by Mary Gentle
The Lord-Architect rested one ham-hand on a joist of the machine, some four feet above ground-level, and bent to peer under the platform. His left foot came free of the artillery garden’s white mud with a concussive suck. He looked absently down at his dripping silk stocking and shoe.
"–which the factory could have accurately followed."
"What caused your absence?" the Cardinal-General demanded.
"I assure you, messire, the last . . ." Casaubon paused invitingly.
"Thirty days."
"The last thirty days have, for me, gone past in the blink of an eye. You may say, indeed, they passed in the space of a heartbeat."
"I am well aware that you must be busy." Plessiez, waspish, whipped his tail out of the mud, taking a firmer stance on the artillery garden’s rubble. The immense shadow of the machine fell cool across his sun-warmed fur. His left hand slid down to grasp the scabbard of his rapier. He gestured for Zar-bettu-zekigal to approach. "Are you suggesting that these particular engines have been built incorrectly? Is that where the difficulty of operation arises?"
"Oh, not incorrectly, not as such . . ."
The Lord-Architect rapped his fist against the lower joist near the massive rear wheel. The iron plates of the wheel casing quivered. His blue-coated bulk tipped lower as he moved a step forward, under the platform of the machine.
". . . merely minor adjustments . . ."
As Plessiez watched, the fat man gripped a strut in one hand and pivoted, slowly graceful, easing his body down. One massive leg slid forward. He swung down to sit in three inches of semi-liquid mud and, on his back, pull himself further under the axle-casing with massive white-gloved hands.
". . . a few days’ work . . ."
Plessiez frowned. Picking his way across the rutted site, he stooped to look under the machine. The Lord- Architect Casaubon lay on his back in the mud, his blue satin frock-coat spreading out flat, soaking up rain-pools. As Plessiez started to speak, the fat man fumbled in the pocket of his embroidered waistcoat and brought out a miniature hammer. He reached up and tapped the iron axle. A sharp metallic click echoed back across the artillery garden from the royal palace wall.
"I don’t have ‘a few days,’ Lord-Architect. These engines must be ready to move later today."
Plessiez, irritated, straightened up and looked for the Kings’ Memory. The young Katayan woman had her heels on the wheel-rim where it rested on the earth, eight inches above ground, her back to the axle, stretching her arms as far up the spokes to the metal casing as possible. The top of the wheel curved a yard and a half above her head.
Her chin tilted up, pale, as her eyes traversed the bulk of the engine above her on the wheeled platform.
"Zari!"
"I’m listening, messire." The Katayan’s chin lowered. She grinned.
Plessiez urbanely repressed the fur rising down his spine. The tip of his tail lashed an inch to either side in a tightly controlled movement. "I repeat: I do not have days."
The fat man grunted amiably. His large delicate fingers probed the gear-wheels above the axle. He took his hand away, staring at a glove now caked with black grease. He began to ease himself forward on hands and heels and buttocks, until he cleared the mud with a succession of squelches. The Lord-Architect stood up, cracked his head against the underside of the platform, and spread oil and mud in his copper-gold hair as he rubbed the crown of his head.
"Days," Casaubon repeated firmly. He ducked out from under the platform. His silk knee-breeches dripped. Taking one hem of his frock-coat in a gloved hand, he cracked the cloth and spattered mud in a five-yard radius.
The Katayan wiped the tuft of her tail across her cheek.
Plessiez looked down at the glutinous white mud spattered across his fur and cardinal’s sash. "You may find this behavior acceptable. I do not. It is possible, Messire Casaubon, that these tactics are designed to obfuscate your inefficiency. I assure you that they fail."
The Lord-Architect laughed. He swung a gloved grease-stained hand to clap Plessiez on the back. The Cardinal-General stepped away smartly, his heel coming down on a broken paving-stone filmed with mud.
"Wh—?" .
Plessiez skidded, flailed limbs and tail to stay upright; a rock-solid hand closed around his arm and steadied his balance. Chins creased as the big man smiled, innocent.
"Careful, messire."
"I am always careful. Thank you." Plessiez met Zar- bettu-zekigal’s gaze. The Kings’ Memory leaned her fist hard against her mouth, eyes bright. Plessiez took a step back, gazing up at the metal-plated casings and turrets and ports and beaks of the siege engine.
Morning sun dazzled off the row of nineteen others ranked beyond it.
"Not my preferred line of work, really. Trained in it, of course. Could do you ornamental garden automata," the Lord-Architect offered hopefully, "or hydraulic water-organs . . ."
Plessiez narrowed his eyes to furred slits and studied the large man. Coming in moments to a conclusion that (had he known) it had taken the White Crow years to arrive at, he smiled, nodded an acknowledgment and observed: "Very well, we understand each other. I am somewhat in your hands, being at the mercy of your expertise, and you have a price which is not entirely orthodox. It may be granted, if it is not too impossible, messire."
Casaubon beamed, blue eyes guileless. "I could work faster if I knew what these engines are specifically needed to do."
Morning light shone back from white earth, from distant windows and multi-tiered roofs, with a promise of later heat. Small figures dotted the perimeter of the site: engineers being kept back by St. Cyr’s Cadets. Their impatient voices came to Plessiez across the intervening distance.
"We do understand each other. Very well," Plessiez conceded. His muzzle turned towards Zar-bettu-zekigal as she stepped down from her perch on the wheel. "But, I regret, not in your presence, Zari. For the present this must be between his Majesty and myself–and now you, Messire Casaubon."
"Must she go?" The big man’s face creased in disappointment. "Such a beautiful young woman. And a Memory, too? Lady, you should have told me."
The Katayan leaned her elbow against the wheel-rim and her cheek on her hand. "I did tell you. I yelled it in your ear. You had your head in the rotor-casing at the time, but I did tell you you had an auditor. Didn’t I, messire?"
"Certainly." Plessiez, sardonic, folded his arms, sword-harness chinking; looking from the Kings’ Memory to the Lord-Architect, and absently picking pieces of drying mud from his left elbow-fur with his right hand. "Is there anything else either of you would wish to know?"
"I’d like to know what these machines are for." The Katayan inclined her head to the fat man, her tail cocked high. "Zar-bettu-zekigal. Are you liable to need a Kings’ Memory, messire architect?"
The Lord-Architect Casaubon took the young woman’s hand between the tips of filthy gloved fingers and thumb, inspected it for a moment, and bowed to kiss it. "Baltazar Casaubon, Lord-Architect, Scholar-Soldier of—"
Plessiez cut the man off in mid-flow: "If you listen, Zaribet, you do it as a private person."
The Katayan nodded vigorously, hair flopping over her black-hook eyebrows.
Plessiez let his weight rest on one haunch, thumb tucked into sword-belt, eyes narrowed against the sun; something of his poise returning.
"There are thirty-six of these engines. I’ve directed the production-line workers for the past week, getting sixteen engines on-station in the further Districts. These that remain must be functioning and able to move by noon, to be in position–at the entrances to the airfield, the docks, the underground rail and sewer termini, the main avenue to the royal palace, and at as many points overlooking the Fane as possible."
He saw Zar-bettu-zekigal’s head come up, her pale eyes raking armor-plating, gunports, stacked muskets on the platform, beaked battering-rams.
"You’re going to attack the Hyena’s people!" she accused.
"We face no serious threat from a few of the
servant class who’ve latterly learned to hold a sword by the correct end."
"No."
Plessiez, startled, looked up from his footing on the rubble to meet the china-blue eyes of the Lord-Architect. The fat man absently wrung mud out of his coat-tails and shook his head again.
"As I understand it, these are spiritual machines." Plessiez shrugged. "Designed to protect my people against attack–by the servants of the Thirty-Six: the acolytes of the Fane."
A shudder walked down Plessiez’s spine. He momentarily shut his eyes upon a memory of Masons’ Hall, butcher-red, a shambles. The early sun fell hot on his fur. He opened his eyes to the distant sparks of light from palace windows. The silence of work suspended hung above the artillery garden, as it had been poised above all the city since dawn.
Zar-bettu-zekigal’s eyes narrowed against the brightness of the empty sky. She smoothed her dress over her narrow hips with both hands. Her dappled tail hung limp.
"Tripe!" boomed a bass voice: Casaubon shattering the quiet.
Plessiez, tight-mouthed, shifted his ringed hand to his belt-dagger. A momentary breeze unrolled like a gonfalon the hooded silk cloak of a Cardinal-General. "Messire, if you would confine yourself to architecture and engineering—"
A large hand hit Plessiez squarely between the shoulders. The black Rat twisted his head, feather-plume blocking his view, to see a muddy glove-print on the back of his robe.
"Complete rubbish," the Lord-Architect Casaubon beamed. "That being the case, you’d only cover the Rat and Mixed districts. Wouldn’t bother with a siege-engine for every district, including the Human."
Plessiez opened his mouth to prevaricate, saw Zari hop from one bare foot to the other, grinning wildly, and Casaubon twinkle at her: "I don’t doubt he plans protection from the Fane. I’m no fool, Messire Cardinal. I can see thaumaturgy plain in a set of blueprints. As for these"–a jerk of the head at the towering siege-engines that set his multiple chins quivering–"I’m an architect. I followed your exact design. Put these in strategic locations and you protect everybody–as far as that’s possible. Yes?"
Cardinal-General Plessiez shut his open mouth. He lifted his snout, raking the large man from copper hair to mud-dripping high-heeled shoes, and bringing his gaze to rest on the amiably smiling face. A brown smear of oil covered freckles, continued up into the cropped hair. The black Rat met the man’s eyes.
"I assume that you need to know that," Plessiez said, "because I don’t indulge idle curiosity, not with a matter that has taken years to conceive and execute, and which, besides, involves his Majesty the King. Even the curiosity of an excellent architect, messire."
The Lord-Architect Casaubon inclined his head gravely, waiting.
"Yes," Plessiez said. "The intention is to protect as many people as we can, regardless of who and what they are. Rat or human. Or, if it comes to it, acolyte. You are liable to see apocalyptic matters today, messire, and if any of us survive it will be thanks to these machines which his Majesty has desired and I have designed."
The Archdeacon’s sandals scuffed on the concrete of the yard. Tawny grass sprouted up through the cracked surface. She raised her eyes to the tops of the surrounding factory walls. Grass rooted there, against a blue morning sky. A stink of oil and furnaces made her broad nostrils flare.
"A daylight possession? And not susceptible to talismans?"
"We’ve tried everything. It keeps growing." The burly woman wiped sweat from her eyes. "There have been small corruptions breaking through for ten days or more, but now the Rat priests and the Fane won’t answer our messages."
Inside the nearest factory-hangar door men and women leaned exhaustedly up against walls or lay on benches. The Archdeacon glanced back over her shoulder, seeing the alley; the Reverend Mistress and the blond Candia safely penned in by a locked gate and factory workers regarding them with suspicion.
"This way." The burly woman in carpenter’s silks led her past molding and milling engines, standing silent and reeking of oil, towards the back of the building. In the unaccustomed silence, the bells of the nearby charnel- houses rang clearly.
"Your sick people here"–the Archdeacon pointed– "is it the pestilence?"
The carpenter glanced back at her co-workers where they sprawled or staggered. The Archdeacon saw a whiteness of skin under the woman’s eyes, a certain luminosity and sharpness about the broad features. Vagueness crossed her eyes from moment to moment.
"I’m Yolanda." The woman stopped at the back wall. "Foreman over in the next workshop. Well, priest—"
The Archdeacon pointed to a canvas-shrouded bundle in the corner, among broken glass and waste metal and sacking. The length and shape of the human body: on it, blotted red dried to blotched brown. "Is that a victim of the possession here?"
A proud note came into Yolanda’s deep voice. "Garrard? He fainted and fell under the ore-carts out in the sidings. Hadn’t eaten for five days, to my certain knowledge. We had a Sergeant of Arms down here, running back to the Rat-Lords, closing us down. We tried to get a real priest."
She stopped, shrugged, eyes still on the shroud. "Already on the Boat by now, and traveling through the Night. He always did like sailing . . . The possession is here. Archdeacon."
The Archdeacon remained standing staring into the corner of the factory hangar. "This man died because he tried to work without food or sleep?"
Yolanda folded her arms. "He died because the Decans fated him to die today. More fool them. No foundries means no tools, no scaffolding, pretty soon no more building on the sites–no more Fane. They’ll soon know how it goes. We’re willing to work. Just not able."
The Archdeacon cracked her dark knuckles, loosening the muscles in her hands. "If the plague carries on, you won’t need to starve or fatigue yourself, Fellowcraft Yolanda."
"Here." Yolanda pushed the small back door open.
Light from a clerestory window picked out the darker green threads woven into the Archdeacon’s cotton dress: the pattern of roots, trunk, branches, leaves. She pulled her wide cloth belt taut. Her fingers touched the energy centers at her dark temples, at her breasts and groin and each opposite wrist.
"For all you despise my Church, I can’t refuse to do my duty here. My name is Regnault." The Archdeacon’s voice sounded clear, cold. "If I should be injured and can’t do this, you must see to it: take Master Candia to the Cathedral of the Trees. Tell them Candia is to be questioned about Theodoret."
"Candia is to be questioned about Theodoret—"Yolanda flinched back a sleep-dazed step as the door in the back wall began to drift open. She turned and walked rapidly towards the front of the factory, gesturing to other workers to stay back.
Regnault touched fingers to the peeling white paint of the door. She wrinkled her nose. A smell of rotten vegetation came through the open door: not honest decay, but touched with a corruption of flesh.
She entered, took one slow step into the long white- tiled room, and halted, the door swinging closed behind her, her eye caught by movement. A young black woman in a faded dress faced her from the far end of the room. Round-breasted, round-hipped; bushy hair throwing back a myriad points of gold light from the clerestory windows. Archdeacon Regnault gazed at her reflection in the spotted mirror, at the long row of porcelain urinals on the wall to her left, and the row of closed or open cubicle-doors to her right. Darkness prickled at the edge of her vision. Cold struck up through the tiling and her sandals to impale the soles of her feet.
"Root in Earth protect me." Her whisper fell on dank air. She put her fingers to her breast, to the spray of hawthorn pinned there. She pressed the pad of her index finger against the thorn, piercing the skin. A bead of blood swelled.
"Above, beneath: branch and root—"
Breath-soft, she began the Litany of the Trees; letting her power push the pepper-scent of hawthorn out into the tiled room, expunging the smell of urine and feces, tasting still a faint corruption in her mouth.
"Pillars of the world—"
Light brightened: sun through high windows. A watery glop sounded, close at hand. The Archdeacon padded forward, and suddenly stopped.
Her reflection in the fly-spotted mirror had not moved.
"–branch and leaf—"
The reflection raised a head subtly disfigured, and smiled with teeth too long and pointed.
"–leaf in bud: shelter and protection—"
The Archdeacon splayed the fingers of her left hand in the Sign of the Branches. Her right index finger throbbed. Blood fell to the floor-tiling in small perfect discs and ovals.
Something buzzed, close at her right hand.
Regnault halted between one step and the next, glancing sideways. The cubicle-door beside her stood halfopen, opening inwards, disclosing muddy porcelain footstands in the floor-basin and the china throat of the open drain.
A furred body as large as her two fists hung above the toilet-hole, angrily buzzing. Yellow and black stripes, light glinting from whirring wings, multi-faceted eyes.
The Archdeacon turned from the mirror, stepping towards the cubicle. Water blinked in the open floor- drain: a dark eye in the stained white porcelain. The giant wasp shifted in the air, shifted again, faster than she could react. She stabbed her finger against the hawthorn again and sketched a sign in blood on the air.
"–the protection of the Branches that support the sky—"
The wasp lifted, buzzing, the vibration reverberate from the walls; rising level with the Archdeacon’s head. Regnault flung both hands out at a level with her shoulders, spread her fingers and slowly closed them.
Dints appeared in the furred body-segments. Diaphanous wings glimmered emerald, the color of spring leaves, and crumpled. The soft heavy body fell, still crumpling, to smack against the glazed china surface; slid down the shallow slope and blocked the open drain, feebly burring.
Sweat trickled down between Regnault’s shoulder- blades. The step forward had brought her into the cubicle. Eyes still fixed on the dying wasp, she reached out a hand behind her to pull open the swung-to door.