"Stross, Charles - Examination Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Sebastian shuddered. "It was an interrogation, nothing more. The palace had a surfeit of conspirators to dispose of and considered the scaffold too inflamatory in the current climate of opinion. Lord Kerein was entrusted with the teaching of the highest and darkest arts, and the summoning of the three-in-one was apparently mandated to the University by your own – by the Invigilators. For purposes of forewarning, should there be another unspeakable invasion plotted in the abyss, your order has instructed us to pursue a series of summonings and interrogation of daemonic forces. Not to control the daemons, you understand – nothing so questionable – just to summon and interrogate. We receive a bursary, and in return if we learn anything of the Dark we pass it on."
Anya removed her palm from the jug and Sebastian filled his tankard. After a moment he remembered to glance up at her; she nodded slighty and he emptied what was left of the wine into her cup.
"Now tell me," the Invigilator continued, "what is your own status in these events? As sole incumbent student of the diabolic arts, not to mention apprentice to the dean, it seems spurious to suggest that suspicion logically falls upon your neck..."
"Never." Sebastian took a deep draught of dutch courage and collected his scattered wits. "Oh, the inquisition questioned me, but they decided that my heart was pure and my strength was that of ten righteous men, or somesuch nonsense."
"Which would tend to suggest that the righteous are going to get their heads kicked in," Anya observed drily. "Pray continue. What cause would you attribute to the inquisitor's death?"
"I don't know," Sebastian mumbled. "His skin turned into many little cancers of the brain. They think he died of the pain; all those nervous sinews... I didn't do it. Why should I look into their heads? It's none of my business; I'm to be sent down on the morrow for refusing my exam, isn't that enough for you?" He shook his head, refraining from making any mention of his own worst problem. "All I want to do is drown my frights and forget my troubles and you come and drag me up from the gutter and pour acid truth in my ears! Where do your demands end?"
"Not here," she snapped, momentarily letting her anger show. Sebastian recoiled from her. "You forget that I have a task to accomplish, and it is not to be countenanced that a lack-liver apprentice shall refuse the holy duty of Invigilation!" She moderated her tone before the other customers had time to more than turn their heads. "Remember the specifics of the academic charter you studied under. Your tuition was given to you without fee because the treasury of the Ministry of Lost Souls, the Invigilation, paid for the upkeep of the University. The term of reference was that you should in return render to the Invigilation such services as could reasonably be required of you while you study within the said institution. Do you now repudiate that vow, scholar? You, who as the sole scholar of the daemonic arts are undoubtedly aware of the cost of such a broken oath?"
Sebastian stared at her, and felt the noose tighten around his throat. "But I'm to be sent down."
"Yes, but not yet. Need I remind you of the termination codicil to the charter?"
He bowed his head. "You are signing my death warrant," he whispered. The fingers of his left hand traced an esoteric shape in the air above the table: a thin smoke drifted from his fingernail beds as he began to shiver in the grip of a premature hang-over.
"At least you can do one thing right," Anya said, begrudging even a suggestion of approval. "But a heavy drinker like you must have frequent recourse to that skill, no doubt."
Sobering up, Sebastian gave a climactic shudder and gasped; his teeth rattled in his jaws and his vision popped into sharp focus, then blurred again. The iron band around his forehead relaxed and the taste of carrion slowly departed from his mouth. "It only speeds things up," he said hoarsely. "By the seven-fingered sisters of Hyss, I feel worse now than I did a minute ago." He buried his face in his hands and coughed repeatedly. "This is a very bad idea," he mumbled.
Anya banged her tankard on the table. "By the grace of Eris, will you stop protesting your cowardice and show the good manners not to disgrace your commission so lightly in public? You're pathetic! Look at you. You aspire to practice the Art as a master but you can't even hold your grape juice! You disgust me!"
Sebastian sat up and stared at her. His eyes were bloodshot but sober. "Shut up and let me think, or I'll show you just what I think of your commission," he said bitterly.
A moment later: "It's not my fault, you see. Vargas chose me because no student was willing to be his apprentice after he flogged and expelled his last apprentice, Zevon, for laxity and moral corruption – accusations both baseless and without proof, I'll warrant you. Zevon was among the most brilliant and fascinating – well. Vargas never accepts scholars who threaten his position, you know; he uses the system to maintain a steady supply of high-born body servants. Or worse." His grimace softened in to a sly smile. "I showed him." The smile faded. "Zevon would have shown him, the bastard whoreson villein ..."
Anya stood up. "Very well then," she said, her expression neutral. "I should like to meet this master of yours before the night is out, Sieur de l'Amoque. Perhaps –" her lips twitched – "you'll learn something about how to deal with your superiors in the process. But only if you keep your eyes open. Now forward, bravo, and show the way, for I have a mission – and if my intelligence is correct there is only this night left in which to accomplish it!"

The chambers of Vargas di Escobar were located in the west wing of the House of Ambrose Nulcompare, high on the north slope of College Hill. The House presented a forbidding face to the city. Soot-stained by time, its arched casements stared gloomily out from beneath eaves supported by stone gargoyles. Rumour had it that they were the family of the original architect who, upon completing his work, had demanded an extra twenty gold groats from the Chancellor of the day. Nobody who dwelled in the building could see any point in debunking this myth, for its probity could not in any way moderate the grim reputation the building had earned since its construction. The mob gave it a wide berth, not so much from sympathy as from fear; even when lord lynch was riding through the city the fires of anarchy generally left the University untouched.
It was to this grim and ill-hallowed heap that Sebastian escorted the Invigilator Anya of Tigre. The rain had diminished to a light drizzle that pattered upon the cobble-stones like the memory of some mythical deluge: it chilled to the bone, and by the time they reached the blackened oak doors Sebastian was damp through. Anya, in contrast, was dry. "How is it that the rain doesn't touch you, but seems attracted to me like filings before a lodestone?" he grumbled to her.
She grinned. "I walk between the drops. It is a skill you would do well to master, scholar."
"Hah. I should be so fortunate." He spat in the gutter and glanced back down the hill. Lights still glimmered in every upper window, and faint music drifted from beneath a pavilion on Fiddler's Green. "If I know my master he will be at his studies even now," he said, changing the subject to one with which he was more comfortable. "If it pleases you to disturb him then I shall not stand in your way."
"It so pleases me," said Anya. She adjusted her cloak, settled her sword belt around her waist, and motioned him forward. "Pray lead the way, my lord."
Sebastian could tell when he was being mocked. He mumbled the word of Unbinding and shoved the door open rudely: the hinges groaned like a seditionist upon the rack.
He swept up the grand staircase without heed to his escort, who was paying unnecessary attention to the statuary and decorative finish of the magesterial mansion. Anya followed at her own pace, pausing to stare at her reflection in a beaten brass mirror set in a gallows-wood frame. Dark oil paintings of former Deans and Chancellors stared disapprovingly down as she paused on her way upstairs. Candid appreciation, they seemed to suggest, was not the response that this hallway was intended to induce in visitors.
At the uppermost landing Sebastian marched straight along the passage and threw open a wide pair of doors at the end. Another staircase lay beyond them, a twisted corkscrew of black iron that resembled a dissection of the spine of a felon broken upon the wheel. It tolled like a bell as Sebastian's boots thumped from step to step. She followed him lightly, her gait as quiet as that of any cat. Finally he reached the top of the spiral and paused. "We must knock first," he hissed. "My master has a short way with intruders."
"I don't think so," Anya said lightly. Brusquely shouldering him aside she rapped a brief tattoo on the mahogany panel, then turned the brass handle and pushed on through.
"Well, you took your time," said Vargas, looking up from his lectern. "What kept you?" Sebastian, heart in mouth, followed her into the room. "Oh, I see," his master continued, replacing the brass nut-crackers he had been using in the bowl on his desk. "Well then. What can I do for you, my lady? Was your journey easy?"
"Sufficiently so." Anya strode over to the window and perched upon the trunk in the casement. Sebastian closed the door silently; meanwhile, Vargas shuffled across to the tall book-case beneath the stuffed crocodile and withdrew a crystal decanter from the shelf reserved for spirits. "I discovered your apprentice in a tavern, by the way. He was busy consigning his academic career to oblivion in the hope that a lifetime's inherited mastery over a dung-heap infested with serfs was in some way superior to seeking the world's salvation."
"Hah. I can't say I expected any better of him."
The student felt his ears burn as he stood by the door, watching while Vargas poured two crystal goblets full of liquid fire and offered one to the Invigilator.
"There has been a degree of truancy this past month that has startled even the Chancellor. (Complacant fat bastard that he is.) I suppose you could put the blame firmly at the feet of Kerein or Frankenburg for dropping off at the altar and on the throne respectively, save that they did so the very same week and under surpassingly suspicious circumstances. Not to mention the other deaths. And then there's the matter of the gargoyle that didn't fly."
"It had wings, didn't it?" said Anya.
"That, my lady, is exactly the point." Vargas raised his glass to his nose and sniffed, delicately, then unexpectedly threw back the entire contents in a single gulp. After much smacking of lips and a small belch, he continued. "Two students in a single day is a bit much, you will agree. And it was only a parenthetical summoning, at that, the interrogation of a lost shade from the depths of the eleventh segmentation of the abyss – if, that is, you adhere to the nomenclature and conventions proposed by the upstart di Michaelis. The gargoyle was a different matter. It took wing, it's true, after gathering moss for a matter of some centuries, and that suggests a degree of enthusiasm for flight on its part. Nevertheless, animations of stone are not easily endowed with the lightness of feathers, and a young oneiromancer happened to be practicing her cardinal divinations beneath it at the time. If only it had learned to flap its wings on the way down ..." he shook his head morosely then blew his nose on the stained black sleeve of his gown.
"Was anything discovered around the joist from which the gargoyle leapt?" asked Anya.
Vargas sniffed. "Pigeon droppings," he said, his voice muffled by a double layer of damp velvet. "Perhaps the birds were of subversive intent, but I do believe our inquisitors might have a difficult time inducing them to confess."
"You really ought to adopt the pocket-kerchief," Anya suggested; "you've been snuffling like that ever since I met you, and I assure you that it is not considered the most elegant of habits in polite society." She twisted her scabbard round across her thighs and swung her legs back and forth. "What steps you have taken to identify the miscreant, and what success have they met with to this date?"
"I've taken every step, my lady – and to no avail. The witnesses to the death of Kerein – "here Vargas' eyes swept across to Sebastian, and focussed unblinkingly upon him for a while – "were not able to spin a right consistent tale. Frankenburg died unwatched and alone. And there's the matter of the Royal charter, which has absorbed so much of our energies of late –"
"The charter. You are aware that the interventions of my agency take precedence? Even over Royal fiat?" Her expression was one of mild curiosity, as if she failed to comprehend the dangers of Vargas notorious ill-temper.
Sebastian steeled himself for an explosion, but it failed to materialise; instead, Vargas bowed his head in meek acknowledgement. "Were it not for your agency, there would be no empire to trouble us with it's decrees," he said gravely. "We deeply appreciate the vital nature of your mission to seek out and destroy the taint of Darkness wherever it lingers. Nevertheless, you must understand that with two members of the hidden faculty elsewhere, pursuing the whims of a princess in search of a dragon –" he snorted. "You must excuse me, though, for there is one matter in which I can and must make further enquiries. Now!" He turned to glare furiously at Sebastian. "You dissolute rascal! What have you got to say for yourself? Five years of study and then you refuse your obligation and spit on your tutor's honour! Explain yourself, pray, to this humble servant. What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Sebastian had been steeling himself for this moment ever since Anya forced him to attain sobriety; even so, he was unable to manage even the appearance of contrition. "I'm staying alive, old man. The curse that has descended upon this academy won't be cast out by the immolation of one more drudge who, born the second son to a lord, is forced to earn his bread as a grinder of inks and a cleaner of floors! You've treated me like shit these past four years, and I'm not about to stake my life on your good nature. Send me down, see if I care! My devotion to my art is such that no gown can make me more than I already am; why should I suffer for your profit? That's all there is to it! As you have sown, so you are about to harvest in bloody spades. It looks to me very much as if there's a Dark Pretender aspiring to immanence, and I'm not about to involve myself in that!"
A deathly silence descended within the room. Anya looked at Sebastian and shook her head: something approaching admiration could be seen in her expression, but there was also a judgement there – and it was not favourable. Vargas, for his part, also stared at Sebastian, but there was something in his gaze that wholly unnerved the apprentice.
"I think it would profit you mightily to think longer on that issue, and decide whether you mean it before I decide whether to take it seriously," Vargas finally said. "I smell insubordination in your anger: do you truly think I have mistreated you like that? After all this time?"
Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. It's all over now, that's for sure. "I never asked to be adopted as your apprentice," he snapped, careless of his discretion. "You have a certain reputation among the students, my lord. After you whipped my predecessor Zevon around the quad with lashes of frozen storm, after you had the scholars Quayle and Azmar expelled from the conclave for moral corruption, and after you announced that true enlightenment could only come through diligent study and self-mortification, and in view of your marked prejudice towards those less skilled than yourself ..." he shrugged again. "Once, I wanted to study here," he concluded.
"Then you shall study here no more," Vargas said casually. He reached into the bowl on his desk and pulled out a walnut and the brass calipers he had been using when Sebastian and Anya arrived: the kernel shattered loudly in the silence. There was a glint of lofty amusement in his eye as he contemplated the broken shell lying in the palm of his hand. "I presume that this has been troubling you for some time. In that case, and given your issuance of due cause, by casting slanders against your lawful master, I hereby notify you that I can no longer accept your tutelage. However, you have a contract with the University which remains undischarged: and as dean of the School of Diabolism I feel it wise to see that all scholars are appropriately supervised by one of suitable skill and puissance. So! My lady, will you ..?"
Anya stood up. "He's a cowardly oaf. Even if he does know what's going on. Why would I want him? What's in it for me?" Sebastian stared at her, confused. Something didn't ring true.
"You would receive my gratitude, and that is a commodity of which it has been said that I have far too little." Vargas grinned malevolently. "You have a new master, Sebastian de l'Amoque. I hereby apprentice you, as is my duty and privilege – to Anya of Tigre, mendicant practitioner of the final arts and agent of the Invigilation – on pain of violation of your contract! At least until the close of your tenure, at dawn tomorrow. Dare you refuse?"
Sebastian glanced from face to face. "You've got me," he said, flatly. In a voice of desperation, he added: "but I'm still not going to enact the examination of high jeopardy!"
"You don't have to," said Anya, walking across to him. She rested a hand on his shoulder and steered him inexorably towards the book-case. "If you survive 'til dawn I think I will vouch for your graduation regardless. In the meantime – how good are you at tracking down ex-students?"
"What? Why?" He demanded. "What ex-students?"
Anya paused and looked at Vargas. "Is he really this stupid?" she asked. Vargas shook his head.