"Oh, what!" Exasperated, the White Crow swung round. She met his dark gaze, seeing both amusement and calculation. She nodded once. As she tucked her white shirt into her breeches, she said: "Well done, Prince. But you won't stop the two of us quarreling. As to your question, the College is wherever two or three Scholar-Soldiers happen to meet. Often you never do find out just who suggested what."
A last sparrow flew out of the street-side window. The Lord-Architect rubbed absently at his sleeves, smearing guano across the blue satin. Wet patches of sweat already showed under his arms.
"You're promoted," he announced, "from Master-Captain to Master-Physician Valentine."
She felt an amazed grin start, and touched clasped fists to her mouth to hide the joy. "You're joking. No, really."
"I'm telling the truth," Casaubon said.
"I never thought they'd ever- But I've left the damned College!" She sat down at the table and looked at Lucas. "Yes, and your next question is How do you find the College to leave it?"
The Lord-Architect rested his hand on Lucas's shoulder as he walked around to face her. "The Invisible College's rules are strict. We travel incognito, Prince, and never more than two or three together."
"Oh, this is quite ridiculous." The White Crow pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, lost in a sparkling darkness. Evelian's voice sounded out in the courtyard, talking to her daughter Sharlevian. It came no nearer. A bee hummed in through one window, out through the other.
"Stupid." She took her sweat-damp hands away from her face. "I did leave. You knew it; so did Master-Captain Janou. You can't make me a Master-Physician, because I won't let you."
The young man squatted down, fiddling with one of the chests against the wall.
"You know what's truly stupid?" She turned her head towards Casaubon. "What's stupid is that it comforted me, sometimes, to think that I might be part of the College stillwhoever we are, and however many there may be of us. I had to leave you, but I lost something when I left."
"And so did I."
The White Crow felt her cheeks heat. She rubbed her flat palms against her face.
"And so did you . . . And now I don't want anything to do with this. I sent that warning because I want nothing to do with this; I wanted someone wiser to come here and do something about it!"
Casaubon tsk-ed ironically. "Poor Valentine."
Lucas's hand passed over her shoulder, and she sat up as a long bundle clattered on to the mirror-table.
"I asked the Lord-Architect about Scholar-Soldiers," the young man said. "You should be carrying this."
She ignored Casaubon's startled look. Her fingers undid the wrappings, sliding scabbard and sword onto the table. The sweat-darkened leather grip on the hilt fitted her fingers, ridged to their exact shape. The weight on her wrist when she lifted it, familiar and strange now, made her throat ache.
"Why does the College need a Master-Physician here?"
"I would like to know that," Casaubon said.
She rubbed her finger along the oiled flat of the blade. Cold metal, cold as mornings walking the road, or evenings coming to an inn. The smell of the oil mixed with the smell of the ink on the table, drying on the hiero-glyphed parchments.
"What could possibly need healing?"
In one flawless movement she clicked the rapier home in its scabbard. The straps and buckles of the sword-belt tumbled across the table.
"I'm frightened."
The Lord-Architect's voice rumbled above her head. "That makes me afraid."
"Well, that's sense enough." Hands still on the scabbard, she looked across at Lucas. "Oh, and if I wear this in the street I'll be in the palace dungeons before you can say his Majesty."
"You need to wear it," he insisted. "You need to. Not for protection."
She looked down at hands tanned and with a fine grain to the skin, the blue veins showing faintly under the surface. She flexed her fingers.
"A wise child. My lord, you have a wise child with you." She took Casaubon's cuff between thumb and forefinger. The sweat-damp satin smelt of an expensive scent. "Something formal, is it?"
"The Fane. An audience, at the eleventh hour."
"What? Who with? The Spagyrus?"
The Lord-Architect spread padded hands. "How can I tell you that? You've left the College."
The White Crow drew in a breath, saliva tasting metallic. Gaining time, she stood, her practiced fingers unbuckling the straps of the sword-hanger and belt. She muttered irritably, waving away Lucas's offered help; and busied herself for almost two minutes in slinging straps over her shoulders and around her hips, buckling the scabbard so that it hung comfortably across her back, hilt jutting above her right shoulder.
"If I accept Master-Physician?" she queried.
Casaubon pushed the piles of paper from the table onto the floor, spun the table to its mirror side, and began to comb his copper hair into a neat Brutus style. Before she could get breath to swear he straightened, and pulled white cotton gloves from his capacious pockets.
"I am told"Casaubon tugged glove-fingers snugly down"that I shall be seeing the Thirty-Sixth Decan, whose sign is the Ten Degrees of High Summer."
The White Crow worked the belt around her waist, made an alteration of one notch to a buckle. Then she reached across and brushed the Lord-Architect's fingers away, and buttoned his gloves at the wrist.
"Lucas . . ."
She crossed the room and hugged the young man, having to stand up on the balls of her feet and stretch her arms around his muscled back. His eyes shone. She stepped back, reaching up to touch the hilt of her sword, where it hung ready for a down-draw over the shoulder.
"Thank you," she said, and to Casaubon: "I'll come to the Fane with you. Lucas, can I ask you a favor? I need you to go and see your uncle, the Ambassador."
Blinding and imperceptible, the sun rose higher.
Pools of rain in Evelian's courtyard shrank fraction by fraction. The heat of the sun drew mosquito nymphs to the water's surface. The wooden frieze of skulls and spades grew warm, and hosted colonies of insects swarmed out of cracks.
Wings skirred: one of the Lord-Architect's sparrows fluttering to the eaves.
Beyond Clock-mill, lizards sunned themselves in corners of streets left drowsy and deserted. White dust and white blossom snowed the streets of the city.
The sparrow flicked from eaves to tiles to roof-ridge, crossing the quarter. Where the Fane's obelisks cut the sky, the bird scurried for height, lost in the milk-blue heavens; flying swiftly south-aust.
Down between marble wharfs, heat-swollen helium airships tugged at mooring-ropes. Crews rushed to the gas-vents. The bird's bead-black eyes registered movement. A dusty-brown mop of feathers, it fell towards an airship's underslung cabin.
Aust, north, south, east and west: the city stretches away below, reflected in the sparrow's uncomprehending vision.
A day later, one woman crewing an airship will find the bird, half-frozen, and feed it drops of warm milk and millet. Thinking to keep it as a pet, when the airship's long overseas voyage is done.
The Lord-Architect's sparrow rests, cushioned under her shirt, between her breasts. The bead-black eyes hold a message that is simple enough for those with the power to read it.
"Carrying a sword?" the Candovard Ambassador exclaimed.
"It was wonderful. She was wonderful!" Lucas sobered. "At first . . . I don't know what she's seen to cause her so much fear. But she's going to the Fane at eleven this morning."
"A sword," Andaluz repeated.
"Well, yes, technically she shouldn't, but . . ."
Andaluz scratched his salt-and-pepper hair. One stubby finger pointed at his Prince.
"This is the heart of the world, not the White Mountain. Candover sees its Rat-Lord Governor only once or twice a year, and you're let carry weapons there because who else could? Here, every Rat with pretensions to gentle blood carries a sword. Gods preserve men or women who trespass on their privileges!"
Dust drifted in from the compound. Flies haunted the ceiling, undeterred by the wck-wck-wck of the fan.
"I . . . didn't realize." Lucas, who had carried his shirt in his hand, slung it about his neck like a towel, and tugged it back and forth to mop up sweat.
"Your father could never bear it. I discourage him from traveling here." Andaluz pushed his chair back from the big desk. "Lucas, dear boy, here I'm the ambassador from savagesyes, savageswho are suffered to live with only minor supervision, because we're far away and beneath the Rat-Lords' notice."
"And I told her to carry a sword." Lucas's eyes showed dark in a face gone greenish-white. "I'll have to warn her!"
"If this White Crow woman has been five years in the heart of the world, I assure you that she knows."
"She needs it. To be what she should be." Lucas looked up from the dusty patterned carpet. "She asked if you would attend at court today. I told her that you would. I told her that you'll use all of Candover's influence with the King, Uncle, if she's troubled or arrested."
"Yes, Prince." Andaluz made a face. "What there is of it. Ah . . . the university?"
"I'll take care of that. Reverend Mistress Heurodis has her own way with students," the young man said. "I'm coining with you to court. A prince's word may carry weight."
"Aww, this sun's too bright. Hold on a minute." The cinnamon-haired woman clattered back up the stairs from the street-door.
The Lord-Architect Casaubon waited by the carriage, easing his shirt away from the rolls of flesh at his neck. Sweat trickled down his back.
She re-emerged holding a white felt hat, wide-brimmed and with a dented crown. It had a black band, and small black characters printed into the felt. She clapped it on to her head and tilted it, shading her eyes.
"And you say I have no dress sense."
She smiled. "No sense of any kind, as far as I could ever make out . . . You know what this hat needs?"
"Euthanasia?"
"A black feather. Tell me if you spot one."
She leaned automatically up against his arm, sparking backchat off his deadpan replies with the ease of habit and practice. Now he saw her frown. She moved away.
"Master-Physician." The Lord-Architect very formally offered a glove, handing her into the carriage.
He settled himself opposite her, with his back to the driver, the carriage sinking on its springs. The oxen lowed and pulled away. The red-haired woman tilted her hat further down towards her nose, and rested one heel up on his seat.
"The Decans," she said, "won't swallow any story about your being a traveling horologer or garden-architect, or whatever nonsense you gave Captain-General Desaguliers. Who have you said you are?"
"A Scholar-Soldier of the Invisible College."
He beamed, seeing Valentine reduced to complete speechlessness. "They'll know, in any case," he added.
"And you think they're going to let us out of there after that!"
He smiled.
"Casaubon!"
Casaubon dug in one pocket, thumbed ponderously through a very small notebook, extracted a pencil from the spine, and began to write, with many hesitations and crossings-out. The carriage jolted into wider streets.
The White Crow stood it for all of three minutes. "What are you writing?"
His blue eyes all but vanished into his padded cheeks as he squinted in concentration.
"Poetry," said the Lord-Architect, "but I can't think of a rhyme for 'Valentine.' "
His formally buttoned black doublet left Lucas dizzy with the heat. He fingered the short ruff, moving a step closer to Andaluz. Loud talk resounded from almost two hundred and fifty Rats and humans crowding the main audience chamber.
The clover-leaf-domed hall soared, and Lucas lifted his head, gaping up at the four bright domes. Andaluz's pepper-and-salt brows dipped in the family frown.
"Two of theno, three of the Lords Magi are here," he said, looking through the crowd at black Rats in sleeveless gold robes. "And most of the noble Houses . . . And all seven Cardinals-General of the Church . . ."
Rows of paired guards in Cadet uniform lined the interlocking circular walls, black fur gleaming. At regular intervals ceiling-length curtains were drawn across windows that, none the less, admitted chinks of sunlight.
"Whatever this is, it's blown up fast as a summer storm."
"What . . . ?" Lucas moved away from the main entrance's staircase. He began walking towards the point where two of the four semi-circular floor areas intersected.
A treadmill stood a little out from the blue-draped wall, on the spindle of some paneled and bolted metal machine. Blue-white sparks shot out of the metal casing.
The treadmill itself stood eight feet tall. In its cage, two men and a woman, stripped to breech-clouts, trod the steps down in never-ending repetition. Lucas, shoved by the press of assembled bodies, turned away. He saw two more treadmills over the heads of the crowd.
Thick cables wound up from the machines to the ceilings. In the four hollow domes, a stalactite-forest of chandeliers hung down. Lucas saw clusters of glass, wires burning blue-white and blue-purple, and lowered his gaze, blinking away water.
"Impressive," Andaluz said. "If they didn't have to close the curtains to show it off, and stifle all of us."
The actinic light wavered down on Rats in the sleeveless robes of Lords Magi, on the jeweled collars and swords of nobles and soldiers, the red and purple of priests.
"Uncle . . ." Lucas turned. Startled, he met the gaze of a youth much his own age. The young man smiled. Fair-haired, stripped to breeches and barefoot, he wore a studded collar round his throat. From it hung a metal leash. A middle-aged black Rat robed in yards of orange taffeta held the end of the leash casually in her hand.
"Bred from the finest stock," Lucas heard her say to another female black Rat, "and trained fully in all skills."
She trailed the chain-leash over one furry shoulder, and tugged the metal links. The fair-haired young man squatted down on his haunches at her side.
"A pretty little thing, yes." The second black Rat, slender in linen shirt and breeches enclosing furry haunches, her rapier slung at her side, turned to eye the treadmills. Two men and a woman in the wheel plodded, heads down, gripping the central bar with sweat-stained hands.
"Don't stare," Andaluz murmured. "You're being provincial."