The Ring of Solomon

suspected that the djinni had whipped its tail from side to side more vigorously than was strictly necessary – but she had also thoroughly disliked the extreme helplessness she felt. Wrapped in the tail, suspended high above the ground, watching as the lizard fought so desperately with the first of the repulsive spider guards, she had realized for the first time how utterly dependent she was upon her slave. Deny it as she might, that dependency was total. Without Bartimaeus, she would never have got so far; without Bartimaeus she had no hope of getting any nearer to her goal.
    Of course, it was she who by quickness of thinking and strength of mind had commanded the djinni to her service – she had made the most of the chance that had come her way. But that was all it was, in truth – a lucky chance. Left to her own devices in the palace, all her skills and years of training would have come to nothing, and the trust her queen had showed her would have proved misplaced. On her own, she would have failed.
    Knowledge of her limitations, of her individual frailty, suddenly enveloped Asmira and took its usual shape. In her mind’s eye she saw again her mother standing on the chariot beside the throne, with her killers advancing on all sides. She saw the knives gleaming in the sun. And she felt again the terror of her weakness – the weakness of her six-year-old self – too slow, too feeble, too far away to help.
    Much more than the swinging of the tail, it was this sensation that made her sick at heart, and it had actually come as a relief to her when the second guard had scuttled from its hole, and she had been able to wrest a dagger from her belt and strike it down. As always, her fluidity of action brought respite – her heart’s unease was smothered by enjoyment in her skill. In the flash of a knife-strike her memory of her mother was, for the moment, gone, and Asmira was refocused on the task ahead. Even the last few lurching moments of the climb, in which the djinni seemed to throw her around more violently than ever, did not damp down the feeling, and she was deposited at last upon the balcony in better spirits than before.
    She was on a pillared walkway, open to the stars. Between the pillars, silhouetted statues sat on plinths; here and there were scattered seats and tables. Above, and very close now, the tower’s dome soared into the night. Set into the dome’s base and accessed by a covered passage leading from the balcony, there stood a pitch-black arch.
    Asmira turned to look back the way she had come. Far below, silvery in the starlight, the gardens stretched away towards the southern regions of the palace, where distant points of colour could be seen, darting to and fro.
    A small sand cat, with long, pointed ears, neat body and a striped and fluffy tail curled around its forepaws, sat atop the balustrade watching the movement of the lights.
    ‘Still milling about the treasury, chasing shadows,’ the cat remarked. ‘What a flock of fools they are.’ It shook its head pityingly, and glanced at Asmira with big, lilac-coloured eyes. ‘Just think, you might have summoned one of them . Aren’t you lucky you got me?’
    Asmira blew a strand of hair away from her face, irritated that the djinni had echoed her own thoughts. ‘You’re just as lucky,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Seeing as I got you out of that bottle, and killed that spider-thing just now.’ She checked her belt. Two knives left. Well, that would be enough.
    ‘I’d say we’re both lucky to have survived this far,’ the sand cat said. It jumped silently to the ground. ‘Let’s see how much further we can make our fortune stretch.’
    With tail high and whiskers out, it dinked between the pillars, flowing in and out of shadows. ‘No obvious hexes, no trip-threads, no dangling tendrils …’ it murmured. ‘The walkway’s clear. Solomon must have been relying on everything that came before. Now then, this arch … No door, just heavy drapes. A bit too easy, one might think … and one would be right, because there’s a nexus on the seventh plane.’ The cat looked over its furry shoulder as Asmira drew close. ‘For your information it’s like a pearly shimmery cobweb thing strung all the way across. Quite pretty really, only alarmed.’
    Asmira frowned. ‘What can we do?’
    ‘ You , as usual, can’t do anything except stand around looking cross. I, on the other hand, have options. Now, hush up a moment. I need to