Rats and Gargoyles (49 page)

Hot wax spattered his hand.

He winced and set the candelabrum down, absently
peeling the white discs of cooling wax from his skin. They left clean marks. He
unknotted his red kerchief and wiped his hands and arms, conscious of dust, oil,
bloody scratches; wiped his face. He smiled wryly, scratching through his hair,
now grown long enough to catch in the chains of the talismans hung about his
neck.

"Gerima would call me a base mechanic. And Uncle
Andaluz—!"

He turned, decisive, and strode back across the
floor to the Reverend tutors. Shamar waved his arms excitedly; Pharamond rubbed
at his clipped beard, and gestured for quiet; Reverend Mistress Regis tucked her
blond-red hair back behind her ears and glared severely at Lucas.

"I suggest we send this young man back to the
Arche- master with a message of some description. His class- record is not such
that I think we’ll find him useful in an emergency. You know how irresponsible
these outland princes are."

Heat touched his ears and cheeks. Lucas pressed on doggedly. "The message said, cheat
mathesis
—"

Pharamond put his hands behind his back.

"There are certain numbers that control the Form of
the world. The formulae of force, attraction, gravitation, celestial and
terrestial mechanics. These the Decans number and keep in existence. As well as
those formulae that create the shapes and souls of men and beasts; formulae
written deep in our cells—"

"Oh, if we
could
cheat, yes!" Shamar
interrupted the easy fluency of the lecture hall. His dark eyes glowed as he
looked at the ranked analytical machines.

Lucas frowned. "I don’t understand—"

"Why should you think you could understand?" Regis
snapped. "You’re a first-year student, and a mostly absent one at that."

Shamar chuckled. A lightening of the tension went
through the group. Lucas, for that reason, bit back a protest.

Regis added kindly: "You wouldn’t understand. And
this is an emergency."

Light caught in the corners of Lucas’s eyes,
blurring his vision with silver and blue. The levers and gearwheels of the
analytical engines stood out black against the windows.

"I study to be wise, but I’m not ignorant to begin
with!"

He drew himself up; all the bearing of Candover’s
princes coming back to him now: one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, his
shoulders straight as he stared at the six or eight tutors of the University of
Crime.

"Do you know who I am? The Emperor of the East and
the Emperor of the West meet at my father’s court! Do you think his wisest
tutors failed to teach me how it is
mathesis
that holds the Great Wheel
of the heavens in place? It’s our serfs in Candover that build these
mathematical engines! Now I’ll tell
you
something."

Regis’s freckles stood out darkly. She opened her
mouth.

"A magus told me," Lucas said. "A woman who isn’t
sitting here safe in the university! Do you know where she is, now, this minute?
She’s inside the Fane . . ."

He shook his head. "Sorry.
None
of us is
safe. But I’ll tell you this. Yes, you can get these machines producing the
Form-numbers of all things–stars, stones, roses, bricks, butterflies. You can
run the formulae. What
good
will it do us? The White Crow told me what a
Decan told her. All these formulae are going to be uncreated, finally, and for
good. Now."

Breath caught in his throat.

The scent of candlewax drenched the air. Muffled by
glass, the shrieks of acolytes echoed across the university’s courtyards. The
silence in the hall pressed on his ears. Anger drained out of him; the last of
court training reasserting itself.

"I apologize, masters. I
am
hindering you; I
crave your pardon. Excuse me."

He bowed shortly. "What shall I tell Lord Casaubon
when he asks why you don’t act?"

Pharamond glanced away from the group of tutors:
the elderly Reverend Mistress buttonholing Shamar, haranguing him; Regis
stabbing a finger at both as she interrupted; four or five others clustered down
the gallery by the ranked handles of the analytical engines.

The bearded man touched the handle nearest to him,
cranking it thoughtfully. Cogs shifted; numbers rolled in the dial. "Tell him we
don’t, imprimis, have the manpower—"

Lucas grinned. Air bubbled in his chest; he
suddenly seized the smaller man by the shoulders.

"You do," he said. "You do! Just wait!"

"
Prince
—"

"Believe me, you do!"

He hit the door-jamb with his shoulder, racing out
into the hall; feet hitting every third step down the great polished flight of
stairs. Black light shone in from perpendicular windows; a scent of burning
crept in through the creaking joins of the leaded glass. Lucas skidded across
polished marble tiles and hit double-doors with both hands extended.

A burst of voices quietened; he gazed out at
alarmed faces in Big Hall.

"Rafi!"

"What in hell is happening?" Rafi of Adocentyn
demanded. He rapidly strode towards Lucas, who shut the door behind him and
seized his arm.

"Get up to Long Gallery."

"Oh,
what?
What are you on about, Candover?"

Lucas grabbed a chair from the nearest desk, climbed on it, yelled across the
heads of the assembled students. The noise-level fell a little: fifty or sixty
heads turning.

"Listen!
Get yourselves up to the Long Gallery.
Do it
now.
You’re going to be running the analytical engines. If we do it
right, we’ve got a chance of clearing up this mess!"

A flurry in one corner of Big Hall: the Proctor
shoved into a corner and shouted down. Almost all faces turned towards Lucas.
Students he recognized shouted questions, others yelled. As if by unspoken
consent they began moving closer.

"I haven’t got time to explain; it doesn’t
matter
if you don’t know what you’re doing—"

"Nor you, Prince?" one voice yelled. Lucas laughed.

"Nor me, neither.
Listen.
There’s a dozen
Reverend tutors up in Long Gallery and they’re wetting themselves because they
can’t run the machines on their own. Now, I’m going back up there. Come with me
if you want. If you don’t, then sod you!"

He kicked the chair aside as he leaped down; it
skittered across the doorway. He ran out ahead of the crowd, Rafi of Adocentyn
the only one close enough to catch up as he sprinted back up the stairs.

"Candover, what the fuck are you doing?"

Lucas’s steps slowed. He heard feet pounding the
stairs behind, and glanced back to see the Night Sun glint from fair and dark
hair, students running, yelling, laughing with the relief of action. Caught up
in action, only a few spared a glance for the world outside the windows.

"I don’t know." Lucas, dizzy with shouting, grinned
at Rafi’s narrow puzzled face.
"I
don’t know. I’m trusting these idiots
who teach us to know what they’re doing. I’m trusting White Crow when she says
Lord Casaubon knows what he’s doing."

The dark young man frowned. "Those two that were at
Carver Street? Gods, Lucas! You’re crazy."

Lucas grabbed the back of Rafi’s neck, turning the
young man to look across the top of the stairwell and out of a window that
overlooked the heart of the world.
"Go outside and then tell me I’m crazy!"

He swung the doors of the Long Gallery open,
holding back the heavy oak. Rafi frowned, strode through. A girl followed, two
more; a fair-haired Katayan; then a rabble of a dozen, then more. He stared at
their excited shouting faces, searching for something, some conception of what
had occurred outside the university in this hour of the Night Sun.

"I suppose," Pharamond’s voice came from behind
Lucas, "that they don’t have to know what they’re doing here to do it.
You,
Hilaire, walk!
Shamar, get them sorted out, will you?"

Shamar raised his hand. The warm light gallery
flooded with voices, with students who ran, shouting to each other; the Reverend
tutor directing each to set a dial or crank a handle.

"Lucas, listen." Pharamond sighed, resting his arm
up against the door-jamb. "Go and tell your Archemaster we’ll do what we can,
but probably it’s not much. Yes, now we can run the numbers. But we can’t cheat
to prevent the discreation."

Lucas froze. Half-suspecting, half-speculating, he
looked across at the tutor. "What would you have to do, for that?"

"Pattern compels," Reverend Master Pharamond said.
"As above, so below. But the influence runs both ways. Our ciphering of the
numbers of the cosmos is compelled by the divine numbering of the Decans, yes.
But if we could cheat, and make Their numbering dependent on
our
results,
here?"

Lucas stared.

"We don’t do it often, boy, but when we need to we
can–usually. We cheat with our results, and that cheats the world to comply with
us."

The dark Reverend Master, Shamar, approached the
door and paused as he came up with them. "Pharamond, we’ve always said we could
do it, but could we? Really?"

"Not without the mechanical skills!" Pharamond
nodded his head sharply at the ranked lines of levers.

"Mechanical skills." Lucas paused, breath tight in
his throat.

"We’d have to gear the machines for the results we
want, not the results it’ll give us now, considering what’s going on out there
in the city. But . . ." Pharamond shrugged. "The faculty’s mechanics aren’t
resident in the university."

"Where will we find them?"

Regis’s deep laughter echoed back from the Long
Gallery. "Find them?
Find
them? In that chaos out there?"

"She’s right," the bearded man said. "She’s right."

Lucas reached out and rested his dirty hand against
the stamped plate of Candover on the nearest engine. A quietness had fallen in
the Long Gallery, most of the young men and women over the immediate excitement
of their arrival. He heard their voices, saw how they watched him speaking with
the Reverend tutors.

"I–it wouldn’t be any use–well, it might—"

Regis snorted. Pharamond held up a hand, arresting
what she might have said; moved it to tap Shamar’s shoulder for the dark man’s
attention.

Heat colored his face; Lucas shifted his feet,
stared at the floor.

"I don’t want my father ever to know this! That
I’ve been mixing with serfs, or with the trade of
thaumatur-gike,
or—The
truth of it is, I know how these machines are put together. I think the Lord
Casaubon must know that: we’ve talked. I used to . . . to sneak away and spend a
lot of time in the workshops."

The silence bit into him like acid. Somewhere down
the hall, a richly amused voice that sounded like the Prince of Adocentyn said:
" ‘Trade’!"

Raising his head, and with an odd dignity that
belonged neither to the past nor to Candover, Lucas said: "Master Pharamond, I
can probably get these machines to do whatever you want them to. I was in the
workshops when the Mark Four was being designed. But if you don’t have any other
mechanics here, and there’s only me—"

Voices shattered the quiet hall: Regis protesting,
Shamar protesting, and the bearded Reverend Master’s voice drowning them both
out: "Yes! We’ll do it! We can argue afterwards if it was worthwhile, if there
is an afterwards. Masters, we stand in such a place that
any
help we give
is worthwhile. Regis love, go and get the students organized–Shamar, you, too.
Good!"

He swung round, speaking over the clatter as they
ran down the Gallery: "Candover. Tools down there; if you need anything, ask for
it. Take a look, then I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do."

"Yes . . ."

Lucas, Prince of Candover, unbuckled his sword and
hung it by the belt on the back of the door. He walked across to squat, sit and
finally slide himself down into the concrete sump under the first engine.

He picked up and adjusted a wrench, fingers black
with oil; paused, looking up through the interlocking rods and gears.

"If this happens to help you, it’s more than I have
a right to ask." Prayer not seeming relevant now, he contented himself with
breathing her names: "White Crow. Valentine."

Loud footsteps clattered down the hall, each
student going to set a dial or heave on a lever; shouting, voices edged half
with fear and half with a wild excitement. Returning, Pharamond’s voice vibrated with the same
emotion: "Do
exactly
what I tell you."

Lucas, listening, reached up with the wrench to
adjust the first gear.

Footsteps pounded past. Out among the debris and
rubble of Fourteenth District’s square, the last unwary Rats ran towards
barricaded doors and tunnel-entrances. The undercarriage of the siege-engine
shook deafeningly: liquid fire hissed up into the air.

"Ei,
you
!"

A torn edge of blue and yellow satin whisked past
the Lord Architect Casaubon’s vision. A sharp and very solid finger poked him in
the rump.

"Where’s my bloody rent, you oversized fraud?"

Casaubon, straightening, clipped one ear-lobe
painfully against the underside of the engine as his heel skidded in leaked oil.
He grunted, backing out without turning until he could stand up.

"I
beg
your pardon?"

A woman of perhaps forty folded her arms under her
ample bodice. Yellow coils of hair fell across her ripped satin dress. Oblivious
of the now-deserted New Temple site, the other buildings’ neo-classical doors
barricaded with torn-up marble paving-slabs, ignoring the Guards up on the
siege-engine platform, and the broken windows from which musket-muzzles jutted,
Evelian stared up at the Lord-Architect with glassy determination.

"You heard me! You owe me a month’s back rent!
Where is it?"