Rats and Gargoyles (6 page)

" ‘Honestly’? You forget I’ve dealt with Rat-Lords
before." Falke sat, pointing with economical gestures. "Very well, have your
way. Shanna is a Fellowcraft, so is Jenebret." He indicated an older man.
"Thomas is an Apprentice. Awdrey is the Mistress Royal of the Children of the
Widow. I’m Master of the Hall."

Zar-bettu-zekigal leaned forward on the wooden
table, brushing the black hair from her eyes.

" ‘Children of the Widow’. . . ‘Master of the
Hall’. . ." she murmured happily. She caught Plessiez’s warning stare and
grinned, professional, her own eyes enthusiastic with Memory.

Falke began. "We—"

The doors at the end of the hall slammed open.
Plessiez stood up, his chair scraping back.

Two Rats and three or four men struggled to hold
back a middle-aged man, himself in the forefront of a group.
"Falke!"

Falke peered towards the bright end of the hall
through his cloth bandage.

Charnay glanced to the black Rat for a cue, one
hand reaching for her sword. Plessiez shook his head. "I know the man, I think.
East quarter. East quarter’s Mayor?"

"Certainly I am!"

The man shook himself free of the brown Rats’
restraining grip. He was in his fifties, and stout; raggedly cut yellow hair
framing a moon-face. Confronting Falke, he tugged his greasy breeches up about
his belly, and straightened a verdigris-stained chain of copper links that hung
across his frayed jerkin.

"
Mayor
Tannakin Spatchet," he rumbled, and
pointed a beefy finger at Master Falke. "What do you mean by holding this
meeting without me? At the very least, some of the East quarter Council should
be here!"

"Tan, get out of here." Falke waved a dismissive
hand. "You’ll bring the dregs in with you. A rabble of bureaucrats, shopkeepers,
lawyers and teachers!"

The five or six men who had come in with Tannakin
Spatchet shuffled and looked embarrassed.

"We have every right to be represented! If you’re
talking to the Rat-Lords, that concerns everyone in the quarter."

Falke shook his head. "No. You’re not admitted to
the mysteries here, not even to the outer hall. Thomas, take these people
outside."

"Damn your hall! Just because you won’t admit us .
. ."

Plessiez pushed Charnay in the direction of the
hall door, and turned to Falke. "Pardon me, messire, but it might not be amiss
if other trades were represented here."

A fair-haired woman leaned forward, looking down
the table to the black Rat. "Then we can’t speak freely. Craft mysteries aren’t
to be disclosed to outsiders. You
know
that."

Plessiez shrugged. "Then, I must go. I don’t belong
to any Craft hall."

"We can’t have this scum here!" The Fellowcraft,
Shanna, pointed at the Mayor, who bridled. "You’ll have us inviting
councilors
next."

Falke’s cupped palms slammed down on the table. The
crack!
echoed. In sudden silence, his bandaged head cocked to one side,
he spoke.

"Our quarrels are meat and drink to our masters.
Aren’t they, messire priest?"

"I don’t understand you, Master Falke."

"You do. You think no more of using us than of
saddling a horse to ride. You’d no more think of a man’s name than a dog’s name
in the street if you kick it!"

His hand went up behind his head, pulling the
knotted cloth bandage down. Prematurely white hair slid free. His fingers
immediately clamped across his eyes, features blasted by the sudden light. Zari
glimpsed wide eyes: no injury, no scar; only immensely dilated black pupils.

He said: "Because
my
name is on file, you
can find and use me."

As if prompted, the Fellowcraft Shanna spread her
hands, turning to the other men and women around the table. "The Rat-Lord’s
obliged to tell us nothing more than pleases him. We must tell him all. For all
his alliance with us, he can sell us out any time that it should please him, and
walk away unharmed. Remember that, when we come to trust him!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal’s gaze darted from Falke to
Plessiez. Her tail coiled up, lying across her arm, tense and twitching. Hearing
and all senses acute–her smile widened suddenly.

Charnay marched back from the hall door, whisking
her cloak past the seated Fellows, and leaned over to speak in the black Rat’s
ear. The Katayan heard: "Desaguliers is coming!"

Falke froze.

The black Rat's whiskers quivered. His bright eyes
fixed on Charnay, and the brown Rat stumbled back a pace.

"This was your idea of secrecy, was it, Charnay!"

Before she could do more than mumble, voices were raised, and the group of men at the door were
pushed aside. Five sleek black Rats, with black-plumed headbands and drawn
rapiers, shoved them aside; and a taller black Rat stepped in from the sunny
yard to the white hall.

"Was it necessary," Plessiez murmured silkily, "to
bring the cadets in such strength, Messire Desaguliers?"

The watermills turned slowly, dripping water
catching the sun. Lucas gazed at the water running past the building’s stone
wall (some part of a concealed stream uncovered?), and then up at the
watermills’ tower.

A twelve-foot gold-and-blue dial gleamed in the
sun. The clock’s hands twitched once, to a metallic click inside the tower, and
a bell chimed the quarter. Lucas stood watching as a silver knight, some two
feet tall, slid out on rails from one side of the tower, to meet an approaching
bronze knight on a similar curve. Their swords lifted jerkily; they struck a
clang!
that echoed the length of the cobbled street. A pause, and both began
to retreat.

Lucas rubbed his sweating neck, took his hand away
filthy, and glanced speculatively at the running water. He still carried shirt
and stockings. His bare feet were chafing in his boots, and his filthy chest and
arms were beginning to sting from the sun.

A first-floor window opened further down the
street, and a woman shook out a quilt and laid it on the sill.

"Lady," Lucas called, "is this Clock-mill?"

She leaned one bare forearm on the sill, her other
hand supporting her as she leaned out, so that her elbow jutted up and her thick
yellow hair fell about her shoulders. She wore a blue-and-yellow satin dress
slashed with white, with puffed sleeves and a low full bodice. Lucas moved a few
steps down the street towards her.

"Clock-mill and Carver Street," she called.

Lucas gazed up at the window. The quilt hung down,
half-covering a frieze carved in the black wood: hourglasses, scythes, spades
and skulls. Seen closer, the woman’s face was lined. Lucas judged her forty at
least. Some twinge of memory caught him.

"Is there . . . are you Mistress Evelian?"

"You’re not one of my lodgers?" The woman’s china-
blue eyes narrowed, studying the filthy ragged young man. "Good God. What does
Candia think he’s sending me these days? Come in: don’t
stand
there.
Third door down will take you through info the courtyard. I’ll let you in."

Lucas had only taken a few steps before she stuck
her head out of the window again.

"Have you met the other students yet? Have you seen
anything of that Katayan child, Zaribeth?"

Zar-bettu-zekigal sat with her grubby hands in
front of her on the table. Her dappled tail flicked sawdust on the hall floor. A
smell of cut wood, pitch, and long-boiled tea filled the heavy afternoon air.

Her eyes moved from the white-haired Falke, poised
at rest in his chair, to Tannakin Spatchet (stiffly upright), and the
well-dressed builders and ill-dressed councilors; to Plessiez and Charnay, and
to the black Rat Desaguliers, standing and glaring at each other across the
table.

"I think the King might be interested in this
meeting," Desaguliers challenged. He was a lean black Rat, tall, with the plain
leather harness and silver cuirass of a soldier; the hairs on his thin snout
grizzled.

"The Captain-General is aware, of course, that the
King has full knowledge of—"

Desaguliers bluntly interrupted Plessiez:
"Horse-dung! I’m aware of nothing of the sort."

"How very remiss of you."

"Gentle lords. Please." Falke spoke with a sardonic
gravity. He sat with his hand shading his uncovered eyes against the hall’s
whitewashed brilliance. Tears ran down his cheeks; he rapidly blinked. "You know
how your honor suffers, to be seen quarreling by we underlings."

"Master Falke!" Plessiez snapped.

"I apologize. Most humbly. I hazard my guess, also,
that this terminates our discussion. And that we shall be the ones to suffer for
your plotting." He smoothed the cloth bandage between his fingers, and bent his
head to tie it back over his eyes.

Zari’s gaze darted back to Plessiez and the black
Rat Desaguliers.

"No." Plessiez, sleek in scarlet. "I put this hall
under Guiry’s protection. Let Messire Desaguliers hear our talk. Since I
perceive his spies will have it sooner or later, let it be now. I have nothing
to hide."

Desaguliers snorted. "A miracle, that!"

Welcome heat touched her with the room’s shifting
patches of sun. Zari coughed, and stuck her tail up above head-height, twitching
it. "If you talk through me, messires, it’ll be easier for the record."

Desaguliers peered down the table. "What is
that
?"

Plessiez, seating himself, and draping his scarlet
cloak over the back of the chair, murmured: "Zari, of South Katay. A Kings’
Memory."

"A Kings’ Memory." The taller Rat shook his head in
reluctant admiration, and slumped back into a chair on his side of the table.
The sun glinted off his cuirass. He kicked his rapier-scabbard back with a bare
heel. "Plessiez, you miss few tricks. Let’s hear what you have to say, then."

Plessiez rested one slender clawed finger across
his mouth for a few seconds, leaning back, thin whiskers still. His eyes
narrowed to obsidian slits. The hand fell to caress his pectoral
ankh.

"I don’t think I need to do more than say what I
said when we last met. Master Falke, we, your masters, confine humans to certain
ghetto areas within the city—"

"As you are yourselves confined, by those Divine
ones who are masters of us all." The white-haired man sat back with his arms
along the arms of the chair, cloth- blinded eyes accurately finding Plessiez’s
face. "It may gall you, Messire Plessiez, but there are Human Districts
forbidden even to you. The Decans decree it."

"If I spoke sharply, Master Mason, you must pardon
me. There is much at stake here."

"You apologize to
this
scum?" Desaguliers
guffawed loudly; broke off as Zari glared at him. He glanced around at black Rat
cadets positioned on guard about the hall. She resumed the concentration of
listening, head cocked bird-like to one side.

"We need your help, Falke," the black Rat Plessiez
said, in a tone of plain-dealing, "and you, you say, need ours. Both of us for
the same reason: that one can go where the other cannot."

Falke inclined his head.

"If, therefore, we agree an exchange of mutual
help—"

Tannakin Spatchet rose to his feet. He mopped his
face, reddened by the airless heat. "We don’t enter into blank contracts. As
local Mayor, I
must
know what you intend, messire priest."

"You ‘must’ nothing." Plessiez’s rapier-hilt
knocked against the chair as he shifted position. "However, I am prepared to
discuss a little of the situation."

The black Rat glanced towards Zari. She grinned and
tapped her freckled ear-lobe with one finger.

Plessiez said: "There are a number of locations
within the city, at which, for purposes of our own, we intend to place certain .
. . ‘articles.’ Packages. Three of them are within quarters humans may enter and
we may not. Therefore—"

Desaguliers snorted. "Purposes of your own, yes,
messire, surely!"

"I see no need to discuss it with you."

"It may endanger the King."

"It will not. But if his Majesty is ever to be King
in more than name only, then some of us must act; and you and your cadets will
oblige me by keeping silent while we do!"

"Is this treason, messire!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal reached, sprawling halfway across
the wooden table, and slapped her hand down over the hilt of Charnay’s discarded
sword as the Captain-General grabbed for it. Plessiez slowly relaxed his hands
that gripped the arms of his chair.

Still sprawled across the sun-warmed wood, the
Katayan said: "You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to know what was going
on, Messire Desaguliers, so why don’t you shut up and listen?"

Plessiez threw his head back and laughed.

Zar-bettu-zekigal slid back into her chair. "I don’t have all day. If I miss
this afternoon’s lectures, I’m dead. So could we get on, please?"

The white-haired Mason, Falke, watched the armed Rat-Lords. "Our part of the bargain is this. There
are ancient buildings of this city that we may not enter, because of where they
are situated. There are records and inscriptions in those buildings that we
need. If Messire Plessiez and his people can gain us that, we’ll run his
errands."

"No!" Tannakin Spatchet’s fist hit the table. "Who
knows what retribution we’d bring into our quarter if we did? As Mayor—"

"Tan, be quiet," Falke ordered.

Desaguliers leaned forward. "The peasant’s right. I
want to know what and why, messire priest. Some scheme to open up every district
to us, is it? That would be foolhardy, but of use. But, if you say to me certain
‘articles’ needing to be put in certain places, that sounds like
magia.
Which one might expect from the damned Order of Guiry priests!"

Falke, head sunk to his chest, seemed by the
turning of his chin to direct quick glances at both armed Rat- Lords. The
corners of his mouth moved. "Will you tell him, Messire Plessiez?"