Rats and Gargoyles (32 page)

Tension, like static in fur, crackled in the
heat-heavy air.

"I have spoken with the architect, your Majesty,
and corrected the fault in the drive mechanisms of the remaining siege-engines.
They can be set to move whenever you command."

The formal phrasing came easily. Plessiez kept his
eyes fixed on a point just over the black Rats-King’s shoulder. Before the King
answered, he spoke again:

"Your Majesty, this was done by your will. I have
always acted so; I trust that I always shall. You have had your necromancy
performed, and by the end of this day there will be no one who does not perceive
the result of it."

One of the silver Rats-King put down the scroll he
was reading. "Then, all is well, messire."

"Your engines are ready to be put in place, to ward
off the acolytes if they attack." Memory touched Plessiez’s spine with a cold
claw. "But I beseech your Majesty, again, to approve the plan the Order of Guiry
has suggested, and spare several such engines for the defense of Human
districts."

Heat soaked in through the linen curtains, and in
the silence Plessiez heard the servants whispering in the corners of the
audience chamber. The long-bladed fan turned slowly, as if through clear honey.

"St. Cyr came to me today." The bony black Rats-King spoke without acknowledging the Cardinal’s last words. He smiled. "The
conspiracy of Messire Desaguliers–or perhaps
coup
is better, since he
plans Our removal and replacement–is ripe now. St. Cyr believes he and his
disaffected friends will act in the next two days."

"Remove the fool now, your
Majesty."

"I may yet have a use for Messire Desaguliers. But
we did not—"

"–ask for your opinion in this, Messire Plessiez."
The fatter of the brown Rats-King spoke again. "What else?" Plessiez mentally
shrugged, shifted one furred knee on the steps where it began to ache, and
reported: "It’s five days, now, since anything at all was observed leaving or
entering any part of the Fane. Your Majesty, I believe that means the
magia
begins to work upon them. We should protect ourselves."

Three of the Rat-King spoke together.

"The humans–"

"–this High Summer fever is our pestilence in
disguise. It begins—"

"–to thin down their numbers."

"They will prove more tractable to our rule if
there are fewer of them." The bony middle-aged black Rats- King shifted, easing
over on to his other haunch. "Yes, Messire Plessiez, we are aware that you find
that unpalatable. Government is a hard art, harder than your
magia.
Very
well, order the engines to move out–between the hours of eleven and one, when
the heat will empty the streets."

Plessiez, rising to leave, adjusted the hang of his
scabbard, and the cardinal’s green sash; and at the last couldn’t keep from his
warning: "Your Majesty, I know, may hope by this to weaken our masters’ power,
or even, it may be, to drive them to abandon their incarnation here amongst us.
But consider that then we lose not only their oppression of us, but also their
protection."

"We
have
considered it," the bony black
Rats-King said. "You may go and do as we order, messire."

Plessiez bowed deeply, backing across the carpet to
the doors. The brown Rat servants opened them soundlessly as he turned and
passed through. The airless chamber slicked down his fur with heat. He paused
for a moment in the palace corridor to groom.

"Lord Cardinal, a message for you."

He took the folded paper from the brown Rat,
expecting it to be Reverend Captains Fleury or Fenelon, or perhaps something
from the military architect. He unfolded it and read:

I have urgent news but can’t meet you now, messire.
Be on the Mauressy Docks by noon.
The laboriously printed signature spelled
out
Lieutenant Charnay, King’s Guard.

"It’s taken me an hour and a
half
to walk
here. " Breathless, Zar-bettu-zekigal sat down heavily on the camp- bed. The
trestles gave out a sharp creak.

"What does the Cardinal-General say?"

"Tell you in a . . . in a minute . . ."

The Hyena paced the length of the temporary
pavilion. Sepia light through the canvas walls sallowed her face. Her scabbard
clashed as she moved. Her plate armor hung discarded on a frame in the corner of
the tent; the woman wore only her dark red shirt and breeches, sweat- marked in
the close heat.

"Well?" She passed the document-covered desk,
ignoring it for the moment, and finished standing beside the trestle bed,
looking down at the young Katayan woman. "What did he tell you?"

Muffled, clocks struck eleven. The harsh strokes
barely penetrated the folds of the pavilion tent.

The young woman leaned back on her elbows on the
bed, looking up. Her pale arms and legs glowed golden in the sunlight sifted
through the canvas. Black lashes dipped once across dark eyes, before she
shifted on to one elbow, reaching with her other hand for the shoulder of her
black dress.

"I can’t believe it: it’s so
hot.
"

The Hyena folded her arms, with difficulty keeping
a smile from her face. "You’re a Katayan."

"I’m still hot!"

The younger woman, eyes holding the Hyena’s, undid
with accurate fingertips the hooks-and-eyes that ran down the shoulder and side
of her black dress.

"You’re as subtle as a brick."

"Oh, but, see you, it
works.
"

Amused, exasperated, the Hyena shook her head. "I
don’t have time for this, not now of all times. Tell me about Plessiez."

The Katayan lifted her legs on to the trestle bed
and rolled over onto her front, so that she lay on the discarded flattened
dress, head pillowed on her pale arms. The matt-black hair of her head grew in a
tiny hackle down her neck and the pale knobs of her spine, to transform into fur
where her tail (wide as her wrist at the coccyx, but flattened) coiled down
black and white.

"Don’t you ever give up?"

"Never!"

The Hyena seated herself on the unsteady edge of
the bed. She reached out and began to rub the younger woman’s shoulders.
Zar-bettu-zekigal lowered her head, lay with her nose in the crook of her arm.
Something brushed the Hyena’s shoulder; she started; realized it was the
tuft-tipped tail.

"I’m ordering camp struck. Well enough for the
Salomon men to fortify their halls, but the dynasty’s used to hit-and-run." She
paused. "We may need to be invisible before the end of today, to attack with no
warning of our coming."

Zari’s head came up far enough for her to say:
"That why you shifted the tents down here? To Fourteenth District?"

The Hyena pushed her thumbs into flesh that barely
cushioned sharp shoulder-blades, hot under her hands; bracing her fingers on the
Katayan’s skin. Shadows crossed the tent. No breeze moved the canvas walls.
Outside, she heard the shouts of civilian infantry being drilled, spared a
moment’s thought for the sewer-taught soldiery and this district’s militia.

"The Fane." Her fingers dug into smooth skin.

"Messire the Cardinal says:
Memory, hear: To the
leader of the Imperial dynasty this message. His Majesty’s own precautions will
have taken place by noon. If you wish no retaliation, make no attack on them; they
are not designed for use against your people
. . ."

The Hyena nodded impatiently. "I know about the
engines in the artillery garden. Zari—"

Still soothing the younger woman’s muscles in
rhythmic strokes, she found her hands moving as Zar-bettu- zekigal rolled over
onto her back, until they rested on her small high breasts. The Katayan put her
hands under the back of her head and grinned. A dappled tuft of hair marked her
Venus-mound, and pale freckles dotted her belly. The Hyena moved her hands down
over the sharply defined rib-cage.

"Your own people’s protection I leave to you. My
best experts in
magia
foretell this noontide to be the moment of the
Great Wheel’s turning. Now, whether it be for the favor of my people or yours, I
know not, but such a confusion is cast over all readings for our strange masters the Decans that I confidently anticipate—"

Hardly holding in her impatience, she said: "Yes?
Yes?"

"–anticipate that our bargain reaches its
conclusion here. Lady, when the Fane falls
—"

The Katayan winced. The Hyena withdrew fingers that
had spiked flesh, nodded.

"When the Fane falls, which I believe will be noon
today, then, it being everyone for themselves, I bid you farewell, Lady."

"Damn it, it is, it
is
today! Now–I’ll give
the alert."

She sat back, moving to stand. Pale hands reached
up. She stared absently down at the young woman, suddenly pulled her up to sit
on the bed and threw her arms about her in a fierce embrace. Zar-bettu-zekigal
yelped in her ear.

A voice outside the tent called: "Lady Hyena!"

Ignoring Zar-bettu-zekigal’s oath, she shouted back
to the sentry: "What is it, Clovis?"

"Vanringham’s on his way through camp," the muffled
voice called. "You said this time you’d see him, Lady."

"Send him in." She
stood, strode to the desk, suddenly spun round in her tracks. "Zari, out!"

"Ei, what?"

"You can’t be allowed to talk to him. Out. Come on, out now!" The Hyena pulled her up by the wrists,
and the Katayan came unwillingly to her feet.

Fists on bare hips, she glared. "Oh,
what!"

"The back way. Now!" She bundled up the crumpled
black dress, thrust it into the younger woman’s arms, head turned to catch the
announcement of entrance. "Vanringham’s from one of the news-broadsheets. You
can’t talk to him."

The dress dropped to the floor. The young Katayan
woman’s shoulders straightened. She glared up from under her fringe of black
hair, taut with anger. "I’m a Kings’ Memory. I talk with whoever asks me—"

"Exactly, and you’re not talking to the press. Now,
out
when I tell you!"

A horn blared outside the pavilion. The sound of
mailed tread approached. The Hyena took a step forward. She watched as
Zar-bettu-zekigal bent and scooped up the dress, clutched it to her bare
stomach, and then hesitated.

The sentry outside called: "Lady Hyena, the
representative of the Nineteenth District broadsheet."

The Katayan’s head turned as the canvas wall of the
tent quivered. Her chin came up. Hooking the dress on one finger, she slung it
over her shoulder, sepia light sliding down her naked shoulders, breasts, hips
and legs; and walked with something of a swagger to the curtained exit.

"Zari."

Loud enough to be heard, the Katayan spat: "If you
didn’t want a Kings’ Memory, you had no business talking in front of one!"

Tail flicking, she strode out as the sentry and the
new arrival came through the canvas passage; nodded a casual greeting at the
gaping men, and walked out into the blazing sun.

The Hyena brushed the lank hair back from her face,
sighing. The man escorted in, small and middle-aged, with white hair that stuck
up like owl’s feathers, turned his head back from following the Katayan’s exit.

"
Do
you have a Kings’ Memory in your employ,
Lady?"

She ignored his question. Passing Clovis on her way
to sit down, she said quietly: "Call in the council of captains."

Sepia light gleamed on the banners of the dynasty,
draped white and gold at the rear of the tent. A flash of white light glinted
from the armor-stand as Clovis lifted the curtain on his way out. The Hyena
walked slowly round to sit behind the desk, facing the broadsheet publisher, the
gold-cross banners at her back.

"Messire Vanringham, I want to show you something."

She uncreased a folded broadsheet that lay on the
table, on top of unfolded maps. Her own face looked up at her in shades of gray
from the paper, slanting brows made heavy by shadow.

"I do not ever recall telling you, Messire
Vanringham, that the army of the human dynasty is made up from ‘criminals
escaped from oubliettes, the disaffected, the lunatic; and the young enticed by
drugs or seduced by treason.’ Nor that ‘their leader, claiming imperial blood,
is in fact the child of a shopkeeper and a Tree-priest . . .’ "

The man scratched at his head, spiking the hair
into further disarray, and then rubbed his nose vigorously and dug in the
pockets of his stained doublet for his notebook. Unembarrassed, and possibly
unafraid, he said: "I print what I have to, Lady. Else I lose my printing press
to the Rat-Lords."

"Criminal." She let sweat shine on his forehead
before she added: "But you need no longer suffer it."

Light and heat momentarily glared as Clovis
reentered. Armor and swords clashed, the tent suddenly full of bright metal and
gold-cross surcoats: eight or nine other captains entering with him. They knelt
before the Hyena.

A little uncomfortable, Cornelius Vanringham looked
at her across their lowered heads. The Hyena waited until she could see the
professional hardness re-enter his gaze.

"We’re ready to make the announcement today,
messire. I want you to put out a special edition. Print it now, send it out to
the five quarters here, and to as many other Districts as your delivery-men can
reach—"

He made a protest patently not the one in his mind.
"But the strike?"

"The people will break it. This is for the human
dynasty and the House of Salomon. And don’t worry about your masters and your
printing press." She waited a heartbeat for the doubt to clear from his face.
Seeing it would not, knowing the man’s reservations, she grinned.

"Don’t forget how far and how fast I’ve come.
You’ll believe me by the end of the day, Messire Vanringham. The story you’ll
print shall be this: that the imperial dynasty is at last ready to resume its
place as the ruling power in the heart of the world."