Rats and Gargoyles (18 page)

It scored the air towards her, rising, too large
for the narrow tunnel. Wing-tips thirty feet apart brushed through the blue
stone walls and ceiling. As the feathers passed through the substance of the
stone, the stone crumbled away, falling on the downsweep into newly created
void.

Zar-bettu-zekigal craned her neck to follow as the
condor soared over her head. The great bird vanished into mist. She looked down
again, to see in its wake–sky.

"Messire Plessiez!"

She knelt up, tail tucking around her knees.

Ahead, voids of empty air opened up. The walls and
roof of the tunnel crumbled, blue stone falling into blue air.

Zar-bettu-zekigal stared at the masonry of the
floor, momentarily solid and spanning the gulf. Emptiness began to eat into it,
stone melting like frost in sunlight.

"But we’re underground," she protested.

Slender strong fingers grasped her shoulder. She
looked up to see Plessiez gazing ahead, black eyes narrowed.

"What is this?"

"You’re under the city," the Hyena said. "You’re
under the heart of the world."

Zar-bettu-zekigal stood, brushing dust from her
black dress. She pulled the greatcoat firmly around her. The vast gulfs of air pressed in on her, swelling her
skull with emptiness; until she swayed, and caught hold of the woman’s arm,
steel vambrace cold under her hand.

Miles below, a plain stretched out into blue mists.
She gazed at a middle region of cloud, eyes squinting against a cold wind. The
breath she took smelt of burning.

A steel-gauntleted hand pushed Zari in the flat of
her back.

"Move, or you’ll never cross."

Zar-bettu-zekigal stepped forward, bare feet
testing the Portland stone. Chill water slicked the surface. The stone bridge
diminished into distance and perspective before her. She lifted her head and
saw, where vapors shifted, the ragged ends of arches and stone groynes hanging
down into the void.

"Look,"
she breathed.

Masonry towers ended above her, hanging their
sealed cellars down from the underside of the city into the gulf. Blended with
brick, and with steel girders; and structures the shape of building-foundations.
And random jammed-together masses of stone and mortar and wood. Further off, raw
rock jutted down into the sky: the undersides of hills.

Zar-bettu-zekigal strained her vision, searching
the vapor.

Between the underside of the city and the plain, a
waning moon stood flat and white in a blue sky. A second half-globe hung behind
it, larger and more pale. Within the larger moon’s curve, Zar-bettu-zekigal saw
the fingernail-paring of a smaller satellite.

She looked down, off the slender span of stone.

Her stomach wrenched. Six miles below, the plain
burned with visible flames. Licking orange-and-yellow fires, hearth-fire
welcoming; until she made out how condors and eagles soared in the depths under
the bridge.

Plessiez’s fur brushed her shoulder. Water pearled
on the Rat’s glossy black coat. The priest walked steadily beside
Zar-bettu-zekigal, hand gripping her arm. She looked up and saw that his eyes
were clamped shut.

Behind them, the woman laughed.

The masonry floor of the tunnel shifted, etched
away piecemeal by the air. Zar-bettu-zekigal peered over the edge again as she
walked, heels kicking the slick stone, and stopped.

"How much time do we have?"

A whisk of metal and leather sounded, yards behind.
She spun round as Plessiez did. The woman leaned now on a naked sword, some yard
and a half long, that spanged light from its outside curve. She rubbed a hand
across her filthy face.

"Not long," she said, "and we can’t turn back. Now
let’s
move.
"

Clock-mill strikes four-thirty.

Stars hieroglyphed the night sky, blotted by rain-
clouds.

A large figure trod stealthily across the dark
courtyard, smelling of fresh soap. The Lord-Architect padded towards the steps
in the far comer, the silken tail of his night-robe flapping in the wind.

He rubbed thumb and middle finger softly together.
Faint goldlight glimmered, died. His shoulders straightened. Invisible in the
night, he smiled. No natural magic tripwires guarding the steps to Valentine’s
rooms . . .

He put one foot on the bottom step, hesitated as
the wood creaked. Her window showed dark. He climbed another step, and another.

The Lord-Architect’s foot caught a metal rim. The
handle of the saucepan flew up, cracking his shin. His other foot came down
firmly inside a pot and, as he stumbled, two cans rattled and clanged down the
wooden steps.

The Lord-Architect exclaimed,
"Helldammit!,"
arms wheeling, flailing massively. Another pan clattered from stairs to cobbles.

Upstairs, a woman rubbed cinnamon hair from her
mouth with one wrist, rolling over in bed on to her stomach; eyes glued shut,
smiling in her sleep.

Lights came on in several windows round Evelian’s
courtyard: flints struck, copper lamps groped for and lit; fingers burned,
swearwords muttered.

With immense dignity, and his left foot jammed
tightly into an enameled chamberpot, the Lord-Architect Casaubon clanked back to
his own rooms.

* * *

"I’ll be back!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal clung with both hands to the iron
ladder’s rails. Looking between her feet, she shouted down the narrow shaft
again:

"Don’t forget me!"

Far below, a woman laughed.

"Come, little one." The black Rat leaned over,
standing above her where the ladder hooped over to the head of the shaft. Light
shining up from the depths illuminated his snout and brilliant eyes.

Hunger dizzied her as he reached down. Her foot
slipped. She whipped her tail around the ladder, grabbed the Rat’s sword-belt,
and felt her greatcoat ride up over her shoulders as Plessiez grabbed her under
the arms, hauling her up on to a flat brick floor.

Far, far below, the laugh modulated out of the
sound a human voice makes: raked up into higher, yelping registers; echoed away
in whoops, giggles, vixen-yawps.

The light that shone up the shaft began to fade.
Zari raised her head, peering at the surrounding dark.

"I’ve seen places I liked better." She stepped out
of the Rat’s inadvertent embrace, pushing lank hair out of her eyes.

This shaft opened into a brick chamber some twenty
by thirty feet, empty in the fading illumination. The black Rat reached up to
the ceiling, eighteen inches above his head, testing each of the interlocked
metal plates.

"She was laughing at where we’ll come out," Zari
guessed. "It
has
to be in the city still. When I came in on the ship it
took five days just to sail up the estuary, and the city all around us all the
way."

Fading light showed her his face, lean and drawn
with hunger, with the weariness of climbing shaft upon shaft of the endless
sewers.

"Ah!"

One plate swung up and over, vanished with a
clang!
,
and Plessiez sprang to hoist himself up through the now- open
trapdoor. Zari danced from one foot to the other beneath.

"What is it? What’s there? Where are we?"

Plessiez began to laugh.

Zari leaped up, hands gripping the sides of the
trap; got one bare foot up for leverage. She heard him laugh again, a loud
uninhibited guffaw: part awe, part admiration. Metal clanged. Rapid footsteps
went back and forth.

"What?"
Huffing, she pulled herself up through
the trapdoor.

"But this is wonderful!"

Plessiez’s expression changed from enjoyment to
second thoughts. He stood in a passageway lined either side with barred rooms,
and had been banging on the iron-studded door at the far end of the passage.

"Amazing. Little one, these are the oubliettes of
the Abbey of Guiry."

Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed at green stains on the
sleeves of her greatcoat. "The Abbey what?"

A last gust of laughter shook Plessiez.

"My Order is the Order of Guiry, the Guiresites,"
he explained gravely; and swung round and struck the door an echoing blow.
"Guards! What,
guards ho
!"

There were green stains on the soles of her feet,
Zari discovered, as she balanced precariously on one leg. And stains on her
black dress.

Over the clatter of approaching feet, the black Rat
said: "Listen to me, Kings’ Memory–you stay with me, now, and only with me.
Above all, you say nothing except when I direct you to."

"I’m a Kings’ Memory; I speak to whoever asks me."
She buttoned the great overcoat, covering the worst of the stains. "Messire, can
we have something to
eat
?"

The rattle of the door unlocking was followed by a
rush of black and brown Rats into the corridor. Zari gazed at their sober black
dress. The first Rat, plumed and wearing a black jacket, came to a skidding halt
when she saw Plessiez; grabbed the
ankh
at her neck, and exclaimed:
"Plessiez! Cardinal-General Ignatia told us you were dead—"

His glance crossed hers. Zar-bettu-zekigal saw the
black Rat grin, showing sharp incisors. Amusement, triumph, and a febrile
excitement gleamed in his eyes.

"There’s much that Cardinal-General Ignatia doesn’t
know, I assure you."

A brown Rat pushed to the forefront of the guards
and priests, looked Plessiez up and down, and with an air of triumph concluded:
"You’re not dead, are you?"

Plessiez smoothed down his torn scarlet jacket.
"No,
Mornay–and nor is your sister Charnay. Hilaire, order my coach brought
to the front of the palace. Lucien, ride immediately to his Majesty and say that
I must have an immediate audience.
Now.
I want no argument. I must see
the King."

Zari grinned at the startled faces. Plessiez’s
slenderfingered hand swept her along, trotting beside him while he fired orders
to left and right. Her calves ached sharp protests at the steps up from the
oubliette to the guardroom.

"Fetch Reverend Captains Fenelon and Fleury.
They’ll be accompanying me to the King. Lay out my best clothes in my rooms.
Also my sword. Sauval, come with me; I’ll want you to take down a dictated
report as we go–"

"Food!" Zari yelled succinctly above the confusion.

"–and have the kitchens bring something to eat."

A black Rat some years older than Plessiez pushed
through the crowd, past Zar-bettu-zekigal. She had little enough of the priest
about her: her plumed headband was gold and white, and her jacket white with
gold piping. "I’ll have to inform Cardinal-General Ignatia, Plessiez. You can’t
ask to see the King if she doesn’t know why."

Plessiez hesitated at the guardroom door, head
cocked, translucent ears tensing. Zari saw him listen to some interior voice
urging caution and discard it.

"The Cardinal-General Ignatia," Plessiez said, "is
a useless old bitch."

"What?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal put both hands on separate Rats’
shoulders and shoved them aside. Sunlight dimmed the candles in the corridor
outside, patched with color the coats and embroidered scabbards of the priest
Rats. She blinked water from her eyes. Pushed, shoved, ignored by the quarrel
rapidly forming, she thrust a way out of the group and padded across the
white-walled corridor to the nearest window.

The sun hung a hand’s breadth above the horizon.
Sharp-edged clouds glowed, indigo above, translucent pink below. She pushed the
casement open. Cold air flooded her lungs–the chill of evening or the dew-damp
of dawn? She scrunched her fingers through her hair, and twitched the kinks from
her black-and-white furred tail.

"Morning or evening?" She caught a passing Rat’s
arm. He stared at her, and she jerked her head at the window. Light as cold and
clear as water covered the city, that stretched out unbroken to the horizon.

"Dawn. Messire—"

Plessiez’s voice ripped the air. "Silence! Captain
Auverne, you may make yourself useful by taking a squad of guardsmen and
investigating the sewer-shaft that opens into our cellars. But use all possible
caution. I want a day-and-night guard kept down there from now on."

The white-and-gold-clad Rat snarled something under
her breath, reluctantly turning away to summon guards.

"And I am most disturbed to discover that you knew
nothing of this entrance, Captain Auverne. Kindly report to me later with the
explanation. Zari." Plessiez turned his back on the indignant captain.

"I’m here, messire."

"Come with me."

She followed the priest as he strode off through
the whitewashed stone corridors. A faintness of hunger sang in her head, cramped
her guts; and at every sunlit window they passed she grinned and skipped a
half-step. Each window gave her a wider view of the dawn: the pale sky deepening
to azure.

Inside the doors of extensive apartments, the small
group grew to a crowd, augmented as other Rats came running. Plessiez’s voice
rose over the noise, his rapid- fire orders sending junior priests off on
errands. Zari flopped down on a satin-covered couch, her attention taken up with
a tray of bread and goat-cheese, and a flagon of cold water.

"Steady, little one."

She looked up, jaws clamped on a crust; tore and
swallowed and nodded, all in one movement.

"I know, I know . . ." Cramps from too-rapid eating
griped in her gut.

The outer doors swung closed. Sunlight blazed in
the white low-roofed rooms; on carpets, tapestries, desks, globes and icons.
Plessiez dictated to his secretary as Rats sponged and brushed his filthy fur.
Zari switched to sitting cross-legged on the couch, gazing round at the royal-
blue drapes, the silver goblets and plates.

"It isn’t," she said into a gap in Plessiez’s
dictation, "an austere Order, the Order of Guiry."

Plessiez chuckled. He slipped his arms into a
crimson jacket slashed with gold and, as a brown Rat servant buttoned it up to
his throat, remarked: "An academic Order, little one; and austere as–ah, as all
academics are."