Ptolemy's Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

the first object they spy close at hand. I once cheeked a master a little too cleverly during his afternoon tea; before I knew it I was imprisoned inside a half-filled pot of strawberry jam and would have remained there, possibly for all eternity, had not his apprentice opened it by mistake at supper that same evening. Even so, my essence was infested with sticky little seeds for ages after.

[2] The afrit Honorius was a case in point: he went mad after a hundred years' confinement in a skeleton. A rather poor show; I like to think with my engaging personality I could keep myself entertained a littlelonger than that.

My current predicament was in stark contrast. Not for me the luxury of being hidden away in a cozy lamp or amulet. No—day in, day out, I was a djinni on the street, ducking, diving, taking risks, exposing myself to danger. And each day it became a little more difficult to survive.
    For I was no longer the carefree Bartimaeus of old. My essence was raddled with Earth's corruption; my mind was bleary with the pain. I was slower, weaker, distracted from rny tasks. I found it hard to change form. In battle my attacks were sputtering and weak—my Detonations had the explosive power of lemonade, my Convulsions trembled like jelly in a breeze. All my strength had gone. Where once, in the previous night's scrap, I would have sent that public convenience right back at the she-pig, adding a phone box and a bus stop for good measure, now I could do nothing to resist. I was vulnerable as a kitten. A few small buildings in the face, I could stand. But already I was practically at the mercy of second-rate fops such as Ascobol, a fool with no great history to speak of.[3] And if I met a foe with even a grain of power, my luck would surely end.

[3] It is a curious fact that, despite our fury at being summoned into this world, spirits such as I derive a good deal of retrospective satisfaction from our exploits. At the time, of course, we do our darnedest to avoid them, but afterward we often display a certain weary pr ide in the cleverest, bravest, or most jammy events on our resume. Philosophers might speculate this is because we are essentially defined by our experiences in this world, since in the Other Place we are not so easily individualized. Thus, those with long and glittering careers (e.g. me) tend to look down on those (e.g. Ascobol) whose names have been unearthed more recently, and haven't amassed so many fine achievements. In Ascobol's case, I also disliked him for his silly falsetto voice, which ill becomes an eight-foot cyclops.

A weak djinni is a bad slave—bad twice over, since he is both ineffective and a laughingstock. It does a magician no favors to maintain one in the world. This is the reason why they usually allow us back to the Other Place on a temporary basis, to repair our essence and renew our strength. No master in his right mind would permit a djinni to deteriorate as far as I had done.
    No master in his right mind . . . Well, that of course was the problem.
    I was interrupted in my gloomy cogitation by a stirring in midair. The girl looked up.
    Above the road appeared the faintest shimmering—a delicate tingling of pretty pink and yellow lights. It was invisible on the first plane, and thus went unnoticed by the people trudging up the street, but if any children had seen it, they'd probably have guessed it to be fairy dust.
    Which shows how wrong you can be.
    With an abrupt scratching noise, the lights froze and were drawn back from the middle like two curtains. Between them appeared the grinning face of a bald baby with bad acne. Its evil little eyes were red and sore, indicating an owner who kept long hours and bad habits. For a few moments they peered myopically to and fro; the baby swore under its breath and rubbed its eyes with dirty little fists.
    All at once it noticed my Concealment and let out a dreadful oath.[4] I regarded it with cool impassivity.

[4] Probably Germanic in