by Mary Gentle
"–anticipate that our bargain reaches its conclusion here. Lady, when the Fane falls—"
The Katayan winced. The Hyena withdrew fingers that had spiked flesh, nodded.
"When the Fane falls, which I believe will be noon today, then, it being everyone for themselves, I bid you farewell, Lady."
"Damn it, it is, it is today! Now–I’ll give the alert."
She sat back, moving to stand. Pale hands reached up. She stared absently down at the young woman, suddenly pulled her up to sit on the bed and threw her arms about her in a fierce embrace. Zar-bettu-zekigal yelped in her ear.
A voice outside the tent called: "Lady Hyena!"
Ignoring Zar-bettu-zekigal’s oath, she shouted back to the sentry: "What is it, Clovis?"
"Vanringham’s on his way through camp," the muffled voice called. "You said this time you’d see him, Lady."
"Send him in." She stood, strode to the desk, suddenly spun round in her tracks. "Zari, out!"
"Ei, what?"
"You can’t be allowed to talk to him. Out. Come on, out now!" The Hyena pulled her up by the wrists, and the Katayan came unwillingly to her feet.
Fists on bare hips, she glared. "Oh, what!"
"The back way. Now!" She bundled up the crumpled black dress, thrust it into the younger woman’s arms, head turned to catch the announcement of entrance. "Vanringham’s from one of the news-broadsheets. You can’t talk to him."
The dress dropped to the floor. The young Katayan woman’s shoulders straightened. She glared up from under her fringe of black hair, taut with anger. "I’m a Kings’ Memory. I talk with whoever asks me—"
"Exactly, and you’re not talking to the press. Now, out when I tell you!"
A horn blared outside the pavilion. The sound of mailed tread approached. The Hyena took a step forward. She watched as Zar-bettu-zekigal bent and scooped up the dress, clutched it to her bare stomach, and then hesitated.
The sentry outside called: "Lady Hyena, the representative of the Nineteenth District broadsheet."
The Katayan’s head turned as the canvas wall of the tent quivered. Her chin came up. Hooking the dress on one finger, she slung it over her shoulder, sepia light sliding down her naked shoulders, breasts, hips and legs; and walked with something of a swagger to the curtained exit.
"Zari."
Loud enough to be heard, the Katayan spat: "If you didn’t want a Kings’ Memory, you had no business talking in front of one!"
Tail flicking, she strode out as the sentry and the new arrival came through the canvas passage; nodded a casual greeting at the gaping men, and walked out into the blazing sun.
The Hyena brushed the lank hair back from her face, sighing. The man escorted in, small and middle-aged, with white hair that stuck up like owl’s feathers, turned his head back from following the Katayan’s exit.
"Do you have a Kings’ Memory in your employ, Lady?"
She ignored his question. Passing Clovis on her way to sit down, she said quietly: "Call in the council of captains."
Sepia light gleamed on the banners of the dynasty, draped white and gold at the rear of the tent. A flash of white light glinted from the armor-stand as Clovis lifted the curtain on his way out. The Hyena walked slowly round to sit behind the desk, facing the broadsheet publisher, the gold-cross banners at her back.
"Messire Vanringham, I want to show you something."
She uncreased a folded broadsheet that lay on the table, on top of unfolded maps. Her own face looked up at her in shades of gray from the paper, slanting brows made heavy by shadow.
"I do not ever recall telling you, Messire Vanringham, that the army of the human dynasty is made up from ‘criminals escaped from oubliettes, the disaffected, the lunatic; and the young enticed by drugs or seduced by treason.’ Nor that ‘their leader, claiming imperial blood, is in fact the child of a shopkeeper and a Tree-priest . . .’ "
The man scratched at his head, spiking the hair into further disarray, and then rubbed his nose vigorously and dug in the pockets of his stained doublet for his notebook. Unembarrassed, and possibly unafraid, he said: "I print what I have to, Lady. Else I lose my printing press to the Rat-Lords."
"Criminal." She let sweat shine on his forehead before she added: "But you need no longer suffer it."
Light and heat momentarily glared as Clovis reentered. Armor and swords clashed, the tent suddenly full of bright metal and gold-cross surcoats: eight or nine other captains entering with him. They knelt before the Hyena.
A little uncomfortable, Cornelius Vanringham looked at her across their lowered heads. The Hyena waited until she could see the professional hardness re-enter his gaze.
"We’re ready to make the announcement today, messire. I want you to put out a special edition. Print it now, send it out to the five quarters here, and to as many other Districts as your delivery-men can reach—"
He made a protest patently not the one in his mind. "But the strike?"
"The people will break it. This is for the human dynasty and the House of Salomon. And don’t worry about your masters and your printing press." She waited a heartbeat for the doubt to clear from his face. Seeing it would not, knowing the man’s reservations, she grinned.
"Don’t forget how far and how fast I’ve come. You’ll believe me by the end of the day, Messire Vanringham. The story you’ll print shall be this: that the imperial dynasty is at last ready to resume its place as the ruling power in the heart of the world."
Heat-haze lay over the lagoon and the expanse of dock-yards. Zar-bettu-zekigal hooked together the last hook-and-eye on the shoulder of her black dress, the cloth hot under her fingers.
"Bitch! Cow! Shitarse!"
She slammed her fists down on the balustrade of the bridge. A fragment of stone plopped into the canal below. She leaned over, staring down into the ripples. All the docks stood deserted. No barges sailed down from the arsenal; the booms and cranes of the Moressy dock-quay stood silent.
Faint but audible across the half-mile distance came the noise of the impromptu camp: imperial soldiers and the House of Salomon.
"Bitch . . ."
She leaned her elbows on the bridge, on clumps of grass that grew in the pointing. Eyes unfocused, she watched sun dance on the lagoon. Haze obscured sails on the horizon. Her gaze dropped, and her eyes abruptly focused.
"Oh, what!"
She put one foot on the rough brick, hoisting herself up; then slid down, ran barefoot down the further steps and ducked into the shadow of the canal bridge. "Charnay!"
Cold metal slipped across her shoulder to lie against her neck.
"Don’t be ridiculous!" she snapped. "It’s me."
The rapier lifted. A deep laugh sounded in her ear. She turned. Burn-patches and scars marked the big brown Rat’s fur, and her cloak and uniform were missing. She gave Zar-bettu-zekigal a confident smile. "You’ve come from Messire Plessiez?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal shook her head.
"I sent a message," Charnay complained, resheathing her rapier. "He should have been here at noon."
"That’s an hour yet!" She saw the big Rat scowl. "Charnay, where have you been? What’s been happening?"
The brown Rat raised her head, listening for footsteps. "Take me to Plessiez."
"Can’t. Kings’ Memory business. Got to go back and find out if the bi—If she’s got messages for him." Zar-bettu-zekigal brought her tail up to scratch her upper arms, tingling from the sun. "Isn’t as easy as it sounds, but I have to. Charnay, where were you?"
"With the Night Council."
"Who?"
The brown Rat opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it. Transparently awkward, she cast about for something and finally pointed out into the lagoon. Heat lay white on the blue sea, on the sand-bars that lined the horizon. The sails of the small fleet of ships hung like faded washing, casting for every faint breeze.
"I’ve been watching that fleet come in. No pilot-ship?" Charnay said wonderingly. "No tugs?"
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sp; Zar-bettu-zekigal narrowed her eyes and did her best imitation of Messire Plessiez. "Charnay, someone once told you about changing the subject, but you never got the hang of it, did you? That’s the strike. Now, what’s this ‘Night Council’–?"
She grabbed Charnay’s arm, and the big Rat winced as her fingers tightened.
"Charnay, wait! I know one of those ships. Those are the banners of South Katay!"
A smell of magia haunted the air like burning.
The White Crow tensed her fingers against the hot leather of reins, halting the brown mare. Hoofs broke the silence with hollow concussive noise. Something drifted past her field of vision, and she reached out with her free hand, snatching; and opening her hand on a black feather. She blinked back water, staring at the empty furnace-sky.
"In which it is seen," she murmured, "how a prince turns horsethief. Very useful, your university training; we may yet make the Fane by noon."
She pulled the brim of her black-and-white hat down firmly to cut the glare, squinting at the walls and shuttered windows of the Twenty-Third District’s deserted street. Almost at the brow of the hill now. Despite talismans of cold, she wiped a face hot and sweaty.
"I hear something." Lucas reined in the black gelding.
"I sense something."
She lifted her leg over the saddle and slid to the street, slipping off her sandal and resting her foot on the flagstones. Stone burned her bare toughened sole.
"Seven focuses of plague-magia." Two hours’ riding left her throat sandpaper and her head pounding. "And, yes, it’s more than a summer pestilence. There are diseases of the flesh that have their resonances in soul and spirit."
"How far away?"
"They’re widely scattered. Even the nearest is a damn long way off."
She forced concentration: cut out the weight of the leather backpack, the swinging scabbard at her hip, the mare’s head lifting beside her shoulder and tugging on the reins.
"They’re coming up to crisis-point now, I can tell that much. I could try to reach one–but if I even try to go for it, I’ll miss The Spagyrus at noon. Damn. Damn." Lucas slid down from his stolen hack to join her. A red head-band had been tied raggedly about his black hair, and a knife jutted through the belt of his knee- breeches. He hissed as his sandals touched the cobbles, and grabbed for the talisman at his neck.
"I meant that—"
A grinding roar drowned his words.
The White Crow straightened. The mare skittered back; reins jolted her arm and shoulder joint. Hoofs hit the cobbles inches from her feet. Automatically searching for magia words, she hesitated; her wet hands lost grip as the mare reared. Lucas swore, ducked back as the gelding kicked. Both horses clattered in circles in the street, the noise echoing from white porticoes; diminishing as they cantered back down the hill.
Lucas swore steadily and vilely under his breath.
"What-the-fuck-is-that?" he finished.
A machine rumbled towards them.
It towered level with the flat marble-balustraded roofs. The White Crow pushed back the brim of her hat, staring upwards at the bright metal housings that shot back highlights from the sun; at the two beaked rams like claws at the front, and the metal-sheathed ballista at the rear: a rising scorpion-tail. Brown and black Rats crouched on the carapace-platform carrying muskets.
"It’s a siege-engine . . . It’s a Vitruvian siege-engine . . ."
Noise thrummed through the flagstones of the street and the bones of her chest; she felt in her belly the juggernaut weight of it. Its massively spoked iron wheels turned with a ponderous inevitability.
Lucas’s arm flattened her back against the wall. The noise roared into her head, spiking her ear-drums. She stepped back up onto a doorstep. As the engine drew level, the platform some eight feet above their heads, two of the blue-clad Rats lowered their muskets to point at the Prince of Candover and the Master-Physician.
"What—" Temper lost left her breathless. "What about my fucking horse!"
Lucas’s hand shook her arm. She turned to see him mouthing, inaudible, eyes bright; some convulsive emotion twisting his features. She shook her head, cupped her hand over her ear. He took both her shoulders in his hands, and turned her to face the front of the engine.
The throbbing machine backfired in a cloud of sweetsmelling oil and cut down to a tickover. She fingered her ear, wincing. In the comparative quiet, a voice above her said: "Is it damned passengers now?"
The White Crow lifted her head. A metal trapdoor stood open in the upper casing. Filling every inch of the gap, an immensely fat man in rolled-up shirt and eye- goggles leaned massive elbows on the trapdoor rim. He reached up and shoved the goggles off his eyes, into his cropped orange-red hair.
A white mask of clean skin crossed the Lord-Architect’s face at eye-level, clearly showing his freckles. The rest of his face, hands and arms showed black with oil and grease. He dabbed at his chins with a rag, small in his plump fingers, that appeared once to have been an embroidered silk waistcoat.
"Valentine!" He beamed. "And my young Page of Scepters, too. This city is remarkably short of transport at the moment, it would seem. Can I offer you a lift anywhere?"
Andaluz eased a finger under the tight ruff of his formal doublet, sweating in the docklands heat. Sun flickered up off the harbor water. The Candovard Ambassador stepped away from his private coach, signaling his clerk to attend him, and walked down the wide marble steps to Fourteenth District’s north-quarter quay.
"But it’s almost deserted. Dear girl, where are the other ambassadors?"
The clerk, a thin red-haired woman in black, shrugged. "They were notified of the putative Katayan state visit, Excellency. Pardon me, Excellency, I don’t even see a Rat-Lord here to greet them."
Voices drifted on the wind. Andaluz risked a glance behind, across the sands of the airfield and the deflated airships, to where the marble buildings opened out from a great square. The size of the crowd, to be heard at this distance . . .
"They would have overturned us, simply for breaking the transport strike. I hardly blame the Rat-Lords for not being on the streets," Andaluz said drily.
Across the lagoon, under the noon heat that leached all color from the blue water and the bright flags, the unwieldy galleons spread all sail to catch the scant wind. Andaluz’s pepper-and-salt brows met as he frowned, estimating. How long to come to safe anchorage at this deepest quay? He cocked his head, listening to a distant clock strike the half-hour.
"Noon," he guessed. The clerk bowed.
"Excellency, if there are no lords here from the heart of the world, and no other ambassadors, I foresee that the King of South Katay will ask you many awkward questions."
"Simply because I’m here? Dear girl, I can’t ignore our duty because of that unfortunate fact." Andaluz folded his hands together behind his back. Without a tremor of surprise, he added: "But this young lady should be able to tell you considerably more about South Katay than I can. Claris, you’ll have seen her with Cardinal-General Plessiez and myself."
The clerk murmured: "She’s the one Prince Lucas wants to see? Shall I follow her when she leaves?"
"Of course," Andaluz confirmed, mildly surprised; and raised his voice to call: "Honor to you, Mistress Zar-bettu-zekigal."
The Katayan woman trotted down the wide flight of steps to the quay, a brown Rat following her at a distance. She nodded absently to Andaluz, squatted down on the marble quay beside a silver mooring-bollard, and rested her arms on the metal and her chin on her arms.
"Something’s wrong. See you, messire ambassador, when were you told this was happening?"
"Three days past, when the fleet passed the mouth of the estuary. You heard nothing from your august father?"
"Oh, if he’s here three months after me, he must have left soon after I did. Takes close on a year to get here from South Katay." The young woman straightened up and turned to sit on the bollard. As the large brown Rat joined them, she indicated the harbor with a sha
rp jerk of her head.
"See you, some of those are Katayan flags. That one isn’t. Nor’s that. And as for that last ship . . ."
Andaluz found the red-headed clerk at his elbow. She stooped slightly to speak in a low tone.
"Excellency, the last ship’s banners are from New Atlantis. I recognize them–from my history studies at the University of the White Mountain."
The Candovard Ambassador’s head came up, chin and small beard jutting. He put a reassuring hand on the clerk’s arm. Half his attention fixed on the King’s daughter–she now leaned up against the big female Rat, pointing to the ships, chattering in an undertone–and half his attention on the ships.
"My dear," he interrupted Zar-bettu-zekigal, "will you do something for me? Will you count how many ships there are?"
"Oh, sure." The Katayan’s dappled tail came up, tuft flicking to point at each one. "The one with Katayan banners, the one with the high poop-deck, the one with blue flags, one with bad hull-barnacles, and one with what your friend calls New Atlantis banners–six."
Her tail drooped.
The big brown Rat guffawed, clapping her on the shoulder. "Call me stupid, girl? You’ve added up five and made six!"
Andaluz numbered them softly over in his head.
"One," he counted. "And one, and another one . . . another one, and one more . . . and I see six of them still."
The clerk nodded. "So do I, Excellency."
The brown Rat, still frowning, moved back towards the steps, as if she had business urgently elsewhere. She carried her rapier unsheathed now, and Andaluz had not seen her draw it. The young Katayan ignored the Rat’s muttered question. One pale fist knotted in the cloth of her dress, black fabric bunched.
Her pale eyes met Andaluz’s gaze. "Those are oldstyle Union-of-Katay banners. Not my father’s."
The Candovard Ambassador nodded. He planted his feet apart, tugging his doublet straight, gave a glance to the sun’s position, and then stared out across the halfmile of water separating ships from the dock.
"My dear, it seems to me that one of those ships must be the Boat."