web design companies with 40+ employees had managed to develop. When they went the same way as their US dotcom brethren, it would be nearly a decade for web design agencies of their size to be seen again. From the fallout though, a number of smaller companies were formed that would go on to win awards and build some of our most loved sites.
In early 2001, the good times seemed set to continue forever for the darlings of the local web design community. In Auckland they partied it up at 'Grok' (geek for 'to understand') parties, organised by publisher IDG to imitate the pre-crash high-life in tech communities such as San Francisco. Being a geek was finally (as) sexy (as it would get).
In April, WebMedia rewarded its 45 employees by flying them to Amsterdam for a knees-up, taking their own DJs and journalists along for the ride. The celebration of their hard work and worldwide recognition, particularly in Europe, was unbeknownst to the them actually their last hurrah as they were forced to close down after payment for a major contract fell through a few months later. One staffer said later, "What do you mean a million-dollar, ultra-designed, multi-lingual music sales site built in Flash isn't going to be an overnight success?! Oh, you did the deal on a handshake too? Good luck with that".
Jacob Briars
About the Internet opened up the world of cocktails to New Zealand.
From Napster to BitTorrent
2001 was a bad year even for Internet ventures not built to make money. Napster's brief time in the sun came to the end with a parade of lawsuits. It would re-emerge as a paid service a year later, but as we had flocked to it only because it was free, we soon turned elsewhere. Technology came to the rescue with the launch of BitTorrent. At first it was used to replace Napster as our go-to technology for acquiring music, but as more of us got broadband, it would impact the bottom line of movie studios in the same way Napster had turned the music industry on its head.
Not even the printed word was safe in 2001 with the launch of Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia. For the first few years, the content was far from comprehensive – not yet the cut-and-paste solution to homework that students love and teachers loathe today. But New Zealanders soon found entries relevant to our interests and helped to grow it into the site it is today.
Cheaper, but slower broadband
We could, at least, all comfortably load Wikipedia on our Internet connections in New Zealand. BitTorrent, however, was another matter as it enforced sharing of files as well as downloading them. Thankfully broadband solutions were becoming more available and affordable by 2001.
Telecom sought to address cost concerns with its Jetstream DSL service by releasing the 'Jetstart' package that offered a flat-rate DSL account – meaning no worries about excess data charges. This was appealing, but the capped speed of 128kbit/sec was only three times faster than dial-up and not even considered broadband by most overseas measures.
Businesses in certain sectors were becoming increasingly willing to pay the price for real broadband, realising that it opened up invaluable 'digital trade routes' nationally and internationally. For many, a major broadband selling point was that we could ship large files off to the likes of printers - displacing expensive and time-consuming physical media and couriers.
Michael Gregg
About how the Internet opened up digital trade routes for business.
Business-to-business successes
As a result of advantages such as this, businesses were starting to flock to the Internet; 1200 new domain names being registered a month. By the end of the year, there were over 100,000 .nz domains registered, mostly in the commercial space. Many were put off business-to-consumer plays by the dotcom bust, concentrating instead on delivering or utilising online business-to-business services.
These services and sites targeted at business users - especially those that used the web as a low-cost delivery mechanism would emerge over the next few years as a second bubble, to become known as web 2.0 by the middle of the decade.
William Cass
Talks about deciding to be a web mediated business from day one.
There were visible business sites like NZ Stock Exchange's new site that made it easier for investors to track their portfolio's performance, and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise newly launched directory of NZ exporters. But behind-the-scenes uses of the Internet were starting to emerge. What would have been proprietary network services a decade prior were now zipping around the Internet with regular traffic.
Mike Roan
How the Internet opened up the local energy market.
Government support services
As well as supporting business with the likes of the NZTE export directory the government also funded projects that were big hits with tech-savvy youth in 2001. NZQA's site redevelopment, for example, allowed students to repeatedly hit refresh on their browser rather than wandering up and down to the letterbox in anticipation of their bursary results.
Financial advice site Sorted launched this year, immediately winning awards from the likes of Netguide for its online calculators – the now all-too-familiar mouse mascot there from day one.
Kiwi "Big Brother" online
Just a couple of years after launch, Trade Me was picking up steam. As today highlighting interesting auctions was a traffic drawcard. In 2001 one such case was the auction of computing gear used by the Kiwiflatmates website that had closed down earlier that year.
The number of dot.nz domain names registered by May
By May 2001, the number of dot.nz domain names clicks past the 100,000 mark, a growth of 25,000 on the previous six months.
Launched in mid-2000, Kiwiflatmates had been our very own Internet 'Big Brother', allowing site visitors to view the lives of a set of flatmates in an Auckland villa through a set of webcams. We could chat live with the contestants (the now clichéd weekly expulsions from the online show would lead to a winner) and even follow them into the spa and bedrooms… for a $20US/month fee.
Objecting to the priceyness of this digital voyeurism, local hackers saw fit to break into the site and liberate the paid video streams for anyone to see. With a manifesto that objected to the 'unoriginal idea' and the media's attention on the larger IT players over what they perceived as more interesting ventures outside the mainstream, the hackers mostly succeeded in getting the venture extra promotional mileage with the stunt before the series was cancelled.
It seemed that New Zealanders had better places to spend their money online. The sight of Amazon.com packages arriving at homes and workplaces was becoming increasingly commonplace, even if the NZ dollar was worth nearly half of what it is today against the US dollar. Buoyed by this local operators would start to get back into business-to-consumer plays in the next few years.
Scoop News [b.1999]
It's the best New Zealand resource for gathering information for study purposes, and also for entertainment and informative purposes. There is soooooo much content which is unavailable through other websites. everything is on there and it seems to be all from the original source. [ View Site ]
iStart - technology in business [b.2001]
iStart was all about turning business on to the burgeoning potential of eCommerce. The .com bubble had burst, but business had only just started to really see the benefits of streamlining processes with integrated technology. iStart brought real stories of businesses who had decided to lead the way for others to follow. [ View Site ]
Tomorrow: Whether broadband or not, mostly not, 60% of us had access to the Internet by the end of 2001. So 2002 saw more of the country getting their shopping online. But which consumers found themselves in a sticky situation?
Internet defamation case Hardnews from Amsterdam Kiwiflatmates hacked
I wrote a blog about Antarctica in 2001, back when new blog posts still scrolled down the side | 1,933 |
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Stylishly renovated from the floor up, this sunny north facing unit captures magic city and water views.
Upon entrance, you'll instantly fall in love. Whether it's<|fim_middle|> built in wardrobes and the second bedroom is also of good size and offers built ins.
The modern bathroom/laundry is located close by and offers a roomy walk in shower with recess.
Situated on a huge 656m2 (approx.) block with its own access from Peel Street, there is plenty of scope to further landscape or fence.
Located just a short drive to Launceston CBD, Kings Meadows or Old Tudor Shopping Complex, this property certainly ticks a lot of boxes for the astute investor or owner occupier. | the city and river views, the sunny open plan living space or the on trend grey kitchen with bamboo bench tops & flooring, there is certainly plenty to love about this two-bedroom unit.
The main bedroom is spacious with a full wall of | 47 |
June 2, 2019 by remember
Victory celebrations
Although hostilities ceased with the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the First World War did not end officially until the Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919. In Britain, peace was celebrated on 19 July that year, with a Victory Parade in London as the main event.
A camp for the troops taking part was set up in Kensington Gardens and thousands of civilians flocked to the capital for the festivities. Nearly 15,000 British Empire servicemen took part in the parade, led by Allied commanders including Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
Kingsley Peace Celebration 1919
It's unclear what if any celebrations took place in Kingsley Parish. As stated above the date officially was 19th July. However commemorative mugs produced to mark the celebration locally seem to have been misprinted as they state the date of the celebration was 19th June.
We would be grateful if anyone has any stories, eapecially Kingsley related as regards the Peace Celebrations of a century ago.
Kingsley<|fim_middle|> regimental history of his Tank Regiment was purchased and searches done to track down his family. Finally in 2016 his grandson Stephen was traced to Sheffield and through him another grandson Michael who lives in California.
As a result, we learned how he may have died, why he was in Kingsley and what he looked like.
James died it seems early in the morning when he exited his tank to have a smoke and was shot by a sniper. Why he was in Kingsley is still not 100% clear but what is known is he was not really a plumber. The Wildgoose family owned and ran a large-scale building and plumbing business and its highly likely James was in the village overseeing work as Bolton's where there was an expansion at the factory to deal with the war work coming their way. Its only a presumption but may well be correct.
The date of James' death is unclear, both 8th and 9th May are given from various sources. To read more about James click this link HERE
January 22, 2018 by remember
Shrouds of the Somme
The Shrouds of the Somme is a long-running project to commemorate those lost on the Somme in 1916.
Initially, it commemorated the almost 20,000 men killed on the first day of the battle a figure never surpassed before or since in terms of the loss of men killed in one day. The overall casualty figures were in excess of 57,000.
This took the form of miniature figures wrapped in a white shroud that were displayed in Bath and elsewhere around the country.
It has now developed to commemorate the some 72,000 men on the Thiepval Memorial who have no known grave – the 'Missing of the Somme'
To read more of the project click the image here –
The Shrouds project has now joined forces with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to gather as many stories as possible of the men who died and have no known grave. Kingsley has four such men and we have previously supplied their stories to the Missing of the Somme project and have now done the same to the Shrouds of the Somme.
The men are Charles Allen, George Price Bevans, Isaac Hammond and Arthur Keene.
To read each man's story click on the links and you will be taken to the CWGC site where you can put the men's name in and search – sadly at present there is not a unique web address for each man.
CWGC Shrouds Site | Peace Celebration Mug
Cenotaph
The architect Sir Edwin Lutyens designed a cenotaph – an 'empty tomb' to honour the dead – for the marching troops to salute as they passed along Whitehall.
His simple and non-denominational monument was represented on the day of the Victory Parade by a temporary structure of wood and plaster. The permanent stone memorial was unveiled on Armistice Day 1920. It is now the scene of the annual National Service of Remembrance.
Celebrations and memorial services took place all over the country. But there was some criticism that this was too extravagant when so many ex-servicemen were now unemployed.
In Manchester, demobilised soldiers marched with slogans like 'Honour the dead – remember the living', and to demand 'work not charity'.
Some argued that the money would be better spent supporting returning servicemen who had suffered physical and mental injuries.
At a time when revolutionary ideas were sweeping across Europe, Lord Derby's scheme was very unpopular. On 9 December 1918, men of the Royal Artillery stationed at Le Havre burnt down several depots in a riot.
On 3 January 1919, frustrated soldiers mutinied at Folkestone when they heard they were being sent back to France. Later that month, a mutiny at Calais involving around 20,000 men witnessed the temporary formation of soldiers' councils.
Crisis averted
In response, the new Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, introduced a new scheme in January 1919.
Based on age, length of service and the number of wounds a man had received, it ensured that the longest-serving soldiers were generally demobilised first.
The new system defused a dangerous political situation, although problems still occurred.
Empire troops
Demobilised Commonwealth soldiers were often left waiting for long periods until transport could be found to ship them home. In March 1919, a mutiny at a Canadian camp in Rhyl was only suppressed after several men were killed.
The men had been living in overcrowded conditions and several had died of flu during the winter. Over 40 rioters were later court-martialled. Twenty-four were tried and convicted of mutiny, but many sentences were later commuted.
On the whole, however, demobilisation was a success.
Courtesy of National Army Museum https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/peace-and-commemoration
The second edition is published today, the 11th November 2018. There are only 50 copies if you want one do get in touch via this page. We can post out.
There was always an intention to publish an online version of the book. A proper eBook was both costly and technically a challenge but via the link below you can download it in a PDF format which should be readable on most eBook readers, tablets, and computers.
All the Kingsley Men 2018
William Brindley died 100 Years Ago Today
War is always cruel and fate had it that William Brindley was to lose his life just 9 days before the end of the war. he was the twenty-third man with links to the parish to lose his life. His service record does not survive but he joined the army its believed in late 1917 and was posted to the Lancashire Fusiliers.
His father is not known and he was to some degree brought up by his grandmother. We have not traced any descendants and we have no picture of him.
Two members of the project team visited Williams grave which is situated on the roadside as you enter a French village in 2016. We wondered at the time if we were the first to specifically visit him and it's likely we were. He lies with a number of his comrades who also lost their lives on that day. Two days later his battalion was withdrawn from what was their last engagement of the war.
Not far from where Williams battalion was positioned was the Manchester Regiment in which Wilfred Owen the war poet was a Lieutenant. He died on 4th November.
William's story is to be found HERE
All the Kingsley Men Second Edition at the printers
In April 2017 when the book was first published we were under no illusion that our work was a definitive list of those men who came from the parish and who served in WW1.
Indeed on the launch day, we had one further man confirmed and in the coming weeks and months, another 21 men were identified mainly by our research following up further lines of enquiry.
Photos of existing men were unearthed and more became know of them.
In total the number now identified stands at 182 men and a woman who served with 29 dying during the war or after as a result of their service.
An online book was always the intention but in the last few weeks, we have decided to self-fund a small run of 50 second edition books. These are now at the printers and will we hope be ready to sell on 11th November at St Werburgh's Church after the morning service.
The cost is £5 which will cover our costs.
Additionally, the online version will be available free of charge from this website on the same day.
Right up until the last minute more information was coming in. We are delighted to say we have been provided with a photo of Rowland Burston in uniform (he died in 1917) and also now know far more about Thomas Gibson who survived. Following a family death, his medals and photo's were discovered and we are pleased to say his entry in the book is now fully updated.
Rowlands sister Frances married Thomas and we are hopeful we can shed more light on her two brothers who also served Ernest and Herbert but that work is ongoing.
Centenary of the end of World War One
The 11th of November 2018 marks the centenary of the end of World War One and is an opportune moment to pause and reflect on the events of a century ago.
Many Kingsley men would begin to return from the war, indeed a few had already returned due to injuries and illness. Ernest Capewell, Arthur Carr, and Harry Carr were among those invalided out of the service.
Those who came back brought with them both physical and mental scars and of course 25 men did not return having been killed during the war. The last two men to die in 1918, John Salt and Kenneth Lovatt did so after the Armistice.
In the years after the war, four more men were to die as a result of their service.
In recent years the sacrifice and suffering of our servicemen and women have come to the fore and now as we near this auspicious centenary it is only right we pay our collective respects to those who served all those years ago and still do to this day.
The Kingsley Remembers Project has joined forces with the Parish Council, St Werburgh's Church and The British Legion to host a series of events in the run-up to the 11th November and on the day itself.
We are grateful that the Parish and District Councils have donated over £400 to ensure we can do justice to the events we are holding.
The images below are from a flyer that has been delivered in the Kingsley Holt News and will be delivered in Kingsley in the next few days. Do take time to see what's on and where and do make an effort to attend.
The British Legion in the run up to the 11th will have a display of Poppies at the Methodist Chapel in Kingsley Holt and outside the old Wesleyan Chapel on High Street Kingsley. At the War Memorial there will be another display of Poppies, 29, one for each man who died as a result as well as 9 blue or violet Poppies, one for each type of animal that was used in the war effort.
On 11th November there will be a series of events from dawn until dusk involving the Battles Over national tribute to those who served.
6 am – a Scottish Piper will play at the War Memorial. There will be free refreshments to ward off the autumnal cold.
10.55 am – traditional Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial (be in place for 10.50am) followed by a service at St Werburgh's Church.
After the service there will be a display of the research undertaken by the project team, free refreshments and the launch of a limited edition of the All the Kingsley Men (50 copies) which includes 22 more men who served, extra pictures and more on those from the first edition.
An online version of the book will also be launched as a free download.
6.55pm – at the War Memorial there will be the playing of the Last Post (we are after a trumpet or cornet player to play live – get in touch if you know of someone) At 7pm a Beacon designed and made by local man Dan Lucas will be lit (again as part of a national series of beacons).
Following the reading of the names of the 29 men who lost their lives at 7.05pm the bells of St Werburgh's will ring out for peace as they did in 1918.
All are then invited to return to St Werburgh's for hot soup and refreshments free of charge. The displays will still be there and the book on sale.
Moses Holland – Died 100 Hundred Years Ago Today
Vis-en-Artois CWWG Cemetary
The 5th October 1918 saw the death of Private Moses Holland who had links to Kingsley Holt, Consall and Whiston.
At the time of his death, he was just 18 years old. Tragically he has no known grave but is commemorated at the beautiful Vis-en-Artois Commonwealth War Graves Cemetary in France. He is one of around 10,000 men remembered their who have no known grave.
To read about Moses Holland click HERE
The Kingsley Remembers Project is nearing its conclusion after over 4 years which has seen some notable achievements. As well as works around the War Memorial and the book All The Kingsley Men the project team have visited the graves and memorials to 23 of the 29 men lost in WW1 and placed a Poppy Cross on each.
The last three to be visited this last summer were Robert Miles Heywood, Jim Beech, and James Meakin.In respect of James Meakin an extra cross was placed on behalf of a relative Cathy Thompson. Pictured are their graves from the visits.
Finally, the project in conjunction with the local Britsh Legion branch, the Parish Council and St Werburgh's Church are planning a series of events from dawn until dusk on 11th November with funds provided by the Parish and District Council. More to follow.
Robert Myles Heywood grave
The grave of Jim Beech
The last resting place of James Meakin
August 8, 2018 by remember
George Ramsell died 100 years ago today
George Ramsell was serving with the Tank Corps and had been in the army and serving in France for almost three years when he was killed.
His story is HERE
He still has family living locally who keep his memory alive.
George is buried at the Hangard Community Cemetery Extension in France which is pictured above. The project visited his grave in August 2016.
June 13, 2018 by remember
Centenary of the death of Colin Capewell
The 26th May this year marked the centenary of the death of Colin Capwell who died as the result of gas poisoning whilst serving with the North Staffordshire Regiment in France.
His two brothers also served, Frederick was taken a prisoner and Ernest was wounded. The family came from Kingsley Moor and Colin joined up within weeks of the outbreak of the war and was trained as a Lewis Mchine Gunner.
Colin's nephew Peter Capewell, son of Ernest, has been a great source of information to the project providing a wealth of information in relation to the men and families from Kingsley Moor.
Colin's story can be read here with more information about him and his two brothers here
May 10, 2018 by remember
James Henry Wildgoose – died 100 years ago 8th / 9th May
James Henry Wildgoose has been one of the projects most fascinating characters. A man whose surname does not appear to be local, who has no relatives in the area but appears on both St Werburgh's memorial and also on the wayside cross memorial on Dovedale Road.
Our initial enquiries four and a half years ago led to a man from Matlock who was a plumber, we then found references to him and his wife in Kingsley from late 1916 and early 1917.
James who seems to have come to the village in 1916 /17 quickly became active in village life, taking part in farewell parties to men off to the forces, hosting whist drives at the Reading Room (now village hall) and other activities.
At our project launch event, we were told of a local residents mother who as a young girl recalled that her mother as saying how sorry she was for the families two young boys as their father was called up and never came back. We discovered that they lived at Hallcroft on Hazles Cross Road but after James was killed the family moved back to Matlock but clearly some three years after the war he was still remembered and recorded on our war memorials.
Determined to find out more about him, the | 2,854 |
New Indiana exploration grants helping Earlhamites evaluate careers, confront 'deathly fears'
Grant will expand Chinese language studies, cultural exploration at Earlham
Earlhamites enriching youth through new computer coding course
Field hockey fuels Megan's '17 passion for enhancing student access to college
Spotlight on undergraduate research: Analyzing rare neolithic jade artifacts in China
'88<|fim_middle|> attract 3.5 million visitors. Those transactions result in ripple effect throughout the Indiana economy, generating about $5.4 billion in total economic activity.
To learn more about Earlham's contributions to the state, or to explore the ICI's study, visit icindiana.org/economicimpact. | alumnus managing Peace Corps' Human Capital Program
Happy 102nd birthday, Landrum!
Go Quakers! New athletics website, app now available
EC choirs to perform in three Midwestern cities as part of 2016 choir tour
Earlhamites speak out against global tragedies, plan march in Richmond
Earlham College is a significant driver of economic growth across Indiana, according to a new study released by the Independent Colleges of Indiana (ICI).
With 400 employees and 1,100 students, the Earlham community contributed about $91 million to Indiana's economy and attracted 29,000 visitors to the state during the 2017-18 academic year.
"This study is an important reminder of the significant contributions that Indiana's independent colleges make not only in educating students, but also in contributing to the economic vibrancy of their community and region," says Earlham President Anne Houtman. "We are deeply committed to the success of Richmond and Wayne County and proud of the contributions we make, both directly and indirectly, to the entire state of Indiana."
Earlham is among Richmond's largest employers and serves as an important intellectual and cultural hub for the state. A not-for-profit college, Earlham is committed to advancing the social good through innovation, community engagement and service, often working side-by-side with organizations that deliver critical services for neighbors living in the region. Earlham's graduates also work in a number of Indiana industries, including healthcare, business, technology, government and civic affairs, education, social services, spiritual life and the arts.
Earlham, Forward Wayne County partnering to transform the lives of 25,000 neighbors
The ICI's report also highlights Earlham's broader contributions to the state, which include:
Purchasing $45.5 million in goods and services from Indiana businesses;
Supporting more than nearly 900 jobs statewide;
Generating $17.2 million in total taxes; and
Constructing $23 million in capital projects.
Across the state, the ICI's 29 other affiliated institutions are having a similar impact.
ICI's 30 member institutions are educating about 88,355 students, ranking Indiana 13th nationwide in terms of enrollment in private colleges and universities.
ICI institutions, as a sector, represent the 7th largest employer in the state with more than 22,443 people working directly for those institutions, accounting for a total of 50,000 jobs affiliated with those schools.
Statewide, ICI schools directly purchase $2.8 billion in goods and services from Indiana businesses and | 554 |
Category Archives: Politico.com
>Supreme Court justices 'participated in political strategy sessions' before Citizens United
>Has the time finally come to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Supreme Court rulings of two justices, Scalia and Thomas for conflicts of interest and the selling of their decisions ?
After reading the following that was post over at Rawstory.com I am<|fim_middle|>, Steve Lonegan | beginning to think so:
On the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, which overturned nearly a century of restrictions on campaign spending, a progressive group has asked the Department of Justice to look into "conflicts of interest" two justices may have had when issuing the ruling.
In a petition to be sent to the department this week, Common Cause will argue that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the campaign finance decision because of their involvement with Koch Industries, a corporation run by two conservative activists who many say directly benefited from Citizens United.
"It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision," the letter alleges, as quoted at Politico.
The group will urge the department to disqualify Scalia and Thomas from the ruling. If that were to happen, the Supreme Court could vacate the ruling, effectively returning the campaign finance restrictions that existed until 2010. But, as Common Cause itself admits, the odds are against it.
At the center of the group's claims is a document from Koch Industries unearthed last fall by ThinkProgress and the New York Times. In an invitation to a Palm Springs retreat to be held this month, Charles Koch boasted that previous events were attended by Scalia and Thomas.
Read more >>> Here
Filed under Common Cause, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, NY Times, Politico.com, Raw Story, Think Progress, U.S Supreme Court
>Health reform's benefits kick in
>By REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN posted at Politico.com
Six months ago, President Barack Obama signed the new health reform legislation that will bring down health care costs for American families and small businesses, expand health coverage to an additional 32 million Americans and end the widespread abuses in the health insurance industry. The Affordable Care Act is the most groundbreaking reform of health care coverage since Medicare. It reduces the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the next 20 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Americans are already benefiting from several important provisions that have taken effect. More than 4 million small businesses are eligible for $40 billion in tax credits, helping them offer employee health insurance coverage. Children with pre-existing conditions who have long been denied coverage now have access to a health plan in every state, including Maryland. Seniors in the Medicare Part D program are now receiving an annual supplement of $250 as the first installment toward closing the notorious "doughnut hole." No longer will seniors be forced to choose between food or heat and lifesaving medications. Early retirees are also benefiting, because the program helps employers continue their health coverage.
This week, some crucial health care consumer protections begin. This new Patients' Bill of Rights helps Americans obtain better care, lower their costs and improve their health coverage security.
Health insurance companies will no longer be able to drop people's coverage when they get sick and need health care the most. Young adults — the largest population of uninsured Americans before passage of this law — can now remain on their parents' health insurance plan until their 26th birthday. Health plans can no longer impose lifetime limits on coverage, and annual limits are to be phased out over three years — a dramatic change for families, because more than 60 percent of people who declared bankruptcy in 2007 cited medical bills as a reason, and medical costs have only increased since.
Over time, the Affordable Care Act will prohibit insurance companies from denying anyone coverage based on pre-existing conditions, create insurance exchanges so that Americans have the same health plan choices as members of Congress and implement the biggest tax cut for health care in U.S. history to ensure that middle-class families can afford insurance. The new law puts Americans, not the health insurance companies, in charge of their own health care.
Unfortunately, Washington Republicans want to repeal the law and take away these important consumer protections and benefits. Under their plan, things would grow worse and the deficit would increase. The CBO found that the Republicans' plan would increase the number of uninsured to 52 million — higher than today.
The Republican plan would also make coverage unaffordable for millions of Americans, eliminate tax credits that help people cover their premiums and remove assistance to small businesses that offer coverage for their employees.
I am proud that these reforms, enacted by Congress, are helping make a difference in Americans' lives today, and I am committed to ensuring the legislation is implemented successfully.
To learn more about these provisions and other ways that health reform will help you, please visit http://www.healthcare.gov/.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) serves as assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Filed under health care reform, Politico.com, President Obama, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, The Affordable Care Act
Raw Story Exclusive: 'Ellie Light' regrets damage done to Obama, blasts right-wing 'conspiracy theorists'
Rawstory.com –
WASHINGTON — In an interview with Raw Story, prolific Obama supporter and letter-writer "Ellie Light" slammed conservatives claiming the published writings were part of a White House "astroturf" operation, and regretted the "damage" they've done to the president.
The interview was conducted before the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that the deep, husky-voiced "woman" publicly calling herself "Ellie Light" was actually a man named Winston Steward. Most initially believed he was a woman, probably due to his mannerisms and tone, including this reporter.
Steward, 51, is a traveling health care worker based in Frazier Park, California. He admitted to being the author of letters published in dozens of newspapers across the country — sent with fake addresses from a variety of locations — under the name "Ellie Light."
"The damage has been done," Steward told Raw Story, "with blog posts and YouTube videos. I don't think anything can undo that."
He ripped conservatives for their unsubstantiated allegations about his ostensible affiliations with the White House.
hey are conspiracy theorists, there's no doubt. Apparently I'm a space alien, that's the newest thing on one Web site, so it just goes on and on. The Michelle Malkin people — they're clowns. We know they're clowns."
Steward's alias, Ellie Light, became the subject of widespread conservative fascination after one letter he wrote in defense of President Obama, first published by Politico's Ben Smith, subsequently appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
The story about his letter's numerous appearances with different addresses was first broken on Friday, January 22 by Sabrina Eaton of The Plain Dealer newspaper before catching the attention of conservative Web sites such as Michelle Malkin's blog, Patterico's Pontifications and the National Review.
Following allegations that he wasn't a real person and merely a ghost-name for an Obama official, Steward posed as a woman and claimed his name was "Ellie Light" in a radio interview on Tuesday, claiming that name was real but admitting he was "wrong" for "giving false address" while submitting the letter to various regional newspapers.
A flurry of conservative bloggers have since suggested — and outright accused — Steward of being an Obama administration plant. Many of them, including Michelle Malkin, declared he was part of White House "astroturf" activities to deceptively burnish its credentials.
He told Raw Story he believed the whole issue had been blown far out of proportion.
No evidence has been unearthed linking Steward to the Obama administration or the Democratic Party. He said he is not and has never been a activist for a political advocacy group.
"Affiliated with an organized group? No," he said bluntly. "I've never been affiliated with anyone like that."
Steward, who for a brief period after Obama got elected wrote diaries for the Daily Kos, said he hopes people will take the time to understand the situation rather than jump to conclusions.
"For those who pay attention a little longer, it could end up being good, but for the people who are only going to pay attention for the 'Balloon Boy' period it'll be 'oh, another one of those Obama things'."
He said if he could go back in time, he "probably would have written the letter and told them all I was in the Los Angeles area."
Criticizes Democrats: 'not as loyal' as Republicans
Steward declined to criticize Obama, calling him "the most remarkable elected official," and criticized Democrats and progressives for allegedly wanting instant gratification of their wishes.
"Democrats have abandoned the president that they practically worshiped such a short time ago because he couldn't tend to their needs in the first twelve months of office. And they're behaving like a bunch of babies," he said.
"They need to show that there's a groundswell of support for the president so that the yahoos have nothing to talk about."
Though he accepted that there are genuine critics of Obama on the left, he criticized Democrats for not being as loyal to Obama as Republicans were to former President George W. Bush.
"Think about the Republicans that had to suck it in in 2003 and 2004 when Bush was caught lying over and over and over again," he said. "All the Republicans stood there and said 'the president has his reasons, we trust the president.'"
"And we laughed at them, because they were all liars. But at least they were loyal."
Steward said he will continue writing letters to newspapers in support of Obama and hoped more Democrats will do the same.
(Editor's Note: Article originally confused Winston Steward's last name. Thanks to the multiple readers who noticed the mistake. Raw Story regrets the error, and hopes Eric Arthur Blair's estate will not mind.)
Filed under Cleveland Plain Dealer, Daily Kos, Democrat, Ellie Light, health care reform, National Review, Politico.com, President Obama, Raw Story, Republicans, Winston Steward
The GOP's governor problem
Politico.com-
By: Nathan Daschle
Kevin Bacon's opening argument in "A Few Good Men," the 1992 movie about the fictional prosecution of two Marines charged with murder, is a shining moment in the history of Hollywood. After rattling off a series of statements that, if true, would appear to doom the defendants, Bacon places his argument in the seemingly unbreakable frame: "These are the facts of the case. And they are undisputed." Set aside for a moment that Bacon ended up losing the trial, the oratory is a reminder of the raw power of simple facts.
Recent political news has been dominated by the Massachusetts Senate race and its meaning for the Democratic Party. Buried by the coverage, however, is a bit of bad news for the GOP. The government released the December jobs report, and once again, four of the five states with the highest rates of unemployment were those with Republican governors, the self-proclaimed leaders of the so-called GOP Comeback.
Taken in isolation, that fact might seem trivial, like hundreds of other talking points that make their way around Washington on a regular basis. But this one is different because it's part of a larger trend: Republican governors, as a whole, vastly underperform their Democratic counterparts on virtually every economic or fiscal score. In addition to high unemployment numbers, states with Republican governors are far less likely to be on the Forbes list of "Best States for Business" (only one of the Top 5 has a Republican governor), score a AAA rating from the major credit rating agencies (only two of the seven have GOP governors) or make a real investment in clean technology (only two of the Top 10 clean-tech states have Republican governors).
Perhaps most telling, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, is that throughout the past decade, the size of state governments actually grew more under Republican governors than under Democratic ones. This is true for both traditional ways of measuring the size of government: spending growth and the number of state employees.
These are the facts. And they are undisputed.
These facts are important because they give us an indication of what a "GOP Comeback" would actually look like. We can't look to the epically vapid congressional Republicans sitting in the cheap seats, because they are enjoying the relief of any obligation to come up with an affirmative plan for this country. While we could look to our former president — whom a real-life Bacon would already have convicted on charges of fiscal negligence — voters are tired of hearing about him. Thus, the only relevant data set is the records of Republican governors.
And while the party seems bent on burying these records, the facts are tough to hide. When Republicans are in charge, government is more likely to grow, investors are less likely to have confidence and people are more likely to lose jobs. This is the record of a party in which dogma and rhetoric continue to trump people and results.
Governors are the weak spot for the GOP, not because they are different from the rest of the party, but because they don't have their congressional brethren's privilege of inaction. The governors' recklessness is a matter of public record, a record replete with indisputable facts that impugn the national party's efforts to portray itself as ready to assume authority. Voters interested in making a comparison this fall ought to ask the GOP how it would be different than the record of its governors, though I doubt the party can handle the truth.
Nathan Daschle is executive director of the Democratic Governors Association.
Filed under Democratic Party, GOP Comeback, GOP Governors, Nathan Daschle, Politico.com, undisputed facts
Obama Takes On the GOP Retreat
He came, He spoke, He conquered…President Obama attended today's Congressional GOP Retreat outside of Baltimore and by all accounts kicked-ass!
The entire ass-whopping was broadcast live on all of the major cable news networks and C-Span. Evidently the beating Obama was placing on the GOP was so brutal that Fox News broke away early from so that they could show a non-news interview with NY Congressman Peter King, while other networks stayed till the end of the 1.5 hour confrontation.
It will be hard for the GOP to get up off the canvass after this one, score this a big knock-out by the President.
Here's a little bit of what Politico had to say about it:
BALTIMORE — President Barack Obama on Friday accused Republicans of portraying health care reform as a "Bolshevik plot" and telling their constituents that he's "doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
Speaking to House Republicans at their annual policy retreat here, Obama said that over-the-top GOP attacks on him and his agenda have made it virtually impossible for Republicans to address the nation's problems in a bipartisan way.
"What happens is that you guys don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me," Obama said. "The fact of the matter is, many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable with your own base, with your own party because what you've been telling your constituents is, 'This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America.' "
Obama's comments came in the midst of an extraordinary back-and-forth with Republican House members — a scene straight out of the House of Commons that played out live on cable TV.
Republicans invited Obama to appear at their annual conference; the president accepted — and then surprised them by asking that cameras and reporters be allowed into the room.
Republicans immediately agreed to the request, but they may be regretting it now.
Again and again, Obama turned the Republicans questions against them — accusing them of obstructing legislation for political purposes and offering solutions that won't work….
You can read the rest >>>Here
You can watch the whole confrontation below from C-Span if you wish.
Filed under Baltimore Maryland, C-Span, Fox News, Politico.com, President Obama, republican retreat
November 9, 2009 · 4:45 pm
Lessons Learned By Governors Races
The following commentary was published on Politico this past Friday and was written by DGA Executive Director Nathan Daschle. It's an interesting take on what the results of last Tuesday's election really means for New Jersey and Virginia as well as, the rest of the Democratic Party in general.
Spend enough time in politics, and you will have your share of good election nights and bad election nights. The key to surviving the bad is learning from the results without dwelling on them; look forward, not backward.
Reflecting on Tuesday's elections, I am disappointed, but not discouraged. The losses came from two electorates with an affinity for demonstrating their independence from the White House. For 24 and 36 years straight, New Jersey and Virginia, respectively, have elected governors of the opposite party of the president. Couple that streak with the worst recession since the Great Depression, and it would have been an unprecedented upset if we had won either of these races.
Democrats need to sift through the data, analyze it, and pull out lessons that are instructive for moving forward. At the same time, it would be a costly mistake to simply assume that the Republicans' talking points about this election are valid. There are several things that Tuesday night's results do NOT mean:
1. They do not signal that a Republican "comeback" is imminent. Virginia and New Jersey have gone against the White House for 24 straight years. Unless there's been some under-the-radar comeback every four years since 1985, there is no more indication of Republican resurgence today than there was last week.
2. They do not indicate that President Obama has been politically weakened. Exit polls indicate (and common sense shows) that these were isolated races that, while subject to historical trends, were not a referendum on our president.
3. They do not mean that Democrats are in trouble in 2010. To the contrary, we found some encouraging evidence in the exit polls. In New Jersey, for example, voters embraced Gov. Jon Corzine's agenda on the economy by a 58-36 margin. He was defeated because other local issues superseded his economic agenda, but we are encouraged that voters preferred our economic message to the Republicans' attempt to return to economic policies that put Wall Street ahead of Main Street.
There are, however, some important lessons that Democrats should take to heart:
1. Democrats still carry a burden of proof with independents and surge voters. These voters don't want to let Republicans give tax breaks to the wealthy while working families struggle, but our incumbent governors and challengers need to underscore how they're creating and saving jobs. There's no question that Democrats have the right vision and plans for restoring prosperity to this country – our charge is to get our message out and, for incumbents, show results.
2. While Republicans with no solutions will continue to use federal issues as red herrings in state races, we must show at the national level that we can govern. The American people expect results. They need to see how they're better off with Democrats in charge. I am confident that we'll make significant progress on health reform and the economy. And in the meantime, our gubernatorial candidates must know that when their opponents try to box them in on federal issues, it's because they have no ideas on the issues that matter.
3. The Republican Party is in disarray and not remotely ready to lead. If this year taught us anything about the other side, it's that they remain a house divided. Who are their leaders – Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin? What do they stand for? Bob McDonnell is a conservative who campaigned as a moderate. Chris Christie won despite himself; certainly not because of a compelling philosophy or agenda. In NY-23, the GOP civil war was on full display. A party still groping for an identity won't attract voters to put them over the finish line.
Tuesday night was the opening battle; now starts the war. We have 37 races next year, including contests in marquee states like California and Florida. Fortunately, Democrats are well-prepared for the fight to come. In part, this is because we used our resources effectively this year: the DGA made record investments in both New Jersey and Virginia, but we resisted pressure to overspend and draw down our 2010 account.
More importantly, however, we are prepared because we have placed Tuesday in the appropriate context; the results are instructive but not foreboding. Democrats have a lot to accomplish, and so long as we continue to advance our agenda and get real results, voters will keep us in power.
Filed under Democratic Governors Association, Nathan Daschle, Politico.com
June 2, 2009 · 10:10 am
GOP Salivating for New Jersey Governorship
By ANDY BARR- Politico
With New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine lagging in the polls, Republicans couldn't be more enthusiastic about their chances of ousting him in November.
But first they must settle an intraparty conflict over who's best suited to do the job — former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie or former Bogota, N.J., Mayor Steve Lonegan. Assemblyman Rick Merkt is also contending for the nomination in Tuesday's GOP gubernatorial primary, though he trails by wide margins in the polls.
The contest pits two wings of the Republican Party against each other, with Christie widely viewed as the moderate conservative with more general election appeal in a Democratic state like New Jersey and Lonegan framed as the more orthodox conservative.
Corzine trailed both GOP candidates, according to a Research 2000/Daily Kos poll released Thursday, with Christie leading the incumbent Democrat 46 percent to 39 percent, with 15 percent undecided. Lonegan held a 3 percentage-point lead over the governor, 43 percent to 40 percent, with 17 percent undecided.
According to the poll, Corzine's favorability rating is just 36 percent, compared with 55 percent who view him unfavorably. Nine percent had no opinion.
In the GOP gubernatorial contest, most polls show Christie leading Lonegan by around 20 percentage points. A May 20 Quinnipiac University poll gave Christie a 56-to-33-point lead.
"It's pretty obvious that it is going to be Christie vs. Corzine," said Quinnipiac pollster Clay Richards. "There was a little doubt for a while that Christie just didn't seem to be catching fire, but in the last few weeks, he definitely has and Lonegan has not."
Christie has been aided in his run by the support of several prominent national Republicans and is seen as having the support of the national party establishment. Former GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Forbes have spent significant time on the stump with Christie and aided the former federal prosecutor in fundraising.
In his endorsement, Romney praised Christie as "a strong conservative voice for balanced budgets, low taxes and more jobs."
Lonegan has sought to turn Christie's establishment support against him by questioning Christie's willingness to let moderate Republicans from outside the state speak on his behalf.
When asked about the endorsements Christie has gotten from popular Republican figures, Lonegan strategist Rick Shaftan quickly interjected, "You mean all these moderate Republicans helping Chris Christie?"
Filed under Chris Christie, Congressional Democrats, Gov. Jon Corzine, Mitt Romney, New Jersey, Politico.com, primary election, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Forbes | 4,844 |
No diet will make you young forever. It's a seductive promise, and it certainly sells plenty of books and supplements, but it's a lie: human beings just do get old and there's no way to prevent it.
But that doesn't mean you need to get old faster than necessary. Accepting your own mortality is one thing; accepting premature disability is very different. Huge numbers of people today just accept any and all health problems after 25 as "aging" and never even consider trying to change their diet or lifestyle to manage those aching knees, twinging back, or ever-expanding beer belly.
Actually, though, a lot of those problems are diet-related, and what's "inevitable" on a typical American diet might not look so inevitable to a person who's actually eating well. So without promising immortality, here's a quick run-down of a few common signs of aging that we often take as unavoidable and how diet can actually help modify them.
Avoid highly refined sugars, especially paired with inflammatory junk oils. Constant high blood sugar, especially combined with other inflammatory factors, is a fast-track to skin aging.
If you're eating Paleo, you've already got those two down pat – just go easy on the nuts and seeds and the Paleo candy, and enjoy your good skin.
Do people inevitably get more forgetful as they age? Maybe, but there's also some evidence that it's modulated by diet. For example, this review suggested a role for antioxidants from fruits, vegetables, and spices in preventing age-related changes in the brain. Considering that older adults often have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables and rarely get enough of them, it does raise the question: is that memory loss inevitable, or is it partly an effect of diet?
Other potentially important nutrients include Omega-3 fats and B vitamins. Supplements specifically haven't panned out as well as researchers hoped, though: possibly there's some kind of synergy among nutrients in whole foods that we haven't been able to replicate in supplement form. In any case, the evidence suggests that a healthy diet is probably better than Wonderbread and a bottle full of pills.
There's also a macronutrient connection. A typical American diet is high in refined carbs and low (or even deficient) in protein and healthy fats. This isn't exactly a recipe for metabolic health: it tends to cause insulin resistance and other problems of carbohydrate metabolism. And those problems are actually a big factor in brain health, including serious neurodegenerative diseases. Alzheimer's in particular is being described as "Type 3 Diabetes" – in other words, a problem of carbohydrate metabolism.
That doesn't mean that "carbs cause Alzheimer's" (here's a great explanation of why it doesn't work like that), and it doesn't mean that improving metabolic health will prevent or cure it: neurological diseases are complicated and have all kinds of different factors. But it does suggest that the kind of brain decline so common on a high-refined-carb Western diet might not be so inevitable in people who eat a little better.
A couple different studies have shown that Paleo works very well for improving insulin sensitivity – if you want to give your metabolic health a boost, a moderate amount of carbs from whole foods is a pretty good trail to follow.
Paleo can also help with the creaky knees, aching fingers, and other bone and joint issues that seem to collect over time.
First of all a fair amount of "age"-related damage is actually years of overuse injuries catching up. The Paleo approach to exercise is designed to avoid exactly this problem: frequent rest days, lots of recovery, and a minimum of pounding out the mileage on harsh concrete sidewalks.
Paleo food is also high in bone-building nutrients, and not just calcium – calcium is important, and it comes from plenty of places other than dairy, but it's not the final word on keeping your hips fracture-free past age 40. Protein, magnesium, and Vitamin D are also important, just to name a few.
Paleo is also protective against the various different forms of arthritis and general joint "aches and pains" because it's a highly anti-inflammatory diet (protecting against osteoarthritis) and eliminates many dietary triggers of autoimmune disease (like rheumatoid arthritis). Yes, some achiness is part of aging, but a lot is just the cumulative effect of years of irritation and inflammation – you don't have to do that to your body<|fim_middle|> grandchildren. Immunosenescence is the fancy word for this; basically, it just means your immune system is getting old.
Older people often have deficiencies in important micronutrients for immune function, like Vitamins B6 and B12, folic acid, iron, and zinc. Is it their age that's causing the immune problems, or is it the deficiency?
Older people also often get too little protein and too few calories. Protein and energy are also important for immune function.
This study also suggests that Vitamin E might be helpful specifically for immune-related aging, and this one also notes the role of probiotics and increased Omega-3 fats.
In other words, maybe immune decline is about nutrition, not just the number of years since you were born. And in that case, it would be modifiable with a nutrient-dense, protein-rich diet.
A good variety of fruits and vegetables.
But at the same time that we're all trying to look so young, we also accept feeling old way too early. Yes, aging is going to happen. But it doesn't have to happen at 35! A lot of the supposedly "inevitable" problems of aging actually have a dietary component – what's "inevitable" on a high-junk diet just isn't "inevitable" in the same way on a nutrient-dense diet of whole foods.
No diet can guarantee immortality. But proper nutrition can go a long way towards preventing what can be prevented, instead of just accepting it as a foregone conclusion. | !
Red meat and egg yolks are delicious sources of important immune nutrients like B vitamins and protein.
Aging is hard on your immune system – it's one of the reasons why common viral diseases like the flu are so much more dangerous in older people than in their children and | 55 |
Bryce Dallas Howard Carried On A Family Tradition On The Set Of Summer Blockbuster Jurassic World By Landing Her Son Theo A Role In The Film.
The actress reveals her dad, filmmaker Ron Howard, kickstarted the trend of allowing his kids appear in his movies when they turned seven - and she has adopted it for her children.
She says, "I was in Parenthood and my<|fim_middle|> uncomfortable in front of the camera, but she would always say yes and help him out.
"He's superstitious and now he can't do a movie without my mom being in the background." | son turned seven during this movie, so he got to be in the movie as an extra and he's in a petting zoo scene and he hugs a dinosaur. There was a guy with kind of a sock puppet... and he hugged the arm. He was pretty good."
Young Theo also landed an extra spot in mum's follow-up movie, Pete's Dragon.
Howard admits the family tradition extends to her mum, who reluctantly appears in all her father's films.
She explains, "My mom and dad were 16 years old when they got together and so by default, when he was making movies with his Super 8 camera in high school, he would ask her if she could be in it. She's not an actress and feels really | 150 |
The often volatile behaviour of UK house prices between 1957 and 1994 is analysed in an annual econometric model. Theory suggests that financial liberalization of mortgage markets in the 1980s should have led to notable shifts in house price behaviour. The evidence supports<|fim_middle|> Geoff Meen, Penelope Rowlatt, Neil Shephard and seminar participants at Bristol, Dublin, NERA and Oxford. David Hendry is due special thanks for unfailing help over the years this research has been in gestation. Responsibility for errors, however, likes with the authors. We are grateful to Rebecca Emerson, Sebastian Galiani and, especially Gavin Cameron for skilled research support. This research was financed in part by ESRC programme grants R000 23 1184 and R000 23 4954. | the predictions of theory, suggesting shifts took place in wealth effects, as in the consumption function, and that real interest rates and income expectations become more important. The presence of transactions costs suggests important non-linearities in house price dynamics. The paper also contains an explicit econometric treatment of expectations, demography, supply spillovers from the rented sector and of composition biases in the official house price index.
We are grateful for comments, on earlier version to the referees and to Janine Aron, Andy Chesher, Nick Coote, Mike Dicks, Steve Martin, | 114 |
RISD's Edna Lawrence Nature Lab hosts a world of creative inspiration
By Anna Carnick
Photo © Josephine Sittenfeld for L'AB/Pamono>
Photo © Josephine Sittenfeld for L'AB/Pamono
Edna Drawing Moths
Courtesy of RISD
Anna Carnick, our Managing Editor, at RISD's Nature Lab
Edna Lawrence with owl and scowl
Edna Lawrence with skull
Edna Lawrence and class, October 1951
Ash Crescent Lounge by Vonnegut / Kraft
Delhi Lamp by Pletz
In a creative mind, something as seemingly small as a speckled seashell or brightly colored butterfly can inspire a fashion season's worth of fabric patterns. A sea sponge's form can give rise to an über modern lampshade, while a skeleton's bones can inform a modern jewelry piece. And the structure of a beetle's wings can spark everything from the shape and motion of a daringly sleek car door to the way a pair of pantyhose is folded and packaged.
That sort of organically inspired thinking is at the heart of the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, a charming and quite quirky, hands-on natural history collection and studio space at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Part museum, part lending library, and all classroom, the lab features an estimated 100,000 specimens from each of the five scientific kingdoms (most of which visitors are encouraged to poke, prod, and even take home). It has served as a source of biomimetic stimuli for RISD students and faculty across disciplines for decades, as well as a forum for exploring the often subtle connections among man, nature, art, and design.
From the moment one enters the Nature Lab, which exists in two floors of RISD's Waterman Building (notably, the first structure constructed by the school in 1893), it's clear you're in a very special place. From taxidermy creatures like puffer fish and birds floating overhead to a live turtle crawling on the creaky, dark wood floor at your feet—not to mention the thousands of specimens in the Victorian era cabinetry covering the walls—the lab is brimming with life. And those are just the permanent tenants. Over the course of one recent visit, the Nature Lab hosted students sketching samples, masters level microscopic research, a tutorial on scientific poster presentations, plus<|fim_middle|>
Arc Light from Anna Karlin
Juliet Vessels by Anna Karlin, Set of 6
Plumb Pendant Light by Anna Karlin
Milk Day Bed by Anna Karlin
Milk Sling Chair by Anna Karlin
Wooden Chess Piece Stool by Anna Karlin
Tusten Lamp by Pletz
Black Troika Stool or Side Table by Vonnegut / Kraft
Walnut Crescent Lounge by Vonnegut/Kraft | work scholars pinning recent findings for the bug collection and undertaking a spider sample repair; in short, the lab space is in high demand.
There's a curious sense of being simultaneously frozen in time and at the forefront of highly innovative, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative work. The Nature Lab is a rare and seamless combination of the historical and the modern. The lab boasts everything from hundred-year-old plants, minerals, and stuffed and stripped mammals to a gang of more modern human skeletons (led by two standouts called Kurt and Courtney—a clear indication of the era from which they come), as well as a suite of technologically advanced offerings, including photo and video microscopy workstations, digital cameras, computers, and more. On my first visit, I found myself particularly taken with Tiny Town, an old-school library card catalogue whose drawers house thousands of tiny, natural specimens (Need to see what a bat's hands look like up close? Tiny Town has you covered); on my second visit, the entire lab was abuzz with excitement over its newest acquisition, a decidedly cutting-edge scanning electron microscope. There's a curious sense of being simultaneously frozen in time and at the forefront of highly innovative, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative work.
According to Lab Coordinator Betsy Ruppa, who oversees operations and approximately 25 work scholars in the student-run venue each semester (and whose hospitality and knowledge are exceeded only by her charm; she conducted my first tour with a live praying mantis in her hand the entire time), a big part of the lab's magic comes from its hands-on culture, and the resulting sense of openness that permeates the space. "We know we can't keep a pristine collection; we don't even try. There are too many hands touching the samples, and they go in too many backpacks. That's also what's cool about it, though. It's such an amazing resource, and there is so much freedom—more freedom than you'd have in a typical museum or library, for example." In keeping with the spirit of that unusual freedom, if, as happens from time to time, students misplace something they've been lent, they're asked to replace the item with either something in kind or a totally new specimen of their choosing.
Unmediated access has been integral to the collection's identity from the start. When its namesake, RISD alumna (class of 1920) and teacher Edna Lawrence, launched the collection in 1937, her intention was to provide a uniquely interactive environment that would inspire her students. By multiple accounts, Lawrence was a much-loved character—strict but warm, (occasionally) funny, and very talented—who had the remarkable foresight to understand what the lab might become—a place to support and expand both the way that students learn and problem solve as well as the potential connections between art, design, and science over time.
Lawrence taught nature drawing between 1920 and 1974 in what was formerly her classroom, and is the Nature Lab's current main room. During her 50-plus years as a teacher at RISD, she built up the collection through her own gathering expeditions. Every summer, according to the Nature Lab's Director Neal Overstrom, "she'd travel around the world, sometimes to Europe aboard a steamship or a freighter, other times going to the Caribbean and South America. She even drove across country in the 1920s, camping along the way." Slowly, thanks to Lawrence's efforts, along with faculty and student donations, her teaching collection grew into what Overstrom aptly describes as an "intuitive and natural portal to science."
Ctenophores in the RISD Nature Lab © Josephine Sittenfeld for L'AB/Pamono Lawrence retired in the 1970s, and in 1981, the lab was renamed in her honor. Since that time, a series of curators has maintained her legacy and carried on her vision. On any given day, it might host undergraduate, graduate, and faculty guests from the Industrial Design, Architecture, and Apparel Design departments (among others), or even, of special note, RISD students and faculty involved in Rhode Island's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR)—an innovative, multi-school, state-wide effort funded by the National Science Foundation and aimed at making Rhode Island an "international leader in understanding and predicting the response of marine organisms and ecosystems to climate changes and variability." This program—which over the past two summers has included fellowship opportunities for RISD and Brown students to undertake research in science communication around these topics—has led to the expansion of the Nature Lab's aquatic resources, including two large saltwater tanks and special aquariums called kreisels built by RISD students to house ctenophores (tiny jellyfish-like creatures also known as comb jellies).
The breadth of the lab's constantly growing collection falls neatly under the umbrella of a larger school initiative known as STEM to STEAM, which aims to add art and design to the national agenda of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education and research. Championed by RISD President John Maeda, the initiative promotes the idea that scientific and artistic inquiry can be drawn together to foster new, innovative ways of approaching research and problem solving.
That creative, interdisciplinary thinking goes hand-in-hand with the Nature Lab's position as an experimental and exploratory forum. As Overstrom notes, "Edna Lawrence's vision really was remarkable. The way in which it's informing many of these programs, like EPSCoR, which seem to find sort of a quasi-home here, speaks to the fact that this way of explaining a natural science collection has many applications in many emerging conversations about design, about nature inspired design, and even the field of biophilic design; this idea that you have an innate affinity for life and lifelike processes, of understanding the human-nature connection in built environments. The Nature Lab continues to be both a relevant and dynamic resource for all these emerging design disciplines."
"We spend a lot of time thinking about Edna, actually," adds Ruppa. "She was passionate about helping people to draw realistically and to explore and find inspiration in nature—to see connections and patterns throughout species and across kingdoms. She provided the foundation."
In fact, according to Overstrom and Ruppa, some of Lawrence's remaining documents even reveal her thoughts on the lab's future and notions of advanced technologies and even micro-imaging. Says Overstrom, "Her mission was to provide immediate access to specimens, and microscopes allow you access where you might not otherwise. It's just an extension of that. She was quite a forward thinker."
The ever-evolving collection is a unique bridge between the past and the present, with a definitive eye toward the future. And considering the palpable energy and creativity that the students and staff derive from the space, it seems safe to say that Edna Lawrence would be proud. As Ruppa notes, "I could look at the same exact tiny skull as twenty other people, and we'd each be inspired differently. That's what's so great; you never know where someone's going to get their idea."
RISD's Nature Lab seems like a logical place to start.
Anna Carnick
Anna is Pamono's Managing Editor. Her writing has appeared in several arts and culture publications, and she's edited over 20 books. Anna loves celebrating great artists, and seriously enjoys a good picnic.
Images by
Josephine Sittenfeld
Originally from Ohio, photographer Josephine lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her daughter and husband. She received her BA from Princeton University and her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she is a faculty member.
Dune Candelabra by Vonnegut / Kraft
Marty Lamp by Pletz
Marty Lamp II by Pletz
Nocturne Credenza by Vonnegut/Kraft | 1,644 |
News3 News Now Investigators
Ticket troubles: Omaha man in wheelchair among some denied bus rides on ORBT
A disabled veteran had to travel to Metro's offices to pick up an ORBT pass guaranteed to work. It cost him a half day's pay.
By: AARON SANDERFORD (KMTV/FLATWATER FREE PRESS)
OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV/FLATWATER FREE PRESS) — Thousands of Omahans rely<|fim_middle|> like her.
"I think the system is working for some," Johnson said. "But it is not working for those who desperately rely on it."
Cencic, of Metro Transit, said the bus service will remind its drivers again about honoring bus passes. She said Metro already did so during quarterly training sessions.
Metro officials had no immediate tally of how many complaints it had received from people with paper passes being unable to ride. They said they had received "very few."
Cencic urged people told they can't ride to call Metro's customer service line at 402-341-0800. She said they'll try to contact the driver – or another one before the next bus arrives.
Riders who want to exchange passes can call the same number and make arrangements.
"We are always striving to improve communications, just like any company," Cencic said. "We're certainly working from top to bottom to make sure we're all on the same page."
Wright said consistent communication at Metro Transit would help.
"Give me an explanation of how it's supposed to work ... and then follow through with that," Wright said. "Don't have three different people telling me three different things, so I can have a good idea how to plan my day."
Editor's Note: 3 News Now Investigators collaborated with the Flatwater Free Press on this story.
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Contact our investigative team
What do you want us to investigate? | on the bus, including many with disabilities.
But several say they are frustrated after having trouble using some bus tickets — including those distributed by social service agencies.
Their complaints center on how old paper tickets work with Omaha's new rapid bus system, ORBT, which shuttles people down Dodge Street.
The problem: ORBT buses use a new electronic payment system, Umo, that scans a plastic card or a QR code from a cell phone for payment. Older paper cards that work on regular buses won't scan.
Riders say some bus drivers don't accept paper passes to ride ORBT. Metro leaders say those tickets should be accepted, but they're open to exchanging the paper tickets to avoid confusion.
That exchange is causing confusion and frustration of its own.
The problem may well be temporary: Metro vendors and service providers say they are now distributing bus passes that easily work with ORBT. In the meantime, some people who need the Omaha rapid bus have found themselves left behind as their bus literally pulls away.
YMCA fitness trainer Jabari Wright is one such bus rider. He shared his experience with 3 News Now Investigators and the Flatwater Free Press.
Most work days, Wright wheels himself to a downtown bus stop by 6 a.m. He rides an ORBT bus down Dodge Street to Crossroads Mall. From there, he catches a second bus to 72nd and Maple Streets.
He then wheels himself west down the hill to the Maple Street YMCA, where he aims to arrive before his 9 a.m. shift "to settle in, check my emails and drink my coffee."
"I literally use the bus every day to get back and forth to work, various appointments at the VA," he said. "I usually go over to where my kids live and then we, you know, shuffle on down to the school."
He loves ORBT's speed: The rapid service helped cut his commute time by an hour, he said. But the paper bus ticket he has received monthly because of his disability hasn't always worked on the new bus service.
After ORBT started charging fares for the service in November, some drivers told him he couldn't ride with his paper pass.
He got left at the curb. For him, that meant a mad scramble to find someone who could carry his wheelchair in a vehicle. Others shared similar stories with local transportation advocates.
"I got denied, and depending on the driver, I was able to get on one bus, but the next driver didn't allow it," he said. "I ended up having to actually call a Lyft ride to get where I needed to be."
Metro Transit CEO Lauren Cencic said drivers should honor all paper tickets and acknowledged that a driver might have been confused about the policy.
"Anybody can use that on ORBT," she said. "It won't work with the fare boxes or the machines on ORBT, but they just need to have that available on their person in their wallet or on their person to show it to a fare inspector if they're asked."
Thousands of people get paper passes each year from social service agencies around the Omaha area, Metro officials say. The regular price for a monthly pass is $55.
Riders who want to exchange those passes for the newer plastic cards that swipe or scan on ORBT or the new single-use cards can do so in person or exchange them by mail.
But those who choose the mail option might be without a bus pass for days.
Some who want to exchange paper passes, including disabled and elderly riders, will have to visit Metro's downtown headquarters to get a new card that keeps their discount. Their new plastic bus cards include a photo ID, which they'll need to get downtown.
That trip to Metro's main offices at 22nd and Cuming Streets cost Wright four hours and a half-day's pay, he said. He had to take three different buses to get there.
Local transit and mobility advocates, including Mode Shift Omaha's Sarah Johnson, say Metro can do better. She'd like Metro to weigh the benefits – including simplicity – of charging nothing for bus service. ORBT was free for its first year of existence. Nearby Kansas City doesn't charge for bus service.
She said she knows a visually impaired bus rider who is thinking about moving to another city with a bus system that works more reliably for people | 877 |
Q: Eddy current in transformer and its minimization There is a loss in transformer that is known as eddy current loss. It also known as core loss. If we use solid metal instead of laminated layers of iron as core then the eddy current will much compared to the laminated layer.
My question is "What is eddy current? How it is produced in transformer? How laminated iron layers minimize eddy currents?"
A: No, eddy current loss is not the same as core loss. Core loss usually refers to the material itself absorbing some of the magnetic field energy as it is magentized and demagnetized. Ideal material acts like a ideal spring, in that you get all the magnetic field energy back that you put in. Real materials will be somewhat lossy, just like real springs.
Eddy currents are currents caused by the changing<|fim_middle|> circuit and therefore not present electrically. That's often called a wound core. Again, look at large line-frequency power transformers and you will sometimes be able to see a spiral of thin layers, instead of parallel flat layers as in a laminated core.
| magnetic field. This is exactly the effect that causes currents in the secondary when the magnetic field is changed due to how the primary is driven. Think about the difference between a conductive metal core and another secondary. The problem is that there basically isn't one. A conductive core acts like another secondary that is always shorted.
So does that mean you can never use conductive material in a transformer core? Not completely. At first glance, you use something like ferrite that has reasonable magnetic properties but does not conduct. However, unfortunately materials with really good magnetic properties are conductive, like iron. A iron core transformer will be significantly smaller than one that handles the same power but has a ferrite core.
Therefore it's worth getting clever about how to use iron but keep it from conducting to make a shorted secondary. One way is what's known as a powdered core. Iron is used ground into small pieces, which are suspended in something that insulates. You still get much of the iron properties, but the bulk material can't conduct much because each of the individual iron particles are largely insulated from each other.
Other more common methods of using conductive material like iron are based on the observation that we only need to prevent the material from conducting in a particular direction, which is circularly around the center of the core. One way to do this is to make the core out of a bunch of thin iron plates that have a even thinner insulating layer between them. Tiny eddy currents still exist, but only within each thin sheet, so are greatly reduced. This is often called a laminated core, and is quite common. Take a look at a large line-frequency power transformer, and you will probably be able to see the stackup of plates.
Another method is to start with a long thin sheet of iron and wind it up to make a bulk volume, with a thin insulating layer between each layer of winding. Now the transformer core looks like a secondary winding, but since the ends aren't connected, it is always open | 426 |
WILMINGTON, Del., March 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont™, through its software business, Granular, announced today with Planet - an integrated aerospace and data analytics company - a significantly expanded global partnership to deliver digital agriculture software solutions for farmers. The three-year agreement will integrate Planet's industry-leading daily, global satellite imagery data into Granular's farm-management software suite - powering enhanced analytics tools that will help farmers manage risk and increase yields.
"Planet operates the world's largest fleet of satellites and is quickly advancing its image frequency and quality," said Sid Gorham, Granular co-founder and CEO. "Our team of data scientists have built tools that<|fim_middle|> at @planetlabs. | translate Planet's imagery into actionable insights on the health of crops throughout the growing season. Our farmer customers access these insights via Granular's easy-to-use mobile applications - enabling farmers to tap into the power of a global satellite network right from their phone."
"The team at Granular is doing groundbreaking work in agriculture, delivering software solutions to farmers that help them do their jobs. Planet's daily imagery will now play an even more important role in that work," said Will Marshall, CEO and co-founder of Planet. "With Planet's stream of information, Granular customers will have the insights they need to ensure optimal field conditions and increase yields."
Under the expanded partnership, Granular will directly license and integrate Planet's daily feed of satellite imagery into its farm-management software, beginning with its industry-leading agronomy offering, Encirca® Services.
The combination of Planet's first-of-its-kind global daily satellite data with Granular's world-class crop modeling talent and datasets enable farmers to access valuable insights for real-time response. Daily satellite imagery from Planet provides farmers with timely visibility into problem spots, as well as patterns in weather-related impacts, on every field. Granular's proprietary analytics advance the use of this daily imagery - providing farmers with a complete view of what certain patterns and conditions indicate about crop health, along with proven methods for optimal response. Together, the combined solutions enable farmers to maximize crop potential.
Planet is an integrated aerospace and data analytics company that operates history's largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites, collecting a massive amount of information about our changing planet. Planet is driven by a mission to image all of Earth's landmass every day, and make global change visible, accessible and actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet designs, builds and operates over 190 satellites, and develops the online software and tools that serve data to users. Decision makers in business, government and within organizations use Planet's data and machine learning-powered analytics to develop new technologies, drive revenue, power research and solve our world's toughest challenges. To learn more visit www.planet.com and follow us on Twitter | 426 |
Founded as a partnership in 2015, CL Simplex aims to help organizations grow through improving their operations with simple, proven IT services and IT management. We strive to work with organizations to create tools and processes that are usable, flexible, and powerful.
What's in a name?<|fim_middle|> your revenue. | Our name means several things and reflects our philosophies. A simplex is the basic mathematical concept for a triangle in any given dimension. 2-simplex is a triangle and 3-simplex is a pyramid. Higher numbered simplexes are more complex shapes. With respect to our business philosophy, we like to start with something very simple, and build upon it.
You may not know that the simplex algorithm is one of the most important inventions of the century (on this list simplex is 27th). The simplex algorithm solves Linear Programming problems. In other words - given constraints, finding the maximum (or minimum) value for a given objective. Creating a schedule for staff in a restaurant in an example of a Linear Programming problem. We operate in a pretty similar fashion. Maximizing return on investment given the constraints of business and organizations and the challenges they face. That's CL Simplex - We start simple and grow with your organization as a strategic IT partner to maximize | 193 |
News > Latest news > 2017 > November
Swinburne students made top 20 in James Dyson Award
The team considered the difficulties faced by traders in the developing world when designing their multi-purpose wheelbar<|fim_middle|> collaborate to revolutionise construction industry
Last updated: Monday, 18-Mar-2019 04:25:25 EST | row
This article originally featured in Swinburne's Venture magazine
To have someone of the calibre of Sir James commenting on our work was just amazing.
Surely the traditional wheelbarrow defies reinvention? Yet two Swinburne students have done just that — and made the top-20 finalists in the prestigious James Dyson Award.
The Utility Barrow, created by product design engineering students Lachlan Meadows and Hugh McKay, is designed to be used as a traditional wheelbarrow – or a boat, or even as a market stall.
It was designed to ease the effects of annual flooding suffered in many cities globally and can carry up to 300 kilograms through floodwaters.
The international competition is named after British inventor Sir James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. Sir James' office sent compliments via email about the wheelbarrow design well before it had made the finals. "The initial excitement was due to the similarities between the Utility Barrow and one of Sir James Dyson's first designs – the Ballbarrow," Lachlan says.
"To have someone of the calibre of Sir James Dyson commenting on our work was just amazing."
For their case study, Mr Meadows and Mr McKay tested their wheelbarrow concept in the context of a low socio-economic community along a river subject to flooding in Indonesia.
"The idea is that during a shallow-water evacuation, the barrow is guided through the water to safety, keeping family members and belongings safe and dry," Lachlan says. "During deeper floods, it can be used as a personal watercraft."
The design includes a heavy wheel at the front to balance the person sitting on the seat at the rear. Rings on the side of the Utility Barrow hold poles in place to turn it into a market stall.
"People from the demographic we were designing for often sell things at the local market, but can't get the goods through the floodwaters, so we added a few guide holes to readily adapt the barrow into a shelter for the markets, using found materials."
The Utility Barrow was created by the students as part of their work in Swinburne's Global Design unit.
"Making the final was great kudos for the university and the course because it shows that this is absolutely what can be achieved," unit co-ordinator Dr Charles Ranscombe says.
The international design award celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers.
Engineering Design Technology
MASH turns 30: a celebration of Swinburne's Maths and Stats Help Centre
Swinburne and Speedpanel | 529 |
Well we have had a very busy April at SND Photography with all the Engagement Sessions we could shake a stick at, it has been absolutely fantastic!! We have been to a Farm, Southend Pier a Skate park and Central London. I have updated the sessions on our Facebook page if you wanted to see more… if you take a visit and like what you see don't forget to "LIKE" us to keep up to date with all the latest from SND Photography.
We have had some great sessions and I have added my favourite ones to the banner on top!! All of the new engagement sessions only meant 1 thing and that was a new page for the website too you can check this out here.
If you would like to have a session with us or you would like to buy someone a session for an engagement present or anniversary present get in touch today!! We would love to hunt out a great location and have some fun taking<|fim_middle|> great shots for you to treasure.
Lastly I would love to thank all of my beautiful couples for being so easy going with my crazy ideas and generally a pleasure to be with. I have enjoyed everyones sessions all with a different story to tell and it has been great getting to know you all, with hopefully plenty of newly engagement couples to come!! | some | 1 |
Expressor Is the Name, Data Integration Is the Game
expressor software corporation
Commerce News
Business Integration
Expressor software has announced expressor 1.0, a new semantic data integration system that intends to tackle the complexity and cost of enterprise IT projects. Founded by expert practitioners and technologists in data warehousing and data integration, expressor automates the most labor-intensive parts of data integration (DI) projects, delivers superior processing performance for batch and real-time operations, and is priced significantly lower than alternative DI solutions, according to the company.
Redefining Data Integration through Smart Semantics
Expressor software is redefining data integration via an active, semantic-driven metadata repository approach that simplifies design and reuse-thereby significantly shortening development time and effort, the company says. The software enables users to rationalize physical metadata constructs around common business terms and write target-specific data transformation and business rules that are 100 percent reusable across the enterprise.
"Our semantic-driven approach to data integration coupled with breakthrough performance of our parallel processing engine delivers a best-in-class software solution," says Bob Potter, CEO of expressor software. "Additionally, by introducing an aggressive runtime pricing model, we are confident we have a compelling alternative to current solutions in the DI market."
Key Features of expressor 1.0
The expressor 1.0 semantic data integration system combines three significant capabilities in one integrated platform:
Expressor integrator is a suite of team-oriented, role-based tools that support the entire project development and management lifecycle. It includes:
expressor administrator-a Web-based project management application targeted at project managers and enterprise architects.
expressor illustrator-a Windows desktop-based visual integration flow design application targeted at developers.
expressor constructor-a Windows desktop-based spreadsheet application for semantic rationalization and business rule definition targeted at data stewards and analysts.
Expressor repositor is an enterprise-class semantic metadata repository that collects, stores, and manages project management information, reusable data descriptions, application file versioning, performance metrics, and the implementation and enforcement of role-based security.
Expressor processor is an ultrafast parallel data processing engine that runs a deployed data integration application in batch and real-time across heterogeneous hardware platforms, including Windows, Linux, UNIX, and IBM mainframe operating systems and includes extensive connectivity to a wide range of data sources.
Bloor's Research Director<|fim_middle|> global alliances with complementary technology vendors, resellers, systems integrators, and solution providers. With more than 20 years of sales and management experience, Fallon joins expressor from BEA, where, as senior VP Americas, he managed a team of 400 sales professionals and was directly responsible for all North and South American license business of $230 million. Prior to BEA, Fallon held executive positions at enterprise software companies including SeeBeyond, Tivoli Systems, and Sybase.
Dr. Michael Waclawiczek is responsible for driving expressor's overall marketing strategy including product management, field marketing, marketing communications, analyst and public relations, and brand management. As acting VP of marketing since February 2008, Waclawiczek was responsible for the marketing launch of the company and product in May. In his more than 20 years in high tech, he has launched more than a dozen software products that have generated more than $1billion in revenues. Prior to joining expressor, Waclawiczek held senior marketing and product management executive positions at StreamBase Systems, Kalido, and IONA Technologies.
Frechette is responsible for all aspects of product development and delivery at expressor software. Within the first year, Frechette established expressor's engineering organization and delivered the first release of the expressor semantic data integration system in mid July. With more than 18 years of engineering management, technical architecture, and software development experience, he brings a depth in software and technology from his senior roles at Blue Agave, Oberon, and IBM Lotus.
According to CEO Bob Potter, "We have just brought to market our semantic data integration system, which takes data integration to a whole new level of ease of use and performance and introduces a highly affordable channel-based pricing model. We are very excited about the reception thus far from our early adopters and prospective customers, as well as industry analysts we've briefed over the past three months. The addition of these three key executives, all of whom have longstanding track records of customer and market success, will enable us to capitalize upon our tremendous opportunity and redefine the competitive landscape in data integration."
"Frank's leadership and expertise will be crucial in rapidly establishing our channel and partner strategies as we develop a global presence in 2009. Steve continues to be instrumental in our efforts to rapidly broaden and further enhance our product suite in the coming releases. Additionally, I have worked with Michael at several previous companies and am very confident in his ability to establish a strong market presence for us and drive the overall product strategy for the company."
For more information on these executive appointments, visit www.expressor-software.com/about-us-leadership.htm.
About expressor software
Expressor software tackles the complexity and cost of enterprise IT projects with data integration software that delivers breakthrough development productivity and data processing performance at a significant price/performance advantage. expressor's patent-pending semantic data integration system has been designed from the ground up-based on common business terms-that enable collaborative, role-based team development, business rule reuse, and end-to-end project lifecycle management.
Expressor was founded in 2003 by experienced data integration and data warehousing practitioners and executives. The company is headquartered in Burlington, MA and is funded by Globespan Capital Partners and Sigma Partners. For more information visit http://www.expressor-software.com/. | Philip Howard states, "It is only recently that traditional vendors have started to add functions such as business glossaries into their data integration products and these have been, literally, add-ons. Expressor software has turned this approach on its head and put semantics at the heart of its software: this should have a positive impact on the development process itself and on collaboration between IT and the business."
Expressor 1.0 is generally available and ships with a library of hundreds of thousands of built-in name correlations for key data domains across major industries. The expressor data integration system is priced on a runtime usage basis with a starter configuration of $20,000 for a perpetual license. In addition, expressor is available as a six-month, one-year, or two-year term license, and expressor software does not charge for development tools or data source connectors.
Expressor software corporation also announced the addition of two industry veterans to its executive team. Frank Fallon joins expressor as vice president of sales and business development and Dr. Michael Waclawiczek as vice president of marketing and product management. In addition, Steve Frechette, formerly senior director of engineering at expressor, has been promoted to vice president of engineering. The three executives report to Bob Potter, expressor's chief executive officer. The company made these appointments in preparation for the next phase of rapid growth after earlier launching its next generation semantic data integration system.
Fallon is responsible for expressor's worldwide sales and business development efforts, including building a direct field and inside sales organization and establishing | 314 |
What a spectacular day we had with Teresa and Max<|fim_middle|> the best possible day. The weather was great and the stage set for a magnificent party.
The venue at Sotogrande Polo Ground was beautifully decorated with incredible floral arrangements. The dance floor having a plant and flower canopy cascading from the ceiling. The food was great and when everyone was suitably satiated the dancing started and went on till very late.
Thank you Teresa and Max for having been the perfect couple to photograph and to your family for their warmth. | . The preparations and ceremony took place in Gibraltar. As always everybody was on hand to make everything run smoothly. The logistics of getting people from the church to the venue a possible nightmare but it all worked out thanks to the help of all involved.
Teresa and Max had been planning their wedding for a number of years and when the day arrived family and friends were over the moon. Everybody wanted to make sure that it was | 84 |
TRADING UP: SEC Loses Ceresney; Wedbush, FlexTrade Add Pros
By John D'Antona
The exodus from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission continues as Andrew Ceresney, director of enforcement at the regulator, was the latest to announce his departure Ceresney has held the position for nearly four years and has overseen more than 2,850 enforcement actions and fines totaling $13.8 billion.
Triad Securities announced its expansion into the Boston area with the hiring of Tom Landsbergen as Director, Prime Brokerage Sales. Tom has over 22 years' experience in the Prime Brokerage industry. Before joining Triad, Landsbergen was responsible for Prime Brokerage Sales and Client Service for JP Morgan and Bear Stearns in New England and Canada for 16 years. Prior to that, he held various positions with the Prime Brokerage platforms of Furman Selz/ ING Barings as well.
If you have a new job or promotion to report, let me know at jdantona@marketsmedia.com
Andrew Ceresney, SEC
Wedbush Securities announced the appointment of Bob Fitzsimmons as<|fim_middle|>FCM"), with a focus on developing and defining the strategic direction for the Futures and Treasury division. Fitzsimmons is based in the Chicago office and reports to Executive Vice President of Wedbush Securities, Rich Jablonski. He joins Wedbush Securities from Coveney Trading LLC, his own proprietary options trading firm. Prior to that, he was CEO of Optionshop where he provided strategic direction and day-to-day operations for the online futures brokerage. He also held CEO tenures with several other financial services organizations including ITG Derivatives and NQLX.
Marex Spectron, an independent commodities broker, has hired three US power brokers as it invests in and expands into the US power market. The three are – Christopher Grosso, Christopher Moster and Brian Vooletich. Grosso and Moster join from Tullett Prebon, where they spent 15-years working together, and Vooletich joins from OTCGH, where he spent seven years, having previously traded electricity at Enron. They join John Olsen, who was hired in December 2015 to establish Marex Spectron in the Northeast Power markets, having previously spent 20-years at TFS. The team is based in New York and follows the recent hiring of NGL broker, Jarrad Lewis, from ION Energy, and physical and financial Canadian Crude brokers, Justin Norbraten, Jay Mitchell and Tarun Ajwani from Shorcan Energy.
Deutsche Bank has lost another senior clearing executive. Jason Vitale, the bank's co-head of listed derivatives and markets clearing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), resigned on December 7, Risk.net has learned. London-based Vitale also served as Deutsche Bank's global head of foreign exchange prime brokerage. He is expected to take on a new role at another firm in early 2017. Vitale joined Deutsche Bank in 2004.
There has been a raft of departures at bulge bracket broker Credit Suisse lately. According to Business Insider, Gary Gunn, global program trading; Jill Shea, an equity research analyst covering the banking sector; and Ashley Serrao, an equity research analyst covering the banking sector, have all left. It was also reported that Guy Cirillo, the global head of business development for electronic products, had left as part of a round of layoffs and that Chip Clingham, the head of equity sales trading in New York, also left.
BNY Mellon has lured Deutsche Bank's global head of prime brokerage Mark Haas and has named him itshead of principal securities finance in its prime services arm. Haas, who will be based in BNY Mellon's New York office, had previously worked for Deutsche Bank in a number of senior prime brokerage roles over a ten year period, between 1998 and 2009, including the position of global head of prime brokerage. Prior to that, he worked as principal and COO for Hutchin Hill Capital between 2009 and 2012 before launching his own consultancy Nekton Partners, focused primarily on hedge funds and prime brokerage.
FlexTrade Systems, a provider of multi-asset execution and order management systems, announced the appointment of Aaron Levine as Vice President, OEMS Solutions. Based in the company's headquarters in New York, Levine will manage sales and business development for FlexTrade's new OEMS solution, FlexONE. Levine comes to FlexTrade after spending three years at Bloomberg AIM, where he handled OMS sales and relationship management. Prior to Bloomberg, Levine worked at Eze Software Group for three years as an OMS business consultant.
Horta-Osório Resigns as Credit Suisse Chair
The board investigated whether Horta-Osório broke quarantine rules.
FTX Launches $2bn Ventures Fund
Crypto investor Amy Wu joined to lead Ventures, gaming, M&A and commercial initiatives.
Tributes Paid to Lord Myners
He was appointed City Minister after the financial crisis in 2008.
How Women Can Say Goodbye To Imposter Syndrome
Fitch Learning found 82% of women play down their personal and professional achievements.
FIA Tech Opens London Subsidiary
The office is the company's first outside the United States. | a Managing Director. In this capacity, Bob will oversee the business operations within the Futures Commission Merchant (" | 20 |
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