Rats and Gargoyles (19 page)

The silver rim of the water-jug chilled her mouth.
She drank, colicky; and belched.

"Plessiez!"

"Here." The black Rat acknowledged the yelp of joy,
raising his arms while a servant buckled and adjusted his sword-belt and
basket-hilted rapier. He shrugged himself back into it, hand going at once to
rest there. The junior priests and servants fell back before two newcomers.

Zari switched round to kneel upright on the couch.
She put both hands over her mouth, muffling a giggle. A short plump black Rat
slitted her eyes, her gaze passing over the Katayan silhouetted against the
rising sun.

"You’re going to see the King?" she asked Plessiez.

"Fleury, of course he is!" A tall and very thin
Rat, with raffish black fur and a cheerfully unworldly look, slapped Plessiez’s
shoulder. "Must have worked out, eh? When do we give the word to move?"

With a start, he noticed the Katayan.

"Zar-bettu-zekigal," she said gravely, scratching
her ear with her tail. The Rat bowed.

"Fenelon," he said.

"Fleury, Fenelon, you’ll come with me to the King."
Plessiez beckoned. "Little one."

Zar-bettu-zekigal got off the couch, and bent to
rub her calves with both hands. "I’m dead beat!"

"Rest in the coach. Come."

"Messire Plessiez!"

An elderly black Rat stood in the doorway, the
white-and-gold-clad captain beside her. Her ears showed ragged, her muzzle gray.
The sleeveless open robe over her jacket glowed emerald. Lace foamed at her
wrists and at her throat. A gemmed pectoral
ankh
hung between her rows of
dugs.

"I regret I cannot stay to serve the
Cardinal-General," Plessiez said, picking up his scarlet cloak and plumed
headband. "The Cardinal-General will excuse me."

"What are you doing?"
Cardinal-General Ignatia frowned, bewildered. "Captain Auverne reports you asked
for an audience with the King. You must, of course, first report to myself
anything concerning the use of
magia
—"

"Is my coach there?" Plessiez asked
Zar-bettu-zekigal. She padded across to the window.

"There’s a coach waiting in the courtyard,
messire."

"Good."

"Messire Plessiez, you will explain yourself!"

Zari saw the black Rat’s tail sweep into a jaunty
curve. With a studied recklessness, Plessiez faced the Rat in the doorway.

"The explanation would be a little too complex for
you, Ignatia. Short of force, you won’t stop me seeing the King. And you won’t
use force."

The black Rat that Zari identified as Auverne
stepped forward. Fleury’s sword scraped out of the scabbard: a ragged raw noise.
The Cardinal-General held up her hand.

"Really, Messire Plessiez, the haste, if nothing
else, is most unseemly; and, even without that rashness, protocol demands that
your superior in the Order first hears whatever information you may possess."

Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed her eyes, planting her
bare feet foursquare on the floorboards; dazzled by whitewashed walls and
daylight. The sun-warmed wood thrummed, once, and she winced: the tensile memory
of the skin on the soles of her feet still tingling with the dissolution of
stone.

"That child has seen
magia!"
the
Cardinal-General protested. Zari opened her eyes to find the elderly Rat peering
at her.

"Yes,
magia.
Thirty years’ study should at
least enable you to recognize it when you see it!"

Plessiez snarled, not slowing as he approached the
Cardinal-General.

"Or has it been something in books for too long,
Ignatia? Don’t you care for it raw? Now, while you’ve been poring over the
Library for decades, I’ve
acted."

The elderly Rat involuntarily stepped back.

"This is your old talk of power under the heart of
the world? Plessiez, you demean yourself, you behave no better than a
Treepriest. We have our God at hand, their
gaia
is nowhere to be seen,
and as for beneath the city—"

"Messire Plessiez," a guard interrupted, as he
pushed his way through the crowd at the door. "That sewer- shaft. We’ve
investigated. It goes down about six feet. Then it’s completely choked by new
rubble."

Zari’s feet tingled, remembering the floorboards’
tremor. She tried to catch Plessiez’s eye, but the black Rat only beckoned her
and Fleury and Fenelon.

As they passed the Cardinal-General, Zar-bettu-
zekigal glanced first at her and then sympathetically up at the raffish Fenelon.

"End of a long fight?"

"About six years’ worth," he agreed. He put himself
between Zar-bettu-zekigal and Auverne’s novice-guards.

Plessiez carried his slim body taut, swinging cloak
and headband from his free hand. As Zari caught up, he called back over his
shoulder: "Make the most of your time, Ignatia. I’ll be asking the King to
appoint a new Cardinal-General of the Order of Guiry."

Far into the Fane, day and night are lost memories.
The light that shines on the stonework is cool green. There is no slightest hint
of decay in the air.

–Why did you betray your people
?–

He hears no audible voice. It writes, instead, in
lines of blood forming behind his shut eyelids. The Bishop can croak air through
ripped vocal cords. But he will not speak.

His wrinkled lids, blue-veined, open to disclose
rheumy eyes. No matter how he tries to look down (head held immobile by the iron
spike upon which it is impaled) he cannot see the peripheral obstructions of
chest or shoulders. They no longer exist.

–Why did you betray the Builders’ conspiracy
?–

Lines of blood, forming in the empty air.

His creased lower jaw works. Drying blood and
sinews constrict his throat.

–How did they think to threaten god-daemons
?–

"I . . . don’t . . . know
. . ."

–Answer and it will count well in your favor. Those
are coming who need to ask no questions, all-knowing and all-seeing. The Decans
will be less kind than we who are only their servants
.–

"Lady . . . of . . . the . . . Woods
. . ."

Unable to see his interrogators, unable to move
anything but that once-eloquent mouth, the Bishop of the Trees begins to pray.

The heat of the early sun drew vapor from the black
wooden sill. Earth and cobbles in the courtyard below steamed, the previous
night’s rain drying. The young man on the truckle-bed rolled over. Half-asleep,
sweating, he got up on one elbow. The vibrations of Clock-mill striking eight
jarred his brown eyes open.

"Awshit," Lucas of Candover muttered. "Awshit- shit
. . ."

A long
cre-eak
disorientated him. He kicked
free of the sheet and sat up. Something large, pink and swathed in wet towels
loomed over the bed. Lucas swallowed the foul taste in his mouth.

"Wh—?"

The Lord-Architect Casaubon said: "Step across the
landing for a moment, Prince. I need help."

"Mmhrm–
What?"

The door to Lucas’s room creaked shut. He rubbed
granules of sleep from his eyes, staring around the tiny room. Only the smell of
steam spoke of recent occupation. He groped for his breeches.

"Shit!"
Struggling into his clothes, he barged
out and across the tiny landing to the Lord-Architect’s door. "What is it?
What’s wrong? Is it her–White Crow?"

The Lord-Architect sat on his creaking truckle-bed,
toweling his hair vigorously. A claw-footed iron bathtub in one corner was
surrounded by sopping-wet towels. Crates and brass-bound trunks occupied what
space that was left. Through the leaded window, a blue summer sky grew pale and
hotter by the second.

"Is she in danger?"

"What?" The Lord-Architect emerged from his towel,
wet hair standing up in red-gold spikes. He beamed at Lucas. "Some ridiculous
ordinance in the city–a human being can’t hire
servants
! Of all the
pox-rotted pig’s-tripe. Hand me my vest, will you?"

"Servants?"

"Body-servants," Casaubon amplified. He pushed
himself up from the bed, and the wooden frame creaked a protest. The wet towel
joined the others on the floorboards. Pulling a vest over his head, he repeated
from the depths of the folds of cloth: "Hand me
that,
there."

Lucas glared. "I’m a Prince of Candover and no
man’s servant!"

"Hmm?" The Lord-Architect thrust his head out of
the muffling cloth. "Hurry it up, will you? There’s a good lad."

Something in the Lord-Architect’s tone convicted
Lucas of dubious manners at best. Lucas picked up the canvas garment hanging
over the back of a chair and passed it across. He caught a jaw-cracking yawn,
stifled it, and combed his sleep-tangled curls with his fingers.

"This is what you woke me up for? Of all the
insolence
—"

He stopped, and stared at Casaubon’s back. The fat
man’s vest rode up over slabs of thigh and buttock as he fitted the canvas
garment over his head, tugging it down over the full-moon swell of his belly.

"Poxrotted-damned-cretinous—" One elbow jammed in the air, the other caught in the laced-up
garment. "Lend a hand, can’t you, boy!"

The court of Candover requires tact and diplomacy
from a prince. Lucas sniffed hard. "Is that a corset?"

"Damned-poxrotted full-dress
audience
—"

Lucas looked at canvas, bone-ribs and thick cord
lacings, almost as bewildered as the older man. He bristled, caught between the
insult to his dignity and the sneaking suspicion that his lack of knowledge was
about to make a fool of him.

"The Princes of Candover don’t dress themselves!" He
reached out and tugged tentatively at the bottom hem. Casaubon’s elbow slid
free. The fat man pulled the garment lower, huffing, until it girdled his
stomach.

"Can’t hire a damned servant, can’t get a decent
meal." He turned, glaring down at Lucas. "Does your poxrotted landlady
ever
serve anything without boiled cabbage in the meal?"

"I don’t know," Lucas shot back with satisfaction.
"I’ve only been here a week!"

The Lord-Architect chuckled resonantly. His
companionable beam took in Lucas, the summer morning, the bell-notes of birds in
the courtyard.

"Pull," he ordered, presenting the Prince of
Candover with his back and the lacings of the corset.

Lucas stepped closer, staring up at the
fat-sheathed muscles of the Lord-Architect’s shoulders and arms. He tugged the
two flaps of the corset towards each other across the broad back.

"Right," he said.
"Right."

He grabbed the two cords and pulled, sharply. The
Lord-Architect grunted and braced his massive legs apart.

"She doesn’t want you here." Lucas emphasized his
speech with a hard pull on the lacings. "She’s only talking to you because you
won’t answer her questions!"

The top of the corset, under the fat man’s arms,
began to pull together. Lucas, sweating, poked at the lacings further down;
hooked his fingers under a point where they crossed over, and heaved.

"What’s more, you’re bothering her, and I don’t
like it."

Casaubon grunted. He scratched at his newly washed
hair, spiking it in tufts. Craning to look back over his cushioned shoulder, the
Lord-Architect said mildly: "Now, if I’d answered her questions when I arrived,
what would she have done?"

"Told you to—" Lucas trapped his finger between tight lacings. He swore under his breath. "To go
away."

"Precisely." The Lord-Architect sucked in his breath and belly. The two edges of the corset creaked
closer together. "Now, how else could I get a bad-tempered impatient woman like
Valentine to stand still and hear my message?"

Lucas glowered at the Lord-Architect’s back. He
wrapped the cords around his fist, put a knee at the cleft of the fat man’s
buttocks and pulled.

"What message?"

"Valentine will be asking herself that."

Lucas whipped the cords into a secure knot, and sat
down heavily on the Lord-Architect’s bed, panting. Casaubon picked up a ruffled
shirt and slid his arms into it, the bone-ribs of the corset gently creaking.

"I said . . . you’re bothering her . . . and I
don’t like it." Lucas rested his arms back, propping himself up, chin on his
chest. Outside, the heat whitened city roofs, turned the air dusty. He sweated.
The sour smell of bathwater and wet cloth filled his nostrils.

"You’re right," Casaubon said contritely. "It was
too sudden."

He fastened the toggles on his shirt. The tails
hung down almost to his massive calves. Lucas shook his head, and handed up the
bright-blue silk breeches laid out on the bottom of the bed.

"Much too sudden!" The Lord-Architect stopped, one
foot in his breeches, the other wavering in mid-air. He beamed widely at Lucas.

"I shall woo her," he announced.

His foot hit the floorboards with an audible thump.
As he fastened his silk breeches, he added: "Do you think she likes poetry? I’ll
write her a sonnet. Two sonnets. How many lines would that be, exactly?"

Lucas fell back across the bed, wheezing, water
leaking out of the comers of his eyes.

"Have that hay-fever treated," the Lord-Architect
advised. He cumbrously hooked his braces to his breeches, and over them eased an
embroidered waistcoat on to his massive torso.

The attic-room’s airless heat increased. Lucas
rolled across the bed and pushed the casement window open.

Mud patched the courtyard, remnant of the storm.
The White Crow stood up, two battered saucepans under her arm, and waved as she
saw Lucas. He stared after her as she climbed her steps, picking up another can
on the way. He realized he hadn’t waved back.

"What
message? If you’re getting her involved
in anything dangerous . . ."

The sun tangled in her hair that, he saw now, shone
red without a gleam of gold or orange in it. Her white shirt hung out of the
back of her brown knee-breeches.