Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  Dark under the Night Sun, birds circled. Great scarlet macaws, eagles, buzzards; peregrine falcons and merlins, mouse-owls and herring gulls, crows, ravens and vultures. Amazed, she hugged Elish tighter, deafened by the rush of great wings, wincing from the spatter of droppings that hit the flagstones; dizzied by the skirl of flight, hundreds upon thousands of birds flocking overhead.

  "Follow! Follow-follow-follow!"

  High as a jay’s shriek, the old woman’s voice pierced the air. She swept the bamboo cane high above her head.

  A mottled black-and-white moth skittered across Zari’s vision. A rush of cold wings sounded, whirring; and the scarlet parakeet seemed to halt in mid-air, beak snapping. The moth’s body crunched. The bird flicked away on an updraught, beak pecking down the fragile wings.

  "Elish . . ." Zari unknotted her fists from her sister’s coat, knuckles white. A cold wind began to blow. "Elish! What’re they doing?"

  Her heart thudded in her breast; Zar-bettu-zekigal felt it through her sister’s flesh. The older Katayan said nothing, only stared upwards.

  Swift, acute, cutting the sky: the great flock of birds circled and spread out, rising on dark wings, pursuing and catching and devouring the hundred thousand butterflies that spiraled up into the bright air.

  Brick walls rose up about him. Lucas trotted to the end of another alley, pacing himself, holding in tight frustration. The alley opened into a crossroads.

  Five identical ways led off: indistinguishable from all the other alleys. He cocked his head, listened. At least no footsteps now, no pursuers.

  "Gods damn it!" He slammed his fist against the wall. Brickdust and plaster sifted down. "I don’t believe it!"

  Lucas stared up at the narrow strip of sky visible between roofs. The black glare of the sun blinded him, dead overhead, no use for directions.

  He picked an alley that might lead away from the square and began to run down it, loping, muscles aching. Within minutes he hit a division of the ways, paused. Lost.

  Lost.

  "I can’t believe I did this." His voice bounced thinly back from the walls and shutters. He banged on peeling shutters. No sound, no answer.

  Claws scratched on cobblestones, loud in the silence. A hard hairy body pushed under his right hand. Lucas froze as it brushed his leg, looked down. A white dog.

  "Lazarus?"

  Not a dog, a timber wolf; turning its thin muzzle up to gaze at him with ice-blue eyes. Dust clogged the pads of the animal’s feet. It let its jaw gape for a moment, panting; then gave a quick high-pitched growl and trotted off down one of the two alleys.

  "Hey!" Lucas hesitated. "Where is she? Were you with her? What the fuck–you’re an animal. What do you know?"

  The wolf stopped, gazing back with feral eyes.

  Lucas stepped forward. Heat rebounded back from the walls of the buildings, built up a thin film of sweat on his skin that the sunlight cooled. He began to walk. The wolf, as if satisfied at seeing him follow, turned and trotted on, loping easily down the dry central gutter.

  Dust thickened thirst on his tongue. Now the wolf began running, the rocking pace that eats up miles outside city streets; and Lucas, one hand pressed over his breeches pocket and the letter, sprinted after, panting.

  "Hey!"

  A corner, a narrow alley, a flight of steps; another long alley, cut right, cut left; a short alley—

  He caught a gutter-pipe to pull him round the next corner. The street shone dusty, dark, empty before him. Disbelieving, he slowed, panting; walking slowly along past a high wall.

  "As if I believed—" Incredulity sharpened his voice; he hit his fist against his thigh.

  A murmur of voices came from a high window.

  Lucas stopped. He narrowed his eyes against the light shadows cast by the wall, staring up at the building’s clustered chimneys and high peaked roofs. Still staring up, he walked along the wall to the massive iron-railing gates that stood open.

  Chimneys cast light shadows across the paving. Cool reflected back from the walls on three sides, light glinting blackly from the windows. Great stone stairways went up at cater-corners of the courtyard, the wooden doors at the top of the left-hand flight standing open.

  The murmur of voices from Big Hall echoed down through open windows into the courtyard of the University of Crime.

  From gable and ridge and roof, from finial and spire, from pinnacle and gutter they rise up.

  Great ribbed wings scour the sky.

  Their shadows fall across the heart of the world, falling not light as all other shadows do, but still black: black as pits on the streets and houses and parks below.

  The Night Sun bubbles their skins like tar. They shriek, rising up into the air, soaring.

  The heart of the world stretches far out to the horizon, its thirty-six Districts and one hundred and eighty-one quarters; each District cut on its austerly sides by the darkness of the Fane, tentacles of stone building piecemeal across the earth. Houses, palaces, inns, temples; courtyards and avenues, all empty now, no Rat-Lords, no humans, all lost or fleeing for refuge—

  The acolytes of the Fane swarm, a hundred thousand.

  Here they swoop low, bristle-tails beating the air, their thumbhooked wings beating at the windowless Fane-in-the-Eighth-District. There they shriek, circling the buttresses of the Fane-in-the-Thirty-First-District.

  They can no longer enter.

  The Night Sun scorches their uncommon flesh, burning, burning.

  Goaded they rise, blind with blood and fear. The Fane is closed to them. Over the city they swarm up, screaming.

  Their Thirty-Six masters do not answer.

  Clawed feet scrape the air: unflesh that can wither stone if it will. Wings beat: their breath can rip roofs from houses. Ears listen, hearing the beats of frightened hearts: the living who hide in their homes below and pray to the Fane’s deafness.

  Shrieking, they soar up into the burning black light. Gaining height to strike.

  Plessiez clasped his onyx-ringed hands behind his back, gazing out over the building site of the House of Wisdom, Temple of the Two Pillars of Strength and Beauty, the Daughter of Salomon.

  Abandoned barrows and diggers littered the earth, tarpaulins flapped loose over crates; drills, buckets, chisels and barrels lay on the ground and on the scaffolding platforms where they had been dropped. He stepped half a pace to one side as two black Rats, both in the lace and linen of minor gentry, carried the last of the dead men past by the hands and feet.

  "The tents?" one queried. Plessiez inclined his head, glancing down at the body’s heat-black and tattered skin.

  "We need fear no infection . . . I believe."

  Dust still hung over the massive granite block by which he stood. From a blazing sky, dark light settled into the incised Word of Seshat, filling every carved channel. He rested his hand against the chill surface.

  "As our great poet says, architecture is frozen music. A thaw would improve this greatly, I think. We’ll have it demolished later." He turned away from the site, now cleared of bodies, and walked down the broken steps. Without looking up, he added: "How goes it?"

  The Lord-Architect glanced up and winced. He wiped his face, smearing a white dropping across one dark copper eyebrow.

  "Fewer butterflies," he replied gravely. "More birds."

  Plessiez nodded acknowledgment to a group of black Rats, merchants from one of the rich houses around the square; paused to exchange a word. To all sides now the square stretched away empty, but for the last of the impromptu squads carrying bodies to the abandoned Imperial tents. Careless, hard, cheerful: voices rang out. One ragged banner still flew, in the increasingly chill air.

  "You have"–the Lord-Architect Casaubon drew on his voluminous blue satin frock-coat, and felt in his pockets–"a monstrously tidy mind, Master Plessiez."

  Plessiez rubbed his hands together, restoring circulation. Giving a tug to his cardinal’s green sash, he moved down from the last broken step to the paving, and into
the bright shadow of the siege-engine. His scabbard jingled, harsh in the cold air.

  "I see no reason these should not labor. Albeit minor gentry and merchants assume themselves too good for it." A nod of his head to the velvet- and lace-clad Rats now milling in the square. "I’ll give orders later for some communal burial, some monument."

  "Later?"

  Plessiez surveyed the crowds of his own kind, and smiled slightly. "Oh, yes. After the present trouble."

  The Lord-Architect walked out a distance into the square and squatted down, studying the ground, blue silk breeches straining over his expanses of thigh and buttock. Rubbish still littered the paving about his feet: feathers, masks, colored ribbons, abandoned food and drink.

  "Then let me tell you . . ."

  A glass with an inch of stewed beer still in it stood by the Lord-Architect’s foot. He absently picked it up, drank the dregs, and rose to his feet again.

  ". . . just by way of a warning, since you’re too gods- damned ignorant to perceive it for yourself . . ."

  Casaubon felt in his deep pockets. He brought out, first, a stale chunk of bread smeared with something brown, which he bit into and then returned; and then a small sextant. Holding this up to the Night Sun with greasy fingers, he spoke through a spray of bread pellets.

  ". . . that there’s plague, and the black sun, but your troubles aren’t half-over yet . . ."

  Plessiez crossed the space between them in three strides, seizing the fat man’s arm. "What do you know? Is this your Art?"

  ". . . therefore," the Lord-Architect concluded as if he had not been interrupted, "kindly stand aside, master priest, and let me get on with my work!"

  "What work?" He loosed the satin sleeve.

  "Plessiez!"

  "Wait here," Plessiez ordered, turning to face the voice. The noise of hoofs echoed across the square, the rider driving hard between the clear-up squads; reining in to a reckless halt by the siege-engine. She swung down from the mare’s saddle, a plump black Rat in the scarlet jacket and ankh of the Order of Guiry.

  "Fleury?"

  "Man, are you in trouble!" She caught his arm, drew him aside, her naked tail lashing nervously. "I rode from the palace. Fenelon told me you’d gone this way. Let me tell you—"

  "Wait."

  Plessiez signaled to the King’s Guard, sending them to stations a little distance from the siege-engine; glanced at the Lord-Architect (the fat man’s attention fixed on the Night Sun and his sextant); and drew the plump Rat into the shelter of the engine-platform.

  "Now. And briefly."

  The black Rat priest blinked, her dark eyes wide. Specks of plaster clung to her fur; she smelt of horse- sweat and fear and cordite. Plessiez abruptly put his hands behind his back again, holding the one with the other, this time to prevent them shaking.

  "Desaguliers holds the palace and the King." She drew in a breath, began to relate in a machine-gun rattle.

  Half-listening, half-absent, Plessiez narrowed his eyes against the cold wind skirling across the square. The shadows of birds, bright gold and fringed with light, fell thick across him, pelting like summer rain. Their cries diminished as they flocked higher, higher; drawn up after the swarm of brightly colored insects seeking the sun.

  "Your orders, messire?"

  He reached out and ruffled Fleury’s fur affectionately. "My orders are to wait. We’ll settle our discontented Captain-General, and St. Cyr, when this is finished. Republic! What fools do they think we are?"

  "Prodigious great ones?" The Lord-Architect Casaubon, padding back to the siege-engine, sat down by the heap of his belongings at the foot of the metal ladder. He beamed up at Plessiez, hooking on his heeled court- shoes, and pulling up one stocking that immediately slid back down around his ankle.

  "I believe I can dispense with your services," Plessiez murmured. "The engine will do very well on-station here. Now, Fleury—"

  "Gods rot your soul, I’ve half a mind to leave you to it!"

  Bending, hitting his head on the under-carapace, the Lord-Architect moved under the siege-engine, twisting his head to peer up at the axle and gears. He reached up with delicate plump fingers, feeling among hard metal and grease. A sharp clck! sounded.

  Plessiez stepped back. "These men obey my orders, Messire Casaubon. I wouldn’t want to have to arrest you."

  The fat man backed out from under the machine, straightening; cracked the back of his head on the undercarriage again, and stared ruefully up into the bird- shadowed sky. At the blue empyrean, the rising dark dots and confetti-colors; and the cold blaze of blackness at noon.

  He sighed with something of a martyr’s air: "All in position?"

  The bright shadow of the ballista fell across Plessiez, dazzling him momentarily. Courteous, while he raised a hand to call the Guard, he confirmed: "Yes. One in each of the thirty-six Districts. Does aught else matter now? If you know of another danger, speak of it."

  The immensely fat man continued to stare upwards, while his ham-hands delved deeper into inner and outer pockets. "Another danger!"

  Casaubon, producing a lump of what appeared to be red wax from one pocket, and black chalk from another, took a last squint at the Night Sun and bent to inscribe curving lines on the paving-stones. Plessiez watched him backing away, rump in the air, periodically back-handing bottles or glasses out of his way. A laugh bubbled in his throat. He fought it down, fearing hysteria; drew his rapier and paced beside the pattern of hieroglyphs that curved around the Vitruvian siege-engine.

  "What are you doing?"

  At the simplicity of the question, the fat man tilted his head up for a second. "Doesn’t matter where the other thirty-five are, so long as they’re in their Districts. Designed this one as the key. Activating it takes concentration, blast you!"

  "But why? Is it what I feared?"

  While Plessiez still fumed at the desperation he heard in his own voice, the Lord-Architect pointed with one filthy hand at the aust-westerly horizon.

  "That’s why."

  Whirling dark motes spun up from the spires and obelisks of the Fane. Plessiez automatically stepped back and raised his sword to guard position, staring as heads turned all across the square: Rats looking up from their talk and work to stare at the swarming sky.

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon straightened up, and surveyed Plessiez over the swell of his chest and belly with arrogant authority.

  "Master priest, you and I have scores to pay off. In future time, if there is future time, I’ll make it my business to discover if you were workman or architect of this plan. Certainly you’re one of the pox-damned fools who thought necromancy was a safe magia to loose on the world. It may be, even, that you’re the cause of Valentine’s danger."

  Plessiez, his gaze fixed on the sky, heard a tone in the fat man’s voice that made him glance down.

  "I’ll make time for you." Casaubon grunted, hefting the chalk lost in his massive hand. "For the rest–acolytes. The acolytes of the Fane. Had it occurred to you, master priest, that at this hour of the Night Sun they are masterless, too?"

  Over the noises of birds and voices, over the humming and chattering in the air, and his own voice calling orders, Plessiez heard behind him the rapid urgent strokes of chalk on stone.

  Throat raw with screaming, the White Crow sobbed in a breath and muttered a charm against pain. Stone grated hard under her knees and shins; against the side of her face. The stench of ordure faded in her nostrils, replaced by the sweetness of honey.

  Kneeling, slumped against masonry, a hard tension pulled against the muscles of her arm.

  "Did we . . . ?"

  She opened her eyes to rose-pale light.

  A deep hollow, man-sized, pitted the stone floor of the cell beside her. New, but smooth; as if time or the sea had worn it down for aeons. And cradled in that absence of stone she saw a foot, white and bony, a sharp shin, a knee . . . Her head jerked up.

  A smell of honey, sweet and sleepy, sang in the air. The cell soared over their
heads, white stone with a heart of rose burning softly in its masonry depths.

  Candia knelt on the newly hollowed stone, bearded face gaunt now, his arm around the naked white shoulder of an old man.

  "Gods! Oh, dear gods . . ."

  The man’s hands busy at his face touched flesh, white hair, nose, ears and lips; slid down to his Adam’s apple and collar-bone and sharp-ribbed chest. Pale age-spotted skin all whole. Candia’s buff-and-scarlet jacket swathed his hips; his thin legs and bare bony feet protruded from under it. His chest rose and fell smoothly. He broke into a sweet open smile.

  All realization in a split second: pain slammed her vision black and bloody. She doubled up. A scream ripped from her throat. Tears ran down her face. Still kneeling supported against the cell wall, she stared at her outstretched arm and hand.

  Her left hand impaled, four inches down on the jutting iron spike.

  Solid metal poked up from torn skin and flesh. Blood and white liquid ran down her arm, streaking red, drying. Her flesh trembled: the bones in her hand grated against the impaling metal spike.

  "God-shit-damnit . . ."

  A hand covered her eyes; she smelt a fragrance of lilac. Heurodis’s voice said: "Don’t look. Wait. There."

  Something gripped her left hand, pulled it up, free of the spike.

  Pain ripped through her. She rolled fetally on the stone floor of the cell, screaming, left hand held out and away from her body. Warm trickles of blood ran over her wrist.

  "Lady." A new voice, hesitant, well spoken; light with age.

  She opened her mouth, screaming. A cold numbness took her skin, sank into muscle and bone.

  The White Crow pushed herself up on to her knees, supporting herself on her right hand, sweating and dizzy. The old man knelt at her side, shrugging Candia off, labile face creased into a triumphant smile. She looked down. Both his hands clasped hers, the light of summer leaves shining out between the Bishop’s fingers.

  Pain ebbed.

  The light of forests faded.

  She covered their hands with her free one, squeezed his for a second longer. His grip loosened. The White Crow took her hand back, examining the wound. Red muscle gleamed at the edges, and a white bone glinted. A skein of dermis glinted over raw flesh. Pain. No blood.