Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  "Lieutenant, give me as many days as you can before you escape from here."

  The brown Rat matched his undertone. "I’ll stay, messire. To tell you the truth, I’d sooner duel Desaguliers’ Cadets any day of the week. These scum are amateurs. Just as likely to stab you in the back as fight . . ."

  She dropped her resonant voice a tone softer. "Give it a couple of weeks, let the plague get a grip down here, and I’ll come out in the confusion. Don’t worry, messire! I’ll do it."

  His hand closed on her brawny arm, dark against the glossy brown fur. "If it’s from you that they discover they’re not immune to this plague, I swear I’ll have you gutted at the square and chasing your own entrails round a stake!"

  She nodded, good-humored, still smiling. "Plessiez, man, give me credit for sense! I want to die as little as you do. The only way they’ll find out is when they start burying each other."

  Plessiez looked up at her. "See that’s so."

  He stepped back, adding in a louder tone: "We’ll leave you now."

  The blond man, Clovis, squinted at the woman in ragged armor. "Lady, who’ll lead him out?"

  "I will." The Hyena pointed. "Take those others and give them food."

  A man in the tatters of a satin suit jeered. Youths scrambled to follow Falke and Charnay as they were led off, scooping handfuls of ordure to throw, screeching insults. Plessiez bristled, tail cocked high.

  As she turned away, he spoke unpremeditatedly:

  "And give me back my sword."

  The armored woman beckoned, not turning to see if she was obeyed. The great silence of the sewers pressed against his ears. The substanceless brambles of roses brushed his fur.

  "No," she said. "Feel how it is to go unarmed, messire, in the presence of your enemies."

  Above, in the city, clocks strike four in the morning.

  Footsteps echoed down the main aisle of the Cathedral of the Trees.

  "You!"

  The novice sleeping on the oak altar started awake. Bright starlight showed his patched water-stained robe. He rubbed his eyes. "The cathedral’s closed."

  The brusque voice said: "We don’t close the cathedral."

  She moved into the starlight, monochrome through night-stained windows. The novice saw a black-skinned woman in her twenties. Her tree-embroidered robe had a wide belt, cinched tightly, so that she seemed an hourglass: round hips and buttocks, round shoulders and breasts. Her short hair tangled darkness in loops and curls.

  "Archdeachon Regnault, I beg your pardon!"

  He slid down from the altar, an awkward bony young man.

  "I didn’t know you were back from the Aust quarter."

  Regnault smiled briefly. "We remain a church, in despite of all they can do to us. Are you the only one here?"

  "The others are out looking for Bishop Theodoret."

  "So am I," the Archdeacon said. "The old man’s put his head in the Decan’s mouth once too often. We’ll have to do what we can to get it out."

  "You think . . . you think he’s alive, then?"

  The Archdeacon tugged at the waist of her robe. Her dark hand brushed the hawthorn spray pinned on her breast. Her fingers splayed in a Sign of the Branches.

  "Where’s your faith?" she asked.

  "Ei!"

  Feathers swooped down and flung into an upward curve. Zari crooked up an arm. Wings splayed like spread hands in front of her face. She flinched away as the bird skirred past, burring up to the unseen roof.

  "Little one?"

  "Oh, see you, it’s nothing."

  Her voice died. The black Rat stopped, and she cannoned into his elbow. Humidity had slicked his fur up into tufts. She pressed close to his side.

  A few yards ahead, the Hyena swiveled, pivoting on the scabbard she used as a crutch. "Keep moving! I told you that we’d have to cross the bridge."

  Cloud and blue vapor drifted across the stonework. Here, in older tunnels, the brickwork had given way to masonry. Zar-bettu-zekigal reached out to trail her fingers across one immense pale-blue block of Portland stone. Chill wetness took the print. A wind gusted into her face, lifting strands of black hair.

  "Messire, where are we?"

  The black Rat limped now, weary with four hours’ walking, and his tail dragged in the stone-dust. Thrown ordure marked his scarlet jacket. His dark fingers continually reached for his empty scabbard.

  "In Hell. I—" His arctic calm shattered. "What’s that?"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal scurried three steps to the Hyena’s side. She pushed past the woman in red cloth and armor, skidded, slipped to one knee, tail crooked out for balance; pointed ahead.

  "That–!"

  Great wings beat, a thirty-foot wing-span: dipping down so slowly that the up-curve of flight-feathers clearly showed at their tips. Zari fell to hands and knees. The sharp beak and amber eyes soared towards her. Gleaming black, only wing-tips and head feathered white, the condor rose on a column of air that blew in her face, scattering the white clouds and blue vapor.

  It scored the air towards her, rising, too large for the narrow tunnel. Wing-tips thirty feet apart brushed through the blue stone walls and ceiling. As the feathers passed through the substance of the stone, the stone crumbled away, falling on the downsweep into newly created void.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal craned her neck to follow as the condor soared over her head. The great bird vanished into mist. She looked down again, to see in its wake–sky.

  "Messire Plessiez!"

  She knelt up, tail tucking around her knees.

  Ahead, voids of empty air opened up. The walls and roof of the tunnel crumbled, blue stone falling into blue air.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal stared at the masonry of the floor, momentarily solid and spanning the gulf. Emptiness began to eat into it, stone melting like frost in sunlight.

  "But we’re underground," she protested.

  Slender strong fingers grasped her shoulder. She looked up to see Plessiez gazing ahead, black eyes narrowed.

  "What is this?"

  "You’re under the city," the Hyena said. "You’re under the heart of the world."

  Zar-bettu-zekigal stood, brushing dust from her black dress. She pulled the greatcoat firmly around her. The vast gulfs of air pressed in on her, swelling her skull with emptiness; until she swayed, and caught hold of the woman’s arm, steel vambrace cold under her hand.

  Miles below, a plain stretched out into blue mists. She gazed at a middle region of cloud, eyes squinting against a cold wind. The breath she took smelt of burning.

  A steel-gauntleted hand pushed Zari in the flat of her back.

  "Move, or you’ll never cross."

  Zar-bettu-zekigal stepped forward, bare feet testing the Portland stone. Chill water slicked the surface. The stone bridge diminished into distance and perspective before her. She lifted her head and saw, where vapors shifted, the ragged ends of arches and stone groynes hanging down into the void.

  "Look," she breathed.

  Masonry towers ended above her, hanging their sealed cellars down from the underside of the city into the gulf. Blended with brick, and with steel girders; and structures the shape of building-foundations. And random jammed-together masses of stone and mortar and wood. Further off, raw rock jutted down into the sky: the undersides of hills.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal strained her vision, searching the vapor.

  Between the underside of the city and the plain, a waning moon stood flat and white in a blue sky. A second half-globe hung behind it, larger and more pale. Within the larger moon’s curve, Zar-bettu-zekigal saw the fingernail-paring of a smaller satellite.

  She looked down, off the slender span of stone.

  Her stomach wrenched. Six miles below, the plain burned with visible flames. Licking orange-and-yellow fires, hearth-fire welcoming; until she made out how condors and eagles soared in the depths under the bridge.

  Plessiez’s fur brushed her shoulder. Water pearled on the Rat’s glossy black coat. The priest walked steadily beside Zar-be
ttu-zekigal, hand gripping her arm. She looked up and saw that his eyes were clamped shut.

  Behind them, the woman laughed.

  The masonry floor of the tunnel shifted, etched away piecemeal by the air. Zar-bettu-zekigal peered over the edge again as she walked, heels kicking the slick stone, and stopped.

  "How much time do we have?"

  A whisk of metal and leather sounded, yards behind. She spun round as Plessiez did. The woman leaned now on a naked sword, some yard and a half long, that spanged light from its outside curve. She rubbed a hand across her filthy face.

  "Not long," she said, "and we can’t turn back. Now let’s move."

  Clock-mill strikes four-thirty.

  Stars hieroglyphed the night sky, blotted by rain- clouds.

  A large figure trod stealthily across the dark courtyard, smelling of fresh soap. The Lord-Architect padded towards the steps in the far comer, the silken tail of his night-robe flapping in the wind.

  He rubbed thumb and middle finger softly together. Faint goldlight glimmered, died. His shoulders straightened. Invisible in the night, he smiled. No natural magic tripwires guarding the steps to Valentine’s rooms . . .

  He put one foot on the bottom step, hesitated as the wood creaked. Her window showed dark. He climbed another step, and another.

  The Lord-Architect’s foot caught a metal rim. The handle of the saucepan flew up, cracking his shin. His other foot came down firmly inside a pot and, as he stumbled, two cans rattled and clanged down the wooden steps.

  The Lord-Architect exclaimed, "Helldammit!," arms wheeling, flailing massively. Another pan clattered from stairs to cobbles.

  Upstairs, a woman rubbed cinnamon hair from her mouth with one wrist, rolling over in bed on to her stomach; eyes glued shut, smiling in her sleep.

  Lights came on in several windows round Evelian’s courtyard: flints struck, copper lamps groped for and lit; fingers burned, swearwords muttered.

  With immense dignity, and his left foot jammed tightly into an enameled chamberpot, the Lord-Architect Casaubon clanked back to his own rooms.

  * * *

  "I’ll be back!"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal clung with both hands to the iron ladder’s rails. Looking between her feet, she shouted down the narrow shaft again:

  "Don’t forget me!"

  Far below, a woman laughed.

  "Come, little one." The black Rat leaned over, standing above her where the ladder hooped over to the head of the shaft. Light shining up from the depths illuminated his snout and brilliant eyes.

  Hunger dizzied her as he reached down. Her foot slipped. She whipped her tail around the ladder, grabbed the Rat’s sword-belt, and felt her greatcoat ride up over her shoulders as Plessiez grabbed her under the arms, hauling her up on to a flat brick floor.

  Far, far below, the laugh modulated out of the sound a human voice makes: raked up into higher, yelping registers; echoed away in whoops, giggles, vixen-yawps.

  The light that shone up the shaft began to fade. Zari raised her head, peering at the surrounding dark.

  "I’ve seen places I liked better." She stepped out of the Rat’s inadvertent embrace, pushing lank hair out of her eyes.

  This shaft opened into a brick chamber some twenty by thirty feet, empty in the fading illumination. The black Rat reached up to the ceiling, eighteen inches above his head, testing each of the interlocked metal plates.

  "She was laughing at where we’ll come out," Zari guessed. "It has to be in the city still. When I came in on the ship it took five days just to sail up the estuary, and the city all around us all the way."

  Fading light showed her his face, lean and drawn with hunger, with the weariness of climbing shaft upon shaft of the endless sewers.

  "Ah!"

  One plate swung up and over, vanished with a clang!, and Plessiez sprang to hoist himself up through the now- open trapdoor. Zari danced from one foot to the other beneath.

  "What is it? What’s there? Where are we?"

  Plessiez began to laugh.

  Zari leaped up, hands gripping the sides of the trap; got one bare foot up for leverage. She heard him laugh again, a loud uninhibited guffaw: part awe, part admiration. Metal clanged. Rapid footsteps went back and forth.

  "What?" Huffing, she pulled herself up through the trapdoor.

  "But this is wonderful!"

  Plessiez’s expression changed from enjoyment to second thoughts. He stood in a passageway lined either side with barred rooms, and had been banging on the iron-studded door at the far end of the passage.

  "Amazing. Little one, these are the oubliettes of the Abbey of Guiry."

  Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed at green stains on the sleeves of her greatcoat. "The Abbey what?"

  A last gust of laughter shook Plessiez.

  "My Order is the Order of Guiry, the Guiresites," he explained gravely; and swung round and struck the door an echoing blow. "Guards! What, guards ho!"

  There were green stains on the soles of her feet, Zari discovered, as she balanced precariously on one leg. And stains on her black dress.

  Over the clatter of approaching feet, the black Rat said: "Listen to me, Kings’ Memory–you stay with me, now, and only with me. Above all, you say nothing except when I direct you to."

  "I’m a Kings’ Memory; I speak to whoever asks me." She buttoned the great overcoat, covering the worst of the stains. "Messire, can we have something to eat?"

  The rattle of the door unlocking was followed by a rush of black and brown Rats into the corridor. Zari gazed at their sober black dress. The first Rat, plumed and wearing a black jacket, came to a skidding halt when she saw Plessiez; grabbed the ankh at her neck, and exclaimed: "Plessiez! Cardinal-General Ignatia told us you were dead—"

  His glance crossed hers. Zar-bettu-zekigal saw the black Rat grin, showing sharp incisors. Amusement, triumph, and a febrile excitement gleamed in his eyes.

  "There’s much that Cardinal-General Ignatia doesn’t know, I assure you."

  A brown Rat pushed to the forefront of the guards and priests, looked Plessiez up and down, and with an air of triumph concluded: "You’re not dead, are you?"

  Plessiez smoothed down his torn scarlet jacket. "No, Mornay–and nor is your sister Charnay. Hilaire, order my coach brought to the front of the palace. Lucien, ride immediately to his Majesty and say that I must have an immediate audience. Now. I want no argument. I must see the King."

  Zari grinned at the startled faces. Plessiez’s slenderfingered hand swept her along, trotting beside him while he fired orders to left and right. Her calves ached sharp protests at the steps up from the oubliette to the guardroom.

  "Fetch Reverend Captains Fenelon and Fleury. They’ll be accompanying me to the King. Lay out my best clothes in my rooms. Also my sword. Sauval, come with me; I’ll want you to take down a dictated report as we go–"

  "Food!" Zari yelled succinctly above the confusion.

  "–and have the kitchens bring something to eat."

  A black Rat some years older than Plessiez pushed through the crowd, past Zar-bettu-zekigal. She had little enough of the priest about her: her plumed headband was gold and white, and her jacket white with gold piping. "I’ll have to inform Cardinal-General Ignatia, Plessiez. You can’t ask to see the King if she doesn’t know why."

  Plessiez hesitated at the guardroom door, head cocked, translucent ears tensing. Zari saw him listen to some interior voice urging caution and discard it.

  "The Cardinal-General Ignatia," Plessiez said, "is a useless old bitch."

  "What?"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal put both hands on separate Rats’ shoulders and shoved them aside. Sunlight dimmed the candles in the corridor outside, patched with color the coats and embroidered scabbards of the priest Rats. She blinked water from her eyes. Pushed, shoved, ignored by the quarrel rapidly forming, she thrust a way out of the group and padded across the white-walled corridor to the nearest window.

  The sun hung a hand’s breadth above the horizon. Sha
rp-edged clouds glowed, indigo above, translucent pink below. She pushed the casement open. Cold air flooded her lungs–the chill of evening or the dew-damp of dawn? She scrunched her fingers through her hair, and twitched the kinks from her black-and-white furred tail.

  "Morning or evening?" She caught a passing Rat’s arm. He stared at her, and she jerked her head at the window. Light as cold and clear as water covered the city, that stretched out unbroken to the horizon.

  "Dawn. Messire—"

  Plessiez’s voice ripped the air. "Silence! Captain Auverne, you may make yourself useful by taking a squad of guardsmen and investigating the sewer-shaft that opens into our cellars. But use all possible caution. I want a day-and-night guard kept down there from now on."

  The white-and-gold-clad Rat snarled something under her breath, reluctantly turning away to summon guards.

  "And I am most disturbed to discover that you knew nothing of this entrance, Captain Auverne. Kindly report to me later with the explanation. Zari." Plessiez turned his back on the indignant captain.

  "I’m here, messire."

  "Come with me."

  She followed the priest as he strode off through the whitewashed stone corridors. A faintness of hunger sang in her head, cramped her guts; and at every sunlit window they passed she grinned and skipped a half-step. Each window gave her a wider view of the dawn: the pale sky deepening to azure.

  Inside the doors of extensive apartments, the small group grew to a crowd, augmented as other Rats came running. Plessiez’s voice rose over the noise, his rapid- fire orders sending junior priests off on errands. Zari flopped down on a satin-covered couch, her attention taken up with a tray of bread and goat-cheese, and a flagon of cold water.

  "Steady, little one."

  She looked up, jaws clamped on a crust; tore and swallowed and nodded, all in one movement.

  "I know, I know . . ." Cramps from too-rapid eating griped in her gut.

  The outer doors swung closed. Sunlight blazed in the white low-roofed rooms; on carpets, tapestries, desks, globes and icons. Plessiez dictated to his secretary as Rats sponged and brushed his filthy fur. Zari switched to sitting cross-legged on the couch, gazing round at the royal- blue drapes, the silver goblets and plates.