Rats and Gargoyles (33 page)

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?"

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.

"
Some
thing’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 sharp 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."

Beetles and centipedes scuttled across the marble
paving, fried by the approaching-noon sun. Something rustled on her arm, and the
White Crow’s fingertips brushed chitin: a locust skittering away. She wiped her
upper lip free of sweat. She could hardly look up at the sky. The shadow of the
siege-engine fell on her as welcome shade.

"This really is the most amazing machine to drive."
The Lord-Architect Casaubon beamed under oil-smears. His head lifted, chins unfolding, as a clock chimed
the half-hour somewhere down towards the docks. The White Crow bit her lip to
keep a grin off her face.

"How long have you been now? Here?"

He gazed down from the engine-casing, rocked a
podgy hand back and forth. "Since dawn, this day?"