Rats and Gargoyles (11 page)

"Are you disobeying me, boy?" Her wrinkled face
puckered into a smile. "Good! The time will come when you have to kill to stay
alive. But life is precious; you should always have a better reason for taking
it than someone else’s order."

A tall girl stepped forward from the group. "But
we’re here to learn, aren’t we?"

Heurodis reached to take the knife from Lucas’s
outstretched hand. "Certainly. And Reverend tutors musn’t be disobeyed, which is
why Master Lucas will be scrubbing out the latrines this morning, as a
punishment."

Lucas wiped his wet palm on his shirt.

"As a point of reference," the elderly lady said,
"we usually don’t do any killing–knives, poisons, traps– until well into the
second term."

She gave the drugged man’s tether to one of the
hall- assistants, and as she passed Lucas he smelt frangipani and the scent of
lilac. The old woman smoothed down her cotton dress.

"Pair off now. I want to see your techniques for
disarming someone who has a knife. Master Lucas, a word with you."

The other new students began unrolling
practice-mats. Lucas walked a few paces aside with the white-haired woman.

"I hear that you used some family influence
yesterday to avoid the punishment for not attending." She placed the top of her
cane against Lucas’s chest. "Don’t do that again. You could spend the rest of
this term cleaning latrines."

"I—"
was led astray by a dead girl,
Lucas
finished the thought; and shut his mouth, and met Heurodis’s smoky gaze. "Sorry,
Reverend Mistress."

The cane rapped him familiarly under the fifth rib.
She smiled, displaying long regular teeth. "Good man."

"When I’ve finished . . .
cleaning
"– Lucas’s
nostrils flared slightly–"do I rejoin the class?"

"Yes." Heurodis raised her voice inclusively. "This
afternoon you all have a session with Reverend Master Pharamond–and your first
practice-session, out in the city itself."

In the darkness, water dripped. Echoes ran off into
the unseen distance. Cold moist air blew steadily now; and the stench of ordure
was interrupted by scents of unbearable sweetness.

Rubble skittered across a hard surface. A grunt and
an oath were succeeded by a splash.

"Zari?"

"My
foot
! My bare foot!"

The Katayan sprawled face-down across brick paving,
half in and half out of a pool of water. She raised her head, pushing a
chopped-off fringe of black hair out of her eyes, and then held up her hands,
spread-fingered.

"Ei! I can
see.
It’s light. Where’s it
coming from?"

She knelt up, wringing out the hem of her
greatcoat. Her dappled tail cracked like a whip, and a fine spray of water flew
into the darkness.

"Where are we? Can we get out of here?"

"I think it unlikely."

Dim illumination shone on Plessiez, where the black
Rat, drawn rapier in his hand, stood staring up a brick shaft that opened above
his head. A cone of silvery light fell from it, on to a floor cluttered with
broken bricks, stones, heaps of dried ordure, ossified branches and yellowing
bones.

"Charnay, see if it’s possible to climb here."

The brown Rat emerged from the gloom. She put her
fists on her furry haunches, craning her neck. The arched brick roof passed five
or six feet above her head, and the shaft in it (easily thirty feet in diameter)
opened without lip or ledge.

"It’s smooth," Charnay reported.

"I see that. Try if you can get a grip.
Climb.
"

Zar-bettu-zekigal stood up, shaking her dripping
foot, and padded towards the light. The skeleton of a snake curved across the
brick paving in front of her, entire, the delicate-branched vertebrae all
intact; and she stooped to peer at the wedge-shaped skull.

It rose an inch, empty eye-sockets turning towards
her; and glided smoothly under an abandoned heap of brushwood.

Zari took one step after the loose-rattling tail,
hesitated, and limped over to the two Rats.

"Where’s . . . ? We’ve lost Falke again," she said.

Charnay’s leap for the edge of the shaft connected
briefly, and Plessiez stepped back as the brown Rat’s wildly scrabbling hind
foot swung past his head. Her tail whipped in wild circles.

"Damn the man."

The brown Rat lost her tenuous grip, tangled a foot
in her scabbard and tail on landing and fell heavily on her rump. Plessiez
side-stepped.

"I’m not his nurse!"

"Where
is
he?"

The shaft’s dim light showed little around them but
the walls. The scent of sweetness was stronger here. The Katayan narrowed her
eyes, discerning a phosphorescence patterning the brick vaulting. A paleness of
brambles, toothed leaves, petals . . .

Zari stepped forward and stared up the shaft, hands
shoved deep into her pockets. Dizzied by the receding circle of brickwork and
the sweet stench, she stumbled back against Plessiez, grabbing the black Rat’s
arm.

"It goes way up, messire. I think it’s
elbow-jointed. What are the flowers?"

The priest fingered his pectoral
ankh.
"A
haunting of roses. One rarely sees such things above ground. I’d advise you to
leave them alone."

Her shivering communicated itself through his arm.
Plessiez chose a dry area of paving, in the shaft’s light, and pushed the
Katayan woman to sit down.

"We’re taking a rest now. Charnay, find Falke."

The black Rat sheathed his rapier and reached up to
untie his scarlet cloak. He swung it free, knelt down, and took the Katayan
woman’s freckled foot in his hands; drying it with the cloth, and examining it.

"Bruised. Can you walk?"

She withered him with a glare. "Messire, of
course
I can walk."

The black Rat dug thumbs into the ball of her foot,
with hands upon which the rings were chill. His obsidian eyes glinted in the
twilight.

"Honest assessment of your capabilities would be
more useful than bravado, I think."

Her calves ached with an infinitude of steps,
passages, iron-rung ladders, and tunnels. "I can walk."

Plessiez swathed her feet temporarily in the warm
lined cloak and sat down at her side. His lean wolfish face was thoughtful. In
the twilight she could see how his scarlet jacket was mud-stained, and the
plumed headband bedraggled. Only a twitching of his scaly tail showed his
reined-in temper.

"Damn the man! This is his escape-route; he should
know where it leads."

Zari turned her greatcoat collar up, and sat
hugging her knees. "Messire, be honest. Did
you
stop to ask where this
went, when it went away from those . . . things?"

"I did not."

Plessiez removed his headband, scratching at the
fur between his ears; and smoothed the broken black feathers. Two of the yellow
nails on his right hand were broken. Scuffs and disheveled patches showed in his
sleek fur. He looked sideways at the young woman.

"I don’t forget that your prompt action saved us."

The Katayan shoved pale fingers through her hair,
head bowed; and shook the black hair back from her face as she looked up. "Falke
did that, with his traps and false cellars."

She knelt up, feet still swathed in Plessiez’s
cloak. She reached across, put her hands on the black Rat’s shoulders, and
absently began to knead the muscles that were tense under the sleek fur. Some of
his rigidity dissolved. "If this
is
a sewer system, then it’s been here for
ever
—"

A sound thrilled through the dark.

Plessiez grabbed his rapier, scrambling upright.
Zar-bettu-zekigal half got to her feet, tangled herself in the cloak and sat
down. Charnay’s voice, nearby, said: "So it’s salt. Then you ought to be glad
that I pulled you out, instead of bitching about it, messire!"

The brown Rat staggered into the circle of
twilight, a man’s body over her shoulder. With a grunt of effort, she knelt and
eased him down on to the terracotta paving. Black overalls streamed water on to
the brick.

"We’ve got to get out of here! If we don’t, we’ll
starve!" Falke caught the harness of Charnay’s rapier in a white fist. His
translucent hair dripped, sleeked dark with oil and water, and his eyes,
uncovered, stared wildly: velvet pits.

Plessiez sheathed his rapier, watching the pale
fire of spectral roses.

"The last of our worries is starvation, messire."

The brown Rat clapped Falke roughly on the back.
"No need for hysterics."

Zari kicked her bare feet free of the cloak and
scrambled upright. She seized Charnay’s arm, as the brown Rat began to scrub
water from her fur with a silk kerchief.

"It’s wet!"

"So it’s wet." Charnay’s tail whip-cracked,
flicking water-drops off with an audible
spuk!
"So what?"

Plessiez put his hand on the Katayan’s shoulder,
restraining her. "Water?"

"Oh, yes, messire." The brown Rat began cleaning
dampness from her rapier.

"Where?"

Surprised, she said: "Up ahead. Not far. Falke here found it the hard way, I don’t know why; there was
light enough that even a Ratling needn’t have fallen
in—"

Plessiez shoved Zar-bettu-zekigal back. The Katayan
danced from foot to bare foot, hardly bothering to avoid the shivering Falke
where he huddled, dripping.

"Light? Light from
what,
you dim-witted
idiot!" the black Rat demanded.

Charnay sheathed her cleaned rapier, adjusted the
hang of her cloak and looked down at Plessiez with a puzzled expression.

"The canal has lamps," she explained.

Sun from the hard yellow sand dazzled him. Lucas
sat on the lagoon wall, dealing cards on to the smooth stone surface.

White marble palaces shone under the luminous blue
sky, rising up in terraces from the lagoon. Pink and blue banners hung from
balustrades, from walls, from arches and domes. People on the streets made
pin-pricks of bright color. The thin thump of drums came down from a procession,
up on a higher street, and the brass tang of cymbals. On the promenade, several
black Rats in litters stopped to talk, blocking the way. The sun glinted off the
cuirasses of their bodyguards.

"Play you at Shilling-the-Trump?" a voice offered.
Lucas nodded to the woman in sailor’s breeches and shirt, identifying her as a
transient worker, and so allowed to carry coin. She set down her kitbag and sat
on the carved balustrade beside him. He dealt, businesslike now.

"You’re too good," she said at last. Her yellow eyes
narrowed suspiciously. "You’re not a student, are you?" Lucas, lying only by
implication, said deprecatingly: "Only came in on the
Viper
two days
ago."

"I’ve been warned about students . . ."

The calm lagoon waters mirrored marble-white
terraces and a clear sky. Gilding glinted from temple columns and dome-friezes.
Far off, where the lagoon opened to the sea, masts were visible, and sailors
loading ships, and merchants outside warehouses.

Here, on the flat-packed sand, immense oval shadows
dappled the ground: airships tugging at mooring-ropes.

"Five shillings you owe me."

The woman paid, and Lucas watched her walk away.
Barely three o’clock, a dozen other students scattered across the promenades,
and already five impromptu cardsharp games since his arrival . . .

None of them the meeting
she
foretold me.
Still, she did say the station, and the docks, as well as here.

He dealt idly: Page of Scepters, Ten of Coins,
Three of Grails. A breeze whipped the pasteboard off the marble. He made a
sprawling grab for the cards.

A hand the size of a ham slapped down on the stone
balustrade, trapping the Page of Scepters and smearing both card and stone with
heavy streaks of machine-oil.

"Here." A resonant good-natured voice.

"Of all the
filthy
—"

Lucas straightened up, the sun burning the back of
his neck. On the sand-flats, crews were scurrying about a moored helium-airship;
trolleys and small carriages scored ruts in the sand. Lucas’s voice trailed off
as he realized that all his view was blotted out.

The man wiped the Page of Scepters on the lapel of
his pink satin coat. Black oil smeared the satin. He peered at the card with
china-blue eyes, and dropped a kitbag from his other ham-sized fist. It thudded
on to the sand.

"Nothing wrong with that," he remarked
encouragingly, and handed the pasteboard back to Lucas.

"Just wait a damn minute—!"

"Yes?"

Cropped hair glinted the color of copper wire. As
he looked down over his mountainous stomach at the seated young man, his several
chins creased up into sweaty folds. He beamed. The smell of the distant surf was
overlaid by oil and sweat and garlic.

Lucas opened and shut his mouth several times.

The big man moved and sat down companionably on the
balustrade. The marble shook as his weight hit it. He tugged his oil-stained
silk breeches up, loosened his cravat and belched; and then gazed around at the
surrounding city with immense pleasure.

"Architectonic," he murmured. He scratched
vigorously in his copper hair and examined his fingernails, flicking scurf away.
"Wonderful. Is all the city like this?"

"Uhhrh. No."

"Pity."

The man offered a plump fat-creased hand. His sleeve
was coated in some yellow substance, almost to the elbow. Wet patches darkened
under his arm.

"Casaubon," he said.

Lucas managed to swallow, saliva wetting his dry
mouth. Half-lost in thoughts, he muttered: "You can’t possibly be . . .
No!
"

"I assure you, my name
is
Baltazar
Casaubon." The big man inquired with gravity, over the noise of engines, voices
and distant bells, "Who ought I to be?"

"I’m not sure. I don’t know." Lucas closed his fist
over the pack of cards. Badly startled, he began again. "A seer foretold a
meeting for me, here . . . Somehow I hardly think that you’re the person in
question."