Rats and Gargoyles (20 page)

The door swung to behind her.

Casaubon came to the window, shrugging into a
royal- blue satin coat, deep-pocketed, with turned-back embroidered cuffs. It
fitted across his corseted stomach like a second skin. The full skirts swirled.
Lucas, momentarily petty, enjoyed a thought of how hot and uncomfortable the
Lord-Architect was going to be at a formal audience.

"Valentine has faced danger for the College since
she was fifteen," Casaubon said soberly. "The woman enjoys it. Foolish child."

Lucas stood. The Lord-Architect still topped him by
six or eight inches.

"My uncle the Ambassador has a fairly efficient
intelligence service. If I want to find out what’s going on here, I can. Suppose
you tell me."

Casaubon lifted the corner of the bedsheet, peering
under the bed. He padded to the other side of the room in stockinged feet.

"Can you see a shoe?"

Lucas scratched his chest. Muscles slid under
sweaty skin. Almost despairing, he burst out: "If you care about her so much,
why won’t you take help when it’s offered? I’m a prince. I can command my people
who are here. I could help!"

"It was here somewhere . . ."

Lucas picked up an extremely large black shoe from
behind a crate. Acting on nothing but impulse, he walked around the bottom of
the bed, put his hand on Casaubon’s chest and pushed. The Lord-Architect sat
down heavily. Wood screeched. Lucas squatted down on his haunches in front of
the fat man.

"You won’t get rid of me." He grabbed one
stockinged foot, shoving the shoe on to it. Casaubon grunted. Lucas snared the
other high-heeled court shoe from under the bed and fitted it on. "So you might
as–uh–might as
well
get used to me. There."

Casaubon rested his elbows on his massive thighs,
and rested his chins in his hands. China-blue eyes met Lucas’s.

"I am about to go and give Valentine her message,"
he said gravely. "Would you care to come with me, before you leave for the
university?"

Lucas stood. "Yes! Yes . . ."

"Good."

Hazarding a blind guess, Lucas said: "You’ll take
her with you, to your audience with the King?"

"I have an audience," the Lord-Architect Casaubon
agreed, "but not with the King. I have an audience at eleven, at the Fane."

"No, true, my eyes are a natural condition.
Permanently dilated pupils. My grandmother suffered them, too."

Falke pulled
down the sleeves of a slightly overlarge gray leather doublet, shrugging his
shoulders into the new garment.

"Do you blame me for impressing the gullible? You
must know what it’s like to grub for every scrap of influence, the dynasty being
powerless these many centuries . . . I tell them: every guttersnipe in the city
walks into the Fane to talk to God; but I don’t mean antechambers or
building-sites, I mean the infinite interior of what we build . . . I say
: I’ve
seen.
It works."

Silver buckles clinked at his wrists, and he
fastened them; thumbing back the dove-gray silk that protruded through the
slashing on the leather sleeves. Pinpoints of brilliance reflected back from the
metal into his vision. His eyes watered.

"And, gullible or not, I have a large number of
people who listen to what the House of Salomon says. You need support. Your
numbers are comparatively small–compared to our masters the Rat-Lords, that is."

A last movement, tucking gray breeches into new
boots (the leather a little bloodstained still at the toes), and he
straightened; dry and clothed, now; gambling; meeting her red-brown eyes where
she sprawled across the carved chair, under the torches and banners and bones.

"I’ve listened to you." She snapped her fingers,
not looking at the blond man who ran to her side. "Clovis, feed him. I’ll speak
to him again later."

"What about the Lieutenant?" Clovis asked.

"Nothing. I must think. Go."

Falke followed the man through the makeshift camp
in the vast chamber, walking easily across shadowed broken earth. A warm wind
blew in his face, with a stench of carrion and sweetness on it; nevertheless he
expanded his chest, drawing in the air.

"There."

Clovis jerked his head towards a wide brick ledge.
Falke leaped up lightly as the man walked away towards cooking-pots on tripods.

Charnay opened shining dark eyes. She lounged back
against the brick wall with something of a disappointed air, furry body
half-supported against sacks and barrels, her long-fingered hands clasped
comfortably across her belly. "Didn’t expect to see you again. Who gave you the
new kit?"

"The Lady Hyena."

Falke reached up to tie his silver-gray hair back
into a pony-tail with a length of leather thong. Fingers busy, facing into the
great cavern, arms up and so unprotected. "There’s always a way, and I found
it!"

The Rat rolled over on to one massive brown-furred
flank. "I wouldn’t trust one of you peasants to find your backside with both
hands and a map."

A pottery dish clunked on the edge of the
brickwork. Clovis walked away without a word. Falke watched him stumble over
rocks plainly visible in the somber torchlight that mimicked night.

He chuckled quietly, back in his throat.

Squatting, he scooped up the stew-bowl and prodded
the mess of cooked weeds with his forefinger. Warm, greasy; the smell made his
stomach contract. He shoved a messy fistful into his mouth, spilling fronds down
the front of the leather doublet, and spoke between chewing.

"She knows, now, that I’ve been inside the Fane.
Something your messire Plessiez can’t claim."

"What use is that to her? You fill your breeches at
the mention of daemons."

Falke stopped chewing. "True, but that’s not to the
point now. A
magia
plague, a plague to send into the Fane. Very good. I
like that. House of Salomon will approve.
I understand the Fane.
Listen,
and try to understand me, Lieutenant. Messire Plessiez would want you to support
me in making an alliance with this woman. She has a number of people down here;
she can be useful."

Shining black eyes shifted. The Rat lumbered to her
hind feet and stood over him, looking down. "Too late. He has his bargain with
her already, boy. He doesn’t need you now."

Warm shivers walked across his skin, raising the
small hairs. Cramps twisted his gut. Falke turned his back on her momentarily.
Shadows shifted. Hauntings whispered at the edges of light. A jealousy shifted
in his breast. Across the vast brick chamber, under a ragged sun-banner, two men
circled each other, sparring: light sliding down the blades of broadswords.

"You think so? It isn’t the first time Rat-Lords
have used me. I may surprise them yet."

The anvil-clang of weapons-practice echoed in the
sewer chamber. Stenches drifted up from the distant canal. Falke, hands tucked
up under his armpits, stared across the expanse of camp-fires, brushwood heaps,
gallows, and men and women. Each speck of light pricked at his unbandaged eyes.

"I shall live to thank Messire Plessiez for
abandoning me here."

He missed what she rumbled in reply, still staring
out at the armed camp.

At human men and women carrying swords, pikes,
flails, daggers. Carrying weapons and practiced in their use.

The fox-cub nipped at the White Crow’s wrist. She
swore, put the feeding-bottle down on the mirror-table, and the cub back in its
box. She reached up to the herb shelf for witch-hazel to put on the
blood-bruise.

"Where did I . . . ?"

The silver wolf padded across the room, pushing
over two precarious piles of books. They slid to rest in the sunlight slanting
whitely in at the street-side and courtyard windows, and at the roof-trap. Light
fell on opened books, star-charts propped up with ivory rods, wax discs
scattered in three heaps, and discarded hieroglyphed scrolls.

"Here."

She tapped the wolfs muzzle. Pale eyes met hers. It
gaped, letting her finger the socket where a rotten tooth had been removed. Its
head twitched irritably.

"Lazarus, you only come to me to get your teeth
fixed," she accused. "I’d wait a day or two yet—"

She heard footsteps, and raised her voice without
looking up: "We’re shut! Go away!"

The door swung open. She raised her head to see the
dark young man open it with a mocking flourish, and bow most formally. The
Lord-Architect Casaubon strode in past Lucas without a blink of acknowledgment.

"Valentine!"

The White Crow looked down at the timber wolf. "No.
I
don’t know how he does it."

"I must say," Casaubon remarked, "that you could
keep this place a good deal tidier."

She put her fists on her hips.

"I’ve been up since dawn working on the last batch
of Mayor Spatchet’s talismans, which aren’t finished, which
won’t
be
finished today unless we’re all very lucky, and so I advise you not to make
critical comments of any sort, because my temper is not of the best, is that
clear?"

The Lord-Architect tugged at the turned-up cuffs of
his blue satin coat. "I had something of a disturbed night myself."

"Aw—" The White Crow sat down heavily at the table, sinking her chin in her hands. Bright eyes
brimmed with laughter, fixing on Casaubon; she snuffled helplessly for several
seconds.

Lucas’s dark brows met in a scowl.

"Good morning . . . Prince," the White Crow said.

Lucas picked up one of the discarded wax tablets.
"Talismans?"

"Oh . . ." She took it out of his hand. "Easy enough
making something to warn when Decans exercise their power. The difficulty is
making one the god-daemons’ acolytes won’t immediately feel being used and flock
to."

A light wind lifted papers as it brushed past her. She anchored one heap on
the table with the handful of talismans. A number of crates stood open under the
table, carved wood and incised wax talismans nesting in oakum. Her hand went to
the small of her back, rubbing. She looked past the young man’s earnest face to
Casaubon.

"Now I suppose you’ll tell me why you’re here?"

The Lord-Architect stood by the open street-side
window, face intent. He whistled through chiseled lips. The White Crow stood and
walked across to sit on the sill, drawing her feet up, bracketed by the frame.

"There have been three other Scholar-Soldiers come
to the heart of the world," Casaubon said, "since you disappeared."

Feathers rustled by her head. She flinched at the
fluttering.

Bright chaffinches flew to perch on the Lord-
Architect’s extended plump fingers. A thrush’s claws scored his head, pricking
sharp through his hair; and a humming-bird the same brilliant blue as his satin
coat hung so close before his face that his eyes crossed watching it. He
whistled again.

She met his gaze through vibrating wings.

"None of them survived a half-year," he concluded.

"I
didn’t know. This place is scaring me shitless." The White Crow lifted her chin.
"You’re not helping."

"I have a message from the Invisible College."

She reached forward, past her raised knees,
touching the wooden window-frame. Sun-warmed, barely damp now. She breathed the
acrid smell of street-dust. Heat already soaked the sky: people hurrying past
kept to the buildings’ shadows. Clock-mill’s half-hour chime came from the far
side of the building.

"I haven’t written on the moon in ten years.
Believe that I wouldn’t have sent out any warning unless I had to. If I’d known it would bring
you
—"

His cushioned arms pushed between her back and the
windowframe, and under the arch of her knees. She grabbed wildly, balance gone;
blindly lurching back from the one-story drop. His arms tightened. The White
Crow knotted fists in his shirt as the fat man lifted her, holding her across
the swell of his stomach.

"I am not in the habit of being a messenger-boy!
Sit down, sit still, shut up and
listen!
"

Her bare feet hit the floor stingingly hard.

"Get the hell out of here!"

Lucas’s voice came from the corner of the room:
"How does an invisible college find itself, to send messages?"

"Oh, what!"
Exasperated, the White Crow swung round. She met his dark gaze, seeing both
amusement and calculation. She nodded once. As she tucked her white shirt into
her breeches, she said: "Well done, Prince. But you won’t stop the two of us
quarreling. As to your question, the College is wherever two or three
Scholar-Soldiers happen to meet. Often you never
do
find out just who
suggested what."

A last sparrow flew out of the street-side window.
The Lord-Architect rubbed absently at his sleeves, smearing guano across the
blue satin. Wet patches of sweat already showed under his arms.

"You’re promoted," he announced, "from
Master-Captain to Master-Physician Valentine."

She felt an amazed grin start, and touched clasped
fists to her mouth to hide the joy. "You’re joking. No, really."

"I’m telling the truth," Casaubon said.

"I never thought they’d ever— But I’ve
left
the damned College!" She sat down at the table and looked at Lucas. "Yes, and
your next question is
How do you find the College to leave it?"

The Lord-Architect rested his hand on Lucas’s
shoulder as he walked around to face her. "The Invisible College’s rules are
strict. We travel incognito, Prince, and never more than two or three together."

"Oh, this is quite ridiculous." The White Crow
pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, lost in a sparkling darkness.
Evelian’s voice sounded out in the courtyard, talking to her daughter
Sharlevian. It came no nearer. A bee hummed in through one window, out through
the other.

"Stupid." She took her sweat-damp hands away from
her face. "I did leave. You knew it; so did Master-Captain Janou. You can’t make me a
Master-Physician, because I won’t let you."