Rats and Gargoyles (62 page)

A grin quirked up the corners of her mouth. Hands
in pockets, she shrugged, superbly casual.

". . . Just
ask
me. I can tell you! I’m a
Kings’ Memory. What do you want to know?"

Candia, sprawling down on a stone horse-block,
scratched at thick blond stubble and spread out stained pasteboard cards. A
dazed child’s wonder blanked his expression.

Brilliant image succeeds brilliant image, no tarot
card what it has been before, all new and strange and altering again even as he
turns them: lions coupling in a desert, a river flowing uphill, a
steel-and-granite bird circling a star, a throned empress giving her child suck
. . .

Acolytes clung to every projection of stone above
him, gripping gutters, facades, strapwork and chimneys; staring down into the
overgrown university quadrangle.

The black gelding grazing loose by the block raised
its head and whinnied, sweat creaming its haunches, eyes white and wild. Candia
glanced up. He sprang to his feet, the cards scattered.

"My lord! Theo!"

He put his arms carefully around Theodoret’s
shoulders, embracing him. The Bishop returned the grip, careless of the younger
man’s sweat-stained and filthy shirt.

"My friend, I haven’t thanked you—"

"Don’t. It took me long enough to come back, and I had to be pig-drunk to do it—"

A shadow halted him in mid-word. Behind the
whitehaired man, bright in the sun, a sandstone-and-gold shape paced between
tall university buildings that only shadowed His flanks.

"Lord Spagyrus." He swallowed, mouth dry. "You
live, still?"

"Yes, little Candia, I live. I live again!"

The great head lowered, tusks gold against the sky,
tiny scaled ears pricked forward. The scales of the Decan’s muzzle glinted. The
Bishop of the Trees reached up and laid a veined hand on the tip of one
down-jutting fang, just below the vast nostril. Breath stirred Candia’s hair. An
almost-mischievous smile creased Theodoret’s face.

"I am the elixir, I am the prima materia, I am the
stone that touches all, the marriage of heaven and hell. I had forgotten,"
the Decan’s soft voice boomed, echoing in sandstone courtyards where the slim
leaves of bamboo sprout from shattered windows,
"and I perceive that I have
erred, the while that matter clouded me. "

Candia shoved his straggling hair back under its
sweat- band, put his fists on his hips, and glared up at the Decan of Noon and
Midnight.

" ‘Erred.’ " He eyed the Decan with an exasperation
long since past the point of caution. "Erred! Would you like me to tell you
about it!"

"The error is not one that concerns you."

Candia rubbed the back of his wrist across his
mouth. The horse whinnied again. His breath came back to him, rich with the
scent of the dusty yard: sweet, salt, rose- and dung-odored. Clamor continued to
sound outside. Through the archway, across the District to the harbor’s marble
piers and aqueducts, to the far south-aust horizon where tides of flowers
flowed.

"Who, then?"

"These."

To each roof-ridge, chimney, gable and gutter, the
dispossessed Fane’s acolytes clung. They roosted restlessly, membraned wings
furling and unfurling in the new sun, obsidian claws gripping stone and metal.
Candia tilted his head back, staring up into slit-eyed beaked faces.

Malice and pain stared back.

"They suffer."

Candia grunted. "Good. They made us suffer for
centuries."

Daemon-wings flared open, beating the bright day
into duststorms. One beast clung head down on lead guttering, picking with its
beak at new vegetation, spitting dumb hatred down at him.

"They are Our just instruments. They have no minds
to recall, else they would remember how you sought to betray fellow-humans to
them."

The Decan’s scented breath skirred dust about
Candia’s feet. He sank to one knee in the courtyard, head high; his mouth
opening and closing several times.

"I have always been able to rely on mortals for
treachery."

Stubbornly suppliant, Candia remained kneeling, a
ragged blond man squinting against the light. A resonance of his swagger and
competence of a Sign ago haunted him, now, much as he haunted this deserted
university. The Decan’s shadow fell across his flopping hair, his filthy shirt
and breeches.

"These are only animals. Death is death to them;
their generations do not return. Except in the darkness behind the eye and in
the Fane, they have no voice. We must make some end of these servants of Ours,
now that We walk out into the world. What would you have Me do? Tell Me what you
would do, little Candia."

The Fane’s acolytes raised restless muzzles to all
five points of the compass, sniffing the blossom-scented wind, searching for the
Fane.

His face heating, Candia muttered: "Why ask me?
I’ll answer for Masons’ Hall. It was my choice. As for these butchers, they were
your instruments!"

"Tree-priest, you suffered most. What would you?"

"Lord Decan, it’s you I can’t forgive." Theodoret’s
veined hands spread in a Sign of the Branches, faint sparks of green and gold
flowing under the skin. "I’m an old man, therefore familiar with discomfort. You
and they gave me pain that should have killed—"

"Forget."

"You haven’t yet paid for that!"

"God does not pay. We do not incur debts. Whatever
We do is well and right, because it is We who do it. Who can deny that?"

Candia muttered: "Bollocks!"

A raw tone echoed back from the courtyard’s walls.
Candia only knew it much later for a Decan’s laughter.

"It is true that much is different now, but that
does not change. But give an answer. What shall be done with these?"

Candia stared up at the misshapen bodies. "Freeze
them into stone for all I care, and let them stick there until the city’s
demolished!"

Prescience gave an image of how it would be, clear
as a tarot card: each massive building lined with rows of stone guardians,
bodies frozen in a rictus, rain streaming from their open beaks . . .

The Decan’s full lips parted. One gold fang dulled
with his summer breath, birthing the beginning of a word.

"No!" The day’s heat dappled on Theodoret; he
seemed to move in shade and the shifting of leaves. "Lord Spagyrus, no."

"Why not so?"

"Animals are innocent murderers, Divine One." The
Bishop’s ascetic mouth wrinkled, distaste mingling with resignation and a
certain sly justice. "You should pay something, Lord Spagyrus. What penalty one
asks of the Divine, I don’t know. Perhaps you should pay by taking
responsibility. They are yours, these daemons."

"We have no use for these servants now. What they
did, We will do Ourselves."

Spitting temper, Candia pushed the hair back that
flopped into his eyes. "Call
that
taking responsibility!"

"I perceive that I have erred. See how I will pay."
Grave humor echoes; like the Bishop’s, young beyond its years, and fully
cognizant of dubious moral standpoints.
"Let them have speech and souls. I
create them so. I create them free of Us!"

"Speech and souls—"

Candia grabbed the Bishop’s arm, pulling himself to
his feet. The old man’s lips opened, anticipating, awed.

"Praise the Lord Decan!" a gargoyle-figure
shrilled, hanging head-down from a high gutter.

"Praise be buggered!" A raucous cry. Bristle-tail
lashing, a daemon uncurled black wings and flew up to hover over the roof. His
eyes gleamed amber. "He’s thrown us to our enemies, that’s all He’s done!
They’ll take revenge for what He made us do!"

Beaked muzzles rose, opening, and harsh voices
cawed in competition with one another.

"We’re different now; Rats and men won’t
hate us—"

"
Won’t
they!"

"I have a right to be here; it’s our city, too!"

"No home, here; no place for us—"

"All ours! Sky and roofscape, all ours."

"But I want more than that—"

"The Lord Decan will tell us what to do!"

"Not me, he won’t tell!"

Wings rattled in the heat, circling; shadows
falling to dazzle Candia as he gazed upwards. Apprehensive of the copper taste
of blood, he waited for that ancient warning of their presence. Nothing came.
Black ribbed wings, moth-eaten brown furred bodies, spiked long tails–mortal
gargoyle-daemons swarmed above the university quadrangle.

Theodoret’s elbow dug his ribs. Through the
archway, black specks began to rise in confusion across the whole district.
Dumbfounded, Candia scratched at his blond stubble.

"The Rat-Lords aren’t going to like this. His
Majesty
really
isn’t going to like this."

"Choice. Knowledge and choice. I think I
am
revenged. Let these have all our problems! Let them deal with us, and his
Majesty
–and
the Thirty-Six in the world, and—" The Bishop suddenly
guffawed. "My friend, no one’s going to like it!"

An elderly gargoyle-daemon on a gutter linked
clawed thumbs across her flaking breast. Her ribbed wings, drawn down, furled
about her shoulders, gleaming tar-black and smelling of old buried stone. One
finger moved to scratch under a drooping dug. She stared down at Candia and
Theodoret with a light in her eye.

"Who
asked
you to like it?"

Andaluz rolled down one black woolen stocking,
folded it neatly on the canal steps beside its twin, and lowered his lean feet
into the water.

Early-afternoon sun shimmered, light webbing his
pale skin. He flexed his toes in the cold water.

"I assure you, Lady Luka, this canal is real
enough. Although to my knowledge it’s never been here before—"

He broke off, spreading his hands to acknowledge
the city of wonders; shook his head, smiling.

"One says that of so much. What’s one canal!"

The plump silver-braided woman walked in a swirl of
bright robes to where he sat. She shaded her eyes with her hands. "In a city of
wonders . . . !"

Andaluz slid his heavy doublet off his arms and
shoulders, letting it fall carelessly on the steps. He unfastened a
button-toggle of his shirt. Sweat dampened the cloth between his narrow
shoulder-blades; heat drove sixty years’ chill from his bones. He lifted one
foot from the canal and hooked his arm around his knee.

"Luka?"

She gazed at the sky: at the heat-hazed, soft
gray-blue, empty of all birds. Past her profile, the new wide waterway here
opened out into the harbor. Heat and summer’s brightest light glared back from
the marble palaces that lined the great canal. Andaluz left wet splashes on the
marble as he drew his feet from the water and stood up.

"Lady, what is it?"

Marble-and-gold steps and walkways paralleled the
canal, running down to where the light flashed from the sea-harbor. Hot on the
air came the smell of the sea. Miles of city fronting the harbor shone now in
the sun, bright with apple and cherry and blackthorn flower.

She turned to face inland. "Listen!"

The buzz of the approaching crowd grew louder. The
Candovard Ambassador stood barefoot, in shirt and breeches, scratching at his
grizzled hair. He reached down towards his discarded doublet. The movement
arrested itself midway: he straightened, resting his hand on the woman’s arm.

"Luka, dear lady, tell me—"

"There!"

A sudden black spar reared over the heads of the
crowd. Appearing between the frontages of palaces, where the canal curved back
into the city, the prow of a black ship glided into sight.

The smell of tar came to him in the hot sun,
sparkling on the planks. Great black masts towered, white sails belling from
them. A sweet rich scent set Andaluz to rubbing his eyes; he frowned, focusing.

Sails hung in tangles against the sky, great
curtains and draperies of roses depending from the rigging. The flower-sailed
ship glided deep and steady in the water, no hand at the wheel. Figures lined
the rails. Ripples lapped the marble steps at Andaluz’s feet.

"It’s the Boat! Dear lady—" He turned to her, eyes
bright with a sudden comprehension.

One of her slender fingers pointed. "And it’s young
Elish!"

Crowds of people walked the canal paths. Noisy,
hand- in-hand or arms about each other’s shoulders, sweating in the heat and
calling to their neighbors on the far canal bank, the people of the city crowded
out into the sun.

Between a stocky brown Rat and an elderly
Fellowcraft, the Katayan walked. Her pale face raised, she moved her mouth; he
could hear nothing of what she chanted. The power and joy of it beat against his
skin, as hot as the sun’s light.

"Madame Elish!"

He pushed his way forward between people and
embraced the thin woman. She shifted her gaze from the Boat, the wall of the
hull towering beside them as it glided slowly towards the sea.

"Ambassador!" She caught his hand and swung him to
walk on with her to where Luka stood waiting. "You must know, messire, I lied to
you. I’m no envoy."

"My dear girl, I don’t care whether you are or not;
you’re infinitely welcome."

The great vessel began to slow. The Katayan woman,
licking her lips and drawing in breath, chanted a few soft syllables. She ran
forward to grip Luka’s hands, laughing down at the middle-aged woman. Andaluz
caught his bare foot on a stone, staggered against someone in the crowd. A tall
bearded man smiled and handed him a wine-flask.

Andaluz began to shake his head, stopped, took the
wine and drank. "My thanks to you, messire."

"Welcome. Welcome!"

"Oh, see you—" A hand gripped his bare elbow.
"Messire Ambassador! Isn’t it
won
derful?"

Andaluz ran his finger down the younger Katayan’s
palely freckled jaw-line. He smiled. "Mistress Zari. My nephew, if he yet lives,
wishes you found. Do you know this?"