Free Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle

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."
    "Luck," Desaguliers said, relaxing, and with a
genuine regret in his tone. "We were lucky to come out of that. No one else who
was caught in the building survived."
     

    No through-draught moved in the room under the
rafters. A fly skewed right-angles across the air, sounding distant in the heat,
although it was only a few feet above his head. Lucas bent over the paper,
imprinting neat cuneiform characters with an ink-stylus.
    I like the University well enough, sister; you’d
like it, too. Tell our father that I will stay here for the three years. It will
please him.
    Candover seems very far away now.
    He put the stylus down on the table. His jacket
already lay over the back of his chair; now he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled
it out of his belt. Scratching in the dark curls of his chest, he wrote:
    I consulted a philosopher (which is what they call
a seer here) earlier this morning, but she could tell me nothing. She says she
will draw a natal chart for one of the other students, but it will take her a
few hours. I’ve said I’ll go back at noon.
    Footsteps crossed the courtyard below. Lucas leaped
from his chair and leaned over the window-sill.
    Mistress Evelian waved a greeting, gestured that
she would speak but couldn’t: mouth full of clothes-pegs. Last remnants of mist
blurred the tiled roofs. A smell of boiled cabbage drifted in. On the street
side of the room, the noise of a street-player’s lazy horn wound up into the
late-morning air.
    Hugging himself, sweaty, Lucas crossed back to the
table.
    Gerima, perhaps I won’t come back to Candover at
all. I might not go to the university. I might just stay here in the city.
    The skylight screeched, dropping rust-flakes into
his eyes as he wedged it further open. The air up on the slanting roof hit him
like warm water, and he drew his head back inside. A bird cried.
    The seer is a woman who calls herself the White
Crow. I said I would call back for the birthstar chart myself, although the
person it concerns is no friend of mine. The White Crow —
    The slow horn milked heat from the day, drowsing
all the morning’s actions away into dreams.
    He scratched at the hair of his chest, fingers
scrabbling down to the thin line of back-growing hair on his belly. Sweat
slicked his fingers. The narrow room (only bed, table and cast-iron basin in it)
stifled him. Dizzy, dazed, drunk on nothing at all, Lucas threw himself down on
his back on the bed and stared up through the open window at the sky.
    Imaging in his mind how her hair, that strange dark
red, is streaked with a pure silver and white, flowing from her temples. How her
eyes, when they smile, seem physically to radiate warmth: an impossibility of
fiction, but striking home now to some raw new center inside him.
    Gerima, so much of her life has gone past and I
don’t know what it is. I would like to go back and make it turn out right for
her. If she laughs at me, I’ll kill myself.
    The slow heat stroked his body as he stripped,
lying back on the white linen. Imaging in his mind how sweat darkens her shirt
under the arms, and in half-moons under each breast, and the contrast between
her so-fine-textured skin and her rough cloth breeches. His fingers pushed
through the curly hair of his genitals, cupped his balls for a moment; and then
slid up to squeeze in slow strokes. His breathing quickened.
    A faint breeze rose above the window-sill and blew
the unfinished letter on to the floor.
     

    On the far side of the courtyard Clock-mill struck
eleven. An