Summary
Salty water sprays at my face as I lean over the side of the speeding ship, winds billowing Ptolemy’s dark hair, flaring it about his head in a rather dashing manner. Dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, the counterfeit boy seems distracted and wholly disengaged from his surroundings as I ponder upon what fresh hell I am getting myself into this time. The vessel I’m on smells like old iron and fish, creaking with the movement of the seas. Alas, even I, the great Bartimaeus of Uruk, cannot cross over an entire ocean by my strength alone. Once we are close enough to land, however, I’ll be merrily off this ship, in the form of a falcon or whale, or whatever suits my fancy at the time.
“The shipmaster said he’s visiting an old friend,” someone’s voice came, hushed as to keep from drawing my attention. Consider my attention fully drawn. Not willingly, mind you, but I’m bored enough to find watching grass grow entertaining at this point.
Over the past two weeks of this godforsaken journey, I hadn’t escaped the notice of the two girls crowding at the other end of the ship’s deck now, and one of them always giggles when our eyes meet. They look like sisters, with matching locks of dark curls and buck teeth as large as any proud species of jackrabbit’s, and from what I’ve involuntarily gathered of them, they are traveling with their brother overseas. Why they’d choose America to migrate to, of all places, eludes me still. I could swear England still had a war going on with them (hadn’t I heard Kitty still talking about it a few months back?), and America was just a large expanse of trees and a skilled native people who guarded their land with vicious pride the last time I was there. There are more of the Europeans settled there now, but it can’t have changed all that much.
“Did the shipmaster mention what kind of friend?” Another asked. “Who travels an entire ocean just to visit somebody who is only a friend?”
“Do you think he’s already got a sweetheart waiting on him?”
“Shame. All the good-looking ones are taken these days.”
“What if he isn’t? It wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
I can assure them, it most probably can, and will. I’m itching for one of them to try me, or else I would be the first one to walk on over and put an end to the debate myself. Preferably by tossing the giggly one overboard. And possibly have the rest of the ship’s crew follow… if I knew how to sail. Which I don’t. So here I am [1].
[1] : (I have collected many skills over the years, I assure you, as one does when you live as long as I have and have been a slave to magicians for much of your recent existence. But sailing a modern vessel is not one of them. The iron everywhere really gets on my nerves. Even now, my poor essence itches like a bad rash has spread all over my form, in all the places I cannot reach.)
Ptolemy was always a looker, mind you, but he did nothing to take advantage of his looks. I, on the other hand, have often found myself drawing attention wearing his face, although it doesn’t stop me from donning the guise every now and again. It feels comforting and familiar all at once, and the thought that I may one day forget his face haunts my nightmares. So it has become my preferred form over the millennia, and so it has stayed.
You may be wondering, what is Bartimaeus of Uruk, Sakhr al-Jinni, N’gorso the Mighty, the Serpent of Silver Plumes, doing on a small fishing vessel such as this one, crossing the oceans along with these humans, to god-knows-where? Well, I could start my tale at the very beginning, go on to supply you with mindnumbing amounts of detail and extra footnotes that would no doubt leave you vapid and drooling and halfway through a long nap [2]. Or I could run you through a quick re-cap.
[2] : (This would be because of no shortcoming on my part, as my riveting tales entertain all, and I am an excellent storyteller. It is just that you humans have never had long attention spans, and I have had to be understanding, to save your time and mine. Mostly mine. You, however, could learn much from every morsel of knowledge I decide to offer.)
In the one-hundred-thirty-five days since Natty boy went on to kick the bucket in a characteristically spectacular fashion, cementing his new legacy as the Hero of London [3], I have had to suffer in new ways I wouldn’t have ever even conceived possible before now. Don’t get me wrong, Kitty is a wonderful master to be bound to, if you had to choose one. She’s allowed me every freedom, to come and go as I please (thus, my current predicament), to leave to the Other Place any time I choose, has given me trust and friendship in a capacity I haven’t experienced since Ptolemy. If humanity has ever done anything right, it is to allow such shockingly empathetic beings to walk among them. Would this world have ever thought it? A djinni and a human girl, friends? [4]
[3] : (Doesn’t sound great enough for you? It is strange times we live in, where a pasty teenage boy with the complexion of death and a dark mop of greasy hair goes on to live forever in people’s hearts as the dashing, intelligent, young, and charming defender of the modern world. Perhaps one of the greatest things Nat ever saved the world from was the sight of him red-faced and stammering in front of any girl whose ever given him some passing attention.)
[4] : (Let us all spare each other the Swans of Araby reference. The morons who came up with the script clearly had an agenda there— somebody on that writing team had a kink for spirits, don’t try and tell me otherwise. They wouldn’t be the first, and they won’t be the last. Either that, or the writer was themselves a spirit, as it is so typical of humans to give us their most menial chores; and the spirit was hoping somebody would fall for the story and try falling in love with it, thus one day setting it free to devour as many humans as it possibly could before it ate its master and was finally allowed back into the Other Place.)
Although it is clear, the rest of London has a lot of progressing to do. Ever since the Nouda incident, it seems that magicians all over England have come to the conclusion that enslaving ancient beings from another reality to serve their own measly whims is— dare I say it— wrong, and could have disastrous effects on all parties involved. I guess they realized there could be direct consequences as a result of their actions. And all it took was a near-apocalypse.
They have gone on a headhunt for any magician left who survived the aftermath of Nouda’s rampage, and the newly-instated head of government, Piper, has declared that summoning any demon above the power-grade of a common foliot is strictly forbidden [5]. And only that, because London, as we know it, would collapse entirely if all spirits were banned immediately from helping clear out the rubble of its last mistake. Kitty’s long-term plan (because of course she found her place in the new government, as one of the surviving leaders of a successful revolution and all that), is to eliminate summonings altogether.
[5] : (And how are they enforcing this new policy, you ask? Why, they’ve got a nice little posse of three or four djinni on the job, ratting out any spirits they find having been summoned from a higher plane. This, naturally, has only served to make the stubborn twits who continue to maintain powerful spirits at their command use more clever methods to hide what they’ve been doing.)
Now that I’ve furbished you with all the necessary nonsense, let’s get on to me, and my problems.
Because I’ve got many.
Ever since Natty-boy did his self-sacrificing stunt and disappeared, there has been a funeral, many teary-eyed speeches, streets named after the amazing John Mandrake. And no body.
That’s right.
One-hundred-thirteen days. And they hadn’t dug up the rubble of the Glass Palace yet, which remained an immovable mountain sitting in the middle of the city. There simply hadn’t been enough manpower to spare, and there had been far too many other priorities besides actually digging up their beloved hero to give him a proper burial. They buried an empty coffin instead, as a gesture of… something. Certainly not gratitude.
So of course, yours truly had to roll up my metaphorical sleeves and get the job done.
And I found no body.
Kitty and I were bewildered, shocked, confused, wondering if his body had been decimated when Gladstone’s staff broke, if Nouda had eaten the kid before it died and left no remains, if the body was just in so many little pieces that we couldn’t salvage even a single tooth or nail. We were going to tell everyone. Launch a search party. ‘John Mandrake’s body is missing.’
But then I did some thinking. And some asking around. Some poking at people who’d been there at the night it all went down.
Let me tell you, nobody is willing to cooperate faster than defenseless commoners facing down an angry, distraught, djinni ready to go to any lengths to figure out where the hell his old master’s dead body went. One old janitor, bless his soul, stammered on and on about seeing a ghost when I pressed, and then made up a wild tale of a heavenly ram that had descended from the skies to take Natty boy’s remains away upon the curve of his horns [6].
[6] : (Alright, I admit, in my overeagerness to get some answers, I may have scared a couple of commoners completely shitless, and in effect, forced nonsense confessions from their lips out of their sheer terror.)
Why am I so enraged, you ask? Why so riled up, frothing at the mouth, over a dead magician? Let us start with one of the the most unfortunate side-effects of having shared a body with a human soul [6].
Emotions.
[6] : (I don’t recommend the experience, if you’re asking. How you lot stumble about, caged in bags of bound meat, bone, and flesh your whole lives, unable to do anything much to change your forms to escape the confines of your wretched realities, confounds me. Magicians may have a superiority complex because they’ve figured out ways to bind us with magic incantations and chalk-drawn circles on the ground, but you have to admit, spirits are the far superior species. No matter that we outlive you by a couple millennia and can choose to take on any form we please, existing on planes of existence you will never know about. But sure, enjoy your meat bags.)
In case any of the dimmer lot of you are going to be wondering, I have always had emotions. We spirits still have feelings— we may not have a physical brain or a heart, but we do experience emotions. I was just not expecting the sheer… volume of emotions I was going to be having post-Nathaniel’s death.
One day, I found myself sitting and staring at the ruins of the Glass Palace. I often visited. Kitty left flowers, as did many magicians and commoners alike. Paying their due respects to their hero. All kinds of bouquets were left behind— wildflowers tied by strings, posh varieties of roses and lillies and carnations with fancy ribbons, spots of bright color left all along the glass and metal debris of the Glass Palace. It made quite a sight, all the more because I knew how much John Mandrake would revel in all this attention on him.
At first, it didn’t feel real.
It didn’t feel like Nathaniel was actually dead, buried, and dusted, under all that rubble.
After all those years of being bound to his side as his ever-present slave, I half-expected the boy to crawl out from under the rubble and start going on about overtaking what was left of the government, or sending me off on a quest to get him a decent sandwich and tea, or perhaps a fancy tie for this dramatic re-entrance into politics after his heroic sacrifice.
But that day. That day, something happened. It clicked in my mind. Nathaniel was gone. Selfish, idiotic, moronic, prat that he was, chose to foolishly sacrifice himself in one moment of weakness.
“This isn’t like you,” I found myself saying. Rather loudly. Alright, I was screaming. Tears running down Ptolemy’s cheeks, a crushing pressure piercing my chest, snot dribbling from both my nostrils, tearing at where Ptolemy’s heart should be. Not one of my better moments. “Come back, you prick! Take responsibility for everything you left behind! Keep your promises! Who do you think you are? You’re a pathetic, good-for-nothing, magician scum, who always looks after himself! So why would you— How could you—”
It kept replaying in my mind. The moment Ptolemy dismissed me, when it came his time. This time could’ve been different. This time… But history had repeated itself. And Nathaniel is gone. Ptolemy is gone. I couldn’t do this all over again— be the only real remnant of a person who once was. The only one left to remember, the only one to carry the memories.
I had over two hundred years to grieve Ptolemy in peace. The Other Place healed all wounds. Emotions were near-meaningless there. While I held onto precious memories, the pain was distant, dull. This, now? This wasn’t distant. It filled up all of my being, gnawed at my essence, and I wanted to tear myself limb from limb, and then do it again, stuff myself into an iron tin, be punished with an inversion spell, because all of that would hurt less than the pain I was feeling.
Over the next couple of weeks, Kitty would do her very best to hold me together, as foreign powers beyond my control wracked my being. Even the Other Place could not help. It hurt, damn it. I was hurting in a way that wasn’t healing.
All this fuss, over what?
That brat.
That idiot.
Truly, it is strange times we live in, when a djinni grieves the death of its cruel, selfish, needling master.
In a moment of weakness one day, I actually called up a scrying glass to get one last look at him. To get a sense of where his body was, from where I could reach him.
And guess what I found.
Go on.
It has a lot to do about why I’m bobbing up and down on a ship, floating out in the middle of nowhere right now.
The next time I see that prat’s face, I’m going to teach him what an inversion spell looks like on a human.
Straightening from the railing, I turn to stroll down the small length of the vessel, approaching the two women gossiping on the other side.
“Excuse me, ladies. I have to apologize, but I couldn’t help but overhear you speaking.” I smile, all charming-like.
The two girls back up a little, squeaking nervously. The one on the right turns slightly red as I lean over. What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s all in just a little bit of fun.
“Unfortunately, you’re correct. I have someone I’m very much looking forward to meeting on the other end of this journey. So I’d suggest you quit gawking at me. It’s getting annoying.”
“I-I’m so sorry, sir, we didn’t mean to be so loud— we were just—”
Whatever they had left to stutter, I smile and walk past them, hoping the mini-confrontation would alleviate some of that infernal burning all throughout my essence. Just my luck, it did nothing. Perhaps later, I could circle back around to the idea of throwing multiple people overboard.
I massage my temple, as if to alleviate a headache, even though djinni don’t get headaches. The only thought that soothes me is imagining wrapping my fingers around a particular prick’s neck, all the way around and squeezing until his eyeballs popped out.
It has been one-hundred-and-thirty-five days since Nathaniel ‘died’ a heroic death vanquishing Nouda from this world. And I hope, in another seventeen more, I would get my hands on an actual body to fill his grave with. Lucky number one-hundred-fifty-two.