Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  "Sir, I don’t know who you are." The parakeet clung to her shoulder, guano spotting the crimson, purple and orange-patterned linen robes that swathed her. A small humming-bird hovered around her head, brilliant blue; and from a fold in the robes at her breast a dusty sparrow peered out.

  "Candovard Ambassador, madam. My name is Andaluz. Welcome to—"

  "An ambassador? How marvelous! Just the man I wanted to see." She snapped her fingers. "Elish, help your little sister, will you? Those cases must not be damaged, and they’re heavy. Now, messire–Andaluz, is it?–kindly call me a carriage, and make sure that the horses are lively. I’ve much to do."

  The woman tapped past Andaluz, his clerk and the brown Rat. Andaluz caught a glimpse of gold sandals under the trailing robes. Sprays of scarlet-and-blue feathers had been braided into her long white plait. Now three bright humming-birds hovered in the air around her.

  "Make haste!" She snapped her fingers again, and the two Katayan women fell in behind her, each with a small brass-bound trunk on her shoulder.

  "Madam, I—" Andaluz moved forward, and found himself running up the quay steps to catch up with the woman. "I don’t think you understand. It’s dangerous to be on the streets today. If you’ll come with me to my Residence . . ."

  Breath failed him at the top of the marble steps. The small woman paused, looking up at him with eyes bright and amber as the parakeet’s. Laughter shifted in the lines of her round face. Shadows fell across her: high and distant, circling wings. Andaluz glanced up into an empty sky. When he looked down, the shadows remained.

  Speaking with an inborn respect for magia, he asked: "Lady, may I know your name?"

  The older Katayan woman shouldered her trunk, sweating in the heat, and said: "Messire Ambassador, this is the Lady of the Birds."

  "Luka to you, young man. Now . . ."

  She smiled, disclosing crooked but white teeth, and rested her light hand on Andaluz’s; a smile of such sweetness that he forgot his breathlessness and concern.

  "First," the Lady Luka said, "I need to find my son. I believe he’s here in the heart of the world. You may know of him. He’s a Lord-Architect. His name is Baltazar Casaubon."

  The acolytes swarmed, their flight warping sky and light.

  Warm dust skirled about the White Crow’s ankles, blowing across the lichen-covered steps. Heat slammed back at her from the stone. Swinging the backpack from her shoulders and squatting, frog-like, she rummaged for a strip of paper written over with characters.

  "C,mon, girl, come on; you haven’t got all day—"

  Echoes of her mutter clicked back double and triple from the Fane of the Decan of Noon and Midnight. Arches, pinnacles and buttresses reared above and around, blackening all the north-aust sky. She irritably rubbed the hair out of her eyes; pinned the thin strip of paper in a tight four-way loop about the hilt of her rapier.

  A cracked elderly voice called: "Here’s another fool! Another one as mad as you are, young Candia!"

  She risked a glance down the steps. The abandoned scaffolding shimmered in the heat. The path ran back between pyramids of bricks, gleaming like black tar under the sun; vanished among abandoned piles of halfdressed masonry. At the foot of the steps of the Fane a man stumbled as he walked, supported by the arm and shoulder of a white-haired woman.

  The White Crow stood. "Get up here. No, don’t argue; get up here in the shelter of the arch. I don’t know who the hell you are, but if you want to stay alive to regret this, move!"

  She slung the pack up on her shoulders and gripped the hilt of her sword. The corded grip fitted her palm easily, smoothly; with the hard feel of something right and fitting. She raised her head.

  High above, circling, swarming, no larger than birds or insects at this distance, acolytes flew restlessly up from pinnacles, gutters, high Gothic arches. One beast swept low, gargoyle-wings outspread, bristle tail lashing the air. High-pitched humming chittered in the heat.

  "Oh shit . . . move!"

  A small old woman in a blue dress limped up the steps, one arm tightly hooked about a fair-haired man in his thirties. The White Crow grabbed the man’s arm, thrust him under the overhanging carving of the great arched door; reached a hand to the old woman and dodged back with her, eyes still fixed on the sky. The acolyte hovered, wings beating, raising up dust.

  "Saw you on the road behind me. What in gods’ names possessed you to come here?"

  "We might ask you the same thing, missy."

  The man’s voice, amazed, said: "She’s a Scholar-Soldier."

  Heat reflected back from the dizzying heights of stone above, and from the great brass-hinged wooden doors. The White Crow coughed, smelling a sweetness of roses. She risked an eye-watering glance at the sun. Overhead: closing fast with noon.

  "Not fast enough. Now, there’s an irony." Her pulse thundered away the minutes, beating in her head. She fingered the talismans with a sweat-slick hand, magia protecting against heat, not against fear. "And if the damn place is closed anyway—"

  "Where were you?"

  Startled at the man’s intensity, she backed a step or two into the archway and glanced up at him. Fair hair flopped across his bruised-looking eyes. With one hand he made an attempt to pull a stained and stinking doublet into some kind of order, a gesture that degenerated into helplessness. His blue eyes glared.

  "Why didn’t you come to the university a month ago?"

  Warm alcohol-stinking breath hit the White Crow in the face. Turning, eyes on the wheeling gargoyle-shape now riding an updraught, she snapped: "Should I have?"

  "We sent out messages for a Scholar-Soldier! We tried to contact the Invisible College for months!"

  "Damn." She stopped dead. "Are you Candia? I’ve been asking Evelian about you—"

  "Now wait just one moment." The old woman’s face creased into a frown, smoky-blue eyes darkening with anger. "Do I understand you, Reverend Master? You’ve been in contact with these vagabond scholar-mercenaries? In direct contravention of university regulations? And just who are we?"

  The man lurched forward. The White Crow grabbed his shoulder one-handed, found herself supporting half the man’s weight. Now four shadows wheeled and skittered across the stone steps.

  "Get back, rot you!"

  Her left hand throbbed. She thrust him back, gripping the rapier, eyes never leaving the movements above, point mirroring flight by instinct and long practice.

  His voice came from behind her. "We prayed you’d come in with the new intake, a month ago. When I told Bishop Theodoret there was no one . . ."

  Something that might have been a sob or a gasp of pain interrupted; his voice picked up after a second.

  "I have to rescue him or kill him now, lady. Where were you?"

  "Me? I’ve been here all along. The Invisible College never has been the best-organized—"

  Cold air screeched across her skin; she whirled, thrust upward, darted back. The blade sank home, ripped free. A bristle-tail lashed the steps. White stone chips flew up, stinging her cheek. The lichen on the steps began to glow with a yellow luminescence. The beat of wings hissed in the air. Dark bodies dropped down from the soaring flock.

  "We’re going to miss noon by minutes." Frustrated, she stared down at the heat-soaked abandoned building site; seeking cover, seeing only temporary salvation. Feeling through the soles of her feet the magia in the depths, necromancy boiling to crisis, that stirred the servants of the Fane to bloodlust. "Minutes, unfortunately, will be enough. Damn, I think he was right: the Fane is closed."

  A spot of blood dripped from the rapier to her bare foot. She winced at the caustic impact. Waiting: waiting for the circles of Time to slide and interlock, mesh into the Noon that will open the Fane-of-the-Twelfth-Decan to mortals. Eyes running water, she stared up through circling wings at the sun still minutes short of midday.

  "Girl!"

  The White Crow swung round. The old woman stood at the great carved doors, one veined hand just leaving the bronze ring. At
her touch the black wooden slab swung open a yard, and another. Sun-dusty beams of light slanted into the interior of the Fane.

  "It’s not time!"

  Above, the chittering rose to shrieking-pitch. Dark wings tumbled across an air suddenly yellow and sere.

  "Heurodis," the woman said, folding a thin strip of metal and secreting it back in her cotton sleeve. "Reverend Mistress, University of Crime. I have no intention of waiting out here to be attacked."

  The White Crow wiped her sweating face, pushing the silvered red hair back behind her ears. Aware that her mouth gaped open, she shut it firmly; caught the blond man’s elbow in her free hand, and stepped smartly after the old woman, shoving the door to with her heel as she crossed the threshold into the Fane.

  Silence shattered.

  Raggedly at first, then in a roar, a hundred thousand men and women began to cheer.

  "–And now!" Falke gripped the loudspeaker microphone tightly. "The Feast of Misrule’s truly started! With our strike-carnival!"

  The square rippled.

  His silk eye-bandage blurred Fourteenth District’s great square with black. Textures of cloth overwove the sunlight, snared the blue sky in threads. Falke blinked, strained vision.

  The mass of people seethed.

  He clenched his own hand at his side, seeing so many arms flung up, so many hands waving. Sweat ran down between his shoulder-blades; the heat of his mail-shirt robbing him of breath. Cheering racketed back from the distant facades of buildings.

  "Listen to that!"

  "I hear it." The Hyena jostled his elbow, steel vambrace hard and hot in the sun. Through his shielding silk the visor of her helm flashed as she slid it up; red-brown eyes sharp. "I see it. Now?"

  "Now." He wiped the sweat from his forehead, grinning. Abruptly he signaled.

  Shadowless heat hammered him from the north-aust.

  All this fifth side of the square lay demolished. Mansions torn down, ragged edges of brick and masonry and dug-up foundations cast aside in great heaps. Cranes and earth-movers rested, poised. He rubbed the silk tighter against his face, through blurred vision making out the sixty-acre clearance, the scaffolding at its entrance–and the great block of granite held in a cradle of rope and steel wire.

  "Now, my baby . . ."

  He shook his head and chuckled. A wind blew from the square behind him, carrying the smell of human sweat, of beer and sharp wine and the powder from muskets.

  "Now’s our time."

  The rope cradle creaked, inching round. He squinted at the cranes, unable to see the workers. Only the yellow-and-white Salomon colors. He paced four steps along, four steps back, booted heels kicking.

  He cut the air with his hand: the lateral swing ceased.

  Hieroglyphics shone on the great foundation-stone, newly incised; gleaming redly, as if the cut stone filled up with blood.

  He turned his face up to the sky, letting the breeze cool his sweating face, turning back as the granite block stilled. Packed faces: painted, masked, laughing, calling; the rows of silent Rat-Lords at the nearer buildings’ windows.

  He touched the Hyena’s steel shoulder. "Wait for me here."

  He ran careless of obstacles down the rutted steps to the front of the site, the microphone clasped in his fist. Soldiers in imperial mail and citizen militia shoved the crowd back. Men and women reached between them, over their shoulders, hands outstretched; and Falke waved good-naturedly, trotting along some yards until he swung and faced out into the crowd.

  "Long live tradition!"

  His voice echoed back from far walls, soft as surf in sewer-tunnels that riddle the docks. Paper streamers soared up into the air, and bottles; and he turned his face full up to the sun, careless of dazzlement.

  "Long live tradition, long live the Feast of Misrule!" He paused, letting them quieten a little. "Yes, the great and ancient Feast of Misrule . . . This annual day when all’s turned upside-down–and we, yes, today, WE turn the world upside-down! Only this time, it STAYS this way! You see the stone. It is our stone, it is our foundation-stone: the founding-stone of the New Temple of Salomon!"

  Cheers broke out, doubled and redoubled.

  He strode another few yards along the steps. A paper streamer glanced across his shoulder; he gripped it in the same hand as the microphone, waved it, grinned at the feather-masked boy, dimly seen, who’d thrown it. The boy pulled off his mask, eyes bright, mouth a round O.

  "The world turned upside-down–you’ve all heard that prophecy." The metal of the microphone, warmed and dampened by his breath, chilled his lips. "Hear it and believe it! Oh, not the Rat-Lords; they don’t matter now– although they may still think they do. "

  Falke paused, lifting a hand in ironic salute- to the black Rats lining the overlooking windows. One looked down at a broken flower in his hand. Another, headband in hand, smoothed a feather. None spoke.

  "You will say they have been challenged before, these masters of ours. So they have. So they have. I was a part of that summer, fifteen years gone. Fifteen years ago, in Fifth District, when they cut us down in the streets–rode us down, for daring to refuse our labor!"

  Now he dropped his tone caressingly; walking down the scarred marble steps to the line of soldiers, touching hands with the people beyond as he walked along the front row, invisible to more than those few but letting the loudspeakers carry it.

  "I have never forgotten. You have never forgotten. Now we can erase it from our minds. Now, today, we labor only for ourselves."

  He halted, lowering the microphone.

  Faces, hands, swords, mail-shirts: the front row of the crowd a tapestry, sun-bright and raucous. His mouth dried. He swallowed with difficulty, blinking; the touch of silk strange against his lashes. He reached up and pulled the bandage free.

  "They have always betrayed us."

  Tears streamed hot down his cheeks; a bubble of laughter in his chest for this final public hypocrisy. He snatched breath suddenly, tears of the bright sun becoming the wrenching tears of a man who assumed, until then, that he only cries for appearance’s sake.

  "We can be true to ourselves."

  Warm wind bathed his fingers as he held up his hand, poised; cut the air with one decisive stroke. He let his hand fall to his side.

  Through his feet he felt the vibration of the Temple’s foundation-stone settling into its place on the site behind him.

  "The foundation-stone is laid! Now feast and rejoice. Feast and rejoice–and build the New Temple of Salomon!"

  He laughed, recklessly reaching into the crowd again to grip hands; his tear-streaked naked face dappled with paint, daubed on by small children held up by their parents.

  "Now drink! Eat! Rejoice! BUILD THE TEMPLE!"

  Breathing hard, he stumbled back up the steps. A glare of silver: he seized the Hyena’s plate-clad arm for support; leaned with his head down for a moment, breath sobbing, and then nodded.

  "At last." She signaled.

  The imperial soldiers fell out the rank that held the crowd back. First one, then ten, then dozens of men and women ran forward and up the steps to the open site; meeting there the Fellowcrafts of the Masons’ Halls. Falke gazed at the river of silks and satins, masks thrown down and trodden underfoot as the skilled workers swarmed over the foundations and scaffolding and cranes.

  The Hyena held up her gauntleted hand, the soldiers linking arms again to thin the flow.

  Falke covered his eyes, between sweating fingers watching the tide of masons, carpenters and builders spread out across the open ground behind him.

  Exhilarated, the Hyena swept her arm in an arc. "Look at it! We've done it."

  "I . . . hardly believe it."

  He retied his black silk bandage. The last of the first shift of workers walked across the steps to the site. The rest settled: men and women sitting down where they stood; bottles and food brought out, masks pushed up so that eating and drinking could begin. The noise of their singing, clapping and shouting beat back from the dis
tant walls.

  The Hyena yawped a laugh. "No going back for us. Not now, whatever happens."

  The rising tide of sound drowned thought. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his gray doublet, and rested both hands on his wide sword-belt. The ring-guards of the sword-rapier brushed his knuckles. Standing with feet apart, welcoming the weight of weapons, he peered through black silk at the crowded day. Faintly, through the shouting and music, a clock on the far side of the square chimed quarter to the hour.

  "Ahead of schedule." He smiled, finding his voice thick with the aftermath of weeping.

  "Ah."

  "What is it?" He peered at the Hyena, straining to see which way she faced, what she stared at. "Lady?"

  "I think–right on schedule." Amused surprise rounded her tone. "This is effrontery of the first order. What does he think I’ll do? Clovis!"

  Clovis and a dozen other soldiers doubled up the steps to join her. Falke frowned. Shoved back, he elbowed his way to the Hyena’s side, demanded:

  "What is it? What’s happening?"

  The woman shaded her eyes against the sun, staring out across the great square. Frustrated, Falke followed the direction of her gaze. Waving arms, thrown hats and occasional muzzle-flashes from muskets: the rest a cloth- shrouded blur.

  A groaning vibration came to him through the earth he stood on.

  "All King’s Guard by the uniform." The Hyena’s grin widened. "Good firepower, but they’re somewhat outnumbered. We’ll accept their surrender. Clovis, take a squad down there and escort them here. Master Falke, can you see? There."

  A deep-throated mechanical roar drowned crowd- noise; and he wrinkled his nose at the stench of oil. Light glinted–from windows, stone surfaces. Swords? Gun-barrels?

  Fine detail faded into sun-blaze.

  Counting on a second’s view before blindness, Falke snatched away the eye bandage. Tears ran down his face.

  Shockingly close, rearing above the impromptu tents of the Hyena’s camp and the crowd: beaked rams, hammered steel plates, curving ballista.