Ptolemy's Gate

whatever demons you can," she said. "If we're going to do any good at all, that's where we have to be."

35

    It has to be said, we worked well together. Better than either of us expected.
    Okay, maybe it took a little while to get the system sorted— we had a couple of embarrassing moments when our body did two things at once, but we always rectified it sharpish, so no harm done.[1] And once we got into our seven-leagued stride, we really began to motor, and to enjoy the advantages of our irregular condition.

[1] Well, not to me , anyway, safely encased as I was inside. Nathaniel maybe got a few unnecessary bruises, like the time he went right when I was pointing left, and the Staff bashed him on the nose; or when he fired the Staff during the middle of an extra-fancy leap, and we were blown sideways into a gorse bush. Or that little incident down at the lake when he got so angry (we were only under water for a measly four or five seconds, and let's face it a little bindweed never hurt anyone). But by and large we managed to avoid self-inflicted wounds.

It was our first success against poor old Naeryan that really fired us up: it showed us what we had to do; how to combine to best effect. We stopped trying to second-guess each other and did a bit of delegation.
    Here's how it went. Nathaniel worked the boots: if we had a long straight distance to travel, he did the strides. Once at our destination (one or two seconds later, generally—those boots were pretty snappy), I took over the legs, imbued them with a little of my trademarked vim, and sent us bounding like an impala, back, forth, up, down, left, and right, until any enemy, and occasionally even myself, was hopelessly confused.
    Meanwhile, Nathaniel retained full control of his arms and of Gladstone's Staff; he fired it whenever we came within range, and since I could anticipate his intentions, I usually stayed put long enough for him to do so. The only exception (justified, I feel) was when I was hurrying us out of the path of a Detonation, a Flux, or a Spiraling Dismemberment. Always best to avoid such things if you wish to retain momentum.[2]

[2] Or indeed your vital organs.

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, etc.[3] We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing. It was all a bit butch and male, and left little room for introspection or emotional analysis, a factor that fitted in nicely with the business of staying alive, and also with a certain subdued detachment that now flooded Nathaniel's mind. It hadn't been so noticeable at first, when we were back with Kitty (his head was full of softer things, then—half-formed, eager, outward-looking), but after that moment in Trafalgar Square, when the woman had turned away from him with a face of fear and scorn, it rose up swiftly and closed him off. His softer emotions were new and hesitant—they didn't like rejection. Now they were sealed away; in their stead returned the old familiar qualities: pride, remoteness, and steely determination. He was still committed to his task, but he undertook it in an attitude of vague self-disgust. Not healthy, maybe, but it helped him fight well.

[3] This latter was an observation I made on the edge of the lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.

And fighting, now, was what we had to do.
    Naeryan, dawdling at the square, had been the most tardy of the spirits; the others had hurried on, drawn by the sound and smell of human bodies, under the Churchill Arch and out into the dark acres of St. James's Park. Perhaps, if the commoners had not been congregated here in considerable numbers, Nouda's army would have immediately dispersed across the capital and so' been far harder to discover and waylay. As it was, the people's protest had been gathering through the night, emboldened by the government's inertia; now, for the avid spirits, their teeming masses provided an unmissable temptation.
    When we arrived, the entertainment was well underway. Far across the park the spirits wandered, chasing herds of fleeing humans as the whim took the m. Some used magical attacks; others preferred to move for the sake of moving, trying out the unfamiliar stiffness of their limbs, racing around to cut off scurrying prey. Many of the distant trees were aflame with colored lights; the air was a montage of flashes, spinning cords of smoke, shrill screams, and