Free Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle Page A

authoritative knocking came on the street-door. The White Crow swore,
threw down her celestial charts and padded barefoot down the narrow stairway to
the street.
    "Yes?"
    A man gazed nervously up and down the cobbled lane.
A dirty gray cloak swathed him from head to heels, the hood pulled far forward
to hide his face.
    "Are you the White Crow?"
    The White Crow leaned one elbow on the door-frame,
and her head on her hand. She looked across at the hooded face (standing on the
last step, she was just as tall as he) and raised an eyebrow.
    "Aren’t you a little warm in that?"
    The air over the cobbles shimmered with heat, now
that the early mist had burned away. The man pushed his hood far enough back for
her to see a fleshy sweat- reddened face.
    "My name is Tannakin Spatchet," he announced.
"Mayor of the District’s East quarter. Lady, I was afraid you wouldn’t want to
be seen receiving such an unrespectable visitor."
    The White Crow blinked.
    "What do you want?"
    "Talismans." He leaned forward, whispering. "Charms
that warn you when the Decans’ acolytes are coming."
    "No such thing. Go away. That’s not possible."
    His fleshy arm halted the door as she slammed it.
"It is possible! A girl saved six people’s lives yesterday with such a
warning. She’s dead now. For the safety of my quarter’s citizens, I want some
talisman or hieroglyph that will give us warning if it happens again!"
    The White Crow gestured with spread palms, pushing
the air down, as if physically to lower the man’s voice. She frowned. Lines at
the corners of her eyes radiated faintly down on to her cheek-bones, visible in
the sunlight.
    He said: " Is it possible?"
    "Mmm . . . Bruno the Nolan incontrovertibly proves
how magia runs in a great chain from the smallest particle, the smallest
stone, up to microbes, bacteria; roses, beasts and men; daemonic and angelic
powers–and to those Thirty-Six Who create all in Their divinity. And how magia -power may be heard and used up and down the Great Chain of Being . . ."
    The White Crow tapped her thumb against her teeth.
    "I use the Celestial world. Yes . . . Master Mayor,
you realize talismans can be traced to the people who made them? People who make
them, here, they don’t live long. Who sent you to me?" she temporized.
    "A friend, an old friend of mine. Mistress Evelian.
She mentioned a Hermetic philosopher lodging with her . . ."
    The White Crow shoved a hand through her massy
hair, and leaned out to look up and down the street. "That woman is perilously
close to becoming a philosopher’s pimp. Oh, come in, come in. Mind the—Never
mind."
    Tannakin Spatchet rubbed his forehead where the low
doorway caught him, and followed her up the dark stairs.
    She led him through a room with an iron stove to
one side and a scarcely less rigid bed to the other, and through into an airy
room smelling of paper and leather bindings. She held out a hand for his cloak.
    "Can you help, lady?"
    The White Crow folded the cloak, studying the bulky
fair-haired man. He seemed in his fifties, too pallid for health. She dropped
the cloak randomly across a stack of black-letter pamphlets.
    "Mayor of the Nineteenth District," she repeated.
    "Of
its East quarter. I regret coming to you in this unceremonious manner. I brought
no clerks or recorders, thinking the whole matter best kept quiet." He cleared
his throat. "Yesterday . . ."
    Tannakin Spatchet touched a finger to the cleared
chair, looked distastefully at the book-dust, and seated himself gingerly. Then
he met the White Crow’s gaze, his fussiness gone.
    "Yesterday I saw Decans’ acolytes," the Mayor said,
"closer than I ever hope to see them again. Five of my people are missing–dead,
I should say. I need someone to advise me."
    A beast yipped. The White Crow’s preoccupied gaze
snapped back into focus. She crossed the room and squatted down, picking up from
a padded box a young fox-cub and reaching for a glass bottle. As she