Rats and Gargoyles (67 page)

He waited. She turned.

"Messire!"

All condemnation, all solemnity burned out of her
by a fierce joy; grinning widely, fists on her hips, greatcoat swinging open as
she moved. The sunset light blazes her shadow long across the terrace, as in
future years their influence will cast a bright shadow on the city.

Gracefully and with dignity, she dipped one knee to
the gravel terrace, taking the black Rat’s hand and
kissing the ring of the Cardinal-General of Guiry.

Plessiez snatched her to her feet, holding both her
hands tight in his; long jaw tight with repressed emotion.

"Oh, see you, messire; and I thought age was
supposed to make people reform!"

The black Rat recovered himself enough to smile
sardonically. The Katayan woman linked her arm in his, walking slowly, giving
him all of her strength that he needed for support.

Black bees throng, swarming in the flowers that
weigh down the city’s gutters, blossom from ships’ masts in the harbor. Their
noise is all heat, all summer, all dusty sunset days.

The Decan of Noon and Midnight, Lord of the
Spagyric Art, turns His face to the setting sun. The ancient smile widens. At
His feet, children play in the Temple’s spouting fountains, shrill cries
undaunted, not yet called in to bed.

Sunset glared from ivory-and-gold statues, from the
rippling water of the ornamental lake, and from the bright flowers of the formal
gardens.

"Damn." The White Crow leaned forward and bit into
the hot vegetable-roll she carried. She spilled grease on to the gravel and her
borrowed shirt and breeches. "Ah, I’m still not used to this. Arms and legs and
things . . ."

"That’s what you get," the Bishop of the Trees
observed, "for being given the bird."

She shied a lump of pastry past Theodoret. It
ricocheted off the back of his marble bench, fragmenting. Ducks from the
ornamental lake squarked and pecked it up.

"But, you see . . ."

Candia, insouciant in buff leather and scarlet
silk, arranged empty wine-bottles along the edge of the lake. His blond hair
flopped forward. As he set the first of a handful of long-stemmed rockets in the
bottles, he completed: ". . . I know why that happened to her."

The red-headed woman’s eyes narrowed.

"Go on."

"Obviously, because it’s always quicker as the crow
flies."

"
Can
dia!"

Unrepentant, the Reverend Master grinned at the
Bishop. Theodoret, on the bench, linked his hands across his stomach.
"Therefore, as you might say, she decided to wing it . . ."

"One of you is a man of the cloth," the woman
observed, "and the other doubtless recovering from the shock of recent events,
otherwise
—"

"At least," Theodoret added, "she got me off the
hook."

The White Crow bit into her vegetable-roll again,
glared at the Bishop, and observed through a mouthful of pastry: "That’s what
you get for being stuck up!"

Candia squatted, removing a tinder-box from his
breeches-pocket. "Who says you can’t play dice with the universe?"

"Aaw!"

Candia chuckled. "Something the matter with her?"

The White Crow licked grease from her fingers. She
stood up. Inside the breast of her shirt, a folded paper rustled, scratching the
skin as memory scratches at peace of mind.

"You two deserve each other," she said. "I might
come back when you’re being sensible."

Candia struck flint. Theodoret inclined his head
graciously at the White Crow’s departing back, and then jumped as the rocket
hissed skyward.

Softly explosive, pale against the still-bright
sky, the first of Reverend Master Candia’s fireworks exploded in a shower of red
sparks.

Gas-lamps gleamed. The sky above glowed almost a
pale mauve, the sun sitting on the horizon, heat still soaking from the stones.
Stars shone in the top of the sky.

The White Crow walked by the canal, and the Arch of
Days, holding the stained paper up to the level sunset light.

Her lips moved as she read, silently testing the
words:

"You are a banquet for a starving man,

All sweet savories in your flesh presented.

Of this food I offer you the plan

Anatomized and elemented:

Freckle-sugar-dusted thighs

Cool and cream-smooth: enterprise

The drinking of these syllabub sighs;

This table laid out in the candle’s flicker

Garnished with sweat’s tang and the body’s liquor.

"Lady, your dish delights the tongue:

Hot crevices and subtle flavors.

I taste your breasts, your skin: undone,

Abandoned, gluttonous, to your savors.

Such intricate conceits demand

A Paradox. You understand:

I sit to feast, and yet I stand.

Save that, for me, for this one time at least,

I would not come unbidden to the feast.

"Such banquets, self-consumed in mutual pleasure,

Display a goddess’ skill in their erection:

Giving, receiving; both in equal measure

Of which I’m expert to detect perfection.

But this feast her own guest invites,

None may enjoy without those rights,

So I go hungry from delights.

Lady, I love you: I leave love behind me:

Or, if you love me, follow me, and find me."

Elish-hakku-zekigal, finding her silk coat knotted
in the red-headed woman’s fist, pointed away from the New Temple in
bewilderment.

"The Lord-Architect that Zar’ keeps talking about?
He left. No, I don’t know where. If you look, Scholar-Soldier, you’ll see the
moon is marked in blood. A signal."

The woman let go of her coat, scowling.

"Damn, the Invisible College can be
any
where!"

"I remember once he spoke to Zar’ of a city he
built as Lord-Architect. Would he return there?"

The White Crow abruptly grinned.

"No . . . Thank you; but I’ve just worked it out.
It doesn’t matter where he’s planning to go from here–I know where he’ll be
before
he leaves."

Clock-mill strikes the hour in Carver Street.
Wheezing metal machinery clangs.

She does not even pause to see how sun, moon and
star-constellations on the dial are different now.

She kicked the door without knocking and entered
his room.

The Lord-Architect Casaubon sat in the iron
clawfooted bath. She saw very little water: his bare knees, elbows and stomach
jammed together to take up almost all the room. He looked up as she came in,
eased himself a little, and brought the soap up from a lap invisible beneath
bubbles.

"Yes?" Innocent blue eyes, under a draggled mop of
copper-gold hair.

"I want to talk to you."

The White Crow pushed the door shut behind her
without looking, and slid the lock-bar across.

"I’m hardly at my best," the Lord-Architect
complained.

Amusement tugged up the comers of her mouth. "It’s
how I remember you."

She padded across the floorboards. Patches of sun
falling in at the window made the wood painfully hot under the bare soles of her
feet. A scent of herbs came from the stacked crates, and the less identifiable
scents of wax and perfume and badly cured parchments.

The Lord-Architect gripped both sides of the bath,
hoisted himself up an inch, and slipped back. Water slopped up, splattered on
the floorboards. The White Crow stepped back, laughing. Casaubon folded his
massive arms across his pink stomach, with an air of injured dignity. The soap
slid down his chest and plopped into the water between his legs.

"Talk to me about
what
?" he demanded,
irritable.

"Poetry!"

She covered her mouth with one fisted hand, looking
at him for a minute over her knuckles.

"Too easy," she said. "You’re the same and I’m the
same–we’re
not,
but somehow we’ve grown in the same way. It’s as if I’d
never left."

The Lord-Architect Casaubon looked up at her
loftily. He flicked water from cushioned fingers and held out a demanding hand.
The White Crow grabbed his hand, heaving to help him from the bath.

Her heels skidded on the floorboards, his hand
wrapped around her wrist and pulled. The White Crow swore, startled, sprawled
face down across his chest, and slid to sit in his lap and six inches of soapy
water. The Lord-Architect let go of her hand, and bent a painful inch forward to
kiss her, bird-delicate, on the lips.

"Shit-damned-cretinous-moronic—!"

She slumped back against his thighs and knees:
padded as pillows. One of her heels skidded for purchase on the boards, but
obtained no balance. She sat back in the hot soapy water.

"You might as well," Casaubon said, "have a bath
while you’re here?"

"
Cas
aubon . . . !"

The White Crow pushed flattened fingers through the
tiny copper curls on his chest. She shook her head. Reaching his cheek, she
patted twice, hard enough to sting. He sat very still, arms hanging out of the
sides of the bath.

"I can’t be here any longer"–he made a sideways
movement of the head that took in the city called the heart of the world–"and
not touch you."

His large hands came up, moving delicately as
watchmaker’s fingers to unbutton her wet shirt.

The White Crow drew his head forward to her
breasts.

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