Chapter Eight The Powers of the Air
Eight
The Powers of the Air
Father Gerhardt ignored Dr. Leila Pervani, which was all right with her because she was intrigued to see him at work. As soon as Bonneville left the room, the nuncio lifted the telephone, turned the handle hard, and spoke rapidly to someone whose harsh voice said the one word “Jawohl” in response.
Father Gerhardt stood up swiftly, took a small pistol from a drawer and dropped it in a pocket of his cassock, and glanced at the woman in a calculating way before shaking his head.
He swept out of the office and through the hall, ignoring the receptionist, who was used to that, but who watched with interest as Mademoiselle Pervani came out more slowly after him.
Her clothes were expensive, and she moved elegantly without making any noise on the stone floor.
She smiled at the receptionist and began to climb the staircase; the scent she wore lingered faintly after she’d gone past, something woody and spicy and almost intoxicating.
The receptionist wished she had the nerve to ask the woman what it was.
In the courtyard the men of the Magisterial Guard were climbing into the back of an adapted prison van painted in desert camouflage—unnecessarily, since it had never been used outside the city—under the supervision of a sergeant and Father Gerhardt.
The nuncio’s rasping voice said loudly, “Take them alive. You understand—alive.”
He climbed in next to the driver. One of the men swung the gate open, and the van moved out into the street.
—
Leila Pervani knocked softly on the door of Olivier Bonneville’s room and waited. Finally his voice came: “Who’s that?”
“I want to talk to you,” she said.
“Wait.”
Movements inside the room, and then the door opened. He looked out, flushed, scowling, in his shirtsleeves.
“May I come in?” she said.
She had the ability to make everything about herself soft, gentle, agreeable. He had no power to resist. He stood aside, and as soon as she entered she uttered a little gasp of sympathy at the sight of his hawk daemon perching on the back of a chair, one wing stretched out, broken.
Her own daemon, a sand-colored snake with emerald markings, hissed in her sleeve. She held her arm out towards the chair, and the daemon flowed out and onto the seat, from where, she knew, he would talk very quietly with the wounded hawk.
“Are you hurt?” she said to Bonneville.
“Yes,” he said shortly. “I told you.”
She could see he was mortified by everything that had happened, including her interest in it.
“May I sit down?” she said.
He shrugged. There was nowhere to sit but the bed. She sat on the end, and after a moment he sat down carefully on the floor with his back against the wall. His face was stiff with pain.
“Olivier, is it? I’m Leila. I’m so sorry about your daemon. These things cure themselves, but it’ll be painful for you both for a while. I was interested to hear what you said about that man, what was his name? Ionides. How did you meet him?”
“He was following me. Out in the desert, near some ruins, I cornered him and asked him what the hell he was doing. He told me some yarn about treasure. Well, I wasn’t interested.
The only thing I want is something that girl stole from me.
He’s some kind of guide, interpreter, pretends to be, anyway, but really he’s just a thief.
He fooled that girl, but he couldn’t fool me. ”
“He’s working for her, you say?”
“She wouldn’t have got this far otherwise. She’s lost her daemon. I suppose she’s looking for him.”
“What did she steal from you?”
“My father’s alethiometer. There’s a man involved too. Polstead, Matthew or Malcolm, I don’t know.”
“Is the man Ionides after the alethiometer as well?”
“He’s had plenty of chances to take it, so probably not. He wants this treasure he was talking about. Somewhere in the desert, way off to the east. Almost Cathay.”
“Why is he going with the girl when he could move more quickly by himself?”
“He needs her. There’s something only she can do before they can get to the treasure.”
“And what is this treasure?”
“No idea. As I said, I’m not interested.”
She nodded. She looked at his wounded daemon, all sympathy, all kindness. As hard as Bonneville looked he could see no deception there, but the habit of mistrust was lifelong.
“You know,” she said, “I was talking to Marcel Delamare the other day.”
“Where?”
“In Constantinople. At the Patriarch’s palace.”
Bonneville knew that Delamare was there. So far she might be telling the truth.
“He told me about you,” she went on. “He said you were the best alethiometrist he’d ever known. He admires you very much.”
“Maybe he did once. But he treated me like a servant. Do this, do that. Look for this. Don’t look at that. I wasn’t going to be his tame oracle. I had my own purposes.”
“Quite right. But now you’re back with the Magisterium?”
“On my own terms. They have facilities I wouldn’t be able to use otherwise.”
Leila Pervani remembered the scene in the nuncio’s office.
If “on his own terms” meant being sent to his room like a naughty schoolboy…
But Bonneville was humiliated and hurt and angry and nearly crippled with pride.
She reached out for her serpent daemon, who hissed a farewell to the hawk and slipped up into her sleeve.
“Thank you, Olivier,” she said. “I’m grateful. I hope we can talk again soon. There are things each of us could learn from the other, and your knowledge is unique. Lie flat now. Let your back heal.”
She smiled. He looked away, and she left.
—
“There she is,” said Ionides. “On that bench.”
He and Malcolm had just turned in to the Brazilian Embassy garden.
The afternoon was heavy with heat and thick with insect sounds, and the garden was nearly deserted; an elderly couple were feeding some sparrows from a paper bag, and a young woman lay asleep in the dappled shade on the bench Ionides was pointing to.
“But that’s not Lyra!” said Malcolm.
So thin, with short dark ragged hair—
“Yes, it is!” said Asta, and leapt across the grass to her side.
Malcolm followed with all the clumsy speed his wound allowed. He’d noticed the astonishment with which Ionides saw that he and his daemon could separate, and the moment of swift calculation that followed.
Asta was already standing on the arm of the bench, near Lyra’s head, and purring.
Seeing that Lyra was deeply asleep, Malcolm tried to kneel beside the bench to wake her gently; but it hurt so much he had to give up, and pushed himself upright again.
Lyra was so still she might have been dead, and of course with no daemon…
He’d never seen her before without Pantalaimon.
He realized that if she woke up while he was standing just there the sun would be in her eyes, and moved around to a spot where it would be in his face rather than hers.
He leaned on the back of the bench and said quietly, “Lyra! Can you hear me? Lyra, wake up.”
Ionides had withdrawn a little way to keep watch. Malcolm bent down a little closer.
“Lyra, wake up! We’re going to have to move away from here. Don’t be startled. Wake up gently now.”
Still no response. She was frowning in her sleep, hot, drawn. He could never have imagined her looking so unhappy. He reached down and laid his hand on her shoulder: the first time he had ever touched her.
“Lyra—”
She cried out, twisted away, leapt up like a wild animal about to flee.
“Miss Silver,” said Ionides calmly, and she turned, bewildered, and then looked back to Malcolm.
“Lyra, it’s all right, you’re safe,” he said.
“Malcolm?”
He nodded. She looked at the bench, where Asta was watching.
“Malcolm, is that really you?”
Her voice was a little hoarse, a little strained, a little thick with sleep. Malcolm’s hand still held the memory of her shoulder: how fragile! He wanted to enfold her in his arms, but knew nothing like that would ever happen.
“Yes, it’s really me,” he managed to say. “Thanks to Mr. Ionides, who brought me here. Come with us. We’ll go somewhere safe.”
“How did you—where did you…”
“Did you find Pan?” he said. “Is he anywhere near?”
“No—oh, my rucksack. I must take that…”
It lay on the grass beside the bench. She picked it up and swung it over her shoulder.
“The hotel,” she said. “There were police there, or something…”
“Left anything there?” said Malcolm.
“I’ve got everything I need. What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
She was still only just awake. She looked exhausted.
She was wearing a floral skirt that was far from clean, and she could hardly keep her balance, and she was blinking and trying to open her eyes fully in the sun.
And the hair—she looked like a stranger—and she’d hurt her hand— “Show me your hand,” said Malcolm.
She held it out, trembling, and he took it on his palm. The bruise was floridly colored, and her first and middle finger were bent out of alignment.
“That’s broken,” he said, and she nodded.
“Mr. Malcolm,” said Ionides. “Listen.”
He listened, and so did Lyra. The sound of a siren was coming from three or four streets away.
“It’s coming this way,” Ionides said.
“The young man with the alethiometer,” said Lyra.
“He was here?” said Malcolm.
She nodded. “I had to fight him, and I hurt his daemon,” she said. “He must’ve…”
“We must go, now,” said Ionides.
“Is there another gate?” said Malcolm.
“That way, but they keep it locked.”
“Come on. Lyra, can you run?”
“You’re limping,” she said. “Can you?”
“Just hurry.”
She followed where Ionides was leading, along the gravel path and then left around the side of the house. Ionides was waiting for them to catch up.
“You got a plan?” he said to Malcolm.
“I’ve got two. Is this still an embassy?”
“No.”
“In that case, I’ve got one. Where’s that gate?”
“That way—”
The siren was rapidly getting louder, and then there came the sound of another, from a different direction.
Shadows flickered over them as they struggled to hurry to the gate.
For a moment Malcolm thought it was his private aurora, the spangled ring, but it wasn’t: as the first car turned into the gate behind them, with the noise of an air-cooled engine straining in a low gear and the siren suddenly increasing in volume, the shadows vanished and the garden blazed with sunlight again.
“Something’s happening,” said Lyra, looking all around. “Something else…”
She, Malcolm, and Ionides were still on the path, a hundred yards or so from the group of trees that shaded the other gate.
The camouflaged van slammed to a halt, spraying gravel to left and right, siren still blaring, and then from behind them, out of the trees, came another, this one marked with the word Polis.
Malcolm crouched to whisper to Asta: “Whatever happens, whatever it takes, stay with her.”
He and Ionides moved closer to Lyra, one on each side, and she took a short stick out of her rucksack. Malcolm transferred the cane to his left hand and took a small pistol from his pocket with the right. Ionides seemed to be holding a knife.
The sirens were both still screaming, one ahead of them and one behind, making the air of the garden shudder and ring to the point of hallucination.
Men with guns were leaping from the back of the first van and running to spread out in a line, all aiming at the three of them, and then more shadows sped over them: it was like being dashed with cool water.
Some of the armed men looked up and stumbled backwards. One fell over. Two others turned and fled.
The man in command of the first van gave an order to the driver, and the siren stopped. A moment later the other did too, and then they could all hear something else, like gigantic wings, windmill-sized, beating the air.
Malcolm hadn’t taken his eyes off the soldiers.
He was calculating: sergeant first, pull Lyra behind him, that tall man second, but those shadows—his very sight was flickering—and if it wasn’t the scotoma, it had the same effect on him: a revelation, a new way of seeing, the opening of windows into a different vision of the world—
The combat in the sky during the night of the desert? Had those creatures come here too? He looked up, but the light was too dazzling.
A shout from Ionides: Malcolm and Lyra both looked, and saw him being wrestled to the ground by three soldiers, with a gray-faced man in a clerical robe directing them.
Before they could move to help him, one soldier braver than the rest fired upwards, and at once a vast creature swooped low and seized him and bore him screaming into the sky—then dropped him from high above treetop height, still screaming until he hit the ground—
Lyra hid her face in Malcolm’s shoulder.
More shadows—a well-loved voice crying Lyra’s name—she turned her face up and shouted: “Pan! Oh, Pan! Here! Here I am!”
Her right hand shaded her eyes—she was gazing into the sky, into the flashing shadows, into the bare sun—
A crash of gunshots, human cries, a screaming roar from the sky—
Ionides struggled, but they had pinioned his arms. A soldier clubbed him from behind.
Malcolm struck at the soldier with his cane, slashing him across the head so that he fell and scrambled up and ran away.
Another two held on to Ionides and dragged him towards the van.
Lyra was pulling at Malcolm’s arm, face turned to the sky, shouting something he couldn’t make out, and then he pulled away to reach Ionides, if he could, and tug him to safety.
But before he could, something whose power was greater than anything he’d ever known seized him by the shoulder, lifted him off the ground, and with vast beating wings bore him higher and higher above the garden, above the buildings, above the city.
Lyra was shouting “Malcolm! Malcolm!” but she was on the ground, and Asta—Asta was down there with her—just as he’d told her, staying close to Lyra.
In the battering whirlwind of sensations and feelings, the pain, the shock, the fear for Asta and for Lyra, Malcolm found himself still capable of thinking clearly; and what he thought was that these creatures who had swept him into the sky, whatever name they had for themselves, whatever name they were given by poets, were of the same order of beings as the fairy of the Thames and the old giant of the riverbed, and that he’d had dealings with them before, and that he’d survived, and so had Lyra.