Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  4

  Thistle woke up well past the hour of the Eagle, the sun beating down shamelessly, though he didn’t know the time at first and didn’t care when he did.

  He didn’t know because his sleeping quarters were a windowless shack built atop the slum tenement he lived in with his mother, siblings and a dozen-odd other families. He didn’t care because he had nothing to do, no labour to occupy the morning, no toil to carry him through until evening. So far as the world was concerned, he could have gone on sleeping until nightfall. Could well have never woken up.

  The shack had been a pigeon coop. When he’d assumed residence in the spring, Thistle had spent three solid days – perhaps the only three days of work he’d put in over the sixteen years he’d drawn breath – removing the cages and various bric-a-brac, washing the floors over and over and over again. It hadn’t done much good. He could still smell them, the dander from their wings, the thick white goo of their shit. Thistle hated birds. He hated a lot of things, but he particularly hated birds.

  Still, it was better than his mother’s apartment, two rooms separated by a wall the width of his little finger, four children packed into the front, his mother and little Apple in the back. The coop was his at least, and there wasn’t much else in the world he could lay sole claim to. In a few months it would be too cold to sleep there and he’d be back sharing a pallet on the floor. Best enjoy it while he could.

  Thistle stretched, yawned, pulled himself up and out into the early-afternoon sun. He took a long piss off the side of the building, watched the stream of urine fall against the alleyway below. This time of day there was little chance of watering a passer-by, though Thistle held out hope.

  He was about average height for a youth from the lowest stretches of the Roost, which would have made him short almost anywhere else on the continent. His face was coarse, his mouth brutish. The last year he’d grown a patchy bush of black hair thick around his neck and above his lip but sparse everywhere else, peach-fuzz unsure if it was ever to become a beard. He’d been an ugly child, become an ugly youth, and in all likelihood would end up an ugly man. His one distinguishing feature was his eyes, which were so dark a brown you could be forgiven for mistaking them as black. If you passed him you’d walk faster, and maybe take a quick backwards look once you were safely past.

  Thistle lived in the Barrow, far down on the Fifth Rung, a short walk upslope from the docks. His building was the tallest in the neighbourhood, five storeys in crumbling red brick. To the east could be seen one of the great pumps leeching water from the bay and sending it on its long journey skyward. Of course it could be heard wherever you were , an unpleasant slurping sound like an old man farting. Didn’t smell much different to that either, gave the whole Rung a strong whiff of mildew and worse. Sixteen years Thistle had lived in the echo of the suck – he figured he ought to have got used to it by now, but he never had.

  As far as Thistle was concerned the world was the Roost, and the Roost was the Fifth and the Fifth was the Barrow and the few neighbourhoods surrounding it, east to the pumps, south to the harbour, upslope towards the Points. Beyond that, Thistle’s perceptions of place grew hazy, vague impressions of privilege and soft silks.

  Thistle pulled on his trousers, noticed the shaky job he’d done during his most recent repatching, told himself to borrow some thread from his mother and take care of it later that evening, knew he wouldn’t get round to actually doing it. It is a curious fact that the less one has to do the less one does, a vicious cycle that if uninterrupted leads to torpor. He went back into his hutch and pulled up a loose stone from the back corner. From inside the alcove he removed a thin bit of pig-iron, one end sharpened into a point, the other shoved into a piece of cork. The shiv was worn and ill-made, but like anything else that might be used as a weapon it was strictly illegal – humans were forbidden to own any blade larger than a cooking knife, even the Cuckoos had to make do with their knobbed ferules. Thistle told himself he carried it for protection, in case a rival crew caught him alone in a back stairwell or an alley. This wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t quite the truth either. Thistle liked holding the shiv in his hand, liked feeling its weight when he walked. He shoved it into the back of his trousers, pulled his belt tight around it, put on his boots and started out into the afternoon.

  Down the crumbling stairs, jumping over the third step on the second landing, crumbling now for half a generation, a trap for the forgetful or foreign. He skirted the door of his own apartment, quickly and quietly as he could. Mother would be down at the water, doing the day’s wash. Inside would be his sisters, Thyme and Shrub and little Ivy, three years come winter and still couldn’t quite walk right. And of course Apple, sharing the back room with the small altar their mother kept to Siraph, coughing his life out against the thin walls. In truth it had been Apple that had led Thistle to taking up his spot on the roof, the ever-constant hack, an intake of breath and two sharp ejections of phlegm. Thistle’s shack was dirty and often damp and always smelly, but it beat listening to your brother dying all night, every night. Secretly Thistle sometimes found himself wishing that Apple would stop mucking around already and just get to it. What was it exactly he had to live for? Thistle wondered. What was the point of prolonging such a miserable existence?

  But then that same question could be asked of everyone – at least everyone Thistle had ever met.

  Outside the Barrow was busy as ever, lines of porters like ants carrying goods up from the ships, laden double with bolts of raw silk from Chazar or chicory from the Baleferic Isles or Dycian oranges. From the Source at the top of the First Rung a complex and elaborate series of canals ran down through the city and back to the bay. But only the Eternal could use them, and since no seed-pecker ever came down to the Fifth, the waterways were empty of anything but fallen leaves. What goods made their way from the docks were taken to their destinations on the back of one of the city’s endless supply of human chattel. Most of the men on the Fifth that had jobs – a modest majority, if you were being kind – worked in such a fashion, unloading cargo from the huge caravels that floated into the harbour, hauling it upslope, back and forth from morning till nightfall.

  Thistle found the boys at their usual spot, in a long-abandoned pumping station a few blocks towards the docks. It was a small stone building beneath one of the main pipes, an access hole leading down into the bowels of the mountain. As children they had dared each other to explore it, crawling into the dark with a candle nub for guidance, but when they had been eight little Crimson, Bandage’s second cousin, had gone down and never come back up, and that had been the last of the game. Still, it made for a good place to kill time, if you could get past the smell and the dark. ‘What’s gospel?’ Thistle asked.

  Felspar was handsome and clever, but more handsome than he was clever, a truth that he ignored to his frequent misfortune. By Thistle’s count, every third or fourth scrap they got into was on account of Felspar’s not being able to keep his mouth shut, relying on Treble’s size and Thistle’s savagery to save him from trouble. But then, down here in the Barrow, belligerence was not considered an unpardonable sin, and Thistle wasn’t the sort who minded a good brawl, or was particularly concerned as to what sparked one. What was the point of having boys if you couldn’t use them to bail you out, now and again?

  Treble was big and dim and loyal, though you could never be sure of the degree to which the last was a function of the second, whether he would have your back from virtue or simply because he couldn’t imagine another option. Thistle didn’t suppose it mattered much. Treble’s character didn’t seem to be spoiling, and as for his wit, well – there were even fewer signs of change in that department.

  Rat was as far from Treble as you could get, dark and always smiling. He hadn’t yet lost his baby fat. Thistle wondered at what point baby fat just became fat, suspected that Rat was fast approaching it. Rat wasn’t born in the Barrow – his father had been a baker up on the Fourth Rung – but when he had d
ied of the plague his mother had lost the shop and had to move downslope. Perhaps it was this early brush with prosperity that was the cause of the Rat’s vague softness.

  They were the core group, though you could add the Brothers Calc and a few others. Urn the Youngest, the third of his name still extant, had been a mainstay as well, but the previous winter he had humiliated himself in a dust-up with some boys from upslope, left Felspar to deal with three of them on his own, and so by the rough and reasonable code of conduct adhered to in the Barrow he was no better than a dog, his name unfit for mention.

  ‘It’s hot,’ Treble said.

  ‘That’s news to you?’ Thistle asked.

  Treble shrugged. He’d done his best.

  Between the four of them they had enough tobacco for two cigarettes, and they went ahead and rolled them, Felspar doing the honours. Thistle felt that he rolled better than Felspar but Felspar felt otherwise, and it was too hot to fight over it, Treble had got that much right. The sun brought a rolling sort of boil that made it impossible to do anything but rot. With a dozen Salucian pennies or even a few bronze nummus they could have bought a bottle of potato liquor and sipped their way into evening. But it was empty pockets all round, and nothing to do but stew.

  ‘They’re having a dig tonight up at the East Stay. Supposed to have a band and everything,’ Rat said.

  ‘Be three pennies a head, at least,’ Felspar answered.

  ‘We won’t keep them, we try and march our way to the East Stay.’

  ‘The coin, or our heads?’

  An open question, not worth a response. Rat wasn’t really suggesting they go to the East Stay, he was just talking because there wasn’t anything else to do. There is a common misconception that poverty breeds crime, but in fact this skips a step. Poverty breeds boredom, and boredom leads to crime. Two hours of aimless waiting and Thistle and his boys were ready to pull a smash and grab just to relieve the monotony.

  It took longer to figure out where to pull it, though. Couldn’t do it in the Barrow; their faces were too well known. Try rolling someone in the neighbourhood and you end up getting a visit from a member of the Brotherhood Below, some ornery motherfucker with a burn scar on his neck and a knife in his waistband. The Brotherhood was responsible for smuggling and prostitution and pretty much every other illegal activity on the Fifth, and they didn’t like having their monopoly challenged by a pack of kids, and they weren’t slow to make known their displeasure. Of course the docks were straight out, they were at open steel with the crew living there, wouldn’t be heading that way just for the lark of it. That left Seven Points or the North Straits, and there was a fair bit of back and forth as to which. Thistle might be the leader, but they were an anarchic bunch, cajoled and threatened rather than led.

  They settled on the Points. There weren’t any particular troubles with the locals that way – that didn’t mean they wouldn’t find any, but it at least meant there wouldn’t be a crew of them waiting in an alley with sharpened iron. Course, upslope meant more money and that meant more chance of running into the Cuckoos, but the Cuckoos didn’t much concern Thistle – they were less of a concern than the other gangs, gods knew, that bunch of slow fat drunkards comfortable trading the hatred of their entire species for a gold eagle a season. And Seven Points was a good place to lose anyone following you, a handful of different pipes joining at one central location, hence the name.

  Felspar was pushing for the Straits, but that was just because he was trying to bed a girl that lived there. ‘I’m not walking all the way to Ell Street just so you can not have sex with someone,’ Thistle said. ‘If I wanted to watch you not have sex with someone, I could just stay here.’

  ‘She’s ready to pop,’ Felspar insisted.

  ‘Only thing you’ll get out of that girl is a stiff cock.’

  ‘Or the drip,’ Rat added.

  ‘He ain’t smooth enough to get the drip,’ Thistle said.

  ‘Why you gotta be smooth to get the drip?’ Treble asked.

  Thistle bit his tongue and shook his head. You could forget how stupid Treble was so long as he was staring silently at a wall, but even Treble couldn’t stare silently at a wall for ever, and once he opened his mouth it all came storming back at you.

  Thistle dropped down from the crate he was sitting on and started off at the sort of speed that made it clear the conversation was over. The rest fell in behind him.

  The broken pipe was the unofficial barrier of the neighbourhood, a length of metal tubing rising up from the mountain and over the road that had burst some generations previous and never been fixed. Of course it wasn’t on any map, but anyone living there knew what walking past it meant, knew you better quicken your step, pull your coat tight, keep your eyes wary but don’t get to staring at nobody. Past the border it was open season on you and anyone born in the Barrow, just as it was in the Barrow for anyone from anywhere else

  Thistle wasn’t over-worried; not in the middle of the day, not with Treble and the boys with him – but he noticed just the same. They all noticed, the stroll turning to a march, Treble taking point almost unconsciously, because even the fiercest thug would take a good long second thought before taking a swing at him.

  They’d been walking for half an hour when Thistle stopped in front of a small general store just off the main thoroughfare. No one said anything, but then it was an old game for the four of them, their parts well rehearsed. Felspar would be the distraction, because he had an even smile and eyes that might seem innocent if you weren’t looking closely, and if you were foolish enough to think there was still an innocent left on the Fifth. Rat and Treble would keep lookout, because they weren’t suited for anything more. And Thistle would make the grab, because he never flinched, or at least hadn’t yet. It was this last that Thistle supposed made him the leader. Treble was a better scrapper, and Felspar a louder speaker, which most of the world seemed to take as evidence of superior intellect. But Thistle did what needed to be done, did it without any trembling, of his hands or his conscience. That made him special, and despite what Felspar might croon to the halfwit slatterns who mooned after him, when something needed to be done he put his eyes on Thistle, like all the rest of them.

  Felspar went in first. Thistle gave him thirty seconds and followed. It was a small market like any other you could find on the lower levels, the sort of place that sold anything and everything, goods uniform only in being overpriced and of poor quality.

  ‘Mother needs beef marrow,’ Felspar was saying to the man at the counter.

  ‘Ain’t got no beef marrow,’ said the proprietor, who was north of forty, grey-haired, fat and friendly-looking.

  ‘You’re the fifth shop I’ve tried.’

  ‘That may be the case,’ the merchant said affably. ‘But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have any beef marrow. Try Sickle’s butcher shop, it’s up two streets on your right.’

  ‘I tried Sickle’s,’ Felspar pleaded. ‘Sickle said to come here.’

  Thistle had edged his way to the corner pantry, made like he was inspecting the stock. The trick with pocketing merchandise is that there isn’t any such thing – just make the snatch and don’t fuss around. It didn’t help that Thistle looked like the sort of kid who’d be up for a lift, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about that.

  ‘But if you don’t have beef marrow,’ Felspar continued, ‘and Sickle doesn’t have beef marrow, then how am I going to get my mother any beef marrow?’

  The owner leaned against his counter, somewhere between annoyed and bemused. ‘I guess you’d better start looking for a cow.’

  Thistle wedged the bottle into his front pocket, the owner all but ignorant of his presence, attention occupied with Felspar’s quest for goose marrow. They were in the clear. All Thistle needed to do was keep his head down, walk out casual, pass the thing off to Rat. They’d be drunk and happy inside of an hour. At the very least they’d be drunk.

  But then Felspar muffed it, caught
Thistle’s eyes as Thistle went to slip out the door, a second or two longer than he should have, long enough for something to click in the owner’s mind. ‘What are you doing there, boy?’

  Thistle figured it was best not to wait around and discuss it, pushed past his bumbling confederate and made for the exit with all the speed he could manage. Felspar picked up a second behind him, almost knocked Thistle down coming out of the door, and the owner started to shout, and the whole thing went sideways.

  That they’d been noticed at all was Felspar’s fault. That there were two Cuckoos making their way upslope as Thistle came outside, strutting down the middle of the street just like they’d been waiting for him, that wasn’t nothing but bad luck. Officially they were the custodians, though everyone on the Fifth, which is to say everyone Thistle knew, just called them the Cuckoos, after those treasonous avians known to lay eggs in the nests of other birds, which then hatch early and destroy their clutch-mates. You almost never saw one so far downslope – there were always plenty hanging out by the docks but they were just there to make sure everything went smoothly with their pay-off, not to hassle anyone. What in the hell reason they had for being in the Points that day, Thistle never did learn.

  Nor did it matter. ‘Bolt,’ Thistle ordered Treble and Rat as soon as he’d stepped outside, and they didn’t need him to say it twice.

  As a breed the Cuckoos were not renowned for their competence, but then you hardly needed to be to notice four boys sprinting off in separate directions while a shop owner screamed at them. The first Cuckoo was old and fat, and Thistle didn’t have any worries about losing him. But the second was young and trim, with the slicked-back hair that they wore on the upper Rungs, and Thistle thought he might prove more trouble. They were both dressed the same, of course, in simple blue robes, and carrying a stout wood ferule with a noisemaker at the end that gave off a croaking sound when it was twirled.