Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  His dark-brown meeting brows dipped in concentration. The metal prong plumbed the depths of the lock, and then his mouth quirked: there was a click, and he tested the handle, and the heavy door swung open.

  Clearer: the noise of the garrison below.

  Lucas buttoned his breeches. He took a step towards the open door. One hand made a fist, and there was a faint pink flush to his cheeks. Caught between reluctance and fear of recognition, he stood still for several minutes.

  Coming in, they had passed no human above the rank of servant.

  He bent to remove stockings and shoes, wrapping them in his shirt. Then he knelt, shivering, to rub his hands in the dirt; washing arms, face and chest in the cobwebs and dust.

  A black Rat passed him on the second floor. She didn’t spare a glance for this kitchen-servant. With the bundle under his arm, and an old leather bucket balanced on his shoulder, Lucas of Candover walked free of the palace.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned out of the carriage window, regardless of the dust and flying clots of dung the team’s hoofs threw up.

  "See you, we’re out of Nineteenth District’s Aust quarter already –oof!"

  Plessiez’s hand grabbed her coat between the shoulder- blades and yanked her back on to the carriage seat. "Is it necessary to advertise your presence to the entire city?"

  "Oh, we’re not even out of a Mixed District, messire, what’s to worry?"

  She leaned her arms on the jolting sill, and her chin on her arms, and grinned out at the street. The carriage rattled through squares where washing hung like pale flags and fountains dripped. The sun beat down from a blazing afternoon sky. Humans and Rats crowded the cobbled streets–a dozen or so of the palace guard, in silks and satins and polished rapiers, drank raucously outside a tavern, and sketched salutes of varying sobriety as Plessiez’s coach and horses passed them.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal drew a deep breath, contentedly sniffing as they passed a may-hedge and a city garden.

  "You have no Katayan accent," the black Rat said. The dimness inside the coach hid all but the glitter of his black eyes, and the jet embellishment of his rapier’s pommel.

  "Messire"–reproach in her tone, and humor–"Kings’ Memories remember inflections exactly–we have to. What would I be doing with an accent?"

  "I beg your pardon, lady," Plessiez said, sardonically humble, and the Katayan grinned companionably at him.

  The coachman called from above, sparks showered as the brakes cut the metal wheel-rims, and the carriage rattled down a steep lane. Plessiez caught hold of the door-strap with a ring-fingered hand.

  "Mistress Zekegial . . . Zare-bethu . . ." He stumbled over the syllables.

  "Oh, ‘Zari’ will do, messire, to you." She waved an airy gesture. Then, leaning out of the window again as the carriage squealed to a halt, she said: "You’re holding this important meeting in a builders’ yard?"

  Plessiez hid what might have been a smile. The black Rat said smoothly: "That is one of the Masons’ Halls, little one. Show the proper respect."

  Zari pushed the carriage door open and sprang down into the yard. Two other coaches were already drawn up in the entrance, horses standing with creamed flanks and drooping heads. Plessiez stepped down into the sunlight. It became apparent that the black Rat had changed uniform: he now wore a sleeveless crimson jacket, with the neat silver neck-band of a priest. His crimson cloak was also edged with silver.

  He paused to adjust rapier and belt, and Zari saw him straighten a richly gemmed pectoral ankh. A flurry of black and brown Rats from the other coaches rushed to meet him, those with priests’ collars particularly obsequious.

  "Mauriac, make sure the guards are placed unobtrusively; Brennan, you–and you–get these carriages taken away." The black Rat’s snout twitched.

  A heavily-built brown Rat swaggered out from the back of the group. Pulling her aside by a corner of her cloak, Plessiez said sharply: "My idea of a secret meeting does not consist merely of arriving in a coach without a crest on it! Yours does, apparently. Get rid of this crowd. I’ll take you only in with me."

  Charnay laughed and slapped Plessiez on the back. The black Rat staggered slightly.

  "Don’t worry, messire! They’ll just think you’ve come for a plan for the new wing."

  "Perhaps. But do it."

  Zar-bettu-zekigal’s bare feet printed the yellow yard- dust. The air shimmered in the heat. She wrapped her greatcoat firmly round her, and squinted up at the stacked clay bricks, timber put out to weather, and piles of wooden scaffolding that surrounded this Masons’ Hall.

  Tiles and wooden crates blocked the view to the nearer houses.

  She cocked her head, and her dappled black-and-white tail coiled around her ankles. With a nod at the weathered-plank structure–half hall, half warehouse– she said over the noise of departing coaches: "Well, messire, have I begun yet?"

  "As soon as we enter the hall."

  Leisurely, hands folded at his breast, the black Rat paced forward. Charnay fell in beside him. Two men pushed the hall doors open from the inside, and Zari gave a half-skip up the steps, catching up, as they went in.

  "Messire Falke!" Plessiez called.

  In a patch of sunlight from the clerestory windows, a man raised his bandaged face. His short silver-white hair caught the light, pressed down by the strips of cotton.

  "Honor to you, priest." The man faced Plessiez with a wry, somewhat perfunctory grin. His black silk overalls shone at collar, cuffs and seams; sewn with silver thread. A heavy silver pin in the shape of compasses fastened the black lace at his throat. Diamond and onyx rings shone on his left hand.

  "Oh, what . . . ?"

  The merest whisper. Charnay nudged the Katayan heavily in her ribs, and Zari bowed. She continued to stare at the fine linen bandaging the man’s eyes.

  The men and women with Falke drew back, bowing respectfully to the black Rat, and the sleek priest strode down the passage that opened in the crowd and seated himself on a chair at the head of a trestle table. This gave signs–like the eight or nine others in the room– of having been rapidly cleared of site- and ground-plans, measurements, calculations and scale models.

  Charnay ostentatiously drew her long rapier and laid it down on the plank table before her.

  "Zari," the black Rat prompted.

  The young woman was standing on tiptoe, and leaning over to stare into a tank-model of a sewer system. She straightened. Hands in pockets, she marched across the bright room and hitched herself up to sit on the trestle table.

  "Kings’ Memory," she announced. "You have an auditor, messires: you are heard: this is the warning."

  Some of the expensively dressed men and women began to speak. Falke held up a hand, and they ceased. "What is your oath?"

  She took her hands out of her greatcoat pockets. "To speak what I hear, as I heard it, whenever asked; to add nothing, to omit nothing, to alter nothing."

  Falke passed her on his way to sit down, close enough for her to see dark brows and lashes behind the cloth shield. A lined face, and silver-fine hair: a man on the down side of thirty-five.

  "And the penalty," he said, "if otherwise?"

  "Death, of course." She slid down on to a collapsible chair, positioning herself exactly halfway between Falke’s people and the Rats.

  The light of late noon fell in through clerestory windows, shining on the plans, diagrams and calculations pinned around the walls. Falke, without apparent difficulty, indicated the half-dozen men and women who abandoned compasses, straight-edge and fine quill pens for the cleared trestle table, as they sat down. Silk and satins rustled; white lace blazed at cuffs and collars.

  "The master stonemason. Master bricklayer. Foreman of the carriage teams. Master tiler."

  Plessiez, who sat with his lean black muzzle resting on his steepled fingers, said: "You may give them their proper titles, Master Falke. If we’re to talk honestly, we must have no secrecy."

  " ‘Honestly’? You forget I’ve dealt with Rat-L
ords before." Falke sat, pointing with economical gestures. "Very well, have your way. Shanna is a Fellowcraft, so is Jenebret." He indicated an older man. "Thomas is an Apprentice. Awdrey is the Mistress Royal of the Children of the Widow. I’m Master of the Hall."

  Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned forward on the wooden table, brushing the black hair from her eyes.

  " ‘Children of the Widow’. . . ‘Master of the Hall’. . ." she murmured happily. She caught Plessiez’s warning stare and grinned, professional, her own eyes enthusiastic with Memory.

  Falke began. "We—"

  The doors at the end of the hall slammed open. Plessiez stood up, his chair scraping back.

  Two Rats and three or four men struggled to hold back a middle-aged man, himself in the forefront of a group. "Falke!"

  Falke peered towards the bright end of the hall through his cloth bandage.

  Charnay glanced to the black Rat for a cue, one hand reaching for her sword. Plessiez shook his head. "I know the man, I think. East quarter. East quarter’s Mayor?"

  "Certainly I am!"

  The man shook himself free of the brown Rats’ restraining grip. He was in his fifties, and stout; raggedly cut yellow hair framing a moon-face. Confronting Falke, he tugged his greasy breeches up about his belly, and straightened a verdigris-stained chain of copper links that hung across his frayed jerkin.

  "Mayor Tannakin Spatchet," he rumbled, and pointed a beefy finger at Master Falke. "What do you mean by holding this meeting without me? At the very least, some of the East quarter Council should be here!"

  "Tan, get out of here." Falke waved a dismissive hand. "You’ll bring the dregs in with you. A rabble of bureaucrats, shopkeepers, lawyers and teachers!"

  The five or six men who had come in with Tannakin Spatchet shuffled and looked embarrassed.

  "We have every right to be represented! If you’re talking to the Rat-Lords, that concerns everyone in the quarter."

  Falke shook his head. "No. You’re not admitted to the mysteries here, not even to the outer hall. Thomas, take these people outside."

  "Damn your hall! Just because you won’t admit us . . ."

  Plessiez pushed Charnay in the direction of the hall door, and turned to Falke. "Pardon me, messire, but it might not be amiss if other trades were represented here."

  A fair-haired woman leaned forward, looking down the table to the black Rat. "Then we can’t speak freely. Craft mysteries aren’t to be disclosed to outsiders. You know that."

  Plessiez shrugged. "Then, I must go. I don’t belong to any Craft hall."

  "We can’t have this scum here!" The Fellowcraft, Shanna, pointed at the Mayor, who bridled. "You’ll have us inviting councilors next."

  Falke’s cupped palms slammed down on the table. The crack! echoed. In sudden silence, his bandaged head cocked to one side, he spoke.

  "Our quarrels are meat and drink to our masters. Aren’t they, messire priest?"

  "I don’t understand you, Master Falke."

  "You do. You think no more of using us than of saddling a horse to ride. You’d no more think of a man’s name than a dog’s name in the street if you kick it!"

  His hand went up behind his head, pulling the knotted cloth bandage down. Prematurely white hair slid free. His fingers immediately clamped across his eyes, features blasted by the sudden light. Zari glimpsed wide eyes: no injury, no scar; only immensely dilated black pupils.

  He said: "Because my name is on file, you can find and use me."

  As if prompted, the Fellowcraft Shanna spread her hands, turning to the other men and women around the table. "The Rat-Lord’s obliged to tell us nothing more than pleases him. We must tell him all. For all his alliance with us, he can sell us out any time that it should please him, and walk away unharmed. Remember that, when we come to trust him!"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal’s gaze darted from Falke to Plessiez. Her tail coiled up, lying across her arm, tense and twitching. Hearing and all senses acute–her smile widened suddenly.

  Charnay marched back from the hall door, whisking her cloak past the seated Fellows, and leaned over to speak in the black Rat’s ear. The Katayan heard: "Desaguliers is coming!"

  Falke froze.

  The black Rat's whiskers quivered. His bright eyes fixed on Charnay, and the brown Rat stumbled back a pace.

  "This was your idea of secrecy, was it, Charnay!"

  Before she could do more than mumble, voices were raised, and the group of men at the door were pushed aside. Five sleek black Rats, with black-plumed headbands and drawn rapiers, shoved them aside; and a taller black Rat stepped in from the sunny yard to the white hall.

  "Was it necessary," Plessiez murmured silkily, "to bring the cadets in such strength, Messire Desaguliers?"

  The watermills turned slowly, dripping water catching the sun. Lucas gazed at the water running past the building’s stone wall (some part of a concealed stream uncovered?), and then up at the watermills’ tower.

  A twelve-foot gold-and-blue dial gleamed in the sun. The clock’s hands twitched once, to a metallic click inside the tower, and a bell chimed the quarter. Lucas stood watching as a silver knight, some two feet tall, slid out on rails from one side of the tower, to meet an approaching bronze knight on a similar curve. Their swords lifted jerkily; they struck a clang! that echoed the length of the cobbled street. A pause, and both began to retreat.

  Lucas rubbed his sweating neck, took his hand away filthy, and glanced speculatively at the running water. He still carried shirt and stockings. His bare feet were chafing in his boots, and his filthy chest and arms were beginning to sting from the sun.

  A first-floor window opened further down the street, and a woman shook out a quilt and laid it on the sill.

  "Lady," Lucas called, "is this Clock-mill?"

  She leaned one bare forearm on the sill, her other hand supporting her as she leaned out, so that her elbow jutted up and her thick yellow hair fell about her shoulders. She wore a blue-and-yellow satin dress slashed with white, with puffed sleeves and a low full bodice. Lucas moved a few steps down the street towards her.

  "Clock-mill and Carver Street," she called.

  Lucas gazed up at the window. The quilt hung down, half-covering a frieze carved in the black wood: hourglasses, scythes, spades and skulls. Seen closer, the woman’s face was lined. Lucas judged her forty at least. Some twinge of memory caught him.

  "Is there . . . are you Mistress Evelian?"

  "You’re not one of my lodgers?" The woman’s china- blue eyes narrowed, studying the filthy ragged young man. "Good God. What does Candia think he’s sending me these days? Come in: don’t stand there. Third door down will take you through info the courtyard. I’ll let you in."

  Lucas had only taken a few steps before she stuck her head out of the window again.

  "Have you met the other students yet? Have you seen anything of that Katayan child, Zaribeth?"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal sat with her grubby hands in front of her on the table. Her dappled tail flicked sawdust on the hall floor. A smell of cut wood, pitch, and long-boiled tea filled the heavy afternoon air.

  Her eyes moved from the white-haired Falke, poised at rest in his chair, to Tannakin Spatchet (stiffly upright), and the well-dressed builders and ill-dressed councilors; to Plessiez and Charnay, and to the black Rat Desaguliers, standing and glaring at each other across the table.

  "I think the King might be interested in this meeting," Desaguliers challenged. He was a lean black Rat, tall, with the plain leather harness and silver cuirass of a soldier; the hairs on his thin snout grizzled.

  "The Captain-General is aware, of course, that the King has full knowledge of—"

  Desaguliers bluntly interrupted Plessiez: "Horse-dung! I’m aware of nothing of the sort."

  "How very remiss of you."

  "Gentle lords. Please." Falke spoke with a sardonic gravity. He sat with his hand shading his uncovered eyes against the hall’s whitewashed brilliance. Tears ran down his cheeks; he rapidly blinked. "Y
ou know how your honor suffers, to be seen quarreling by we underlings."

  "Master Falke!" Plessiez snapped.

  "I apologize. Most humbly. I hazard my guess, also, that this terminates our discussion. And that we shall be the ones to suffer for your plotting." He smoothed the cloth bandage between his fingers, and bent his head to tie it back over his eyes.

  Zari’s gaze darted back to Plessiez and the black Rat Desaguliers.

  "No." Plessiez, sleek in scarlet. "I put this hall under Guiry’s protection. Let Messire Desaguliers hear our talk. Since I perceive his spies will have it sooner or later, let it be now. I have nothing to hide."

  Desaguliers snorted. "A miracle, that!"

  Welcome heat touched her with the room’s shifting patches of sun. Zari coughed, and stuck her tail up above head-height, twitching it. "If you talk through me, messires, it’ll be easier for the record."

  Desaguliers peered down the table. "What is that?"

  Plessiez, seating himself, and draping his scarlet cloak over the back of the chair, murmured: "Zari, of South Katay. A Kings’ Memory."

  "A Kings’ Memory." The taller Rat shook his head in reluctant admiration, and slumped back into a chair on his side of the table. The sun glinted off his cuirass. He kicked his rapier-scabbard back with a bare heel. "Plessiez, you miss few tricks. Let’s hear what you have to say, then."

  Plessiez rested one slender clawed finger across his mouth for a few seconds, leaning back, thin whiskers still. His eyes narrowed to obsidian slits. The hand fell to caress his pectoral ankh.

  "I don’t think I need to do more than say what I said when we last met. Master Falke, we, your masters, confine humans to certain ghetto areas within the city—"

  "As you are yourselves confined, by those Divine ones who are masters of us all." The white-haired man sat back with his arms along the arms of the chair, cloth- blinded eyes accurately finding Plessiez’s face. "It may gall you, Messire Plessiez, but there are Human Districts forbidden even to you. The Decans decree it."