by Mary Gentle
"Aren’t you meant to do that?"
"You want me to read dice or cards," the woman remarked, lifting several volumes of Paracelsus from an armchair, "and you act like a damned aristo. You’re studying at the university, but all of that I could have heard where I heard your name, Lucas. From gossip. I don’t do party tricks. Sit down."
Lucas stiffened. The cinnamon-haired woman dusted her hands together, and winced.
She pulled the patchwork cloth from the round table. Mirror-glass glimmered. Businesslike, she bent down, undid a catch, and spun the mirror on its spindle until the wooden backing was uppermost. A click of the catch and the table was firm.
Reaching up to a cupboard, the White Crow remarked, "Dice, I think," and pulled a brown silk scarf out and floated it down across the table.
Lucas picked the empty chair up and put it by the table. Something brushed his hair, buzzed sharply; he shook his head, and a honey-bee wavered off across the room. The woman put up a finger. The bee clung there for a moment while she brought it up close to eyes that, Lucas saw, glowed tawny amber; her lips pursed, and she blew gently. The bee hummed, flying drunkenly through the open window.
"Why ‘White Crow’?" Lucas sat, lounging back in the chair and crossing his legs.
She smiled. Under the white cotton shirt, her breasts were small and firm. Crow’s-feet starred the comers of her eyes, and the slightest fat was beginning to blur the line of her jaw.
"Because it’s not in the slightest like my own name—Quiet, Lazarus."
The wolf snapped, snarled a quick high whine, as two more bees flew in at the door. The White Crow held out a hand absently. As the bees alighted there, she transferred them to her red-brown hair, where they crawled sluggishly, buzzing. Lucas’s skin crawled.
"If you have a silver shilling," she said, "it would speed matters up considerably. Now where did I . . . ? Oh, yes."
She pushed books off the window-sill left-handed, regardless of where they fell. The sill opened. From the compartment, she took a handful of dice. She looked about for a moment for somewhere to sit, and then pulled a tall stool out from a corner.
Lucas sat up. The White Crow threw the dice loosely onto the brown silk covering the table. There were eight or nine of them: cubes of bone. And laid into each die- face, in brilliant enamel, was a picture or image.
"Just handle those for a minute, will you, and then cast them?"
Mist cleared and clouded, visible through the open skylight, and the room seemed to swell or darken as the sun shone or diminished. The woman reached up to a high shelf. Her shirt pulled taut across her breasts and pulled out of her breeches waistband, so that he saw tanned flesh in the gap. Lucas shuffled the dice in both hands, leaning forward to the table to conceal his arousal.
She took down a stole and slung it about her neck. The white satin shone, embroidered with dozens of tiny black characters.
"Now," she said, and Lucas cast the handful of dice on the table.
He drew in a sharp breath. Of the nine die-faces, four were showing a white enameled skull with blue periwinkle eyes, the other five a tiny knotted cord–the knot with which a shroud is tied.
The White Crow leaned over, squinting, and her dark red eyebrows went up.
"Damn things are on the blink again. Here, we’ll try the cards. How old are you?"
"Nineteen." Lucas slid a hand down between himself and the table, and tugged surreptitiously at the seam of his breeches. His eyes followed the woman as she padded about the room, turning up books and piles of paper, obviously searching.
Something about her made him want to drop all pretense. "Actually," Lucas said, "I’m the heir to the throne of Candover. Prince Lucas. Eldest son of King Ordono."
She trod on the end of the satin stole, and swore.
"Incognito?"
"That was my idea." He pushed his fingers through his thick springy hair. "I thought it would be good. To not be a king’s son. I suppose I thought people would treat me the same; that it would show through, naturally, somehow–what I really am."
The White Crow said drily, "Perhaps it does," and straightened up with a much-thumbed pack of cards. She gave them to Lucas and slumped down on the stool, puffing.
"But there’s no advantage to it, I can see that." Lucas shuffled the cards. "I’ll give it up, I think."
"Oh, to be nineteen and romantic!" The woman smiled, sardonic. She took the cards back and began to lay them out on the brown silk cover. When she had put twelve in a diamond-pattern, she stopped.
As she bent forward, squinting down at the table, Lucas saw that she had faint golden freckles on her cheek-bones. Her hair was coming down on one side, the silver flowing.
The White Crow fumbled in her shirt pocket for a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, shoved them firmly on, and announced: "Now . . ."
Lucas saw a mess of deuces and knaves.
"What’s a king’s son doing studying at the University of Crime anyway?"
"My father said it would be the best possible training for the crown. I already had an aptitude for it. What can you see?"
The spice-haired woman sat back and whipped off her glasses.
"Nothing. Oh, I can see pointers . . . You should go to the docks, soon."
She peered at the cards again.
"Or the main station."
She turned up another card: the Page of Scepters.
"Or the airfield." Disgusted, she swept the cards together. "This is ridiculous! I’ve been doing this more years than you’ve been alive, and now I’m getting nothing here, nothing at all."
Silence filled the room. The White Crow stood, moving to the window, replacing dice and cards in the sill-compartment. Mist frayed, admitting light, and the sun caught the silver in her hair; and Lucas stood up and walked to the window.
"It reminds me of the White Mountains," he said, sniffing deeply.
The woman folded her satin stole. She put it down on the sill, rested her fists on it, and leaned out to look at the heat and droplets of fog. Sheets and linen draped the trees in the yard. There was a lingering scent of soap and drains.
"There comes a time," the White Crow said, "when you can’t smell the air of any kind of a day without it bringing some other past day to mind. When that happens, you’re not old, but you’re no longer young."
Lucas leaned his arm across the window-frame behind her back, close enough that the hairs on his bare skin prickled.
"You’re not old."
The timber wolf whined, half-rose, and sank down again across the doorstep.
"Telling you you’ll meet someone at an airfield, or a station, it’s kitchen-teacup magic!" She picked up a heavy octavo volume from a chair. "Birthdate?"
Lucas took his arm away, not certain it had even been noticed.
"Midwinter Eve, the seven hundred and fiftieth year from the founding of Candover."
"That corresponds to . . ." She flicked pages, resting the book on the sill, searching for the relevant page. A whisk of dust caught in Lucas’s throat. Midway, she glanced up, thin shoulders sagging.
"Why lie? I can’t do this. Yesterday–there was such a use of power in the city yesterday that it’s deafened and blinded me. I could no more read for you than fly."
"Evelian told me some people were injured, over in one of the other quarters."
"Injured and killed. That’s twice the acolytes have been sent out to feed since the spring."
The White Crow held out a hand into open air, and another bee alighted, crawling across her unbandaged palm.
"Maybe I can do something for you, all the same."
She nudged at her temple. One of the bees that crawled in her hair flew off. She abruptly closed her hand over the remaining one, blew a fit! into her fist and opened it in front of Lucas’s nose.
A solid gold bee lay on her palm.
"Take it. Think of it as a hair-grip." The White Crow’s humor was exasperated. "Go to your meeting, whoever it turns out to be. This may be some protecti
on. You won’t have heard of it, but a while back it was a recognized sign. If you need to convince anyone that you know a magus, then show them this."
Lucas picked it up gingerly, between thumb and forefinger. It was cold, heavy, hard metal.
"But I’d be obliged," the woman added, "if you didn’t show it to anyone unnecessarily."
He opened his mouth to voice discontent, and the wolf raised its head and gazed at him with pale blue eyes. It did not look away. Lucas broke the contact first.
"One more thing," he insisted. "Evelian will be worried if I don’t ask. The South Katayan student who lodges here. Zari. Can you find out where she is now?"
Desaguliers paused outside the audience chamber, removing his plumed headband. A blowfly buzzed round his ears, and he swatted it irritably away. He pulled his cloak up about his lean shoulders, concealing the worst patches of charred fur, and took a deep breath.
"Enter!"
The Captain-General hesitated. His wolfish face was lost for a moment in calculation. Then he shrugged and pushed his way through the double doors.
Watery sunlight shafted from full-length windows into the audience chamber, glowing on the blue drapes and gold-starred canopy. Desaguliers approached the bed.
"Your Majesty," he said.
Eight Rats lay on the great circular bed on the dais. Three were being fed and groomed by servants. Another lay asleep. One black Rat had a secretary seated on the carpeted dais steps, reading a report to him in a low voice, and two Rats (fur so pale it was almost silver) dictated letters. The eighth Rat beckoned Desaguliers.
The Captain-General climbed the steps to kneel before the bed. The Rats lay with their bodies pointing outwards, their tails in the center of the bed’s silks and pillows. Each scaly tail wound in and out of the others, tangled, tied, fixed in a fleshy knot; and Desaguliers could see (as a brown Rat page carefully cleaned) where the eight tails had inextricably grown together.
"A serious matter." The Rats-King brushed crumbs from his gold-and-white jacket. He reclined on his side, facing Desaguliers: a bony black Rat in late middle age.
"One of my cadets lost his life. Three others are so badly injured that it will be months before they return to military service." Desaguliers paused. "Has your Majesty received word from the Fane this morning?"
"No word–"
The bony Rat picked a sweetmeat from a dish, bit into it, and the half-sleeping black Rat on his left opened his mouth to murmur: "–from the Fane at all," while the first Rat chewed.
Desaguliers suppressed a shiver. He straightened his shoulders, wincing where his leather harness galled burned flesh.
"I discovered what I could, your Majesty. There were Rats present at this hall meeting, a priest called Plessiez, and one of your Majesty’s guard, by name Charnay; both of whom were killed. There were also a number of humans that died in the attack, most but not all of hall rank."
The first Rat bowed his head, while a page brushed the fur along his jaw and behind his translucent ears. His shining black eyes met Desaguliers’.
"And you have no idea of the purpose of the meeting?"
Desaguliers’ gaze did not alter. "None at all, your Majesty. I continue to investigate. The attack came very shortly after I entered the Masons’ Hall, and I had no chance to question anyone."
The bony Rat nodded. A fly buzzed thickly past. The sleeping Rat, eyes still half-shut, said: "You were lucky, messire, to live."
"The hall turned out to have a small cellar underneath. I and my cadets took shelter there." Desaguliers halted at the black Rat’s glare, and qualified: "Truthfully, your Majesty, we fell through when the floor collapsed, and emerged after the Fane’s acolytes had gone. I had the cellar and the rubble searched for bodies–rather, remains of bodies."
Another brown Rat secretary came to read reports; and Desaguliers overheard the twin silver Rats say, in perfect unison: "Send in the ambassador first; then the Second District Aust quarter delegation–"
"–afterwards," the bony black Rat finished, smiling. "Very well, Desaguliers. We’re pleased that we still have our Captain-General."
"Luck," Desaguliers said, relaxing, and with a genuine regret in his tone. "We were lucky to come out of that. No one else who was caught in the building survived."
No through-draught moved in the room under the rafters. A fly skewed right-angles across the air, sounding distant in the heat, although it was only a few feet above his head. Lucas bent over the paper, imprinting neat cuneiform characters with an ink-stylus.
I like the University well enough, sister; you’d like it, too. Tell our father that I will stay here for the three years. It will please him.
Candover seems very far away now.
He put the stylus down on the table. His jacket already lay over the back of his chair; now he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his belt. Scratching in the dark curls of his chest, he wrote:
I consulted a philosopher (which is what they call a seer here) earlier this morning, but she could tell me nothing. She says she will draw a natal chart for one of the other students, but it will take her a few hours. I’ve said I’ll go back at noon.
Footsteps crossed the courtyard below. Lucas leaped from his chair and leaned over the window-sill.
Mistress Evelian waved a greeting, gestured that she would speak but couldn’t: mouth full of clothes-pegs. Last remnants of mist blurred the tiled roofs. A smell of boiled cabbage drifted in. On the street side of the room, the noise of a street-player’s lazy horn wound up into the late-morning air.
Hugging himself, sweaty, Lucas crossed back to the table.
Gerima, perhaps I won’t come back to Candover at all. I might not go to the university. I might just stay here in the city.
The skylight screeched, dropping rust-flakes into his eyes as he wedged it further open. The air up on the slanting roof hit him like warm water, and he drew his head back inside. A bird cried.
The seer is a woman who calls herself the White Crow. I said I would call back for the birthstar chart myself, although the person it concerns is no friend of mine. The White Crow—
The slow horn milked heat from the day, drowsing all the morning’s actions away into dreams.
He scratched at the hair of his chest, fingers scrabbling down to the thin line of back-growing hair on his belly. Sweat slicked his fingers. The narrow room (only bed, table and cast-iron basin in it) stifled him. Dizzy, dazed, drunk on nothing at all, Lucas threw himself down on his back on the bed and stared up through the open window at the sky.
Imaging in his mind how her hair, that strange dark red, is streaked with a pure silver and white, flowing from her temples. How her eyes, when they smile, seem physically to radiate warmth: an impossibility of fiction, but striking home now to some raw new center inside him.
Gerima, so much of her life has gone past and I don’t know what it is. I would like to go back and make it turn out right for her. If she laughs at me, I’ll kill myself.
The slow heat stroked his body as he stripped, lying back on the white linen. Imaging in his mind how sweat darkens her shirt under the arms, and in half-moons under each breast, and the contrast between her so-fine-textured skin and her rough cloth breeches. His fingers pushed through the curly hair of his genitals, cupped his balls for a moment; and then slid up to squeeze in slow strokes. His breathing quickened.
A faint breeze rose above the window-sill and blew the unfinished letter on to the floor.
On the far side of the courtyard Clock-mill struck eleven. An authoritative knocking came on the street-door. The White Crow swore, threw down her celestial charts and padded barefoot down the narrow stairway to the street.
"Yes?"
A man gazed nervously up and down the cobbled lane. A dirty gray cloak swathed him from head to heels, the hood pulled far forward to hide his face.
"Are you the White Crow?"
The White Crow leaned one elbow on the door-frame, and her head on her hand. She looked across
at the hooded face (standing on the last step, she was just as tall as he) and raised an eyebrow.
"Aren’t you a little warm in that?"
The air over the cobbles shimmered with heat, now that the early mist had burned away. The man pushed his hood far enough back for her to see a fleshy sweat- reddened face.
"My name is Tannakin Spatchet," he announced. "Mayor of the District’s East quarter. Lady, I was afraid you wouldn’t want to be seen receiving such an unrespectable visitor."
The White Crow blinked.
"What do you want?"
"Talismans." He leaned forward, whispering. "Charms that warn you when the Decans’ acolytes are coming."
"No such thing. Go away. That’s not possible."
His fleshy arm halted the door as she slammed it. "It is possible! A girl saved six people’s lives yesterday with such a warning. She’s dead now. For the safety of my quarter’s citizens, I want some talisman or hieroglyph that will give us warning if it happens again!"
The White Crow gestured with spread palms, pushing the air down, as if physically to lower the man’s voice. She frowned. Lines at the corners of her eyes radiated faintly down on to her cheek-bones, visible in the sunlight.
He said: "Is it possible?"
"Mmm . . . Bruno the Nolan incontrovertibly proves how magia runs in a great chain from the smallest particle, the smallest stone, up to microbes, bacteria; roses, beasts and men; daemonic and angelic powers–and to those Thirty-Six Who create all in Their divinity. And how magia-power may be heard and used up and down the Great Chain of Being . . ."
The White Crow tapped her thumb against her teeth.
"I use the Celestial world. Yes . . . Master Mayor, you realize talismans can be traced to the people who made them? People who make them, here, they don’t live long. Who sent you to me?" she temporized.
"A friend, an old friend of mine. Mistress Evelian. She mentioned a Hermetic philosopher lodging with her . . ."
The White Crow shoved a hand through her massy hair, and leaned out to look up and down the street. "That woman is perilously close to becoming a philosopher’s pimp. Oh, come in, come in. Mind the—Never mind."
