Rats and Gargoyles (34 page)

"Yeah, that’s about when I found myself."

Catching the Rats’ attention on her, she switched
to a language of more distant origin.

"I’m trying for the Fane-in-the-Twelfth-District,
to enter at noon. If not, it’ll have to be at midnight. But I don’t think we
have that much time. And then there’s . . ."

She flicked a brief gaze to the hot flagstones.
Casaubon ponderously nodded.

"What lies below? Oh, yes. And almost ripe, by the
feel of it." His bulk shifted. "Valentine . . . Pox rot the Decan; She robbed us
of a month! We could have discovered the nature of this
magia,
and how to
prevent it."

"I can hazard a better guess than the great
Lord-Architect Casaubon?" The White Crow wiped her wet forehead. "Amazing. But
talk to Lucas about the crypt under Aust-quarter. This is a plague-
magia
,
responsible among other things for this High Summer pestilence. I believe I know
who made it, but I don’t know why. What advantage is it to the Rat-Lords to have
humans sick now?"

She shifted one bare foot scalded by the hot
paving, and raised it to slip on her shoe. "And, if I go after it now, I’ll miss
entry to the Fane."

The Lord-Architect rested bare arms on the engine-
casing, wincing at the heat of sun on the metal, obviously feeling for a
foothold in the bowels of the machine. Slowly he heaved his immense torso
upwards. His shirt snagged on a rivet, tore free.

"Pox rot it, She gave me my own task to do; and I
must
do it. I must see the builders. If you haven’t returned after noon,
I’ll come for you."

He sat up and swung his massive legs over, slid
down to the main part of the platform, and knelt to offer the White Crow a hand
to climb up.

"If I can meet you, yes, we’ll debate what we do
next. If noon’s the crucial time, then act as and how you
can. I don’t like the feel of the day."

Metal rungs hot under her tender palms, she climbed
the ladder; grasped his hand and swung to stand on the steel-plated platform.
The Lord-Architect rose to stand beside her. Somewhere he had shed one stocking,
and his shoes were caked with white mud.

"I wish," the White Crow said, "that She had been a
little
more forthcoming in what She wants us to do."

From the height of the platform she could see how,
ahead, the street opened up. She stared down the hill to the lagoon, the
airfield and the rising slope of marble temples beyond, and–highest,
farthest–the black aust- northerly horizon of the Fane-in-the-Twelfth-District.

"I do what I can, Master-Physician. I am
only"–Casaubon put one massive hand on the stained shirt over his heart–"a poor
Archemaster and Master-Captain."

"This is
serious.
Lucas . . . Lucas?"

Glancing down, she missed the Prince of Candover.
His voice came from the rear of the engine-platform, as he scrambled up the
metal ladder near the ballista and hailed a black Rat.

"Messire Cardinal!"

The Rats in Guard uniform fell back from the edge
as the black Rat signaled. Sleek, a few inches taller than Lucas; he rested his
ringed hand on the hilt of his rapier. The Rat stood lightly, tail cocked, black
feather-plume at a jaunty angle, with a silver
ankh
at his collar, and
only the rich green silk sash to mark him more than a priest.

"Where’s Desaguliers?" The White Crow touched
Casaubon’s sweat-warm shirt-front. "Those are Guiry colors.
That’s
the
Cardinal-General of Guiry? That’s Plessiez?"

The Lord-Architect opened his mouth, shut it again,
shook his head and made
later
gestures with his plump fingers.

The Prince of Candover walked down the platform,
apparently unaffected by the sun-heated metal under his thin sandals. "Messire
Cardinal-General Plessiez. We’ve met, you may recall it. At the Embassy, with my
Uncle Andaluz."

The black Rat’s snout wrinkled in a smile. "And
also, Prince, I think we met in the crypt below Nineteenth District’s Aust
quarter. But that I have not yet discussed with your uncle the Ambassador."

"In a crypt!" the Lord-Architect snorted
sotto
voce.

Lucas’s gaze moved across the White Crow’s face,
his own blank as any diplomat’s; and she watched with a professional
appreciation that momentarily, pleasantly, masked her urgent fears.

"The very question I wanted to raise, Messire
Plessiez," Lucas said. "You’ll recall I was with a Katayan girl then. Mistress
Zar-bettu-zekigal–Zari. Her friends have been afraid she was dead. I’d very much
like to speak with her again."

The black Rat raised one furry brow.

About to speak, the White Crow hesitated as she
felt Casaubon’s voice rumble through his massive torso: "I, also, think it would
be rewarding to speak with the Kings’ Memory. Valentine, you’ll be unaware of
it. but I met her this morning, in company with the Cardinal here. A most
delightful
young lady."

She blandly ignored his last comment. The Lord-
Architect’s apparent smugness gave way to apparent pique. She smiled.

"You may be overstepping an archemaster’s
privileges, Messire Casaubon." The black Rat’s expression flickered, the glint
of anger in bead-black eyes.

"But," Plessiez continued smoothly, "in point of
fact, I was about to suggest the same thing. I sent Mistress Zaribet to the
great square in Fourteenth District with a message, and she may still be there.
Perhaps, Prince Lucas, I could beg you to accompany us?"

Still in a distant language, the White Crow
murmured: "That one won’t get as much out of the Prince as he hopes, though I
see he’ll try."

"And your delightful foreign friend,"
Cardinal-General Plessiez continued, "who I take to be a practitioner of the
noble Art? Madam, if you seek employment, I could find a use for a
prognosticator of fortunes."

"As well as for a Lord-Architect?" the White Crow
challenged. "Who you seem to have riding in this monstrosity as well as building
it–"

"Driving, not riding," Casaubon corrected with mild
hurt. "Master Plessiez here has promised me an introduction to the leader of the
House of Salomon, one Master Builder Falke, in the great square. Therefore I
accompany him."

"Falke?" The White Crow put her palms back against
the hot metal casing of the upper engine, supporting herself. Between tension
and delight, she grinned at Plessiez. "So this Master Falke came out of the
Eastquarter hall alive? I was told he died. But, then, I was told
you
died there, your Eminence. One can’t trust rumor!"

Brown Rats in King’s Guard uniform leaned at their
stations on the engine’s carapace, shading eyes against the brilliance, or
checking the loading of muskets and calivers.

"You know Falke, madam?"

"I know of him. I know of you."

The click of a rifle-bolt echoed back from the
house-fronts. A sweet stink of oil choked the air, throbbing up as the
siege-engine ticked over. Plessiez glanced over his shoulder at the Prince of
Candover.

"I see . . ."

The Lord-Architect Casaubon interrupted: "We can
drive to our destination by way of the Twelfth District, Valentine. Certainly!
You’d be late if we left you to walk."

Plessiez opened his mouth to protest.

"Oh, certainly," the White Crow deadpanned. "I’ll
never get Lucas to steal me horse and tack again in the time left. Of course, if
it weren’t for this
thing,
we’d still have the mare and the gelding . . ."

Hot sun beat down. Marble roofs and frontages, gold
and white against the blue, breathed back the silence that comes from hot stone.
The tickover of the siege-engine came back from street and alley walls like the
beating of surf, mingling with the offhand talk of the Guards as they patrolled
the platform or squatted down against the shaded side.

The Cardinal-General frowned with an expression
condemning bad taste.

"Madam, this is not a day upon which to make
jokes."

"I know, your Eminence. I know that better than you
appreciate," The White Crow tilted her hat-brim down to shade her eyes. "Let’s
speak of necromancy, shall we?"

Desaguliers walked past the turning treadmill, not
pausing even to brush the sparks from his fur as they fell from the crackling
chandeliers. One sweating human face turned towards him. He slapped the end of
his tail against the bars. "Get working."

"Scum!"

Unbelieving, he swung back to throttle the whisper
out of the naked straining worker. Before he could reach her, a Lord Magus in a
golden robe appeared at his elbow.

"All’s arranged."

He felt a small hard object pressed into his palm.

"Watch me, then. Don’t miss the signal."
Desaguliers, sweating in the heat of midday, the audience hall’s closed curtains
and artificial light, let a cynical smile appear on his lean features. "I’ve
known too many of these affairs be messy failures. This one has to succeed. If I
go down, I’ll take all of you with me."

"We never doubted that, messire."

Desaguliers left him, walking under the clover-leaf
vaults of the great chamber, now bright with the flare of generated lights. He
pushed between two Rats, one in blue satin, one in linen and leather; both
feeding by hand and from the same dish their leashed human slaves.

A flurry in the thick crowd caught his attention. A
tall Rat in the gold of the Lords Magi, awkwardly riding the shoulders of a
female brown Rat-Guard, yelled a drunken toast to the four or five hundred
packed into the hall: "The King!"

Different voices chorused: "The King and victory!"

"To our future without masters!" the Magus echoed,
slipped, and slid to vanish from Desaguliers’ sight into the crowd and a roar of
laughter.

Pushing onwards, elbowing, the former
Captain-General worked his way towards the circular dais-throne. The crowd grew
thicker. He thrust a way between four female Rats in Guard uniform, a priest, a
cluster of gallants quarreling; stepped down hard on the long-toed foot of a
dazed-drunk brown Rat and opened a gap in the front row.

The Rat-King sat among wine-stained cushions, under
the incandescent glare of the lights. Receiving toasts, congratulations; waving
away a messenger, talking to a priest in the robes of the Abbey of Guiry,
bright-eyed with victory celebrations . . .

"Messire Desaguliers!" The younger of the silver-
furred Rats-King raised a wine-goblet in ironic salutation. "Have you come
seeking your co-conspirators?"

Silence began to seep into their immediate circle.

"Conspiracy?" Desaguliers asked mildly.

"Janin, Reuss, Chalons," the silver-furred Rat-King
enumerated. "And, of the Guard, Rostagny and Hervet—"

"–Volcyr, Perigord, de Barthes," the bony black
Rats-King picked up, turning away from the young female Guiry priest. "If you
have come inquiring for them, I recommend you seek them out in the palace
oubliettes. But, then, you’ll—"

"–be there in their company soon enough." A brown
Rats-King flopped down on his belly, tail cocked high, and wrinkled his nose
dazedly. "Drink, man! We’ll settle your execution tomorrow. Things will be
different tomorrow."

"They certainly will." Desaguliers spoke over the
nearest of the crowd’s ragged cheers. He made a low formal bow and, as he
straightened up, added: "You were well informed about the conspiracy, your
Majesty. If not quite well enough."

"Shilly." The brown Rats-King closed his eyes
suddenly.

"Are you still a danger, then?" the bony black
Rats- King said. He sprang to his feet, dragging the knot of co-joined tails
painfully towards him. Standing knee-deep in the silk cushions, he flung out a
hand.

"Enough leniency.
More
than enough. Shoot
him!"

The Rats nearest Desaguliers started, whiskers
quivering; backed up hard against the packed crowd. The Guards around the dais
raised their loaded muskets, struck tinder for the fuses. Someone at
Desaguliers’ elbow screamed. The Rat-King pointed again, shrieking:
"Shoot!"

Elbows rammed into his ribs; feet clawed him,
pushing away. Desaguliers, swordless, grinned a ferocious grin and kept his
feet; watching the smouldering musket-fuses, praying that the Lord Magus’ lent
magic would–
once,
it only needs to be this once–work for him.

He flung up his hand and crushed the tiny glass
sphere that he carried in his hand.
"Now!"

The sputtering chandeliers died momentarily; then
blazed up with a glare that lit the closed draperies like a gunpowder-flash. Hot
splinters of glass rained down among screams. Desaguliers threw himself flat as
a musket discharged, heard the shot whistle past his head and
thunk
into
something with a noise like a butcher’s cleaver hitting bone. Wet blood
spattered his fur.

On his knees, jaw aching from some unrecognized
blow, he heard what seemed at first to be a continuation of the bulbs breaking.
The full-length windows shattered, draperies billowing inwards. Daylight blazed
in, and dust.

Through clouds of dust and stone-fragments,
Desaguliers saw the metal-tipped beak of a battering-ram. Panicked Rats all but
crushed him as, now, they struggled as hard away from the windows as they had
from the dais. Desaguliers sprang across the intervening distance and landed on
the Rat-King’s throne.

"Nobody move!"

The spur of the battering-ram, joined by a second,
pushed collapsing wall and window-frames into the audience hall. Dust rained
down on silks and satin and fur. Screams and cries echoed. A silver Rats-King
sobbed. The vast bulk of a siege-engine rumbled through the destroyed wall and
on to the inlaid-wood flooring, grinding up planks as it came. It blocked the
shafts of sunlight spearing the dust . . .

"Here!" Desaguliers held up his hand, signaling to
the Rats in Guard uniform crouching on the main platform, who now, swords in
hand, leaped down and began shoving the crowd together in smaller, terrorized
groups. One group remained on the engine-platform, firing a musket-volley into
the King’s Guards.