Zar-bettu-zekigal put both hands on separate Rats' shoulders and shoved them aside. Sunlight dimmed the candles in the corridor outside, patched with color the coats and embroidered scabbards of the priest Rats. She blinked water from her eyes. Pushed, shoved, ignored by the quarrel rapidly forming, she thrust a way out of the group and padded across the white-walled corridor to the nearest window.
The sun hung a hand's breadth above the horizon. Sharp-edged clouds glowed, indigo above, translucent pink below. She pushed the casement open. Cold air flooded her lungsthe chill of evening or the dew-damp of dawn? She scrunched her fingers through her hair, and twitched the kinks from her black-and-white furred tail.
"Morning or evening?" She caught a passing Rat's arm. He stared at her, and she jerked her head at the window. Light as cold and clear as water covered the city, that stretched out unbroken to the horizon.
"Dawn. Messire-"
Plessiez's voice ripped the air. "Silence! Captain Auverne, you may make yourself useful by taking a squad of guardsmen and investigating the sewer-shaft that opens into our cellars. But use all possible caution. I want a day-and-night guard kept down there from now on."
The white-and-gold-clad Rat snarled something under her breath, reluctantly turning away to summon guards.
"And I am most disturbed to discover that you knew nothing of this entrance, Captain Auverne. Kindly report to me later with the explanation. Zari." Plessiez turned his back on the indignant captain.
"I'm here, messire."
"Come with me."
She followed the priest as he strode off through the whitewashed stone corridors. A faintness of hunger sang in her head, cramped her guts; and at every sunlit window they passed she grinned and skipped a half-step. Each window gave her a wider view of the dawn: the pale sky deepening to azure.
Inside the doors of extensive apartments, the small group grew to a crowd, augmented as other Rats came running. Plessiez's voice rose over the noise, his rapid- fire orders sending junior priests off on errands. Zari flopped down on a satin-covered couch, her attention taken up with a tray of bread and goat-cheese, and a flagon of cold water.
"Steady, little one."
She looked up, jaws clamped on a crust; tore and swallowed and nodded, all in one movement.
"I know, I know . . ." Cramps from too-rapid eating griped in her gut.
The outer doors swung closed. Sunlight blazed in the white low-roofed rooms; on carpets, tapestries, desks, globes and icons. Plessiez dictated to his secretary as Rats sponged and brushed his filthy fur. Zari switched to sitting cross-legged on the couch, gazing round at the royal- blue drapes, the silver goblets and plates.
"It isn't," she said into a gap in Plessiez's dictation, "an austere Order, the Order of Guiry."
Plessiez chuckled. He slipped his arms into a crimson jacket slashed with gold and, as a brown Rat servant buttoned it up to his throat, remarked: "An academic Order, little one; and austere asah, as all academics are."
The silver rim of the water-jug chilled her mouth. She drank, colicky; and belched.
"Plessiez!"
"Here." The black Rat acknowledged the yelp of joy, raising his arms while a servant buckled and adjusted his sword-belt and basket-hilted rapier. He shrugged himself back into it, hand going at once to rest there. The junior priests and servants fell back before two newcomers.
Zari switched round to kneel upright on the couch. She put both hands over her mouth, muffling a giggle. A short plump black Rat slitted her eyes, her gaze passing over the Katayan silhouetted against the rising sun.
"You're going to see the King?" she asked Plessiez.
"Fleury, of course he is!" A tall and very thin Rat, with raffish black fur and a cheerfully unworldly look, slapped Plessiez's shoulder. "Must have worked out, eh? When do we give the word to move?"
With a start, he noticed the Katayan.
"Zar-bettu-zekigal," she said gravely, scratching her ear with her tail. The Rat bowed.
"Fenelon," he said.
"Fleury, Fenelon, you'll come with me to the King." Plessiez beckoned. "Little one."
Zar-bettu-zekigal got off the couch, and bent to rub her calves with both hands. "I'm dead beat!"
"Rest in the coach. Come."
"Messire Plessiez!"
An elderly black Rat stood in the doorway, the white-and-gold-clad captain beside her. Her ears showed ragged, her muzzle gray. The sleeveless open robe over her jacket glowed emerald. Lace foamed at her wrists and at her throat. A gemmed pectoral ankh hung between her rows of dugs.
"I regret I cannot stay to serve the Cardinal-General," Plessiez said, picking up his scarlet cloak and plumed headband. "The Cardinal-General will excuse me."
"What are you doing?" Cardinal-General Ignatia frowned, bewildered. "Captain Auverne reports you asked for an audience with the King. You must, of course, first report to myself anything concerning the use of magia-"
"Is my coach there?" Plessiez asked Zar-bettu-zekigal. She padded across to the window.
"There's a coach waiting in the courtyard, messire."
"Good."
"Messire Plessiez, you will explain yourself!"
Zari saw the black Rat's tail sweep into a jaunty curve. With a studied recklessness, Plessiez faced the Rat in the doorway.
"The explanation would be a little too complex for you, Ignatia. Short of force, you won't stop me seeing the King. And you won't use force."
The black Rat that Zari identified as Auverne stepped forward. Fleury's sword scraped out of the scabbard: a ragged raw noise. The Cardinal-General held up her hand.
"Really, Messire Plessiez, the haste, if nothing else, is most unseemly; and, even without that rashness, protocol demands that your superior in the Order first hears whatever information you may possess."
Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed her eyes, planting her bare feet foursquare on the floorboards; dazzled by whitewashed walls and daylight. The sun-warmed wood thrummed, once, and she winced: the tensile memory of the skin on the soles of her feet still tingling with the dissolution of stone.
"That child has seen magia!" the Cardinal-General protested. Zari opened her eyes to find the elderly Rat peering at her.
"Yes, magia. Thirty years' study should at least enable you to recognize it when you see it!"
Plessiez snarled, not slowing as he approached the Cardinal-General.
"Or has it been something in books for too long, Ignatia? Don't you care for it raw? Now, while you've been poring over the Library for decades, I've acted."
The elderly Rat involuntarily stepped back.
"This is your old talk of power under the heart of the world? Plessiez, you demean yourself, you behave no better than a Treepriest. We have our God at hand, their gaia is nowhere to be seen, and as for beneath the city-"
"Messire Plessiez," a guard interrupted, as he pushed his way through the crowd at the door. "That sewer- shaft. We've investigated. It goes down about six feet. Then it's completely choked by new rubble."
Zari's feet tingled, remembering the floorboards' tremor. She tried to catch Plessiez's eye, but the black Rat only beckoned her and Fleury and Fenelon.
As they passed the Cardinal-General, Zar-bettu- zekigal glanced first at her and then sympathetically up at the raffish Fenelon.
"End of a long fight?"
"About six years' worth," he agreed. He put himself between Zar-bettu-zekigal and Auverne's novice-guards.
Plessiez carried his slim body taut, swinging cloak and headband from his free hand. As Zari caught up, he called back over his shoulder: "Make the most of your time, Ignatia. I'll be asking the King to appoint a new Cardinal-General of the Order of Guiry."
Far into the Fane, day and night are lost memories. The light that shines on the stonework is cool green. There is no slightest hint of decay in the air.
Why did you betray your people?
He hears no audible voice. It writes, instead, in lines of blood forming behind his shut eyelids. The Bishop can croak air through ripped vocal cords. But he will not speak.
His wrinkled lids, blue-veined, open to disclose rheumy eyes. No matter how he tries to look down (head held immobile by the iron spike upon which it is impaled) he cannot see the peripheral obstructions of chest or shoulders. They no longer exist.
Why did you betray the Builders' conspiracy?
Lines of blood, forming in the empty air.
His creased lower jaw works. Drying blood and sinews constrict his throat.
How did they think to threaten god-daemons?
"I . . . don't . . . know . . ."
Answer and it will count well in your favor. Those are coming who need to ask no questions, all-knowing and all-seeing. The Decans will be less kind than we who are only their servants.
"Lady . . . of . . . the . . . Woods . . ."
Unable to see his interrogators, unable to move anything but that once-eloquent mouth, the Bishop of the Trees begins to pray.
The heat of the early sun drew vapor from the black wooden sill. Earth and cobbles in the courtyard below steamed, the previous night's rain drying. The young man on the truckle-bed rolled over. Half-asleep, sweating, he got up on one elbow. The vibrations of Clock-mill striking eight jarred his brown eyes open.
"Awshit," Lucas of Candover muttered. "Awshit- shit . . ."
A long cre-eak disorientated him. He kicked free of the sheet and sat up. Something large, pink and swathed in wet towels loomed over the bed. Lucas swallowed the foul taste in his mouth.
"Wh-?"
The Lord-Architect Casaubon said: "Step across the landing for a moment, Prince. I need help."
"MmhrmWhat?"
The door to Lucas's room creaked shut. He rubbed granules of sleep from his eyes, staring around the tiny room. Only the smell of steam spoke of recent occupation. He groped for his breeches.
"Shit!" Struggling into his clothes, he barged out and across the tiny landing to the Lord-Architect's door. "What is it? What's wrong? Is it herWhite Crow?"
The Lord-Architect sat on his creaking truckle-bed, toweling his hair vigorously. A claw-footed iron bathtub in one corner was surrounded by sopping-wet towels. Crates and brass-bound trunks occupied what space that was left. Through the leaded window, a blue summer sky grew pale and hotter by the second.
"Is she in danger?"
"What?" The Lord-Architect emerged from his towel, wet hair standing up in red-gold spikes. He beamed at Lucas. "Some ridiculous ordinance in the citya human being can't hire servants! Of all the pox-rotted pig's-tripe. Hand me my vest, will you?"
"Servants?"
"Body-servants," Casaubon amplified. He pushed himself up from the bed, and the wooden frame creaked a protest. The wet towel joined the others on the floorboards. Pulling a vest over his head, he repeated from the depths of the folds of cloth: "Hand me that, there."
Lucas glared. "I'm a Prince of Candover and no man's servant!"
"Hmm?" The Lord-Architect thrust his head out of the muffling cloth. "Hurry it up, will you? There's a good lad."
Something in the Lord-Architect's tone convicted Lucas of dubious manners at best. Lucas picked up the canvas garment hanging over the back of a chair and passed it across. He caught a jaw-cracking yawn, stifled it, and combed his sleep-tangled curls with his fingers.
"This is what you woke me up for? Of all the insolence-"
He stopped, and stared at Casaubon's back. The fat man's vest rode up over slabs of thigh and buttock as he fitted the canvas garment over his head, tugging it down over the full-moon swell of his belly.
"Poxrotted-damned-cretinous-" One elbow jammed in the air, the other caught in the laced-up garment. "Lend a hand, can't you, boy!"
The court of Candover requires tact and diplomacy from a prince. Lucas sniffed hard. "Is that a corset?"
"Damned-poxrotted full-dress audience-"
Lucas looked at canvas, bone-ribs and thick cord lacings, almost as bewildered as the older man. He bristled, caught between the insult to his dignity and the sneaking suspicion that his lack of knowledge was about to make a fool of him.
"The Princes of Candover don't dress themselves!" He reached out and tugged tentatively at the bottom hem. Casaubon's elbow slid free. The fat man pulled the garment lower, huffing, until it girdled his stomach.
"Can't hire a damned servant, can't get a decent meal." He turned, glaring down at Lucas. "Does your poxrotted landlady ever serve anything without boiled cabbage in the meal?"
"I don't know," Lucas shot back with satisfaction. "I've only been here a week!"
The Lord-Architect chuckled resonantly. His companionable beam took in Lucas, the summer morning, the bell-notes of birds in the courtyard.
"Pull," he ordered, presenting the Prince of Candover with his back and the lacings of the corset.
Lucas stepped closer, staring up at the fat-sheathed muscles of the Lord-Architect's shoulders and arms. He tugged the two flaps of the corset towards each other across the broad back.
"Right," he said. "Right."
He grabbed the two cords and pulled, sharply. The Lord-Architect grunted and braced his massive legs apart.
"She doesn't want you here." Lucas emphasized his speech with a hard pull on the lacings. "She's only talking to you because you won't answer her questions!"
The top of the corset, under the fat man's arms, began to pull together. Lucas, sweating, poked at the lacings further down; hooked his fingers under a point where they crossed over, and heaved.
"What's more, you're bothering her, and I don't like it."
Casaubon grunted. He scratched at his newly washed hair, spiking it in tufts. Craning to look back over his cushioned shoulder, the Lord-Architect said mildly: "Now, if I'd answered her questions when I arrived, what would she have done?"