The kid was thinking hard. There were big gray bags under his eyes. Every time he made an incantation he wore himself out further, which suited me just fine. Some magicians have been known to drop dead simply from overexertion. It's a high—stress lifestyle they have, poor things.
His thinking went on for a long time. I gave an ostentatious yawn and made a watch appear on my wrist so that I could glance at it wearily.
"Why not ask the boss?" I suggested. "He'll help you out."
"My master? You must be joking."
"Not that old fool. The one who's directing you against Lovelace."
The boy wrinkled his brow. "There's no one. I don't have a boss."
Now it was my turn to look blank.
"I'm acting on my own."
I whistled. "You mean you really summoned me on your lonesome? Not bad… for a kid." I tried to sound suitably sycophantic. "Well then, let me give you a tip. The best thing now is for you to let me go. You need a rest. Have you looked in a mirror recently? One without an imp inside, I mean? There are worry lines there. Not good at your age. It'll be gray hairs next. What will you do then when you meet your first succubus?[37] Put her right off, it will."
I was talking too much, I knew, but I couldn't help it. I was worried. The kid was looking at me with a calculating expression that I didn't like.
"Besides," I said, "with me gone, no one will know you have the Amulet. You'll be able to use it in complete secrecy. It's a precious commodity—everybody seems to want it. I didn't tell you before, but some girl tried to jump me for it when I was hanging around in town."
The boy frowned. "What girl?"
"Search me." I neglected to mention that this was pretty much what the girl had succeeded in doing.
He shrugged. "It's Simon Lovelace I'm interested in," he said, almost to himself. "Not the Amulet. He humiliated me, and I'm going to destroy him for it."
"Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured.
"Why?"
"Um…"
"I shall tell you a secret, demon," he went on. "By dint of my magic,[38] I saw how Simon Lovelace came by the Amulet of Samarkand. Some months ago, a stranger—swarthy, black—bearded and cloaked—came to him in the middle of the night. He brought him the Amulet. Money was exchanged. It was a furtive meeting."
I snorted. "What's surprising there? It's how all magicians trade. You should know that. They thrive on unnecessary secrecy."
"It was more than that. I saw it in Lovelace's eyes and in the eyes of the stranger. There was something illegal, underhand about it… The man's cloak was stained with fresh blood."
"I'm still not impressed. Murder's part of the game for you lot. I mean, you're obsessed with revenge already, and you're only about six."
"Twelve."
"Same difference. No, there's nothing unusual in it. That bloke with the bloodstains probably runs a well—known service. He'll be in the Yellow Pages, if you let your fingers do the walking."
"I want to find out who he is."
"Hmm. Black—bearded and cloaked, eh? That narrows our suspects down to about fifty—five percent of the magicians in London. Doesn't even exclude all the female ones."
"Stop talking!" The kid seemed to have had enough.
"What's the matter? I thought we were getting along well."
"I know that the Amulet was stolen. Someone was killed to get it. When I find out who, I shall expose Lovelace and see him destroyed. I will plant the Amulet, lure him to it and alert the police at the same time. They will catch him red—handed. But first, I want to know all about him and what he gets up to. I want to know his secrets, how he does business, who his friends are, everything! I need to discover who had the Amulet before and exactly what it does. And I must know why Lovelace stole it. To this end, I charge you, Bartimaeus—"
"Wait just a minute. Aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?"
"I know your true name, Natty boy. That means I have some power over you. It's not all one way anymore, is it?"
The kid paused to consider.
"You can't hurt me so easily now," I went on. "And that limits your room for maneuver in my book. Throw something at me, and I'll throw it right back."
"I can still bind you to my will. You still have to obey my commands."
"That's true. Your commands are the terms on which I'm in this world at all. I can't break out of them without your unleashing the Shriveling Fire.[39] But I can sure as hell make life difficult for you when I carry out your orders. For example, while I'm spying on Simon Lovelace, why shouldn't I grass you up to some other magician? The only thing that stopped me doing that before was fear of the consequences. But I'm not so worried about them now. And even if you explicitly forbid me to grass you up, I'll find some other way to do you a nasty. Let slip your birth name, maybe, to acquaintances of mine. You won't be able to sleep in your bed for terror of what I might do."
He was rattled, I could see that much. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if hunting for a flaw in my reasoning. But I was quietly confident: entrusting a mission to a djinni who knows your name is like tossing lit matches into a fireworks factory. Sooner or later you're going to have consequences. The best he could do was to let me go and hope no one else called me up while he was alive.
Or so I thought. But he was an unusually clever and resourceful child.
"No," he said slowly, "I can't stop you if you want to betray me. All I can do is make sure you suffer along with me. Let's see…"
He rummaged through the pockets of his shabby coat. "There must be something in here somewhere… Aha!" His hand emerged holding a small battered tin, on which the words Old Chokey were ornately inscribed.
"That's a tobacco tin!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know smoking kills?"
"It doesn't contain tobacco anymore," the boy said. "It's one of my master's incense pots. It's full of rosemary now." He lifted the lid a fraction; sure enough, an instant later, a waft of the hellish scent reached me and made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Some herbs are very bad for our essence, and rosemary is one of these. In consequence, magicians can't get enough of it.[40]
"I'd turf that out and fill it up with some honest baccy," I advised. "Far healthier."
The boy closed the lid. "I am going to send you on a mission," he said. "The moment you've gone, I shall cast the spell of Indefinite Confinement, binding you into this tin. The spell will not take effect immediately; in fact I shall make it start up a month from today. If for any reason I am not around to cancel this spell before a month is up, you shall find yourself drawn into this tin and trapped there, until such time as it is opened again. How'd you like the idea of that? A few hundred years encased in a small tin of rosemary. That will do wonders for your complexion."
"You've got a scheming little mind, haven't you?" I said glumly.
"And in case you're tempted to risk the penalty, I shall bind this tin with bricks and throw it into the Thames before the day is out. So don't go expecting anyone to release you early."
"I won't." Too right—I'm not insanely optimistic.[41]
The kid's face now bore a horribly triumphant look. He looked like an unpleasant boy in a playground who'd just won my best marble. "So, Bartimaeus," he said, sneering. "What do you say to that?" I gave him a beaming smile. "How about you forget all that silly tin business and just trust me instead?" "Not a chance." My shoulders sagged. That's the trouble, you see. No matter how hard you try, magicians always find a way to clobber you in the end. "All right, Nathaniel," I said. "What exactly is it that you want me to do?"
37
38
Typical magician's guff this. It was the unfortunate imp inside the bronze disc who did all the work.
39
A complicated penalty made up of fifteen curses in five different languages. Magicians can only use it on one of us who deliberately disobeys or refuses to carry out a given command. It causes immediate incineration. Only applied in extreme cases, since it is tiring for the magician and robs them of a slave.
40
There's big business in protective herbal aftershaves and underarm deodorants for magicians. Simon Lovelace, for instance, positively reeked of Rowan—tree Rub—on.
41
The Indefinite Confinement spell is a bad 'un, and one of the worst threats magicians can make. You can be trapped for centuries in horrid minute spaces, and to cap it all, some of them are just plain daft. Matchboxes, bottles, handbags… I even knew a djinni once who was imprisoned in a dirty old lamp.