Rats And Gargoyles - Rats and Gargoyles Part 57
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Rats and Gargoyles Part 57

"Over there. In white."

"Her? I thought she'd be . . . younger."

Lucas moved out of his sister's embrace, rubbing the back of his sweating neck. He looked from Gerima to the Scholar-Soldier further down the terrace. "I don't care if you don't like her!"

Gerima smiled at the red-haired woman.

"Like her? But I met her while I was looking for you; she's the magus who was in the Fane! But that's wonderful! When you (gods forbid) inherit the throne from father, what better to have as a queen than a woman with magia?"

She put her short curls back from her face, features sharpening with concentration.

"If you're serious, we can have the wedding later this year. Father will take you out of the university. You ought to give him at least one grandchild before you leave White Mountains again. Don't you think? And she could teach at the University of the White Mountain while we train her in statecraft . . . What's the matter, Lu?"

The Prince of Candover pulled down his knotted handkerchief and wiped his forehead, his head turning uneasily between his sister and the White Crow. He opened and shut his mouth several times.

"Maybe," he said at last, "we should think about this."

The Princess Gerima of Candover, passing by the Master-Physician White Crow, concluded their earlier and longer conversation with a short wink.

Mid-afternoon drowses; long, lingering, with somewhere the scent of fresh-cut grass.

"It's a climate of miracles now . . ." Theodoret touched a blunt finger to the White Crow's temple, and the chick-soft down growing there. "All these people are thinking that tonight is for rejoicing and tomorrow for putting the world back together. But it'll be a different world when they do."

"They know it."

The White Crow reached down and scratched in the ruff of a silver timber wolf. The wolf scrabbled in the soft earth at the edge of the flower-bed, nosing a bone to the surface, and trotted off with it in its jaws.

"Scholar-Soldier, are you waiting for the moon?" Bishop Theodoret asked. "To see what might be written on it?"

She opened her mouth to reply and stayed silent.

The Decan of Noon and Midnight, afternoon sunlight soft on sandstone and gold flanks, paced between flowerbeds and fountains. The tusked and fanged muzzle lowered, moving in the ancient smile. Where He passed, people stopped their talk and knelt on the cool grass. The White Crow smelt stone-dust, and the distant burning of candles.

Theodoret's face creased into a smile. "The man will catch up with you sooner or later. Heart of the Woods! Talk to him, lady, and then I can stop avoiding him in your company. I have somewhat of a desire to speak with your architect-magus."

A gargoyle-daemon whirled leathery wings, roosting on a balustrade; cawing something softly to a man who stood beside her and did not kneel to the Decan of Noon and Midnight. One Rat in red satin folded his arms insouciantly and stared at the sky. A little distance away, young Entered Apprentices continued their dancing.

The Spagyrus touched His lips to the fountain, raised His head, passing on. The White Crow scooped her hand in and tasted, lips numbed with heavy red wine.

"Who knows what may happen?" She grinned. "My lord Bishop, I think we should have another drink, before they dispose of the lot."

"Not much chance of that, I would have thought."

The White Crow gazed down into the gardens, at men and women and Rats. "Don't bet on it. Some of this lot could out-drink a miracle, no problem."

In a further garden, Captain-General Desaguliers swept his plush cloak back with ringed fingers. Medal-ribbons fluttered. The white ostrich plumes in his silver headband curved up in a fan, one dipping to brush his lean jaw, almost blinding him. The jeweled harness of his sword clanked as he walked.

"Well, now . . ."

He gestured expansively. Four Cadets walked with him, each similarly overdressed; the tallesta sleek black Ratstumbling over the hem of her cloak from time to time. Desaguliers belched. He leaned heavily on the shoulder of the gargoyle-daemon.

"I think we should serioushly talk . . ."

"I agree." The harsh caw, muted now, didn't carry further than this corner of the garden. The elderly acolyte-daemon waddled on clawed feet across the grass, her shabby wings pulled cloak-like around her shoulders. Her claw-tipped fingers clasped each other across her flaking breast as if she prayed. "Messire Captain-General, I offer no apologies for what we were before-"

"No, no. 'Course not. Victims of circumstances. Superior orders," he said owlishly, bead-black eyes widening. "Had we been otherwise then . . ."

Desaguliers pushed himself upright, halting the gargoyle-daemon with a pressure of his furred arm. He laid his snout across her shoulder, crumpling his ear against her beaked head, and pointed with his free hand.

"See them? Tha's his Majesty the King. Just needs a little looking after, is all. Going to call a meeting, me and the Lords Magi 'n' others, form a Senate." He stopped, puzzled. "That isn't what I was going to tell you. What was I going to tell you?"

The gargoyle-daemon's body shifted under his arm as he felt her draw in a long breath.

"What was it, messire?"

In a rather less slurred tone than he had been affecting for the past few minutes, the Captain-General put his mouth so close to her that his incisors rubbed her small round ear, and said: "Lot to worry us now. These rabble peasants will want things their own way. 'N' your people, too. Got to make sure we can come to arrangements. Sensible arrangements."

"Exempli gratia?"

The black Rat's whiskers quivered. He blinked. "Oh. Yes. For example, wethe new Senatewe keep his Majesty in order. And you, you tell us about your masters."

"Who are no longer our masters." The gargoyle head turned to follow the passing of a Decan's shadow in the sunlit air. Desaguliers prodded the air with one dark finger.

" 'Zactly! We got the King sewn up. You keep us posted on the Divine Ones. Well, then! Elbow-room for everybody. Then we'll set about the peasants."

He snatched a goblet of wine from the tall black Rat. The gargoyle-daemon's clawed wing unfurled, and her fingers reached out and gripped the metal, indenting it. Desaguliers stood, arms hanging at his sides, amazement on his lean scarred face. The daemon, wine spilling, none the less got most of the goblet's contents into her beaked mouth.

"Urp!" She scratched at her flaking brown-furred dugs. "Outwit the Divine Ones? While they dwell amongst us, out in the world? Well . . . urp . . . who knows? We might do it at that . . ."

The cover of the sewer stood open.

Zar-bettu-zekigal picked the petals from an ox-eye daisy and let them fall, one at a time, into the darkness.

She listens: hears no yawping laughter, that hyena- hysteria quieted now. Hears no rush of waves upon hot and mist-drenched shores. No immensurate wings.

Now she is still, only the dappled-furred tail twitching; straining to hear in the foundations of the world the Serpent-headed Night Council. Below her bare feet is silence and a hot pregnant blackness.

For lack of a grave to put it on, she throws the ravaged flower down into the dark.

Lights hovered in the air, globes of pale fire, unsupported. They dotted the gardens, transparent against the long evening light. Now that the sun sat on the aust-westerly horizon, their pastel colors began to glow.

The lights clung to the pillars and dome of the open rotunda, shining down on a checkerboard floor of ash and ebony. Couples moved in wild measures, coats and robes rustling; music chimed.

Surrounded by questioners, the White Crow stood at the edge of the open-air dance-floor. With one hand she gestured, answering a tall brown Rat's question; the other held a spray of cherries that she bit into, nodding and listening.

Zar-bettu-zekigal elbowed through the crowd until she got to the Lord-Architect.

"Ei, you!"

The Lord-Architect turned on one two-inch heel, the satin skirts of his frock-coat swirling. Dirty silk breeches strained over his thighs and belly, failing to button; and leaving some inches' gap between themselves and a shirt black with machine-oil.

"There you are!" A delighted smile spread over his face. He took her hand in gloved fingers and bowed over it. His copper-red hair had been scraped together at the back, and a tiny tuft tied with a black velvet string. "Honor to you, Kings' Memory."

"Care to dance?" she said.

"My honor, lady."

Zar-bettu-zekigal touched the fingers of her left hand to the Lord-Architect's arm, resting them on the twelve-inch turned-back cuffs silver braid; rested her other hand in his; hooked her tufted tail over her elbow, and stepped out into a waltz. Someone called her name, and she grinned, hearing a scatter of applause.

"I heard about the Chemicall Labyrinth. So that's what those machines were for! Damn, I wish I'd seen it!"

The Lord-Architect lumbered gracefully into a turn, narrowly missing a Rat in mauve silk. "I adapted the little priest's design."

"If not for him and his Majesty, there wouldn't have been a plague. But then, if not for him, it wouldn't have stopped. I wish he could have been here."

They swung close to a pillar. Looming by it, some eight feet high and with night wings furled about his shoulders, an acolyte-daemon gazed with yellow eyes at the dancing. She smelt his cold breath.

"H'm. A little uncouth, perhaps," the Lord-Architect admitted. "But, then, they'll have had little experience of this sort of thing . . ."

Zar-bettu-zekigal nodded to Elish-hakku-zekigal in the crowd as she danced by; and lifted her head again to the Lord-Architect.

"I've been talking to your lady. She's not bad, y'know? I should have got to know her while she was in Carver Street. Don't suppose I'll get the chance now."

China-blue eyes looked down at her.

"You suspect her on her way to Candover?"

"Oh, what! Don't you?"

The gentle pressure of his fingers steered her towards the edge of the dance-floor. Sunset put the long shadows of the pillars across the dancers.

"I'm going to take steps," he announced.

Somewhere between affection and cynicism, Zar-bettu-zekigal demanded: "What steps?"

The fat man looked puzzled for a few seconds. "Perhaps . . . Yes! Perhaps I should finish my poem?"

"What p-?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal stared after him as he walked away.

"Poem?"

A hand tapped her shoulder. She glanced back. Resplendent in sky-blue and iris-yellow satin, Mistress Evelian of Carver Street smiled down at her.

"You left owing me rent-Oof!"

"I'm so glad to see you!" Zar-bettu-zekigal hugged the woman harder.

Evelian settled her puffed ribbon-decorated sleeves, tugging her bodice down over her full breasts.

"And I you. Zaribeth, don't be heartsore for too long." She flicked the Katayan girl's cheek with her finger. "I want to see you happy."

Away from the dancing-floor, the Lord-Architect Casaubon felt absently through the outside left-hand pocket of his stained blue satin frock-coat, then the right-hand pocket; and finally abandoned them both and investigated an inside breast-pocket. From this, he brought out a large speckled goose-egg.

"For a member of the Invisible College," he remarked, "you seem to be remarkably visible."

The White Crow, sitting at the end of the abandoned banqueting tablet, shrugged. "I wasn't planning on staying here anyway."

He tapped the goose-egg against the marble buttock of a putti on the nearest balustrade, a delicate and economical movement that knocked off the top of the shell. Egg-white ran down his plump fingers.

"I'll cheer you up . . ."

He lifted the shell to his mouth, tipping it as he threw his head back. She watched in awed fascination as his throat moved, swallowing.

"I have a present for you!"

He belched, wiping his mouth with the back of his fat hand, and dropped the now-empty egg-shell. He looked down over his swelling chest and belly at the rose-haired woman.

The White Crow folded her arms and glared up at him in exasperation.

"A present. OK, I'll buy it. What present?"

The Lord-Architect, satisfied, leaned back against the marble balustrade. She heard a quiet but distinct pop. The Lord-Architect heaved himself off the stone, and put his hand into the satin coat's tail-pocket.

He brought out a handful of crushed shell, his fingers dripping egg-white and egg-yolk.

"Knew I had another one somewhere," he observed, picking off the shell and licking his fingers. "Now . . ."

The White Crow put her head in her hands and groaned.

With his moderately clean hand, the Lord-Architect Casaubon reached into his buttoned-back cuff and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

"It's a poem. For you. I wrote it."

He swept the skirts of his coat back in a magnificent formal bow, beamed vaguely, and wandered away down the terrace. The White Crow rested the folded sweat-stained paper against her lips. Dark red brows dipped.

"You don't fool me . . ."

She stared at his departing back.

". . . not for a minute."

The carved limestone balustrade pressed hard against her hipbones. Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned over, shading her eyes against the level sun. Day's heat beat up from the stone. She shrugged the black greatcoat more firmly about her thin shoulders, wrapping it across her chest.