Rats and Gargoyles Read Free

Candia,
with no assurance our messages have even reached them?"
    Candia glanced at the washed flagstones (where the
traces of scrawled graffiti were visible despite the Bishop’s work) and then
back at the man. "So events force us."
    "To go to The Spagyrus."
    "Yes. I think we must." Candia put the knife back
into its sheath at his belt, fumbling it. He drew a breath, looked at his
shaking hands, half-smiled. "Go before me and I’ll join you–if the faculty see
me with a Tree-priest, that’s my lectureship lost."
    He followed the Bishop back down the central aisle,
through green light and stone. Dust drifted. The man picked up a broad-brimmed
hat from a pew. Then he opened the great arched doors to the noon sun, which had
been triple-locked before Candia chose to pass through.
    "You and your students," he said, "make a deal too free with us—"
    "I send them here, Theo. It’s good practice."
    "I was a fool ever to advise you to apprentice
yourself to that place!"
    "So my family say to this day."
    The Bishop snorted. He wiped a lock of white hair back
with the sleeve of his robe, and clapped the hat onto his head. "I had word from
the Night Council."
    "And there was a waste of words and breath!"
    "Oh, truly; but what would you?" The Bishop
shrugged.
    Candia smelt the dank cellar-smell of the
cathedral’s incense, all the fine hairs on his neck hackling. He shook himself,
scratched, and moved to stand where he would not be visible when the door
opened.
    "You take underground ways. I’ll follow above.
We’re late, if we’re to get there by noon."
     
    * * *
     
    Lucas put the address-slip in his pocket and strode
across the yard, the side of his cuffed face burning.
    A last student waited, leaning up against the
flaking iron gate, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a brown greatcoat two
sizes too large, and too heavy for the heat.
    Either a young man or a young woman: the student
had straight black hair falling to the coat’s upturned collar and flopping into
dark eyes. A Katayan, the student’s thin wiry tail curved under the flap of the
brown coat, tufted tip sketching circles in the dust.
    "I can take you to Carver Street." The voice was
light and sharp.
    "And take my purse on the way?" Lucas came up to
the gate.
    The student shifted herself upright with a push of
one shoulder, and the coat fell open to show a bony young woman’s body in a
black dress. Patches of sweat darkened the underarms. Her thin fine-furred tail
was mostly black, but dappled with white. Her feet were bare.
    "I lodge there, too. By Clock-mill. The woman in
charge–um." The young woman kissed the tip of a dirty finger and sketched on the
air. "Beautiful! Forty if she’s a day. Those little wrinkles at the corners of
her eyes?"
    The smell of boiled cabbage and newly laundered
cloth permeated the narrow street; voices through open windows sounded from
midday meals. Lucas fell into step beside the young woman. She had an erratic
loping stride. He judged her seventeen or eighteen; a year or so younger than
his calendar age.
    "That’s Mistress Evelian?"
    "I’ve been there a week and I’m in love." She kept her hands in her pockets as she walked, and threw her head back as she
laughed, short fine hair flopping about her ears.
    "And you’re a student?"
    At that she stopped, swung round, head cocked a
little to one side as she looked him up and down.
    "No, you don’t. I’m not to be collected –not
a specimen. You take your superior amusement and shove it up your anus
sideways!"
    "Watch who you’re speaking to!" Lucas snarled.
    "Now, that’s a question: who am I speaking
to?"
    Lucas shrugged. "You heard the Reverend Master read
the roll. Lucas is the name."
    "Yes, and I heard him afterwards."
    "That’s my business—"
    "This is a short-cut," the student said. She dived
down a narrow passage, between high stone houses. Lucas put one boot in the
kennel’s filth as he followed. He called ahead. Her