The Amulet of Samarkand

knew, but I couldn't help it. I was worried. The kid was looking at me with a calculating expression that I didn't like.
    "Besides," I said, "with me gone, no one will know you have the Amulet. You'll be able to use it in complete secrecy. It's a precious commodity—everybody seems to want it. I didn't tell you before, but some girl tried to jump me for it when I was hanging around in town."
    The boy frowned. "What girl?"
    "Search me." I neglected to mention that this was pretty much what the girl had succeeded in doing.
    He shrugged. "It's Simon Lovelace I'm interested in," he said, almost to himself. "Not the Amulet. He humiliated me, and I'm going to destroy him for it."
    "Too much hate is bad for you," I ventured.
    "Why?"
    "Um..."
    "I shall tell you a secret, demon," he went on. "By dint of my magic,[6] I saw how Simon Lovelace came by the Amulet of Samarkand. Some months ago, a stranger—swarthy, black-bearded and cloaked—came to him in the middle of the night. He brought him the Amulet. Money was exchanged. It was a furtive meeting."
     
    [6] Typical magician's guff this. It was the unfortunate imp inside the bronze disc who did all the work.
     
    I snorted. "What's surprising there? It's how all magicians trade. You should know that. They thrive on unnecessary secrecy."
    "It was more than that. I saw it in Lovelace's eyes and in the eyes of the stranger. There was something illegal, underhand about it.... The man's cloak was stained with fresh blood."
    "I'm still not impressed. Murder's part of the game for you lot. I mean, you're obsessed with revenge already, and you're only about six."
    "Twelve."
    "Same difference. No, there's nothing unusual in it. That bloke with the bloodstains probably runs a well-known service. He'll be in the Yellow Pages, if you let your fingers do the walking."
    "I want to find out who he is."
    "Hmm. Black-bearded and cloaked, eh? That narrows our suspects down to about fifty-five percent of the magicians in London. Doesn't even exclude all the female ones."
    "Stop talking!" The kid seemed to have had enough.
    "What's the matter? I thought we were getting along well."
    "I know that the Amulet was stolen. Someone was killed to get it. When I find out who, I shall expose Lovelace and see him destroyed. I will plant the Amulet, lure him to it and alert the police at the same time. They will catch him redhanded. But first, I want to know all about him and what he gets up to. I want to know his secrets, how he does business, who his friends are, everything! I need to discover who had the Amulet before and exactly what it does. And I must know why Lovelace stole it. To this end, I charge you, Bartimaeus—"
    "Wait just a minute. Aren't you forgetting something?"
    "What?"
    "I know your true name, Natty boy. That means I have some power over you. It's not all one way anymore, is it?"
    The kid paused to consider.
    "You can't hurt me so easily now," I went on. "And that limits your room for maneuver in my book. Throw something at me, and I'll throw it right back."
    "I can still bind you to my will. You still have to obey my commands."
    "That's true. Your commands are the terms on which I'm in this world at all. I can't break out of them without your unleashing the Shriveling Fire.[7] But I can sure as hell make life difficult for you when I carry out your orders. For example, while I'm spying on Simon Lovelace, why shouldn't I grass you up to some other magician? The only thing that stopped me doing that before was fear of the consequences. But I'm not so worried about them now. And even if you explicitly forbid me to grass you up, I'll find some other way to do you a nasty. Let slip your birth name, maybe, to acquaintances of mine. You won't be able to sleep in your bed for terror of what I might do."
     
    [7] A complicated penalty made up of fifteen curses in five different languages. Magicians can only use it on one of us who deliberately disobeys or refuses to carry out a given command. It causes immediate incineration. Only applied in extreme cases, since it is tiring for the magician and robs them of a slave.
     
    He was rattled, I could see that much. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if hunting for a flaw in my reasoning. But I was quietly confident: entrusting a mission to a djinni who knows your name is like tossing lit matches into a fireworks factory. Sooner or later you're going to have consequences. The best he could do was to let me go and hope no one else called me up