Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud
BOOKS BY JONATHAN STROUD
LOCKWOOD & CO.
The Screaming Staircase
THE BARTIMAEUS BOOKS
The Amulet of Samarkand
Ptolemy’s Gate
The Ring of Solomon
The Amulet of Samarkand Graphic Novel
Buried Fire
The Leap
The Last Siege
Heroes of the Valley
About the Endnotes
Bartimaeus is famous for making snarky asides and boastful claims, which you can find in this book’s endnotes. To access his comments as you are reading the story, click on the highlighted superscript number and the page will turn to the corresponding note. To return to where you were reading, click on the same number in the endnotes section. This feature works on most devices.
Copyright © 2006 by Jonathan Stroud
Excerpt from The Screaming Staircase text copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Stroud, illustrations copyright © 2013 by Kate Adams
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney - Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4231-4141-9
Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com
For Isabelle, with love
The Main Characters
THE MAGICIANS
Mr. Rupert Devereaux Prime Minister of Great Britain and the Empire, and acting Chief of Police
Mr. Carl Mortensen Minister of War
Ms. Helen Malbindi Foreign Minister
Ms. Jessica Whitwell Security Minister
Mr. Bruce Collins Home Secretary
Mr. John Mandrake Information Minister
Ms. Jane Farrar Deputy Police Chief
Mr. Quentin Makepeace A playwright; author of Petticoats and Rifles and other works
Mr. Harold Button Magician, scholar, and book collector
Mr. Sholto Pinn A merchant; proprietor of Pinn’s Accoutrements of Piccadilly
Mr. Clive Jenkins Magician Second Level, Department of Internal Affairs
Ms. Rebecca Piper Assistant to Mr. Mandrake, Information Ministry
THE COMMONERS
Ms. Kitty Jones A student and barmaid
Mr. Clem Hopkins An itinerant scholar
Mr. Nicholas Drew A political agitator
Mr. George Fox Proprietor of the Frog Inn, Chiswick
Ms. Rosanna Lutyens A private tutor
THE SPIRITS
Bartimaeus A djinni—in service to Mr. Mandrake
Ascobol
Cormocodran
Mwamba
Hodge Greater djinn—in service to Mr. Mandrake
Purip
Fritang Lesser djinn—in service to Mr. Mandrake
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Part One
Alexandria: 125 B.C.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Two
Alexandria: 126 B.C.
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Three
Alexandria: 125 B.C.
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Four
Alexandria: 124 B.C.
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part Five
Alexandria: 124 B.C.
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Preview of Lockwood & Co., Book One: The Screaming Staircase
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
About the Author
The assassins dropped into the palace grounds at midnight, four fleet shadows dark against the wall. The fall was high, the ground was hard; they made no more sound on impact than the pattering of rain. Three seconds they crouched there, low and motionless, sniffing at the air. Then away they stole, through the dark gardens, among the tamarisks and date palms, toward the quarters where the boy lay at rest. A cheetah on a chain stirred in its sleep; far away in the desert, jackals cried.
They went on pointed toe-tips, leaving no trace in the long wet grass. Their robes flittered at their backs, fragmenting their shadows into wisps and traces. What could be seen? Nothing but leaves shifting in the breeze. What could be heard? Nothing but the wind sighing among the palm fronds. No sight, no noise. A crocodile djinni, standing sentry at the sacred pool, was undisturbed though they passed within a scale’s breadth of his tail. For humans, it wasn’t badly done.
The heat of the day was a memory; the air was chill. Above the palace a cold round moon shone down, slathering silver across the roofs and courtyards.1
Away beyond the wall, the great city murmured in the night: wheels on dirt roads, distant laughter from the pleasure district along the quay, the tide lapping at its stones. Lamplight shone in windows, embers glowed on roof hearths, and from the top of the tower beside the harbor gate the great watch fire burned its message out to sea. Its image danced like imp-light on the waves.
At their posts, the guards played games of chance. In the pillared halls, the servants slept on beds of rushes. The palace gates were locked by triple bolts, each thicker than a man. No eyes were turned to the western gardens, where death came calling, secret as a scorpion, on four pairs of silent feet.
The boy’s window was on the first floor of the palace. Four black shadows hunched beneath the wall. The leader made a signal. One by one they pressed against the stonework; one by one they began to climb, suspended by their fingertips and the nails of their big toes.2 In this manner they had scaled marble columns and waterfalls of ice from Massilia to Hadhramaut; the rough stone blocks were easy for them now. Up they went, like bats upon a cave wall. Moonlight glinted on bright things gripped between their teeth.
The first of the assassins reached the window ledge: he sprang tigerlike upon it and peered into the chamber.
Moonlight spilled across the room; the pallet was lit as if by day. The boy lay sleeping, motionless as one already dead. His dark hair fell loose upon the cushions, his pale lamb’s throat shone against the silks.
The assassin took his dagger from between his teeth. With quiet deliberation, he surveyed the room, gauging its extent and the possibility of traps. It was large, shadowy, empty of ostentation. Three pillars supported the ceiling. In the distance stood a door of teak, barred on the inside. A chest, half filled with clothes, sat open against the wall. He saw a royal chair draped with a discarded cloak, sandals lying on the floor, an onyx basin filled with water. A faint trace of perfume hung on the air. The assassin, for whom such scents were decadent and corrupt, wrinkled his nose.3
His eyes narrowed; he reversed the dagger, holding it between finger and thumb by its shining, gleaming tip. It quivered once, twice. He was gauging the range here—he’d never missed a target yet, from Carthage to old Colchis. Every knife he’d thrown had found its th
His wrist flickered; the silver arc of the knife’s flight cut the air in two. It landed with a soft noise, hilt-deep in the cushion, an inch from the child’s neck.
The assassin paused in doubt, still crouched upon the sill. The back of his hands bore the crisscross scars that marked him as an adept of the dark academy. An adept never missed his target. The throw had been exact, precisely calibrated … yet it had missed. Had the victim moved a crucial fraction? Impossible—the boy was fast asleep. From his person he pulled a second dagger.4 Another careful aim (the assassin was conscious of his brothers behind and below him on the wall: he felt the grim weight of their impatience). A flick of the wrist, a momentary arc—
With a soft noise, the second dagger landed in the cushion, an inch to the other side of the prince’s neck. As he slept, perhaps he dreamed—a smile twitched ghostlike at the corners of his mouth.
Behind the black gauze of the scarf that masked his face, the assassin frowned. From within his tunic he drew a strip of fabric, twined tightly into a cord. In seven years since the Hermit had ordered his first kill, his garrote had never snapped, his hands had never failed him.5 With leopard’s stealth, he slid from the sill and stole across the moonlit floor.
In his bed the boy murmured something. He stirred beneath his sheet. The assassin froze rigid, a black statue in the center of the room.
Behind, at the window, two of his companions insinuated themselves upon the sill. They waited, watching.
The boy gave a little sigh and fell silent once more. He lay faceup among his cushions, a dagger’s hilt protruding on either side.
Seven seconds passed. The assassin moved again. He stole around behind the cushions, looping the ends of the cord around his hands. Now he was directly above the child; he bent swiftly, set the cord upon the sleeping throat—
The boy’s eyes opened. He reached up a hand, grasped the assassin’s left wrist and, without exertion, swung him headfirst into the nearest wall, snapping his neck like a reed stalk. He flung off his silken sheet and, with a bound, stood free, facing the window.
Up on the sill, silhouetted against the moon, two assassins hissed like rock snakes. Their comrade’s death was an affront to their collective pride. One plucked from his robe a pipe of bone; from a cavity between his teeth he sucked a pellet, eggshell thin, filled with poison. He set the pipe to his lips, blew once: the pellet shot across the room, directed at the child’s heart.
The boy gave a skip; the pellet shattered against a pillar, spattering it with liquid. A plume of green vapor drizzled through the air.
The two assassins leaped into the room; one this way, the other that. Each now held a scimitar in his hand; they spun them in complex flourishes about their heads, dark eyes scanning the room.
The boy was gone. The room was still. Green poison nibbled at the pillar; the stones fizzed with it.
Never once in seven years, from Antioch to Pergamum, had these assassins lost a victim.6 Their arms stopped moving; they slowed their pace, listening intently, tasting the air for the taint of fear.
From behind a pillar in the center of the room came the faintest scuffling, like a mouse flinching in its bed of straw. The assassins glanced at each other; they inched forward, toe-tip by toe-tip, scimitars raised. One went to the right, past the crumpled body of his fellow. One went to the left, beside the golden chair, draped with the cloak of kings. They moved like ghosts around the margins of the room, circling in upon the pillar from both sides.
Behind the pillar, a furtive movement: a boy’s shape hiding in the shadows. Both assassins saw it; both raised their scimitars and darted in, from left, from right. Both struck with mantis speed.
A dual cry, gargling and ragged. From around the pillar came a stumbling, rolling mess of arms and legs: the two assassins, locked together in a tight embrace, each one skewered on the other’s sword. They fell forward into the pool of moonlight in the center of the chamber, twitched gently, and lay quiet.
Silence. The windowsill hung vacant, nothing in it but the moon. A cloud passed across the bright round disc, blacking out the bodies on the floor. The signal fire in the harbor tower cast faint redness on the sky. All was still. The cloud drifted out to sea, the light returned. From behind the pillar walked the boy, bare feet soundless on the floor, his body stiff and wary, as if he sensed a pressure in the room. With careful steps, he neared the window. Slowly, slowly, closer, closer … he saw the shrouded mass of gardens, the trees and sentry towers. He noticed the texture of the sill, the way the moonlight caught its contours. Closer … now his hands rested on the stone itself. He leaned forward to look down into the courtyard at the bottom of the wall. His thin white throat extended out….
Nothing. The courtyard was empty. The wall below was sheer and smooth, its stones picked out by moonlight. The boy listened to the quietness. He tapped his fingers on the sill, shrugged, and turned inside.
Then the fourth assassin, clinging like a thin black spider to the stones above the window, dropped down behind him. His feet made the noise of feathers falling into snow. The boy heard; he twisted, turned. A knife flashed, swiped, was deflected by a desperate hand—its edge clinked against stone. Iron fingers grappled at the boy’s neck; his legs were knocked from under him. He fell, landing hard upon the floor. The assassin’s weight was on him. His hands were pinioned. He could not move.
The knife descended. This time it met its mark.
So it had finished as it must. Crouching above the body of the boy, the assassin allowed himself a breath—his first since his colleagues had met their ends. He sat back on his sinewy haunches, loosened his grip upon the knife, and let the boy’s wrist drop free. He inclined his head in the traditional mark of respect to the fallen victim.
At which point the boy reached up and plucked the knife from the center of his chest. The assassin blinked in consternation.
“Not silver, you see,” the boy said. “Mistake.” He raised his hand.
An explosion in the room. Green sparks cascaded from the window.
The boy rose to his feet and tossed the knife upon the pallet. He adjusted his kilt and blew some flakes of ash from his arms. Then he coughed loudly.
The faintest of scrapings. Across the room the golden chair shifted. The cloak draped over it was nudged aside. Out from between its legs scrambled another boy, identical to the first, though flushed and tousled from many hours of hiding.
He stood over the bodies of the assassins, breathing hard. Then he stared up at the ceiling. On it was the blackened outline of a man. It had a kind of startled look.
The boy lowered his gaze to the impassive doppelganger watching him across the moonlit room. I gave a mock salute.
Ptolemy brushed the dark hair from his eyes and bowed.
“Thank you, Rekhyt,” he said.
1
Times change.
Once, long ago, I was second to none. I could whirl through the air on a wisp of cloud and churn up dust storms with my passing. I could slice through mountains, raise castles on pillars of glass, fell forests with a single breath. I carved temples from the sinews of the earth and led armies against the legions of the dead, so that the harpers of a dozen lands played music in my memory and the chroniclers of a dozen centuries scribbled down my exploits. Yes! I was Bartimaeus—cheetah quick, strong as a bull elephant, deadly as a striking krait!
But that was then.
And now … well, right now I was lying in the middle of a midnight road, flat on my back and getting flatter. Why? Because on top of me was an upturned building. Its weight bore down. Muscles strained, tendons popped; try as I might, I could not push free.
In principle there’s nothing shameful about struggling when a building falls upon you. I’ve had such problems before; it’s part of the job description.1 But it does help if the edifice in question is glamorous and large. And in this case, the fearsome construction that had been ripped from its foundations and hurled upon me from a great height was neither b
No.The object that was pinning me haplessly to the ground, like a butterfly on a collector’s tray, was of twentieth-century origin and of very specific function.
Oh, all right, it was a public lavatory. Quite sizable, mind, but even so. I was glad no harpers or chroniclers happened to be passing.
In mitigation, I must report that the lavatory in question had concrete walls and a very thick iron roof, the cruel aura of which helped weaken my already feeble limbs. And there were doubtless various pipes and cisterns and desperately heavy taps inside, all adding to the total mass. But it was still a pretty poor show for a djinni of my stature to be squashed by it. In fact, the abject humiliation bothered me more than the crushing weight.
All around me the water from the snapped and broken pipework trickled away mournfully into the gutters. Only my head projected free of one of the concrete walls; my body was entirely trapped.2
So much for the negatives. The good side was that I was unable to rejoin the battle that was taking place up and down the suburban street.
It was a fairly low-key sort of battle, especially on the first plane. Nothing much could be seen. The house lights were all out, the electric street lamps had been tied in knots; the road was dark as an inkstone, a solid slab of black. A few stars shone coldly overhead. Once or twice indistinct blue-green lights appeared and faded, like explosions far off underwater.
Things hotted up on the second plane, where two rival flocks of birds could be seen wheeling and swooping at each other, buffeting savagely with wings, beaks, claws, and tails. Such loutish behavior would have been reprehensible among seagulls or other down-market fowl; the fact that these were eagles made it all the more shocking.
On the higher planes the bird guises were discarded altogether, and the true shapes of the fighting djinn came into focus.3 Seen from this perspective, the night sky was veritably awash with rushing forms, contorted shapes, and sinister activity.
Fair play was entirely disregarded. I saw one spiked knee go crunching into an opponent’s belly, sending him spinning away behind a chimney to recover. Disgraceful! If I’d been up there I’d have had no truck with that.4