Will stepped carefully across the grass in Cittagazze, counting his paces, holding in his mind as clearly as he could a memory of where the study was and trying to locate it with reference to the villa, which stood nearby, stucco-white and columned in a formal garden with statues and a fountain. And he was aware of how exposed he was in this moon-drenched parkland.
She mastered herself, and swallowed hard, and shook her head.
Coulters cocktail party, when I ran away! And he must have known who I was, all the time...."
When he thought he was in the right spot, he stopped and held out the knife again, feeling forward carefully. These little invisible gaps were anywhere, but not everywhere, or any slash of the knife would open a window.
The third time, he found he could see the whole of the study in the dim light through the open door to the hall. There was the desk, the sofa, the cabinet! He could see a faint gleam along the side of a brass microscope. And there was no one in the room, and the house was silent. It couldnt be better.
and opened another. This time he found fabric in front of him—heavy green velvet: the curtains of the study. But where were they in relation to the cabinet? He had to close that one too, turn the other way, try again. Time was passing.
The Rolls-Royce stood in front of the house, and the chauffeur was moving around to the passenger side to open the door. Sir Charles stood waiting, smiling, offering his arm to the woman who was getting out, and as she came into view Lyra felt a blow at her heart, the worst blow since shed escaped from Bolvangar, because Sir Charless guest was her mother, Mrs. Coulter.
And on the shelf in the middle, where Sir Charles had placed the alethiometer, there was a space.
"Ill tell you, I promise. But you must tell me something first."
This was the right cabinet, and the alethiometer wasnt there.
She folded up the letters, and he lay on the bed, pushed the cat aside, and fell asleep.
"Shh. Dont stay here if youre going to make a noise."
A minute went by, and another. Where was Will now? She strained to look through the window of the study, but it was just a dark mullioned square overhung with creeper. Sir Charles had sat inside it on the window seat only that morning, and crossed his legs, and arranged the creases in his trousers. Where was the cabinet in relation to the window? Would Will get inside without disturbing anyone in the house? Lyra could hear her heart beating, too.
When shed finished, he said, "Thank you." Then he said, "Listen. I want you to take something in your rucksack for me, in case we cant come back here. Its only letters. You can read them if you want."
All right?"
Im going to listen and see if he puts it back. Stay here."
and that in turn seemed to make the bleeding even worse. He sat on the edge of the bath and closed his eyes and breathed deeply several times.
Lyra put some water on to boil, and Will took it up to the bathroom and stripped to wash from head to foot. The pain was dull and unrelenting, but at least the cuts were clean, and having seen what the knife could do, he knew that no cuts could be cleaner; but the stumps where his fingers had been were bleeding freely. When he looked at them he felt sick, and his heart beat faster,
He went at once to the sofa again, and crouched behind it, next to the window that opened onto the moon-silvered grass in Cittagazze. And no sooner had he got there than he heard footsteps in that other world, lightly running over the grass, and looked through to see Lyra racing toward him.
"I cant imagine why you would. She is a repellent brat."
"Because Lyra had it, and I want to find her."
"I havent got it," he whisperedwhen she came up. "It wasnt there. Hes probably got it with him.
Hed have to go through properly and look around. Opening windows here and there at random would take all night. He closed the window in front of the cabinet, opened another to look at the rest of the room, and when hed taken careful stock, he closed that one and opened a larger one behind the sofa through which he could easily get out in a hurry if he needed to.
Lyra did as he said, and he cut through four bars altogether, enough for them to pass through without difficulty. Lyra laid them one by one on the grass, and then they were through, and moving among the bushes.
She tore up a sheet and wrapped it around and around, clamping it down over the wounds as tight as she could. He gritted his teeth, but he couldnt help the tears. He brushed them away without a word, and she said nothing.
"What is Asriel up to?"
He cut a window at the right height. The glass of the cabinet door was only a handsbreadth in front of it. He put his face close, looking intently at this shelf and that, from top to bottom.
Will stepped back a moment and took a deep breath.
A light came on in the room. He heard Sir Charles speaking to the servant, dismissing him, coming into the study, closing the door.
There was a silence then, as if the woman were calculating what to say. Will looked back through the window at Lyra, and saw her face, moonlit and wide-eyed with fear, biting her lip to keep silent and straining to hear, as he was.
The alethiometer wasnt there.
Then Pantalaimon made a soft noise, and at the same moment a different sound came from the front of the house, to Lyras left. She couldnt see the front, but she could see a light sweeping across the trees, and she heard a deep crunching sound: the sound of tires on gravel, she guessed.
She hadnt heard the cars engine at all.
"If I can," she said, in a different tone that Will thought might be a warning. Her voice was intoxicating: soothing, sweet, musical, and young, too. He longed to know what she looked like, because Lyra had never described her, and the face that went with this voice must be remarkable.
The lane ran down through trees to another road at the far end, and it wasnt lighted. It would have been easy for an ordinary burglar to get unobserved into the shrubbery and thus to the garden, except that there was a strong iron fence twice as high as Will, with spikes on the top, running the length of Sir Charless property. However, it was no barrier to the subtle knife.
Much later that night, Will and Lyra crouched in the lane that ran along beside the tree-shaded shrubbery in Sir Charless garden. On the Cittagazze side, they were in a grassy park surrounding a classical villa that gleamed white in the moonlight. Theyd taken a long time to get to Sir Charless house, moving mainly in Cittagazze, with frequent stops to cut through and check their position in Wills world, closing the windows as soon as they knew where they were.
"Ill remind you that shes my daughter."
"May I offer you a glass of Tokay?" he said.
"What do you want to know?"
"Youre going to have to tie my bandage again," he said to Lyra. "I dont care how tight you make it as long as it stops the bleeding."
"Have the chair by the fireplace."
"Your good health, Marisa," he said, sipping. "Now, suppose you tell me what you want."
He was just in time to wave and put his finger to his lips, and she slowed, realizing that he was aware Sir Charles had returned.
"Hush now ..."
His hand was throbbing brutally by this time, and the bandage was trailing loose. He wound it around as best he could and tucked the end in, and then went through into Sir Charless house completely and crouched behind the leather sofa, the knife in his right hand, listening carefully.
Nor was it on the desk among the neatly piled books and papers, nor on the mantelpiece among the invitation cards to this opening or that reception, nor on the cushioned window seat, nor on the octagonal table behind the door.
"Sir Charles is coming back," he whispered. "And theres someone with him."
Once they had a clear sight of the side of the house, with the creeper-shaded window of the study facing them across the smooth lawn, Will said quietly, "Im going to cut through into Cigazze here,
There was the faint glug of wine being poured, a tinkle of decanter on glass rim, a murmur of thanks, and then Sir Charles seated himself on the sofa, inches away from Will.
and leave the window open, and move in Cigazze to where I think the study is, and then cut back through to this world. Then Ill take the alethiometer out of that cabinet thing and Ill close that window and then Ill come back to this one. You stay here in this world and keep watch. As soon as you hear me call you, you come through this window into Cigazze and then Ill close it up again.
"I dont mind. Else I wouldnt have said."
At first Will thought hed got the wrong cabinet. There were four of them in the room. Hed counted that morning, and memorized where they were—tall square cases made of dark wood, with glass sides and fronts and velvet-covered shelves, made for displaying valuable objects of porcelain or ivory or gold. Could he have simply opened a window in front of the wrong one? But on the top shelf was that bulky instrument with the brass rings: hed made a point of noticing that.
Will stood back and held out the knife, searching, touching the air with the most delicate movements, until after a minute or so he found a point at which he could cut. He did it swiftly, opening a window through into the moonlit land of Cigazze, and then stood back, estimating how many steps it would take him in that world to reach the study, and memorizing the direction.
He cut a window in the air not far from the white-gleaming villa, and they came through to the quiet lane in Headington to work out exactly how to get to the study where Sir Charles had put the alethiometer. There were two floodlights illuminating his garden, and lights were on in the front windows of the house, though not in the study. Only moonlight lit this side, and the study window was dark.
"Yeah," she whispered. "Both me and Pan11 look out."
First they went back to the cafe, to recover and rest and change their clothes. It was clear that Will couldnt go everywhere covered in blood, and the time of feeling guilty about taking things from shops was over; so he gathered a complete set of new clothes and shoes, and Lyra, demanding to help, and watching in every direction for the other children, carried them back to the cafe.
He went to the bedroom, took out the green leather writing case, and handed her the sheets of airmail paper.
"Then she is even more repellent, because she must have resisted your charming influence on purpose. No one could do it by accident."
He carefully estimated the distance, closed that window, stepped forward four paces, and held up the knife again. If he was right, hed be in exactly the right spot to reach through, cut through the glass in the cabinet, take out the alethiometer and close the window behind him.
He moved back to the desk, intending to try the drawers, but with the heavy expectation of failure; and as he did so, he heard the faint crunch of tires on gravel. It was so quiet that he halfthought he was imagining it, but he stood stock-still, straining to listen. It stopped.
Then without a word he stepped through and vanished.
A womans voice, low and sweet, replied, "How kind of you, Carlo. I havent tasted Tokay for many years."
He stepped out on the silent carpet and looked into each of the cabinets in turn. It wasnt there.
Because he could hear voices in the hall. The two of them were close enough to touch, Will in his world, she in Cit-tagazze, and seeing his trailing bandage, Lyra tapped him on the arm and mimed tying it up again. He held out his hand for her to do it, crouching meanwhile with his head cocked sideways, listening hard.
"Why?"
Her daemon was a small tawny owl, almost invisible in the dappled shadows under the trees. His wide pale eyes took in every movement.
"No! Its worse!" she said, and she was nearly in a genuine panic. "Shes with him—Mrs. Coulter—my mother! I dunno how she got here, but if she sees me, Im dead, Will, Im lost— and I know who he is now! I remember where I seen him before! Will, hes called Lord Boreal! I seen him at Mrs.
Presently he felt calmer and set himself to washing. He did the best he could, drying himself on the increasingly bloodied towels, and then dressed in his new clothes, trying not to make them bloody too.
Hearing nothing, he stood up slowly and looked around the room. The door to the hall was halfopen, and the light that came through was quite enough to see by. The cabinets, the bookshelves, the pictures were all there, as they had been that morning, undisturbed.
He took off again, and this time Lyra followed, tiptoeing over the soft earth with the utmost care, crouching down behind the bushes, finally going on hands and knees to look between the leaves of a laurel.
"Sorry. I want to stay with you," she whispered. "I want to hear what they say."
Then he heard the front door open.
"Where is she?
"I want to know where you got the alethiometer."
Lyra crouched down nearby. Pantalaimon was perched on a branch above her head, turning this way and that, silent. She could hear traffic from Headington behind her, and the quiet footsteps of someone going along the road at the end of the lane, and even the weightless movement of insects among the twigs and leaves at her feet.
Not with them but not far behind came the tabby cat. She had slept since theyd rescued her from the stone-throwing children, and now that she was awake again she was reluctant to leave them, as if she thought that wherever they were, she was safe. Will was far from sure about that, but he had enough on his mind without the cat, and he ignored her. All the time he was growing more familiar with the knife, more certain in his command of it; but his wound was hurting worse than before, with a deep, unceasing throb, and the bandage Lyra had freshly tied after he woke up was already soaked.
"I wont read them unless—"
"Hold this bar while I cut it," Will whispered. "Catch it when it falls."
She looked for Pantalaimon, and he was already gliding ahead silently, as far as he could go from her. He turned in the darkness and swooped back to settle on her fist.
He cut a small opening first, no bigger than his hand, and looked through. Nothing but darkness on the other side: hecouldnt see where he was. He closed that one, turned through ninety degrees,
