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.
There was a sudden movement among the flames. It was time to go.
I didn't give the boy the option of panicking. Grasping him around the waist, I ran down the roof and leaped from the end. The boy made no sound as we arched through the air, picked out in orange by the light of the fire. My wings beat frantically, keeping us aloft just long enough, until with a whipping and stabbing and a cracking of branches, we plunged into the foliage of the evergreen tree.
I clasped the trunk, stopping us from falling. The boy steadied himself against a branch. I glanced back at the house. A black silhouette moved slowly against the fire.
Gripping the trunk loosely, I let us slide. The bark sheared away against each claw as we descended. We landed in wet grass in the darkness at the foot of the tree.
I set the boy on his feet again. "Now—absolute silence!" I whispered. "And keep below the trees."
Then away we slunk, my master and I, into the dripping darkness of the garden, as the wail of fire engines grew in the street beyond and another great beam crashed into the flaming ruin of his master's house.
Part Three
31
Nathaniel
Beyond the broken glass, the sky lightened. The persistent rain that had been falling since dawn drizzled to a halt. Nathaniel sneezed.
London was waking up. For the first time, traffic appeared on the road below: grimy red buses with snarling engines carrying the first commuters toward the center of the city; a few sporadic cars, honking their horns at anyone scurrying across their path; bicycles too, with riders hunched and laboring inside their heavy greatcoats.
Slowly, the shops opposite began to open. The owners emerged and with harsh rattling raised the metal night—grilles from their windows. Displays were adjusted: the butcher slapped down pink slabs of meat on his enamel shelving; the tobacconist hung a rack of magazines above his counter. Next door, the bakery's ovens had been hot for hours; warm air that smelled of loaves and sugared doughnuts drifted across the street and reached Nathaniel, shivering and hungry in the empty room.
A street market was starting up in a side road close by. Shouts rang out, some cheery, others hoarse and guttural. Boys tramped past, rolling metal casks or wheeling barrows piled high with vegetables. A police car cruised north along the road, slowing as it passed the market, then revving ostentatiously and speeding away.
The sun hung low over the rooftops, a pale egg—yellow disc clouded by haze.
On any other morning, Mrs. Underwood would have been busy cooking breakfast.
He could see her there in front of him: small, busy, resolutely cheerful, bustling round the kitchen clanging pans down on the cooker, chopping tomatoes, slinging toast into the toaster… Waiting for him to come down.
On any other morning that would have been so. But now the kitchen was gone. The house was gone. And Mrs. Underwood, Mrs. Underwood was—
He wanted to weep; his face was heavy with the desire for it. It was as if a floodtide of emotion lay dammed there, ready to pour forth. But his eyes remained dry. There was no release. He stared out over the gathering activity of the street below, seeing none of it, numb to the chill that bit into his bones. Whenever he closed his eyes, a flickering white shadow danced against the dark—the memory of flames.
Mrs. Underwood was—
Nathaniel took a deep, shuddering breath. He buried his hands in his trouser pockets and felt the touch of the bronze disc there, smooth against his fingers. It made him start and pull his hand away. His whole body shook with cold. His brain seemed frozen too.
His master—he had tried his best for him. But Mrs. Underwood—he should have warned her, got her out of the house before it happened. Instead of which, he…
He had to think. This was no time to… He had to think what to do, or he was lost.
For half the night, he had run like a madman through the gardens and back—streets of north London, eyes vacant, mouth agape. He remembered it only as a series of rushes in the dark, of scrambles over walls and dashes under street lamps, of whispered commands that he had automatically obeyed. He had a sensation of pressing up against cold brick walls, then squeezing through hedges, cut and bruised and soaked to the skin. Once, before the all—clear was given, he had hidden for what seemed like hours at the base of a compost heap, his face pressed against the moldering slime. It seemed no more real than a dream.