Rats and Gargoyles (8 page)

The first room was light, airy, and piled high with
volumes of leather-bound books. Books stood on chairs, shelves, leaned on the
window-sill, slid off a couch. Only the round table, with its patchwork cloth,
was clear.

"Mistress White Crow?"

"Here." The far door opened. A woman in a white
cotton shirt and cut-off brown knee-breeches came in. A white dog followed at
her bare heels.

Her hair was a tumbling mass of dark red-brown,
almost a cinnamon color; and, where she had pinned the sides back from her face,
bright silver streaked her temples. She stood a few inches shorter than Lucas,
wiry, with something languid in her movements. He thought her about thirty years
old.

She nodded to him, and crossed to the window,
leaning on the sill and sniffing at the heat of the morning. Her smile was
melancholy. Lucas caught a flash of white; noticed that she wore a fingerless
cotton glove on her left hand. The palm was dotted with red.

"Don’t touch Lazarus," she warned. "He isn’t a
pet."

Lucas turned his head. The dog was no dog. Large, with a shaggy white coat
that faded into a silver ruff; the muzzle sharp and thinly pointed. It turned
its head, staring at him with blue eyes. Sweat prickled between his
shoulder-blades as the silver-gray timber wolf padded past him and lay down
across the doorway.

The door swung back open, on creaking hinges. The
White Crow raised red-brown eyebrows, and smiled at Lucas. "Disconcerting, isn’t
it? Tell me about yourself."

"Aren’t
you
meant to do that?"

"You want me to read dice or cards," the woman
remarked, lifting several volumes of Paracelsus from an armchair, "and you act
like a damned aristo. You’re studying at the university, but all of that I could
have heard where I heard your name, Lucas. From gossip. I don’t do party tricks.
Sit down."

Lucas stiffened. The cinnamon-haired woman dusted
her hands together, and winced.

She pulled the patchwork cloth from the round
table. Mirror-glass glimmered. Businesslike, she bent down, undid a catch, and
spun the mirror on its spindle until the wooden backing was uppermost. A click
of the catch and the table was firm.

Reaching up to a cupboard, the White Crow remarked,
"Dice, I think," and pulled a brown silk scarf out and floated it down across
the table.

Lucas picked the empty chair up and put it by the
table. Something brushed his hair, buzzed sharply; he shook his head, and a
honey-bee wavered off across the room. The woman put up a finger. The bee clung
there for a moment while she brought it up close to eyes that, Lucas saw, glowed
tawny amber; her lips pursed, and she blew gently. The bee hummed, flying
drunkenly through the open window.

"Why ‘White Crow’?" Lucas sat, lounging back in the
chair and crossing his legs.

She smiled. Under the white cotton shirt, her
breasts were small and firm. Crow’s-feet starred the comers of her eyes, and the
slightest fat was beginning to blur the line of her jaw.

"Because it’s not in the slightest like my own
name—Quiet, Lazarus."

The wolf snapped, snarled a quick high whine, as
two more bees flew in at the door. The White Crow held out a hand absently. As
the bees alighted there, she transferred them to her red-brown hair, where they
crawled sluggishly, buzzing. Lucas’s skin crawled.

"If you have a silver shilling," she said, "it
would speed matters up considerably. Now where did I . . . ? Oh, yes."

She pushed books off the window-sill left-handed,
regardless of where they fell. The sill opened. From the compartment, she took a
handful of dice. She looked about for a moment for somewhere to sit, and then
pulled a tall stool out from a corner.

Lucas sat up. The White Crow threw the dice loosely
onto the brown silk covering the table. There were eight or nine of them: cubes
of bone. And laid into each die- face, in brilliant enamel, was a picture or
image.

"Just handle those for a minute, will you, and then
cast them?"

Mist cleared and clouded, visible through the open
skylight, and the room seemed to swell or darken as the sun shone or diminished.
The woman reached up to a high shelf. Her shirt pulled taut across her breasts
and pulled out of her breeches waistband, so that he saw tanned flesh in the
gap. Lucas shuffled the dice in both hands, leaning forward to the table to
conceal his arousal.

She took down a stole and slung it about her neck.
The white satin shone, embroidered with dozens of tiny black characters.

"Now," she said, and Lucas cast the handful of dice
on the table.

He drew in a sharp breath. Of the nine die-faces,
four were showing a white enameled skull with blue periwinkle eyes, the other
five a tiny knotted cord–the knot with which a shroud is tied.

The White Crow leaned over, squinting, and her dark
red eyebrows went up.

"Damn things are on the blink again. Here, we’ll
try the cards. How old are you?"

"Nineteen." Lucas slid a hand down between himself
and the table, and tugged surreptitiously at the seam of his breeches. His eyes
followed the woman as she padded about the room, turning up books and piles of
paper, obviously searching.

Something about her made him want to drop all
pretense. "Actually," Lucas said, "I’m the heir to the throne of Candover.
Prince Lucas. Eldest son of King Ordono."

She trod on the end of the satin
stole, and swore.

"Incognito?"

"That was my idea." He pushed his fingers through
his thick springy hair. "I thought it would be good. To not be a king’s son. I
suppose I thought people would treat me the same; that it would show through,
naturally, somehow–what I really am."

The White Crow said drily, "Perhaps it does," and
straightened up with a much-thumbed pack of cards. She gave them to Lucas and
slumped down on the stool, puffing.

"But there’s no advantage to it, I can see that."
Lucas shuffled the cards. "I’ll give it up, I think."

"Oh, to be nineteen and romantic!" The woman
smiled, sardonic. She took the cards back and began to lay them out on the brown
silk cover. When she had put twelve in a diamond-pattern, she stopped.

As she bent forward, squinting down at the table,
Lucas saw that she had faint golden freckles on her cheek-bones. Her hair was
coming down on one side, the silver flowing.

The White Crow fumbled in her shirt pocket for a
pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, shoved them firmly on, and announced:
"Now
. . ."

Lucas saw a mess of deuces and knaves.

"What’s a king’s son doing studying at the
University of Crime anyway?"

"My father said it would be the best possible
training for the crown. I already had an aptitude for it. What can you see?"

The spice-haired woman sat back and whipped off her
glasses.

"Nothing. Oh, I can see pointers . . . You should
go to the docks, soon."

She peered at the cards again.

"Or the main station."

She turned up another card: the Page of Scepters.

"Or the airfield." Disgusted, she swept the cards
together. "This is ridiculous! I’ve been doing this more years than you’ve been
alive, and now I’m getting nothing here, nothing at all."

Silence filled the room. The White Crow stood,
moving to the window, replacing dice and cards in the sill-compartment. Mist
frayed, admitting light, and the sun caught the silver in her hair; and Lucas
stood up and walked to the window.

"It reminds me of the White Mountains," he said,
sniffing deeply.

The woman folded her satin stole. She put it down
on the sill, rested her fists on it, and leaned out to look at the heat and
droplets of fog. Sheets and linen draped the trees in the yard. There was a
lingering scent of soap and drains.

"There comes a time," the White Crow said, "when
you can’t smell the air of
any
kind of a day without it bringing some
other past day to mind. When that happens, you’re not old, but you’re no longer
young."

Lucas leaned his arm across the window-frame behind
her back, close enough that the hairs on his bare skin prickled.

"You’re not old."

The timber wolf whined, half-rose, and sank down
again across the doorstep.

"Telling you you’ll meet someone at an airfield, or
a station, it’s kitchen-teacup magic!" She picked up a heavy octavo volume from
a chair. "Birthdate?"

Lucas took his arm away, not certain it had even
been noticed.

"Midwinter Eve, the seven hundred and fiftieth year
from the founding of Candover."

"That corresponds to . . ." She flicked pages,
resting the book on the sill, searching for the relevant page. A whisk of dust
caught in Lucas’s throat. Midway, she glanced up, thin shoulders sagging.

"Why lie? I can’t do this. Yesterday–there was such
a use of power in the city yesterday that it’s deafened and blinded me. I could
no more read for you than fly."

"Evelian told me some people were injured, over
in one of the other quarters."

"Injured and killed. That’s twice the acolytes have
been sent out to feed since the spring."

The White Crow held out a hand into open air, and
another bee alighted, crawling across her unbandaged palm.

"Maybe I can do something for you, all the same."

She nudged at her temple. One of the bees that crawled in her hair flew off. She
abruptly closed her hand over the remaining one, blew a
fit!
into her
fist and opened it in front of Lucas’s nose.

A solid gold bee lay on her palm.

"
Take
it. Think of it as a hair-grip." The
White Crow’s humor was exasperated. "Go to your meeting, whoever it turns out to
be. This may be some protection. You won’t have heard of it, but a while back it
was a recognized sign. If you need to convince anyone that you know a magus,
then show them this."

Lucas picked it up gingerly, between thumb and
forefinger. It was cold, heavy, hard metal.

"But I’d be obliged," the woman added, "if you
didn’t show it to anyone unnecessarily."

He opened his mouth to voice discontent, and the
wolf raised its head and gazed at him with pale blue eyes. It did not look away.
Lucas broke the contact first.

"One more thing," he insisted. "Evelian will be
worried if I don’t ask. The South Katayan student who lodges here. Zari. Can you
find out where she is now?"

Desaguliers paused outside the audience chamber,
removing his plumed headband. A blowfly buzzed round his ears, and he swatted it
irritably away. He pulled his cloak up about his lean shoulders, concealing the
worst patches of charred fur, and took a deep breath.

"Enter!"

The Captain-General hesitated. His wolfish face
was lost for a moment in calculation. Then he shrugged and pushed his way
through the double doors.

Watery sunlight shafted from full-length windows
into the audience chamber, glowing on the blue drapes and gold-starred canopy.
Desaguliers approached the bed.

"Your Majesty," he said.

Eight Rats lay on the great circular bed on the
dais. Three were being fed and groomed by servants. Another lay asleep. One
black Rat had a secretary seated on the carpeted dais steps, reading a report to
him in a low voice, and two Rats (fur so pale it was almost silver) dictated
letters. The eighth Rat beckoned Desaguliers.

The Captain-General climbed the steps to kneel
before the bed. The Rats lay with their bodies pointing outwards, their tails in
the center of the bed’s silks and pillows. Each scaly tail wound in and out of
the others, tangled, tied, fixed in a fleshy knot; and Desaguliers could see (as
a brown Rat page carefully cleaned) where the eight tails had inextricably grown
together.

"A serious matter." The Rats-King brushed crumbs
from his gold-and-white jacket. He reclined on his side, facing Desaguliers: a
bony black Rat in late middle age.

"One of my cadets lost his life. Three others are
so badly injured that it will be months before they return to military service."
Desaguliers paused. "Has your Majesty received word from the Fane this morning?"

"No word–"

The bony Rat picked a sweetmeat from a dish, bit
into it, and the half-sleeping black Rat on his left opened his mouth to murmur:
"–from the Fane at all," while the first Rat chewed.

Desaguliers suppressed a shiver. He straightened
his shoulders, wincing where his leather harness galled burned flesh.

"I discovered what I could, your Majesty. There
were Rats present at this hall meeting, a priest called Plessiez, and one of
your Majesty’s guard, by name Charnay; both of whom were killed. There were also
a number of humans that died in the attack, most but not all of hall rank."

The first Rat bowed his head, while a page brushed
the fur along his jaw and behind his translucent ears. His shining black eyes
met Desaguliers’.

"And you have no idea of the purpose of the
meeting?"

Desaguliers’ gaze did not alter. "None at all, your
Majesty. I continue to investigate. The attack came very shortly after I entered
the Masons’ Hall, and I had no chance to question anyone."

The bony Rat nodded. A fly buzzed thickly past. The
sleeping Rat, eyes still half-shut, said: "You were lucky, messire, to live."

"The hall turned out to have a small cellar
underneath. I and my cadets took shelter there." Desaguliers halted at the black
Rat’s glare, and qualified: "Truthfully, your Majesty, we fell through when the
floor collapsed, and emerged after the Fane’s acolytes had gone. I had the
cellar and the rubble searched for bodies–rather, remains of bodies."

Another brown Rat secretary came to read reports;
and Desaguliers overheard the twin silver Rats say, in perfect unison: "Send in
the ambassador first; then the Second District Aust quarter delegation–"

"–afterwards," the bony black Rat finished,
smiling. "Very well, Desaguliers. We’re pleased that we still have our
Captain-General."