The Ring of Solomon

suddenly resumed. He would have been walking away from Gezeri now, speaking over his shoulder. ‘Let Khaba sort out his own mess in the morning. He’s not to disturb any of our guests now.’
    ‘But see, we think—’ There followed a muttered word from the magician, a mouse’s battle-squeak and a shrill curse from Gezeri. ‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘Keep it off! All right, all right, I’m going!’ After that came the unmistakable sound of a lilac cloud imploding. The magician’s footsteps pattered slowly away along the hall.
    I scowled over at the girl. ‘ That didn’t take long. We’ve got Khaba on our heels. We’d better hurry up and get killed by something else before he discovers where you are.’
    Rather to my relief no further demonic waifs and strays came wandering along the Babylonian Hall, and we got to the far end unmolested. After that it was a simple matter to duck through the Hittite Room, veer past the Sumerian Annexe, take a left beside the Celtic Cabinet 5 and, just before we got to the sprawling (and guarded) Egyptian Halls, step through a little arch into the southern cloisters beside the gardens.
    ‘OK,’ I breathed. ‘Now we pause and have a recce. What do you see here?’
    The night beyond the cloisters was at its deepest, darkest and most secretive. The air was clear; a breeze still carried warmth from the eastern deserts. I scanned the stars: judging by the brightness of Arcturus, and Osiris’s waning, we had four or five hours left before dawn.
    The gardens stretched away from us, north and south. They were ink-dark, save where rectangles of light from the palace windows lay twisted over shrubs and statues, fountains, palm trees, oleander flowers. At some unseen distance to the north lay the black wall of the king’s tower, conveniently beside the harem, but separated from the main section of the palace. To the south were many of the public halls, including the audience chambers, the rooms where Solomon’s human servants lived and worked, and – slightly apart from the other buildings – his treasury, filled with gold.
    The girl had been taking it all in. ‘These are the gardens? Seem quiet enough.’
    ‘Which shows how much you know,’ I said. ‘You humans really are useless, aren’t you? It’s all go here. See that statue over by the rhododendrons? That’s an afrit. If you could make out the higher planes, you’d see – well, it’s probably just as well you can’t see what he’s doing. He’s one of the night-shift captains. All the sentries in this section of the palace will report to him periodically; they keep watch on each other too, just to ensure nothing’s untoward. I can see five – no, six – djinn either concealed in the shrubbery or floating amongst the trees, and there are a few wispy firefly things that I don’t like the look of either. In the middle of that central walkway is a trip-thread that triggers something nasty, and up there in the sky there’s a great big soaring fifth-plane dome covering the gardens; any spirit flying through that will activate alarms. So, taken all in all, this part of the palace is pretty well locked down.’
    ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ the girl said. ‘How do we get through?’
    ‘We don’t,’ I said. ‘Not yet. We need to cause a distraction. I think I can arrange that, but first, I’ve got a question for you: Why?’
    ‘Why what?’
    ‘Why are we doing all this? Why must we die?’
    The girl scowled. Thinking again! How it taxed her. ‘I told you. Solomon threatens Sheba.’
    ‘In what way precisely?’
    ‘He demands our frankincense! A vast ransom! If we do not pay, he will destroy us! He told my queen so.’
    ‘Came himself, did he?’
    ‘No. He sent a messenger. What difference does it make?’
    ‘Maybe none. So pay the ransom.’
    It was as if I’d asked her to kiss a corpse. Anger, incredulity and revulsion jostled for position in her dumbstruck face. ‘My queen would never do such a thing,’ she hissed. ‘It would be a crime against her honour!’
    ‘Ye-e-e-s,’ I said. ‘And we wouldn’t be dead.’
    For a second you could sense the cogs whirring; then her expression went all hard and blank. ‘I serve my queen, just as my mother did, and my grandmothers, and their mothers before them. That is all there is to it. Now, we’re wasting time. Let’s go .’
    ‘Not you,’ I said shortly. ‘You need to keep undercover here a moment, and don’t talk to any strange imps while