Ptolemy's Gate (25 page)

“Right.” Kitty settled herself comfortably. “I don't know whether you've noticed, but things have been going from bad to worse in London. The magicians are starting to lose control. Commoners are being sent off to fight, trade's being disrupted. There's a lot more poverty and that's led to disruption—there've even been riots in some towns. And there's a lot of resentment about … demons.”

“It's as I predicted when we last spoke,” the djinni said. “People are starting to notice spirits and uncover their own resilience too. They'll explore the possibilities, then begin fighting back.”

Kitty nodded. “But the magicians are responding—the police are cracking down, there's violence, people being arrested and spirited away, worse things even than that.”

“It happens,” the boy said.

“I think that the magicians will be prepared to carry out terrible deeds,” Kitty went on, “in order to remain in power. There are many secret commoners' groups, but they are weak, divided. No one has the strength to oppose the government.”

“That will come,” the djinni said. “In time.”

“But how
much
time? That's the issue.”

“You want a rough guess?” The boy tilted his head, thinking. “I reckon another couple of generations will do it. Say fifty years. That'll allow resilience to build up to the required levels for a successful revolt. Fifty years isn't too bad. With luck you might see it happen when you're a sweet, old granny, dandling big fat babies on your knee. Actually”—he held up a hand, interrupting Kitty's cry of protest—“no, that's wrong. My projection is incorrect.”

“Good.”

“You'll never be a sweet old granny. Let's say, ‘sad, lonely old biddy' instead.”

Kitty banged her fist against the floor. “Fifty years isn't good enough! Who knows what the magicians will have done by then? My whole life will have gone by! I'll probably be dead when the revolution comes.”

“True,” the boy said. “But
I'll
still be here to watch it. I'll be exactly the same.”

“Yes,” Kitty snarled. “Aren't you lucky?”

“You think so?” The boy looked down at his cross-legged form. He was sitting straight-backed, legs folded neatly in the manner of an Egyptian scribe. “It's two thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine years since Ptolemy died,” he said. “He was fourteen. Eight world empires have risen up and fallen away since that day, and I still carry his face.Who do
you
think's the lucky one?”

Kitty made no answer. At length she asked, “Why do you do it? Take on his shape, I mean.”

“Because I promised myself,” the djinni said. “I'm showing him how he was. Before he changed.”

“But I thought he never grew up,” Kitty said.

“No. That's right. He didn't.”

Kitty opened her mouth to ask a question, but shook her head instead. “We're getting off the point,” she said firmly. “I can't afford to wait and watch while the magicians do more wicked things; life's too short. Action is needed
now.
But we—the people, the commoners—can't unseat the government on our own. We need help.”

The boy shrugged. “That may well be.”

“So, my idea, or my proposal, really,” Kitty said, “is that the djinn and other spirits give us that help.” She sat back.

The boy looked at her. “Say again.”

“You help us out. After all, like you said just now—we're
all
victims here, both djinn and commoners. The magicians subjugate us the same whether we're human or spirit. So. We can team up and defeat them.”

The boy's face was expressionless. “Just like that?”

“Well, it's not going to be easy, of course. But there's bound to be a way. For instance, if commoners like me can summon important djinn like you, why can't we take on the government together? It needs a bit of thought, and a lot more de—spirits to get involved, but we'd have the advantage of surprise, wouldn't we? And it would be so much more effective for us to fight as an
equal
force: no slaves, no masters. No scrapping among ourselves or undermining each other. Just smooth cooperation. We'd be unstoppable!”

She was leaning forward in the pentacle now; eyes bright and shining with her vision. The boy seemed transfixed too; for a long while he did not answer. At last he spoke. “Insane,” he saidi “Nice hair, nice outfit, but quite, quite mad.”

Kitty squirmed with frustration. “You just have to
listen
—”

“Quite a few of my masters over the years have been mad,” the boy continued. “I've had religious zealots beating their bottoms with brambles, dead-eyed emperors joylessly committing mass murder, misers lusting after hoards of gold. I've had countless abusers of themselves and others…. You are a perverse and unappetizing species. I'll go as far as to say that
your
particular madness, Kitty, is less harmful than most, but it will lead to your death, and to mine also if I'm not careful, so I'll be frank with you. What you have just suggested is ridiculous in a thousand ways, and if I went through them all, we'd still be here when the British Empire finally
does
fall. So let me single out two reasons. No djinni, no afrit, no city-trampling marid or skintickling mite, will ever, ever team up (as you put it) with any kind of human.
Team up
… I ask you! Do you see us all wearing the same jersey or something, going into battle hand in hand?"The boy laughed—a harsh, unpleasant sound. “No! We've suffered too much pain for us
ever
to view a human as an ally.”

“That's a lie!” Kitty shouted. “I say again—what about Ptolemy?”

“He
was unique!” The boy clenched his fists. “He was the exception. Don't bring him into this!”

“He disproves everything you've said!” Kitty shouted. “Sure, it would be difficult to persuade most demons, but—”

“Difficult? It could never be done!”

“That's what you said about me learning enough to summon you. But I did it!”

“Utterly irrelevant. Let me tell you something. I've been sitting here, talking nicely, keeping pretty manners as a djinni will, but all the time I've been watching you like a hawk, waiting to see if you stuck so much as a toe outside the circle. If you had, I'd have been onto you faster than blinking, and you'd have learned something about humans and demons then, I can tell you.”

“Yeah?” Kitty sneered. “Instead of which you stuck your own stupid toe out and blew your skirt off. Which more or less sums up your last few thousand years.You're going nowhere on your own, pal.”

“Is that so?”The boy's face was livid with fury. “Well, let me get on to the second reason why your plan's a dud, shall I? Even if I wanted to help you, even if a hundred other djinn almost as potent as me shared that sentiment and wanted nothing better than to cast their lot in with some oat-brained humans, we couldn't. Because the only way we can come to Earth is through summoning. And that means losing free will. It means pain. It means obeying your master. And there's no equality in that equation.”

“Rubbish,” Kitty said. “It doesn't have to be that way.”

“Of course it does. What's the alternative? Every summons binds us. That's what they do. Would you seek some way to let us off the leash? With our power? Would you be happy to give us control?”

“Of course,” Kitty said stoutly. “If that was what it took.”

“You wouldn't! Not in a million years.”

“I would. If the trust was there, I'd do it.”

“Is that so? Well, why not prove it right now? Step out of your pentacle.”

“What?”

“You heard me well enough. Step out, across those lines.Yes, those ones right there. Let's see this trust of yours in action, shall we? Give
me
power for a moment. Let's see you put your money where your mouth is.”

As he spoke this, the boy sprang up, and after a moment Kitty did so too. They stood in the opposing pentacles, staring at each other. Kitty bit her lip. She felt hot and cold at the same time. This wasn't how she'd intended it to go—rejection of her proposal followed by an immediate challenge; she hadn't imagined it this way at all. What to do now? If she broke the summons by stepping from the pentacle, Bartimaeus would be able to destroy her before vanishing. Her resilience would not prevent him from tearing her apart. The idea of this set her flesh trembling beneath her clothes.

She looked into the face of the long-dead boy. He smiled at her in what was evidently intended to be an amiable fashion, but the eyes were hard and mocking.

“Well?” he said. “How about it?”

“You've just told me,” she said huskily, “about what you would do to me if I broke the protections. You said you'd fall upon me faster than blinking.”

The smile flickered. “Oh, don't pay any attention to
that.
I was only bluffing. You don't need to believe everything old Bartimaeus says, now
do
you? I'm always joking, you know that.” Kitty said nothing. “Go
on,
” the boy continued, “I won't do anything to you. Put yourself in my power for a moment. You might be surprised. Put your trust in me.”

Kitty ran the tip of a dry tongue against her lower lip. The boy smiled harder than ever; he put such effort into it that the surface of his face was taut and straining. She looked down at the chalk marks on the floor, then at her foot, then at the chalk again.

“That's the ticket,” the boy said.

Kitty suddenly realized that she had forgotten to breathe. She exhaled violently. “No,” she gasped. “No. That won't achieve anything.”

The dark eyes watched her, the mouth a sudden line. “Well,” the djinni said sourly, “I admit my hopes weren't high.”

“It's not about the trust,” she said, lying. “It's that you'd simply dematerialize. You can't stay on Earth without the power of the summons, and I haven't got the energy to summon you again right now. The point is,” she went on desperately, “that if you and other djinn joined forces with me, we could defeat the magicians and stop them summoning you. After we'd defeated them, you'd never be called on again.”

The djinni snorted. “I've no time for fantasies, Kitty. Listen to yourself—even you don't believe a word you're saying. Well, if that's all, you might as well dismiss me.” The boy turned his back on her.

At this, a great rage surged through Kitty. Memories of the last three years swam before her eyes; she felt again the enormous effort it had taken to get this far. And now this proud and blinkered spirit was rejecting her ideas out of hand. It hadn't even given them a moment's fair and considered thought. True, the details had to be worked out; there were many issues to be resolved, but clearly some kind of cooperation was both possible and necessary. She felt close to tears, but furiously drove the sensation away. She stamped her foot, making the floor reverberate. “So,” she snarled, “that stupid Egyptian boy was good enough for you, was he? You put your faith in
him
happily enough. Then why not me? What did
he
do for you that I couldn't? Well? Or am I too lowly to hear about his great deeds?” She spoke bitterly, savagely, contempt for the demon rising like gall inside her.

He did not turn to look at her. Moonlight spilled over his bare back and stick-thin limbs. “For one thing, he followed me to the Other Place.”

Kitty found her voice at last. “But that's—”

“It's not impossible. It's just not done.”

“I don't believe it.”

“
You
don't have to. But Ptolemaeus did. I challenged
him
to prove his trust in me too. And that was the way he did it: by devising the Gate of Ptolemy. He went through the four elements to find me. And he paid the price, as he guessed he would. After that—well, if
he'd
proposed a harebrained union of commoners and djinn, perhaps then I'd have gone along with it. There was no limit to our bond. But for you, well-intentioned as you are …? Sorry, Kitty. I think not.”

She stared at his back, saying nothing. Finally the boy turned, his face hidden in shadow. “What Ptolemy did was unique,” he said softly. “I wouldn't ask it of anyone else, not even you.”

“Did it kill him?” she asked.

He sighed. “No …”

“Then what price—?”

“My essence is a
little
vulnerable today,” Bartimaeus said. “I'd be grateful if you would keep your word and let me go.”

“I'm going to. But I do think you might stay and talk a little more. What Ptolemy did doesn't have to be unique. Maybe it's just that no one since knows much about this Gate thing.”

The boy laughed shortly. “Oh, they know, all right. Ptolemy wrote about his journey; some of his notes survived. Like you, he talked a lot of nonsense about a truce between magicians and djinn. He hoped others would follow his example, take the same risk he did. And over the years a few
did
try, more out of greed and the lust for power than with his idealism. It didn't go well for them.”

“Why not?”

No answer came; the boy looked away.

“All right,
say
nothing,” she cried. “I don't care. I'll read Ptolemy's notes for myself.”

“Oh, you understand ancient Greek, do you?” He laughed at the expression on her face. “Just don't worry about it, Kitty. Ptolemy's long gone, and the modern world is dark and complicated. You can't make a difference. Look after yourself and survive. That's what I do.” He prodded at his flesh. “Or try to. Mandrake very nearly had me killed just now.”

Kitty took a deep breath. Downstairs, in some book-filled corner of his decaying villa, Mr. Button slept; next morning he would expect her bright and early to begin the collation of new papers. In the evening she would be at The Frog once more, helping to repair the bar, serving out drinks to passive commoners…. Without her secret plan to drive her, these prospects seemed wearisome indeed.