Chapter Thirty-Three: Into the Red Building

At dawn, Gulya sets Lyra and Malcolm down at the red-tiled building guarded by two weary soldiers. Responding in Latin, Malcolm satisfies their ritual challenge and the pair enter a colossal hall whose walls form a continuous panorama of a harmonious rose world, including scenes of trade that imply the hall once served as an exchange.

They open the far door and emerge into the rose world itself, but it is being razed and rebuilt: excavators uproot rose fields, a river is straightened for a suspension bridge, and a road grid grows around the doorway site. Workers ignore them, many dæmons appear weak or abused, and Lyra sees, shockingly, a dead dæmon. A supervisor admits a “communications hub” is being built; his dæmon seems lifeless. TP machinery reveals Thuringia Potash’s role.

At a small distillery, they find bottling halted and a dead dæmon among rose petals. Outside, Silvina Policastro, dispossessed landowner of the rose fields and door, explains that “development people” forced a sale and imposed a baffling new money system. She and her dæmon look frail and fearful.

In the town they barter for food because traders demand tokens and credits. Along the lakeshore, building overruns public land. They witness police probing a tidy house; later, posing as reporters, they interview Henry and Ethel Butler, longtime toll-keepers. The Butlers recount how a conglomerate’s slick meeting counted attendance as approval, then replaced civic institutions, widened roads, privatized rents, and introduced tokens/credits that unmoored value. Soon after, people began neglecting their dæmons; sickness and deaths followed.

Security forces return to evict the Butlers. Lyra attempts to confront them but, without Pan, falters; armed men escort the couple out. As Lyra hands Ethel her knitting bag, a sudden clarity strikes: she understands what the alkahest is.