The Amulet of Samarkand

flying, half walking, fast as I could lift him. We reached the second landing and went on again, up the attic stairs. Directly below, the steps cracked and splintered under Jabor's feet.
     
    [3] Without much conviction. It seemed a perfectly reasonable desire to me.
     
    [4] Psychology of this sort is not my strong suit. I haven't a clue what motivates most humans and care even less. With magicians it's usually pretty simple: they fall into three distinct types, motivated by ambition, greed, or paranoia. Underwood, for example, now he was the paranoid type, from what I'd seen of him. Lovelace? Easy—ambition leaked from his body like a foul smell. The boy was of the ambitious kind as well, but he was still young, unformed. Hence this sudden ridiculous burst of altruism.
     
    By the time we reached the top, my master had recovered himself sufficiently to be stumbling along almost unaided. And so, like the hopeless pair in a threelegged race who trail in last to a round of sympathetic applause, we arrived at the attic room still alive. Which was something, I suppose.
    "The window!" I said. "We need to get onto the roof!" I bundled Nathaniel across to the skylight and punched it open. Cold air rushed in. I flew through the opening and, perching on the roof, extended a hand back down into the room. "Come on," I said. "Out."
    But to my astonishment, the infernal boy hesitated. He shuffled off to a corner of the room, bent down and picked something up. It was his scrying glass. I ask you! Jackal-headed death hard on his heels, and he was dawdling for that? Only then did he amble over to the skylight, his face still wiped clean of expression.
    One good thing about Jabor. Slow. It took him time to negotiate the tricky proposition of the stairs. If it had been Faquarl chasing, he'd have been able to overtake us, lock and bar the skylight, and maybe even fit it with a nice new rollerblind before we got there. Yet so lethargic was my master that I barely had him within grabbing distance when Jabor finally appeared at the top of the stairs, sparks of flame radiating from his body and igniting the fabric of the house around him. He caught sight of the boy, raised a hand and stepped forward.
    And banged his head nicely on the low-slung attic door.
    This gave me the instant I needed. I swung down from the skylight, holding on with my feet like a gibbon, seized the boy under an arm and swung myself back up and away from the hole. As we fell back against the tiles, a gout of flame erupted from the skylight. The whole building shook.
    The boy would have lain there all night if I'd let him, staring glassy-eyed at the stars. He was in shock, I think. Maybe nobody had seriously tried to kill him before. Conversely, I had reactions born of long practice: in a trice I was up again, hoisting him with me and rattling off along the sloping roof, gripping tightly with my claws.
    I made for the nearest chimney and, flinging the boy down behind it, peered back the way we had come. The heat from below was doing its work: tiles were popping out of position, small flames dancing through the cracks between them. Somewhere, a mass of timber cracked and shifted.
    At the skylight, a movement: a giant black bird flapping clear of the fire. It alighted on the roof crest and changed form. Jabor glared back and forth. I ducked down behind the chimney and snatched a quick look up ahead.
     
    There was no sign of any of Lovelace's other slaves: no djinn, no watchful spheres. Perhaps, with the Amulet back in his hands, he felt he had no need of them. He was relying on Jabor.
    The street was terraced: this gave us an avenue of escape stretching away along a succession of connecting houses. To the left, the roofs were a dark shelf above the lamp-lit expanse of the street. To the right, they looked over the shadowy mass of the gardens, full of overgrown trees and bushes. Some way off, a particularly large tree had been allowed to grow close to its house. That had potential.
    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