Rats and Gargoyles (53 page)

"
Mo
ther . . ." The yellow-haired girl didn’t
move out of Evelian’s embrace; if anything, tightened her arms around her
mother’s waist. Evelian ruffled the girl’s hair, then buried her face in it.

Footsteps clicked across the empty square, echoing
back from distant buildings. A weighty tread.

"Archemaster, what will happen now?" Tannakin
Spatchet’s voice sounded flatly.

She rubbed her cheek against her daughter’s warm
hair and head, aware of the muscles tense in the child’s back. Hiding her own
fear, she put the girl back to arm’s length and gave her a shake.

"There’s my Shari, eh."

"Aw, leave off."

The girl tugged her silk overall sleeves up to show
her wrists, bracelets jangling. She shrugged Evelian’s hands away.

"I heard something today."

Caught by his tone, Evelian looked at the Mayor and
found Tannakin staring at Casaubon.

"A prophecy, Lord Archemaster. This.
In one
hour, the circle of the living and the dying shall be broken. In one hour, the
Wheel of Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees will fly apart into chaos: stone from
stone, flesh from bone, earth from sun, star from star. There shall not be one
mote of matter left clinging to another, nor light enough to kindle a spark, nor
soul left living in the universe.
Is this the hour?"

Evelian saw the fat man’s blue eyes widen. "Where
did you hear that!"

"They say it has its origins in the Fane, messire."

"Aw, yeah." Sharlevian sniffed, resting her hands
back against the Word of Seshat carved into the abandoned foundation-stone.
"That’s been going round. Been lots of stuff like that."

The luminescent shadow of the foundation-stone
seemed to hold a little warmth. Her hands behind her back, wrapped in the folds
of her skirt, Evelian drew courage enough to look up at blazing darkness.

"I never thought to see that come in my time. The
Night Sun . . . Now will they leave us, the Thirty-Six? And wipe the world away
and start a new one? Is the prophecy true?"

She looked down. A step or two below, his back to
the square, the big man stood at eye-to-eye level with her. Anger tautened his
massive shoulders.

"Are there other master builders here? Answer me,
rot you! Who else would have the plans for the Temple? And workers, construction
workers. I need them. I can’t act without them!"

A cold wind blew. Tangled spars of light-shadow
slanted from the scaffolding. Numbness bit at her feet and fingers. Evelian
stared out at the glittering darkness of the Night Sun, eyes watering.

"You see where we are? You see what’s happening to
us?" She smiled, shook her head, one hand extending out to the deserted square.
"Those that aren’t dead have run, messire. Now I’ve helped you search for Falke,
I’m taking Sharlevian out of here. If it wasn’t for
that
—"

She stabbed a finger at the distant siege-engine.
Away from the stone of Seshat’s warmth, black light clustered, hiding the aurora
of the labyrinth, the trapped daemons.

"We shouldn’t have listened to you anyway. We
should have run when we had the chance!"

Tannakin Spatchet rose to his feet, pulling his
greasy gray doublet straight. He gazed up at the fat man.

"Archemaster, I may say that I admire your skills
in protecting us from the acolytes. We thank you for that. Now I feel it might
be wise if we attempted to take cover, all of us. Ultimately it may make no
difference, but then again . . ."

"Oh, Tan, for gods’ sakes!" Exasperated, Evelian
rubbed the corners of her eyes as she walked down the steps, as if the darkness
might be in her vision and not in the air. Shock numbed her, left her whole
seconds of calm normality before the chill reasserted itself.

"We used to hold a market . . ." She looked out
towards the littered stone flags. Now faint metallic sparkles precipitated out
of the air, falling to shine on porticoes and balconies. "In Nineteenth’s
square, of course. Not here. Fourteenth is a Rat district . . . I don’t suppose
that matters at all now."

She fisted her hand and touched it gently to
Casaubon’s arm, as she passed.

"That’s what Falke wanted. But it’s too late to
think about that now, isn’t it?"

The Lord-Architect sat, both hands palm-down on the
frost-cracked steps, his head tipped back and leaning against the
foundation-stone. Folds of satin coat blotted up moisture from the stone, that
darkened his blue silk breeches. One of his court shoes lacked a heel now, and
both stockings slid down his tremendous calves to his ankles.

"Falke could have given me the designs of the New
Temple."

He spoke so quietly that the silence almost drowned
him.

"Mistress Evelian, deep structures have a power on
the universe, witness what power the labyrinth has to compel the Fane’s
servants. The structure of building has that power, also; and I might have used
it, if he had lived to tell me."

The radiance of the Night Sun began to pulse: to
tick, the time of some great heart or clock beating in it.

"I told the lady White Crow." Tannakin Spatchet
turned, hands fussing with his cuffs. The strands of hair combed across his
balding head fell across his eyes now; and he jabbed an accusatory finger at the
Lord-Architect. "When she made us talismans, I told her that young Falke was a
fool, and engaged in plague
magia
and bone
magia
and the
Thirty-Six know what else! You had a month to act in. Why didn’t you? Why wait
until
now
? Until the Night Sun’s here, and it’s too late?"

"Ask the pox-rotted Bitch who denied us a month to work in—!"

The air vibrated to a striking that might have been
inside the ear-canal or over the distant horizon in another District. Casaubon’s
head came up. Copper hair fell over his forehead, straggling down to his eyes,
and he gazed up through it. A liquidity swam in his eyes. The fine lines of his
features, fat-blurred and buried, lost all good nature and humor.

" ‘When that hour strikes, then act—’ "

His rounded delicate lips quivered with some
emotion: anger or misery.

"Damn Her, the bitch! Treat an Archemaster like
this!"

He reared to his feet, as if he would actually
shake his fist towards the Fane-in-the-Twelfth-District. Some rigidity left his
spine.

"Damned Divine mother of all bitches. Give me
thirty days to prepare and I might have done something, but no! No! What’s it to
Her? Pick people up and put them down where it suits Her, no thought about what
we can or can’t do; Valentine to the Fane, me to this
farce—"

Evelian, in a sharp voice that Sharlevian
automatically winced at, snapped: "
Lord Casaubon
!"

To her surprise the large man’s tantrum halted. He
stared down at her, a faint pink colouring his cheeks.

"Damned Decans think they can play god-games."

"Is that where Crow vanished to? The
Fane
?
With you? You fool! That woman was a friend of mine, as well as a lodger; if you
were stupid enough to drag her into the
Fane,
of all places in earth and
heaven, then—"

"She’s there now, woman! Willingly. Searching out
ways to avert your prophecy, Master Mayor."

The Mayor reached to his throat, fingering a
malachite talisman carved with symbols.

Evelian reached behind and sat down on the steps
without looking, the muscles of her legs turned liquid. Stone jolted her. She
looked at her daughter, who shied pebbles idly across the construction site and
paused to hook up one coil of her hair with a flashy pin.

"Sharlevian . . ."

The Lord-Architect stood as if he felt danger
through the earth beneath his feet. His gaze traveled through the abandoned
chaos of the construction site, staring towards the north-austerly horizon and
the black pyramids of the Fane-in-the-Twelfth-District.

Evelian looked up at him.

"What were you going to do? I think you had better
try it, Messire Lord-Architect."

He shook his head ponderously. "How? Given plans,
given workers . . . I could have at least built out the
ground-plan
of
Salomon’s Temple. There were people enough here, before the pestilence, for me
to do it; but time ran out for us."

Shuddering through bone and flesh and blood,
Evelian felt the striking of an hour. She reached up a hand as her daughter
picked a way back across the broken steps. The girl took it, staring at the fat
man.

"See you, Master Falke isn’t the only builder. I’m
an Entered Apprentice."

"Ah, love . . ."

Sharlevian pulled free of her hand, reaching up to
twist her fair hair into a worker’s knot, pinning it securely, ear-rings
jingling. Plaster-dust stained the knees of her pink silk overalls. She smiled,
sly; excluding everything that lay outside her expression of pleasure at her own
intelligence.

"Why don’t we build the Temple anyway?"

The Lord-Architect Casaubon looked at her in
silenced disbelief.

"No,"
the girl said. "A
model.
There’s
enough stuff here. It’s all pattern, like you said. Oh gods, the lectures I’ve
had in Masons’ Hall about
structures.
"

She sighed self-consciously. Evelian, gathering her
blue-and-yellow skirts and getting to her feet, said "Do you want a slap,
missy?" and then laughed at incongruous reflexes. "Love, tell us."

Abashed, the fair-haired girl mumbled: "Doesn’t
matter what size it is, then, does it? Doesn’t have to be full size. Still got
structure, hasn’t it?"

Casaubon’s plump hands seized her by the shoulders.
"A model!"

Evelian walked past his padded torso, taking her
daughter’s arm. A long exasperation faded. She gripped both of Sharlevian’s
nail-bitten hands.

"Shall we do this? Or shall we try to take
shelter?"

"Aw, Mother,
c’mon.
Might as well. Why not?"

"Right. Tan and I will help. Let’s do it. Collect
bricks–wood–nails–what you can.
Move
!"

She strode up the steps. Behind her Casaubon
protested, "There’s no plans! No blueprints. I don’t know what rituals he
planned to use!"

"We’ll build it how
we’d
want it to be. Who
would it be for, after all?"

The fat man reached into an inside pocket and
extracted a rule, a plumb-line and a notepad; the last of which he began to
figure on rapidly.

Evelian climbed the steps to the site rapidly, and
stopped with her hand on her stomach. Black sparkles fringed her vision. The
smell of cold flared her nostrils; her breath fogged the air. She bent to seize
the handles of an abandoned barrow.

Enthusiasm or desperation beat in her head with her
pulse. Conscious of the Mayor at her side, unearthing bricks, tiles, bags of
plaster, and stone fragments, she abruptly straightened up and began to laugh.

"Evelian." Tannakin Spatchet stopped, hands deep in
a toolbox, peering up at her over his much-darned doublet-shoulder.

It wheezed out of her, tears cold in the comers of
her eyes. "Tan, didn’t you always want to be a hero? I did, when I was Shari’s
age. This
isn’t
what I had in mind."

He straightened his back and threw a handful of
chisels and knives into the barrow. A wind from somewhere began to tug at his
doublet and patched breeches, and blow strands of thinning hair across his eyes.

"Evvie, I’ve never known you satisfied with
anything."

Her shoes lodged in the mud. She bent to free them,
and to heave the barrow back towards the edge of the site.

"Look."

Tannakin lurched through the soft earth and grabbed
the barrow’s other handle. As he pulled, he looked, and she saw him frown.

All else darkening, now, as if storms approached;
some faint light yet remained. The abandoned foundation-stone of the New Temple
glowed with a flickering warmth like firelight. It beat against her skin as they
plodded back, the barrow jolting over the rubble. In its light, the immensely
fat man sat with legs sprawled wide apart, reading from his notepad, directing
Sharlevian and sketching with chalk on the paving-stones in front of the carved
Word of Seshat.

"Let’s have an open courtyard, too!" Sharlevian
sprawled on her stomach, elbows outspread, careless of her silk overall. She
reached over and planted two bricks, and a third, to form a plain arch.

"Main gates," she announced. "Build it in a
rectangle or square, you can have a gate each side, people can walk in."

The Lord-Architect reached across with the hand
that enfolded his pencil and moved the bricks closer together, making the arch
smaller. "No coaches."

"Oh, sure. Just so people can walk and the kids can
play out of the way."

Evelian heaved the barrow to a halt and left the
Mayor to sort around in its contents. She gathered her skirts and knelt down on
the broken marble.

"What are you doing?"

The Lord-Architect Casaubon measured a lath with
his rule, snapped it expertly to length, and fitted it along the chalk lines of
the model Temple.

"The proportions of great buildings should rightly
be made the same as the proportions of the body, as Vitruvius writes."

He knelt up, knees wide apart, silk straining to
encase his huge thighs and calves. The top two buttons of his breeches had come
undone, she saw, unequal to holding in his belly. His crumpled fleshy face
wrinkled up with innocent concentration.

"Symmetry’s the relations of the proportions of the
part to the whole. As, the face–always the same distance from the bottom of the
chin to the underside of the nose, as from nose to eyebrows, and eyebrows to
hairline."

He reached across, one fat finger tapping
Sharlevian’s chin, nose and forehead. The fifteen-year-old giggled, vaguely
flattered; and Evelian’s heart suddenly lurched for the normality of Masons’
Halls and building instruction.