Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  They began to see other parties in the distance. Each had begun their journey at a different quay, but the wiles of the velvet deer had ensured they progressed towards their final destination. By custom they were not to speak to each other until they had been greeted by the hostess, and so each group continued as if ignorant of the others.

  The central pavilion had been built over a small lake, atop a floating wooden platform. An intricate net of walkways radiated out from the tent, the freshly painted banisters wrapped with vines and flowers. The pavilion itself looked like a large silk tent, coloured verdant green to match the forest, but Calla somehow felt certain there was more to it, and was eager to discover whether she was correct. It wasn’t until she grew close that she realised the velvet deer had disappeared back into the forest, their purpose fulfilled. An unpleasant reminder that time continued its progress.

  The Prime stood on the pathway leading into the floating web, greeting each guest in turn. She was dressed in a skintight gown that covered her completely from neck to ankle but somehow hid nothing. Her hair was shaped into a sphere fully nine links in diameter, stained jet black. Her face was painted with gold leaf. Her eyes were a blue so dark as to be nearly black. She did not smile, but had she, you’d have seen her teeth were white and straight and perfect. Beaming down from the apex of her comb was a diamond every bit the size of a fist – the fist of an Eternal, to clarify, not a human. It was the only outward signifier of her position.

  ‘Prime,’ the Lord said, performing the bow of greeting fluidly.

  ‘My Lord of the Red Keep,’ she said, returning the courtesy. ‘I greet you on behalf of the Lord of the Ivory Towers and the Lady of the East Estate, on the occasion of their binding.’

  Those Above consummated sexual relationships with the frequency and ritual of a bowel movement, but to commit oneself fully to another was as rare as a double moon, and one celebrated with all the extravagance of which the Eldest were capable. It meant not only that the participants were to adhere to the most rigid standards of monogamy, but also that the pair intended to reproduce, an event always rare among the Eternal and particularly so in the current age.

  ‘I accept your greeting,’ the Aubade said. ‘And I hope that their union is a fertile one, that brings honour to the Roost and to their line.’

  This was part of the formula, the same exchange that the Prime was waiting to perform with the rest of the guests in line behind them. No doubt there was more that they might have said to each other; but decorum reigned over everything in the life of the High, and anyway, the evening was far from over.

  Calla followed the Aubade across the walkway, felt it sway faintly. The lake itself was marvelously clear, swarms of iridescent fish darting through the depths, ebullient and wondrous and forgotten as soon as she caught close sight of the pavilion. Twelve cells surrounded the main chamber, separated by pure silk walls of different colours and complementary patterns, doorways cut into it on each side. By some cunning contrivance each wall had been set to revolve in alternating directions and at slightly different speeds, and occasionally the openings would align and one could see deeper into the heart of the pavilion, at the pleasures awaiting therein. Whatever engine drove its revolutions was invisible, and made so little noise as to be drowned out by the partygoers and the soft music.

  In the first chamber the walls were azure with gold trim, and a staff of humans awaited to take the slippers of the new arrivals, and to wash their feet in basins of heated water. In the second chamber the walls were orange with pink offsetting, and cool drinks and warm towels were presented to revive the guests after their journey. In the third the walls were crimson with sterling silver, and couches had been set up around bright crystalline water pipes. They continued like that, each room more fabulous than the next, and hard though Calla tried she would not be able to remember all of them afterwards.

  Deeper into the pavilion a cell had been set aside for gifts, and the bearers who had accompanied Calla and the Lord were finally able to relieve themselves of their burdens. After doing so a member of the Prime’s staff led them back the way they’d come, out of the pavilion and presumably to some sort of waiting area. Only the Eldest and their highest-ranking servants were allowed to enjoy the cornucopia of delights the Prime had prepared. If Calla did not give the three porters a second thought, it must be said in her defence that there was much for her to think of at that moment.

  With the gifts delivered and the bearers gone, Calla was able to spend a few minutes exploring the pavilion on her own. Some of the High insisted on keeping their servants near them at all times, but the Aubade was not one to have his hand held. In a sea-blue chamber further towards the core Calla found Sandalwood inspecting one of the silk curtains, looking handsome in his long green robes, if not quite young. He had been the Seneschal for the Lord of the Sidereal Citadel for fifteen years, though she had known him far longer, since she was a small child. He had been like an elder brother to her, growing up. He had been more than that for a time. What they were now, it was hard to say. A friend, at the very least.

  ‘The Pavilion is our work,’ he began. ‘It took my Lord a week to conceive of it, and us six months to build. It’ll be destroyed come morning,’ he continued, wistfully but not unhappily. The Lord of the Sidereal Citadel, known among the low-born as the Wright, was famed as the most brilliant and forward-thinking of all the steam workers who graced the First Rung.

  ‘It is magnificent,’ Calla said, because it was and because she wanted him to be happy. She wanted everyone to be happy, that night; and it even seemed like everyone might be.

  ‘It was no small thing to get each cell to run opposite the next,’ he said, shaking his head ruefully. Though in fact he was the sort of person who never seemed happier than when he was in the midst of solving some technical problem. ‘Has there ever been anything like it?’

  The floor, which in the rest of the pavilion consisted of woven reeds, was in this chamber alone formed of one unbroken plate of glass, offering unobstructed views of the lake below. Bobbing along beneath was an array of floating crystal lanterns, through some genius of construction inextinguishable. Prismatic carp swarmed around these bubbles of illumination, while shifting-hued octopods crawled along the lake floor. Moustachioed catfish, so fat and mean-looking that even the squid seemed uninterested in disturbing them, floated lazily through the water grasses, proud as any Eternal.

  ‘No,’ Calla said confidently. ‘There has not.’

  He smiled and trailed his hand down her back. She leaned into him, and they stood together silently for a few moments.

  The Woodcock’s hour chimed, signalling that it was time for the ceremony to begin. The guests, four-and five-fingered alike, found themselves filtering back outside, to the long circular platforms extending out from the main pavilion. Half of the Eternal in the Roost were crowded out along the floating deck, along with their human servants, and Calla could not find much of a view.

  Although for once that evening, there was not very much to see. The Eldest had no gods to swear by, and there was no officiant to perform any ritual. The Lord of the Ivory Towers and the Lady of the East Estate, each dressed in traditional and elaborate finery, swore loyalty to each other, gave succinct but lovely promises of fidelity. Then Those Above gave a whistling cheer in their foreign tongue, the humans remaining silent, and the couple joined hands and walked deeper into the pavilion, and deeper still, the spinning sections quickly obscuring them from view. They would continue on to the heart of the tent, and there they would consummate the union, the blessings of their act shaking centrifugally out to all those in attendance.

  With the departure of the couple, the festivities could begin in earnest. Drink flowed more freely, Those Above spoke louder; even the humans began to unwind, to flirt and chatter among themselves. Between the warm afternoon and the long walk over and, perhaps, the libations in which she had indulged, Calla found herself a touch overhot, was pleased to forsake the pleasu
res inside the pavilion for the cool evening air.

  And by now it was well and truly evening, a fact reinforced by the arrival of the glow-bugs, whole flocks of them appearing as if by magic. Another product of the Lady’s long breeding, each individual insect produced light in a different colour, though by some strange instinct those of a similar hue grouped together, swarming clouds of crimson and cerulean and heliotrope winking in and out of the firmament. Hanging from the boughs of the trees were open silver cages baited with some sort of sweet or scent that drew in the flickering creatures, creating a living source of illumination softer and clearer than any lantern.

  White-robed servants brought trays of food and drink for Eldest and human alike. The edibles were as magnificent as everything else that evening, though Calla could not bring herself to eat more than a few nibbles. She felt as if she could subsist on nothing but the warmth of the evening, on the sounds coming from the forest, on the reflection of the moon against the lake, on beauty itself.

  Tonight’s festivities aside, the Wellborn saw sex as a pleasant indulgence and little more. In and of itself it indicated no particular passion, or even affection, nothing beyond a brief spark of lust. Like their other customs, this had filtered down to the humans who served them, and to the higher reaches of the Roost more generally. Calla noticed no few members of other households drag smiling eyes over her body; found herself doing the same, nakedly and without shame. And why not? If ever there was a time for love to stand triumphant, was it not tonight?

  She could see the Wright and the Lady Sweet Blossom talking quietly, standing near the southern bridge, and then the next moment they were eloping into the foliage. Here and there the woods played echo to the faint sounds of lovemaking, another strand to be added to the chorus of bell crickets and nightbirds. Calla drank a second glass of the cinnamon liquor she had been given at the start of their journey, and could feel it in her stomach and her cheeks and in the tips of her hair.

  Amidst the soft bustle of joy the Lord leaned over one of the rails, staring out at the lake and the night beyond. He had not moved in a long time, and so Calla had not moved either, standing silently a short way off. There was much that made the Lord unique, Calla thought, even among his own kind. It was not only that he excelled in swordsmanship, in the strange and subtle movements of their dance, in the even stranger and more subtle workings of their poetry – indeed, it was these things least of all. The Lord carried with him, in a way no other Eldest could be said to, an ineffable sense of destiny, or of tragedy, which are perhaps the same thing. It was this that set him apart from the run of his fellows – not that he was their superior, but that he did not seem to value that superiority.

  Calla was not the only one to notice it. Household servants shot him sidelong glances, lost themselves in the perfection of his face, stumbled as they walked and looked away, blushing. Sandalwood, his obligations discharged now that his lord had retired for the evening, stood silently within earshot, though Calla had to admit the possibility that it was she whom his attentions had fixed on, rather than her lord.

  Nor was it the Five-Fingered alone on whom the Aubade exerted such a pull. The Prime herself broke off a conversation to approach him, a pair of human servants in her train. ‘Who could judge, between the moon and the Lord of the Red Keep?’

  The Aubade took a long time to wrench free of his contemplation. ‘The Lord of the Red Keep will not be here to look at tomorrow evening.’

  ‘And how does that weigh the scales? Do we herald the Lord for his transience, or the moon for its fidelity?’

  ‘Is a thing not more beautiful because we know it will end? Indeed, is its end not what makes it beautiful?’

  ‘If past evenings are any indication,’ the Prime continued, the peerless diamond above her forehead reflecting the light, ‘the moon will leave us sometime before the morning. And we will have long hours to lament its absence, and to hope for its return. And when it blesses us again, what joy we will feel at its homecoming, how we will cherish its light, for ever constant in its inconstancy.’

  ‘Of the moon one may speak of for ever,’ the Aubade said. ‘But we who stand beneath it mark time with the beating of our hearts. Eternity is no blessing to us, as impossible as it is unwanted.’

  ‘Impossible, certainly – but unwanted?’ She brought herself to stand directly in front of the Aubade and set two fingertips against his chest. ‘Would it really be so terrible to spend an eternity in my arms?’

  If the Lord thought so, he did not say it. They stood there, silhouetted against the evening, and Calla swelled with the beauty of it, of the night and of everything that she had seen over the last few hours. It all seemed so perfect that she thought just then of dying. And how wonderful the Aubade had been, and how glorious the Prime! And how much she hoped that they might perform the night’s ceremony themselves during her short span, and imagine the festivities that would accompany such a union!

  Calla sighed. Sandalwood looked up at her sharply, then back at the lake.

  The two Eternal remained still for a moment, silhouetted against the night but somehow beyond it. And then the Lady took the Lord’s hand and led him off the bridgework and further into the evening.

  Calla held the cuff of her robe up to her eyes for a moment. Sandalwood, ever decorous, avoided noticing. When the Lord and Lady were well out of earshot, however, he leaned over and spoke quietly. ‘You grow careless,’ he said. ‘It is not enough to be a mute observer, you must be a deaf one as well.’

  ‘They must know that we understand something,’ Calla responded.

  ‘Who knows what they know? It was not so long ago that the Seneschal of the Iron Mistress was put to death for overhearing his lady.’

  ‘It was a hundred years past.’

  ‘How much time do you think that is to them?’ Sandalwood put his hand atop hers. ‘I wish you would heed my advice.’

  And herein lay the rub, because first and foremost, Calla knew, he wished that she would heed his advice regarding the proposal of marriage that had been standing between them for the better part of five years. The first man she had ever loved, and she could remember why – older than her but still handsome, his cheeks sharp lines and his chest the same. Clever and wise, which were not at all the same thing, and kindly, or as much as you could expect from a man. But Sandalwood had been her father’s protégé and best friend, and seemed bent on trying to fill his absence. Calla had loved her father, esteemed him immensely, missed him daily. But she did not think he required a replacement.

  All the same it was such a beautiful night that there was no sense in feeling anything the least unpleasant, and by unspoken agreement the subject was dropped. The nightbirds had awoken to greet the rising moon, which was full in the clear sky. There was enough light to make out the skin of a lover, but not so much as to rob the evening of its secrets. Calla and Sandalwood sipped slowly from their drinks, and looked out over everything there was to see. And then, after a few minutes had passed, she took his hand as the Lady had taken the Lord’s, and walked him deeper out into the gardens, and they nested down amidst the wonder.

  7

  The Fifth Rung would see blood that night. It was too hot for anything else.

  At street parties and in taverns guys looked at guys looking at their girls (or girls they wanted to be their girls), started cracking their knuckles and drinking to get mean. Long-suffering mothers stared across dinner tables at their progeny and saw voracious ingrates swallowing every groat they had and whining for more, nasty little brats that would get what was coming to them, ought to have got it sooner. Fathers looked at their wives over bowls of burnt stew, and how could you burn stew, worst cook on the damn Rung but she ate enough of it, must have gained two clove in the last year. Long-simmering feuds broke out into open violence, friends became enemies, enemies became corpses. There would be work for the Cuckoos come the morrow, if the Cuckoos ever did any work. Since they didn’t, there would be work for the gravediggers.<
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  In the Barrow, Thistle and Felspar and Treble and Rat and the two Calc brothers and a couple of other hangers-on were getting drunk on black whiskey in the shadow of the pipes. The pumphouse had been out of use since before Thistle’s father’s father had been pushed out of Thistle’s father’s father’s mother. Two generations of hardbitten Barrow kids had been using it as a squat ever since, and left behind ample evidence of their existence. A cenotaph of cigarettes, a sepulchre of broken bottles.

  It was two months since they’d had a good scuffle with the kids down by the docks, during the high-summer festival, and they’d come off worse from it, driven back to the Barrow in a hail of cobblestones and broken bricks. Course the dockers had been a few boys up on them, and had got lucky, it was universally agreed by those present at the pumphouse that evening, and anyway tonight was the night when they’d even up the tally, even up and maybe go a few ahead.

  Thistle had a half-bottle in him and stood twenty links tall. Would have if he’d been standing, at least, though in actual fact he was sitting on a step, letting Petal braid his hair. Petal had hit womanhood before her fourteenth birthday, shot up two links and gained weight in the sort of places a fellow might notice. At the time it had been a source of intimidation to the boys, who were indisputably still that and not men. But a few years down the line Thistle felt distinctly differently about the flesh that was straining its way out of the cheap cotton dress she wore.

  ‘I don’t see why you’ve got to go down there at all,’ she was saying, hands threading Thistle’s black hair deftly. ‘Y’all just like to make trouble.’ Amber and Button echoed agreement, the latter seated happily on Felspar’s lap, the former wedged between the first and second Calc brothers. There might be some dispute over who was in charge among the males, but there was no such confusion for that equivalent portion of the Barrow’s fairer sex. Petal’s opinion was the law, and better than, because the Cuckoos didn’t generally bother to come this far downslope and ensure it was upheld, while Petal had no problem cracking the whip should anyone get out of hand.