Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2

by Daniel Polansky

  Downslope the city moved swiftly towards conflagration, fanatics sharpening their knives and laying their plans for slaughter. Upslope the custodians and bureaucrats cracked down on any faint hint of insurrection, dispensing violence with an open hand. Higher still their Eternal protectors continued unceasingly their games and their dances, ignorant of what was coming if not innocent of its arrival. Everywhere, there was injustice, there was avarice and bigotry, there was fear and soon after fear, cruelty. But in the small room on the Second Rung, in a soft bed with silk sheets, there were only the two of them, and the world seemed still a place worth saving.

  It had gone quickly – he was new to the thing, after all, one could hardly hope for expertise in a novice. But he had been tender, and that was the most important thing, that was the only thing that could not be taught or learned. In the kind light of the early evening they held each other close, and Calla knew only his scent, and the beat of his heart, and even forgot for a time the original purpose of her visit.

  Though reality inevitably intervenes. ‘I fear now that I have thrown away my virtue too cheaply,’ Calla said mockingly, ‘for while I have given you good answer to your question, you have done nothing to answer mine. This Steadfast of your aunt, who you say is the critical piece to the whole thing – how in the name of your gods do we find him?’

  ‘Actually that part’s rather simple,’ Leon admitted, running his fingers through her hair. ‘He goes by Cobble, and he has a trading house on the Fifth Rung.’

  34

  At the far end of the docks there was a neighbourhood called Three Forks, consisting mostly of a complex of warehouses, out of use for much of the year. Vast structures, decaying, lightless except where the occasional spot of sunshine slipped through a broken windowpane. During the Anamnesis they were used to store the excess tithes that came in from the Commonwealth, salted cod and smoked ham, foodstuffs stacked to the rafters. Nine months later it contained another product of Aeleria’s abundance – five hundred hardened soldiers, killers to a man.

  Nominally Aelerians, at least, though half were undiluted Dycian, darker even than Pyre, lean and wiry and rarely out of arm’s reach of their curved bows. The Aelerians themselves were paler, and broader, and they rarely smiled. The two groups were identical, so far as Pyre could tell, in their vulgarity and general meanness, as well as their love of gambling and drink – for three days they had done nothing but roll dice and swill sour wine, were most of the way through the provisions that Pyre had squirrelled away for them, heavy kegs that ought to have lasted a month.

  Courage, the First of His Line, had been left behind as their liaison, and he was growing close to the end of his tether. ‘These are our allies in the struggle against the demons? These are the men who will bring about the age to come? Sots and murderers?’

  There was much required of Pyre these days, the last of the old era, many tasks required if the dawn was to come. Across the lower half of the Roost the Dead Pigeons had gradually taken up their positions, waiting only for the word that would send them into battle, waiting only for the standard to be raised beneath which they would die. Pyre was needed everywhere, at every point of attack, to plan out each route and designate each target. For the first time in two frantic years of civil strife Pyre was approaching the end of his reserves. The night before, hidden in an alleyway across from one of the headquarters of the Cuckoos, he had fallen asleep standing up, a blissful moment of darkness and then sharply awake as his knee struck the stone wall. That had been ten hours earlier, hours he had filled with labour. He would need to find a spare moment for slumber soon, or be no good to anyone.

  ‘It won’t be much longer,’ Pyre said, rubbing the heel of his hand hard against his eyes.

  ‘They are without honour,’ Courage said disapprovingly. ‘Nothing but mercenaries. They deserve no share of the dawn.’

  ‘Edom knows his business,’ Pyre snapped, exhaustion as much as filial loyalty fuelling his anger. ‘And it is obedience required of you at the moment, not commentary.’

  ‘Of course, Brother Pyre,’ Courage said, eyes belying his name, ‘forgive me.’

  As little concern as the demons gave to the lower Rungs, they were comprehensively more ignorant of the farms that extended out from the Roost, of the vast numbers of near-slaves who laboured there. Edom’s words had spread quickly amidst this ocean of grain and black-seeded cotton, men huddled around cookfires and in the great communal barracks in which they slept during those scant hours when they were not labouring. To bring the contingent of soldiers through them quietly, without giving notice to any of the demons’ few human agents, had required no very great excess of skill. The detachment from the main army had been met by one of Pyre’s scouts, shuttled through those plantations that he knew to be theirs entirely. Midnight three days prior had seen five hundred men appearing at one of the less-used gates on the far side of the Fifth Rung, then moved swiftly to their secret quarters nearby. In any human city it would have been absolutely impossible for so large a movement of armed men to enter undetected, but even with an army only a few days from the city, the demons still could not grasp the full extent of their danger. When the Aelerians arrived, they would destroy them, as they always had, as they had every band of men who had ever been sent against them. There was no need for strategy beyond that.

  ‘We must make use of the tools available to us,’ Pyre said, after a moment, in modest apology. ‘And by all accounts they have done well enough against the Salucians.’

  Courage shrugged. What went on in the outside world was of no more interest to him than it was to Those Above, and like most of the rest of the Dead Pigeons he had only the most casual knowledge of the war that had been raging across the continent these last years. ‘The Salucians aren’t the demons.’

  ‘If it isn’t the young king himself,’ said a voice from behind Pyre. Courage’s eyes narrowed nastily. Pyre turned away from him.

  The speaker was Hamilcar, the leader of the Dycians, tall and thin and darkly handsome. Standing next to him, not smiling, for he never smiled or at least Pyre had not yet seen it, was a hulking brute, dull-eyed, the most famous man alive or close to it. In the Roost as well they spoke of Bas Alyates, perhaps especially in the Roost, for even those who laboured beneath the demons’ lash, and even those who thought that lash a kindness, still there was some part of them that breathed for freedom, that revelled in the knowledge that the demons were flesh. Pyre could remember nights as a child on the roof of his building spent in blissful fantasy of slaughter, fighting back to back with the legendary Caracal.

  Perhaps no reality could have matched the legend, but Pyre could not help but feel that he might have approached nearer to it. A big man, but old, his face like a cracked pane of glass, withered and well-lined. Still, his eyes were flat and hard and gave away nothing, and among a group of men who were remarkably savage even by Pyre’s standards, when he said a word that word was taken as if had been passed down from the foot of Enkedri’s great throne.

  ‘It is well to see you still alive, Pyre,’ said the Dycian, in the pidgin travellers’ tongue that was an amalgamation of all of the languages of the Tullus coast, mostly gutter Roost Speech with a few loanwords from the Salucians.

  ‘Blessings of the gods upon you this day. May the light of the coming dawn illuminate your path.’ Courage had taken this opportunity to find somewhere else to be, happy to let Pyre take the lead.

  ‘I sometimes get the sense,’ continued Hamilcar, who, in contrast to his superior, always seemed to be grinning, ‘that your man is not so fond of us as we are of him.’

  ‘He says you drink too much.’

  ‘What else is there to do but drink?’

  ‘Alcohol is a tool the demons use to weaken us. The Five-Fingered abstain from it.’

  Hamilcar laughed and wiggled his digits. ‘And yet these held a skin of wine scarce five minutes past.’

  If the Caracal followed any of this, he gave no indication. With each
interaction Pyre tried his best to determine whether he was playing dumb or was the real thing, and he had yet to arrive at a conclusion. He muttered a few words into his subordinate’s ear, but his eyes didn’t leave Pyre.

  ‘He wants to know when we will move,’ Hamilcar translated. ‘He says the longer we stay here, the more likely we are to be discovered.’

  ‘The neighbourhood is ours,’ Pyre said simply. ‘The people here are proud followers of the word – there are none who would think to inform. And we have our own forces ready to intercept anyone who would try.’

  Hamilcar – presumably – translated this into Aelerian for the Caracal’s benefit. He said a few sharp words in response.

  ‘The Caracal wants to know how you can be certain?’

  ‘My followers are utterly reliable, they can be—’

  But Hamilcar cut him off. ‘The Caracal was not asking a question – he is saying you can’t be certain, not about that, or about anything. Every second spent here is a second which might potentially lead to disaster.’

  ‘He is right, of course,’ Pyre admitted. ‘But there is nothing else for it. Your army has been slower to approach than I had anticipated, but our people are in contact with them daily. We will move when they are ready.’

  Hamilcar translated this. Bas nodded, but his eyes were on Pyre’s own. He spoke again.

  ‘The Caracal wishes to know something.’

  Pyre shrugged.

  ‘They say you killed an Other.’

  ‘A demon?’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  Hamilcar said something in Aelerian to Bas, who chewed over it like salted jerky, then spat something back.

  ‘He wants to know how you did it. Was it just you, or did you have help? Did you trap the thing, or surprise it?’

  ‘It was the will of the gods,’ Pyre said simply. ‘Whom Enkedri chooses, that man is invincible, though he be unarmed, though he carry nothing but a stone, he will be victorious against whatever stands against him.’

  Hamilcar looked at Pyre a long time before translating this, and even in the dim light Pyre could detect contempt in his rich brown eyes.

  ‘The Caracal says that he has seen battle from the far Marches to old Dycia to Salucia itself,’ Hamilcar said after a moment. ‘And in none of them can he remember having seen Enkedri taking the field.’

  ‘Perhaps the Caracal knows less of war than he supposes.’

  ‘I will do you a favour,’ Hamilcar said, smiling suddenly, teeth white against the dark of the warehouse, ‘and not translate that.’

  Bas looked at Pyre for one moment longer, then nodded and headed back towards the rest of his men. Pyre was about to make for the exit when Hamilcar reached out and grabbed him with one calloused hand.

  ‘Did you want something else?’

  ‘Do you wonder why there are two hundred men of my country, interspersed among the throng?’

  Pyre shrugged. He could feel the need for sleep building heavy against his eyes. ‘You are auxiliary forces of the Commonwealth.’

  ‘And do you know how we became so?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Pyre said flatly, in a way that suggested he was not strongly interested in the answer.

  ‘It was penance,’ Hamilcar explained. ‘For our temerity in opposing the Aelerians’ desire to swallow our homeland. They are clever people, the Aelerians, they make use of what they find. Why kill us when we might kill for them? A slave is better than a corpse.’

  ‘I have more to do today than sit around in the dark, swilling wine. Is there a point to this story?’

  ‘The Aelerians sacked my city as well, but I didn’t help them do it.’

  ‘The Roost is not my city – the Roost is the city of the demons, the Roost is a festering sore on the earth, the Roost is a cage in which I and my people are bound. The Aelerians are helping only to free us from it.’

  ‘And then they will march home, leaving all of this behind? You presume a great deal on the magnanimity of your new comrades.’

  ‘They will rid themselves of the tithe they have so long been forced to provide,’ Pyre said. ‘And of the humiliation of being beneath the heel of the Eternal. Are not the Aelerians human, as I am human, as are you? Are not we all united in this struggle?’

  A long pause, during which Pyre could hear the rattle of dice in the dark, and the loud cursing of the Aelerians, and of course the slurp, the slurp, always the slurp. And then Hamilcar began to laugh, loud enough to drown out the rest of the noise, loud enough to draw the attention of onlookers, of Courage and of the nearby Aelerians, and then he shook his head and went off to join the Caracal.

  An hour later, on a cot in the basement of a safe house, exhausted beyond measure and yet unable to sleep, Pyre stared up at the ceiling and thought about the laugh.

  35

  Leon began to put on his face as they passed through the gate to the Fifth. From the cool, keen-eyed composure that was his normal look he scratched away prudence and good humour, and to it he added terror and a dash of foolhardiness. By the time they alighted from the palanquin he was fully inhabiting this new role, flinging a handful of coins at their bearers and then sprinting towards the quay, pulling her behind him in train. The harbour was as busy that day as on any other, nor was there any shortage of miserable men, so their passage caused no particular stir.

  By the time he came rushing into the entrance Leon could add honest fatigue to feigned desperation. There was a waiting area and a woman seated inside it but Leon ignored her, shouting something incoherently and bursting into the next room. It was the modest office of a mid-level clerk, a few shelves, windows through which the bright afternoon sun and the salt air of the bay entered freely, a squat desk. Sitting behind this last was the man that Calla had seen all those long months ago, when the Aubade had first detailed her to spy on the Five-Fingered. The year sat heavy on him, or perhaps the day had already proved particularly trying. Turning to settle her in one of the chairs, Calla offered Leon the slightest nod of confirmation.

  ‘Steadfast, thank the gods,’ Leon said, turning back to face their quarry. ‘Thank all the gods that you’re here.’

  ‘Who – who are you?’

  ‘She always said that if things fell apart, then Steadfast was the man to go to. That no one else would be trusted but Steadfast. She always said that. Very often, at least.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My aunt, of course.’

  ‘Your aunt? What the hell does your aunt have to do with this? Who are you and what are you doing in my office? Speak swiftly, before I call the Cuckoos.’

  ‘The Cuckoos!’ Leon’s laugh had something manic in it, something despondent. ‘I fear they’ll be here swifter than either of us would like! Indeed I fear they may very well be on their way! I am Leon of the line of Aurelia, nephew of the Revered Mother,’ the smile melting his face, eyes wide and mournful, and he dropped into the remaining chair. ‘May the gods grant her rest on the other side.’

  There was a ceramic flagon on the desk, probably not water although Calla would never learn for certain, as Steadfast poured himself a cup but did not offer anything to his guests. ‘They … have her?’

  ‘She would never have allowed that,’ Leon said, somewhere between pride and despair. ‘That was why she carried essence of toadbane round her neck.’

  ‘A prudent woman, even to the end,’ Steadfast said, and between the drink and the news he seemed to have calmed down slightly. ‘Who is this?’ he asked, turning suddenly to Calla.

  ‘I couldn’t leave her,’ Leon half-explained. ‘She’s carrying my seed.’

  Calla allowed the blush to spread across her face, thinking it would play to the role.

  ‘How quickly can you call it off?’ Leon continued. ‘What are the passwords? Where are your messengers? There might still be time to save something.’

  Steadfast took a long time to answer, working through this unexpected development. ‘Why would we call
it off? Your aunt’s … noble sacrifice has surely—’

  Leon’s pose of desperation was alloyed with sudden, blistering contempt. ‘Are you mad? If they knew of Eudokia’s hand in it then they know of everything else! You’ve traitors in your organisation, that’s the only possible explanation.’

  Whatever had been in the flagon, there was a good deal less of it when Steadfast next responded, having forgone the glass entirely. ‘Perhaps … perhaps it was bad luck, or inattention, or—’

  ‘Bad luck?’ Leon repeated, shouting this time. ‘Inattention! From the Revered Mother herself? Are you daft or just drunk? If they knew enough to get her then they know everything, and the plan can’t very well succeed under those circumstances. There’s nothing to do but regroup, try to save some part of our forces.’

  The day had already been, so far as Steadfast was concerned, quite the most stressful he had ever survived. Leon’s arrival had pushed him from anxiety towards outright terror, and just then the fingernail’s grip on composure that he had maintained collapsed. ‘There’s nothing to save!’ he shouted. ‘We gambled everything on this mad plan of your aunt’s! There’s no going back now!’

  ‘Anything is to be preferred to seeing our forces slaughtered in ambush! You need to call off the attack.’

  ‘And how in the hell do you suggest I do that? It’s after the hour of the Kite, Pyre and his forces are already in position! Even if I could get him a message he wouldn’t listen to it, pig-headed fanatic! And by now your countrymen have already reached the Perpetual Spire; there is no force on earth that can call them off. Your aunt’s mad arrogance has doomed us all! Doomed us all!’

  Leon had so far proved himself every bit the scion of Eudokia, maintained his facade impeccably. But this revelation was so sudden and extraordinary that for a few fractured seconds his mask fell away. ‘Then there’s no other choice,’ Leon said, trying to cover for his indiscretion. ‘We must flee the city, try and take shelter with the army beyond the walls.’