Rats and Gargoyles (64 page)

She shuffled paper-clippings, dropping a small pair
of silver scissors on the gravel. "Here’s another one. ‘Rumor speaks of the late
Master of the Hall in Nineteenth Eastquarter, Falke, being instrumental in
preventing the late outbreak of plague from worsening.’ Ei!
Won’t
I talk
to Vanringham! I told him everything true, and he’s just distorted it all!"

Lucas turned the page of Thirtieth District’s
Starry Messenger
over, reading aloud.

" ‘Accusations against Reverend tutor Candia of the
University of Crime have been dropped. It was reported that Master Candia had
dealt with persons unbecoming to the reputation of the University of Crime, and
was to be dismissed from his place on the Faculty, but after representations
from the Church of the Trees
—
’ " Astonishment edged Lucas’s tone. "
‘–from the Church of the Trees all charges have been dropped.’ "

"Oh, say you, that’s because of this."

Zar-bettu-zekigal proffered Eighth District’s
Mercurius Politicus.

" ‘Bishop Theodoret instrumental in dismissing
Black Sun; makes overtures to the Thirty-Six; intervention of this gaia-church
successful; The Spagyrus ratifies new status for the Church of the Trees; see
pictures page six.’ "

"Pictures?" Lucas took the clipping, peering at
silver- and-gray images of the Cathedral of the Trees and that square’s gallows,
a tiny figure in the foreground recognizable as Theodoret. The cameraman had,
quite sensibly, made no attempt to include the Decan, but a vast shadow lay
across the foreground of the square.

At Theodoret’s side, small and bright, stood the
White Crow.

Breath stopped in Lucas’s throat, left a lump past
which he could not swallow. Zari’s voice faded from his consciousness for a
minute. Lucas gazed across the gardens to the canal. Small boats bobbed on the
water, where music and laughter sounded. He smiled, almost hugging himself.

His fingers remember the touch of skin.

"If we’d known how it would end . . ." He scanned her
narrow face, searching for differences from the young Katayan in the
university’s courtyard, and in Austquarter’s crypt and the palace throne-room.
Memory nagged. With sudden discovery, he said: "Plessiez? I heard that . . . I
haven’t seen him. Is he . . . ?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal looked up, her lively features
still.

"Elish–my sister Elish-hakku-zekigal, she’s a
shaman–she did a vision. She told me. She sees true. She saw Messire Plessiez at
the end, underground, somewhere where there were bones . . ."

Her fingers slid to the sash about her waist, a
length of green silk casually knotted around her black dress.

"You can say what you like about the university.
And about your old White Crow. It was Messire who went in to break the
magia.
Elish saw–and then her vision couldn’t see through the dust: the whole
cavern-roof caved in and came down on him. Him and Charnay, too."

Her eyes, sepia with Memory, shifted.

"I wish I could have seen him on the Boat."

Lucas took the
Tractatus Democritus
broadsheet between finger and thumb, staring at the print without reading it. He
grunted cynically.

"Cardinal Plessiez? He had no more conscience than
a fish has feathers! If you ask me, it’s a good thing he didn’t make it."

The paper tore, snatched out of his hands.

"Mistress Zari? I didn’t mean . . ."

The Katayan hunched her shoulders, bent over the
heap of broadsheets, and began with frightening care to scissor out clippings
from the remaining papers.

Passing humans and Rats brushed by him; Lucas stood
and stepped back with automatic courteous apology. He backed further away from
the fountain. Bright silks shone on the far side of falling screens of water.

Up on the terrace, in front of the open pillared
rotunda where many danced, a crowd blocked the path. Men and Rats pressed in on
the White Crow, shouting questions. She laughed; her hand resting on the
green-and-gold sleeve of the Bishop of the Trees.

"Damn. Why does he have to be there? Or any of
them? Well . . . Well."

He shrugged and began to walk up towards the
terrace.

Abandoning press cuttings, Zar-bettu-zekigal dipped
the tuft of her black-and-white furred tail into the fountain, lifted it above
her head, and shook a fine spray over herself. Cool water spotted the shoulders
of her black dress. She crossed her ankles and leaned back, supported
precariously by her arms on the marble fountain’s wide rim. Her face up-turned,
eyes ecstatically shut, she dipped her tail again–stopped, sniffed, opened her
eyes, and turned a disgusted glance on the green fountain-basin.

"Ei! What a stink."

"Low-quality lead piping," a voice rumbled, its
owner invisible through the falling fountain-spray. "My dear child, ought you
really to do that?"

The Lord-Architect Casaubon strode magisterially
around the fountain-basin, mud-stained satin coat over one bolster-arm, his
shirt unlaced and his sleeves rolled up. Black oil and grease smeared his blue
silk breeches and braces. The rag with which he wiped his face looked as if it
might have been an embroidered silk waistcoat.

"Very inferior work, all of this."

"You just can’t trust miracles any more, messire
architect!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal flicked her tail in greeting.
Water- drops cartwheeled in the sun.

He beamed. "Trust miracles? From now on you can!"

The distant clock sounded again. On its last
stroke, the sound of trumpets clashed out. Jets shot up fifteen or twenty feet
from twelve surrounding fountains. Zar-bettu-zekigal put both hands up to push
suddenly wet hair out of her eyes, nose wrinkling at the stronger low- tide-mud
stink. A burst of complicated music blasted from sound horns in the statuary.

"Ei!" Zari cocked one black eyebrow.

The Lord-Architect looked down his nose, chins and
the considerable expanse of his belly at the fountain. A pained expression
crossed his features at the sight of carved nereids spurting water from their
breasts, and ragged sea-monsters jetting water from nostrils and every other
orifice.

"Florid."

He slung the blue satin frock-coat on the marble
rim, careless of one sleeve trailing in the water, searched the pockets, and
brought out a metal hip-flask.

She rolled over on to her stomach on the marble. "I
want to talk to the Bishop of the Trees and Master Candia. About inside the
Fane. And Lady Luka, how she got here. Have the whole story."

Startled, the Lord-Architect met Zari’s eye.

"I’m . . . ah . . . not certain where Mother is."

"I told her
you
were up in the rotunda." The
Katayan stretched, water-spotted dress already drying in the heat, and grinned
at his evident relief.

The music ceased abruptly, with a mechanical
squeak. The jets died. Shadows, precise-edged, blackened the steps and the
flagstones and lawn around the fountains. Her own elbow-and-knee-joint shadow, tail up,
coiled into a florid curve worthy of the fountain’s statues.

"
Hei!
Master Casaubon!"

A blonde girl in pink satin overalls swaggered up,
silver chains jingling about her neck and wrists. She threw herself down on the
marble rim between Zari and Casaubon, sparing no glance for anyone but the
Lord-Architect.

"Mistress Sharlevian." He kissed her bitten-nailed
fingers and waved a casual hand. "You two aren’t acquainted, I believe. Entered
Apprentice; Kings’ Memory . . . Mistress Zari, I was about to ask–have you seen
young Lucas of late?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal shifted from her elbows to lie on
her side, opening her mouth to answer. A sharp voice cut in: "Oh, Lucas.
I’ve
seen him. He went off looking for that red-headed cow who’s one of my mother’s
lodgers." The girl pushed tangled yellow hair back out of her eyes. Her
silver-chain ear-rings glinted. "Always mooning after her, dozy old bag. Well,
she’s welcome to what she gets, that’s all I can say!"

The Lord-Architect raised both copper eyebrows.

"Kids!" The girl sniffed, wiping the back of her
wrist across her nose. She leaned her arms back on the marble, weight on hip and
heel. Under the remnants of paint, her complexion had a child’s clearness. "I
don’t know why I go around with kids. I mean, that boy–poke-poke- bang and it’s
all over, y’know? I wanna go with men who are worth the time."

Zar-bettu-zekigal smothered an exhalation of
breath, for once without useful comment. The Lord-Architect opened his mouth to
speak, rubbed his chins bewilderedly and shook his head. Sharlevian leaned to
one side, her breast pressed against his shoulder, her breath warm and moist
against his ear.

"What I say is, why go out with a kid when you can
go out with someone . . . mature?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal coiled her dapple-furred tail
sensuously across the girl’s thigh and, when she had her attention, grinned.
"Maybe Lucas feels the same way."

"Of all the
—
!"

Sharlevian stared from Zar-bettu-zekigal to the
Lord-Architect and, as it became apparent that he would
make no response, reddened, stood, and stalked off.

"It’s true, he’s looking for White Crow."
Zar-bettu- zekigal stared up at the rotunda’s terrace, seeing the Prince of
Candover and a dozen House of Salomon officers, and no Bishop Theodoret. No
White Crow.

"Anyone would think," the Lord-Architect rumbled,
"that that woman is avoiding me."

Zar-bettu-zekigal crossed her ankles, rested her
chin on the backs of her hands, and directed her gaze to Casaubon. "No! Go on!"

Horn and harpsichord ring out, lazing down the late
afternoon. Humans and Rats take refuge under trees’ shade. Water-automata play.
Hot scents of wine, dust and roses fill the air, spreading out across the miles
of the New Temple’s gardens.

Lazy under that same heat, the air and the cells of
flesh vibrate with the voices of Decans: more speech between the Thirty-Six in
this one day than in the past century.

The black Rat St. Cyr stood with the Bishop of the
Trees, watching a play.

A few planks rocked on top of barrels, with the
canal and the nearest wall of the Temple for a backdrop. On the impromptu stage,
a ragged gray-furred Rat brandished a banner:

"Not sun of pitch, nor brightest burning shadow

Daunted our noble King
–
they lay

A-quiver, pissing in their satin bed,

Whether the threat came from a friend or foe.

Twice-turned, a traitor saved them. (Saved myself
A life of luxury in the world to come!)

Witness, you renegades, what is gained by such

Devotion as I showed my lord the king!"

Both humans and Rats in the crowd cheered.

"I perceive," the Bishop of the Trees observed,
"that that is intended for Messire Desaguliers."

"You’re right." St. Cyr chuckled. He paced
elegantly forward through the mixed crowd. "Well acted, messires!"

A woman appeared at the old man’s elbow. The
paleness of the Fane marked her. Sun brightened her dark-red silver-streaked
hair, caught up at the sides and shining with roses that tumbled down on to her
shoulders. Minuscule down-feathers grew at her temples. St. Cyr, a little awed,
bowed.

She grinned at Theodoret. "Let’s get out of here
before they get on to the Fane again. Mind you, I think they do
you
very
well . . ."

Theodoret’s beak-nose jutted. He swept the green
robe up from his bare feet, snorting back laughter. "Say you so?"

Behind them, from the stage, the harsh
caw!
of a crow rang out.

"Much better than they do me. I don’t know what
that Vanringham’s been telling people, but I regret his source of news caught me
when I was in shock enough to be honest!"

"Zar-bettu-zekigal is an engaging child."

"She’s a plain nuisance. I remember thinking
that
when she arrived at Carver Street."

St. Cyr followed the direction of her gaze, seeing
the woman spot the young Prince of Candover and frown. About to comment, he
found his arm seized; she walked between himself and the Bishop of the Trees,
away down towards the gardens.

"Hey!" The White Crow gave a loud hail as they came
under the shadow of beeches. "Reverend Mistress! Heurodis!"

Sun and shadow dappled the old lady and her
companions. St. Cyr made his bow to the representatives of the University of
Crime.

"Feasting and rejoicing is all very well." Reverend
Mistress Heurodis’s face wrinkled into a smile that showed her long white teeth.
"However, we ought not to miss our opportunities."

‘
Well acted, messires!
’ From
Rituale Aegypticae Nova
,
Vitruvius, ed. Johann Valentin Andreae, Antwerp. 1610 (now lost–supposed burned at Alexandria)

She leaned on her cane, regarding with satisfaction
the procession of students, largely first-year Kings’ Thieves and Kings’
Assassins, passing with jewel-boxes, candle-sticks, portraits, gemmed books, rings and
ankhs
from the earthquake-tumbled ruins of the Abbey of Guiry.