Rats and Gargoyles (35 page)

The leader, St. Cyr, picked a way from the siege-engine between the wounded through to the throne, fastidiously wiping blood and
dust from his black fur.

"Saw your signal," he said. "The rest are in
position at the back of the building."

Desaguliers looked down at the bony black
Rats-King, crouching at his feet in the silken cushions.

"Your intelligence was good," he advised, "but not
good enough. Think about how many more of these engines we may have stolen out
of Messire Plessiez’s control. And then you can be thinking about how the
Rat-King, tomorrow, will still have a master. The senate of our new republic."

The gangplank grated as it hit the quayside.

Six or eight very young children leaned over the
Boat’s rail, screeched, slid back; and the Candovard Ambassador heard their
shrill voices calling, bare feet thumping on the deck, high above and invisible.

"Sir?"

Andaluz looked at the red-headed clerk at his
elbow.

"My dear girl, you don’t suppose that— No. He
would be on the Boat when it docks under the White Mountain, not here. I mean my
son." A sea-breeze gusted in his face. He rubbed absently at his hair, feeling
it stiff with salt. "My late son. You’d recognize him easily, Claris. He bore a
remarkable resemblance to my nephew."

Noon shadows pooled on the white marble quay; from
the brown Rat, the Katayan, and the two Candovards. Ropes strained from the
bollard beside the four of them to the moored ship. Black tarred planks rose up
above the Ambassador’s head, plain and solid in the sun. He craned his neck and
read the name of the Boat cut deeply into the hull.
Ludr.

"An old word: it means ‘ship,’ " he said, "and
‘cradle,’ and ‘grave’ . . . The other ships are gone?"

The tall young clerk squinted into the light off
the harbor. "Yes, sir."

Zar-bettu-zekigal pointed. "It’s still flying a
Katayan flag!"

"Among many others." Andaluz rested his hand on her
shoulder, restraining her impatience.

"I don’t understand." The brown Rat, Charnay,
padded back down the marble quay steps and halted beside Zar-bettu-zekigal.
"When those five galleons were coming in, we couldn’t see this one; and now we
can see this one the others have vanished."

"Oh, what! Haven’t you ever seen the Boat before?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned back on her bare heels, tail coiling up to scratch at
her shaggy-growing hair. "See you, must be hundreds of ’em on board. Boat hasn’t
been in all this summer."

Above, furled sails gleamed an ochre, sand-colored
white in the midday sun. From the decks came the clamor of children’s voices.

"I can’t stay here for this," Charnay protested. "I
must find Messire Plessiez. The Night Council want him!"

Andaluz let their voices fade into the background.
The sun beat down on his uncovered head; he blinked away heat-dazzles in his
vision, sweating. Sounds came clearly: the shift of the horses, restless in the
shafts of the coach up on the promenade, and, far off across the airfield and
the square, the roar of voices . . .

The gangplank creaked.

Andaluz straightened, unconsciously assuming the
position of formal greeting. Then his ramrod spine relaxed. He smiled wistfully.

A child some two or three years old staggered down
the plank. Another followed it, dark as the first was fair; squatting to prod at
the sun-softened tar on the plank. When she stepped onto the quay she took the
other child’s hand. Both walked away.

"They . . ."

Andaluz held up a hand to arrest Claris’s words. He
peered up at the light-silhouetted deck, seeing another child, two more; a group
of a dozen Ratlings, burnished pelts bobbing in the sun. They clattered barefoot
down the gangplank, swarmed for a moment about him, so that Andaluz looked down
on the heads of small children, surrounded.

All silent now, all solemn; looking up at the
Katayan woman, the Rat and the Candovards.

He knelt, reaching out, almost touching the arm of
a small boy no more than two. The child looked with blue eyes, dark blue eyes so
nakedly curious and real that Andaluz shuddered. He sat back, slipped, reached
up to grip his clerk’s arm. By the time he rose to his feet, the crowd of human
and Rat children were beginning to back up on the gangplank. He stepped to one
side.

"They forget. Traveling through the Night, they
forget."

One cried shrilly. Another laughed. All children,
all under the age of three; they ran, suddenly, in the bright sun–running off
along the quay, up to the airfield, down towards the promenade, scattering like
a school of fish.

"No shadows."

"What?" He looked where Claris pointed, at a small
girl who plumped down trying to unpick threads from the mooring-rope: the hemp
wider around than her small wrist. He saw only a tiny rim of black about her
feet.

"They grow ’em in a few minutes." Zar-bettu-zekigal
stood on the tips of her filthy toes, peering up at the deck. The flood of
children swept around her like a tide. Andaluz saw her reach out absently from
time to time and touch a fair or dark head. He glanced around for Charnay. The
brown Rat stood staring to and fro along the quay.

"He might have recognized me if he were here . . ."

A silence breathed off the tarred planks, muffling
the creaking of the mooring-ropes. The voices of the children, not yet having
speech, cried like distant gulls. Andaluz took out a kerchief and dusted his
nose with some energy, wiped the corners of his eyes, and squinted up at the
sun-drenched Boat.

A figure appeared at the top of the gangway,
walking slowly down to the quay. A tall man, thirty or so, with long black hair;
his bony hand holding the paw of a brown Ratling. Andaluz, glancing down, saw
neither had a shadow.

"Sir, I greet you."

Their eyes met his, and Andaluz inclined his head,
falling silent. A shadow of night still lay in their gaze. He stepped aside,
bowed. The man and the Rat child walked past without a glance at Claris,
Zar-bettu-zekigal or Charnay.

Another man appeared from the deck, then a
sunhaired woman; two black Rats, fur dulled with the salt breeze; a young man
with cropped black hair. Andaluz felt his pulse thud, once, before he recognized
it as only a chance resemblance.

"I’ve waited a long while." He looked at Claris. "I
can wait, it seems, a little longer."

"If we’re not needed, sir, may I suggest that we
would be safer back in the Residence."

The disembarking humans and Rats momentarily
separated him from his clerk. Andaluz turned, brushed shoulders with
Zar-bettu-zekigal, who stood gazing up at the pennants streaming from the
mainmast.

"Lady, if you’re going back into the city, may I
offer you a ride in my coach?"

"Right!" She spun around, pivoting on one heel with
dappled tail out for balance. Her grin shone in the sun. "I need to get back to
the square in Fourteenth’s north quarter. So does Charnay. Can you drop us off
there?"

Forming a tactful evasion, Andaluz began to speak, and cut himself off
as he saw her gaze go over his shoulder and her sepia-brown eyes widen.

A voice shouted: "Zar’!"

Andaluz saw the recognizable Katayan speech sink
home into her as an arrow does. Caught with one heel resting on the stone quay,
weight on the other bare foot, tail coiled down, she for a moment looked all
child, bewildered as the embarkees from the Boat. He waited a second to see if
he would have to catch her as she fainted.

Zar-bettu-zekigal whispered:
"Elish?"

"Necromancy . . ."

The White Crow said: "You heard me, Eminence."

The Lord-Architect reached down one oil-black hand
and touched her dark red hair, frowning. She saw Lucas’s head turn, and his
startled expression.

The black Rat, Plessiez, murmured urbanely: "I fail
to follow you. What would a Cardinal of Guiry know about such heresies as
necromancy? Come, come, you know as well as I do: there is a weak
magia
of the dead played with the discarded shells of souls, that is, bodies; but it
has no power, and so is not worth speaking of."

"And if souls died like bodies?"

The Cardinal-General appeared frankly angry. "What
nonsense. I won’t listen to blasphemy. Under our masters the Decans, the dead
travel through the Night and return on the Boat; there is no other death."

The White Crow held his bead-black gaze.

"I’m a Scholar-Soldier, your Eminence, and while we
travel you and I should talk."

The black Rat suddenly laughed. His sleek jaw rose,
light gleaming from his fur. The black feather on his head-band swept the heated
air.

"A Scholar-Soldier! Oh, come now. On this day of
all days, to present me with some mythical human organization—"

"This day?" The White Crow hooked her elbow over
the steel rungs of the nearest ladder. She leaned back easily. "Your Eminence,
today’s the Feast of Misrule. When servants beat their masters, Apprentices give
orders to Fellowcrafts, Rat-Lords serve feasts to their human slaves, Cardinals
tend humble priests–and the Thirty-Six Decans, it seems, leave the solving of
cosmic riddles to poor, blind, stupid human scholars."

She wiped her mouth, dry with the day’s air;
grinned at him with sweat-ringed eyes.

"And the Rat-Lords loose a plague amongst the human
population of the heart of the world. Your Eminence, please. I do know about
these things."

Expecting no honest answer, she shivered when he
inclined his head, his glittering black gaze still holding hers.

"Do you? Well, then, madam scholar. What can it
alter, now, for it to be known?–There is unrest. Order must be restored. With so
many humans passing onto the Boat to begin their journey through the Night, they
will be weakened beyond opposition to the King. Do you see?"

The White Crow absently lifted her free hand to her
mouth, sucking dusty rose-scarred fingers. "Truly, Eminence?"

The sleek Rat, black fur almost blue in the intense
sun, shrugged lithe shoulders and gripped the hilt of his rapier. "Madam
scholar, what I have done I have done with my King’s authority, and my own full
knowledge. Now, if you will be so kind as to excuse me, I must
finish the matter."

"No. I won’t excuse you."

Her mouth curved up, a smile unwillingly rising;
and she flipped her arm loose from the side-ladder, took the black Rat by the
elbow and ushered him a dozen steps into one of the protruding sections of the
upper platform that served as a shield against forward attack. She glanced back,
seeing them out of earshot of the others.

He made no resistance, meeting her gaze with
contained amusement.

"Well, madam scholar?"

"Master-Captain, as it happens." She grinned.
"White Crow is my name."

Above, the sky tilts towards midday. The weight of
its heat lies heavy on her shoulders. The White Crow breathed a deep scent of
oil, dust and harbor wind; shuddered with an instinct that presaged some
manifestation of a
demonium meridanium.

"Eminence, how can I convince you to talk to me?
I’ve spoken to the Candovard Prince, and to others. I could probably give you
the names of those who attended a meeting in Fourteenth Eastquarter’s Masons’
Hall, and tell you what was said there."

She shifted, aware of the straps of her pack
digging into her shoulder. The hilt of her sword-rapier scraped the metal
carapace; the black Rat raised a furry brow.

She said: "Someone had to be supplying the raw
materials."

All his lithe body stilled.

"Materials?"

"I’ve been asking myself questions while I was
riding, your Eminence. Such as: What was a priest of Guiry doing with bones in
an Austquarter crypt? I’m a Scholar-Soldier; I know that there have been four
true deaths in the heart of the world. I may have known that before you did;
I’ve been in the city a while."

Some fragile accord, born of the hot sun and
urgency and the knowledge of crisis, hung unspoken in the air between them. The
black Rat nodded, approving.

"Master-Captain, you are a true practitioner of the
Arts."

She reached for the talismans at her throat,
gripping them as if she could squeeze chill into her flesh.

"I guessed at where the bodies might be. In the
city crypts. Where else do you put a corpse? And what other kind of corpse would
give you the raw materials for necromancy? Hence this plague-
magia
.
There’s more to it, yes, but I believe what I’m saying is true."

He smoothed down the Cardinal’s green sash with a
demure humor. "Yes, Master-Captain. I think that I, also, believe that what you
say is true."

The White Crow touched his arm. Sun-hot fur burned
her fingers.

"Eminence, tell me.
You need to.
I know.
Don’t ask me how I know. Not all the talents of a Scholar-Soldier are easy to
analyze."

The lean bulk of him blocked the sun, brought a
certain coolness to her. The tender flesh of his nostrils flexed, vibrating
wire-thin whiskers; and his voice, dropped to the threshold of audibility,
contained a grating endurance.

"Can you take the weight of it, do you imagine?"

She shrugged.

"Messire, when one arrives at our age, it’s with a
baggage of emotional debts–and they’re rarely repaid to those whom we owe.
Others have taken the weight for me in the past. I’ll do it for you now."

He looked away, squinting at the bright sky. "You
are older than me, I think."

"Am I?"

"Old enough to forget. What it is to
win
–you
forget that. I can tell by the look of you."

Wiry muscles shifted under the sleek pelt as he
straightened, hind feet in the balanced stance of the sword-fighter. The blue
sky glimmered beyond his sparkling gaze.

"I can have anything I want." Plessiez laughed,
musing. "Luck put the Austquarter crypt in my way, and yet I have years enough
of study to know what use to put it to. Luck put Guiry into my hands, and I had
wit enough to take it. And if luck gives me a lever with which to move the
Thirty-Six Themselves–well, why shouldn’t the universe give me what I want?"