Ptolemy's Gate

swift and confident in action. His pale, slim face presented an intriguing paradox, combining extreme youth—he was still only seventeen years old—with experience and authority. His eyes were dark and quick and serious, his forehead prematurely lined.
    His intellectual self-assurance, which had once perilously outstripped his other skills, had now been bolstered by a certain social poise. To peers and inferiors alike he was courteous and charming at all times, although also somewhat remote, as if distracted by an inner melancholy. Alongside the crude appetites and eccentricities of his fellow ministers, this subdued detachment attained an elegance that only added to his mystique.
    Mandrake wore his dark hair close in a military crop—a conscious innovation to honor the men and women still at war. It had been a successful gesture: spies noted that, among commoners, he was the most popular magician. His haircut had thus been mimicked by many others, while his dark suits had likewise inspired a brief vogue. He no longer bothered with a tie: the collar of his shirt was casually unbuttoned.
    Mr. Mandrake was considered by his rivals to be formidably, indeed dangerously, talented, and—following his promotion to Information Minister—they responded accordingly. But each attempted assassination had been cursorily rebuffed: djinn failed to return, booby traps rebounded on the sender, hexes snapped and withered. At last, tiring of this, Mandrake made a point of publicly challenging any hidden enemy to come forward and tackle him in magical combat. No one answered his call, and his standing rose higher than ever.
    He lived in an elegant Georgian town house surrounded by other elegant Georgian town houses on a broad and pleasant square. It was half a mile from Whitehall, and sufficiently far from the river to escape its smell in summer. The square was a generous expanse of beech trees and shady walkways, with an open green in the center. It was quiet and unfrequented, though never unobserved. Gray-uniformed police patrolled the perimeter by day; after dark, demons in the form of owls and nightjars flitted quietly from tree to tree.
    This security was due to the inhabitants of the square. It was home to several of London's greatest magicians. On the south side Mr. Collins, the recently appointed Home Secretary, dwelt in a cream-colored house decorated with fake pillars and buxom caryatids. To the northwest sprawled the grandiose pile of the War Minister, Mr. Mortensen, with a golden dome glinting upon the roof.
    John Mandrake's residence was less ostentatious. A slender four-story building, painted buttercup-yellow, it was reached by a row of white marble steps; white shutters bordered the tall windows. The rooms were soberly furnished, with delicately patterned wallpapers and Persian rugs upon the floors. The minister did not flaunt his status; he displayed few treasures in the reception rooms, and employed just two human servants to keep house. He slept on the third floor, in a plain, whitewashed room adjoining his library. These were his private chambers, which no one visited.
    On the floor below, separated from the other rooms of the house by an empty, echoing corridor lined with panels of stained wood, was Mr. Mandrake's study. Here he conducted much of his daily work.
    Mandrake walked along the corridor, chewing a vestige of toast. Ms. Piper tripped along behind. At the end of the corridor was a solid brass door, decorated in its center by a molded brass face of surpassing ugliness. Its bulbous brows appeared to be melting down across the eyes; the chin and nose jutted out like nutcracker handles. The magician halted and gazed at the face with deep disapproval.
    "I thought I told you to stop doing that," he snapped.
    A thin-lipped mouth opened; the jutting chin and nose knocked together indignantly. "Do what?"
    "Taking on such a hideous appearance. I've just had my breakfast."
    A section of brow lifted, allowing an eyeball to roll forward with a squelching sound. The face looked unapologetic."Sorry, mate," it said. "It's just my job."
    "Your job is to destroy anyone entering my study without authority. No more, no less."
    The door guard considered. "True. But I seek to preempt entry by scaring trespassers away. To my way of thinking, deterrence is more aesthetically satisfying than punishment."
    Mr. Mandrake snorted. "Trespassers apart, you'll likely frighten Ms. Piper here to death."
    The face shook from side to