Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  Casaubon strode across the yard, coat flying, one massive hand gripping the stem of a lace parasol.

  His head was high. He did not look up. As he disappeared into the passage Lucas heard his voice rumble, baritone, and the noise of a dropped crate.

  "Oh!" The White Crow’s arms clamped tight across her ribs. Mouth a rictus, she leaned against the casement and wheezed for air. Lucas opened his mouth to speak and caught the infectious laughter.

  "Shit!" he said. "Oh, shit, what a sight!"

  The woman rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand. Storm-light gave a warmth to her fine skin, her dark-red curls; and from the open neck of her shirt Lucas breathed a scent of sun and grass and flesh.

  He sat down on the opposite side of the sill. Laughter slowly stopped shaking her.

  Finding words from nowhere, he explained: "I thought that you were on your own in the city."

  "So did I."

  Relaxed, her mouth curved; and the terrible warmth of her eyes hit him in the pit of his stomach.

  "I am," she contradicted herself softly. "Sometimes I look ahead, and I can see the days, each one a little cell. He knows me, you see. The clown. He thinks that if he entertains me I’ll . . ."

  Lucas picked up her hand and rubbed it against his face, feeling the warmth; the calluses on her middle finger.

  "No." The woman shook her head. "The easiest thing in the world to say to you: stay. Don’t listen to la belle dame sans merci. I won’t listen to her, either."

  Lucas marveled.

  "I didn’t think you knew I was here at all."

  She took her hand back, slid one cotton sleeve of her shirt to show the, curve of her shoulder, and winked at him. Her breath was soft with wine.

  "Ah, but now it wouldn’t be because of you."

  "Valentine—"

  "No. Not ‘Valentine’," she said. "Not ever again."

  Not ever again beat in his pulse with the wine. Thinking how a Lord-Architect would not be here for ever, and how a student might be three years in the city, Lucas grinned crookedly.

  Wood creaked with the returning tread of the fat man. The banisters protested his grip. The Lord-Architect and Knight of the Rose Castle stooped, still cracking his head lightly on the door-lintel.

  "There was too little space," he confided sunnily. "I told the porters to store certain items in another room. The Lady Evelian suggested yours, young Lucas. I thought that particularly apt, since you’re my page."

  The light is green, the color of sunlight through hazel leaves in April. It shines on the frost-cracked masonry of a tiny cell. It shines on a thick rusty iron spike.

  The air curls with vapors.

  His hair is the same, gentle silver-white waves, and it is an untidy thatch above the same creased labile features. Vulnerably swimming eyes blink, would turn away if they could. Instead the mouth stumbles to form words, responds to insistent questioning.

  The iron spike is slippery, clotted with blood, plasma, mucus; stringy with sinews. Knobbed bone shows a gleaming red and white.

  His head ends raggedly at the stump of a neck . . . torn muscle, wrenched vertebrae, split skin upon which age- freckles are still brown. His head is impaled on the iron spike.

  Time has ceased in the stone labyrinths of the Fane. He is lost in a moment of butchery, endlessly prolonged; still balancing his endurance against the endless, endless demands for his knowledge.

  The gray eyes brim with tears: not because of the moment’s pain, but because the Bishop of the Trees has discovered that the tortures of the gods are infinitely diverse, and eternally prolonged.

  "I am not your page!"

  The White Crow rolled wine in her mouth, the numbness of alcohol pricking her tongue. The muscular young man stiffened, spine straightening; his black brows scowled: turning in a second from relaxed adult to tightly buttoned boy.

  "He’s a prince." She sighed, the last vestiges of humorous teasing falling away from her. "Princes can’t be servants, you see."

  Casaubon placed one hand on his massive chest, and inclined his head in a bow to Lucas of Candover. His heel struck the door, and knocked it to.

  "Page of Scepters," he said.

  She walked to the reversed-mirror table, concentrating on the lifting and pouring of a bottle. Cool damp storm-air rustled the star-charts pinned to the walls.

  "I know. Yes. Lucas is concerned in this somehow," the White Crow admitted, clunking the bottle of straw- colored wine down on the wood.

  The Prince sank into the cleared chair at the table, his dark eyes not leaving her face.

  "So."

  Casaubon grabbed a cold chicken-wing from the table as he passed, eased himself down into the creaking armchair, bit into the oily flesh and, in an indistinct but inviting tone, echoed: "So?"

  The White Crow walked to the street-side window. She leaned up against the jamb, banging her shoulder, and pushed the casement open. Rain spattered her face.

  A yellow storm-light colored the streets, and the roofs of the houses beyond. Past them, on the swell of the hill and horizon, running in a south-austerly direction to mark the quarter’s boundary, a toothed line of obelisks and pyramids made a stark skyline.

  Chitinous wings whir, too distant for human hearing. Like distant fly-swarms, acolytes darken the air over the distant stone.

  She tasted rain on her lips.

  "I know exactly what this is about."

  She heard the armchair creak, knew Casaubon’s vast bulk must have shifted. The thinning rain glistened on the tiled roofs opposite; and an odor of straw and oil drifted up to her. She fisted one hand and stretched that arm, feeling the wine unlock the muscles.

  "Here at the heart of the world . . . it’s lazy, don’t you feel it?"

  Cloud-cover tore in the high wind. She tasted in her mouth how the skyline runs true on Evelian’s side of the building: another black chain of courts and wings and outyards, the Fane cutting across aust-easterly to divide the Nineteenth District from the Thirtieth and Dockland.

  From behind her Lucas’s voice volunteered, "We’re souls fixed on the Great Wheel."

  The White Crow spluttered, wiped her hand across her nose and mouth, and turned around and sat down on the damp window-sill in one unwise movement.

  "Now gods defend us from the orthodox!" She shook her head. The room shifted. She set her empty glass down clumsily. "Next you’ll think you have to tell me that everything that is is alive, and held in the constant creation of the Thirty-Six. From stones, bees and roses, to worlds that in their orbits move, singing with their own life that moves them . . ."

  "Unquote." The Lord-Architect belched. He settled back down into the armchair. "Valentine, you’ve grown regrettably long-winded since we last met."

  The White Crow stood. Anger moved her precisely across the room, avoiding piles of books and the table.

  "Four times." Her index finger stabbed at him. "The first time it happened was the first year I came here. It’s why I stayed. Then another, three years later. And then two in this year alone: one in winter and one a month ago. Now, don’t tell me the College can’t read the stars as clearly as I can. Don’t tell me that’s not why you’re here!"

  Casaubon watched her with guileless china-blue eyes.

  "What happened four times?" Prince Lucas asked.

  She swayed, and reached out to steady herself on empty air. The stale smell of an eaten meal roiled her stomach.

  "I’ll show you."

  The White Crow walked unsteadily to where a chest stood against the wall. Leather-bound volumes weighed down the lid. A chair scraped: Lucas was beside her, suddenly, lifting the books and setting them down on the carpet. The smell of leather and dust made her nostrils flare.

  She pushed up the lid of the chest, and took out, first, an old backpack, the straps cracked from lack of polish; and then a basket-hilted rapier, oiled and wrapped in silk.

  "Scholar-Soldier!"

  The White Crow ignored the Lord-Architect’s muttered excl
amation. She let herself grip the hilt, lifting the sword; and the memory of that action in her flesh made her eyes sting.

  "You’ll make me maudlin," she snarled. "Here, look at these."

  She flung the rolled-up star-charts at Casaubon. Lucas moved to stare over the Lord-Architect’s shoulder as he unrolled them. The White Crow rose cautiously to her feet, and sat down in Lucas’s vacated chair.

  "The Invisible College must know," she said, "that The Spagyrus practices Alchemy. Yes? Up there, in the heart of the Fane. While we turn with the Great Wheel, and return on this earth, he practices sublimation and distillation and exaltation, to discover the elixir of life– or so I thought, until this year."

  "Mmmhmrm." The Lord-Architect swiveled a star- chart with surprisingly precise movements.

  "And since there’s no eternal life but the life of the soul, that would have been harmless enough. He is a Decan, eternal, divine. He’d be playing. You see?"

  "Oh, yes. Certainly."

  She was aware of the dark-browed young man frowning. The White Crow leaned back, struts of the chair hard against her spine. A half-inch of wine remained in the bottle. She held the bottle, tilting it gently from one side to the other.

  "Oh, Lucas . . ."

  His body brushed her hair as he passed. "Tell me."

  "There is a thing that men search for."

  She spoke into the rain-scented air, not attempting to watch him as he paced about the room.

  "Although the Decans found it long since; or, being gods, never needed it. I mean the Philosopher’s Stone: that same elixir that, being perfect in itself, cannot help but induce perfection in all that it touches."

  The after-effect of wine dizzied her, and she laughed softly.

  "Including the human body. And a perfect body couldn’t be corrupted. Couldn’t die. Hence it’s sometimes called the elixir of eternal life."

  The parchment star-charts crumpled in Casaubon’s fist as the Lord-Architect heaved himself out of his chair. He knelt down beside the chest. The thud vibrated through the floorboards. He lifted the leather satchel and the sword, laying them carefully in the trunk.

  "You can still clean a sword," he said, "but I fear for your scholarship, if that’s how you interpret these charts."

  She reached across to ruffle his orange-copper hair, and feel the massive shoulder straining under the linen shirt.

  "No. No. I was just explaining to Lucas that . . ."

  Light shifted from storm-cloud yellow to sun: the evening clearing. A cold air touched her. She sat at table, among the remains of the meal, still tilting the wine- bottle. A deep sky shone through the street-window. She looked at the black-obelisked horizon.

  "Lazy, this heart of the world . . . I came here when I thought I would do nothing but listen to it beat, hear the Great Wheel turn; forget I had ever studied magia, wait to die and be reborn."

  She thumbed the cork out of the bottle with a hollow sound. The glass was cold at her lips.

  "And then, a month after I got here, I saw it. Written in the sky, clear for anyone who could read the stars. A fracture of nature. I didn’t know what it was; I hardly believed I saw it. So–ah."

  She laughed deprecatingly, and waved both hands as if she swatted something away from her; meeting Casaubon’s gaze as he got to his feet.

  "So just what you’d expect to happen, happened. I’d thought I’d done with study. But I paid with labor for a room, and worked in kitchens and bars for what else I needed–optic glass and books mainly–and stayed here searching the De occulta philosophia, the Hieroglyphika, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Thirty Statues . . . Everything and anything. So much for Valentine’s history, hiding out in case the College should find her."

  The Lord-Architect still held one chart in his ham-hand. The most recent, she saw.

  "Four is too many to be accidental," he remarked.

  "Now, I believe that. I thought it might just be an accident, and the second time coincidence. There are god-daemons on earth here in the heart of the world– is it so surprising if miracles happen? Black miracles," she said. "Black miracles."

  Lucas, tracing a finger down the annotated line of the star-chart the Lord-Architect held, frowned in concentration.

  "It’s a death-hour, isn’t it? The heavens at the moment of somebody’s death?"

  The White Crow reached up to take the parchment and unroll it among the dishes and plates on the table. She weighed one corner down with the wine-bottle.

  "Not some body. Bodies die all the time, young Lucas. The Great Wheel turns. We’re weighed against a feather, ka-spirit and shadow-soul both; and then the Boat sails us through the Night, and back to birth."

  The last after-effects of the wine tanged melancholy on her tongue. Workaday evening light glowed in through the window.

  "It’s a chart of the heavens at a moment I’ve only seen these four times. When the Great Circle itself has been broken."

  "It’s not possible," Lucas denied.

  "It is possible. Black alchemy, and an elixir not of life but of death, true death . . . Four times the Great Circle has been broken by a death that was not merely the body’s death."

  Her callused finger touched at the alignment on paper of Arcturus, Spica, the Corona, the sphera barbarica. The constellations of animal-headed god-daemons marched across a sky of black ink on yellow parchment.

  "In this city the soul can die, too."

  Chapter Four

  "But I must keep hostages," the Hyena concluded. She turned her slanting red-brown eyes on Falke and Charnay and Zar-bettu-zekigal.

  Plessiez’s slender dark fingers moved to his neck, feeling in his black fur for the missing ankh. His piercing black eyes narrowed.

  "I need Charnay; the Lieutenant’s familiar with the plan. And the Katayan. Keep Master Builder Falke."

  The man did not stir. He sat with his back to the sewer wall, head resting down on his arms. Zari sprang up from where she sat beside him. Her dappled tail coiled around her leg, whisk-end wrapped tight about her ankle.

  "I could stay!" she volunteered.

  Plessiez hid an icy amusement. "You will come with me, Kings’ Memory, to repeat your record to his Majesty, and to the General of my Order; I will then send you back here, to tell your Memory to the Lady Hyena."

  "So long as I get to come back." Unrepentant, the Katayan grinned.

  The Hyena glanced up at Charnay. "The Lieutenant stays here. You won’t be concerned if I kill a man, even a Master Builder. If I kill a Rat, you will. She stays, with him."

  "Lieutenant Charnay—"

  The brown Rat chuckled, and hitched up her sword-belt on her furry haunches, the empty scabbard dangling. She flexed massive shoulders.

  "No problem, messire. I’ll even keep your pet human alive for you."

  "How very thoughtful," Plessiez murmured.

  His eyes moved to the crowd of ragged men and women who pressed in close now. Sun-banners and skeletons’ shadows danced on the walls, above their heads, in the flickering torchlight. The stench of unwashed flesh and old cooking made his mobile snout quiver.

  "I can give no guarantees that I will achieve your demands."

  The Hyena swung round, one fist clenched. A babble of voices echoed off the sewer-chamber’s walls.

  "Our freedom—"

  "To walk in the streets—"

  "—To carry weapons—"

  "Carry swords without being arrested, gaoled—"

  "—Defend ourselves—"

  "Trade—"

  One of the raggedly dressed men drew his sword, holding it up so that it glinted in the light; a rust-spotted epee. Two or three other men and women copied him, then another; then, awkwardly, most of the assembled crowd.

  "Freedom!"

  "Ye-ess . . ." Plessiez straightened, one slender hand at his side, head high. He gazed around at human faces. Each one’s eyes fell as he met them: subservient, angry, afraid. "I’m not impressed by third-rate histrionics."

  He turned back
to the Hyena, adding: "If only because I know how effective they are with the General of my Order, and with his Majesty the King . . . Lady, you could kill me now. You could let me work to gain you the concession of returning to the world above, carrying arms, and then do nothing of what I’ve asked."

  Her dark face glinted with humor.

  "That may happen, Plessiez. Or we may let you try to work your necromancy. Let me warn you: we go above ground secretly, and we know the city. If you don’t get the truce for us, we’ll stop you dead in your tracks."

  Sweetness made saliva run in his mouth. The stench of roses leaked down from the sewer walls, gleaming with a phantom sunlight.

  "Come here."

  As Zar-bettu-zekigal came to his side, Plessiez rested clawed fingers lightly on the shoulder of her black cotton dress.

  "Memory, witness. The Lady Hyena’s people to carry arms, to walk the streets above ground, to be free of the outstanding penalties against them as rebels and traitors."

  The Katayan nodded once.

  The woman folded her arms, metal clicking. "We do nothing until that happens. Very well. Memory, witness. Certain articles of corpse-relic necromancy to be placed at septagon points under the heart of the world, for the summoning of a pestilence . . ."

  "Which will happen before very long," Plessiez added smoothly. "I have already placed two; the rest are yours. And if no plague-symptoms appear soon, Desaguliers’ police will have words with your people, lady."

  Her slanting eyes met his. "If your Order’s magia does work, messire priest, then it’s everyone for themselves."

  The hunger on her dirty face made hackles rise down Plessiez’s spine. He abruptly turned, snapped fingers for Charnay’s attention, brushing aside humans who sought to stop him. He waved Zar-bettu-zekigal away.

  "Charnay and I are old friends. She may have messages for her family . . ."

  He caught the skepticism in the Hyena’s expression, and the last inches of his scaly tail tapped a rhythm of tension.