Rats and Gargoyles (30 page)

Poised, dizzy, she took a breath of oxygenless air.

Outside the cubicle, pacing footsteps traced a
staccato inhuman rhythm. She glimpsed a brown ankle under the cubicle door, and
a foot with claws.

Wetness touched her bare leg.

The fist-sized body of the dead wasp no longer
blocked the drain. From its open throat a tendril of wet dark nuzzled. It
touched her ankle, numbed the skin, left white puckered marks.

"Heart of the Wood!"

Both hands clenched on crushed hawthorn, she
pivoted on one heel and struck the cubicle door solidly with her other foot, a
hand-span from the thrumming wings. The door banged shut, rebounded concussively
inwards. She pitched into a forward roll through the door, hands tucked into her
sides, bruising her shoulders.

The wasp ripped up into the air, its chainsaw buzz
shattering the glass in the row of clerestory windows.

Regnault came up on to her feet, crouching on the
tiles; threw her left hand’s bunch of hawthorn full in the sharp-toothed
liquid-fleshed mirror-face that fleered above her.

Bloody leaves, stained blossom: for a second
outlined in green-and-gold brilliance. Light blinded. She
dropped to one knee, edging back towards the urinals. Something black fell from
the high ceiling. Shrieking above the saw- buzz of wasp wings, she flung her
right hand’s hawthorn, slipped, fell full-length on the floor.

The last whole windows imploded.

Black clotted liquid spattered her dress and skin,
scalding hot. A rain of ordure pattered down for thirty seconds. She raised her
head. Fragments of wing and black fur floated in the air: the wasps were no
longer there.

Archdeacon Regnault put her wrist to her nose and
wiped away blood. She smiled with the satisfaction of the craftsman. Silence
pressed in on her eyes, deep and echoing. Slowly, painfully, she got to her
feet; fingers throbbing and still bleeding, clots of feces sliding to hit the
tiles.

The wall-mirror hung shattered in the pattern of a
hieroglyph. She read it; frowned suddenly.

" ‘Oldest of all, deepest of all, rooted in the
soul of earth; who dies not but is disguised, who sleeps only
—
’ "

The tiles under her feet rippled, ceramic shifting
like water, and she fell to one knee.

A black stain oozed out from under the furthest
cubicle door. Black liquid ran down from the urinals. A stink of blood and urine
constricted her throat. She clenched her fists, forcing concentration out of
pain, muscles tensing to push her towards the exit.

Her legs could not move.

The ceramic tiles under her foot and knee
shattered, thin as cat-ice on a puddle. Tears ripped from her eyes as she fell
into corrosive vapor. She clawed at the edge of the floor as she fell past it,
caught a joist with one bleeding hand for the briefest second.

She stared down into vaulting flooded with liquid
darkness, heard the voices calling her, saw in the glistening surface far below
the reflection of her face: feral, sharptoothed, grinning
—

The joist grew wormy, holed and friable in the
space of a breath. It crumbled under her clenching fingers.

She fell.

* * *

A sepia twilight, hot and brown, clings to
discarded furnace-mouths, broken bains-marie and alembics. The Bishop of the
Trees views them through the open door of his cell: unable to move, or turn
away, crusted blood and sinew tightening below his impaled medulla oblongata.

"Why . . . will . . . you . . . not . . . let . . .
me . . . die?"

He forces each word out with what breath he can
gather into his withered cheeks.

Wings rustle in the heat. Basalt pinions settle to
huge flanks as the Decan of Noon and Midnight who is also called The Spagyrus
lays his tusked and tendriled head upon vast paws.

You’re bait—

"Wh . . . ?"

The ebony lids slide up from basalt eyes.

–My servants questioned you for their pleasure. I
am a god and a daemon, a Decan of the Thirty-Six: I know all that you could ever
know. Still, I allow the acolytes their play—

Scales rustle as the immense head settles still
further, yellow-crusted nostrils twitching.

Theodoret, Bishop of the Trees, turns his
sandpaper- gaze to where the Decan looks. Down in the wall of the Fane, above
the deserted alchemical workshop, is set a glass bubble
–
no, a congeries
of glass bubbles, each with their variant image of the heart of the world
enclosed . . .

They cast a bluish-white light upon The Spagyrus,
where the Decan sprawls under the Fane’s crepuscular vaults. Perhaps it is that
light–or the sun’s not being in his Sign–or perhaps it is instinct: the most
primitive instinct is smell, and Theodoret has that sense left to him still.

Each breath is rasping pain, each word formed
through a tom throat and split lips; still, Bishop Theodoret forces words into
the hot silence of the heart of the Fane.

"You . . . know . . . all . . . my . . . Lord—I .
. . who . . . know . . . nothing . . . will ask you . . . a . . . riddle . . .
What . . . can happen . . . to . . . make . . . a god . . . afraid?"

Light advancing, midmorning of the Day of the Feast
of Misrule.

Rafi of Adocentyn rolled over on the rug, kicking a
foot against one of the Lord-Architect’s locked abandoned chests.

"If I’d known we had theory-tests on Festival days,
I’d never have joined the university! What is all this junk anyway?"

Lucas chose deliberately to misunderstand. From
where he sprawled on his bed, surrounded by open books, he muttered: "Geometry,
one would hope."

"Witty, Candover, witty."

The languid king’s son from Adocentyn hoisted
himself up on an elbow on the rug, and plotted a course across a page with a
dirty finger.

"Lucas, just
listen
to this question:
‘The Five Points of the Compass lie upon a circle of 360 degrees, each one at a
ninety-degree angle from the next. .
.
Draw a compass rose, and enter
North, West, East, South and Aust at the appropriate positions.’ "

Lucas shifted into a patch of morning sun, knowing
he would be grateful later for shade. He gestured for Rafi to continue. The
other dark-haired student propped the book up on its spine.

"
‘Now draw the following quadrilateral triangle
. . .’ "

Lucas leaned down, grabbed a sheet of paper and a
lead pencil, and sketched for a few seconds. "Like so."

"You think so?" Rafi of Adocentyn sat up,
scratching at the cleft of his buttocks. "We’re going to be sweating our arses
off in Big Hall today."

"The way things are here, lucky if that’s the only
problem we got."

"Yeah, the Feast of Misrule won’t be up to much."

Lucas got up and stood at the open window, thumbs hooked in the back pockets of
his knee-breeches. The warm air soothed his sun-scalded chest and shoulders. He
looked down into the street. A mist so milky blue as to be almost purple clung
to the roofs.

"At least you haven’t been scrubbing latrines for
three weeks."

Rafi bellowed, thin mobile features convulsed.
"Shit, that Heurodis bitch has got it in for you!"

"
And
the rest."

"I think it’s funny," the other king’s son said,
"but then, nothing that happens to me here is ever going to get back to
Adocentyn if I can prevent it."

The wooden frame creaked under Lucas’s grip as he
leaned out of the window, one knee up on the sill.

"What is it this time? Ei,
Luke!
"

He fell back into the room, struck the door-frame
with his shoulder on the way through, ignored Rafi’s shout, and hit every third
stair going down to the street-door.

Heat struck down from a cloudless sky. Apprentices
clattered past at the Clock-mill end of the side-alley. His rapid breathing
slowed as he went barefoot over the cobbles to the other end of the alley and
turned the corner.

Voices rang across the street: Evelian’s snotty
daughter, Evelian herself, and a woman just now halted with her back to Lucas.

Sun tumbled in cinnamon hair.

"I want my rent!" Evelian shouted. "And where’s
your friend the Lord-Architect?"

"The gods know! No–they probably do.
I
don’t."

She stood, now, with one arm outstretched to the
brick-and-plaster wall for support, her white shirt-sleeve half-unrolled. Sweat
soaked the underarms; her uncovered skin glowed pink-red. Slung across her back,
worn straps cinched tight, a sword-rapier caught the
morning light.

"White Crow?"

His whisper cracked soprano, inaudible.

She brushed grit from the sole of her right foot
with her free hand. Brick- or stone-dust powdered her smooth calves and the hems
of her knee-breeches. A hat lay upturned at her feet, white felt speckled with
black hieroglyphics; and she bent and turned and scooped it up, and her tawny
eyes focused and met his.

"Lucas!"

She strode the few yards between them, flung her
arms around his chest: breasts and belly and legs pressed the length of his
stirring body. Her rib-cage moved rapidly as she panted, hyperventilating in the
heat. He buried his face in her hot-odored white-streaked hair. Careful of blade
and harness, as careful of her fine-lined skin and solid flesh as of porcelain,
Lucas closed his arms across her back.

"You’re sunburned." The White Crow swatted his
chest with the brim of her hat, stepping out of his embrace. "The mysteries of
elapsed time . . . What the hell has happened to the trains and carriages? I’ve
had to walk from the Thirty-Sixth District, and it’s taken me hours."

"You must be new here," Evelian snarled
sarcastically. "Haven’t you heard about the strikes?"

The White Crow smiled. "I’ve been away, remember?"

Lucas watched her lips move in the sunlight. A fine
line marked her lower lip: a thirst-split. More fine lines webbed the comers of
her eyes and cheek-bones. Her cinnamon lashes blinked over pale eyes, in
eye-sockets whitened by heat and sweat.

He bent his head, smelling the sweet odor of her
skin, and kissed the gritted comer of first one and then her other eye.

"Grave-robber!" A possessive mutter from
Sharlevian.

He straightened, ignoring the girl. The White
Crow’s mouth moved in some reaction too complex for easy interpretation. Shock
still reverberating through him,Lucas yelled:
"What happened? What did the Fane
do to you?"

Sharlevian gasped; he saw her mouth gape comically.
Evelian scowled. The White Crow pitched her voice above Mistress Evelian’s
renewed questions: "I was gone, I’m back; I’ll be gone again shortly, and after
that I don’t know!"

"But—"

Noise interrupted Lucas: a dozen apprentices
clattering down the alley, cutting through the street to a Dockland site. A
gangling dark boy snapped a punch at Lucas in passing; an older man jeered:
"Student!"

"What are the gold-and-white sashes?" the White
Crow said at his shoulder. "And was that
weapons
they’re carrying?
Openly?"

Lucas stared the gangling youth out until he
turned, spitting, to follow the others. Of the dozen or so passing men and
women, fully half had a striped sash and sword- belt around their shoulders or
waists.

"The new Order of the—
Shit
!
"
A
thrown pebble struck his knuckle. He jammed it into his mouth and
sucked the cut. "Of the Poor Knights of the House of Salomon. We’ve had
street-fights with them at the university."

"I did wonder. No one called me out on this." The
White Crow reached up, touching the hilt of her sword. Sunlight shone on the
blue metal, the sweat-dark leather binding; and on the curve of her uplifted
arm. "It seems that the House of Salomon has changed greatly since the Mayor
told me about them."

"
Those
aren’t Salomon men," Lucas added.
"Just their followers. White and gold are their colors. They’re the sort who say
you can wear the gold cross as protection against the plague."

"There
is
a plague?"

Disquiet touched her face. Lucas regretted the
dramatization.

"Not really. Just the High Summer fevers are worse
than usual. It’s all rumor."

"I need to know . . ." She shook her head,
sun-silvered red hair falling about her shoulders. Lucas noted the falling cuff
of her shirt: a stain of red wine not yet faded.

". . . What
don’t
I need to know!" she
finished.

"Wait there, right there!"

"I’ll be up in my rooms. Evelian—"

Lucas raced back around the corner of the building,
up the street-stairs, into his own rooms, physical effort for the moment masking
his wild excitement.

"The test’s in an
hour,
" the king’s son of
Adocentyn grunted, arms full of texts, as Lucas shoved past him to rummage in a
heap of revision-papers. "They’ll sling us out if we don’t pass. Luke!"

"Yeah, yeah.
Got it.
"

He sprinted back, out into the morning air, seeing
Evelian and her daughter still arguing in the street; leaping for the stairs and
skidding up through the kitchen and into the White Crow’s main room.

"Here. This’ll tell you all you need to know about
Salomon. It’s put out by the woman who claims to lead the imperial dynasty."

"The
what?
"

"You must know. Where have you been?" And then he
froze, at the implications of that casual question.

The White Crow squatted, glancing into the
fox-cubs’ box. The chill of disuse and her absence cut through High Summer heat
in the newly opened room. Junk stacked the corners, piled on chairs.

The mirror-table shone, glass side up,
feeding-bottles scarring rings across its cracked surface.