Rats And Gargoyles - Rats and Gargoyles Part 3
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Rats and Gargoyles Part 3

"It happens," he said, "that we're traitors. The Bishop here, and I. We've come to betray our own kind to you."

A shifting of movement, tenuous as the first tremors of earthquake, folded His wings of darkness. The body of the god-daemon moved, elbow-joints above shoulders, until He threatened emergence from unlight-shadows. Lids slid up to narrow His eyes to slits.

"Master Candia, you always amuse me," He rumbled. "I welcome that. It's a relief from my failures here."

Candia made a gesture of exasperation. He paced back and forth, a few strides each way, as if movement could keep him from seeing where he stood. He directed no more looks at The Spagyrus, his stamina for that exhausted.

The Bishop of the Trees reached to rest a hand on Candia's shoulder, stilling him. "Even the worst shepherd looks to his flock. Doesn't the Lord Decan know what's happening in our part of the city?"

"Do the stock in the farmyard murmur?" A bifurcated tongue licked out and stroked a lower fang. The Spagyrus gazed down at Candia and Theodoret. "What I do here leaves me no time for such petty concerns. The great work must be finished, and I am no nearer to completion. If it comes to rioting in the city, I shall put it down with severityI, my Kin, or your lesser masters the Rat- Lords. You know this. Why bother me?"

Theodoret walked forward. His lined creased face, under the shock of dusty-white hair, showed sternness.

"Lord Spagyrus!"

"Harrhummm?"

"Our lesser masters are what you should look to." Theodoret's gray eyes swam with light; mobile, blinking. "The Rat-Lords are meeting now with the Guildmastersthe human Guildmasters, that is. Meeting in secrecy, as I thought." Incredulity sharpened his voice. "And I see we're right, Lord Spagyrus. You don't know of it."

The Decan roared.

Candia slid to one knee, head bowed, ragged hair falling forward; and his white-knuckled fist gripped the Bishop's robe. A thin greengold radiance limned him. He smelt the blossom of hawthorn and meadowsweet. The tiles beneath his knee gave slightly, as if with the texture of moss.

The Bishop of the Trees said softly: "We were here before you ever were, Lord Spagyrus."

The tendriled muzzle rose, gaped, fangs shining in unlight and the furnace's red darkness, and a great cry echoed down through the chambers, and galleries and crypts of the Fane.

Candia raised his head to see the acolytes already dropping from the ceiling vaults, soaring on black ribbed wings.

In a room that has more books than furniture, the magus stares out at a blinding blue sky.

Her mirror is shrouded with a patchwork cloth.

The day's air smells sleepy, smells sweet, and she sniffs for the scent of rain or thunder and there is nothing.

Suddenly there is a tickle that runs the length of her forearm. She holds up her hand. The gashed palm, halfhealed by her arts, is aching now; and, as she watches, another bead of blood trickles down her arms. She frowns.

She waits.

Charnay paused on the landing, examining herself in the full-length mirror there. She took a small brush and sleeked down the fur on her jaw; tugged her head-band into place, and tweaked the crimson feather to a more jaunty angle.

"Messire Plessiez has a superlative mind," she said. "I conjecture that, by the time you leave us, in a day or two, he'll have found some advantage even in you."

Lucas, aware of tension making him petty, needled her. "Big words. Been taking lessons from your priest friend?"

"In!"

She leaned over and pushed open a heavy iron-studded door. Lucas walked into the cell. Afternoon sunlight fell through the bars, striping the walls. Dirt and cobwebs starred the floor, and the remnants of previous occupationstin dishes, a bucket, two ragged blanketslay on a horsehair mattress in one comer.

"You have no right to put me here!"

Charnay laughed. "And who are you going to complain to?"

She swung the door to effortlessly. It clanged. Lucas heard locks click, and then her departing footsteps, padding away down the corridor. In the distance men and Rats shouted, hoofs clattered: the palace garrison.

Lucas remained standing quite still. The sky beyond the bars shone brilliantly blue; and light reflected off the white walls and the four stories of windows on the opposite side of the inner courtyard, mirror to his.

He slammed the flat of his hand against the door. "Bitch!"

Four floors below, the brown Rat Charnay had stopped in the courtyard to talk and to preen herself in the company of other Rats. Her ears moved, and she glanced up, grinning, as she left.

The shadows on the wall slid slowly eastwards.

"Rot you!"

Lucas moved decisively. He unbuttoned his shirt, folding it up into a neat pad. Goosepimples starred his chest, feeling the stone cell's chill. He rubbed his arms. With one eye on the door, he unbuttoned his knee-breeches, slid them down, and turned them so that the gray lining was outermost.

"If you're going to study at the university, start acting like it!"

His fingers worked at the stitching. A thin metal strip protruded from the knee-seam, and he tugged it free; and then stood up rapidly and hopped about on one foot, thrusting the other into his breeches-leg, listening to check if that had been a noise in the corridor . . . No. Nothing.

His dark-brown meeting brows dipped in concentration. The metal prong plumbed the depths of the lock, and then his mouth quirked: there was a click, and he tested the handle, and the heavy door swung open.

Clearer: the noise of the garrison below.

Lucas buttoned his breeches. He took a step towards the open door. One hand made a fist, and there was a faint pink flush to his cheeks. Caught between reluctance and fear of recognition, he stood still for several minutes.

Coming in, they had passed no human above the rank of servant.

He bent to remove stockings and shoes, wrapping them in his shirt. Then he knelt, shivering, to rub his hands in the dirt; washing arms, face and chest in the cobwebs and dust.

A black Rat passed him on the second floor. She didn't spare a glance for this kitchen-servant. With the bundle under his arm, and an old leather bucket balanced on his shoulder, Lucas of Candover walked free of the palace.

Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned out of the carriage window, regardless of the dust and flying clots of dung the team's hoofs threw up.

"See you, we're out of Nineteenth District's Aust quarter already oof!"

Plessiez's hand grabbed her coat between the shoulder- blades and yanked her back on to the carriage seat. "Is it necessary to advertise your presence to the entire city?"

"Oh, we're not even out of a Mixed District, messire, what's to worry?"

She leaned her arms on the jolting sill, and her chin on her arms, and grinned out at the street. The carriage rattled through squares where washing hung like pale flags and fountains dripped. The sun beat down from a blazing afternoon sky. Humans and Rats crowded the cobbled streetsa dozen or so of the palace guard, in silks and satins and polished rapiers, drank raucously outside a tavern, and sketched salutes of varying sobriety as Plessiez's coach and horses passed them.

Zar-bettu-zekigal drew a deep breath, contentedly sniffing as they passed a may-hedge and a city garden.

"You have no Katayan accent," the black Rat said. The dimness inside the coach hid all but the glitter of his black eyes, and the jet embellishment of his rapier's pommel.

"Messire"reproach in her tone, and humor"Kings' Memories remember inflections exactlywe have to. What would I be doing with an accent?"

"I beg your pardon, lady," Plessiez said, sardonically humble, and the Katayan grinned companionably at him.

The coachman called from above, sparks showered as the brakes cut the metal wheel-rims, and the carriage rattled down a steep lane. Plessiez caught hold of the door-strap with a ring-fingered hand.

"Mistress Zekegial . . . Zare-bethu . . ." He stumbled over the syllables.

"Oh, 'Zari' will do, messire, to you." She waved an airy gesture. Then, leaning out of the window again as the carriage squealed to a halt, she said: "You're holding this important meeting in a builders' yard?"

Plessiez hid what might have been a smile. The black Rat said smoothly: "That is one of the Masons' Halls, little one. Show the proper respect."

Zari pushed the carriage door open and sprang down into the yard. Two other coaches were already drawn up in the entrance, horses standing with creamed flanks and drooping heads. Plessiez stepped down into the sunlight. It became apparent that the black Rat had changed uniform: he now wore a sleeveless crimson jacket, with the neat silver neck-band of a priest. His crimson cloak was also edged with silver.

He paused to adjust rapier and belt, and Zari saw him straighten a richly gemmed pectoral ankh. A flurry of black and brown Rats from the other coaches rushed to meet him, those with priests' collars particularly obsequious.

"Mauriac, make sure the guards are placed unobtrusively; Brennan, youand youget these carriages taken away." The black Rat's snout twitched.

A heavily-built brown Rat swaggered out from the back of the group. Pulling her aside by a corner of her cloak, Plessiez said sharply: "My idea of a secret meeting does not consist merely of arriving in a coach without a crest on it! Yours does, apparently. Get rid of this crowd. I'll take you only in with me."

Charnay laughed and slapped Plessiez on the back. The black Rat staggered slightly.

"Don't worry, messire! They'll just think you've come for a plan for the new wing."

"Perhaps. But do it."

Zar-bettu-zekigal's bare feet printed the yellow yard- dust. The air shimmered in the heat. She wrapped her greatcoat firmly round her, and squinted up at the stacked clay bricks, timber put out to weather, and piles of wooden scaffolding that surrounded this Masons' Hall.

Tiles and wooden crates blocked the view to the nearer houses.

She cocked her head, and her dappled black-and-white tail coiled around her ankles. With a nod at the weathered-plank structurehalf hall, half warehouse she said over the noise of departing coaches: "Well, messire, have I begun yet?"

"As soon as we enter the hall."

Leisurely, hands folded at his breast, the black Rat paced forward. Charnay fell in beside him. Two men pushed the hall doors open from the inside, and Zari gave a half-skip up the steps, catching up, as they went in.

"Messire Falke!" Plessiez called.

In a patch of sunlight from the clerestory windows, a man raised his bandaged face. His short silver-white hair caught the light, pressed down by the strips of cotton.

"Honor to you, priest." The man faced Plessiez with a wry, somewhat perfunctory grin. His black silk overalls shone at collar, cuffs and seams; sewn with silver thread. A heavy silver pin in the shape of compasses fastened the black lace at his throat. Diamond and onyx rings shone on his left hand.

"Oh, what . . . ?"

The merest whisper. Charnay nudged the Katayan heavily in her ribs, and Zari bowed. She continued to stare at the fine linen bandaging the man's eyes.

The men and women with Falke drew back, bowing respectfully to the black Rat, and the sleek priest strode down the passage that opened in the crowd and seated himself on a chair at the head of a trestle table. This gave signslike the eight or nine others in the room of having been rapidly cleared of site- and ground-plans, measurements, calculations and scale models.

Charnay ostentatiously drew her long rapier and laid it down on the plank table before her.

"Zari," the black Rat prompted.

The young woman was standing on tiptoe, and leaning over to stare into a tank-model of a sewer system. She straightened. Hands in pockets, she marched across the bright room and hitched herself up to sit on the trestle table.

"Kings' Memory," she announced. "You have an auditor, messires: you are heard: this is the warning."

Some of the expensively dressed men and women began to speak. Falke held up a hand, and they ceased. "What is your oath?"

She took her hands out of her greatcoat pockets. "To speak what I hear, as I heard it, whenever asked; to add nothing, to omit nothing, to alter nothing."

Falke passed her on his way to sit down, close enough for her to see dark brows and lashes behind the cloth shield. A lined face, and silver-fine hair: a man on the down side of thirty-five.

"And the penalty," he said, "if otherwise?"

"Death, of course." She slid down on to a collapsible chair, positioning herself exactly halfway between Falke's people and the Rats.

The light of late noon fell in through clerestory windows, shining on the plans, diagrams and calculations pinned around the walls. Falke, without apparent difficulty, indicated the half-dozen men and women who abandoned compasses, straight-edge and fine quill pens for the cleared trestle table, as they sat down. Silk and satins rustled; white lace blazed at cuffs and collars.

"The master stonemason. Master bricklayer. Foreman of the carriage teams. Master tiler."

Plessiez, who sat with his lean black muzzle resting on his steepled fingers, said: "You may give them their proper titles, Master Falke. If we're to talk honestly, we must have no secrecy."

" 'Honestly'? You forget I've dealt with Rat-Lords before." Falke sat, pointing with economical gestures. "Very well, have your way. Shanna is a Fellowcraft, so is Jenebret." He indicated an older man. "Thomas is an Apprentice. Awdrey is the Mistress Royal of the Children of the Widow. I'm Master of the Hall."

Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned forward on the wooden table, brushing the black hair from her eyes.

" 'Children of the Widow'. . . 'Master of the Hall'. . ." she murmured happily. She caught Plessiez's warning stare and grinned, professional, her own eyes enthusiastic with Memory.

Falke began. "We-"

The doors at the end of the hall slammed open. Plessiez stood up, his chair scraping back.

Two Rats and three or four men struggled to hold back a middle-aged man, himself in the forefront of a group. "Falke!"

Falke peered towards the bright end of the hall through his cloth bandage.

Charnay glanced to the black Rat for a cue, one hand reaching for her sword. Plessiez shook his head. "I know the man, I think. East quarter. East quarter's Mayor?"

"Certainly I am!"

The man shook himself free of the brown Rats' restraining grip. He was in his fifties, and stout; raggedly cut yellow hair framing a moon-face. Confronting Falke, he tugged his greasy breeches up about his belly, and straightened a verdigris-stained chain of copper links that hung across his frayed jerkin.

"Mayor Tannakin Spatchet," he rumbled, and pointed a beefy finger at Master Falke. "What do you mean by holding this meeting without me? At the very least, some of the East quarter Council should be here!"

"Tan, get out of here." Falke waved a dismissive hand. "You'll bring the dregs in with you. A rabble of bureaucrats, shopkeepers, lawyers and teachers!"

The five or six men who had come in with Tannakin Spatchet shuffled and looked embarrassed.

"We have every right to be represented! If you're talking to the Rat-Lords, that concerns everyone in the quarter."

Falke shook his head. "No. You're not admitted to the mysteries here, not even to the outer hall. Thomas, take these people outside."