We started up the stairs again. My limbs strained at my master's weight. His limbs dragged; he seemed incapable of movement.
"Up," I snarled. "This house is terraced. We'll try the roof."
He managed a mumble. "My master…"
"Is dead," I said. "Swallowed whole, most probably." It was best to be precise.
"But Mrs. Underwood…"
"Is no doubt with her husband. You can't help her now."
And here, believe it or not, the fool began to struggle, flailing about with his puny fists. "No!" he shouted. "It's my fault! I must find her—!" He wriggled like an eel, slipping from my grasp. In another moment he would have hurled himself around the banister and straight into Jabor's welcoming arms. I let out a vivid curse[81] and, grabbing him by an earlobe, pulled him up and onward.
"Stop struggling!" I said. "Haven't you made enough useless gestures for one day?"
"Mrs. Underwood—"
"Would not want you to die too," I hazarded.[82] "Yes, it is your fault, but, er, don't blame yourself. Life's for the living… and, erm… Oh, whatever." I ran out of steam.[83] Whether or not it was my words of wisdom, the boy stopped straining against me. I had my arm round his neck and was dragging him up and round each corner, half flying, half walking, fast as I could lift him. We reached the second landing and went on again, up the attic stairs. Directly below, the steps cracked and splintered under Jabor's feet.
By the time we reached the top, my master had recovered himself sufficiently to be stumbling along almost unaided. And so, like the hopeless pair in a three—legged race who trail in last to a round of sympathetic applause, we arrived at the attic room still alive. Which was something, I suppose.
"The window!" I said. "We need to get onto the roof!" I bundled Nathaniel across to the skylight and punched it open. Cold air rushed in. I flew through the opening and, perching on the roof, extended a hand back down into the room. "Come on," I said. "Out."
But to my astonishment, the infernal boy hesitated. He shuffled off to a corner of the room, bent down and picked something up. It was his scrying glass. I ask you! Jackal—headed death hard on his heels, and he was dawdling for that? Only then did he amble over to the skylight, his face still wiped clean of expression.
One good thing about Jabor. Slow. It took him time to negotiate the tricky proposition of the stairs. If it had been Faquarl chasing, he'd have been able to overtake us, lock and bar the skylight, and maybe even fit it with a nice new rollerblind before we got there. Yet so lethargic was my master that I barely had him within grabbing distance when Jabor finally appeared at the top of the stairs, sparks of flame radiating from his body and igniting the fabric of the house around him. He caught sight of the boy, raised a hand and stepped forward.
And banged his head nicely on the low—slung attic door.
This gave me the instant I needed. I swung down from the skylight, holding on with my feet like a gibbon, seized the boy under an arm and swung myself back up and away from the hole. As we fell back against the tiles, a gout of flame erupted from the skylight. The whole building shook.
The boy would have lain there all night if I'd let him, staring glassy—eyed at the stars. He was in shock, I think. Maybe nobody had seriously tried to kill him before. Conversely, I had reactions born of long practice: in a trice I was up again, hoisting him with me and rattling off along the sloping roof, gripping tightly with my claws.
I made for the nearest chimney and, flinging the boy down behind it, peered back the way we had come. The heat from below was doing its work: tiles were popping out of position, small flames dancing through the cracks between them. Somewhere, a mass of timber cracked and shifted.
At the skylight, a movement: a giant black bird flapping clear of the fire. It alighted on the roof crest and changed form. Jabor glared back and forth. I ducked down behind the chimney and snatched a quick look up ahead.
There was no sign of any of Lovelace's other slaves: no djinn, no watchful spheres. Perhaps, with the Amulet back in his hands, he felt he had no need of them. He was relying on Jabor.
The street was terraced: this gave us an avenue of escape stretching away along a succession of connecting houses. To the left, the roofs were a dark shelf above the lamp—lit expanse of the street. To the right, they looked over the shadowy mass of the gardens, full of overgrown trees and bushes. Some way off, a particularly large tree had been allowed to grow close to its house. That had potential.
But the boy was still sluggish. I couldn't rely on a speedy flight from him. Jabor would nail us with a Detonation before we'd gone five meters.
I risked a quick peek around the edge of the brickwork. Jabor was approaching, head lowered a little, snuffling in our trail. Not long before he guessed our hiding place and vaporized the chimney. Now was very much the time to think of a brilliant, watertight plan.
Failing that, I improvised.
Leaving the boy lying, I rose up from behind the chimney in gargoyle form. Jabor saw me; as he fired, I closed my wings for a moment, allowing myself to drop momentarily through the air. The Detonation shot above my plummeting head and curved away over the roof to explode harmlessly[84] somewhere in the street beyond. I flapped my wings again and soared closer to Jabor, watching all the while the little sheets of flame licking up around his feet, cracking the tiles and feeding on the hidden timbers that fixed the roof in place.
I held up my claws in a submissive gesture. "Can't we discuss this? Your master may want the boy alive."
Jabor was never one for small talk. Another near miss almost finished the argument for me. I spiraled around him as fast as I could, keeping him as near as possible in the same spot. Every time he fired, the force of his shot weakened the section of roof on which he stood; every time this happened the roof trembled a little more violently. But I was running out of energy—my dodges grew less nimble. The edge of a Detonation clipped a wing and I tumbled to the tiles.
Jabor stepped forward.
I raised a hand and fired a return shot. It was weak and low, far too low to trouble Jabor. It struck the tiles directly in front of his feet. He didn't so much as flinch. Instead, he let out a triumphant laugh, which was cut short by the whole section of roof collapsing. The master beam that spanned the length of the building split in two; the joists fell away, and timber and plaster and tile upon tile dropped into the inferno of the house, taking Jabor with them. He must have fallen a good long way from there—down four burning floors to the cellars below ground. Much of the house would have fallen on top of him.
Flames crackled through the hole. To me, as I grasped the edge of the chimney and swung myself over to the other side, it sounded rather like a round of applause.
The boy was crouching there, dull—eyed, looking out into the dark.
"I've given us a few minutes," I said, "but there's no time to waste. Get moving." Whether or not it was the friendly tone of my voice that did it, he struggled to his feet quickly enough. But then he set off, shuffling along the rooftop with all the speed and elegance of a walking corpse. At that pace it would have taken him a week to get close to the tree. An old man with two glass eyes could have caught up with him, let alone an angry djinni. I glanced back. As yet there was no sign of pursuit—only flames roaring up from the hole. Without wasting a moment, I summoned up my remaining strength and slung the boy over my shoulder. Then I ran as fast as I could along the roof.
Four houses further on, we drew abreast of the tree, an evergreen fir. The nearest branches were only four meters distant. Jumpable. But first, I needed a rest. I dumped the boy onto the tiles and checked behind us again. Nothing. Jabor was having problems. I imagined him thrashing around in the white heat of the cellar, buried under tons of burning debris, struggling to get out.
81
Don't worry. It was in Old Babylonian. The boy wouldn't have understood the references.
83
Psychology of this sort is not my strong suit. I haven't a clue what motivates most humans and care even less. With magicians it's usually pretty simple: they fall into three distinct types, motivated by ambition, greed, or paranoia. Underwood, for example, now he was the paranoid type, from what I'd seen of him. Lovelace? Easy—ambition leaked from his body like a foul smell. The boy was of the ambitious kind as well, but he was still young, unformed. Hence this sudden ridiculous burst of altruism.