The Ring of Solomon

queen, but I was serving Sheba too. I love its hills and forests; I love the desert glittering beyond the fields. My mother showed it all to me, Bartimaeus, when I was very small. And the thought of never going back to it, or to her—’ She broke off. ‘You can’t know what that feeling’s like.’
    ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I can. Speaking of which—’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Asmira stood up decisively. ‘It’s time. I see that. I have to let you go.’
    Which just goes to prove yet again that she wasn’t really a magician. Since the days of Uruk, all bouts of slavery have traditionally ended with a sordid argument in which my master refuses to set me free, and I become a cackling corpse or blood-clawed lamia in order to ‘persuade’ him. But the girl, who had freed herself, was happy enough to do the same to me. And do it without a scrap. For a moment I was so surprised I said nothing.
    I got slowly to my feet. The girl was looking around the hall. ‘We’re going to need a pentacle,’ she said.
    ‘Yes. Or even two. There’ll be a couple somewhere.’
    We hunted about, and soon enough spied the edge of a summoning circle peeping out beneath one of the singed carpets. I began to throw aside the furniture that covered it, while the girl stood watching me with that same calm self-possession I’d noticed in the gorge. A question occurred to me.
    ‘Asmira,’ I said, kicking an upturned table across the room, ‘if you head back to Sheba, what are you going to do there? And what about the queen? She’s not going to be pleased to see you hanging about, if today’s spite is anything to go by.’
    To my surprise the girl had her answer ready. ‘I won’t be hanging about in Marib,’ she said. ‘I’ll take work with the frankincense traders, help guard them on their journeys across Arabia. From what I’ve seen there are plenty of dangers out there in the deserts – bandits and djinn, I mean. I think I can deal with those.’
    I tossed an antique couch approvingly over my shoulder. That actually wasn’t a bad idea.
    ‘It’ll also give me a chance to travel,’ she went on. ‘Who knows, I might even go to Himyar one day – see that rock city you mentioned. Anyway, the incense trail will keep me well away from Marib most of the time. And if the queen does take exception to me …’ Her expression hardened. ‘Then I’ll have to deal with it. And her.’
    I wasn’t a soothsayer or an augur and had no knowledge of the future, but I wondered if things might prove a little ominous for Queen Balkis. But there were other issues to attend to now. I shoved the last bits of furniture to the side, rolled up the priceless carpet and threw it in the plunge-pool – and stood back in satisfaction. There, embedded in the floor – and quite undamaged – lay two pentacles of pinkish marble. ‘Slightly fey,’ I commented, ‘but they’ll have to do.’
    ‘Right then,’ the girl said. ‘Get in.’
    We stood facing each other for a final time. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘you do know the words of a Dismissal, don’t you? I’d hate to hang around for months while you were apprenticed out to learn them.’
    ‘Of course I know them,’ the girl said. She took a deep breath. ‘Bartimaeus—’
    ‘Hold on a minute …’ I’d just spotted something. It was a mural I hadn’t seen before, just along the wall from Gilgamesh, Rameses and all the other top despots of the past – a handsome full-length portrait of Solomon himself in all his glory. Somehow, miraculously, it had survived the carnage of the night before.
    Picking up a bit of burned wood from the floor, I hopped across and made a few brisk adjustments in charcoal. ‘There!’ I said. ‘Physiologically improbable, but somehow appropriate, don’t you think? How long before he notices that , I wonder?’
    The girl laughed; it was the first time in our association that she’d done so.
    I glanced at her sidelong. ‘Shall I add Balkis as well? There’s a little space.’
    ‘Go on, then.’
    ‘There we are …’
    I strolled back to the circle. The girl was eyeing me in that same way Faquarl had – with a sort of detached amusement. I stared at her. ‘What?’
    ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘You make such a big deal out of the horrors of your enslavement that I almost missed the obvious. You enjoy it too.’
    I settled myself in my pentacle, fixing her with an expression of bleak disdain. ‘A friendly bit of advice,’ I said. ‘Unless