The Amulet of Samarkand

peevishly.
    "Don't worry, dear. It's important for your master to talk to the top people. We don't need to talk to anyone, do we? But we can still watch, which is always a pleasure...." She tutted a little. "I must say the styles this year are so conservative."
    "Is the Prime Minister here, Mrs. Underwood?"
    She craned her neck. "I don't think so, dear, no. Not yet. But that's Mr. Duvall, the Chief of Police...." A short distance away a burly man in gray uniform stood listening patiently to two young women, who both seemed to be talking animatedly to him at the same time. "I met him once—such a charming gentleman. And very powerful, of course. Let me see, who else? Goodness, yes... you see that lady there?" Nathaniel did. She was startlingly thin, with cropped white hair; her fingers clasped the stem of her glass like the clenched talons of a bird. "Jessica Whitwell. She's something to do with Security: a very celebrated magician. She was the one who caught the Czech infiltrators ten years ago. They raised a marid and set it on her, but she created a Void and sucked it in. All on her own she did that, and with minimum loss of life. So—don't cross her when you're older, John."
    She laughed and drained her glass. Instantly, a servant appeared at her shoulder and refilled it almost to the brim. Nathaniel laughed too. As often happened in her company, he found some of Mrs. Underwood's serenity rubbing off on him. He relaxed a little.
    "Excuse me, excuse me! The Duke and Duchess of Westminster." A pair of liveried servants hustled past. Nathaniel was pushed unceremoniously to one side. A small, shrewish woman wearing a frumpy black dress, a gold anklet, and an imperious expression elbowed her way through the throng. An exhausted-looking man followed in her wake. Mrs. Underwood looked after them, marveling.
    "What a hideous woman she is; I can't think what the Duke sees in her." She took another sip of champagne. "And that there—good heavens! What has befallen him?—is the merchant Sholto Pinn." Nathaniel observed a great, fat man wearing a white linen suit come hobbling down the steps, supporting himself on a pair of crutches. He moved as if it gave him great pain to do so. His face was covered with bruises; one eye was black and closed. Two menservants hovered about him, clearing his way toward some chairs set against the wall.
    "He doesn't look too well," Nathaniel said.
    "No indeed. Some dreadful accident. Perhaps some artifact went wrong, poor man...." Bolstered by her champagne, Mrs. Underwood continued to give Nathaniel a running guide to many of the great men and women arriving in the hall. It was the cream of government and society; the most influential people in London (and that of course meant the world). As she expanded on their most famous feats, Nathaniel became ever more glumly aware how peripheral he was to all this glamour and power. The self-satisfied feeling that had warmed him briefly in the car was now forgotten, replaced instead by a gnawing frustration. He caught sight of his master again several times, always standing on the fringes of a group, always barely tolerated or ignored. Ever since the Lovelace incident he had known how ineffectual Underwood was. Here was yet more proof. All his colleagues knew the man was weak. Nathaniel ground his teeth with anger. To be the despised apprentice of a despised magician! This wasn't the start in life that he wanted or deserved....
    Mrs. Underwood jerked his arm urgently. "There! John—do you see him? That's him! That's him!"
    "Who?"
    "Rupert Devereaux. The Prime Minister."
     
    Where he had come from, Nathaniel had no idea. But there suddenly he was: a small, slim man with light brown hair, standing at the center of a scrummage of competing dinner-jackets and cocktail dresses, yet miraculously occupying a solitary point of grace and calm. He was listening to someone, nodding his head and smiling slightly. The Prime Minister! The most powerful man in Britain, perhaps the world... Even at a distance, Nathaniel experienced a warm glow of admiration; he wanted nothing more than to get close and watch him, to listen to him speak. He sensed that the whole room felt as he did: that behind the surface of each conversation, everyone's senses were angled in that one direction. But even as he began to stare, the crowd closed in and the slender, dapper figure was hidden from his view.
    Reluctantly, Nathaniel turned away. He took a resigned sip of his