The Amulet of Samarkand

quickly—get the Amulet! Get it away from the study, before Lovelace finds it!"
    The boy laughed harshly. "Not a chance. If Lovelace is here, he'll have stationed a dozen spheres outside. They'll home in on its aura and be on me the moment I leave the building."
    Nathaniel drew himself up. With his servant returned, he was not as helpless as before. There was still a chance to avoid disaster, providing the demon did as it was told. "I command you to obey!" he began. "Go to the study—"
    "Oh, can it, Nat." The boy waved a weary and dismissive hand. "You're not in the pentacle now. You can't force me to obey each new order. Running off with the Amulet will be fatal, take it from me. How strong is Underwood?"
    "What?" Nathaniel was nonplussed.
    "How strong? What level? I assume from the size of that beard he's no great shakes, but I might be wrong. How good is he? Could he beat Lovelace? That's the point."
    "Oh. No. No, I don't think so...." Nathaniel had little actual evidence either way, but his master's past display of servility to Lovelace left him in little doubt. "You think..."
    "Your one chance is that if Lovelace finds the Amulet, he might want to keep the whole thing quiet. He may try to do a deal with Underwood. If he doesn't—"
    Nathaniel went cold. "You don't think he'll—?"
    "Whoops! In all this excitement I nearly forgot to tell you what I came for!" The boy put on a deep and plangent voice: "Know ye that I have devotedly carried out my charge. I have spied on Lovelace. I have sought the secrets of the Amulet. I have risked all for you, O my master. And the results are"—here it adopted a more normal, sardonic tone—"you're an idiot. You've no idea what you've done. The Amulet is so powerful it's been in government keeping for decades—until Lovelace had it stolen, that is. His assassin murdered a senior magician for it. In those circumstances, I don't think it's likely that he'll worry about killing Underwood to retrieve it, do you?"
     
    To Nathaniel, the room seemed to spin. He felt quite faint. This was worse than anything he had imagined. "We can't just stand here," he stammered. "We've got to do something—"
    "True. I'll go and watch developments. Meanwhile, you'd better stay here like a good little boy, and be ready for a quick exit if things get nasty."
    "I'm not running anywhere." He said it in a small, small voice. His head was reeling with the implications. "Mrs. Underwood..."
    "I'll give you a tip born of long experience. Running's good if your skin needs saving. Better get used to the idea, bud." The boy turned to the box room door and set the palm of one hand against it. With a despairing crack, the door split around the lock and swung open. "Go up to your room and wait. I'll tell you what happens soon enough. And be prepared to move fast."
    With that, the djinni was gone. When Nathaniel followed, the landing was already empty.

28
     
    Bartimaeus
     
    "My apologies for the intrusion, Arthur," Simon Lovelace said.
    Underwood had only just entered his long, dark dining room when I caught up with him—he'd spent a few minutes beside the lower landing mirror smoothing down his hair and adjusting his tie. It didn't make any difference: he still looked disheveled and moth-eaten beside the younger magician, who was standing beside the mantelpiece, examining his nails, as cold and tense as a coiled spring.
    Underwood waved his hand in an airy attempt at magnanimity. "My house is yours, I'm sure. I am sorry for the delay, Lovelace. Won't you take a seat?"
    Lovelace did not do so. He wore a slim, dark suit with a dark-green tie. His glasses caught the lamp light from the ceiling and flashed with every movement of his head. His eyes were invisible, but the skin below the glasses was gray, heavy, bagged. "You seem flustered, Underwood," he said.
    "No, no. I was engaged at the top of the house. I am somewhat out of breath."
    I had entered the door as a spider and had crawled my way discreetly over the lintel and up the wall, until I reached the secluded gloom of the darkest corner. Here I spun several hasty threads across, obscuring me as fully as possible. I did so because I could see that the magician had his second-plane imp with him, prying into every nook and cranny with it's hot little eyes.
    Quite how Lovelace had come to suspect that the Amulet was in the house, I did not like to guess. For all my denials to the boy, it was certainly an unpleasant coincidence that he had arrived at the