Mrs. Coulter waited till nightfall before she approached the College of St. Jerome. After darkness had fallen, she brought the iion craft down through the cloud and moved slowly along the lakeshore at treetop height. The College was a distinctive shape among the other a buildings of Geneva, and she soon found the spire, the dark hollow of the cloisters, the square tower where the President of the sistorial Court of Discipline had his lodging. She had visited the College three times before; she khat the ridges and gables and eys of the roof cealed plenty of hiding places, even for something as large as the iion craft.
Flying slowly above the tiles, which glistened with the ret rain, she edged the mae into a little gully between a steep tiled roof and the sheer wall of the tower. The place was only visible from the belfry of the Chapel of the Holy Penitenearby; it would do very well.
She lowered the aircraft delicately onto the roof, letting its six feet find their own purchase and adjust themselves to keep the level. She was beginning to love this mae: it sprang to her bidding as fast as she could think, and it was so silent; it could hover above peoples heads closely enough for them to touch, and theyd never know it was there. In the day or so since shed stolen it, Mrs. Coulter had mastered the
trols, but she still had no idea how it owered, and that was the only thing she worried about: she had no way of telling when the fuel or the batteries would run out.
Once she was sure it had settled, and that the roof was solid enough to support it, she took off the helmet and climbed down.
Her daemon was already prizing up one of the heavy old tiles. She joined him, and soon they had lifted half a dozen out of the way, and then she snapped off the battens on which theyd been hung, making a gap big enough to get through.
"Go in and look around," she whispered, and the daemon dropped through into the dark.
She could hear his claws as he moved carefully over the floor of the attid then his gold-fringed black face appeared in the opening. She uood at ond followed him through, waiting to let her eyes adjust. In the dim light she gradually saw a long attic where the dark shapes of cupboards, tables, bookcases, and furniture of all kinds had been put into ste.
The first thing she did was to push a tall cupboard in front of the gap where the tiles had been. Theiptoed to the door in the wall at the far end and tried the ha was locked, of course, but she had a hairpin, and the lock was simple. Three minutes later she and her daemon were standing at one end of a long corridor, where a dusty skylight let them see a narrow staircase desding at the other.
And five minutes after that, they had opened a window in the pantry o the kit two floors below and climbed out into the alley. The gatehouse of the College was just around the er, and as she said to the golden monkey, it was important to arrive ihodox way, no matter how they inteo leave.
"Take your hands off me," she said calmly to the guard, "and show me some courtesy, or I shall have you flayed. Tell the President that Mrs. Coulter has arrived and that she wishes to see him at once."
The man fell back, and his pinscher daemon, who had been barieeth at the mild-mannered golden monkey, instantly cowered and tucked her tail stump as low as it would go.
The guard ked the handle of a telephone, and under a mier a fresh-faced young pri