by Mary Gentle
"Yes, messire."
Lucas looked up at the big man, meeting shrewd blue eyes. The Lord-Architect’s mouth twitched, and a smile creased its way across his features.
"I do know where there’s a room to let," Lucas said hurriedly. "I wish I didn’t know why. The girl who lives there won’t be coming back. I’ll speak to Mistress Evelian and return here. There’s one thing you ought to know."
Casaubon, complicit in the necessity of their further meeting, raised a copper-colored eyebrow. "And that is?"
"I’ve heard of Desaguliers. Most people here have. He’s a strange person to have developed a taste for gardening. Desaguliers is Captain of the King’s Guard."
A boat wallowed under vaulting brick roofs.
One oil-lantern, tied at the stern, shed illumination on a seated black Rat. His ringed right hand grasped the tiller. The other lay at rest on his stained scarlet jacket. Beside him, curled up with her spine against the warm fur of his flank, a young woman slept.
The other lantern, in the prow, reflected light back from oily water. A brown Rat drove a pole into the pitch blackness, strongly thrusting the boat forward; matched by the pale-haired man in black, poling on the boat’s other side.
Zar-bettu-zekigal stretched, eyes still shut. Her pale nostrils flared. She opened her eyes, sat up, and leaned over the side of the boat to spit.
"Pah! The stink!"
"It fails to improve," the black Rat observed gravely.
Zari grinned. One hand and dappled tail extended for balance, she stood up in the boat. She scratched at her disheveled hair. "Is it tomorrow yet, messire?"
Falke, as the sweep of the pole brought him round to face her, said: "Your friend Charnay thinks it’s night outside. I say it must be day again."
Zari leaned over the stern, peering down into clotted liquid. "We can eat fish. If we can catch them. If there are any."
"If we have no objection to poisoning ourselves." Plessiez called towards the prow: "Are we still following the lamps? Is there any other sign of occupation?"
Charnay wiped a hand over her translucent ears, and straightened up from the pole. "You mean there are people down here?"
"I see no reason why there shouldn’t be." Plessiez leaned over, searching for some trace of the salty current. He sat back, remarking: "After all, as our great poet once said, ‘there be land thieves and sea thieves, that is, land Rats and Py-Rats’ . . ."
Charnay looked blank.
"Py-rates," Plessiez enunciated clearly. "Pirates. Pi . . . Charnay, education is wasted on you."
"You’re probably right, messire," she said humbly. "I think it’s getting lighter up ahead, messire."
"Where?"
"Ei! It is!" Zari scrambled over the planks, dipping a hand to catch the wildly rocking side of the boat, and flung herself down on her knees in the prow. Leaning out over the stinking water, she stared ahead.
"Falke–come here Is that light? There?"
The black-clad man squatted down, following her gaze; shading his dilated eyes from the oil-lamps. He stood up. Charnay took her wooden pole and drove it into the mud simultaneously with his. The boat began to wallow forward.
Zari stuffed one sleeve of her greatcoat across her mouth and nose. She knelt up in the prow, intense gaze fixed on reflections in black water.
"Ei, shit!"
Light blazed. Zari fell back against Charnay. The brown Rat cursed. Eyes watering in an actinic glare, she took in one image of a vast brick cavern, quays on three sides ahead, tunnel-entrances; all weltering in sludge and niter, and people: crowds of men and women.
With a noise like hail on corrugated iron, a metal-mesh net winched up out of the canal behind the boat. It rose rapidly, blocking the only exit.
"Shit!" Zar-bettu-zekigal pitched forward as the boat rammed, head-first over the side on to the quay.
Feet rushed towards her. A hand thrust her down. The torn-silk sound of a rapier drawn from its scabbard sounded above her. She sat up. Falke leaped for the dock. He swung the iron-tipped boathook up two-handed in a broadsword grip.
Tatterdemalion men and women ran down the quay, yelling. She saw ragged banners, raised sticks, swords; a woman screaming, a man leaping to avoid fallen rubble, and the white blaze of light began to fade. Yellow torchlight leaped.
"Stop—"
Zari ignored the voice, pushing herself upright, brick cobbles hard first under her knees and then under her bare feet.
"Guard yourself, messire!"
Charnay thrust coolly, sending her rapier into the shoulder of a man in ragged blue. Her brown fur shone in the torchlight. Bright-eyed, showing yellow teeth in a grin, she vaulted the quay steps and drove a group of men down the dock.
"Stop—"
Falke’s iron-hooked staff cracked down on the cobbles. Zari swung round. The boat drifted, empty, three paces out into filthy water. The boathook darted out, struck: a woman’s face twisted in pain and a sword hit the ground.
"Messire?"
Zari fell forward. Something splashed into the canal behind her. A tall man in green met her eyes, grinned, swung up an axe into a two-handed grip. She crouched, snapping her left hand and tail, circling left, watching his stubbled face for distraction; scooped up a stone righthanded and skimmed it.
The man dropped the axe and clapped both hands to his face. Blood blossomed from his eye.
Her heel caught the shallow step leading up from the quay. She sat down abruptly. Plessiez shouted. The black Rat’s rapier darted, his left arm wrapped in the scarlet cloak, feinting; he backed up against the edge of the quay, driven by three or four men.
"Stop!"
Yellow torches wavered.
Zar-bettu-zekigal put both hands over her mouth, muffling her suddenly audible breathing.
Slowly, eyes on the tattered men and women, she got to her feet. The sump (one canal and six tunnels opening into this great chamber) breathed a fetid quiet.
Heaps of black ash along the quays marked where flares had burned out. Men and women stood around the canal-end, tar-burning torches raised, the light falling on to black brick vaults, on to oily water and the metal net swaying from its winches. Most of the crowds carried swords, staves, banners. She let her eyes travel across them, tense, searching for whoever had shouted.
"Stop fighting and we won’t kill you," a man in red called from a tunnel-entrance. Five or six voices immediately added, "Yet," and there was a rumble of amusement.
Zar-bettu-zekigal, slowly, hands held out from her sides, walked down to rejoin Falke and the Rats at the canal’s edge. The white-haired man rested on his staff, free hand shading his eyes that ran with tears in the torch-glare. Plessiez muttered to Charnay. She reluctantly lowered her rapier-point to the ground. The crowd grew minute by minute, pressing closer around them.
Abruptly banners at the back of the crowd jerked and moved aside. The tattered men and women fell back as a litter came through the crowd, carried by six men in ragged black clothing and remnants of unpolished armor.
"They’re all human," Zari muttered, not taking her eyes off the approaching litter.
"They are all pale," the black Rat said, his tone thoughtful, although his chest heaved under the sword- harness. "I think it some time since any one of them saw sunlight. Honor to you!"
The partly-armored men set down the litter on its stilts, jolting on the brick quay. It was large, swathed in water-stained red curtains; and from an elongated corner-pole a banner painted with a sun hung in rags.
Plessiez bowed elegantly to the invisible occupant.
Zari stepped back as two men pushed forward with a carved oak chair. They set it down on the cobbles. A woman in armor shoved herself out of the litter, inch by strenuous inch, thumping the scabbard of a long sword down on the quayside, and using it as a support.
"Next person who doesn’t stop I’ll gut. That goes for you, Clovis. What have you found me?"
She stumbled in three great strides to the chair, sitting with a clash of
armor, and waved away all offer of assistance. As she slumped back into the cushioned chair, two men came to kneel at either side of it.
The thin blond man at her left said: "They came so close that we had to decoy them in."
Her torn shirt and breeches were dark red, blood-red in torchlight; and vambraces gleamed on her forearms, greaves on her calves. Plate armor covered her torso; and she reached up and pulled off a homed laminated helmet, and shook her head, short greasy hair flying.
"Find out how they got here and then kill them."
Zar-bettu-zekigal, hands in pockets, swirled the skirts of her greatcoat about her, and stepped forward. Eyes glowing, she stood and gazed–at the woman’s dirty sardonic face: the high cheek-bones, nondescript hair, the beginnings of crow’s-feet.
Speaking over Plessiez’s protest, and the armored woman’s next words, the Katayan said: "Who are you?"
Silence. Two women with raised swords hesitated, looking to the armored woman, whose slanting red- brown eyes narrowed. A frown indented lines on her forehead. She hitched herself forward in the chair, and Zar-bettu-zekigal smiled, dazed, dizzy with the fear that never touched her in the preceding quarter-hour.
"Who-are-you yourself," the woman said laconically. "I’m called The Hyena. I rule the human Imperial dynasty–what there is left of it."
Dust rose up, yellowing the sills and steps all down Carver Street. Two carts rumbled past men and women (some in satin, some in rough cloth) who swore at the coating of flour-thin dust. Casaubon leaned back mountainously in the first carriage-seat and beamed at Lucas.
"Comfortable lodgings, I hope . . . ?"
Three harsh clangs drowned out his voice. Clock-mill struck the hour, its gold-and-blue dials revolving a notch; sun, moon and stars shifting to new configurations.
A great-maned lion rolled jerkily round on one set of rails, gilt flashing in the afternoon sun; passing a sleek silver hound on the other rail. From somewhere deep in the tower’s mechanism, a mechanical vox animalis roared.
Casaubon sat up. "An early Salomon de Caus—"
Lucas, muscles aching from getting from the palace to Carver Street and back again (by way of the Embassy Compound) to pick up the Lord-Architect, wiped his forehead and loosened the lacing of his thin shirt.
"Mistress Evelian should have the rooms cleared out," he announced.
Casaubon winced as the carriage jolted to a halt. One of the drivers dismounted to see to the oxen, the second stepped down to put blocks under the wheels. Lucas beckoned to one of the men.
"This load goes up to the first floor–through the street-door, there." He slid down to the street, and glanced back up at the fat man. "The person I mentioned, the White Crow . . . may not necessarily want to see you."
Casaubon scratched at his crotch with plump fingers, still gazing up at the great dial of Clock-mill.
"Who knows?"
"Well . . . I’ll make inquiries first."
He left the big man gazing up at the clock, while the crates and chests and boxes were dumped on the cobbles beside him. The passage into the courtyard felt cool after the sun’s heat, and he came out of the shadow blinking at the light beyond.
White sun warmed the wood-friezes: skulls, shovels and bones. He began to walk across to the far steps, towards the White Crow’s rooms. Out of the tail of his eye, he caught a glint of red under the trees.
"Have . . . ?"
Lucas’s voice dried up. A small square of brown grass under the cherry trees was the courtyard’s only garden. Cinnamon-red hair tangled the sun in spidersilk fineness. The woman rested her head on her bare arms, gold lashes closed; and her white almost-freckled back and hips and thighs shone in the dappled shade. Her feet were a little apart, the cleft of her buttocks shadowed.
"Mmhhrm?"
The White Crow rolled lazily on to her back, one hand reaching for the spectacles that lay beside her, on the open pages of a hand-written grimoire. As she turned on to her back, Lucas saw her flattened breasts stippled with the imprint of grass, her dark aureoles, and the curled red-gold of her pubic hair. She pushed the spectacles on to her nose and raised her head without lifting her shoulders, momentarily double-chinned.
"You’re not Mistress Evelian."
"No." Lucas shut his mouth on a croak.
Without any haste, the White Crow began to feel about for her cotton shirt, after some moments tugging it down from a cherry-branch and sliding the sun-warm fabric over her shoulders.
"Who were you looking for?" She eased her hips up to pull on thin cotton knee-breeches.
Her tawny eyes met his, and Lucas blushed sweaty red. He glanced up at the black-and-white half-timbered frontages and the blue sky beyond; and then couldn’t help but drop his gaze back to her. The White Crow knelt up, tucking her shirt into her knee-breeches.
"I hear we have a new tenant. Know anything about that?"
"Very little." He forced self-possession. "And it isn’t for want of looking in my uncle’s confidential files, either. Have you ever heard of something called the Invisible College?"
The cinnamon-haired woman froze, one hand at her breeches waistband: her lips parted. Simultaneously Lucas heard Casaubon’s heavy tread in the passage.
"I haven’t said anything about you," Lucas added hurriedly.
Casaubon stepped out into the sunlight. It glinted off his greasy copper hair, showed every stain and sweat-mark on his linen and satin coat.
Lucas turned back to the White Crow, one reassuring hand held out. "He—"
"Valentine!"
Lucas spun round, deafened by the stentorian bellow.
The big man crossed the courtyard in half a dozen rapid strides, the cobbles shaking to his tread. The skirts of his pink coat flew wide. His shirt had fallen open, copper hairs glinting across the fleshy bulk of his chest; one silk stocking hung out of its garter. A great beam spread across his face.
"Valentine!" he cried happily.
The woman stood frozen, white-faced. His massive arms went forward, his hands seized her under the ribs; he grunted with joy and swung her up, lifting her, tossing her up as if she were a small child. In a flurry of hair and shirt-tail and flailing arms, she soared skyward, six or seven feet above the cobbles–fell back and was swept into a massive hug, bare feet never brushing the ground.
"Valentine!"
"Put me down!"
Lucas snapped out of his astonishment and strode forward. "Put her down–you heard her!"
Casaubon’s grip loosened. The woman slid down, tiptoe on the cobbles; and he flung his arms round her again, pressing her nose into his sternum, grinning generously, laughing with unbelief. Looking down over the mountainous chins and the swell of his belly, he gripped her chin in his hand and bent down and kissed her, smackingly enthusiastic.
"Will you"–she elbowed room, and punched him smartly in the stomach–"put me down?"
"It’s you." Amazement blazoned itself across his face. "It’s wonderful!"
"Casaubon!"
He loosened his embrace, still smiling happily. Lucas halted. Poised on the edge of violence or violent embarrassment, he looked to the White Crow for help.
She put tumbled red hair back from her face with hands that shook. Frowning disbelief, she shook her head, eyes for no one but the big man; and suddenly clenched her fists and rested them against her lips, still staring at him.
Lucas, bewildered, said: "But this is the White Crow . . ."
Casaubon’s china-blue eyes filled with water. Tears overflowed, runneling the dirt down his fat cheeks. He laughed, shook his head, laughed again.
"This is Master-Captain Valentine. This is a Scholar- Soldier, Valentine of the Invisible College."
"Not any more!"
As if suddenly aware that she still stood within his embrace, the woman stepped back. A bare heel skidded on the dry grass; she caught her balance, one protesting hand stretched out against the fat man’s movement to help.
"Don’t!"
Casaubon clapp
ed vast hands together, and then spread his arms expansively. "Wonderful!"
Lucas reached out and closed, first, his right and (since it could not enclose the girth) then his left hand around Casaubon’s wrist. Tensing muscles that had heaved the Lord-Architect’s crates from an ox-cart, digging in his heels, he pulled the big man around in his tracks.
"Leave her alone."
Casaubon blinked, blue eyes bright in his big, faintly freckled face. He scratched at his copper hair with his free hand, and looked down at Lucas; and suddenly swung his other hand around and clapped him on the shoulder, knocking Lucas six inches sideways.
"I’ve found her," he beamed. "It’s wonderful."
"She doesn’t think so."
Lucas felt muscles tense under his hands, in the hard fat that sleeved the man’s wrist. He gripped more tightly, but the girth forced his fingers open. Lucas stepped back, seeing the red mark of his grip on the man’s fair skin.
Casaubon, with no apparent resentment, remarked: "Wonderful!"
"Will you stop saying that?"
Blind exasperation edged the White Crow’s tone. Her arms fell to her sides, hands still clenched into fists. The sun through the leaves stippled her face with gold and shadow, and as she stepped out into the exposed courtyard her hair and linen blazed copper and white.
"I don’t want you here!"
A stale scent of cooking wafted across the courtyard. Lucas heard Evelian’s voice, singing, from one of the open casements; and panic stabbed through him, thinking that she or anyone might come outside.
" ‘Valentine’ isn’t a name on your file," he protested.
The woman squinted at him briefly, lines webbing the corners of her eyes; her gaze hard now with a professional calculation. Lucas’s heart thudded into his throat, and without any pride he said: "Don’t."
She took another step forward, glaring up at the fat man.
"Get out!"
Casaubon still smiled. He shrugged, massive weights of flesh shifting with his shoulders.
"I’ll go."