But even this was forgotten when the other enemies threatened. One

enemy was perennial: the brickburners' children, who lived by the

claybeds and were despised by collegers and townies alike. Last year

Lyra and some townies had made a temporary truce and raided the

claybeds, pelting the brick-burners' children with lumps of heavy clay

and tipping over therunescape gold farming soggy castle they'd built, before rolling them

over and over in the clinging substance they lived by until victors

and vanquished alike resembled a flock of shrieking golems.

The other regular enemy was seasonal. The gyptian families, who lived

in canal boats, came and went with the spring and autumn fairs, and

were always good for a fight. There was one family of gyptians in

particular, who regularly returned to their mooring in that part of

the city known as Jericho, with whom Lyra'd been feuding ever since

she could first throw a stone. When they were last in Oxford, she and

Roger and some of the other kitchen boys from Jordan and St. Michael's

College had laid an ambush for them, throwing mud at their brightly

painted narrowboat until the whole family came out to chase them away

-at which point the reserve squad under Lyra raided the boat and cast

it off from the bank, to float down the canal, getting in the way of

all the other water traffic while Lyra's raiders searched the boat

from end to end, looking for the bung. Lyra firmly believed in this

bung. If they pulled it out, she assured her troop, the boat would

sink at once; but they didn't find it, and had to abandon ship when

the gyptians caught them up, to flee dripping and crowing with triumph

through the narrow lanes of Jericho.

That was Lyra's world and her delight. She was a coarse and greedy

little savage, for the most part. But she always had a dim sense that

it wasn't her whole world; that part of her also belonged in the

grandeur and ritual of Jordan College; and that somewhere in her life

there was a connection with the high world of politics represented by

Lord Asriel. All she did with that knowledge was to give herself airs

and lord it over the other urchins. It had never occurred to her to

find out more.

So she had passed her childhood, like a half-wild cat. The only

variation in her days came on those irregular occasions when Lord

Asriel visited the College. A rich and powerful uncle was all very

well to boast about, but the price of boasting was having to be caught

by the most agile Scholar and brought to the Housekeeper to be washed

and dressed in a clean frock, following which she was escorted (with

many threats) to the Senior Common Room to have tea with Lord Asriel

and an invited group of senior Scholars. She dreaded being seen by

Roger. He'd caught sight of her on one of these occasions and hooted

with laughter at this beribboned and pink-frilled vision. She had

responded with a volley of shrieking curses that shocked the poor

Scholar who was escorting her, and in the Senior Common Room she'd

slumped mutinously in an armchair until the Master told her sharply to

sit up, and then she'd glowered at them all till even the Chaplain had

to laugh.

What happened on those awkward, formal visits never varied. After the

tea, the Master and the other few Scholars who'd been invited left

Lyra and her uncle together, and he called her to stand in front of

him and tell him what she'd learned since his last visit. And she

would mutter whatever she could dredge up about geometry or Arabic or

history or anbarology, and he would sit back with one ankle resting on

the other knee and watch her inscrutably until her words failed.

Last year, before his expedition to the North, he'd gone on to say,

"And how do you spend your time when you're not diligently studying?"

And she mumbled, "I just play. Sort of around the College.

Just...play, really."

And he said, "Let me see your hands, child."

She held out her hands for inspection, and he took them and turned

them over to look at her fingernails. Beside him, his daemon lay

sphinxlike on the carpet, swishing her tail occasionally and gazing

unblinkingly at Lyra.

"Dirty," said Lord Asriel, pushing her hands away. "Don't they make

you wash in this place?"

"Yes," she said. "But the Chaplain's fingernails are always dirty.

They're even dirtier than mine."

"He's a learned man. What's your excuse?"

"I must've got them dirty after I washed."

"Where do you play to get so dirty?"

She looked at him suspiciously. She had the feeling that being on the

roof was forbidden, though no one had actually said so. "In some of

the old rooms," she said finally.

"And where else?"

"In the claybeds, sometimes."

"And?"

"Jericho and Port Meadow."