by Mary Gentle
"Stab him," she directed.
Lucas closed his hand on the knife. The blued-steel blade flashed, ugly; and he looked up from it to meet the glazed stare of the bound man beside Heurodis.
A smell of grease and old sweat came off the man; his ribs were visible under his shirt, and his yellow-gray hair marked him as only a few years younger than Heurodis.
"What are you waiting for?" the old lady demanded. "A killing stroke–you would aim where?"
Lucas heard someone gasp behind him; refused to look back at the half-dozen other students. He nipped lower lip between tooth and incisor, frowning. The knife-blade chilled his thumb. A trickle of sweat ran down between his shoulder-blades.
"In cold blood?"
"This isn’t a game, boy. If you think that it is, you have no business at the university!"
"I . . . "
He moved forward, boots loud on the scrubbed wooden floor. The bound man didn’t move: drugged, dazed; the pulse beating steadily at the base of his corded throat. Heurodis leaned on her cane.
"I would cut the carotid artery there"–Lucas’s free hand tapped the side of the man’s throat–"from the rear for preference, Reverend Mistress."
He flipped the steel knife, caught it by the tip, held it out to her.
"But first I would make sure not to get into the situation. Or, if I had, that there was another way out of it. Or, if not, that I could stun rather than kill."
Someone behind him muttered. A shadow flicked across the floor, from a bird passing the high windows; and far off a clock struck nine.
"Are you disobeying me, boy?" Her wrinkled face puckered into a smile. "Good! The time will come when you have to kill to stay alive. But life is precious; you should always have a better reason for taking it than someone else’s order."
A tall girl stepped forward from the group. "But we’re here to learn, aren’t we?"
Heurodis reached to take the knife from Lucas’s outstretched hand. "Certainly. And Reverend tutors musn’t be disobeyed, which is why Master Lucas will be scrubbing out the latrines this morning, as a punishment."
Lucas wiped his wet palm on his shirt.
"As a point of reference," the elderly lady said, "we usually don’t do any killing–knives, poisons, traps– until well into the second term."
She gave the drugged man’s tether to one of the hall- assistants, and as she passed Lucas he smelt frangipani and the scent of lilac. The old woman smoothed down her cotton dress.
"Pair off now. I want to see your techniques for disarming someone who has a knife. Master Lucas, a word with you."
The other new students began unrolling practice-mats. Lucas walked a few paces aside with the white-haired woman.
"I hear that you used some family influence yesterday to avoid the punishment for not attending." She placed the top of her cane against Lucas’s chest. "Don’t do that again. You could spend the rest of this term cleaning latrines."
"I—" was led astray by a dead girl, Lucas finished the thought; and shut his mouth, and met Heurodis’s smoky gaze. "Sorry, Reverend Mistress."
The cane rapped him familiarly under the fifth rib. She smiled, displaying long regular teeth. "Good man."
"When I’ve finished . . . cleaning"– Lucas’s nostrils flared slightly–"do I rejoin the class?"
"Yes." Heurodis raised her voice inclusively. "This afternoon you all have a session with Reverend Master Pharamond–and your first practice-session, out in the city itself."
In the darkness, water dripped. Echoes ran off into the unseen distance. Cold moist air blew steadily now; and the stench of ordure was interrupted by scents of unbearable sweetness.
Rubble skittered across a hard surface. A grunt and an oath were succeeded by a splash.
"Zari?"
"My foot! My bare foot!"
The Katayan sprawled face-down across brick paving, half in and half out of a pool of water. She raised her head, pushing a chopped-off fringe of black hair out of her eyes, and then held up her hands, spread-fingered.
"Ei! I can see. It’s light. Where’s it coming from?"
She knelt up, wringing out the hem of her greatcoat. Her dappled tail cracked like a whip, and a fine spray of water flew into the darkness.
"Where are we? Can we get out of here?"
"I think it unlikely."
Dim illumination shone on Plessiez, where the black Rat, drawn rapier in his hand, stood staring up a brick shaft that opened above his head. A cone of silvery light fell from it, on to a floor cluttered with broken bricks, stones, heaps of dried ordure, ossified branches and yellowing bones.
"Charnay, see if it’s possible to climb here."
The brown Rat emerged from the gloom. She put her fists on her furry haunches, craning her neck. The arched brick roof passed five or six feet above her head, and the shaft in it (easily thirty feet in diameter) opened without lip or ledge.
"It’s smooth," Charnay reported.
"I see that. Try if you can get a grip. Climb."
Zar-bettu-zekigal stood up, shaking her dripping foot, and padded towards the light. The skeleton of a snake curved across the brick paving in front of her, entire, the delicate-branched vertebrae all intact; and she stooped to peer at the wedge-shaped skull.
It rose an inch, empty eye-sockets turning towards her; and glided smoothly under an abandoned heap of brushwood.
Zari took one step after the loose-rattling tail, hesitated, and limped over to the two Rats.
"Where’s . . . ? We’ve lost Falke again," she said.
Charnay’s leap for the edge of the shaft connected briefly, and Plessiez stepped back as the brown Rat’s wildly scrabbling hind foot swung past his head. Her tail whipped in wild circles.
"Damn the man."
The brown Rat lost her tenuous grip, tangled a foot in her scabbard and tail on landing and fell heavily on her rump. Plessiez side-stepped.
"I’m not his nurse!"
"Where is he?"
The shaft’s dim light showed little around them but the walls. The scent of sweetness was stronger here. The Katayan narrowed her eyes, discerning a phosphorescence patterning the brick vaulting. A paleness of brambles, toothed leaves, petals . . .
Zari stepped forward and stared up the shaft, hands shoved deep into her pockets. Dizzied by the receding circle of brickwork and the sweet stench, she stumbled back against Plessiez, grabbing the black Rat’s arm.
"It goes way up, messire. I think it’s elbow-jointed. What are the flowers?"
The priest fingered his pectoral ankh. "A haunting of roses. One rarely sees such things above ground. I’d advise you to leave them alone."
Her shivering communicated itself through his arm. Plessiez chose a dry area of paving, in the shaft’s light, and pushed the Katayan woman to sit down.
"We’re taking a rest now. Charnay, find Falke."
The black Rat sheathed his rapier and reached up to untie his scarlet cloak. He swung it free, knelt down, and took the Katayan woman’s freckled foot in his hands; drying it with the cloth, and examining it.
"Bruised. Can you walk?"
She withered him with a glare. "Messire, of course I can walk."
The black Rat dug thumbs into the ball of her foot, with hands upon which the rings were chill. His obsidian eyes glinted in the twilight.
"Honest assessment of your capabilities would be more useful than bravado, I think."
Her calves ached with an infinitude of steps, passages, iron-rung ladders, and tunnels. "I can walk."
Plessiez swathed her feet temporarily in the warm lined cloak and sat down at her side. His lean wolfish face was thoughtful. In the twilight she could see how his scarlet jacket was mud-stained, and the plumed headband bedraggled. Only a twitching of his scaly tail showed his reined-in temper.
"Damn the man! This is his escape-route; he should know where it leads."
Zari turned her greatcoat collar up, and sat hugging her knees. "Messire, be honest. Did you stop to ask whe
re this went, when it went away from those . . . things?"
"I did not."
Plessiez removed his headband, scratching at the fur between his ears; and smoothed the broken black feathers. Two of the yellow nails on his right hand were broken. Scuffs and disheveled patches showed in his sleek fur. He looked sideways at the young woman.
"I don’t forget that your prompt action saved us."
The Katayan shoved pale fingers through her hair, head bowed; and shook the black hair back from her face as she looked up. "Falke did that, with his traps and false cellars."
She knelt up, feet still swathed in Plessiez’s cloak. She reached across, put her hands on the black Rat’s shoulders, and absently began to knead the muscles that were tense under the sleek fur. Some of his rigidity dissolved. "If this is a sewer system, then it’s been here for ever—"
A sound thrilled through the dark.
Plessiez grabbed his rapier, scrambling upright. Zar-bettu-zekigal half got to her feet, tangled herself in the cloak and sat down. Charnay’s voice, nearby, said: "So it’s salt. Then you ought to be glad that I pulled you out, instead of bitching about it, messire!"
The brown Rat staggered into the circle of twilight, a man’s body over her shoulder. With a grunt of effort, she knelt and eased him down on to the terracotta paving. Black overalls streamed water on to the brick.
"We’ve got to get out of here! If we don’t, we’ll starve!" Falke caught the harness of Charnay’s rapier in a white fist. His translucent hair dripped, sleeked dark with oil and water, and his eyes, uncovered, stared wildly: velvet pits.
Plessiez sheathed his rapier, watching the pale fire of spectral roses.
"The last of our worries is starvation, messire."
The brown Rat clapped Falke roughly on the back. "No need for hysterics."
Zari kicked her bare feet free of the cloak and scrambled upright. She seized Charnay’s arm, as the brown Rat began to scrub water from her fur with a silk kerchief.
"It’s wet!"
"So it’s wet." Charnay’s tail whip-cracked, flicking water-drops off with an audible spuk! "So what?"
Plessiez put his hand on the Katayan’s shoulder, restraining her. "Water?"
"Oh, yes, messire." The brown Rat began cleaning dampness from her rapier.
"Where?"
Surprised, she said: "Up ahead. Not far. Falke here found it the hard way, I don’t know why; there was light enough that even a Ratling needn’t have fallen in—"
Plessiez shoved Zar-bettu-zekigal back. The Katayan danced from foot to bare foot, hardly bothering to avoid the shivering Falke where he huddled, dripping.
"Light? Light from what, you dim-witted idiot!" the black Rat demanded.
Charnay sheathed her cleaned rapier, adjusted the hang of her cloak and looked down at Plessiez with a puzzled expression.
"The canal has lamps," she explained.
Sun from the hard yellow sand dazzled him. Lucas sat on the lagoon wall, dealing cards on to the smooth stone surface.
White marble palaces shone under the luminous blue sky, rising up in terraces from the lagoon. Pink and blue banners hung from balustrades, from walls, from arches and domes. People on the streets made pin-pricks of bright color. The thin thump of drums came down from a procession, up on a higher street, and the brass tang of cymbals. On the promenade, several black Rats in litters stopped to talk, blocking the way. The sun glinted off the cuirasses of their bodyguards.
"Play you at Shilling-the-Trump?" a voice offered. Lucas nodded to the woman in sailor’s breeches and shirt, identifying her as a transient worker, and so allowed to carry coin. She set down her kitbag and sat on the carved balustrade beside him. He dealt, businesslike now.
"You’re too good," she said at last. Her yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You’re not a student, are you?" Lucas, lying only by implication, said deprecatingly: "Only came in on the Viper two days ago."
"I’ve been warned about students . . ."
The calm lagoon waters mirrored marble-white terraces and a clear sky. Gilding glinted from temple columns and dome-friezes. Far off, where the lagoon opened to the sea, masts were visible, and sailors loading ships, and merchants outside warehouses.
Here, on the flat-packed sand, immense oval shadows dappled the ground: airships tugging at mooring-ropes.
"Five shillings you owe me."
The woman paid, and Lucas watched her walk away. Barely three o’clock, a dozen other students scattered across the promenades, and already five impromptu cardsharp games since his arrival . . .
None of them the meeting she foretold me. Still, she did say the station, and the docks, as well as here.
He dealt idly: Page of Scepters, Ten of Coins, Three of Grails. A breeze whipped the pasteboard off the marble. He made a sprawling grab for the cards.
A hand the size of a ham slapped down on the stone balustrade, trapping the Page of Scepters and smearing both card and stone with heavy streaks of machine-oil.
"Here." A resonant good-natured voice.
"Of all the filthy—"
Lucas straightened up, the sun burning the back of his neck. On the sand-flats, crews were scurrying about a moored helium-airship; trolleys and small carriages scored ruts in the sand. Lucas’s voice trailed off as he realized that all his view was blotted out.
The man wiped the Page of Scepters on the lapel of his pink satin coat. Black oil smeared the satin. He peered at the card with china-blue eyes, and dropped a kitbag from his other ham-sized fist. It thudded on to the sand.
"Nothing wrong with that," he remarked encouragingly, and handed the pasteboard back to Lucas.
"Just wait a damn minute—!"
"Yes?"
Cropped hair glinted the color of copper wire. As he looked down over his mountainous stomach at the seated young man, his several chins creased up into sweaty folds. He beamed. The smell of the distant surf was overlaid by oil and sweat and garlic.
Lucas opened and shut his mouth several times.
The big man moved and sat down companionably on the balustrade. The marble shook as his weight hit it. He tugged his oil-stained silk breeches up, loosened his cravat and belched; and then gazed around at the surrounding city with immense pleasure.
"Architectonic," he murmured. He scratched vigorously in his copper hair and examined his fingernails, flicking scurf away. "Wonderful. Is all the city like this?"
"Uhhrh. No."
"Pity."
The man offered a plump fat-creased hand. His sleeve was coated in some yellow substance, almost to the elbow. Wet patches darkened under his arm.
"Casaubon," he said.
Lucas managed to swallow, saliva wetting his dry mouth. Half-lost in thoughts, he muttered: "You can’t possibly be . . . No!"
"I assure you, my name is Baltazar Casaubon." The big man inquired with gravity, over the noise of engines, voices and distant bells, "Who ought I to be?"
"I’m not sure. I don’t know." Lucas closed his fist over the pack of cards. Badly startled, he began again. "A seer foretold a meeting for me, here . . . Somehow I hardly think that you’re the person in question."
"Foretelling interests me." Casaubon dug into the capacious pockets of his full-skirted coat and brought out a handful of roasted chicken-wings. Picking what remained of the meat from the bones, he said: "I’ll give you a shilling to help carry my gear, and we’ll talk about it."
Lucas stood up off the balustrade. Patience exhausted, the afternoon sun fraying his temper, he said: "Oh, really! There are limits to what a prince will do!"
The big man looked down at the cards, and at the heap of small coins at Lucas’s elbow. Through a fine spray of chewed chicken and spittle, he remarked: "Are there? What are they?"
Lucas stared, silenced.
"Sir?"
A thin brown-haired woman in a frock-coat walked across the sand. Behind her, silver highlights slid across an airship’s bulging hull. She snapped her fingers for a porter to follow: the man
staggered under the weight of a brass-bound trunk. Two other men followed, carrying a larger trunk between the two of them, their boots digging deep into the sand. The woman made a deep formal bow.
"Ah–Parry! Here." The stentorian bellow beside him deafened Lucas.
"I’ve summoned a carriage, Lord-Architect. Now, are you sure that—?"
Casaubon stood. He bulked large above Lucas, easily six foot four or five inches tall. He waved a dismissive hand at the woman.
"Parry, don’t fuss. Go back, as arranged. And try to keep the Senate from bankrupting me while I’m gone, won’t you?"
The woman, sweating in woolen frock-coat and breeches, gave a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Lord-Architect."
One carriage rolled up, and the porters began to load it from the luggage piled up around the airship’s steps. Case followed case, trunk followed trunk, until the metal-rimmed wheels sank inches deep into the sand. The precise woman snapped her fingers and beckoned another of the nearby carriages.
Casaubon strode over to supervise the loading, mopping at the rolls of fat at the back of his neck with a brownish kerchief. Two of the men struggled to raise a square chest. He motioned them aside, squatted, and straightened up with it in his grip. He heaved it up on to the cart.
"Oof! We’ll need another cart. Parry, you’re about to miss your ship."
The thin woman glanced over to where crews were loosening the anchor-ropes of the nearest airship.
"I’ll manage," the big man forestalled her. "My friend here will call another carriage."
The woman made a hurried bow, looked as though she would say more, heard a hail from the airship, and turned and strode away. Casaubon stared after her. Ponderously regretful, he shook his head, and then turned back to Lucas.
"Won’t you?"
Lucas, a step away, hesitated. He scratched at his thick springy hair, and tugged the linen shirt away from his neck. The heat of the afternoon sun cleared promenade, sand-flats and streets; litters vanishing into cool courtyards, and men and women into cafes and bars. No one now to be inveigled into a game of Shilling-the-Trump, and risk sunstroke.
He put a hand into his breeches pocket, and brought it out closed. "I can only think of one way to tell if this is a waste of time."
