Plessiez raised a ringed hand in acknowledgment as he walked towards her. He gestured with finality to the four or five priests with him, giving orders, sending the last hurrying off as he came up with the Katayan.
". . . and tell Messire Fenelon to attend me in the Abbey of Guiry in an hour. Honor to you, Zaribet."
"I just came from the Abbey of Guiry, messire. Fleury told me you were here in attendance on the King."
Outside the open windows, sun put a haze on the blue- tiled turrets and spires and belvederes of the royal palace roofs. The roofscape spread out, acre upon acre. Mist rose up from drying pools of water: the previous sundown's thunderstorm. Cardinal-General Plessiez drew in a breath, bead-black eyes bright, muzzle and whiskers quivering. He folded his arms and leaned up against the white stone corridor-wall.
"I have just had an audience with his Majesty, yes."
A silver band looped above one of his translucentskinned ears, below the other; a black ostrich-plume being clipped into it at a jaunty angle. A basket-hilted rapier hung at his side: leather harness black, buckles silver. Zar-bettu-zekigal grinned, seeing how he tied the cardinal's green sash rakishly from left shoulder to knot above right haunch; tail carried with a high swagger, silver ankh almost lost in his sleek neck-fur.
"I've much to do this morning. Now, the overseeing of the artillery garden . . . Zaribet, come with me; I shall need you as Memory then-"
"But not right this minute." Zar-bettu-zekigal's eyes gleamed. "Shouldn't Messire St. Cyr be dealing with the artillery garden?"
Plessiez snapped his fingers as he turned, not looking to see if the young Katayan woman scurried down the corridor at his heels. Zar-bettu-zekigal tossed her greatcoat into the window embrasure and left it. She caught him up after a few skips, reveling in the sun-hot corridor-tiles under her feet.
"What did the King say, messire?"
Cardinal-General Plessiez slowed rapid steps. He clasped ringed fingers behind his back as he paced, and began evasively: "Messire Desaguliers once removed, it would obviously be his second-in-command, St. Cyr, who gained control of the Cadets . . . St. Cyr is not Desaguliers' man; he is mine. I put him in as lieutenant some years ago; hence he leaves to me what I desire to oversee; hence . . . I have said I will deal with the artillery garden."
"And the King?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal smoothed back her matt black hair from its center parting with both hands. She grinned up at the Cardinal-General: watching his severity and wry humor and affected military air with the delight of a connoisseur or an admirer.
Two approaching priests robbed her of what answer he might have given. Plessiez stopped to issue orders. Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned back against the double doors at the end of the corridor, palms flat against the black oak, her dappled tail coiling down to her bare ankles.
"Be Kings' Memory now," Plessiez cut her off as he rejoined her. She pushed the doors open for him to pass through. Leisurely, she repeated the standard pronouncement: "Messire, you have an auditor . . ."
Plessiez walked through the next hall to where, white in sunlight through leaded casements, the double-spiral stone staircase rose up through this wing of the palace. He paused under its entrance-arch for the young woman to catch up.
"You hold all our secrets."
She glanced up from her footing on the warm stone steps, descending in front of him. "No secrets, messire. What I'm asked, I tell to whoever asks me. When I've heard it as Memory."
"And not otherwise?"
"Oh, see you, messire! I wouldn't take a question like that from anyone except you."
Here in the stone shaft, air blew morning-cool. The Katayan rubbed her bare arms. Plessiez watched her with what, eventually, he had identified as a certain awe; as if she were some hawk come tamely willing to his hand without capture.
"That may be why we all use you as a confessional." He caught the flash of her eyes, knowing and innocent; and his snout twitched with an unwilling smile. "Or does the Lady Hyena, as yet, share more than the ear of the Kings' Memory?"
The Katayan woman fisted hands to thrust in greatcoat pockets no longer there. Instead she put them behind her back, tail coiling up to loop her wrists.
"I'm working on that . . . She wants to know when anything's going to happen at the Fane. And, see you, Master Falke is lying his head off."
"Falke tells no lies that I don't know about."
The jerk of her head, chopped-off hair flying, took in all the thirty-six Districts of the city invisible beyond palace walls. "Her 'Imperial dynasty' and the Salomon-menthey've started something they can't stop down there in the city."
"I know," Plessiez said. "It will be soon. It has already begun."
Leaving the stairwell two floors below, walking through a cluttered salon, he nodded a greeting to passing black Rats, to one of St. Cyr's uniformed Cadets, and to an aide of one of the Lords Magi. The Katayan beside him skipped to keep up with his strides. Plessiez eased the green sash where it crossed the fur of his shoulder, onyx and silver rings clinking against the ankh.
In the next salon all the full-length windows had been flung open, and heat slid in on tentative breezes, bringing the noise of hammers and forges and Rats shouting. Outside the windows, a ruined marble terrace gave way to the artillery garden. Blue haze coiled up from stretches of mud not yet dried by the sun.
A brown Rat passed across the terrace, and the Katayan woman checked. "I thought . . . it might have been Charnay."
"No. Not yet." Plessiez's finger tapped irritably against his flank. "I believe the Lady Hyena's admission that she released her. That means Charnay is off on some fool plan of her own. And that's when one knows there'll be trouble."
The ormolu clock at the far end of the salon struck seven times. As the tinny notes died, a Cadet pushed the doors open. He bowed deeply to Plessiez.
"Lord Cardinal, the military architect is here to see you."
"Finally! Show him in."
"He . . . ah . . ."
Plessiez glimpsed a shadow out on the terrace. The previous night's rain stood in pools, flashing back white sun through the rising haze of steam. The mud, rubble, broken joists, and the machines of the artillery garden were blotted out by the bulk of a man. The big man glanced in at the window, nodding to Plessiez. His copper hair shone. He hooked his thumbs under the lapels of his blue satin frock-coat.
"Messire priest, I am Baltazar Casaubon, Lord-Architect, Scholar-Soldier of the Invisible College, Surveyor of Extraordinary Gardens, Knight oftheRoseCastleand," the immensely fat man got in before Plessiez could interrupt him, "Horologer, Solar and Lunar Dial-maker, Duke of the Golden Compasses, and Brother of the Forgotten Hunt. Where is Messire Desaguliers?"
Rubble and hard earth jarred the base of his spine. Candia's eyes jolted open. Sunlight spiked into his head. He moaned, lying back and leaning his face against rough- pointed brickwork.
". . . it is a priest!"
"Not a real one."
"We ain't got one, but we got her. Ei, priest, over here!"
Voices resounded in the warm air above his head. Yellow grass beside him grew up through shattered paving- stones. Silk- and satin-clad legs milled in front of his face: scarlet and azure and cloth-of-silver dazzled.
"need any sort of a priest; we-"
"see how things are here-"
"necessary exorcism-"
"a priest, now!"
Candia uncovered his face. A factory's sheer brick soared up into a blue sky. Above and beyond, he saw smokeless chimney-stacks. His head fell forward. Six inches from his nose, in the folds of a faded, tree-embroidered, green cotton dress, a black hand clenched into a fist.
A voice just above him said: "I'll send you someone else from the Cathedral of the Trees."
"No. We can't wait!"
"Not while they come all the way from Nineteenth District!"
Candia raised his head with an effort. He focused on a burly woman, arms folded, the gold Rule embroidered on her overalls catching the sun painfully bright.
"No," she repeated. "We want you, Archdeacon, before it's too late."
Candia pushed his shaking fingers through his lank hair. As he moved, the cloth of his doublet and breeches cracked with dried liquid, and he smelt the stench of old urine and vomit. He pressed his shaking hands into his eye-sockets.
"Who? Where?" His weak voice cracked.
A familiar tart voice at his other side said: "You're a fool, Candia. The university officially suspended you ten days ago. What did you do that was worth getting yourself into this state?"
He felt a slow heat spreading across his face. For a second his shame would not let him look up at Heurodis. Veins pulsed behind his shut eyelids, the color of light through new leaves. The invading presence of that healing could no longer be denied.
"Heurodis . . ." He took his hands from his face, braced his shoulders against the wall, and pushed himself upright against the rough brick, ripping his buff doublet again. Morning sun dazzled. The young black woman beside him argued furiously with the burly carpenter. Workers crowded around in the alley, the movement confusing him.
"Stay here." The black woman moved a step towards the factory, glancing at the locked gates at the end of the alley, and then at the elderly Heurodis and at Candia. "I'll come back for you."
"No . . ." Gesture and voice died; he leaned weakly against the wall, brushing fair hair from his eyes, ignoring filth.
"Yes." Heurodis put her wrinkled hand protectively on Candia's arm, and kept it there until the black woman turned away. She raised one faded eyebrow at the Reverend Master then.
"Help me," Candia said shakily. "Now, while they're arguing. I've seen, and I've heard . . . Heurodis, I have to get back inside the Fane."
"Of course," Plessiez heard the Lord-Architect observe, "I left numerous and very detailed plans . . ."
The Lord-Architect rested one ham-hand on a joist of the machine, some four feet above ground-level, and bent to peer under the platform. His left foot came free of the artillery garden's white mud with a concussive suck. He looked absently down at his dripping silk stocking and shoe.
"which the factory could have accurately followed."
"What caused your absence?" the Cardinal-General demanded.
"I assure you, messire, the last . . ." Casaubon paused invitingly.
"Thirty days."
"The last thirty days have, for me, gone past in the blink of an eye. You may say, indeed, they passed in the space of a heartbeat."
"I am well aware that you must be busy." Plessiez, waspish, whipped his tail out of the mud, taking a firmer stance on the artillery garden's rubble. The immense shadow of the machine fell cool across his sun-warmed fur. His left hand slid down to grasp the scabbard of his rapier. He gestured for Zar-bettu-zekigal to approach. "Are you suggesting that these particular engines have been built incorrectly? Is that where the difficulty of operation arises?"
"Oh, not incorrectly, not as such . . ."
The Lord-Architect rapped his fist against the lower joist near the massive rear wheel. The iron plates of the wheel casing quivered. His blue-coated bulk tipped lower as he moved a step forward, under the platform of the machine.
". . . merely minor adjustments . . ."
As Plessiez watched, the fat man gripped a strut in one hand and pivoted, slowly graceful, easing his body down. One massive leg slid forward. He swung down to sit in three inches of semi-liquid mud and, on his back, pull himself further under the axle-casing with massive white-gloved hands.
". . . a few days' work . . ."
Plessiez frowned. Picking his way across the rutted site, he stooped to look under the machine. The Lord- Architect Casaubon lay on his back in the mud, his blue satin frock-coat spreading out flat, soaking up rain-pools. As Plessiez started to speak, the fat man fumbled in the pocket of his embroidered waistcoat and brought out a miniature hammer. He reached up and tapped the iron axle. A sharp metallic click echoed back across the artillery garden from the royal palace wall.
"I don't have 'a few days,' Lord-Architect. These engines must be ready to move later today."
Plessiez, irritated, straightened up and looked for the Kings' Memory. The young Katayan woman had her heels on the wheel-rim where it rested on the earth, eight inches above ground, her back to the axle, stretching her arms as far up the spokes to the metal casing as possible. The top of the wheel curved a yard and a half above her head.
Her chin tilted up, pale, as her eyes traversed the bulk of the engine above her on the wheeled platform.
"Zari!"
"I'm listening, messire." The Katayan's chin lowered. She grinned.
Plessiez urbanely repressed the fur rising down his spine. The tip of his tail lashed an inch to either side in a tightly controlled movement. "I repeat: I do not have days."
The fat man grunted amiably. His large delicate fingers probed the gear-wheels above the axle. He took his hand away, staring at a glove now caked with black grease. He began to ease himself forward on hands and heels and buttocks, until he cleared the mud with a succession of squelches. The Lord-Architect stood up, cracked his head against the underside of the platform, and spread oil and mud in his copper-gold hair as he rubbed the crown of his head.
"Days," Casaubon repeated firmly. He ducked out from under the platform. His silk knee-breeches dripped. Taking one hem of his frock-coat in a gloved hand, he cracked the cloth and spattered mud in a five-yard radius.
The Katayan wiped the tuft of her tail across her cheek.
Plessiez looked down at the glutinous white mud spattered across his fur and cardinal's sash. "You may find this behavior acceptable. I do not. It is possible, Messire Casaubon, that these tactics are designed to obfuscate your inefficiency. I assure you that they fail."
The Lord-Architect laughed. He swung a gloved grease-stained hand to clap Plessiez on the back. The Cardinal-General stepped away smartly, his heel coming down on a broken paving-stone filmed with mud.
"Wh-?" .
Plessiez skidded, flailed limbs and tail to stay upright; a rock-solid hand closed around his arm and steadied his balance. Chins creased as the big man smiled, innocent.
"Careful, messire."
"I am always careful. Thank you." Plessiez met Zar- bettu-zekigal's gaze. The Kings' Memory leaned her fist hard against her mouth, eyes bright. Plessiez took a step back, gazing up at the metal-plated casings and turrets and ports and beaks of the siege engine.
Morning sun dazzled off the row of nineteen others ranked beyond it.
"Not my preferred line of work, really. Trained in it, of course. Could do you ornamental garden automata," the Lord-Architect offered hopefully, "or hydraulic water-organs . . ."
Plessiez narrowed his eyes to furred slits and studied the large man. Coming in moments to a conclusion that (had he known) it had taken the White Crow years to arrive at, he smiled, nodded an acknowledgment and observed: "Very well, we understand each other. I am somewhat in your hands, being at the mercy of your expertise, and you have a price which is not entirely orthodox. It may be granted, if it is not too impossible, messire."
Casaubon beamed, blue eyes guileless. "I could work faster if I knew what these engines are specifically needed to do."
Morning light shone back from white earth, from distant windows and multi-tiered roofs, with a promise of later heat. Small figures dotted the perimeter of the site: engineers being kept back by St. Cyr's Cadets. Their impatient voices came to Plessiez across the intervening distance.
"We do understand each other. Very well," Plessiez conceded. His muzzle turned towards Zar-bettu-zekigal as she stepped down from her perch on the wheel. "But, I regret, not in your presence, Zari. For the present this must be between his Majesty and myselfand now you, Messire Casaubon."
"Must she go?" The big man's face creased in disappointment. "Such a beautiful young woman. And a Memory, too? Lady, you should have told me."
The Katayan leaned her elbow against the wheel-rim and her cheek on her hand. "I did tell you. I yelled it in your ear. You had your head in the rotor-casing at the time, but I did tell you you had an auditor. Didn't I, messire?"
"Certainly." Plessiez, sardonic, folded his arms, sword-harness chinking; looking from the Kings' Memory to the Lord-Architect, and absently picking pieces of drying mud from his left elbow-fur with his right hand. "Is there anything else either of you would wish to know?"
"I'd like to know what these machines are for." The Katayan inclined her head to the fat man, her tail cocked high. "Zar-bettu-zekigal. Are you liable to need a Kings' Memory, messire architect?"