The Golem's Eye

total due to the court is therefore six hundred pounds."
    Kitty reeled in shock, feeling the tears coming strongly now. Furiously she fought them back. She would not cry. She would not. Not here.
    She managed to turn the first sob into a loud, rumbling cough. At that moment the judge banged the gavel twice.
    "Court dismissed."
    Kitty ran from the room.

14
     
    Kitty
     
    Kitty had her cry in one of the little cobbled side roads running off the Strand. Then she wiped her face, bought a reviving bun from a Persian café on the corner opposite the Judicial Courts, and tried to work out what to do. She certainly could not pay the fine and doubted her parents could either. That meant she had a month in which to find six hundred pounds, or she—and perhaps her parents, too—would be bound for the debtors' prison. She knew this, because before she had managed to exit the echoing courtrooms, one of the black-suited clerks had appeared, tugged respectfully at her elbow, and thrust an order for payment, with the ink still wet upon it, into her trembling fingers. It spelled out exactly what the penalties were.
    The thought of informing her parents gave Kitty sharp pains in her chest. She couldn't face going home; she would walk beside the river first.
    The cobbled lane ran down from the Strand to the Embankment, a pleasant pedestrianized walkway following the bank of the Thames. It had stopped raining, but the cobbles were dark and flecked with water. On either side the usual shops stretched: Middle Eastern fast-food joints, tourist boutiques stuffed with kitsch memorabilia, herbalists whose cut-price baskets of dogwood and rosemary bulged halfway out into the street.
    Kitty had nearly reached the Embankment when a rapid tapping behind her heralded the sudden appearance of a stick, followed by an ancient man, half hobbling, half stumbling out of control down the cobbled slope. She jumped back out of his way. To her surprise, instead of careering onward and ending up in the river, the man halted, with much scuffling and gasping, directly beside her.
    "Ms. Jones?" The words wheezed out between each gasp of breath.
    She spoke heavily. "Yes." Some other clerk with a new demand.
    "Good, good. Let—let me get my voice back."
    This took a few seconds, during which time Kitty observed him closely. He was a thin, bony, and aged gentleman, bald on top, with a semicircle of dirty-white hair acting as a ruff to the back of his skull. His face was painfully thin, but his eyes were bright. He wore a neat suit and a pair of green leather gloves; his hands wobbled as he leaned upon his stick.
    At last: "Sorry about that. Afraid I'd lost you. Started along the Strand first. Turned back. Intuition."
    "What do you want?" Kitty had no time for intuitive old men.
    "Yes. Getting to the point. Good. Well. I was in the gallery just now. Courtroom twenty-seven. Saw you in action." He regarded her closely. So?
    "Wanted to ask. One question. Simple one. If you don't mind."
    "I don't want to talk about it, thank you." Kitty made to move off, but the stick shot out with surprising speed and gently barred the way. Her anger fizzed inside her; in the mood she was in, kicking an old man down the street did not seem beyond possibility. "Excuse me," she said. "I've got nothing to say."
    "Understand that. Really. Might be to your advantage, though. Listen, then decide. The Black Tumbler. Sitting at the back of the court. Bit deaf. Thought you said the Tumbler hit you.
    "I did. It did."
    "Ah. Knocked you out, you said."
    "Yes."
    "Flames and smoke all around you. Searing heat?"
    "Yes. Now I—"
    "But, Court didn't accept it."
    "No. Now I really must go." Kitty sidestepped the outstretched stick and trotted the last few yards down to the Embankment. But to her surprise and fury the old man kept up with her, continually jabbing his stick out at an angle so that it became entangled with her legs, or tripped her feet, or forced her to take outsize steps to avoid it. At last she could take it no longer; seizing the end of the stick, she yanked hard, jerking the gentleman off balance so that he collapsed against the river wall. Then she set off at a brisk pace, but once more heard the frantic tapping close behind her.
    She wheeled around. "Now, look—"
    He was hard on her heels, whey-faced, gasping. "Ms. Jones, please. I understand your anger. Truly. But I am on your side. What if I said—? What if I said that I could pay the fine? That the Court has levied? All