by Mary Gentle
"No—"
Candia reached down to knot his fists in her shirt, leaning over her, breath stinking in her face.
"Break a Decan’s power? Theo–you can’t kill him, you can’t heal him. How can you joke, and in front of him! I’ll have no more of it. Hear me?"
"Messire—" The White Crow cut herself off. As gently as temper would let her, she closed her hands over the Reverend Master’s fists, conscious of the pain in her left hand, of the dry warmth of the stone cell. "Candia. I mean what I say."
Flickers of green pushed at her vision, marbling the pale masonry walls. The blond man released his grip, reaching up to push hair out of his bruised-seeming eyes, gazing down bewildered. The White Crow tugged creased cloth straight.
"Lady, he . . . Death would be an act of mercy."
"Trust me."
"Trust a Scholar-Soldier?" Reverend Mistress Heurodis’s acid voice sounded from the low arched door, where she peered out into the golden nave. "Well, girlie, it doesn’t matter; I think none of us will leave here, but you may try to end his pain."
The White Crow turned and knelt. The stone, hard and warm under her bare knee, beat with an imperceptible tension. She looked up again at the severed head. The old man’s eyelids slid half-shut over swimming gray eyes, and his mouth clenched.
"I . . . needed to . . . die . . . before . . . He . . . called . . . me . . . bait."
Some choking pressure in her chest resolved itself into pity and anger, and she put out a hand and touched his soft skin, echoes of pain resounding on cellular levels. "Take time to decide. We’ve got a little time."
She sat back, grabbing the leather backpack and sorting through the books and papers inside.
Candia said thickly: "Bait? For who?"
Heurodis’s voice sounded above the White Crow’s head. "For all of us?"
The White Crow stood and moved to the door. She squatted, dabbed the gummed end of a paper strip at her tongue and pasted it across the threshold. Her sallow fingers worked rapidly, fastening the character-inked strips across the jamb and lintel. A certain growing tension in the air held itself in abeyance.
She stood for a moment with her back to the three of them, staring out into the golden shafts of light in the nave.
"My lord, I haven’t heard you answer."
"So . . . much . . . suffering . . ."
The White Crow turned and took two rapid paces across the cell, catching up her sword as she knelt, resting her hands on the hilt and her chin on her hands, words falling rapidly into the full silence.
"I don’t think I should help you die. I mean . . ." She gave a helpless shrug. "I don’t know if I can give you anything better than death. I’m a Scholar-Soldier; I can’t work miracles. But, see, someone is going to die soon–truly die, my lord, the soul, too–and that’s when the Circle is broken, and I can’t . . . if it’s you . . . if that happens, we . . . I was told by the Decan of the Eleventh Hour to act. But not how."
Theodoret’s creased features moved. Long seconds passed.
"My lord," the White Crow said very softly, "you’re laughing at me, I think."
The severed head’s bright eyes moved, meeting hers; and the Bishop of the Trees, as if there were no one there but the two of them, no old friend Candia, no Reverend Mistress, said: "Do . . . your . . . damnedest . . . woman . . . I would . . . live . . . like this . . . if. . . I . . . thought . . . it would . . . hurt . . . The . . . Spagyrus . . ."
Reverend Mistress Heurodis’s bony finger tapped peremptorily on her shoulder.
"You'll have to be quick, then, missy. Even one of the College should be able to, feel what’s happening here."
The White Crow reached one hand back through the air towards the threshold. Blood tingled in her fingers, dropped to star the stone. The divine, immanent in this cell, receded from her touch as the long going-out of a tide; and for a second she leaned heavily on the rapier for support.
"What . . . ?" Candia, his back resting against the wall, slid down to a sitting position. The buff-and-scarlet jerkin rode up at the back, pulling his dirty shirt and lace ruffles loose from his breeches; one scuff-heeled boot lodged in the crack of a flagstone and arrested his slide. He gazed up at Heurodis. "You’re both crazy."
"Far from it, boy." The white-haired woman paced across the cell to peer out of the door, her voice coming back creakily. "I believe I saw this done once before, about fifty years ago now. Worked, too. Mind you, it killed one of the two other people involved."
The White Crow rested her chin on the backs of her hands. The metal of the rapier echoed faintly with the tread of god-daemons. Without moving her head, she shifted her eyes to the Reverend Master.
"Candia, why did you come back here?"
"Back?" His head resting against the masonry, the man answered with closed eyes. "We were seen entering, then? Yes. I was here before. We were here before. They let me go. After I saw what happened to Theo."
Now his head fell forward, and he met her gaze.
"It took me time, lady, to find the courage to come back; and I found most of it in a bottle. Here I am. Useless. What did I think I could do? I don’t know."
The White Crow straightened, laying the rapier down on the flagstones. She held the blond man’s gaze.
"Masons’ Hall?" she said, too quiet for Heurodis’s hearing. "Could be, you came back out of guilt to be killed with Theodoret. I’ve known it happen among the College. Think that’s true? Because, if it is, I can give you something to do that’s almost guaranteed suicide."
His bruised eyes blinked, startled. He unwillingly smiled. "Lady, you’re persuasive. What?"
A milky light began to seep through the joins of masonry, fogging the air in the cell. The White Crow put both hands to the flagstone floor. Strain tensed the stone. One of the paper talismans at the door snapped, a tiny ppt! in the silence.
"Paracelsus tells us . . ." A tiny smile appeared on the White Crow’s face. With a certain droll formality, she straightened up and inclined her head to the Reverend Master. "Hear a lecture, Messire Candia. Paracelsus teaches that in every body there is one bone, a seed- bone, from which the body is grown again on the Boat as it passes the Night. We being in the Fane, in that same Night through which the Boat passes, it may . . . it may just be possible, by use of magia, to heal that way. The seed-bone is here."
The White Crow reached across, pushing her fingers through Candia’s hair, touching his warm neck and the hard knob of bone at the base of his skull. Arm’s length, the stink of his soiled clothes filled the air; but he raised his head with an insouciant carelessness, caught her wrist and growled: "Shame me into it, would you? What would you have me do? I’d do it anyway."
The weak voice protested: "Candia . . . my friend . . ."
She saw his eyes shift, at last rest without flinching on Theodoret’s severed head. "I’ll do it!"
"This magia needs a third person to draw strength from." The White Crow took her hand back. "Mistress Heurodis isn’t strong enough in body."
The white-haired woman grunted ungraciously. The White Crow shifted her gaze to the severed head of Theodoret, and met a bright humor there.
"We’re strong. Of course, the chances are that it’ll kill Messire Candia and me, too. I’ve never done magia inside the Night of the Fane. The gods alone know what might happen."
"It . . . may . . . even . . . work."
Reverend Mistress Heurodis walked across to Candia, cotton dress rustling, and rested one veined hand on the wall above him.
"Better get ready, missy. I’ll tell him what he has to do."
The White Crow nodded. Under her bare knees and shins, the flagstones began to pulse almost imperceptibly: their rhythm the rhythm of particles and electrons in their universal dance. Practiced enough from five years in the city called the heart of the world, she recognized, far off, an approaching tread.
"I will . . . help . . . if . . . I . . . can . . ."
The White Crow’s nostrils flared at a s
udden scent of woodsmoke. Melancholy, sharp: tears sprang into the corners of her eyes. Momentarily the stone gritting under her blood-slick palms became the creased bark of oak.
Boots rasped. Solid at her shoulder, Candia folded his long legs and sat cross-legged beside the wall. A sharp odor of sweat came off him. The White Crow glimpsed, through milky light, Heurodis’s hand just touching his bowed head. She breathed slowly and deeply.
"My lord." The White Crow shivered, reaching up with her left hand. Her bloody fingers rested lightly on the crusting blood and mucus on the iron spike. The Bishop’s creased eyelids lifted, lines of his face shifting in pain.
Milky light softened raw flesh and shining bone; glowed in his pale hair. The White Crow brought her other hand up to rest on the spike below the severed head. "I may hurt you worse than He did."
"You . . . cannot . . . child."
She let go of the spike. Sword and pack spread around her, rose-pricked palm bleeding, the White Crow knelt before the impaled and severed head. Her right hand sketched a hieroglyph on air, skeining pale light into a net.
"Now . . ."
Her left hand went up to touch her uncovered hair. A bee crawled over the dark red coils to her knuckles, skimmed into flight; drowsing a summer warmth into the dry air. The netted air paled, glowing, thinning to the gold of sunlight.
The white-haired woman nudged him. Candia wet his lips and, ignoring how they shook, raised his hands. The White Crow took them in her own. With infinite care she placed them to cup the severed head of the old man, supporting his corded chin.
". . . Grotesque . . . !"
Seeing that same laughter in the old man’s light eyes, the White Crow, her hands outside the blond man’s and holding them tight to cool kept-living flesh, grinned and said: "Now!"
The lintel of the cell cracked. Gunshot-sharp echoes rattled away into the nave. A heavy tread shook stone.
"Now, damn you!"
Eyes squeezed almost shut, the blond man closed his hands tight about the severed head and lifted it off the metal spike. Her hands felt the dragging resistance of flesh through his. Iron grated on bone. A wet, hollow, sucking noise made her gag.
The stink of decay choked the air. A breathless scream cut off.
Her right hand slid to cup the ripped liquescing vertebrae as Candia cradled the severed head in his arms. The White Crow hesitated. A sweat-drop ran cold down the back of her own neck.
The magia light died. Imprinted on her vision, all three of them–old woman, young man and severed corrupting head–froze, caught in the stark whiteness of the cell.
"Now . . ."
This time only a breath, too soft for anyone but herself to hear it. The White Crow raised her left hand and slammed it palm-down on the point of the iron spike.
"Watch out! ’Way there! Coach coming through!"
A black-haired Katayan woman in a silk coat reined in the team of four horses, one boot planted up on the footboard. Beside her, gripping the comer of the roof, leaning down with tail outstretched for balance, Zar-bettu-zekigal brandished a torn white-and-gold banner and yelled enthusiastically.
"That way—" She stumbled and fell against the backboard, grabbing at the older Katayan’s arm. "Ei, watch out!"
Out of nowhere, men and women swarmed past the coach, running out through the dockyard entrance to Fourteenth’s great square: fifty, a hundred, five hundred. One fell, lay kicked and beaten underfoot. Another pitched face down, and the lead brown gelding skittered in the shafts, half-rearing, refusing to trample the fallen boy.
"Whoa!" The older Katayan reined in again sharply. The coach jolted to a halt, wheezing back on its springs. Bodies thudded against the painted wooden doors. One of the geldings whickered, throwing its head up, eyes rolling. "What the gods is this?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal jumped up. Balancing easily, dappled tail coiled back, she shaded her eyes against the black light and stared into the square. "I see it! Keep us moving, Elish. Slowly!"
"Zar’—"
"Trust me!"
She reached back, gripped the roof-rail, and swung down off the driver’s seat; caught the wide open coach- window with one bare foot and let momentum push her over massing bodies of men and women streaming past. She plummeted into the coach’s interior, landing sprawled across Charnay. The brown Rat hefted her off into the opposite seat, beside the Candovard Ambassador.
"We can’t get through. No, wait!" She reached to grab the brown Rat’s hand. "One sword’s not going to get us anywhere. There’s a mob panic going on out there!"
She eased her rucked-up black dress down over her hips. Her eyes cleared, growing accustomed to the light shadow of the coach’s interior. The Ambassador sat forward, peering through the opposite window, his grizzled face showing confusion. Charnay struggled With her halfdrawn sword in the close confines. The silver-haired woman held up ringed hands upon which three sparrows perched.
"Ei! Clever," Zar-bettu-zekigal appreciated. She leaned forward, hands locked, curving her tail up delicately to hold it invitingly before one bird. It cocked its head, stared at her with Night-dark eyes. "Full-scale panic out there, Lady Luka. Shall we go back, try somewhere else–the palace maybe?"
"My dear girl!" The Ambassador, Andaluz, turned away from the window, his neat pepper-and-salt beard jutting. "I would strongly suggest we . . . I would offer you the protection of the Embassy Compound, but as for what good that will be when that is happening I confess I don’t know."
Zar-bettu-zekigal looked at him in amazement. "Oh, what! Haven’t you ever seen a Night Sun before?"
She swiveled, resting her bare arms on the open window and her chin on her arms, eyes raised to the fiery blackness now at the sky’s highest arc. Basking in the light shadows and cool beams, she said: "Lady?"
Luka chuckled. "Onwards, by all means, if we can. What is it you see?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal slid round in her seat, hooking one foot up under her. The small woman transferred the sparrows to her shoulders, where they nestled in the white- spotted robes. She met Zar-bettu-zekigal’s gaze with eyes of a guileless blue.
"One of those siege-engines the fa— That your son," she corrected herself, "built for messire. It’s here. Whoever’s on it should know where both of them are."
"Absolutely not. Most unlikely. We’ll be overturned before we go much further." Andaluz rested his stubby hand over the tanned hand of Luka. "End this lunacy now, lady, I beg you."
Zar-bettu-zekigal, about to sneer, ducked and slid back as the brown Rat finally hauled her sword from its sheath.
"Charnay!"
"They’re only peasants." Charnay smoothed her fur, translucent ears cocking; and grabbed the window-frame with one hand, pulling herself up to look out. "They’ll run when they’re ordered—"
"They’re running already and not from you!" Zari slipped back as the coach jolted. For a second all her view was sky through the window; deepest blue sky in which particles of darkness burned and danced.
Bright confetti colors dotted the sky.
"Stop the coach!" The Lady Luka trod heavily on Zar-bettu-zekigal’s foot, leaning across the small coach to gaze out. Her feather-braided hair slapped Zari’s mouth. Zar-bettu-zekigal scrambled up, glaring, opened her mouth, and the woman called:
"Elish-hakku-zekigal, stop the coach! Now!"
"Oh, what! See you, this isn’t . . ."
The coach rocked on its springs, stopped dead. A horse whickered. Two bodies slammed against the door, running hard in the press of the crowd, then another: she glimpsed a white-and-yellow Harlequin face. Luka’s hand slipped the catch and pushed the door open.
"Shit!" Zari scrambled across the seat, dropped a yard to the flagstones, and reached under the coach to release the steps. Grease smeared her hands.
Catching her foot, she stumbled.
Zar-bettu-zekigal looked down. A woman sprawled at her feet, eyes open and dead; the body of an older man fallen across her legs.
"It’s a . . . battlefield."
People still ran, away across the square. Where the coach halted men and women and children sprawled across the stained flagstones, the black tatters of plague racing across their flesh. Bright scraps of color danced above their heads, crawled from between gaping lips. One veered towards her, and she jerked her head away, the garish red-and-blue of a peacock-butterfly filling all her vision.
"Souls . . ." Wonder in her tone, the Lady Luka took the Candovard Ambassador’s hand absently as she descended the steps, Charnay hard on her heels. "Souls. Such flight! But–no preparation, no burial, no summoning of the Boat? They’ll be lost."
A Rat’s hand fell heavily on Zar-bettu-zekigal’s shoulder. She started, looked up into the face of Charnay. The brown Rat carried her sword in her free hand, and now lifted it and sighted along the blade at a wheeling butterfly.
"I don’t understand. How will they find their way to the Boat?"
Zari lifted her head to their flight: moths and butterflies fluttering like leaves, dotting the air . . . and rising. Slowly but with purpose, spiraling up towards the Night Sun.
"They won’t. Oh, Elish."
She heard the older Katayan woman’s boots hit the flagstones, and her light tread as she stepped between the tumbled bodies. A warm hand took her arm. She pitched round, throwing her arms about her sister, burying her face in the sweet-scented lace ruffles of her shirt. "Elish!"
"Little one." Work-hardened hands held her back and head, crushing her dress, pressing sun-cooled hair against her scalp. "Hush."
"Hard times deserve hard measures."
Luka’s tone, sharp now, roused her. Zar-bettu-zekigal raised her head. The small woman stood with her arms outstretched, bamboo cane held up in one hand, head raised to the sky. Her feather-braided hair hung down over her breast, silver against the garish robes. The parakeet screeched, clinging to her shoulder.
Birds settled down.
Out of a clear sky, thrushes and starlings and hawks flew down, landing on the lady’s outstretched arms. Sparrows, doves, pigeons, humming-birds–until her old arms bowed, and she flung them upwards, skywards. Zar-bettu-zekigal followed the gesture.