Rats and Gargoyles (37 page)

"Where were you?"

Startled at the man’s intensity, she backed a step
or two into the archway and glanced up at him. Fair hair flopped across his
bruised-looking eyes. With one hand he made an attempt to pull a stained and
stinking doublet into some kind of order, a gesture that degenerated into
helplessness. His blue eyes glared.

"
Why
didn’t you come to the university a
month ago?"

Warm alcohol-stinking breath hit the White Crow in
the face. Turning, eyes on the wheeling gargoyle-shape now riding an updraught,
she snapped: "Should I have?"

"We sent out messages for a Scholar-Soldier! We
tried to contact the Invisible College for months!"

"Damn." She stopped dead. "Are you
Candia
?
I’ve been asking Evelian about you—"

"Now wait just one moment." The old woman’s face
creased into a frown, smoky-blue eyes darkening with anger. "Do I understand
you, Reverend Master? You’ve been in contact with these vagabond
scholar-mercenaries? In direct contravention of university regulations? And just
who are
we
?"

The man lurched forward. The White Crow grabbed his
shoulder one-handed, found herself supporting half the man’s weight. Now four
shadows wheeled and skittered across the stone steps.

"Get back, rot you!"

Her left hand throbbed. She thrust him back,
gripping the rapier, eyes never leaving the movements above, point mirroring
flight by instinct and long practice.

His voice came from behind her. "We prayed you’d
come in with the new intake, a month ago. When I told Bishop Theodoret there was
no one . . ."

Something that might have been a sob or a gasp of
pain interrupted; his voice picked up after a second.

"I have to rescue him or kill him now, lady.
Where were you?"

"Me? I’ve been here all along. The Invisible
College never has been the best-organized—"

Cold air screeched across her skin; she whirled,
thrust upward, darted back. The blade sank home, ripped free. A bristle-tail
lashed the steps. White stone chips flew up, stinging her cheek. The lichen on
the steps began to glow with a yellow luminescence. The beat of wings hissed in
the air. Dark bodies dropped down from the soaring flock.

"We’re going to miss noon by minutes." Frustrated,
she stared down at the heat-soaked abandoned building site; seeking cover,
seeing only temporary salvation. Feeling through the soles of her feet the
magia
in the depths, necromancy boiling to crisis, that stirred the servants
of the Fane to bloodlust. "Minutes, unfortunately, will be enough. Damn, I think
he was right: the Fane
is
closed."

A spot of blood dripped from the rapier to her bare
foot. She winced at the caustic impact. Waiting: waiting for the circles of Time
to slide and interlock, mesh into the Noon that will open the
Fane-of-the-Twelfth-Decan to mortals. Eyes running water, she stared up through
circling wings at the sun still minutes short of midday.

"Girl!"

The White Crow swung round. The old woman stood at
the great carved doors, one veined hand just leaving the bronze ring. At her
touch the black wooden slab swung open a yard, and another. Sun-dusty beams of
light slanted into the interior of the Fane.

"It’s not time!"

Above, the chittering rose to shrieking-pitch. Dark
wings tumbled across an air suddenly yellow and sere.

"Heurodis," the woman said, folding a thin strip of
metal and secreting it back in her cotton sleeve. "Reverend Mistress, University
of Crime.
I
have no intention of waiting out here to be attacked."

The White Crow wiped her sweating face, pushing the
silvered red hair back behind her ears. Aware that her mouth gaped open, she
shut it firmly; caught the blond man’s elbow in her free hand, and stepped
smartly after the old woman, shoving the door to with her heel as she crossed
the threshold into the Fane.

Silence shattered.

Raggedly at first, then in a roar, a hundred
thousand men and women began to cheer.

"
–
And now!"
Falke gripped the
loudspeaker microphone tightly.
"The Feast of Misrule’s truly started! With
our strike-carnival!"

The square rippled.

His silk eye-bandage blurred Fourteenth District’s
great square with black. Textures of cloth overwove the sunlight, snared the
blue sky in threads. Falke blinked, strained vision.

The mass of people seethed.

He clenched his own hand at his side, seeing so
many arms flung up, so many hands waving. Sweat ran down between his
shoulder-blades; the heat of his mail-shirt robbing him of breath. Cheering
racketed back from the distant facades of buildings.

"Listen to that!"

"I hear it." The Hyena jostled his elbow, steel
vambrace hard and hot in the sun. Through his shielding silk the visor of her
helm flashed as she slid it up; red-brown eyes sharp. "I see it. Now?"

"Now." He wiped the sweat from his forehead,
grinning. Abruptly he signaled.

Shadowless heat hammered him from the north-aust.

All this fifth side of the square lay demolished.
Mansions torn down, ragged edges of brick and masonry and dug-up foundations
cast aside in great heaps. Cranes and earth-movers rested, poised. He rubbed the
silk tighter against his face, through blurred vision making out the sixty-acre
clearance, the scaffolding at its entrance–and the great block of granite held
in a cradle of rope and steel wire.

"Now, my baby . . ."

He shook his head and chuckled. A wind blew from
the square behind him, carrying the smell of human sweat, of beer and sharp wine
and the powder from muskets.

"Now’s our time."

The rope cradle creaked, inching round. He squinted
at the cranes, unable to see the workers. Only the yellow-and-white Salomon
colors. He paced four steps along, four steps back, booted heels kicking.

He cut the air with his hand: the lateral swing
ceased.

Hieroglyphics shone on the great foundation-stone,
newly incised; gleaming redly, as if the cut stone filled up with blood.

He turned his face up to the sky, letting the
breeze cool his sweating face, turning back as the granite block stilled. Packed
faces: painted, masked, laughing, calling; the rows of silent Rat-Lords at the
nearer buildings’ windows.

He touched the Hyena’s steel shoulder. "Wait for me
here."

He ran careless of obstacles down the rutted steps
to the front of the site, the microphone clasped in his fist. Soldiers in
imperial mail and citizen militia shoved the crowd back. Men and women reached
between them, over their shoulders, hands outstretched; and Falke waved
good-naturedly, trotting along some yards until he swung and faced out into the
crowd.

"Long live tradition!"

His voice echoed back from far walls, soft as surf
in sewer-tunnels that riddle the docks. Paper streamers soared up into the air,
and bottles; and he turned his face full up to the sun, careless of dazzlement.

"Long live tradition, long live the Feast of
Misrule!"
He paused, letting them quieten a little.
"Yes, the great and
ancient Feast of Misrule
. . .
This annual day when all’s turned
upside-down–and we, yes, today, WE turn the world upside-down! Only this time,
it STAYS this way! You see the stone. It is our stone, it is our
foundation-stone: the founding-stone of the New Temple of Salomon!"

Cheers broke out, doubled and redoubled.

He strode another few yards along the steps. A
paper streamer glanced across his shoulder; he gripped it in the same hand as
the microphone, waved it, grinned at the feather-masked boy, dimly seen, who’d
thrown it. The boy pulled off his mask, eyes bright, mouth a round O.

"The world turned upside-down
–
you’ve all
heard that prophecy."
The metal of the microphone, warmed and dampened by
his breath, chilled his lips.
"Hear it and believe it! Oh, not the Rat-Lords;
they don’t matter now
–
although they may still think they do. "

Falke paused, lifting a hand in ironic salute- to
the black Rats lining the overlooking windows. One looked down at a broken
flower in his hand. Another, headband in hand, smoothed a feather. None spoke.

"You will say they have been challenged before,
these masters of ours. So they have. So they have. I was a part of that summer,
fifteen years gone. Fifteen years ago, in Fifth District, when they cut us down
in the streets–rode us down, for daring to refuse our labor!"

Now he dropped his tone caressingly; walking down
the scarred marble steps to the line of soldiers, touching hands with the people beyond as he walked along the
front row, invisible to more than those few but letting the loudspeakers carry
it.

"I have never forgotten. You have never forgotten.
Now we can erase it from our minds. Now, today, we labor only for ourselves."

He halted, lowering the microphone.

Faces, hands, swords, mail-shirts: the front row of
the crowd a tapestry, sun-bright and raucous. His mouth dried. He swallowed with
difficulty, blinking; the touch of silk strange against his lashes. He reached
up and pulled the bandage free.

"They have always betrayed us."

Tears streamed hot down his cheeks; a bubble of
laughter in his chest for this final public hypocrisy. He snatched breath
suddenly, tears of the bright sun becoming the wrenching tears of a man who
assumed, until then, that he only cries for appearance’s sake.

"We can be true to ourselves."

Warm wind bathed his fingers as he held up his
hand, poised; cut the air with one decisive stroke. He let his hand fall to his
side.

Through his feet he felt the vibration of the
Temple’s foundation-stone settling into its place on the site behind him.

"The foundation-stone is laid! Now feast and
rejoice. Feast and rejoice–and build the New Temple of Salomon!"

He laughed, recklessly reaching into the crowd
again to grip hands; his tear-streaked naked face dappled with paint, daubed on
by small children held up by their parents.

"Now drink! Eat! Rejoice! BUILD THE TEMPLE!"

Breathing hard, he stumbled back up the steps. A
glare of silver: he seized the Hyena’s plate-clad arm for support; leaned with
his head down for a moment, breath sobbing, and then nodded.

"At last." She signaled.

The imperial soldiers fell out the rank that held
the crowd back. First one, then ten, then dozens of men and women ran forward
and up the steps to the open site; meeting there the Fellowcrafts of the Masons’
Halls. Falke gazed at the river of silks and satins, masks
thrown down and trodden underfoot as the skilled workers swarmed over the
foundations and scaffolding and cranes.

The Hyena held up her gauntleted hand, the soldiers
linking arms again to thin the flow.

Falke covered his eyes, between sweating fingers
watching the tide of masons, carpenters and builders spread out across the open
ground behind him.

Exhilarated, the Hyena swept her arm in an arc.
"Look at it! We've done it."

"I . . . hardly believe it."

He retied his black silk bandage. The last of the
first shift of workers walked across the steps to the site. The rest settled:
men and women sitting down where they stood; bottles and food brought out, masks
pushed up so that eating and drinking could begin. The noise of their singing,
clapping and shouting beat back from the distant walls.

The Hyena yawped a laugh. "No going back for us.
Not now, whatever happens."

The rising tide of sound drowned thought. He wiped
his nose on the sleeve of his gray doublet, and rested both hands on his wide
sword-belt. The ring-guards of the sword-rapier brushed his knuckles. Standing
with feet apart, welcoming the weight of weapons, he peered through black silk
at the crowded day. Faintly, through the shouting and music, a clock on the far
side of the square chimed quarter to the hour.

"Ahead of schedule." He smiled, finding his voice
thick with the aftermath of weeping.

"Ah."

"What is it?" He peered at the Hyena, straining to
see which way she faced, what she stared at. "Lady?"

"I think–right on schedule." Amused surprise
rounded her tone. "This is effrontery of the first order. What does he think
I’ll do? Clovis!"

Clovis and a dozen other soldiers doubled up the
steps to join her. Falke frowned. Shoved back, he elbowed his way to the Hyena’s
side, demanded:

"What is it? What’s happening?"

The woman shaded her eyes against the sun, staring out across the great square. Frustrated, Falke
followed the direction of her gaze. Waving arms, thrown hats and occasional
muzzle-flashes from muskets: the rest a cloth- shrouded blur.

A groaning vibration came to him through the earth
he stood on.

"All King’s Guard by the uniform." The Hyena’s grin
widened. "Good firepower, but they’re somewhat outnumbered. We’ll accept their
surrender. Clovis, take a squad down there and escort them here. Master Falke,
can you see? There."

A deep-throated mechanical roar drowned crowd-
noise; and he wrinkled his nose at the stench of oil. Light glinted–from
windows, stone surfaces. Swords? Gun-barrels?

Fine detail faded into sun-blaze.

Counting on a second’s view before blindness, Falke
snatched away the eye bandage. Tears ran down his face.

Shockingly close, rearing above the impromptu tents
of the Hyena’s camp and the crowd: beaked rams, hammered steel plates, curving
ballista.

Midday sun gleamed from the blued-steel barrels of
muskets, from unsheathed swords, and from the harness of Rat-Lords seemingly as
small as children, crouched on the platform of a great armored engine of war.

"There must be two hundred thousand people here!"