Rats and Gargoyles (5 page)

Candia planted his fists on his hips and craned his
neck, looking through the vast spaces to The Spagyrus. The bruised darkness of
his eyes was accentuated by the pallor of fear, but determination held him
there, taut, before the god-daemon.

"It happens," he said, "that we’re traitors. The
Bishop here, and I. We’ve come to betray our own kind to you."

A shifting of movement, tenuous as the first
tremors of earthquake, folded His wings of darkness. The body of the god-daemon
moved, elbow-joints above shoulders, until He threatened emergence from
unlight-shadows. Lids slid up to narrow His eyes to slits.

"Master Candia, you always amuse me," He rumbled.
"I welcome that. It’s a relief from my failures here."

Candia made a gesture of
exasperation. He paced back and forth, a few strides each way, as if movement
could keep him from seeing where he stood. He directed no more looks at The
Spagyrus, his stamina for that exhausted.

The Bishop of the Trees reached to rest a hand on
Candia’s shoulder, stilling him. "Even the worst shepherd looks to his flock.
Doesn’t the Lord Decan know what’s happening in our part of the city?"

"Do the stock in the farmyard murmur?" A bifurcated
tongue licked out and stroked a lower fang. The Spagyrus gazed down at Candia
and Theodoret. "What I do here leaves me no time for such petty concerns. The
great work must be finished, and I am no nearer to completion. If it comes to
rioting in the city, I shall put it down with severity–I, my Kin, or your lesser
masters the Rat- Lords. You know this. Why bother me?"

Theodoret walked forward. His lined creased face,
under the shock of dusty-white hair, showed sternness.

"Lord Spagyrus!"

"Harrhummm?"

"Our
lesser masters
are what you should look
to." Theodoret’s gray eyes swam with light; mobile, blinking. "The Rat-Lords are
meeting now with the Guildmasters–the human Guildmasters, that is. Meeting in
secrecy, as I thought." Incredulity sharpened his voice. "And I see we’re right,
Lord Spagyrus.
You don’t know of it.
"

The Decan roared.

Candia slid to one knee, head bowed, ragged hair
falling forward; and his white-knuckled fist gripped the Bishop’s robe. A thin
greengold radiance limned him. He smelt the blossom of hawthorn and meadowsweet.
The tiles beneath his knee gave slightly, as if with the texture of moss.

The Bishop of the Trees said softly: "We were here
before you ever were, Lord Spagyrus."

The tendriled muzzle rose, gaped, fangs shining in
unlight and the furnace’s red darkness, and a great cry echoed down through the
chambers, and galleries and crypts of the Fane.

Candia raised his head to see the acolytes already
dropping from the ceiling vaults, soaring on black ribbed wings.

In a room that has more books than furniture, the
magus stares out at a blinding blue sky.

Her mirror is shrouded with a patchwork cloth.

The day’s air smells sleepy, smells sweet, and she
sniffs for the scent of rain or thunder and there is nothing.

Suddenly there is a tickle that runs the length of
her forearm. She holds up her hand. The gashed palm, halfhealed by her arts, is
aching now; and, as she watches, another bead of blood trickles down her arms.
She frowns.

She waits.

Charnay paused on the landing, examining herself in
the full-length mirror there. She took a small brush and sleeked down the fur on
her jaw; tugged her head-band into place, and tweaked the crimson feather to a
more jaunty angle.

"Messire Plessiez has a superlative mind," she
said. "I conjecture that, by the time you leave us, in a day or two, he’ll have
found some advantage even in you."

Lucas, aware of tension making him petty, needled
her. "
Big
words. Been taking lessons from your priest friend?"

"In!"

She leaned over and pushed open a heavy
iron-studded door. Lucas walked into the cell. Afternoon sunlight fell through
the bars, striping the walls. Dirt and cobwebs starred the floor, and the
remnants of previous occupations–tin dishes, a bucket, two ragged blankets–lay
on a horsehair mattress in one comer.

"You have no right to put me here!"

Charnay laughed. "And who are you going to complain
to?"

She swung the door to effortlessly. It clanged.
Lucas heard locks click, and then her departing footsteps, padding away down the
corridor. In the distance men and Rats shouted, hoofs clattered: the palace
garrison.

Lucas remained standing quite still. The sky beyond
the bars shone brilliantly blue; and light reflected off the white walls and the
four stories of windows on the opposite side of the inner courtyard, mirror to
his.

He slammed the flat of his hand against the door.
"Bitch!"

Four floors below, the brown Rat Charnay had
stopped in the courtyard to talk and to preen herself in the company of other
Rats. Her ears moved, and she glanced up, grinning, as she left.

The shadows on the wall slid slowly eastwards.

"Rot you!"

Lucas moved decisively. He unbuttoned his shirt,
folding it up into a neat pad. Goosepimples starred his chest, feeling the stone
cell’s chill. He rubbed his arms. With one eye on the door, he unbuttoned his
knee-breeches, slid them down, and turned them so that the gray lining was
outermost.

"If you’re going to study at the university, start
acting like it!"

His fingers worked at the stitching. A thin metal
strip protruded from the knee-seam, and he tugged it free; and then stood up
rapidly and hopped about on one foot, thrusting the other into his breeches-leg,
listening to check if that
had
been a noise in the corridor . . . No.
Nothing.

His dark-brown meeting brows dipped in
concentration. The metal prong plumbed the depths of the lock, and then his
mouth quirked: there was a click, and he tested the handle, and the heavy door
swung open.

Clearer: the noise of the garrison below.

Lucas buttoned his breeches. He took a step towards
the open door. One hand made a fist, and there was a faint pink flush to his
cheeks. Caught between reluctance and fear of recognition, he stood still for
several minutes.

Coming in, they had passed no human above the rank
of servant.

He bent to remove stockings and shoes, wrapping
them in his shirt. Then he knelt, shivering, to rub his hands in the dirt;
washing arms, face and chest in the cobwebs and dust.

A black Rat passed him on the second floor. She
didn’t spare a glance for this kitchen-servant. With the bundle under his arm,
and an old leather bucket balanced on his shoulder, Lucas of Candover walked
free of the palace.

Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned out of the carriage
window, regardless of the dust and flying clots of dung the team’s hoofs threw
up.

"See you, we’re out of Nineteenth District’s Aust
quarter already –oof!"

Plessiez’s hand grabbed her coat between the
shoulder- blades and yanked her back on to the carriage seat. "Is it necessary
to advertise your presence to the entire city?"

"Oh, we’re not even out of a
Mixed District, messire, what’s to worry?"

She leaned her arms on the jolting sill, and her
chin on her arms, and grinned out at the street. The carriage rattled through
squares where washing hung like pale flags and fountains dripped. The sun beat
down from a blazing afternoon sky. Humans and Rats crowded the cobbled streets–a
dozen or so of the palace guard, in silks and satins and polished rapiers, drank
raucously outside a tavern, and sketched salutes of varying sobriety as
Plessiez’s coach and horses passed them.

Zar-bettu-zekigal drew a deep breath, contentedly
sniffing as they passed a may-hedge and a city garden.

"You have no Katayan accent," the black Rat said.
The dimness inside the coach hid all but the glitter of his black eyes, and the
jet embellishment of his rapier’s pommel.

"Messire"–reproach in her tone, and humor–"Kings’
Memories remember inflections exactly–we have to. What would I be doing with an
accent
?"

"I beg your pardon, lady," Plessiez said,
sardonically humble, and the Katayan grinned companionably at him.

The coachman called from above, sparks showered as
the brakes cut the metal wheel-rims, and the carriage rattled down a steep lane.
Plessiez caught hold of the door-strap with a ring-fingered hand.

"Mistress Zekegial . . . Zare-bethu . . ." He
stumbled over the syllables.

"Oh, ‘Zari’ will do, messire, to you." She waved an
airy gesture. Then, leaning out of the window again as the carriage squealed to
a halt, she said: "You’re holding this important meeting in a
builders’ yard
?"

Plessiez hid what might have been a smile. The
black Rat said smoothly: "That is one of the Masons’ Halls, little one. Show the
proper respect."

Zari pushed the carriage door open and sprang down
into the yard. Two other coaches were already drawn up in the entrance, horses
standing with creamed flanks and drooping heads. Plessiez stepped down into the
sunlight. It became apparent that the black Rat had changed uniform: he now wore
a sleeveless crimson jacket, with the neat silver neck-band of a priest. His
crimson cloak was also edged with silver.

He paused to adjust rapier and belt, and Zari saw
him straighten a richly gemmed pectoral
ankh.
A flurry of black and brown
Rats from the other coaches rushed to meet him, those with priests’ collars
particularly obsequious.

"Mauriac, make sure the guards are placed
unobtrusively; Brennan, you–and
you
–get these carriages taken away." The
black Rat’s snout twitched.

A heavily-built brown Rat swaggered out from the
back of the group. Pulling her aside by a corner of her cloak, Plessiez said
sharply: "
My
idea of a secret meeting does not consist merely of arriving
in a coach without a crest on it! Yours does, apparently. Get rid of this crowd.
I’ll take you only in with me."

Charnay laughed and slapped Plessiez on the back.
The black Rat staggered slightly.

"Don’t worry, messire! They’ll just think you’ve
come for a plan for the new wing."

"Perhaps. But do it."

Zar-bettu-zekigal’s bare feet printed the yellow
yard- dust. The air shimmered in the heat. She wrapped her greatcoat firmly
round her, and squinted up at the stacked clay bricks, timber put out to
weather, and piles of wooden scaffolding that surrounded this Masons’ Hall.

Tiles and wooden crates blocked the view to the
nearer houses.

She cocked her head, and her dappled
black-and-white tail coiled around her ankles. With a nod at the weathered-plank
structure–half hall, half warehouse– she said over the noise of departing
coaches: "Well, messire, have I begun yet?"

"As soon as we enter the hall."

Leisurely, hands folded at his breast, the black
Rat paced forward. Charnay fell in beside him. Two men pushed the hall doors
open from the inside, and Zari gave a half-skip up the steps, catching up, as
they went in.

"Messire Falke!" Plessiez called.

In a patch of sunlight from the clerestory windows,
a man raised his bandaged face. His short silver-white hair caught the light,
pressed down by the strips of cotton.

"Honor to you, priest." The man faced Plessiez with
a wry, somewhat perfunctory grin. His black silk overalls shone at collar, cuffs
and seams; sewn with silver thread. A heavy silver pin in the shape of compasses
fastened the black lace at his throat. Diamond and onyx rings shone on his left
hand.

"Oh, what . . . ?"

The merest whisper. Charnay nudged the Katayan
heavily in her ribs, and Zari bowed. She continued to stare at the fine linen
bandaging the man’s eyes.

The men and women with Falke drew back, bowing
respectfully to the black Rat, and the sleek priest strode down the passage that
opened in the crowd and seated himself on a chair at the head of a trestle
table. This gave signs–like the eight or nine others in the room– of having been
rapidly cleared of site- and ground-plans, measurements, calculations and scale
models.

Charnay ostentatiously drew her long rapier and
laid it down on the plank table before her.

"Zari," the black Rat prompted.

The young woman was standing on tiptoe, and leaning
over to stare into a tank-model of a sewer system. She straightened. Hands in
pockets, she marched across the bright room and hitched herself up to sit on the
trestle table.

"Kings’ Memory," she announced. "You have an
auditor, messires: you are heard: this is the warning."

Some of the expensively dressed men and women began to
speak. Falke held up a hand, and they ceased. "What is your oath?"

She took her hands out of her greatcoat pockets.
"To speak what I hear, as I heard it, whenever asked; to add nothing, to omit
nothing, to alter nothing."

Falke passed her on his way to sit down, close
enough for her to see dark brows and lashes behind the cloth shield. A lined
face, and silver-fine hair: a man on the down side of thirty-five.

"And the penalty," he said, "if otherwise?"

"Death, of course." She slid down on to a
collapsible chair, positioning herself exactly halfway between Falke’s people
and the Rats.

The light of late noon fell in through clerestory
windows, shining on the plans, diagrams and calculations pinned around the
walls. Falke, without apparent difficulty, indicated the half-dozen men and
women who abandoned compasses, straight-edge and fine quill pens for the cleared
trestle table, as they sat down. Silk and satins rustled; white lace blazed at
cuffs and collars.

"The master stonemason. Master bricklayer. Foreman
of the carriage teams. Master tiler."

Plessiez, who sat with his lean black muzzle
resting on his steepled fingers, said: "You may give them their proper titles,
Master Falke. If we’re to talk honestly, we must have no secrecy."