"It's wet!"
"So it's wet." Charnay's tail whip-cracked, flicking water-drops off with an audible spuk! "So what?"
Plessiez put his hand on the Katayan's shoulder, restraining her. "Water?"
"Oh, yes, messire." The brown Rat began cleaning dampness from her rapier.
"Where?"
Surprised, she said: "Up ahead. Not far. Falke here found it the hard way, I don't know why; there was light enough that even a Ratling needn't have fallen in-"
Plessiez shoved Zar-bettu-zekigal back. The Katayan danced from foot to bare foot, hardly bothering to avoid the shivering Falke where he huddled, dripping.
"Light? Light from what, you dim-witted idiot!" the black Rat demanded.
Charnay sheathed her cleaned rapier, adjusted the hang of her cloak and looked down at Plessiez with a puzzled expression.
"The canal has lamps," she explained.
Sun from the hard yellow sand dazzled him. Lucas sat on the lagoon wall, dealing cards on to the smooth stone surface.
White marble palaces shone under the luminous blue sky, rising up in terraces from the lagoon. Pink and blue banners hung from balustrades, from walls, from arches and domes. People on the streets made pin-pricks of bright color. The thin thump of drums came down from a procession, up on a higher street, and the brass tang of cymbals. On the promenade, several black Rats in litters stopped to talk, blocking the way. The sun glinted off the cuirasses of their bodyguards.
"Play you at Shilling-the-Trump?" a voice offered. Lucas nodded to the woman in sailor's breeches and shirt, identifying her as a transient worker, and so allowed to carry coin. She set down her kitbag and sat on the carved balustrade beside him. He dealt, businesslike now.
"You're too good," she said at last. Her yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're not a student, are you?" Lucas, lying only by implication, said deprecatingly: "Only came in on the Viper two days ago."
"I've been warned about students . . ."
The calm lagoon waters mirrored marble-white terraces and a clear sky. Gilding glinted from temple columns and dome-friezes. Far off, where the lagoon opened to the sea, masts were visible, and sailors loading ships, and merchants outside warehouses.
Here, on the flat-packed sand, immense oval shadows dappled the ground: airships tugging at mooring-ropes.
"Five shillings you owe me."
The woman paid, and Lucas watched her walk away. Barely three o'clock, a dozen other students scattered across the promenades, and already five impromptu cardsharp games since his arrival . . .
None of them the meeting she foretold me. Still, she did say the station, and the docks, as well as here.
He dealt idly: Page of Scepters, Ten of Coins, Three of Grails. A breeze whipped the pasteboard off the marble. He made a sprawling grab for the cards.
A hand the size of a ham slapped down on the stone balustrade, trapping the Page of Scepters and smearing both card and stone with heavy streaks of machine-oil.
"Here." A resonant good-natured voice.
"Of all the filthy-"
Lucas straightened up, the sun burning the back of his neck. On the sand-flats, crews were scurrying about a moored helium-airship; trolleys and small carriages scored ruts in the sand. Lucas's voice trailed off as he realized that all his view was blotted out.
The man wiped the Page of Scepters on the lapel of his pink satin coat. Black oil smeared the satin. He peered at the card with china-blue eyes, and dropped a kitbag from his other ham-sized fist. It thudded on to the sand.
"Nothing wrong with that," he remarked encouragingly, and handed the pasteboard back to Lucas.
"Just wait a damn minute-!"
"Yes?"
Cropped hair glinted the color of copper wire. As he looked down over his mountainous stomach at the seated young man, his several chins creased up into sweaty folds. He beamed. The smell of the distant surf was overlaid by oil and sweat and garlic.
Lucas opened and shut his mouth several times.
The big man moved and sat down companionably on the balustrade. The marble shook as his weight hit it. He tugged his oil-stained silk breeches up, loosened his cravat and belched; and then gazed around at the surrounding city with immense pleasure.
"Architectonic," he murmured. He scratched vigorously in his copper hair and examined his fingernails, flicking scurf away. "Wonderful. Is all the city like this?"
"Uhhrh. No."
"Pity."
The man offered a plump fat-creased hand. His sleeve was coated in some yellow substance, almost to the elbow. Wet patches darkened under his arm.
"Casaubon," he said.
Lucas managed to swallow, saliva wetting his dry mouth. Half-lost in thoughts, he muttered: "You can't possibly be . . . No!"
"I assure you, my name is Baltazar Casaubon." The big man inquired with gravity, over the noise of engines, voices and distant bells, "Who ought I to be?"
"I'm not sure. I don't know." Lucas closed his fist over the pack of cards. Badly startled, he began again. "A seer foretold a meeting for me, here . . . Somehow I hardly think that you're the person in question."
"Foretelling interests me." Casaubon dug into the capacious pockets of his full-skirted coat and brought out a handful of roasted chicken-wings. Picking what remained of the meat from the bones, he said: "I'll give you a shilling to help carry my gear, and we'll talk about it."
Lucas stood up off the balustrade. Patience exhausted, the afternoon sun fraying his temper, he said: "Oh, really! There are limits to what a prince will do!"
The big man looked down at the cards, and at the heap of small coins at Lucas's elbow. Through a fine spray of chewed chicken and spittle, he remarked: "Are there? What are they?"
Lucas stared, silenced.
"Sir?"
A thin brown-haired woman in a frock-coat walked across the sand. Behind her, silver highlights slid across an airship's bulging hull. She snapped her fingers for a porter to follow: the man staggered under the weight of a brass-bound trunk. Two other men followed, carrying a larger trunk between the two of them, their boots digging deep into the sand. The woman made a deep formal bow.
"AhParry! Here." The stentorian bellow beside him deafened Lucas.
"I've summoned a carriage, Lord-Architect. Now, are you sure that-?"
Casaubon stood. He bulked large above Lucas, easily six foot four or five inches tall. He waved a dismissive hand at the woman.
"Parry, don't fuss. Go back, as arranged. And try to keep the Senate from bankrupting me while I'm gone, won't you?"
The woman, sweating in woolen frock-coat and breeches, gave a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Lord-Architect."
One carriage rolled up, and the porters began to load it from the luggage piled up around the airship's steps. Case followed case, trunk followed trunk, until the metal-rimmed wheels sank inches deep into the sand. The precise woman snapped her fingers and beckoned another of the nearby carriages.
Casaubon strode over to supervise the loading, mopping at the rolls of fat at the back of his neck with a brownish kerchief. Two of the men struggled to raise a square chest. He motioned them aside, squatted, and straightened up with it in his grip. He heaved it up on to the cart.
"Oof! We'll need another cart. Parry, you're about to miss your ship."
The thin woman glanced over to where crews were loosening the anchor-ropes of the nearest airship.
"I'll manage," the big man forestalled her. "My friend here will call another carriage."
The woman made a hurried bow, looked as though she would say more, heard a hail from the airship, and turned and strode away. Casaubon stared after her. Ponderously regretful, he shook his head, and then turned back to Lucas.
"Won't you?"
Lucas, a step away, hesitated. He scratched at his thick springy hair, and tugged the linen shirt away from his neck. The heat of the afternoon sun cleared promenade, sand-flats and streets; litters vanishing into cool courtyards, and men and women into cafes and bars. No one now to be inveigled into a game of Shilling-the-Trump, and risk sunstroke.
He put a hand into his breeches pocket, and brought it out closed. "I can only think of one way to tell if this is a waste of time."
Lucas opened his hand. On his palm, heavy and intricate, glittering with sharp sun-sparks, lay a golden bee.
Falke shuddered as he walked through humid heat, arms tight about his body. One hand clenched, frustrated, lacking the sword that a Rat-Lord would kill him for owning. He flinched as wet petals brushed his face. Great single-petaled roses shone ebony in the gloom, each bramble and leaf and bud outlined in mirror-silver.
Their touch glided through his skin: substanceless.
"Here!" the brown Rat called from ahead.
Falke pushed sopping hair out of his eyes, staring into the sewer-tunnel. Every noisebrushwood shoved aside, a stone kicked, the sharp sound of water dripping from the brick roofthrilled through him. The reflexes of his illegal weapons-training made him twitch and start.
Stinking sweetness filled his nostrils, throat and lungs.
"Messire." The young Katayan woman appeared at his side. Her pale skin glimmered in the tunnel's gloom. His dilated vision saw her face clearly.
She shrugged the heavy greatcoat back off her shoulders and swung it up to shroud him. "You're shivering. Take it. Down here's the first time I've been warm since I came to your damn city!"
Hot humid air brushed his skin, leaving him clay-cold. He reached up, tugging the coat about his shoulders. The taste of copper lingered in his mouth.
The young woman, walking with a kick-heeled stride, plunged her hands into the pockets of her plain black dress. "I thought it would get colder, the further down we went."
The black Rat, outlined briefly at the mouth of the tunnel, stepped down to the left and vanished. Falke heard his voice, with Charnay's; and then Zar-bettu-zekigal slipped her arm under his, and steered him down two steps and out on to a sewer-quay.
The first oil-lamp, searing blue-white, hung in a niche in the tunnel wall. Above it, the ceiling soared thirty feet. Below, the brick went down in steps to the quay. Glass splinters of light pierced his eyes from the ripples. Other lamps shone, further off; gleaming on the filth- choked black quay and the massive tunnel that curved off to either side into the distance.
Oily water glistened and shifted. The Katayan woman coughed. "The stinkit's like dead fish. Like the sea." Falke's heel skidded on the wet paving. He gripped her arm.
"Too much light. I can't see." His clothes clung wetly to him, and he huddled down on the top step, the greatcoat wrapped round him, hands over his dilated eyes.
"Interesting." Plessiez's voice came clearly. "The oil has some way to burn yet. I wonder if these lamps are replaced at regular intervals?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal's voice said: "If it's tidal, we're near the sea. Nearly outside."
Falke raised his head, shading his eyes.
"No. Sea-water comes in a long way. There are hundreds of miles of sewer-system back of docklands."
The black Rat paced back, lightly alert, drawn rapier shining in the lamp-light. His scarlet jacket, unbuttoned, gave him the raffish air of a duelist; little trace of the priest now. Only Falke saw how he shied away from black and silver phantoms.
"Charnay, you go two hundred paces up the tunnel, I'll go two hundred paces the other way; then come back and report."
"Yes, messire."
The brown Rat leaped down on to the lower quay and walked off. Falke heard her humming under her breath. He looked up to meet Plessiez's puzzled expression.
"Stay here, messire, with the little one. No, Zari, you're not coming. Stay where you are."
The young woman brushed dirt from her dress with the tuft of her tail. "Of course, messire."
The black Rat padded soundlessly away. Falke watched the lithe figure merge into the wall's shadows; loping easily towards the bend in the tunnel. From the opposite direction, a loud curse was followed by the splash of some obstacle kicked into the water.
"Stay quiet!" He pushed his fist against his mouth, muffling his outburst.
Zar-bettu-zekigal flopped down on the step beside him. "If someone hears her, that's a good thing. We want to get out of here."
His laugh caught in his throat. He put both hands over his face, drew in a shaky breath; then took his hands away and clenched them, staring at his trembling fists.
Her voice came quietly. "The acolytes frightened me, too."
"It's . . . more than that. More than cowardice." He chuckled, painfully, back in his throat. "I am a coward, of course, but . . ."
The young woman's sepia eyes darkened now, with the concentration of a Memory. She put black hair behind her ears with both hands, and shifted her hip so that she sat close to him. Falke drew unadmitted comfort from the proximity.
"Only, having once seen that, you never truly cease to see it. Inside the Fane. But why here?" she asked.
Now the black Rat was out of sight, around the curve in the tunnel. Falke leaned forward to peer after Charnay, but she also was gone.
"When I made escape-routes from my hall, I only ever meant to get into the upper levels. Down here, do you know how old this is? These sewersif you go deep enough, they're part of the catacombs under the Fane."
Moisture trickled down from somewhere into the sluggish channel and, with the ripples, new stenches arose from the disturbed sewer-water. Saliva filled his mouth, prelude to nausea. He clenched his hand as if that could put one of the House of Salomon's illegal blades into it, and turned his dilated eyes on the Katayan.
"Once, six or seven years back, I was an architect on the Fane. Only a small addition to one wing, but I was proud of itthe tallest perpendicular arches yet, a hundred and eighty feet high, and flying buttresses as thin as lace . . ."
The Katayan bent forward and skimmed a stone across the quay. It struck a scorpion, which plopped into the water, threshing, and sank.
"I couldn't bear never to see it again after it was finished." He pushed his fine white hair out of his face. "How stupid . . . I was too old to be that stupid. I thought that I would conceal myself in it, as they came to take occupation, and see, and then I would know."
Words tumbled out of him now, falling into the sepia gaze of her Memory.
"All the grimoires along Magus' Row couldn't hide a human soul from them. They dragged me out into the open. And took me in, into the heart of the Fane. Where nothing human had been since it was built, millennia past."