Jonathan Stroud - The Amulet of Samarkand

"Don't mention it, John," she said. "I don't want to hear another peep out of you this morning. We have to get you better for the state address, don't we?" She glanced around the room, frowning. "There's a very strong smell of candles up here," she said. "And incense. You haven't been practicing here, have you?"

"No, Mrs. Underwood." Inwardly Nathaniel cursed his carelessness. He had been meaning to open the window to let the stench out, but he had felt so weary the evening before, it had slipped his mind. "That happens sometimes. Smells rise to the top of the house from Mr. Underwood's workroom."

"Odd. I've never noticed it before."

She sniffed again. Nathaniel's eyes were drawn as if by a magnet to one edge of his rug, where to his horror he saw the perimeter of an incriminating pentacle peeping out. With a great effort of will he tore his gaze away and broke into a vigorous fit of coughing. Mrs. Underwood was distracted. She passed him the honey and lemon.

"Drink that, dear. Then sleep," she said. "I'll come up again at lunch time."

Long before she did so the window had been opened and the room well and truly aired. The floorboards beneath the rug had been scrubbed clean.

Nathaniel lay in bed. His new name, which Mrs. Underwood had seemed determined to break in for him, rang strangely in his ears. It sounded fake, even a little foolish. John Mandrake. Appropriate perhaps for a magician from the history books; less so for a dribbly, cold—ridden boy. He would find it hard to get used to this new identity, harder still to forget his old name… Not that he'd be allowed to forget it, with Bartimaeus around. Even with his safeguard—the tobacco tin washing about at the bottom of the river—Nathaniel did not feel quite secure. Try as he might to eject it from his mind, the anxiety came back: it was like a guilty conscience, prodding him, reminding him, never letting him rest easy. Maybe he had forgotten something vital that the demon would spot… maybe even now it was hatching its plan, instead of spying on Lovelace as he had directed.

A multitude of unpleasant possibilities spun endlessly through his mind as he sprawled amid the debris of orange peels and crumpled tissues. He was sorely tempted to bring out the scrying glass from its hiding place under the roof tiles, and with its help check up on Bartimaeus. But he knew this was unwise—his head was fogged, his voice a feeble croak, and his body didn't have strength enough to sit upright, let alone control a small, belligerent imp. For the moment, the djinni would have to be left to its own dubious devices. All would no doubt be well.

Mrs. Underwood's attentions saw Nathaniel back on his feet by the third morning.

"And not a moment too soon," she said. "It's our big outing this evening."

"Who will be there?" Nathaniel asked. He was sitting cross—legged in the corner of the kitchen, polishing his shoes.

"The three hundred ministers of the Government, their husbands and wives, some very lucky named apprentices… and a few hangers—on—the lesser magicians from the civil service or military, who are close to being promoted, but don't yet know the right people. It's a good opportunity to see who's in and who's out, John, not to mention what everyone's wearing. At the summer gathering in June, several of the female ministers experimented with caftans in the Samarkand style. It caused quite a stir, but it didn't catch on, of course. Oh, please concentrate, John." He had dropped his brush.

"Sorry, it slipped, that's all. Why Samarkand, Mrs. Underwood? What's so trendy about it?"

"I'm sure I haven't the faintest idea. If you've finished your shoes, you'd better get on with brushing your jacket."

It was a Saturday and there were no lessons to distract Nathaniel from the thrill of what was to come, so as the day wore on he became possessed by a wildly mounting excitement. By three o'clock, several hours before it was necessary, he was already dressed in his best clothes and prowling back and forth about the house—a state of affairs that continued until his master put his head out of his bedroom and abruptly ordered him to stop.

"Cease your tramping, boy! You're making my head throb! Or would you prefer to remain behind this evening?"

Nathaniel shook his head numbly and descended on tiptoe to the library, where he kept himself out of trouble researching new Constraining spells for middle—ranking djinn. Time passed agreeably, and he was still busy learning the difficult incantation for the Jagged Pendulum, when Mr. Underwood strode into the room, his best overcoat flowing behind him.

"There you are, you idiot! I've been calling for you, up and down the house! Another minute and you'd have found us gone."

"Sorry, sir—I was reading—"

"Not that book you weren't, you dozy fool. It's fourth—level, written in Coptic—you'd never have a hope. You were asleep and don't deny it. Right, snap to sharpish, or I really will leave you behind."

Nathaniel's eyes had been closed at the moment his master walked in: he found it easier to memorize things that way. All things considered, this was perhaps fortunate, since he didn't have to come up with any further explanations. In an instant the book was lying discarded on the chair and he was out of the library at his master's heels and following him in a heart—pounding flurry down the hall, through the front door and out into the night, where Mrs. Underwood, in a shiny green dress and with something like a furry anaconda wound loosely round her neck, waited smiling beside the big black car.

Nathaniel had only been in his master's car once before, and he did not remember it. He climbed into the back, marveling at the feel of the shiny leather seat and the odd, fake smell of the pine—tree odoriser dangling from the rearview mirror.

"Sit back and don't touch the windows." Mr. Underwood's eyebrows glowered at him in the mirror. Nathaniel sat back, his hands contentedly in his lap, and the journey to Parliament began.

Nathaniel stared out of the window as the car cruised south. The countless glowing lights of London—headlamps, street lamps, shop fronts, windows, vigilance spheres—flashed in quick succession across his face. He gazed wide—eyed, blinking hardly at all, drinking everything in. Traveling across the city was a special occasion in itself—it rarely happened to Nathaniel, whose experience of the world was confined mainly to books. Now and then, Mrs. Underwood took him on necessary bus trips to clothes and shoe stores, and once, when Mr. Underwood was away on business, he had been taken to the zoo. But he had seldom gone beyond the outskirts of Highgate, and certainly never at night.

As usual, it was the sheer scale that took his breath away; the profusion of streets and side—roads, the ribbons of lights curving off on all sides. Most of the houses seemed very different from the ones in his master's street: much smaller, meaner, more tightly packed. Often they seemed to congregate around large, windowless buildings with flat roofs and tall chimneys, presumably factories where commoners assembled for some dull purpose. As such they didn't really interest him.

The commoners themselves were in evidence too. Nathaniel was always amazed by how many of them there were. Despite the dark and the evening drizzle, they were out in surprising numbers, heads down, hurrying along like ants in his garden, ducking in and out of shops, or sometimes disappearing into ramshackle inns on street corners, where warm orange light shone through frosted windows. Every house like this had its own vigilance sphere floating prominently in the air above the door; whenever someone walked below, it bobbed and pulsed with a deeper red.

The car had just passed one of these inns—a particularly large example opposite a subway station—when Mr. Underwood banged his fist down on the dashboard hard enough to make Nathaniel jump.