Ptolemy's Gate

him."
    Mandrake nodded sullenly. The depression he had briefly shaken off had speedily returned. "I know. But someone's got to make the case openly and clearly. The country's falling into chaos. I wouldn't be surprised if half the Council aren't planning something."
    "Concentrate on the plot we do know about. Anything yet on Jenkins?"
    "Not yet. But it won't be long. My best djinni's on the case."

9

    Since the days of old Egypt, when I took the form of a silver hawk and shadowed Kushite raiders far out across the sand hills, I've always been a dab hand at trailing unobserved. Take those raiders, now: they left djinn in the form of jackals and scorpions to guard the desert in their wake. But the hawk flew high against the sun and easily evaded them. I found the raiders' base hidden among the blue-green gum trees of the Kharga oasis and drew the pharaoh's army down upon them. So they perished to a man.
    I was employing similar discreet but deadly skills now, although it has to be said that the circumstances were a mite less glamorous. Instead of a ferocious horde of puma-pelted raiders you had a scrawny, gi nger secretary; in place of the aching vistas of the Sahara you had a smelly Whitehall back-street. Apart from that, the parallel was exact. Oh, and I wasn't a hawk this time—a woebegone sparrow was more the job in London.
    I was sitting on a sill watching a grubby window opposite. Whoever owned the sill wasn't very keen on birds: he'd laced it with bird lime, metal spikes, and scraps of poisoned bread. A typical English welcome. I kicked the bread into the street, used a small Inferno to incinerate the lime, bent a couple of spikes out of true, and wedged my frail little carcass between them. I was so weak by now that this Herculean effort pretty much finished me off. Head spinning, I settled in to watch my quarry.
    It wasn't exactly unmissable viewing. Through the accumulated grime on the windowpane I could see Clive Jenkins sitting at a desk. He was thin, stooped, and rather puny; if it had been a straight fight between him and the sparrow, I'd have put my money on the bird. An expensive suit hung uneasily on his frame, as if reluctant to get too close; his shirt was a disturbing mauve. He was pale-faced and a bit freckly, with small eyes peering myopically from behind thick glasses and reddish hair plastered back in a kind of oily pelt, reminiscent of a fox who'd been caught out in the rain. Small bony hands tapped unenthusiastically at a typewriter.
    Mandrake had not been wrong in his assessment of Jenkins's powers. As soon as I took up my perch, I checked the seven planes for sensor webs, watch prisms, gimlet eyes, shadow-stalkers, orbs, matrices, heat traps, trigger-plumes, sprites, weirds, and other means the magician might have employed for magical protection. Not a sausage. He had a cup of tea on his desk and that was about it. I watched closely for any sign of supernatural communication with Hopkins or another, but the secretary spoke no words and made no untoward signs. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter went his fingers on the keys; occasionally they rubbed his nose, adjusted his gl asses or scratched an itchy spot on the end of his chin. So the afternoon passed. It was simply riveting.
    Although I did my best to keep focused on the job in hand, I did find my mind wandering at intervals, (a) because it was so damn dull, and (b) because the ache in my essence made me clothy-headed and distracted. It was like suffering chronic lack of sleep: I kept drifting off and thinking of unrelated topics— the girl, Kitty Jones; my old enemy Faquarl sharpening his cleaver; far off in the distance, Ptolemy—before he changed. Each time I had to force myself back into the present with a start; but Jenkins was always as before, so no harm done.

    Five-thirty came, and with it an almost imperceptible change in Jenkins. A new and stealthy life seemed to flicker in his veins; his lethargy receded. With quick movements, he drew a cover over the typewriter, tidied his desk, gathered up a few bundles of paper, and slung a coat over his arm. He departed his office out of view.
    The sparrow stretched a painful wing, shook its head to relieve the numbing ache behind its eyes, and took off. I drifted down the side road and out above the bustle of Whitehall, where buses nudged slowly through the heavy traffic and armored vans disgorged Night Police at intervals among the crowds. The war had brought disturbance to the streets, and