In the small chamber that bordered her room, Eudokia made her morning obeisances to the household gods – represented on this plane by a pair of rather ill-formed wooden altars. Siraph was given two joss sticks and a few drops of sour wine. Terjunta made do with an absolution of water mixed with honey. Eudokia could never remember a time when she had believed in either, nor a morning when she had not given her prayers to both. That a thing was not real did not mean that it could not have power.
Jahan stood outside the chamber door, as he did every morning. Not much taller than Eudokia herself, still he gave an impression of great bulk, of something bloated and distended. Each fragment of his body seemed oversized, from the bony protrusions of his shoulders to the trunk of his neck to a head the circumference of a globe. He had massive hands – fingers like summer squash, knuckles like the bark from an oak tree. His face was a fleshy oval, his nostrils upturned and wide as copper pennies, a jet-black moustache dovetailing beneath them. In short he was quite hideous, except for his skin, which was the hue of brown sugar, and his eyes, which were almond-shaped and feminine, though generally half hidden beneath heavy lids.
One other point in his favour was that he was a cold-blooded killer of the highest order, deadlier than the swamplands in summer. Such at least was what Phocas had told her, when he had presented Jahan on the occasion of their engagement. ‘He was the best fighter in the grand arena of Kara,’ Phocas had informed her. ‘I paid a hundred solidus for him, after I saw him take on three Dycian whip-men and come away unblooded. He’s kept me safe for four years. Gods willing, he’ll do the same for you far longer.’
At the time all she had seen was a fat man with a corpselike languor and an odour that was less than fresh. It was two years before she could confirm Phocas’s opinion, when a madman with a knife burst out from a crowd of petitioners one morning and Jahan had broken his neck quicker than Eudokia could draw breath, then gone immediately back into his torpor. Since then he had proved his worth a dozen times over, as a bodyguard and more than that. And if he moved slowly at times, it was her understanding that the crocodile was a beast renowned for its sloth as much as its bite. The smell still rankled, but then, one can’t have everything.
He wore the costume of his native land, thin sheets of coloured silk overlapping. Impractical dress, given the climate of his adopted country, but if the cold bothered him he did not let it show. His only visible weapon was a talwar hanging loosely on his right hip. He slouched against the wall and breathed very slowly, as if hoarding his energy for some future effort.
‘Mistress,’ Eudokia heard Jahan say, though somehow without quite going to the effort of moving his lips.
‘Slave,’ Eudokia said. ‘And what of the day?’
‘It rises.’
Eudokia nodded agreement, then entered her toilet. Hot water steamed up from the marble bath, her handmaiden standing beside it.
‘Good morning, Theodora.’
‘Good morning, mistress.’
‘Two drams of the blue salt. And a few drops of rosewater.’
‘Right away, mistress.’
Eudokia spent fifteen minutes in the tub, fifteen minutes almost to the second. Then she stood, allowed Theodora to towel her off. While waiting she inspected herself in the mirror with a dispassionate eye, and what she saw she did not find altogether displeasing. She had already weathered time’s first great sally, watched the beauty of her youth give way to middle age, ripe breasts gone saggy, thighs swelling. But she had kept herself trim, and her tummy was still flat, and her face little lined. Eudokia ran a hand through her hair, white since her fortieth year. She had never bothered to give it colour, and soon it had become the fashion at court. If you looked carefully you could see that half of the snowy-headed widows thronging the city’s salons had brown at their roots.
Eudokia took another moment at the mirror. Soon age would return to finish what it had started, collapse her remaining defences, turn her from venerable to old. Eudokia did not dread this eventuality, though she still luxuriated in what beauty remained to her. There was no point in railing against time, the ever-victorious. Against all other enemies, however, Eudokia felt herself a fair match.
Her dress closet was large enough to serve as the living chamber of a middle-class home, though for a fraction of what she had spent filling it you could have bought a mansion near the harbour. In fact, Eudokia felt fairly little for her costumes – she had mastered fashion because it was one of the things it had become necessary for her to master, not because she had any great love for it in or of itself.
For the morning she chose a blue shift, accented with silver twine. Compared to her evening dress it was simple attire, though it still took Theodora twenty minutes to fasten the whole thing properly and another twenty minutes to apply her make-up and perfume. Eudokia aimed for a sort of clean simplicity, enhancement rather than adornment, though of course executing that competently was more laborious than throwing on a whore’s mask.
She took one final moment to inspect herself in her mirror, conscious of every second stolen by vanity. It was not lost on Eudokia how much more she could accomplish if she wasn’t required to give so much of her time and energy to her appearance. To the degree that she ever envied anyone anything, which as a rule she rarely did, she found herself jealous of the extra hour a day that the opposing sex was able to use on something other than their own dress. Finally satisfied, she gave Theodora a quick though not unfriendly dismissal before heading downstairs to breakfast.
Eudokia had moved into the mansion when she had married Phocas, and she had kept it after he died and for the long interval since. Her initial impression upon inspecting the place had been that they had better get to making children quite quickly, if there was ever to be any hope of filling the space. That hadn’t happened, obviously, though they could have been breeding like rabbits and never needed to use more than a wing. Really it was an absurd edifice, more a statement than a domicile. What exactly that statement was, Eudokia had never been entirely clear, but she supposed it to have something to do with an abundance of money unconstrained by any reasonable notions of taste. Even her vast wealth couldn’t serve to maintain the building in its entirety; at any given moment three-fifths of it was unused. Occasionally she would make a foray into one of these abandoned portions, an explorer penetrating deep into a jungle of outdated furniture and atrocious mosaics.
Off the stairwell to the right was the main dining room, but it was ludicrously oversized. Eudokia only used it a handful of times a year, during her least exclusive gatherings, when it seemed that half the gentry of the Commonwealth was in attendance. She took most of her meals at the smaller chamber attached to the kitchen, at an oak table large enough to comfortably seat a dozen.
On her way to it, Eudokia passed two house slaves cleaning the banisters. Marchers, recently acquired, barely a word of Aelerian between them. Eudokia made a point of remembering the name of every member of her staff – not as easy as it sounded, given the number. Galla and Gemma were the two thin, pale, simple-looking creatures who gave an awkward impression of a curtsy as Eudokia trailed down the steps. Not their real names, of course, but then Eudokia couldn’t very well be stumbling over whatever mash of consonants their barbarian parents had bestowed upon them. Galla and Gemma were fine, simple names, better than their service merited, though Eudokia didn’t exactly blame them for their incompetence. A lifetime spent in some ghastly leather tent, eating horsemeat and dressed in rags – well, Eudokia could appreciate the change of setting would be a source of confusion. She would try to remember that when she went upstairs that evening and found finger marks on the railings, as she was certain she would. It was a strange world, Eudokia thought, that could be put in order more easily than her own household.
Down the hallway and into the dining room, where Leon sat at one corner of the dining table, spooning porridge into his mouth while engrossed in a heavy text.
‘Nephew,’ Eudokia said, taking the
seat next to him.
‘Auntie,’ Leon responded, but without raising his head from the book.
Leon was her second cousin Nonia’s child, or had been at least before the plague took her five years back. Scour her memory though she tried, Eudokia could remember almost nothing about poor Nonia – a meek, mousy, unprepossessing sort whom Eudokia had married to the similarly uninspired offspring of one of the appropriate families. He had been made governor of a southern province, died choking on a fishbone. It was Eudokia’s feeling that very few great men ever died by choking on a fishbone, though whether that was because they took more care when eating fish, or that posterity refused to recognise the accomplishments of anyone who had expired in such a preposterous fashion, she wasn’t sure.
Regardless, when Eudokia had learned that Nonia had gone the way of her husband, albeit with slightly greater dignity, Eudokia had arranged for her issue to take up residence in one of the many unused sections of the estate. Konstantinos had just left for the provinces, and the house felt a bit silent. Eudokia liked company, so long as it didn’t make a nuisance of itself. And she liked the reputation for generosity that these acts of largesse afforded her.
Nor, in the years since he’d come to the mansion, had Leon given her cause to regret her magnanimity. He was clever but not loquacious, which was a combination one found rarely enough to take notice. Five years had turned him into a fine-looking youth, though he had inherited his mother’s weak chin, and he could do with a bit more exercise of the physical rather than mental variety. His tutors all spoke well of him, which either meant that he was smart enough to satisfy their demands or strong-willed enough to bully them into submission. Eudokia suspected the former, which disappointed her slightly.
If she had one complaint against the boy, it was that he seemed sometimes not that at all. At an age when most of his contemporaries couldn’t see past the next whorehouse, Leon maintained a sense of learning and decorum that bordered on the severe. Bordered too closely, she thought. There was a certain sort of man who made a vice of virtue – fetishising austerity, turning their nose up at the compromises required of worldly activity, holding to a code of ethics that allowed them to do nothing and feel proud of it. They called themselves philosophers, or poets sometimes, two professions that Eudokia found to be beneath the dignity of a scion of the Aurelia family. How exactly she was to channel her charge into an existence worthy of his ancient line was not the least of Eudokia’s current slate of concerns.
‘And what use will you make of the sun?’ Eudokia asked.
‘Ionnes just sent over a book of his poetry. I’ve promised I’ll give him my notes by tomorrow. After that I was thinking I might go down to the Senate. They’re scheduled to debate the northern question – it’s certain to generate some heat.’
‘More than light, I imagine.’
‘You underrate them. Senator Andronikos, in particular, has been making a compelling case for forgiving this recent unpleasantness with Salucia.’
‘I don’t suppose his interests in the sugar trade have anything to do with his position on the subject.’
‘Cupidity? In the Senate?’ Leon turned a page. ‘I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘And how are the other grandees taking to Senator Andronikos’s latest bit of wisdom?’
‘Hard to say. Manuel made a rather passionate speech in support of it yesterday afternoon, though there weren’t many senators present to hear him make it.’
‘Manuel feels passionately about everything, so I’m not sure that indicates much.’
‘He’s a man of strong principles.’
‘And how he loves to let you know it.’
The door to the servants’ quarters opened and a slave came in with Eudokia’s breakfast on a silver tray – a small cup of tea and a few slices of melon. Except on feast days, she rarely ate more. The wolf does not hunt on a full stomach.
‘Andronikos is a reprobate,’ Leon continued, ‘Manuel a fanatic. One might get to thinking you lack faith in our governing body entirely.’
‘Perish the very thought. Why, wherever would we be without that noble forum to give us guidance in these clouded and corrupt days?’ Eudokia slipped a spoon of cream into her tea, let it rise to the top before mixing. ‘Will you be attending Senator Valens’ name-day gathering?’
‘I hadn’t planned on it. I quite loathe the senator, and hardly see the point in celebrating his managing to hold on to life for another year. Should he stage a funeral, on the other hand, you can be certain of my presence.’
‘Your personal feelings towards the man notwithstanding,’ Eudokia said, clamping down on a tickle of exasperation, ‘high society anxiously awaits your arrival.’
‘Drunken heiresses and half-witted grandees – they can wait a little longer.’
‘Yes, quite the iconoclast. How proud we all are of this courageous stance you’ve taken against gaiety.’ Eudokia rose from the table. ‘Your time is yours to spend or waste, as you will. But if you’ve an interest in how the Commonwealth is actually run, you’d be better off spending an hour with the Valens’ guests than a day observing the Senate. You’d also be far more likely to find someone to take home at the end of the evening.’
Leon blushed to the roots of his hair. It was a cheap means to victory, Eudokia realised – sharp as a blade when it came to politics, the boy all but shrivelled if you mentioned the bedchamber. Not for the first time, Eudokia wondered if his timorousness was cover for deviancy. She thought not – the Salucian vice was hardly unknown among the aristocracy, and certainly shouldn’t have been cause for such exaggerated bashfulness.
Man or woman, though, he wouldn’t find them sitting reading in his room. ‘You’re too young to be so boring,’ Eudokia said, patting the boy lightly on the cheek as she left the room.
Jahan was already waiting when she entered the study, standing near her desk, peeling an orange. He was the room’s chief ornament, which was bare bordering on austere. A desk, a chair beneath it, one in the corner in the thus far unrealised possibility that Jahan might prefer to sit rather than stand. She had a large library of course, and often used it when entertaining. But this was where the real work took place.
For the next six hours Eudokia busied herself with the small mountain of correspondence that she had received in the twenty-four hours since she’d last emptied the pile. First came the personal correspondence, dull work but necessary, answering invitations to weddings and birth-celebrations and naming days. Most of these received a polite refusal, though the very important and particularly highly favoured would find their fetes graced by the first lady of the Commonwealth.
Next there were matters of business, the extensive enterprises which Eudokia had inherited and which her acumen had expanded upon in the long decades since reaching her majority. Huge plots of farmland throughout the Aelerian heartland, mineral and timber rights for vast swathes of territory in eastern reaches of the March, monopolies on wine and oil and salt from the recently conquered Baleferic isles. Eudokia’s wealth endowed dozens of hospices, temples, schools and orphanages across the capital and the inner provinces, and simultaneously facilitated a hundred plots, stratagems and conspiracies, a massive engine which required constant stoking, stacks of gold solidus disappearing into the furnace.
Only when she had finished with these did Eudokia turn her attention to her real work. Missives from across the length and breadth of Aeleria, and from far outside it as well. From nobles and domestics, from army officers and tax-farmers, from Salucian merchant princes and Dycian shipping magnates. The greater portion of them had no idea to whom they were writing, left their news in dead-letter drops or had it filtered through some third party. Most were written so obliquely as to require outside knowledge to make any sense of them. The very sensitive were transposed to a code of Eudokia’s own design, and when she came across these she would spend a quick few minutes deciphering them. The shrinking pile of letters represented what Eudoki
a felt confident was the finest intelligence system in the Commonwealth – in the Commonwealth at the very least. It was the product of long years of diligent labour, carefully cultivated over the course of most of a lifetime, all the more impressive because it had been grown from nothing.
At half past noon Eudokia drank a goblet of red wine mixed liberally with spring water. Then she walked the sack of letters to the furnace. Four separate trips it took, to rid herself of the information she had acquired that day. It was too hot for a fire, but comfort took second place to caution.
Next she took a brisk walk round the compound, Jahan trailing close behind. A handful of slaves were busy ensuring the continued health of the grounds, pruning and watering and a dozen other activities the purpose of which Eudokia was only vaguely clear on. Eudokia loved gardens but hated gardening, in truth disliked manual labour of any kind. It was a very good thing that Eudokia had been born to a station befitting her abilities, she often thought. Imagine a lifetime spent bending over and standing upright, over and upright, over and upright till finally you don’t come upright any more. The gods had known what they were doing when they had made Eudokia who she was.
A shorter perambulation than she’d have preferred, and Eudokia was back to work. She kept open hours twice a month – an exhausting activity, granting audience to every trumped-up aristocrat and acquaintance’s friend desperate for a favour – but among her intimate circle of supporters, it was well known that she was available most days in the early afternoon.
She took a spot in a large armchair, one of several that sat in the centre of the library. It was her favourite room in the house – Phocas had built it for her as a wedding present, though she had chosen the decor. It did not contain the largest collection of manuscripts in the capital; plenty of senators possessed entire wings demonstrating their erudition. But Eudokia’s was large enough, and the titles were well chosen and had the added virtue of having actually been read.
Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 Page 3