The Amulet of Samarkand

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 backstreets 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.
    Throughout this flight, he had been replaying Underwood's face of terror, seeing a jackal head rising from the flames. Unreal also. Dreams within a dream.
    He had no memory of the pursuit, though at times it had been close and pressing. The hum of a search sphere, a strange chemical scent carried on the wind: that was all he knew of it, until, shortly before dawn, they had stumbled down into an area of narrow, redbrick houses and back alleys, and found the boarded-up building.
    Here, for the moment, he was safe. He had time to think, work out what to do....
    But Mrs. Underwood was—
    "Cold, isn't it?" said a voice.
    Nathaniel turned away from the window. A little way off across the ruined room, the boy that was not a boy was watching him with shiny eyes. It had given itself the semblance of thick winter gear—a down jacket, new blue jeans, strong brown boots, a woolly hat. It looked very warm.
    "You're shivering," said the boy. "But then you're hardly dressed for a winter's expedition. What have you got under that jersey? Just a shirt, I expect. And look at those flimsy shoes. They must be soaked right through."
    Nathaniel hardly heard him. His mind was far away.
    "This isn't the place to be half naked," the boy went on. "Look at it! Cracks in the walls, a hole in the ceiling... We're open to the elements here. Brrrrrr! Chilly."
    They were on the upper floor of what had evidently