"Some godforsaken place—outside London."
"Oh no, really? How desperately tedious. We'll probably all be pitchforked by men in smocks."
"Well, if that's what the P.M. wants…"
"Dreadful."
"So handsome, though…"
"John—"
"You are shallow, Devina; mind you, I'd like to know where he got that suit."
"John!"
Mrs. Underwood, her face flushed—perhaps with the heat of the room—materialized in front of Nathaniel. She grabbed his arm. "John, I've been calling and calling! Mr. Devereaux is about to make his speech. We need to go to the back; ministers only at the front. Hurry up."
They slipped to the side as, with a clopping of heels and a shuffling of gowns, a vigorous herd instinct moved the guests toward a small stage, draped with purple cloth, that had been wheeled in from a side room. Nathaniel and Mrs. Underwood were buffeted uncomfortably in the general rush, and ended up at the back and to the side of the assembled audience, near the doors that opened out onto the river terrace. The number of guests had swelled considerably since they had arrived; Nathaniel estimated there were now several hundred contained within the hall.
With a youthful spring, Rupert Devereaux bounded up onto the stage.
"Ladies, gentlemen, ministers—how glad I am to see you here this evening…" He had an attractive voice, deep but lilting, full of casual command. A spontaneous round of cheers and clapping broke out. Mrs. Underwood nearly dropped her champagne glass in her excitement. By her side, Nathaniel applauded enthusiastically.
"Giving a state address is always a particularly pleasant task for me," Devereaux continued. "Requiring as it does that I be surrounded by so many wonderful people…" More whoops and cheers erupted, fairly shaking the rafters of the ancient hall. "Thank you. Today I am pleased to be able to report success on all fronts, both at home and abroad. I shall go into more detail in a moment, but I can announce that our armies have fought the Italian rebels to a stalemate near Turin and have bunkered down for the winter. In addition, our alpine battalions have annihilated a Czech expeditionary force"—for a moment, his voice was drowned out in the general applause. "And destroyed a number of their djinn."
He paused. "On the home front, concern has been expressed again about another outbreak of petty pilfering in London: a number of magical artifacts have been reported stolen in the last few weeks alone. Now, we all know these are the actions of a handful of traitors, small—time ne'er—do—wells of no consequence. However, if we do not stamp it out, other commoners may follow their lead like the brainless cattle they are. We will therefore take draconian measures to halt this vandalism. All suspected subversives will be detained without trial. I feel sure that with this extra power, Internal Affairs will soon have the ringleaders safely in custody."
The state address continued for many minutes, liberally punctuated with explosions of joy from the assembled crowd. What little substance it contained soon degenerated into a mass of repetitive platitudes about the virtues of the Government and the wickedness of its enemies. After a time, Nathaniel grew bored: he could almost feel his brain turning to jelly as he strove to listen. Finally he gave up trying altogether, and looked about him.
By half turning, he could see through an open door onto the terrace. The black waters of the Thames stretched beyond the marble balustrade, picked out here and there by reflections of the yellow lights from the south side. The river was at its height, flowing away to the left under Westminster Bridge toward the docklands and the sea.
Someone else had evidently decided the speech was too tedious to bear and had actually stepped out onto the terrace. Nathaniel could see him standing just beyond the well of light that spilled out from the hall. It was a reckless guest indeed who so blatantly ignored the Prime Minister… more probably it was just a security official.
Nathaniel's mind wandered. He imagined the ooze at the bottom of the Thames. Bartimaeus's tin would be half buried now; lost forever in the rushing darkness.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the man on the terrace make a sudden, decisive movement, as if he had drawn something large out from under his coat or jacket.
Nathaniel tried to focus, but the figure was shrouded in darkness. Behind him, he could hear the Prime Minister's mellifluous voice still sounding. "…this is an age of consolidation, my friends. We are the greatest magical elite on earth; nothing is beyond us…"
The figure stepped forward toward the door.
Nathaniel's lenses logged a flash of color within the darkness; something not entirely on one plane…
"…we must follow the example of our ancestors, and strive…"
In doubt, Nathaniel tried to speak, but his tongue was furred to the roof of his mouth.
The figure leaped through into the hall. A youth with wild, dark eyes; he wore black jeans, a black anorak; his face was smeared with some dark oil or paste. In his hands was a bright blue sphere, the size of a large grapefruit. It pulsated with light. Nathaniel could see tiny white objects swirling within it, round and round and round.
"…for further domination. Our enemies are wilting…" The youth raised his arm. The sphere glinted in the lantern light. A gasp from within the crowd. Someone noticing—"Yes, I say to you again…" Nathaniel's mouth opened in a soundless cry. The arm jerked forward; the sphere left the hand. "…they are uniting…" The blue sphere arced into the air, over Nathaniel's head, over the heads of the crowd. To Nathaniel, transfixed by its movement like a mouse mazed by the swaying of a snake, its trajectory seemed to take forever. All sounds ceased in the hall, except for a barely discernible fizzing from the sphere—and from the crowd, the gulped, high—pitched beginnings of a woman's scream.
The sphere disappeared over the heads of the crowd. Then came the tinkle of breaking glass.
And, a split second later, the explosion.
20
The shattering of an elemental sphere in an enclosed space is always a frightening and destructive act: the smaller the space, or the bigger the sphere, the worse the consequences are. It was fortunate for Nathaniel and for the majority of the magicians with him that Westminster Hall was extremely large and the tossed sphere relatively small. Even so, the effects were noteworthy.
As the glass broke, the trapped elementals, which had been compressed within it for many years, loathing each other's essences and limited conversation, recoiled from each other with savage force. Air, earth, fire, and water: all four kinds exploded from their minute prison at top speed, unleashing chaos in all directions. Many people standing nearby were at one and the same time blown backward, pelted with rocks, lacerated with fire, and deluged with horizontal columns of water. Almost all the company of magicians fell to the ground, scattered like skittles around the epicenter of the explosion. Standing at the edge of the crowd, Nathaniel was shielded from the brunt of the blast, but even so found himself propelled into the air and sent careering back against the door that led onto the river terrace.
The major magicians escaped largely unscathed. They had safety mechanisms in place, mainly captive djinn charged to materialize the instant any aggressive magic drew near their masters' persons. Protective shields absorbed or deflected the ballooning gobbets of fire, earth, and water, and sent the gusts of wind screeching off toward the rafters. A few of the lesser magicians and their guests were not so fortunate. Some were sent ricocheting between existing defensive barriers, bludgeoned into unconsciousness by the competing elements; others were swept along the flagstones by small tidal waves of steaming water and deposited in sodden humps halfway across the hall.