Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle Read Free Book Online Page A

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