by Mary Gentle
The gold-braid-edged skirts of his satin coat swirled as he turned. Lucas, bile and jealousy burning his gut, stared after the man as he strode ponderously towards the passage’s archway.
The White Crow stared irresolutely at his retreating back. One hand went up to smooth her tumbled hair, straighten her spectacles–as Lucas was about to open his mouth, protest support and loyalty, she snatched off her gold-wire spectacles, gripping them in a fist.
"Where have you come from?" She raised her voice. "Where have you been?"
Casaubon continued to walk away. The courtyard’s quiet, born of sun and distant voices and the scent of dry grass, sifted down like dust.
"What the hell do you mean by just turning up!"
Lucas saw her fist tighten: gold-wire frames twisted. She stamped past him, flinched, reached out a hand to grip his shoulder and brush a stone from her bare sole.
"Damn you! Do you know what’s gone wrong in this city?"
Lucas’s dry mouth silenced him. He felt her warm hand; gazed at her profile, fine-textured skin, and darker freckles on her ears. Her long-lashed eyes fixed on Casaubon’s departing back.
"And what about the College?"
Almost gone now, his scuffed shoe entering the shadow of the passageway that ran under Evelian’s rooms.
"I used blood on the moon—"
She stepped past Lucas, ignoring his exclamation.
"–Are you the answer to my message?"
The shadow-line of the building slid down Casaubon’s back, pink satin turning strawberry in the archway’s dimness.
"Casaubon!"
The big man stopped and looked over his shoulder, a profile of forehead, nose, delicate lips; chins; belly swelling like a ship’s sail.
"You want me to stay, then?"
"Shit!"
The White Crow stomped back past Lucas, stooped to pick up the grimoire from the grass, shut it with a clap that echoed flatly back from the courtyard walls, and stalked across the yard and up the wooden steps.
The outer door slammed violently behind her: a second later the inner room’s door crashed to.
Lucas started as Casaubon’s arm fell across his shoulders, greasy, massive, delicately light. He looked up. Orange-gold hair glinted, falling over a forehead where freckles were hardly visible under dirt.
The fat man glanced down at Lucas, beaming beatifically.
"She wants me to stay."
Spiritual corruption crackled in the air. It tanged dry as fear in Plessiez’s mouth. The black Rat priest’s hand moved to the looped cross at his breast.
"I’ll take that."
The Hyena snatched the silver ankh from Plessiez’s neck. He spun round, slender dark fingers reaching for the rapier that was no longer at his side; wincing as the chain cut fur and flesh.
The woman threw the jeweled chain carelessly away. "A rich priest! How unusual . . ."
Plessiez shuddered, hardly aware of her sarcasm. Chains clanked above his head. All around the vast walls of the cavern, broken metal beams jutted out. From each beam hung chains, and in the chains hung corpses. Some showed bone and dried sinew only. The one above him was fresher.
"Messire," Charnay leaned down to mutter. "You’re not afraid?"
Plessiez suppressed a shiver, fur hackling with horror and satisfaction.
Here, raw brick edges showed how a dozen sewer- chambers had been knocked into one, many-ledged and on multiple levels. Ragged sun-banners hung everywhere. Flames licked the soot-stained walls. They burned in apparently empty ram’s-horns and wide dishes. Niches and ledges higher up gleamed with the spectral light of roses.
"The sheer power . . ." Plessiez breathed, for once unguarded. "Digging bones from crypts is well enough, but this . . . The Order should–I should have discovered this before now!"
Ragged men and women crouched around individual fires, between heaps of rubbish. Sullen, they watched. Ordure stank underfoot; the smells of decay and cooked meat choked the air.
Plessiez, unarmed, black eyes bright, took busy steps back and forth, peering at how woodlice and centipedes swarmed over the heaps of rubbish, active in the humidity. The delicate skulls of herons, mounted on poles, rustled with a ghost of feathers and air.
"Now, messire," Charnay warned, "your Order’s plans are very pleasant in a tavern of a summer evening, but this is serious. Let me break some heads. We don’t need swords to get out of here; they’re a poor lot!"
"No!" Plessiez shook his head violently. "Do nothing before I tell you. Think, for once in your life! What better place to raise plague-magia than here? Let the Cardinal-General weep; I’ll be head of the Order before I’m much older."
The walls sweated a dark niter that stank of blood.
The brown Rat put her hand on his arm. "Plessiez, we’re old friends. Sometimes you’re an ambitious fool."
Furious, he swung round, and then lost his balance on the filth-choked earth as the young Katayan woman pushed him to one side. The thick light that swam in metal bowls shone on her dirty face and on her fever- bright eyes.
"Feed us!" She gazed up at the Hyena, hands still in great-coat pockets, with a grin that might have been confidence or agony. "Two days we’ve been lost. You brought us here. Feed us!"
The armored woman leaned weight on her scabbarded long sword, all the metal glistering dully in the light. She spat. A globule of spittle hit the earth-choked brick paving by Plessiez’s feet. It moved. It scuttled, and he set his heel on it, grinding the aborted by-product of magia into the earth.
She said: "Won’t waste food on you. You wouldn’t have time to shit it out again before we killed you. Clovis!"
The blond man ran to kneel before her. She spoke rapidly to him.
Plessiez watched the men and women of the Imperial dynasty sleeping, eating and arguing in the shadows of gallows; never glancing up.
Wiry arms flung themselves around him. He swore, bit the words back. Zar-bettu-zekigal hugged, pressing the sword-harness painfully into his fur, resting the top of her head against his chest.
"Eeee!" The Katayan kicked a bare foot against the ground, and looked up with glowing eyes. "She’s wonderful!"
"Damn you, Zaribet!" Plessiez’s pulse jolted. "Hell damn you, you little idiot!"
The Katayan beamed uncomprehendingly. "I must be mad. She isn’t a day over twenty-five; she’s a baby. Mistress Evelian’s all woman. This one’s flat as a yard of tap-water . . ."
Exasperation sharpened his voice as Plessiez gathered his shaken self-possession. "I grant you, if she were about to kill us, she would have done it immediately. However–"
The Hyena’s voice cut across his.
"How long is it since we last caught someone down here?"
She reached up with her free hand, skin filthy in the yellow light, and jangled the gallows chains high above Plessiez’s head. The stink of rot drenched the air. He coughed.
Something unidentifiable in the shadows fell from the gallows, hitting the earth with a squashy thud.
"About a month," she judged.
Plessiez swallowed hard. Falke’s shoulder shoved him back as the white-haired man pushed forward. He snarled at the armored woman: "Scare me, ‘Lady’ Hyena. Try. These eyes have seen the heart of the Fane. Nothing human is going to make me afraid." He dropped the hand that shaded his eyes, staring at the woman with pit-velvet pupils.
"Clovis!"
The armored woman snapped her fingers. Two men in half-armor heaved a wooden block across and slammed it down at the Hyena’s feet. The taller of the two drew a thin curved sword; light dripped along the edge of the blade. The other grabbed Falke’s arms, twisting them up behind his back, and dragged him sprawling half across the block.
Plessiez narrowed his eyes to furry slits. He met the Hyena’s gaze, and said softly and clearly:
"Honor to you."
She stared, shook her head and made a bitter sound. "To me? Messire priest, if I had any honor left, why would we be down here?"
Men
and women mostly between the years of fifteen and forty watched, faces sullen. Plessiez ignored them, ignored Falke.
"These are offal, and you know it," he said clearly. "Since you’re not blind or deaf, you can hardly mistake them for anything else. I’m not concerned with them."
She limped, armor clashing, until her face came within an inch of his. He smelled blood; ghostly in the air about her. "What can we humans be but your servants or your whores? You starve us and use us. What can we do? Leave the city? No. Carry a sword, and defend ourselves when you kick us in the streets? No. Carry money, even? No!"
She scowled, black brows dipping; and a strand of lank hair lodged across her cheek, as her head moved with passionate anger.
"Work our guts out and then die while you sleep on silk; and even when we die we’re not free of the city!"
Plessiez smoothed his fur with fingers that trembled.
" ‘We’?" he said delicately.
The Hyena struck backhanded without looking, and the nearer man let Falke pull free of his grip. The whitehaired man stared up from under tear-dazzled lashes at the gallows.
"We," she said, wiping the hair away from her face. Her hectoring tone gave way to puzzled suspicion. "Yes, and you, too–the Decans are your masters."
Plessiez nodded.
"Honor to you," he repeated. "People who are going to kill do it quite utilitarianly. A knife between two neck-vertebrae is efficient. Charnay will not admit it, I think, but I believe that humans may have a soldier’s honor."
Charnay straightened, tail lashing. "Imperial horseshit! I don’t care if they have stolen swords from somewhere; they’re a rabble."
Plessiez very carefully caught the armored woman’s eye, letting a little humorous resignation show. After a long moment, the Hyena’s mouth moved in a smile.
"A priest, a King’s Guard, a Master Builder and"– her red-brown eyes moved to Zar-bettu-zekigal–"something from half the world away . . . It would be a shame to lose a ransom. I’ll kill you after I’ve let you prove to your masters that you’re alive. Then you won’t tell them where to find us."
Plessiez smoothed down his fur again, shooting a brief humorous glance at her; sure of himself now, and ebullient.
"I’ll pay you more than a ransom," he said. "I’ll pay you a King’s ransom that his Majesty is far too mean to give. Your people go under the city, don’t they? Under the whole city? Let’s talk. You can do something for me, and I can do much for you."
"If you Rat-Lords kill each other, that’s good, but it doesn’t help us."
"I belong to an Order within the Church," Plessiez enunciated carefully, aware of knife-edge balance, "and I fear, madam, that we have too short a time for me to retell thirty years of their history; but suffice it that we’re not interested in factions at the court of his Majesty the King. Shall I say we’re concerned with the city’s strange masters?"
"The Decans?"
The woman glanced round, gripped the litter’s pole with a gauntleted hand and slumped down to sit. She looked up at Plessiez from among ordure-stained drapes and cushions.
"A mad priest. We’ve found ourselves a mad priest. You’d fight god, would you? Stupid–and more fool me for listening."
Plessiez let the chill humidity of the cavern sink in; the devil-light and the little hauntings. He took the risk quite deliberately.
"Fifty years ago the plague wiped out a third of the population. It didn’t touch the Fane. Why should it? It only killed bodies. Since then the organization within the Church to which I belong has been studying magia."
Falke hauled himself up by Charnay’s helping hand, shading his eyes that were intent on Plessiez.
"Plagues may exist in flesh, in base matter, and bring bodies to death. And, we discover, there are other pestilences that may be achieved, plagues of the spirit and the soul." His long fingers searched the fur of his breast for the missing ankh. "And there are plagues that can be brought into existence only by acts of magia. They bring their own analogue of death–to such as our masters, the Thirty-Six Lords of Heaven and Hell: the Decans."
The woman took hold of the ragged sun-banner hanging from the litter-pole. "Death? Theirs?"
"To the Divine? No. Naturally not. Lady, what we can and must do is make Them sicken, so that They abandon Their incarnations in flesh and remove to that Celestial sphere that is Their proper habitation, leaving"–his tone sharpened–"the world to us."
The Hyena, without any sign of hearing Plessiez, looked past him to the young Katayan woman. "You– what are you?"
Zar-bettu-zekigal scratched her ear with the tip of her tail.
"A Kings’ Memory?" she offered.
The woman stood, tossed her lobster-tail helmet underarm: Zari caught it in both hands, and the Hyena took firm hold of her shoulder and drew the Katayan aside.
"You’ve been with the priest; you tell me what you’ve heard."
Plessiez straightened his shoulders, sanguine in the haunting-light for all his ruffled fur. His brilliant eyes darted, missing nothing: the two women, dark-haired and dirty, almost twins, standing by poles decorated with the shifting-eyed skulls of cranes.
The older and taller bent her head, listening. The younger stood with eyes half-shut, in the concentration of Memory, the speech of Masons’ Hall unrolling in smooth sequence. Plessiez narrowed his eyes, translucent ears swiveling; stood still, and listened.
"Vitruvius writes . . ."
Casaubon sprawled back in the sagging armchair, legs planted widely apart, a book held at a distance in his free hand. He bit into a gravy-soaked hunk of bread, chewed, and put the remainder of the bread down on the expanse of his spread thigh. Dark liquid blotted the silk.
"In The Ten Books of Architecture, writes of . . ." He squinted, licked a gravy-stained digit and thumbed ponderously through the pages. " ‘Hegetor’s Tortoise: A Siege-Engine.� ‘The Ballista.’ Catapults, crossbows; ‘The Automata of Warfare’ . . . Military engineering. Hardly what I’m used to, but I can do it."
"Casaubon!"
The White Crow smacked the side of his head. Lucas seethed as she pulled out the tail of her shirt, grabbed first one and then the other of the Lord-Architect’s plump hands, and wiped each relatively clean.
"Master Desaguliers has put a factory production-line at my disposal." He sucked a finger clean. "And the King offers me ample funds."
"The King’s as interested in military engineering as Desaguliers?" The White Crow picked up her glass of red wine again. She left her shirt-tail hanging out.
"His Majesty are interesting people," Casaubon remarked.
"Why don’t you go back to your rooms and your books," she inquired pointedly, "instead of making a mess of mine?"
Casaubon’s head turned as he surveyed the book- strewn, map- and chart-walled room. One eyebrow quirked up.
"Mess?"
Lucas took a deep swallow of wine, slid down in his chair and continued to glare at the Lord-Architect. Blue- gray storm-light blurred the window. The heavy air and wine made his temples throb.
The remains of a meal were spread across the round table. White Crow–or Valentine–walked restlessly about the room, glass in hand.
"In any case," Casaubon added, in tones of injured reasonableness, "the porters are still moving my belongings into my room."
His fat arm reached up to the table. He grabbed two tomatoes from a dish and bit into both at once. Through a handful of red pulp and seeds, he added: "Who does Master Desaguliers wish to attack, or defend?"
"Who cares?" Valentine paced back across the book- cluttered floor. She hitched a hip up to sit on the window-sill. "Lucas will know. Won’t you, Lucas? Tell us about the politics, Prince."
He struggled to sit up, meeting her tawny eyes.
"Any news I had at my father’s court will be eighteen months out of date. I’ll have to speak with my uncle. He might be able to tell you something."
"You do that, Prince."
Her grin blurred; and she reach
ed over to pick up the winebottle, nursing it on her lap before refilling her glass. Her eyes moved to the Lord-Architect, and Lucas could not read her expression.
"Why are you here—? Lazarus, no!"
Lucas shifted his legs as the timber wolf trotted in from the further room. Its ice-pale eyes fixed on the Lord- Architect, and it began to whine: a nail scratched down glass. Casaubon reached down and shoved his fingers through the animal’s hackle-raised ruff, gripped the wolfs muzzle and shook it.
"There was blood on the moon," he reminded the White Crow.
The timber wolf made an explosive huff! sound and curled up beside the armchair.
Lucas scratched through his springy hair and stood up, striving for calm or authority or anything but confusion.
"I saw," he insisted. "I saw that when I hadn’t been in the city an hour."
The White Crow nodded her head several times. She lifted one shoulder; the cotton slid across the curve of it and her breast. "You’re talented, Prince—"
Footsteps sounded on the outer stairs. Evelian put her head around the door. She knocked on the open door lintel. "Messire Casaubon?"
"–He’s here," the White Crow finished.
"The porters can’t get everything up to your room." Evelian wiped a thick coil of yellow hair back with her wrist. Her smile showed pale; flesh bagged under her eyes. "If you’re not over in two minutes to sort it out, I’m telling them to leave the rest in the street!"
Her blue-and-yellow satin skirt flashed as she turned, and her footsteps clattered down the steps.
Casaubon tossed a handful of tomato-skins to the timber wolf. It snapped them out of mid-air, chewed–and immediately hacked the fruit back up, onto the carpet. The Lord-Architect stood, agile. He drew the skirts of his coat about him, bent to peer out of the casement, and held a fat palm out to test the air.
Heat-lightning whitened the rooftops, erratic as artillery. Spots of rain darkened the blistered paint on the window-sill.
"Brandy is good for aposthumes and influenzas," he remarked hopefully. "I’ll return shortly, Lady Valentine. Ah. Excuse me."
He bent ponderously and picked up an object from a corner of the room.
Lucas slammed his glass down, slopping wine; staggered across the room, and made it to the window at the same time as the cinnamon-haired woman grabbed the frame and leaned dangerously far out. He leaned out beside her, rain cool on his face.
