The Golem's Eye

you—that this missing eye is the one later found in the collection of your friend Simon Lovelace."
    "Pardon me," Nathaniel said, stiffly, "but he was not my friend."
    "Well, he's nobody's friend now, is he? Because he failed. If he'd won, you'd all have been hanging on his every word and inviting him to dinner." The agent gave a long, melancholy sniff of disparagement from somewhere within the hood. "Hang on to this a minute, I need a drink."
    "Euuch! It's all cold and clammy. Hurry up!"
    "Coming." Harlequin's hands were rummaging within his cloak in a complex sort of way. A moment later, they emerged, holding a dark green bottle with a cork stopper. He pulled out the cork and tilted the bottle into the depths of his cowl. A gulping noise ensued, followed by the smell of strong liquor.
    "That's better." Unseen lips smacked, cork returned to bottle, and bottle returned to pocket. "I'll take that back. You didn't damage it, did you? It is a bit fragile. Now," Harlequin went on, "perhaps Lovelace intended to use the eye himself; if so, his plan was thwarted by his death. Someone else, maybe an associate of his— who knows?—has now stolen it from our government, and appears to have got the thing to work.... This is where it gets difficult."
    "They need the formative spell, too," Nathaniel said. "It is written on a parchment and inserted into the golem's mouth before it comes to life. That's the bit that nobody's known for all these years. No one in London, anyway."
    The agent nodded. "The secret may have been lost; equally, it may still be known in Prague, but just remain unused. The Council does not want to enrage London at present; the British are too strong. They prefer to send spies and small groups over to London to work quietly, gathering information. This golem of yours... it's too dramatic a move for the Czechs—they would expect invasion to follow as a direct result. No, I think you are hunting for a maverick, someone working for their own individual ends."
    "So where do I look?" Nathaniel asked. He couldn't help yawning as he spoke; he had been awake since the British Museum incident the previous night. It had been a taxing day.
    "I must consider..." The agent remained lost in thought for a few moments. "I need time to make inquiries. We will meet again tomorrow night, when I will give you names." He wrapped his cloak about himself with a dramatic sweep. "Meet me—"
    Nathaniel interrupted him. "I hope you're not going to say 'in the shadow of the gibbet' or 'at Execution Dock' or anything dreary like that."
    The figure drew itself up. "Ridiculous. The very idea."
    "Good."
    "I was going to suggest the old plague pits on Hybernska Street."
    "No."
    The agent seemed rather miffed. "All right," he growled.
    "Six o'clock at the hot-dog stand in the Old Town Square. That mundane enough for you?"
    "That'll do nicely."
    "Until then, then..." With a billow of the cloak and a creak of hidden knees, the figure turned and swept its way up the cemetery path, its corpse light flickering dimly into the distance. Soon the light was gone, and nothing but a fleeting shadow and a muffled curse when it knocked into a gravestone indicated it had ever been.
     
     
    Nathaniel sat down on a headstone, waiting for Bartimaeus to show. The meeting had been satisfactory, if a little irritating; now he had plenty of time to rest before the following evening. His weary mind drifted. The memory of Jane Farrar came back to him. How pleasant it had been to have her so close.... It had affected him almost like a drug. He frowned—of course it was like a drug. She'd worked a Charm on him, hadn't she? And he'd nearly fallen for it, completely ignoring his sensor's warning. What a fool he was.
    The girl had either wanted to delay him, or learn more about what he knew. Either way, she would be working for her master, Duvall, who evidently did not want Internal Affairs having any sort of success in this matter. When he got back, he would doubtless face more hostility of the same kind. Duvall, Tallow, Farrar... Even his master, Ms. Whitwell, was not to be relied on, if he didn't produce the goods for her.
    Nathaniel rubbed his eyes. He suddenly felt very tired.
    "Bless, you look ready to drop." The djinni was sitting on an opposite gravestone, in its familiar boy guise. It was crossing its legs in identical fashion to Nathaniel, and pulling an extravagant yawn. "You should have been tucked up hours ago."
    "Did you hear everything?"
    "Most of