Rats And Gargoyles - Rats and Gargoyles Part 32
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Rats and Gargoyles Part 32

He cut the air with his hand: the lateral swing ceased.

Hieroglyphics shone on the great foundation-stone, newly incised; gleaming redly, as if the cut stone filled up with blood.

He turned his face up to the sky, letting the breeze cool his sweating face, turning back as the granite block stilled. Packed faces: painted, masked, laughing, calling; the rows of silent Rat-Lords at the nearer buildings' windows.

He touched the Hyena's steel shoulder. "Wait for me here."

He ran careless of obstacles down the rutted steps to the front of the site, the microphone clasped in his fist. Soldiers in imperial mail and citizen militia shoved the crowd back. Men and women reached between them, over their shoulders, hands outstretched; and Falke waved good-naturedly, trotting along some yards until he swung and faced out into the crowd.

"Long live tradition!"

His voice echoed back from far walls, soft as surf in sewer-tunnels that riddle the docks. Paper streamers soared up into the air, and bottles; and he turned his face full up to the sun, careless of dazzlement.

"Long live tradition, long live the Feast of Misrule!" He paused, letting them quieten a little. "Yes, the great and ancient Feast of Misrule . . . This annual day when all's turned upside-downand we, yes, today, WE turn the world upside-down! Only this time, it STAYS this way! You see the stone. It is our stone, it is our foundation-stone: the founding-stone of the New Temple of Salomon!"

Cheers broke out, doubled and redoubled.

He strode another few yards along the steps. A paper streamer glanced across his shoulder; he gripped it in the same hand as the microphone, waved it, grinned at the feather-masked boy, dimly seen, who'd thrown it. The boy pulled off his mask, eyes bright, mouth a round O.

"The world turned upside-downyou've all heard that prophecy." The metal of the microphone, warmed and dampened by his breath, chilled his lips. "Hear it and believe it! Oh, not the Rat-Lords; they don't matter now although they may still think they do. "

Falke paused, lifting a hand in ironic salute- to the black Rats lining the overlooking windows. One looked down at a broken flower in his hand. Another, headband in hand, smoothed a feather. None spoke.

"You will say they have been challenged before, these masters of ours. So they have. So they have. I was a part of that summer, fifteen years gone. Fifteen years ago, in Fifth District, when they cut us down in the streetsrode us down, for daring to refuse our labor!"

Now he dropped his tone caressingly; walking down the scarred marble steps to the line of soldiers, touching hands with the people beyond as he walked along the front row, invisible to more than those few but letting the loudspeakers carry it.

"I have never forgotten. You have never forgotten. Now we can erase it from our minds. Now, today, we labor only for ourselves."

He halted, lowering the microphone.

Faces, hands, swords, mail-shirts: the front row of the crowd a tapestry, sun-bright and raucous. His mouth dried. He swallowed with difficulty, blinking; the touch of silk strange against his lashes. He reached up and pulled the bandage free.

"They have always betrayed us."

Tears streamed hot down his cheeks; a bubble of laughter in his chest for this final public hypocrisy. He snatched breath suddenly, tears of the bright sun becoming the wrenching tears of a man who assumed, until then, that he only cries for appearance's sake.

"We can be true to ourselves."

Warm wind bathed his fingers as he held up his hand, poised; cut the air with one decisive stroke. He let his hand fall to his side.

Through his feet he felt the vibration of the Temple's foundation-stone settling into its place on the site behind him.

"The foundation-stone is laid! Now feast and rejoice. Feast and rejoiceand build the New Temple of Salomon!"

He laughed, recklessly reaching into the crowd again to grip hands; his tear-streaked naked face dappled with paint, daubed on by small children held up by their parents.

"Now drink! Eat! Rejoice! BUILD THE TEMPLE!"

Breathing hard, he stumbled back up the steps. A glare of silver: he seized the Hyena's plate-clad arm for support; leaned with his head down for a moment, breath sobbing, and then nodded.

"At last." She signaled.

The imperial soldiers fell out the rank that held the crowd back. First one, then ten, then dozens of men and women ran forward and up the steps to the open site; meeting there the Fellowcrafts of the Masons' Halls. Falke gazed at the river of silks and satins, masks thrown down and trodden underfoot as the skilled workers swarmed over the foundations and scaffolding and cranes.

The Hyena held up her gauntleted hand, the soldiers linking arms again to thin the flow.

Falke covered his eyes, between sweating fingers watching the tide of masons, carpenters and builders spread out across the open ground behind him.

Exhilarated, the Hyena swept her arm in an arc. "Look at it! We've done it."

"I . . . hardly believe it."

He retied his black silk bandage. The last of the first shift of workers walked across the steps to the site. The rest settled: men and women sitting down where they stood; bottles and food brought out, masks pushed up so that eating and drinking could begin. The noise of their singing, clapping and shouting beat back from the distant walls.

The Hyena yawped a laugh. "No going back for us. Not now, whatever happens."

The rising tide of sound drowned thought. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his gray doublet, and rested both hands on his wide sword-belt. The ring-guards of the sword-rapier brushed his knuckles. Standing with feet apart, welcoming the weight of weapons, he peered through black silk at the crowded day. Faintly, through the shouting and music, a clock on the far side of the square chimed quarter to the hour.

"Ahead of schedule." He smiled, finding his voice thick with the aftermath of weeping.

"Ah."

"What is it?" He peered at the Hyena, straining to see which way she faced, what she stared at. "Lady?"

"I thinkright on schedule." Amused surprise rounded her tone. "This is effrontery of the first order. What does he think I'll do? Clovis!"

Clovis and a dozen other soldiers doubled up the steps to join her. Falke frowned. Shoved back, he elbowed his way to the Hyena's side, demanded: "What is it? What's happening?"

The woman shaded her eyes against the sun, staring out across the great square. Frustrated, Falke followed the direction of her gaze. Waving arms, thrown hats and occasional muzzle-flashes from muskets: the rest a cloth- shrouded blur.

A groaning vibration came to him through the earth he stood on.

"All King's Guard by the uniform." The Hyena's grin widened. "Good firepower, but they're somewhat outnumbered. We'll accept their surrender. Clovis, take a squad down there and escort them here. Master Falke, can you see? There."

A deep-throated mechanical roar drowned crowd- noise; and he wrinkled his nose at the stench of oil. Light glintedfrom windows, stone surfaces. Swords? Gun-barrels?

Fine detail faded into sun-blaze.

Counting on a second's view before blindness, Falke snatched away the eye bandage. Tears ran down his face.

Shockingly close, rearing above the impromptu tents of the Hyena's camp and the crowd: beaked rams, hammered steel plates, curving ballista.

Midday sun gleamed from the blued-steel barrels of muskets, from unsheathed swords, and from the harness of Rat-Lords seemingly as small as children, crouched on the platform of a great armored engine of war.

"There must be two hundred thousand people here!"

Lucas leaned tight into the steel wall-shield of the siege-engine, the metal platform hard under his knee. Curving hot metal sheltered his body ahead and to the side. From where he crouched, he could see the other King's Guard behind the shelters.

Tens, dozens, hundreds of faces turned upwards. Looking at the siege-engine. Faces caked with white lead and yellow ochre, the colors of the House of Salomon.

The engine's noise drowned all but the tolling of the charnel bells, coming raggedly from the quarters beyond Fourteenth District's square. His grip on the support-strut grew sweat-slippery. Blood pounded in his head, and his hand went automatically to the talisman at his neck.

"Casaubon! Lord-Architect!"

Lucas rapped on the hot metal of the engine-hatch. Heat throbbed from a bright sky.

"Slow down! If we hurt anyone, the rest'll tear us to pieces!"

"Pox rot it, I'm doing what I can!"

The thudding vibration of the machine diminished, the juggernaut wheels slowing. Heat shimmered across packed bodies.

The Lord-Architect Casaubon heaved himself up through the hatch, swore as his bare arms touched metal, and lifted his immense buttocks up to rest on the rivet- studded platform.

"And at that, we're almost too late."

His stained linen shirt and corset obviously discarded somewhere in the engine compartment, sun pinked the slabs of fat cushioning his back and shoulder-blades. Black smears of oil covered his faint freckles, glistened on the copper hairs on his chest. He picked his nose and wiped the result on the metal hatch-casing.

"Let me get this thing on to its station and primed, and I'll shake the truth out of that sleek ruffian who calls himself a Cardinal! Then we'll see!"

The Lord-Architect reached up. Lucas stretched out a hand, gripped his; steadying the immense bulk as the man rose to his feet.

He let go, wiping his now-oily palm on the back of his breeches.

Casaubon drew himself up to his full six foot five, lifted his foot, brought it down, and with his stockinged toe hooked his discarded blue satin frock-coat across the platform towards him.

Sun hammered Lucas's scalp. He blinked rapidly.

"Nearly noon. The White Crow. She will be all right, won't she?" His voice thickened. "Stupid question. She won't be all right unless she's very lucky. And that goes for all of us, doesn't it?"

The Lord-Architect reached into the voluminous pockets of his once white silk breeches and brought out a silver flask. Lucas reached across as the big man offered it, up-ended the flask down his throat, spluttered into a coughing fit, and at last managed to hiss: "What is this?"

Casaubon scratched at his copper hair and examined his fingernails for oil and scurf. "Turpentine?"

"What!"

"I beg your pardon," the Lord-Architect said gravely, "metheglin is what I meant to say. She's a Master- Captain, boy, and a Master-Physician. More than that, she's Valentine."

"What . . . ? I don't . . ."

As Lucas watched, bewildered, the fat man slid down to seat himself with his broad back against the ram-casing. The Lord-Architect screwed up his eyes almost to the smallness of raisins against the glare off the page, and began to write painstakingly in his notebook, resting it against his bolster-thigh.

"There." He tore the pages out with a delicate concentration, folded them, retrieved a gold pin from the lapel of his rescued jacket and pinned the paper shut.

Lucas hunkered down, resting his brown arms across his thighs. "Well?"

"We arrive, but in time to do nothing." Casaubon lifted his head, losing at least one chin. "Get over to the University of Crime. Rouse the students. Give this to the Board of Governorsno, don't argue with me, boy. Tell them it's no use their thinking all this pox-blasted foolery is beneath them; they must act, and I'd be obliged if they'd do it now."

"Explain to me just exactly how I. . ." Lucas stopped. "You're serious, aren't you? I don't know why, messire, but the White Crow thinks you know what you're doing. Tell me how I get away from here and I'll give it a try."

"Prince Lucas!"

The Lord-Architect lifted one copper brow at the new voice. "Monstrous inconvenient."

Cardinal-General Plessiez stepped out from the group of Guards on the platform and approached Lucas, pitching his voice over the crowd-noise. Sun shimmered from his black fur, from his ankh and green sash.

"An interesting woman, your magus, Prince Lucas. What can she hope to say to the Twelfth Decan?"

Buildings blocked the view behind them now; no sign of the marble terraces and the hill they had descended. Sun blurred Lucas's vision; he rubbed his eyes. Nothing to see from here. Not even that last glint of sun from her sword, herself a tiny blob of color walking into heat-shimmer.

Sudden, clear, he feels the shade and cool interior of the house on Carver Street; a holistic flash of white walls, piled books, cracked mirror-table, and the woman's heat-roughened voice.

"According to you, there's no way into the Fane." He attempted to eradicate hostility from his voice, achieved only sullenness. "What's it to you, priest?"

"Still intransigent. I should have known when I met you. A King's son."

Lucas frowned. On the north-aust horizon, around the Fane's black geometries, the summer air swarms thick with acolytes; gargoyle-wings beating as they hover, sink, aimlessly circle.

The smooth voice insinuated. "And yet you're not with her now, messire. Did she just need a university student to steal her a horse when there are none to be had?"

The siege-engine creaked past the facades of ornate buildings lining the square. Pale plaster shot back sunlight and heat. Lucas stared grimly up at ornaments, strapwork, hanging flower-baskets. Rat-Lord spectators crowded balconies and windows. A brown Rat flourished a plumed hat; two drunken black Rats began tossing broken flowers down from pots on to the heads below.

"I can thieve," he said. "I don't have magia. She'd have been wasting her power protecting me. That's why I'm here and not with her."

"But a magus-"

Something slithered across Lucas's bare ankle. A coiled paper streamer drifted across the platform, snagged, then pulled away.

Casaubon slammed his hand against the side of the machine. Iron echoed. "What's happening, Plessiez? Where's your damned Master Builder? And young Zaribeth?"

A brown Rat called: "Your Eminence!"

"You see we face some delay. The crowds," Plessiez said silkily; and before he could be answered strode back to take a report from the Guard.

Lucas glanced back with a casual intensity, seeing the blue-liveried Guards positioned at each of the metal ladders. At the foot of the engine the crowd massed concealingly thick. The Lord-Architect beamed and prodded Lucas's chest with a fat finger, nearly overbalancing him.

"It'll work. You'll see."

The black Rat, Plessiez, standing with the Guard, cast speculative glances up at the gleaming beaked rams and the high cup of the ballista. He murmured: "We must stay on-station here at the south-aust side, at least until the stroke of midday."

"Yes." The Lord-Architect sounded grim. "We must."

Canopies of silk rose on this side of Fourteenth District's great square, great tents shining white and painted with the gold cross of the House of Salomon and the Sun of the Imperial Dynasty. Light glinted off laminated armor. Beyond the soldiers, scaffolding rose, great spider-structures of poles and platforms and cranes.

Lucas stood and shaded his eyes. "Will you look at that!"

"It may have been wise to bring more men." Plessiez walked to the front of the platform just as the Lord- Architect rose to his feet.