The Golem's Eye

enthralled Kitty. She observed Stanley as, on a training day, he picked out a magical knife from six ordinary specimens, each one concealed from him in a separate cardboard box. She followed Timothy as he walked back and forth through Mr. Pennyfeather's shop, locating the resonance of a jeweled necklace that had been hidden in a pot of brushes.
    Magical objects were at the center of the company's strategy. Kitty regularly observed members of the group arriving at the shop with small parcels or bags that they passed to Anne, Mr. Pennyfeather's second-in-command, to be stowed quietly away. These contained stolen goods.
    "Kitty," Mr. Pennyfeather said to her one evening, "I have studied our verminous leaders for thirty years, and I believe I have learned their biggest weakness. They are greedy for everything—money, power, status, you name it—and quarrel incessantly about them all. But nothing arouses their passions more than magical trinkets."
    She nodded. "Magic rings and bracelets, you mean?"
    "Doesn't have to be jewelry," Anne said. She and Eva were with them in the backroom of the shop, sitting beside stacked rolls of paper. "Might be anything— staves, pots, lamps, pieces of wood. That mouler glass we chucked at you; that counts as one, doesn't it, Chief?"
    "It does indeed. Which is why we stole it. Which is why we steal all these things, whenever we can."
    "I think that glass came from the house in Chelsea, didn't it?" Anne said. "The one where Eva and Stanley shinned up the drainpipe to the upstairs window while the party was going on at the front of the house."
    Kitty was open-mouthed. "Isn't that terribly dangerous? Aren't magicians' houses protected by... all sorts of things?"
    Mr. Pennyfeather nodded. "Yes, though it depends on the power of the magician concerned. That one merely had magical tripwires laced across the room.... Naturally, Stanley evaded them easily.... We got a good cluster of objects that day."
    "And what do you do with them?" Kitty asked. "Apart from throwing them at me, that is."
    Mr. Pennyfeather smiled. "Artifacts are a major source of every magician's power. Minor officials, such as the Assistant Secretary for Agriculture—I think he was the owner of the mouler glass—can afford only weak objects, while the greatest men and women aspire to rare pieces of terrible force. They all do so because they are decadent and lazy. It is much easier to use a magical ring to strike down a foe than it is to summon some demon from the pit to do it."
    "Safer, too," Eva said.
    "Quite. So you see, Kitty, the more items we can get a hold of, the better. It weakens the magicians considerably."
    "And we can use them instead," Kitty added promptly.
    Mr. Pennyfeather paused. "Opinion is a little divided on this. Eva here"—he curled his lip back slightly, showing his teeth—"believes it is morally dangerous to follow too closely in the magicians' footsteps. She believes the items should be destroyed. I however—and it is my company, is it not, so my word goes—believe that we must use whatever weapons we can against such enemies. And that includes turning their own magic against them."
    Eva shifted in her seat. "It seems to me, Kitty," she said, "that by using such things, we become no better than the magicians themselves. It's far better to remain detached from the temptations of evil things."
    "Hah!" The old man gave a disparaging snort. "How else can we undermine our rulers? We need direct attacks to destabilize the government. Sooner or later, the people will rise up in support of us."
    "Well, when?" Eva said. "There's been no—"
    "We do not study magic like the magicians," Mr. Pennyfeather interrupted. "We are in no moral danger. But by doing a little research—a little reading in stolen books, for instance—we can learn to operate basic weapons. Your mouler glass, Kitty—that required only a simple Latin command. This is enough for small... demonstrations of our displeasure. The more complex artifacts we can stockpile safely, out of magicians' hands."
    "I think we're going about it the wrong way," Eva said quietly. "A few little explosions will never make any difference. They'll always be stronger. We—"
    Mr. Pennyfeather slammed his stick hard upon his workbench, making both Eva and Kitty jump. "Would you rather do nothing?" he yelled. "Very well! Go back out among the herds of sheep, put your head down and waste your lives!"
    "I didn't mean that. I just don't see—"
    "My shop is