‘The Prime suspects. But we’ve never spoken of it outright.’ A sudden and belated hiccup of fear, and Calla added, ‘No one must ever know of this, do you understand? Not even your aunt.’
‘My aunt has, I’m sure, come to the same conclusion as I have, though you need not worry she’ll say anything to anyone. And I understand better than you do, I think. Our minds are as some great edifice, a mansion or a castle. A room might be rearranged, a wing perhaps renovated, some minor alteration to the exterior or the facade. But the bedrock core of it remains the same, yes? The pillars and the foundations. Were they ever to shake loose, the entire thing would crumble. You would need – it would be a requirement – to do anything you had to to defend against that possibility. A man will believe whatever lies he must.’
‘Is not honesty preferable to falsehood?’
‘We are a febrile species, and prefer our truth diluted.’
‘The Eternal are rather more resilient.’
‘Are they?’ Leon asked quietly. ‘I am not so certain this is the case.’
There was a tapping on the window then, and Calla looked down to discover a pretty girl, dressed garishly, pressing her face against the glass, and behind her a youth strumming on a lute. Calla swung the pane open and called for a song. The girl’s voice was thin and wavering, but she was enjoying herself immensely, and the boy who accompanied her was not altogether incompetent. The song itself was a bit of doggerel about the war to come, and the ease with which the Aelerians would be defeated, and how afterward everyone would be happy as they always were, and the vocalist leaned forward and stroked her hand against the top of Leon’s boot as she sang the more vulgar verses. At the end of it Calla gave them three drahms, and then, laughing, three more. Leon feigned offence at first, crossed his arms and turned his head away, but after a moment he laughed and dropped a solidus into the hands of the girl, who winked and smiled and pranced onward.
The prelude to the Nightjar’s hour chimed happy and loud across the Rung, and Calla called for their bill. They were to meet the Prime downslope a ways, at one of the innumerable small harbours that had been built along the canals, in some distant age when the Eternal had been more likely to descend from the First. From there they were to escort him to a nearby public garden, a far cry from the splendours of the Red Keep but it seemed enough for the people of the Second, who would be attending the festivities in great numbers, greater even than normal, as the news of the Prime’s participation had managed to increase enthusiasm for what was already one of the most beloved evenings of the year.
The flagon of wine was near empty and she delivered the killing blow before standing and setting off on feet that were, if not wobbly, perhaps not entirely sure. Leon rose as well, and seeing her unsteadiness or, perhaps, for some other reason, offered his arm. They walked with more joy than hurry, and more hurry than grace, travelling downslope on a bed of fallen flower petals, a bright white carpet for their steps. They passed children in garish face-paint, devouring sticky-sweet buns and brightly frosted butter cakes. They passed a thick-shouldered man in a travelling coat too heavy for the season. They passed a circle of dancers, citizens of all ages swaying back and forth in happy if arrhythmic fashion, a fiddler and a girl with a drum in the centre trying their able best to keep everyone on the beat. The fresh scent of the blossoms mingled with Leon’s own musk and Calla found herself unsure which she preferred. Just off the path a pair of lovers huddled beneath a large blanket, and what exactly they were engaged in none took the time to see. Two men, tall and unsmiling, in something like porter’s clothes, skirted past a laughing band of youths trying without success to scale one of the blossoming trees. The surface of the canal was covered with a merry line of white flowers, the current like pale cream. A short, squat, very dark young man sat on the edge of the quay, arms and shoulders naked to the night. In the distance Calla could make out the Lord’s pleasure craft gliding silently through the evening, silvery sails reflecting the moonlight, the Aubade himself standing on the prow, Roostborn watching from the banks with wonder.
‘He has no brand,’ Calla said suddenly, as much a surprise to her as it was to Leon, and to the seated boy himself, who looked up with sudden unmasked hatred. ‘He has no brand!’ Calla shouted again, the full meaning and weight of that only now becoming clear to her then, a sudden spurt of fear accompanying the repetition.
The boy was up from where he sat faster than she could have thought, and he had something in his hand that Calla could not make out clearly but feared all the same. He was fast but Leon was faster, intercepted him before he could reach Calla, the two grappling, then Leon twisting and the boy going sideways into the canal. Calla was still screaming and then the surrounding mass of people was screaming likewise, the shift from jubilation to terror surprisingly swift; at the first sight of steel the dancers and the climbing youths, the lovers holding hands, the children eating sweets, broke and ran. Left to struggle against this current of flesh were the broad-shouldered man beneath the too-heavy travelling cloak, and the two false porters who had not been smiling, and the boy who was pulling himself out of the water and not smiling either.
‘Stupid fucking slave-bitch,’ he said, eyes so thick with loathing that they might well have been open wounds. ‘Ruined the whole damn thing.’
Leon stepped in front of her, a noble if pointless effort because there was nowhere to run, no escape from the long knives that shone bright in the moonlight. A twist of steel, a jet of red blood on the white blossoms, Leon screaming and collapsing, Calla screaming also but staying upright, wanting to offer him comfort but feeling some strange injunction against dying on her knees, a pitiful sort of rebellion but it seemed better than nothing. And perhaps this was the reason also that she ceased to scream, though the boy with furious eyes and a bloody knife drew closer, Calla a poor substitute for their target but, it seemed, she would do.
And then suddenly he was behind them, looming, silent. He must have leaped from the ship and come sprinting along the banks of the canal, too far a distance to have possibly crossed in so short a time surely but what was impossible for a god? There was an instant, distinct in Calla’s memory forever after, the dawning realisation of his presence on the part of her assailants, an interruption of the bloody savagery that had prefaced it, and the bloodier savagery to come. That moment was vivid, but not the tumult that followed, the dim light and the frantic motion and the terror that had surrounded Calla’s conscious mind all conspiring to render it opaque. Four of them and well-practised in violence, but they were as nothing before the Aubade, who edged out of the way of their blades with seeming unconcern, without a sound of exclamation, and then a motion that was too swift for Calla to follow and one of the men was dead, and then a second motion that was too swift for Calla to follow and so was another. This left the third, the largest, squaring up against him, and then the Aubade made a motion as if clapping his hands, though the sound was muffled, and then what was left of the man was on the ground and Calla did not dare to look at him directly, nor at the Aubade himself, who was covered in something slick and pink and foul.
And then there was just the one who had injured Leon and perhaps killed him, backing away, the red on his knife slick in the moonlight, and his eyes brighter still. ‘The blood of the martyrs will fuel the fire to come,’ he said, and his smile was, to Calla’s eyes at least, an honest one.
The Prime did not expect it either, Calla did not think, or he would have tried to stop the boy. He committed to death neatly and without wavering, the blade outstretched and then through his throat and jutting out of the back of his neck, Calla turning away too late.
Leon had stopped screaming. His face was very pale, and his eyes were unfocused.
The Aubade, at least, had no moment of confusion, but moved swiftly and with purpose as ever. ‘Are you safe?’ he asked, and then louder and a second time, ‘Are you safe?’
‘Yes,’ she managed finally.
‘I’ll send help,’
the Aubade said. ‘In the meantime, it would be a misfortune were the boy to die within the Roost.’
And before she could answer he had lifted Leon’s weight as easily and carefully as a mother would a newborn, turned and sprinted upslope, disappearing into the darkness, leaving Calla behind with the bodies of the men who had tried to kill her, growing raw in the moonlight, blossoms falling softly on carrion.
29
The door swung open, hardwood slapping against the wall, hinges squeaking in futile protest. The man behind it was wide and dark and scowling, and no one paid him attention, entranced as they were by the elderly woman walking swiftly in his train, blue-eyed and well-dressed and furious as a sudden storm. Her cane rapped loud against the floorboards, an arrhythmic gait, her thick-shouldered bodyguard struggling to keep up with his own awkward crablike sidle.
The bar was on a distant corner of the Third, where the riches and luxury of the upper Rungs gave way to the dilapidation and despair of the lower. Under normal circumstances the arrival of some upslope wench in these rough and rude environs would have been enough to elicit commentary of the insulting or lewd variety. But the countertop wits and the half-soused porters took one look at Jahan and found themselves looking in other directions. The bartender was a man ill-suited to his profession, taciturn and unpleasant. His father had owned the tavern, and his father before him, and on and on down into the distant roots of the past, and if he had ever had any option other than becoming a bartender he had not been aware of it. He disliked casual conversation and found the smell of ale nauseating, and between the two he had lost enough money to require taking on a five-eagle loan, which without collateral was little different from taking on a partner. ‘Can I help you, Lady?’ the publican asked.
‘And what sort of help do you suppose I need?’ Eudokia snapped. ‘What would possibly compel a person such as myself out of her bed and into a palanquin and to descend into the depths of this absurd, endless, monstrosity of a city, and then into a random and unhandsome establishment, and then up to a fat man with what appears to be chicken grease on his lapel? Do I want some of the beer you’ve watered? A turn with whatever hand-me-down whore works the evening shift? I’m here to see the man in the back, you waste of blood and bone.’
‘He’s waiting,’ said a man at the other end of the counter, quietly but loud enough to be heard. He was big, dressed unassuming, and if you had looked carefully you might have seen that the tankard in front of him was full to the brim, as if he had ordered it with no intention of drinking.
Eudokia snapped her attention over to this speaker. ‘How subtle. I’d never have given you such credit, after this recent rash of foolishness.’
The man muttered something unintelligible, made a head-feint towards a back door. Eudokia paid him no more attention, save to follow the direction he had indicated. But Jahan stopped a moment in front of the man, weighing him silently. He lifted the tankard from off the counter and brought it to slug-like lips, thick neck straining, brown eyes steady, without blink or shudder. Then he put it back down empty and scurried to catch up with his mistress.
Through the small back corridor in a small room at a small table, Edom and Steadfast and a man Eudokia did not know sat silently, with an air of unpleasant anticipation. Eudokia took the single empty seat, allowing Jahan to remain standing. Had Eudokia never seen Edom before, she might have supposed him calm, so skilled was he at dissimulation, but past experience allowed her to note the occasional flutter of his blue eyes, the small signs of tension and concern. By contrast, Steadfast was half-frantic, swallowing hard when she entered and looking down at the wood of the table. Only the third man, as yet unnamed, seemed without fear, though objectively one would have to admit this was more a sign of foolishness than of bravery.
‘I have come directly from the Red Keep,’ Eudokia announced, settling her hands firmly on her lap, as if it was only her preternatural self-control that was keeping them from violence. ‘From the bedside of my now one-handed nephew, administrated tenderly to by the seneschal of the Prime himself, who, along with her master, is extremely alive. Alive in every particular, uninjured, not wounded at all. He is sleeping at the moment, my nephew, deep in soporific slumber, but I am told his injuries were the result of defending himself from a group of assassins, members of the Five-Fingers, fanatics, zealots, madmen attempting to break the peace of the Roost. Which I admit to finding immensely curious, as I am of course the chief patron of those same fanatics, zealots and madmen, a fact I had imagined would be sufficient to keep them from injuring my own flesh and blood.’
No one seemed in any very great hurry to answer her. Steadfast found something on the far wall that required the seeming entirety of his attention. There was a brief moment when Edom was not even smiling. ‘Revered Mother,’ he began slowly, and then his teeth were once again on offer, friendly and reassuring. ‘Word has just a few moments ago reached me of this … tragic misfortune, one which we regret entirely, it goes without saying. But are you sure our meeting like this is wise? You yourself said the demons and their servants are watching you closely.’
‘The day Eduokia cannot outwit a handful of custodians is the day she draws a warm bath and presses steel against her wrist. The three men who were posted to follow me are following three sets of palanquins, which have dispersed to different points around the city. But you’re right, this is unwise. What is happening right now, Edom, the First of His Line, is not an example of the proverbial cleverness of the Revered Mother. Instead, you are about to bear witness to one of her rarely seen though no less storied qualities – an astonishingly savage capacity for vengeance. Not quite yet, but soon, very soon indeed if I do not start to receive answers, rather than prevarications.’
Throughout the course of Eudokia’s monologue the boy’s face had gotten redder and redder, and at the end it burst like a boil. ‘Perhaps your ire might better be directed at your nephew, spending his time with the demons and the whore-slaves who serve them.’
Eudokia responded in a tone of voice sweet enough to draw a swarm of hornets. ‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘Grim, the First of His Line.’
‘Have you any hopes of there being a second, you will vacate your seat and the room as well. This conversation will be conducted in your absence or over your corpse.’
‘You are very bold with your threats, Revered Mother,’ Grim responded after a moment.
‘I don’t make threats,’ Eudokia said. ‘Threats are for savages, for thugs, backroom criminals. I am a woman of stature, of class and refinement. I prognosticate – I predict, I augur and foretell. I read the future in the bloody entrails of the world, and I am very, very rarely wrong. And so when I tell you that you sit right now on the very knife’s edge, a breath of wind, a shudder, a false word or blink or thought from oblivion, you would do well not to take that as the empty words of a woman wronged, but as a firm certainty, as the sun rising tomorrow, as the very oath of Enkedri himself.’
Jahan’s eyes, as he stood beside her, were their usual flat imperturbable brown, the colour of mud or of shit dried in the sun, but his swollen lips were bared up over unwhite teeth and those teeth were drawn into a smile. Apart from that he had made no movement to prepare himself for the conflict threatening to arrive, except in so far as he was always, in every waking moment as well as casual slumber, so ready.
‘It’s fine, Brother Grim,’ Edom said. ‘The Revered Mother is concerned about her nephew, as she has every right to be. And of course we are old friends, Eudokia and I, friends and more than friends.’
‘Yes, Father,’ Grim said, rising after a long moment, though he stared hard at Eudokia and even harder at Jahan after. It was not lost on Eudokia that it was not her warnings that drove the boy from the room, but Edom’s command. In fact it gave her a little burst of confidence for the thing to come. Five hundred of such fanatics, all chasing after death as frantically as a pack of mutts might a bitch in heat.
‘There was a misunder
standing,’ Edom said finally.
‘A misunderstanding?’ Eudokia repeated, as if the concept was alien but pleasant-sounding. ‘Yes, a misunderstanding – that was exactly what this was. Do continue.’
‘It was, of course, never our intention to injure your nephew,’ Edom said. His smile remained unchecked. A run of sweat had accumulated over his brow. ‘Our spies on the Second Rung informed us that the Prime was making a rare visit to the Second. It was thought … we had thought … it was determined that this was an opportunity which could not be missed.’
‘An opportunity to what, exactly? Have your men slaughtered? What is the life of one or other Eternal, in the balance?’
‘Not just one Eternal, the King.’
‘Gods.’ Eudokia shook her head vigorously. ‘An entire life lived at their feet, and you do not understand them in the slightest. The Prime no more commands Those Above than he does the evening tide.’
‘After our recent losses, it was thought wise to remind the demons and our yet-enslaved brethren that we have not been broken, that the flame of rebellion burns bright as ever, that our species, so long held in bondage, has not yet—’
Eudokia cut him off. ‘I am not one of your followers, Edom, and I find your passion for pomposity more windsome than enthralling. They’ve been killing your people and so you want to kill some of theirs, yes? Fine, an understandable reaction. Although it seems rather trivial, given the slaughter to come. In the meantime, not only have you injured my nephew, but you will have rendered our communication immeasurably more difficult. What do you suppose the response from the Eternal will be, at your assassination attempt? Foolish to attempt it, and foolish twice over to fail! This demonstrates very little of the caution which I have come to expect from you. Indeed, it seems much more the thinking of your sometime subordinate, slayer of demons, who I take it is too busy to attend in person?’
Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 Page 24