Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

Authors note: so, this one took a while to get up because I added a scene to it. I was never happy with the one I put there and I had a brainwave on how I could make it better and make it fit more into the story. so yeah. sorry it's late if anyone cares ;p. And please review, I love reviews :D

Chapter 5

Ptolemy ran, he was doing far too much running today, he wasn't used to it. He hated it. And it was dark, and cold. How was he expected to find the way out in this? He couldn't even tell if he was going in the right direction.

But Rekhyt was alive, for the time being, and that's all that mattered.

Suddenly he hit a wall. Well, no, he ran into a wall. He rubbed his head. Wait, a wall, not a shelving unit!

He felt along its cold rough contours until he felt something smooth and set slightly into it. A door. He struggled to get it open, not because it was locked, but because it was heavy. He only managed a few inches before giving up. Ptolemy of Alexandria wasn't made for manual labour. Fortunately, this also meant he was skinny enough to squeeze through the gap he had managed to make.

Apparently, this room had a demonic light system; as soon as he entered the place lit itself up by way of several clear glass bottles in the corners of the room. It was quite small compared to the ones they'd been in, plain, whitewashed walls, a desk by the back wall, woven baskets full of scrolls clustered around it and a lot of odd levers and strands of rope hanging from the ceiling on the wall on his right.

On the other wall there was a huge wall hanging covering most of the space, a map of the temple woven into it, there were dots with lettering underneath what appeared to be important parts of the building but age had made the text unreadable, so it told him nothing.

He rooted through the papers on the desk, brushing dust from them, hoping they'd be more legible. They were egyptian, obviously. Something about traps around the place to stop whoever was Pharaoh at the time entering to destroy it. This could be useful.

He moved onto the baskets.

Ammet was approaching fast, he'd got me in the side ages ago and now I could barely dodge an attack. It was a case of hiding now, running didn't work anymore.

So currently I was a desert cat who'd looked like it'd had better days*, in an alcove, cosying up to a dusty scroll. It was getting a bit bored.

(*It had.)

The cat ventured a look out. And an inferno caught the feline in the side of the face, sending it spinning out of its hiding place to skid along the floor. It came to rest at the end of the aisle and lay still.

Something stepped towards me. I looked up, and saw Khaba's ugly mug staring down at me.

It looked like Ammet was going to get his revenge without even realising*, I had no way out of this one. Then, something of a miracle happened. The room lit up.

(*I took great pleasure in that fact. It was a rather nice thought, Ammet searching for me uselessly for centuries, maybe millennia, when he'd already killed me in 124bc. I'd have liked to have been there just to laugh at him.)

We were both momentarily stunned, me being my quick witted self recovered first. I hit the marid looming over me with the best detonation I could muster. It knocked him back all of about two inches. Alright, it was a stumble but the ferocity was bloody well there.

I legged it as fast as my broken form could carry me.*

(*I was lucky I wasn't trailing essence, Ammet would've had a right nice little path to follow. Not that it actually mattered that much.)

I barely got to the next aisle along before he'd jumped me, much to my chagrin. I didn't even see him coming. I was pushed into the floor before being dragged up by the neck and thrown headlong at the nearest wall of scrolls. I crashed into it taking the whole thing down with me.

The cheek! Didn't I even warrant a proper attack now?

Ptolemy jumped, looking up from the papyri on the desk and twisting to look at the doorway. That had sounded a lot like one of the scroll cases falling over. And it hadn't been that far away.

Open texts cluttered the floor around him like leaves at the bottom of a tree in autumn. It was so frustrating. He knew how to get out, he'd read how to do that a million times, but not how to save Rekhyt.

He threw the one he'd been looking at to the floor with the others and ripped another one from the basket, making a statue of some god or other fall from the desk, he barely noticed. He tore off the string that kept the papyri closed and lay it on the desk. It was the map from the wall, except it hadn't faded. He could read all of it! And it showed where every magical trap was in every room in the building.

His eyes scanned the material quickly, finding the library, hoping there would at least be something there that could possibly be helpful.

Ammet looked up suddenly. Great, I didn't even warrant his full attention now either.

But I'd heard the noise too. Something heavy, falling from a height. Faint, no human could've heard it.

"I don't think your masters left the building, djinni," said Ammet.

I said nothing.

The marid looked at me thoughtfully. "I don't really want to kill you, I just needed to so you wouldn't cause me trouble. Really, I'd like to know more about you and your master. You are like me and mine." He paused."No, I think I'll leave you alive, it would be interesting to meet you again at some point."

I had to try something, anything, to stop him. I had to make him want to kill me more than he wanted to go after Ptolemy.*

(* So much easier if he'd just look on the bloody seventh plane! I swear, how did he expect to meet me again if he didn't have a clue what I looked like? Looks like I was just going to have to enlighten him.)

He had his back to me now, walking away. I screwed up my cat eyes and made a change.

"Tell me, Ammet, before you go, how long exactly did it take you to get out of that bottle?"

Ammet stopped dead. He turned slowly. I already knew what Khaba's face would look like and I was right. Ammet stared at me, wide eyed.

"I'd watch it if I were you, your face might stay like that." Said the Summerian, smirk in place, eyebrow raised in amusement.

"You…"

"Yep."

Your…" He actually took a small step back. You could practically hear his brain trying to process what this all meant.

"And, tell me, how many decades had Khaba been dead before you got out?"

Khaba's stupefied face fell. ''You...''

''And you know what, I should understand now right, Ammet, how you can care for your master? But I don't, I still think you're insane. I mean,what did Khaba ever do for you except make sure you were under his heel? You and me are nothing alike.''

"Bartimaeus…"

"And just a suggestion but you might want to start completing some sentences at—urgh." Ammet had threw himself at me, grabbed me by the throat and and slammed me against the nearest avaliable horizontal object.

Scroll storage spaces aren't very comfortable, I'm telling you. Then again neither was the hand round my neck pinning me to it.

Khaba's face was inches from mine, his face murderous, his breathing heavy*. He'd been waiting for this a while*.

(*The breathing was a little melodramatic for my tastes. Technically we don't even need to breathe.)

(*Not as long as I would've liked though, a thousand years would've been nice. Considering he'd meant to have been in there thousands.)

Suddenly the anger was gone. he started laughing. If I had blood, it would've ran cold.

''Yes you are equals, the boy told me. It's an interesting notion. But if it is true then why are you still in Alexandria? Surely you should have taken him from here by now, ran as far as you both could and hid somewhere nobody would find him, what with his cousin trying to kill him and Rome at his back? It's the obvious thing to do, there's no other way around it, staying here is suicide.

''So why haven't you, I wonder? The only reason I can think of is if he's refused to go, refused to listen to your arguments. The boy's said no and you don't get a say in the matter. He's basically given you an order hasn't he? There really isn't much equality in that, is there?''

I had nothing to say to that...I had no comeback for it. There was a pause in which he stared at me for a couple of seconds.

"You know what Bartimaeus? I'm not going to kill you."

"What, my sparkling personality and wit finally won you over?" I asked hopefully, and ok, maybe a bit hollowly too. I actually thought he was going to let us go then. For all of the great length of half a second.

"Oh, no, Bartimaeus." He had a horrible smile on his face, like this was the best scenario he could ever have hoped for.

I knew what he was going to say next before he said it.

"No. I'm going to tie you to this thing, go get your boy and bring him here and make him kneel in front of you. I'm then going to torture him.

"It'll start slow, I'll beat him around a bit get him used to it, make him fear what's coming next. Then I'll cut him open. Cut off a few fingers, toes. I can just hear his screams now. I might even cut him open, leave his organs on the floor. It'll go on for hours, Bartimaeus, maybe days. Maybe he'll even plead for his life, plead for me to stop, for you to help him and you'll be able to do nothing.

"Then maybe I'll leave him there, lying on the floor, crying. You can watch him die then can't you, while he begs, before his death release's you."*

(*Ok, maybe not in so much detail.)

He stood up then, tied me there with a hex, and turned to walk away. I had to try something.

"Ammet, please…"

He stopped for a second, looked over his shoulder at me. "How long really did you expect to delay me killing him anyway, Bartimaeus? He was always going to die. Except, because of your stupidity, he's now going to die slowly and painfully rather than nice and quick. You should have kept your secret really, shouldn't you? In a way that makes all this your fault, doesn't it?" Then he turned away and carried on.

For all of two more steps.

Because that was when silver snow started falling from the ceiling.

The pain was excruciating, not quite Solomon's ring, but bad enough. And it was everywhere this metal powder, coating everything like dust. Including us.

Ammet started running backwards and forwards in pain, running into the scroll cases either side of us, almost knocking them over. Steam coming from Khaba's back, shoulders and head. His hands, melting.

I was too weak for that. The strands of magic tying me to the scroll case released, I fell to the floor and sat there, slumped against the wood behind me. I felt my skin bubbling, burning. Well, if I was going to go, I wasn't going to be running around like deranged imp, I was Bartimaeus of Uruk, I was going with dignity.

My mind wavered a little.

Khaba, was gone now. Off somewhere, his screams echoing somewhere off in the distance.

Ptolemy was safe. Well, safer than two minutes ago anyway.

After a short time I heard footsteps. Something that looked remarkably like a wall hanging fell over my head, covering me from the onslaught.

"We need to get out of here, Rekhyt," said a strangely muffled voice from behind my head. An arm went round me, attempting to drag me to my feet. I got up, albeit without my usual poise, leaning heavily on Ptolemy, pulling the thing further round me like a tent.

"How the hell did you pull this off?" I looked up, but in the sorry state I was in, could barely make out the egyptian boy's hair line let alone any features.

"I do believe we should get you out of this place first." He replied calmly.*

(*Now would've been the time for another witty anecdote, but I let it drop. Best not to insult the small boy saving your life.)

He was practically dragging me to the door, now. He really didn't have much choice. With all the wanton grace of an injured antelope, I obliged and let him, stumbling slightly behind.

We made our way from the building looking more like some weird deformed homeless begger over anything else. Not quite the walk of two beings that had just heroically defeated a marid, I have to say, but it was all right, existing was a much more important commodity right then.