Rats and Gargoyles (25 page)

The White Crow pushed the brim of her hat up. She
grinned, sun-dazed. "And I’ll do the rest that’s hard when we leave here, and if
we’re alive at the end of it I will still thank you for finding me. But as for now
—
"

"–for now," the Lord-Architect Casaubon picked up,
turning to look into the Decan’s slanting desert-eyes. "I would be cautious,
Divine One, with what I said before mortal kings. You, who read hearts and
minds, know mine."

The great paw moved slightly closer. The White Crow
felt a radiance from it through her arm, ribs, thigh, and the left side of her
body. She took a breath. Half air and half the soul of heat, it burned in her
lungs.

"I wrote with woman’s blood on the moon, because I
saw the Great Circle four times broken."

"It will be broken again."

The god-daemon’s breath touched her face, and the
White Crow smelt bone-dust.

"You are too early. For all things, there is a
certain hour to act: that hour and no other. "

The White Crow swayed. Black bees filled the air,
mica-wings glittering. They flew exactly the sun-hot courtyard’s patterns,
holding the air above the gravel labyrinth. She reached out to knot the linen of
Casaubon’s shirt in one hand. Ghost-lines of darkness began to pattern the sky.

"Shall pestilence in the heart of the world be
healed? I have seen infinite generations board the Boat to be carried through
the Night and back to birth. This is nothing in the eyes of the Thirty-Six
Powers. "

"Pestilence?" The White Crow frowned: calculating,
bewildered.

The shining salt-pan gaze of the god-daemon fell on
the White Crow. A black geometry starred the sky. The White Crow rubbed her
sweat-blurred eyes.

The Decan’s robed head tilted to look down upon
Casaubon, where the Lord-Architect stood between her paws.

"Shall we permit Salomon’s House to be raised in
the heart of the world, that it become the New Jerusalem? These things pass. The
Temple has fallen once, and will fall again. This is nothing in the eyes of the
Thirty-Six Powers."

"Ah. I don’t know about that . . . Divine One."
Casaubon wriggled his index finger in his ear, took it out, looked at the wax
under the nail and, as he wiped it down his embroidered waistcoat, said: "I
ruled a city once. All of it built by line, by rule, by square; by order of
hierarchy and just proportion of harmony. They tore it down. It’s a republic
now. The Lords-Architect are gone."

The White Crow watched time-worn brick move as
living flesh; the pocked and crumbling leonine body tense.

"We are who we are, and not to be vanquished by the
reshaping of stone-masonry! That is nothing. But–The Spagyrus, the Lord of Noon
and Midnight–shall He break the Dance?"

The White Crow slid her hand up to rest on
Casaubon’s forearm. Fine copper-haired flesh, sweet and sleepy: human. She
reached up and removed her hat. The heat of the sky above the Thirty-Sixth
temple struck at her neck and the crown of her head.

"It
was
broken." Casaubon’s arm slid around
the White Crow’s shoulders.

"A black miracle." She rubbed her mouth with her
hand and tasted salt. Her dry voice creaked. "A Philosopher’s Stone that gives
eternal Death, death of the soul."

"Such things unloose the sky and earth; untie the
forces that hold world to sun, and flesh to bone."

The White Crow’s skin smelt to her now of sweat and
sweet age, of middle years and high summer, of dreams enacted and powers taken
up into unused hands. She brushed hair away from her eyes. The heat of it burned
her fingers.

Casaubon’s mouth at her ear, warm with alcohol,
breathed: "The face . . . Does she have the face of your mother?"

"How did you know that!"

"Because she has the face of my mother, too."

"All things happen in a certain hour. An hour to
act, an hour to fail or succeed."

The courtyard hummed with the flight of bees,
ceaselessly rising and falling. The scent of black roses hung in the heat-soaked air. The sphinx blocked all light,
Her robed head raised against a yellow sky pocked with the black geometries of
constellations: the hieroglyphs of reality.

"Do what you will, children of earth. In one hour,
there will be a magia of pestilence. In one hour, the founding stone will be
laid of the House of Salomon. In this one same hour, do what you will."

The White Crow shivered, standing in the shadow of
the god-daemon. Lips curved, the baking-hot brick crumbling dust onto the air.
Lids slid widely open upon eyes as pitiless, amused and deadly as earth’s
wastelands.

"The hour of that day is not yet. You are come
before your time.

"In that one hour, the Lord of Noon and Midnight
will once more break the great circle of the living and the dying: I prophesy.
And in that one hour the Wheel of Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees will fly apart
into chaos: I prophesy. Stone from stone, flesh from bone, earth from sun, star
from star. There shall not be one mote of matter left clinging to another, nor
light enough to kindle a spark, nor soul left living in the universe.

"In that one hour."

Movement caught her eye: the White Crow wrenched
free of Casaubon’s arm, her hand going up to her sword. She froze, fingers
outstretched to grip. Above, in the yellow heat-soaked sky, black lines etched
animal-headed god-daemons with stars for eyes.

"I give you both the day that holds that hour."

The sky shuddered.

A sense of turning sickened her. She slitted her
lids to block out the sky, and the sun that
moved:
shifting thirty
Degrees across its arc from the Sign of the Lord of Morning to the Sign of the
Lady of High Summer. Cramps twisted her womb, and she bent over, grinding a fist
into the pit of her belly, the pain of the moon waxing and waning in a
heartbeat.

"At the precise moment that the Great Circle is
once again broken–then act!"

The great paws of the god-daemon closed together.

The White Crow flung out both arms, pushing against
the sun-hot brick that writhed beneath her palms. She staggered, slipped to one knee, sneezed violently
as cold air forced its way into her lungs; and scrambled to her feet.

A wall of tiny ocher bricks blocked her vision. Her
dusty hands rested flat against them. She pushed away, her eyes following the
brickwork up . . . to where it hooped above her head in an arch.

The first entrance-arch cast a dawn shadow into the
street. No coach waited outside. The White Crow stood alone, shivering in air
that felt cold only by contrast with the soul of heat. Her womb ached with the
loss of time passed.

"
Shit
-damn!"

Her voice echoed.

The White Crow swung around, taking in the dew
drying on the cobbles, the dawn-mist turning the blue sky milky. "Evelian! My
rooms! Who’s been feeding my animals while I’ve been gone?"

A citizen, out early, skittered past one corner of
the Fane, and the White Crow yelled: "The day, messire?"

Without turning or stopping, the man called: "Day
of the Feast of Misrule."

"That
long?"

She swung back, stabbing a dusty index-finger at
the Lord-Architect, to realize that she stood alone and faced a blank gateless
brick wall.

"–Casaubon?"

Light spreads out across the heart of the world.

Down in Eighth District North quarter the
barter-stalls open early, candy-striped awnings pearled with dawn’s dew. Men and
women argue the value of rice, portraits and chairs against pomanders, shoes and
viola da gambas. The barter-markets will close in an hour: it is the Feast of
Misrule.

In Thirty-First District morning is advanced.
Children dig the heavy clay earth of allotments, unearthing shards of pottery
with a peacock-bright glaze, where sun sparkles from the edges of broken
telescopic lenses. Parents call the children in; it is the Feast of Misrule.

At the royal palace light slants into wide
gravel-floored courtyards, glares back white from walls. Echoing: the clatter of
guard-change, the rattle of hoofs. Even this early, heat soaks the thick-walled
chambers where Rats await a special morning audience.

And down where Fourteenth District meets the harbor
the sailless masts of ships catch the first yellow fire of the sun. Tugs
anchored; wherries moored; light stains the lapping water where ships lie idle,
even the transients part of the preparations.

Ashen, the dawn touches the Fane. Light curdles,
chitters; sifting to fall upon the ragged wings of daemons: acolytes rustle and
roost. Storm-bright eyes flick open.

Light spreads out across the heart of the world,
the dawn of the day of the Feast of Misrule.

Reverend Mistress Heurodis said: "I cannot stay so
long as I thought. It would hardly do for me to be seen with you."

Archdeacon Regnault sat on the gutter step, sandal
in one dark hand, fingering the ball of her aching right foot. She raised her
head when Reverend Mistress Heurodis spoke, and laughed mirthlessly.

"I’m told by the novices that Reverend Master
Candia took equally great care not to be seen with Bishop Theodoret of the
Trees." She pitched her voice to carry over the constant ringing of a
charnel-house bell. "They were together, I know that. I know nothing else. And
that was thirty days ago!"

She stood, clutching one sandal in her hand.

"My time to search grows less. I’m needed back at
the hospital now. We’ve never needed to heal so many sick with pestilence as
this High Summer."

Beckoning Heurodis with a nod of her head, she
limped across the wide, tree-lined avenue towards the illegal cafes of the human
Eighth District South quarter, just opening or shutting with the dawn.

"If your Church didn’t insist on healing those the
god-daemons fate for death and rebirth"–Heurodis seized the trailing edge of
her blue cotton dress, and picked a neat way between fallen leaves, cracked
roadstones, and fresh dung–"you wouldn’t now stand between poverty and
ignominy."

Two- and three-story sandstone buildings took a
warm light from the sun, the cafes’ shield-shaped signs glowing blue, crimson
and gold. The smell of fresh water rose from newly washed pavements. Where the
soapy liquid trickled into the gutters, it accentuated the dung-odors of the
avenue.

The Archdeacon paused on the far pavement, waiting
for the old woman to catch up. She squinted up at the milky sky, sighed,
anticipating heat and the distances to be walked across the heart of the world
when one’s Church is too poor to afford carriages.

"A Sign’s passed, but I won’t give up. Tell me one
thing," she persisted doggedly, "before you return to the university."

The old woman in the neat cotton dress turned
smoky- blue eyes on the Archdeacon.

"I have honest work teaching at the University of
Crime," Heurodis said, her thin voice firm. "Why should I jeopardize it by
becoming concerned in the dubious activities of the Church of the Trees?"

The Archdeacon stepped into the shadow of a
eucalyptus tree, hearing its leaves rustle above her head. A rush of water from
a shop-front wet her bare foot, and made Heurodis step aside with an irritated
mutter. She made to take the old lady by the elbow and guide her.

"Ah! I didn’t mean—" She shook her wrist, rubbed
her elbow and stepped back from the Reverend Mistress. The white-haired woman
smiled.

"What is it you have to ask me, girlie?"

The Archdeacon brushed the shoulder of her green
cotton dress, and touched the scrolling bark of the eucalyptus for comfort. She
cinched her belt in another notch. The dappled shadow and light of leaves fell
across her black skin. She pointed down the avenue, to one of the bars that,
open all night in the heart of the world, now began to close its doors.

"Is
that Reverend Master Candia?" she asked.

Heurodis brushed tendrils of silver hair away from
her face, and shaded her eyes with a brown-spotted hand. The Archdeacon followed
her gaze into the open frontage of the cafe. Broken mirrors lined the walls.
Among tables and shattered bottles and the fumes of hemp, a heavily built
caf�-owner stood arguing with a man slumped into a chair.

"Yes." Heurodis rubbed her bare corded arms, as if
with a sudden chill.

The Archdeacon slipped her sandal back on her bare
foot and strode towards the caf�. The Reverend Mistress hurried after her.

"We’ll take over here."

The burly man turned a scarred face on the
Archdeacon and the Reverend Mistress. He nodded his head to Heurodis.

"If this bastard’s a friend of yours, he’s got a
score to settle . . ."

Heurodis looked around, and slapped her hand down
on Candia’s table. The burly man’s voice died as she lifted her palm. Sue or
seven silver coins gleamed on the scarred wood. Snake-swift, he brushed the
money over the table-edge into his hand, fisted it, and glared at the old woman.

"You’re mad! Using
coin
! The Rat-Lords will
hang all four of us."

"Then you’d better not tell them."

The bar-owner met Heurodis’s occluded gaze for a
second, turned, and stomped to the back of the caf� to oversee the haphazard
cleaning.

"Candia!"

The blond man sat slumped down so that his head was
below the back of the chair, his booted legs sprawled widely. His uncut beard
straggled to his collar. The buff- colored doublet, open to show filthy linen,
had more slashes than sufficed to show the crimson lining. He twitched at
Heurodis’s sharp tone.

"Reverend Master!"

The Archdeacon leaned forward. His warm foul breath
hit her in the face. She reached out, wound a dark hand in his hair and jerked
his head upright. Blond hair flopped across a face all pallor but for
sepia-bruised eyes.