Rats And Gargoyles - Rats and Gargoyles Part 17
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Rats and Gargoyles Part 17

"Told you to-" Lucas trapped his finger between tight lacings. He swore under his breath. "To go away."

"Precisely." The Lord-Architect sucked in his breath and belly. The two edges of the corset creaked closer together. "Now, how else could I get a bad-tempered impatient woman like Valentine to stand still and hear my message?"

Lucas glowered at the Lord-Architect's back. He wrapped the cords around his fist, put a knee at the cleft of the fat man's buttocks and pulled.

"What message?"

"Valentine will be asking herself that."

Lucas whipped the cords into a secure knot, and sat down heavily on the Lord-Architect's bed, panting. Casaubon picked up a ruffled shirt and slid his arms into it, the bone-ribs of the corset gently creaking.

"I said . . . you're bothering her . . . and I don't like it." Lucas rested his arms back, propping himself up, chin on his chest. Outside, the heat whitened city roofs, turned the air dusty. He sweated. The sour smell of bathwater and wet cloth filled his nostrils.

"You're right," Casaubon said contritely. "It was too sudden."

He fastened the toggles on his shirt. The tails hung down almost to his massive calves. Lucas shook his head, and handed up the bright-blue silk breeches laid out on the bottom of the bed.

"Much too sudden!" The Lord-Architect stopped, one foot in his breeches, the other wavering in mid-air. He beamed widely at Lucas.

"I shall woo her," he announced.

His foot hit the floorboards with an audible thump. As he fastened his silk breeches, he added: "Do you think she likes poetry? I'll write her a sonnet. Two sonnets. How many lines would that be, exactly?"

Lucas fell back across the bed, wheezing, water leaking out of the comers of his eyes.

"Have that hay-fever treated," the Lord-Architect advised. He cumbrously hooked his braces to his breeches, and over them eased an embroidered waistcoat on to his massive torso.

The attic-room's airless heat increased. Lucas rolled across the bed and pushed the casement window open.

Mud patched the courtyard, remnant of the storm. The White Crow stood up, two battered saucepans under her arm, and waved as she saw Lucas. He stared after her as she climbed her steps, picking up another can on the way. He realized he hadn't waved back.

"What message? If you're getting her involved in anything dangerous . . ."

The sun tangled in her hair that, he saw now, shone red without a gleam of gold or orange in it. Her white shirt hung out of the back of her brown knee-breeches.

The door swung to behind her.

Casaubon came to the window, shrugging into a royal- blue satin coat, deep-pocketed, with turned-back embroidered cuffs. It fitted across his corseted stomach like a second skin. The full skirts swirled. Lucas, momentarily petty, enjoyed a thought of how hot and uncomfortable the Lord-Architect was going to be at a formal audience.

"Valentine has faced danger for the College since she was fifteen," Casaubon said soberly. "The woman enjoys it. Foolish child."

Lucas stood. The Lord-Architect still topped him by six or eight inches.

"My uncle the Ambassador has a fairly efficient intelligence service. If I want to find out what's going on here, I can. Suppose you tell me."

Casaubon lifted the corner of the bedsheet, peering under the bed. He padded to the other side of the room in stockinged feet.

"Can you see a shoe?"

Lucas scratched his chest. Muscles slid under sweaty skin. Almost despairing, he burst out: "If you care about her so much, why won't you take help when it's offered? I'm a prince. I can command my people who are here. I could help!"

"It was here somewhere . . ."

Lucas picked up an extremely large black shoe from behind a crate. Acting on nothing but impulse, he walked around the bottom of the bed, put his hand on Casaubon's chest and pushed. The Lord-Architect sat down heavily. Wood screeched. Lucas squatted down on his haunches in front of the fat man.

"You won't get rid of me." He grabbed one stockinged foot, shoving the shoe on to it. Casaubon grunted. Lucas snared the other high-heeled court shoe from under the bed and fitted it on. "So you might asuhmight as well get used to me. There."

Casaubon rested his elbows on his massive thighs, and rested his chins in his hands. China-blue eyes met Lucas's.

"I am about to go and give Valentine her message," he said gravely. "Would you care to come with me, before you leave for the university?"

Lucas stood. "Yes! Yes . . ."

"Good."

Hazarding a blind guess, Lucas said: "You'll take her with you, to your audience with the King?"

"I have an audience," the Lord-Architect Casaubon agreed, "but not with the King. I have an audience at eleven, at the Fane."

"No, true, my eyes are a natural condition. Permanently dilated pupils. My grandmother suffered them, too."

Falke pulled down the sleeves of a slightly overlarge gray leather doublet, shrugging his shoulders into the new garment.

"Do you blame me for impressing the gullible? You must know what it's like to grub for every scrap of influence, the dynasty being powerless these many centuries . . . I tell them: every guttersnipe in the city walks into the Fane to talk to God; but I don't mean antechambers or building-sites, I mean the infinite interior of what we build . . . I say: I've seen. It works."

Silver buckles clinked at his wrists, and he fastened them; thumbing back the dove-gray silk that protruded through the slashing on the leather sleeves. Pinpoints of brilliance reflected back from the metal into his vision. His eyes watered.

"And, gullible or not, I have a large number of people who listen to what the House of Salomon says. You need support. Your numbers are comparatively smallcompared to our masters the Rat-Lords, that is."

A last movement, tucking gray breeches into new boots (the leather a little bloodstained still at the toes), and he straightened; dry and clothed, now; gambling; meeting her red-brown eyes where she sprawled across the carved chair, under the torches and banners and bones.

"I've listened to you." She snapped her fingers, not looking at the blond man who ran to her side. "Clovis, feed him. I'll speak to him again later."

"What about the Lieutenant?" Clovis asked.

"Nothing. I must think. Go."

Falke followed the man through the makeshift camp in the vast chamber, walking easily across shadowed broken earth. A warm wind blew in his face, with a stench of carrion and sweetness on it; nevertheless he expanded his chest, drawing in the air.

"There."

Clovis jerked his head towards a wide brick ledge. Falke leaped up lightly as the man walked away towards cooking-pots on tripods.

Charnay opened shining dark eyes. She lounged back against the brick wall with something of a disappointed air, furry body half-supported against sacks and barrels, her long-fingered hands clasped comfortably across her belly. "Didn't expect to see you again. Who gave you the new kit?"

"The Lady Hyena."

Falke reached up to tie his silver-gray hair back into a pony-tail with a length of leather thong. Fingers busy, facing into the great cavern, arms up and so unprotected. "There's always a way, and I found it!"

The Rat rolled over on to one massive brown-furred flank. "I wouldn't trust one of you peasants to find your backside with both hands and a map."

A pottery dish clunked on the edge of the brickwork. Clovis walked away without a word. Falke watched him stumble over rocks plainly visible in the somber torchlight that mimicked night.

He chuckled quietly, back in his throat.

Squatting, he scooped up the stew-bowl and prodded the mess of cooked weeds with his forefinger. Warm, greasy; the smell made his stomach contract. He shoved a messy fistful into his mouth, spilling fronds down the front of the leather doublet, and spoke between chewing.

"She knows, now, that I've been inside the Fane. Something your messire Plessiez can't claim."

"What use is that to her? You fill your breeches at the mention of daemons."

Falke stopped chewing. "True, but that's not to the point now. A magia plague, a plague to send into the Fane. Very good. I like that. House of Salomon will approve. I understand the Fane. Listen, and try to understand me, Lieutenant. Messire Plessiez would want you to support me in making an alliance with this woman. She has a number of people down here; she can be useful."

Shining black eyes shifted. The Rat lumbered to her hind feet and stood over him, looking down. "Too late. He has his bargain with her already, boy. He doesn't need you now."

Warm shivers walked across his skin, raising the small hairs. Cramps twisted his gut. Falke turned his back on her momentarily. Shadows shifted. Hauntings whispered at the edges of light. A jealousy shifted in his breast. Across the vast brick chamber, under a ragged sun-banner, two men circled each other, sparring: light sliding down the blades of broadswords.

"You think so? It isn't the first time Rat-Lords have used me. I may surprise them yet."

The anvil-clang of weapons-practice echoed in the sewer chamber. Stenches drifted up from the distant canal. Falke, hands tucked up under his armpits, stared across the expanse of camp-fires, brushwood heaps, gallows, and men and women. Each speck of light pricked at his unbandaged eyes.

"I shall live to thank Messire Plessiez for abandoning me here."

He missed what she rumbled in reply, still staring out at the armed camp.

At human men and women carrying swords, pikes, flails, daggers. Carrying weapons and practiced in their use.

The fox-cub nipped at the White Crow's wrist. She swore, put the feeding-bottle down on the mirror-table, and the cub back in its box. She reached up to the herb shelf for witch-hazel to put on the blood-bruise.

"Where did I . . . ?"

The silver wolf padded across the room, pushing over two precarious piles of books. They slid to rest in the sunlight slanting whitely in at the street-side and courtyard windows, and at the roof-trap. Light fell on opened books, star-charts propped up with ivory rods, wax discs scattered in three heaps, and discarded hieroglyphed scrolls.

"Here."

She tapped the wolfs muzzle. Pale eyes met hers. It gaped, letting her finger the socket where a rotten tooth had been removed. Its head twitched irritably.

"Lazarus, you only come to me to get your teeth fixed," she accused. "I'd wait a day or two yet-"

She heard footsteps, and raised her voice without looking up: "We're shut! Go away!"

The door swung open. She raised her head to see the dark young man open it with a mocking flourish, and bow most formally. The Lord-Architect Casaubon strode in past Lucas without a blink of acknowledgment.

"Valentine!"

The White Crow looked down at the timber wolf. "No. I don't know how he does it."

"I must say," Casaubon remarked, "that you could keep this place a good deal tidier."

She put her fists on her hips.

"I've been up since dawn working on the last batch of Mayor Spatchet's talismans, which aren't finished, which won't be finished today unless we're all very lucky, and so I advise you not to make critical comments of any sort, because my temper is not of the best, is that clear?"

The Lord-Architect tugged at the turned-up cuffs of his blue satin coat. "I had something of a disturbed night myself."

"Aw-" The White Crow sat down heavily at the table, sinking her chin in her hands. Bright eyes brimmed with laughter, fixing on Casaubon; she snuffled helplessly for several seconds.

Lucas's dark brows met in a scowl.

"Good morning . . . Prince," the White Crow said.

Lucas picked up one of the discarded wax tablets. "Talismans?"

"Oh . . ." She took it out of his hand. "Easy enough making something to warn when Decans exercise their power. The difficulty is making one the god-daemons' acolytes won't immediately feel being used and flock to."

A light wind lifted papers as it brushed past her. She anchored one heap on the table with the handful of talismans. A number of crates stood open under the table, carved wood and incised wax talismans nesting in oakum. Her hand went to the small of her back, rubbing. She looked past the young man's earnest face to Casaubon.

"Now I suppose you'll tell me why you're here?"

The Lord-Architect stood by the open street-side window, face intent. He whistled through chiseled lips. The White Crow stood and walked across to sit on the sill, drawing her feet up, bracketed by the frame.

"There have been three other Scholar-Soldiers come to the heart of the world," Casaubon said, "since you disappeared."

Feathers rustled by her head. She flinched at the fluttering.

Bright chaffinches flew to perch on the Lord- Architect's extended plump fingers. A thrush's claws scored his head, pricking sharp through his hair; and a humming-bird the same brilliant blue as his satin coat hung so close before his face that his eyes crossed watching it. He whistled again.

She met his gaze through vibrating wings.

"None of them survived a half-year," he concluded.

"I didn't know. This place is scaring me shitless." The White Crow lifted her chin. "You're not helping."

"I have a message from the Invisible College."

She reached forward, past her raised knees, touching the wooden window-frame. Sun-warmed, barely damp now. She breathed the acrid smell of street-dust. Heat already soaked the sky: people hurrying past kept to the buildings' shadows. Clock-mill's half-hour chime came from the far side of the building.

"I haven't written on the moon in ten years. Believe that I wouldn't have sent out any warning unless I had to. If I'd known it would bring you-"

His cushioned arms pushed between her back and the windowframe, and under the arch of her knees. She grabbed wildly, balance gone; blindly lurching back from the one-story drop. His arms tightened. The White Crow knotted fists in his shirt as the fat man lifted her, holding her across the swell of his stomach.

"I am not in the habit of being a messenger-boy! Sit down, sit still, shut up and listen!"

Her bare feet hit the floor stingingly hard.

"Get the hell out of here!"

Lucas's voice came from the corner of the room: "How does an invisible college find itself, to send messages?"