Rats and Gargoyles (29 page)

"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.

Her outstretched fingers touched fur.

She twisted around, flattening her body against the
pipework of the back wall. Her bare ankle brushed over the dead wasp. The door
swung closed an inch, a foot, weighed by the heaviness of its burden.

Bulbous shapes–no,
a
shape–clung to the
inside of the peeling cubicle door. Fragile insectile legs shifted for purchase.
The throbbing soft segments of the torso glowed black and yellow, the glassy
wings shattered a rainbow spectrum. The Archdeacon pressed herself back against
the wall, heel kicking at the pipework.

The wasp’s body, as tall and solid as she, clung
quivering to the door, arching slightly at the division of its bulbous body,
sting pulsing under the lower torso.Regnault’s skin crawled. She looked up wildly to
see if the cubicle walls could be climbed. Beyond the partition a deep buzzing
note began, joined by another, then another. Sun through the clerestory windows
glinted on rising wings.

The wasp that clung to the back of the door
thrummed a raw increasing shriek.

"–heart of the Wood protect, the Lady of the Trees
defend
—
"

A sharp click sounded outside the cubicle, at the
end of the long room. She recognized the sound of a sandal stepping down on to a
tiled floor from a small height: the height of, say, a wall-mirror.

She reached up, hands shaking, and carefully
pressed each finger in turn to the hawthorn spray. With bloody hands she
unpinned it from her dress, marking the cloth, tearing it into two handfuls of
twig and leaf. Her skin cringed away from the insectile form clinging to the
door, its translucent guts throbbing with half-digested food.