Satisfied, Calla opened the door and started briskly on her way.
She had ground to cover – there were towns in the hinterlands between Salucia and Aeleria that were smaller than the Red Keep, and cities far less impressive. Calla had never left the Roost, but her lack of experience, in this case at least, did not make her wrong. There was nowhere in the world to compete with the paradise Those Above had built, and one did not need to have visited every backwater burg to know that for a truth. One needed only to open one’s eyes.
From Calla’s room it was a twenty-minute walk to the kitchens, though of course if you were unfamiliar with the terrain it would have taken far longer. With most of the staff still asleep she felt the dignity of her office could survive a light jog, her footfalls muffled by finely woven carpets, down long corridors of red brick, windows overlooking the gardens or the bay itself. Once morning came, assuming it did not look like rain, the house servants would open the thousands and thousands of glass apertures, and the sun would flood over the intricate stonework, and the wind would carry in the fragrance of fresh flowers and salt water. But in the evenings and when the weather was foul the Lord preferred his own, carefully crafted scents, and in the predawn hours incense simmered in small bronze bowls hanging from the ceiling.
First, Calla paid a quick visit to the kitchens, making sure that everything was in readiness for the Lord’s feast. He took a light breakfast by the standards of his kind: three courses of small plates, a round eighteen dishes in all, plus sherbet to cleanse the palate, tea and several different juices, depending upon what had been available at market the evening prior. Besides the head cook herself there was a specialist for the pastries, one for the meat, one to see to the beverages and a handful of other culinary adepts of whom the Lord made infrequent use, not to mention any number of half-chefs and assistants and attendants.
The head cook was an elderly, waspish woman, easily offended. In Calla’s father’s day the head cook had been a middle-aged waspish woman, though at least at the time she’d also been a thoroughly competent one. But the last year had seen a swift uptick in the woman’s sense of bitterness, accompanied by a slightly less dramatic decrease in her skill. A month earlier she had left the custard tarts in too long, burned them an unsightly brown. The Lord was, of course, the noblest of spirits, his reputation for generosity and temperance literally a byword among the Roostborn – but all the same it didn’t bear thinking about, what might have happened to the unfortunate woman, had Calla not caught the mistake in time to salvage the situation, rearranging the menu so that a replacement could be offered without causing the Lord offence. Of course, for her efforts Calla had earned nothing but an increase in the vitriol of which the cook seemed to possess an ever-increasing supply, and entering the kitchens Calla girded herself for battle.
Today, at least, all was in readiness; the fires were stoked, the pastries and sweetmeats soon to be set over them. The cook was busy berating one of the twenty-odd souls under her direct command, crowding him into a corner and banging her hand against a hanging pot to make her point. Unfortunate for the boy, but at least it gave Calla the opportunity to make a quick survey of the situation. By the time Calla was finished with her inspection the target of the cook’s abuse had been reduced to tears and the cook herself, having momentarily exhausted her spleen, even managed a friendly wave to speed Calla on her way.
Calla left by a side corridor at a fast walk, checking one of the water clocks that were evenly spaced around the estate. Still some time before the hour of the Lark – Calla was on schedule, but the schedule was as tight as it was every other day. She double-timed it down hallways and through antechambers, every step of the maze long ingrained from memory into routine. One of the banisters running along the fourth stairwell in the far quarters had been inexpertly cleaned, not for the first time, and she made a mental note to chastise the maid responsible for that portion of the Keep. She wouldn’t have an opportunity to do so until late in the afternoon, but Calla’s mind was neat as a well-kept slate, and she wouldn’t forget.
Calla exited the walls of the manor and walked swiftly to the east aviary, a walled area of wilderness that looked as if someone had snatched a square cable of old-growth forest, sawed it free from the earth, carried it with some giant hand and replanted it at the top of the Roost. Here, amidst the towering maples and redwood trees like turrets, the Lord’s vast stable of raptors was situated, hawks and eagles and merlins and falcons and one huge, ugly, cruel-seeming condor. In the centre of the arboretum the caretaker and his two sons resided, and Calla spent some time ensuring that all was in readiness should the Lord, as he often did, wish to watch his killers in action. Next she checked on the smaller west aviary, where the other birds in the Lord’s collection – the cassowaries and button-quails, the coots and turacos, were kept. Calla much preferred the west to the east, with its menagerie of tiny bright things singing sweet songs, and strutting false-winged avians staring about with good-natured confusion.
From there Calla visited the other menageries that it pleased the Lord to keep – the tanks of fish and waterfowl and aquatic mammals that held residence in the north garden, schools of creatures that had been found and hooked and transported halfway round the world to add colour and life to the Lord’s estates. Much of the bottom floor of the manor was taken up with the Lord’s workshop, a forge for making the steamwork mechanisms that were all the rage on the First Rung of the Roost. In truth the Lord was at best a competent craftsman, a fact of which he was well aware but which did not at all seem to affect his passion for the activity. The fortunes he had pissed away in that workshop, and for so little result!
Having seen to the Lord’s needs, she then moved on to doing the same for the large staff of humans. Making sure that all was in readiness in the human kitchens, and the staff would have something to eat when the majority of them awoke within the next hour. Ensuring order amidst the various cadres of servants, pouring oil on the turbulent waters ever-present in any large group of people. Later in the day, if she could carve out some time, she’d take a look at yesterday’s accounts, make sure all was in order, that the dozen-odd people deputised to visit the Perennial Exchange on the Third Rung and make purchases on the Lord’s accounts had done so honestly and competently. Then she would check that the stockrooms were full, that they hadn’t been crept into while an inattentive or corrupt quartermaster looked elsewhere. A year earlier she had discovered that the woman in charge of the staff’s bedding had been selling off some of the reserve linens. How that foolish old bag had wept when she had been dismissed, losing her job and her home at one stroke, forced to move to one of the lower Rungs and scrape by doing whatever she could find, her brand scarred off with a heated iron. Imagine, throwing away generations of honest service to the Lord for a few coins! Sometimes, Calla had to admit, her own species was as much a source of mystery as the Eternal.
It was a busy morning, though not quite frantic. With the hour of the Lark drawing near, Calla arrived at the foot of the steam-powered elevator which would take her to the top of the Keep. She had just enough time to swallow one of the raisin buns she had snatched from the human kitchens before climbing inside and beginning her ascent.
There were many things that made the Red Keep magnificent – its size, its ingenious construction, the infinity of tiny but striking details present on the facades and the porticoes, on the stairwells and the ceilings and the floors. Most of these could be attributed to the brilliance of the Lord, or the Lord’s ancestors, who had laboured diligently in its creation and upkeep. But for its placement at the absolute easternmost point of the Roost, jutting out over the water below, one could not rightly credit the Lord, nor his line – for that one needed to herald Providence, or the sheer wonders of nature itself. In the spring and summer the Red Keep was the beneficiary of a strong wind that blew in the early mornings. As dawn rose over the endless blue abyss the breeze pulled the vast abundance of fluttering strands towards the bay, t
he ribbons and banners and particoloured kites – as if at any moment the Keep itself might detach from the city and float off into the ether, an island of its own, drifting east towards unknown lands.
Turning her back on the Bay of Eirann, Calla stared westward at the neighbouring manors – the Aurelian Abode, with its gilded towers higher even than the Red Keep, and beyond that to the House of the Blind Swallow, flowering vines bright over indigo walls. Rising gradually in the distance was the Source, the surging fountain at the apex of the city, the Roost’s heart and centre. Further to the north and south and west the mountain began to slope downward away from the water, slowly and barely perceptibly. Indeed, a casual pedestrian might not have noticed the gradient until they had come to the barrier with the Second Rung, heavy stone walls running the length of the divide. The Second Rung, with its civil servants and wealthy merchants and the occasional artisan, was twice the size of the First Rung, and the Third Rung twice the size of the Second, expanding outward and downward until one came to the base of the mountain, to the Fifth Rung and the vast human population that lived there. Such was Calla’s understanding, at least, though in point of fact she had never descended lower than the Third Rung, and she had been there rarely. Her knowledge of the First Rung was all but comprehensive – she could tell the Alabaster Haunt from the Calignous Citadel by the appearance of their minarets in the late evening, knew the name of every demesne by which the east estuary flowed – but dropped in the heart of the Fourth Rung she would have been as lost as a seagull in the desert.
For all that luxury reigned throughout the rest of the estate, the Lord’s personal preserve was noteworthy for its simplicity, albeit a simplicity married to the highest taste. The silk hammock on which he slept was the sole piece of furniture in the cell that served as his bedchamber, a single room composed entirely of glass, naked to sunshine and moonbeam. Surrounding it was a surreal desert landscape, a kaleidoscope of hued sands that were combed and re-patterned daily. Dotting it were two half-boulders of ebony and crystal, eyes staring up into the sky. The sun was still struggling to break night’s final grip, but in a few moments the entire tier would be flooded with light and colour. Calla found the trail the Lord had left in the prismatic sand, followed his footsteps towards the precipice.
The Aubade, twelfth scion of the Red Keep, perched motionlessly atop a tongue of granite jutting off the ramparts, perfectly naked, greeting the morning. His weight rested easily on the balls of his feet, his arms were outstretched, his eyes gazing out at the sea below and the sun just now reflecting off its waters. To maintain such a position without a tremor of movement, a human would have needed to be an exceptionally talented acrobat. To attempt to do so while resting precariously on a narrow length of stone set many cables above the sea, said human would have needed to be uncommonly foolish as well.
Calla was careful to make no sound that might disturb the Lord. Her silence was as much pleasure as duty – in truth she considered it one of the secret rewards of her position, that she was allowed to observe this moment in the Lord’s schedule, two perfect things giving each other greeting.
Abruptly, for no reason which Calla could identify, the Lord broke free from his reverie, dropped his hands to his sides and descended from his perch with a motion that was more jagged than fluid. All her life she had observed them, and at times it still surprised her, the abrupt brokenness of their movements – each one perfect in itself, but strangely separated from that which preceded and followed it. Two long steps and he was standing in front of her, gazing down through unbroken aurous pools.
‘Good morning, Calla,’ the Lord said. ‘I hope the sun finds you well.’
Broadly speaking the Eternal resembled Calla’s own species – two legs and two feet, two eyes, a head where you’d expect one to be. But somehow what was similar about them seemed only to accentuate the differences. It was not just that they were taller and more robust than humans, limbs long and even and fine. Not that their hands ended in four digits rather than five. Not the oddly oval shape of their faces, not the tiny, hooked noses, not even their eyes, monochrome pools without sclera or iris. Not that they smelled different, though they did, a slightly sweet fragrance, something like dried cinnamon. Not their hair, which from a distance resembled a bundle of vines spilled backwards over their heads, but up close was soft and fuzzy as velvet. There was an ineffable otherness about them that seemed more than the sum of these relatively trivial variations, as if, despite being bipedal and roughly hominid, they had no more in common with Calla than a hawk, or a stone, or the sky.
Calla offered the traditional bow of greeting, dipping her head down to the level of his waist and bringing her hands palm-up behind her. ‘May the light shine brightly on you today, my Lord,’ she said, meaning it.
The Aubade was tall even for an Eternal, and more heavily muscled, though the extra weight did not seem to affect his grace and agility. His eyes were a pure and vivid gold. He was still young by the standards of his kind, and the thick strands of his white hair stretched from his waist back up to his forehead – except for a gap in the centre of his plumage, one tendril notably absent.
After breakfast they would begin the long grooming sessions required to prepare the Lord for his day. First the dyer, carefully choosing which colours would grace the Lord’s hair that day, rich strands of ebony and crimson. Then on to his tailor, fifty years in service and his eyes were still as sharp as his sewing needle. They would consult on the day’s patterns, and a half-dozen of the Lord’s personal servants would help him don whatever costume he decided on. In his sense of personal fashion, as in everything he did, the Lord was perfect – but still, Calla had always thought him at his most exquisite before all that, in this moment of nakedness. A lifetime of observing him should have inured her to his charms, but it hadn’t.
‘Your meal awaits you, my Lord,’ Calla said. His morning robe hung over the wall, and Calla took the liberty of handing it to him. He shifted himself into it in one swift movement, covering his hairless chest and his dangling member, and then he strutted off to take his repast without another comment.
His name, of course, was not the Aubade. But the High Tongue, a language of whistles with rapid changes in tempo and tune, was entirely indecipherable to humans – or at least it was said to be so. Like all the First he had been given a name in the common human speech, a sobriquet that had become colloquial from long usage. The Aubade had been the Aubade since dim antiquity, before Calla’s grandfather’s father had quickened, and those qualities that had earned him his sobriquet were as evident in the present as they had been a century earlier.
Calla followed the Lord to another corner of the garden, one set near an elevator that rose up from the kitchens, steam-powered and mostly silent, large enough to carry up a live bull, though admittedly that particular fare had never been offered. The Lord’s table had been set moments before – there was a member of the staff whose sole job was to wait for Calla’s arrival, and to take that as the signal to begin putting out the feast.
It was no small task, either. Breakfast for the day was dumplings filled with muskrat liver, candied quince in plum liquor, slow-roasted pork belly and numerous other delicacies, each plate arranged neatly on a swivelling circular platform raised just above the table. The Lord sat cross-legged on a green cushion in front of the feast and brought a bit of watercress to his mouth.
‘And how went your evening’s entertainment?’ the Aubade asked, after sampling a few of the plates.
Calla had spent her one free evening that week having dinner with the head chef from the Estate of Gilded Stone. ‘Well enough, my Lord.’
‘But not splendidly?’
Calla smiled. ‘Splendidly, my Lord.’
‘What a high bar you set for your prospective mates, Calla.’ He spent a moment in consideration. ‘Not that you aren’t worthy of excellence.’
‘Thank you, my Lord,’ she said. He did not acknowledge her response and she had not expected h
im to. Those Above had no notion of flattery, nor of dissimulation generally. A thing was said because it was meant, not in hopes of eliciting a reaction.
The Aubade turned his attention back to his feast, though not with any great relish. He expected an elaborate table, but in truth the Lord seemed to take little excitement in it. Those pleasures which inspired his passion tended towards the more abstract. ‘I had thought of visiting the courses today,’ he said idly, forking a caramelised prawn.
‘Of course, my Lord. Your ship awaits you.’
‘And the Lord of the Sidereal Citadel sent me a message last night, insisting that he has hit upon a new design for an aerial that is unique in its conception.’
‘The Lord of the Sidereal Citadel is a fine craftsman.’
‘The finest, though why he imagines I’ll be of any use in turning his conception into reality is utterly beyond me.’ The Lord seemed to think the matter over for a moment, though Calla had been among the High long enough to know that you could never really say with any certainty what their pauses meant, or if they meant anything.
He brushed his mouth with a silk handkerchief and stood abruptly. ‘Still, he always has some fine pieces of steamwork to display. Send a messenger to his estate, ask if I might call at the hour of the Starling.’
The food lay unfinished on the table, and there were six more dishes soon to be making their way up in the elevators. Now it would all be burned in the central fires of the Keep – nothing intended for the use or consumption of an Eternal could be wasted on a lesser species, be it it ant, dog or human.
‘Of course, my Lord,’ Calla said, bowing deeply. ‘At your command.’
Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 Page 5