Rats and Gargoyles (41 page)

"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 sudden 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?"