The Amulet of Samarkand

stepped through it and came out on a cobbled street. The political heart of the city was on our right, the Tower district on our left; the Thames stretched ahead. Curfew was safely over, but there was no one yet about.
    "Right," I said, halting. "The station is close by. Before we go there, we need to solve a problem."
    "Which is?"
    "To stop you looking—and smelling—like a swineherd." The various fluids of the wasteland adhered to him in a complex splatter-pattern. He could have been framed and hung up on a fashionable wall.
    He frowned. "Yes. Clean me up first. There must be a way."
    "There is."
    Perhaps I shouldn't have seized him and dunked him in the river. The Thames isn't that much cleaner than the quagmire we'd waded through. Still, it washed off the worst of the muck. After a minute of vigorous dousing, I allowed him to come up, water spouting through his nostrils. He made a gurgling sound that was hard to identify. I had a stab, though.
    "Again? You are thorough."
    Another good rinsing made him look as good as new. I propped him up in the shadows of a concrete embankment and dried his clothes out with discreet use of a Flame. Oddly, his temper had not improved with his smell, but you can't have everything.
    With this matter resolved, we set off and arrived at the railway station in time to catch the first train of the morning south. I stole two tickets from the kiosk, and while sundry attendants were busy combing the platforms for a red-faced clergywoman with a plausible manner, settled back into my seat just as the train got underway. Nathaniel sat in a different part of the carriage—rather pointedly, I thought. His improvised makeover still seemed to rankle with him.
    The first part of the journey out of the city was thus the quietest and least troublesome half-hour I had enjoyed since first being summoned. The train pot tered along at an arthritic pace through the never-ending outskirts of London, a dispiriting jumbled wilderness of brick that looked like moraine left by a giant glacier. We passed a succession of rundown factories and concrete lots run to waste; beyond them stretched narrow terraced streets, with chimney smoke rising here and there. Once, high up against the bright, colorless cloud that hid the sun, I saw a troop of djinn heading west. Even at that distance, it was possible to pick out the light glinting on their breastplates.
     
    Few people got on or off the train. I relaxed. Djinn don't doze, but I did the equivalent, drifting back through the centuries and contemplating some of my happier moments—magicians' errors, my choice acts of revenge....
    This reverie was finally shattered by the boy throwing himself down on the seat opposite me. "I suppose we'd better plan something," he said sulkily. "How can we get through the defenses?"
    "With randomly shifting domes and sentries in place," I said, "there's no way we can break in unmolested. We'll need some kind of Trojan horse." He looked blank. "You know—something which seems to be innocent, which they allow in past the gates. In which we're hiding. Honestly—what do they teach you magicians nowadays?"[3]
     
    [3] Obviously not classical history. This ignorance would have upset Faquarl, as it happens, who often boasted how he'd given Odysseus the idea for the wooden horse in the first place. I'm sure he was lying, but I can't prove it because I wasn't at Troy: I was in Egypt at the time.
     
    "So, we need to conceal ourselves in something," he grunted. "Any ideas?"
    "Nope."
    Scowling, he mulled it over. You could almost hear the fleshy innards of his brain straining. "The guests will arrive tomorrow," he mused. "They have to let them in, so there's bound to be a steady stream of traffic getting through the gates. Perhaps we can hitch a ride in someone's car."
    "Perhaps," I said. "But all the magicians will be cloaked to the eyeballs with protective Shields and bug-eyed imps. We'd be hard pushed to sneak anywhere near them without being spotted."
    "What about servants?" he said. "They must get in somehow."
    Give him credit—he'd had an idea. "Most of them will be on site already," I said, "but you're right—some may arrive on the day. Also there are bound to be deliveries of fresh food; and maybe entertainers will come, musicians or jugglers—"
    He looked scornful. "Jugglers?"
    "Who's got more experience of magicians—you or me? There are always jugglers.[4] But the point is that there will be some nonmagical outsiders