Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  He was a scion of one of the lower bits of nobility, holding on to a name, a decaying manor in the provinces and very little else. He was big and strong and well formed, the muscles of his abdomen and arms clearly defined against the light. He never really did anything with all that meat, apart from occasionally carry her into bed, but then that was all she required of him. He was dressed in formal blue robes, which she had bought him some months back. Of course, he was never dressed in anything that she hadn’t bought him, nor did he make use of anything for which she had not already paid. He had been her lover for two years now – no, Eudokia corrected herself, only a year and a half. That it seemed longer was not, to her thinking, a particularly good sign.

  ‘Does the blue suit me, katkins?’

  ‘I’ve told you before never to call me that,’ Eudokia said, too involved in putting on her make-up to get properly angry.

  ‘I can’t help but think the green might go better with my eyes,’ he said, not hearing or not listening.

  ‘You look lovely as you are,’ she said, which was true but which she also hoped would shut him up.

  Quite the opposite effect, sad to say. ‘Do I please my little katkins?’ he asked, taking her by the arm and drawing her in nearer, reaching his other hand round to firmly grip her buttocks.

  Eudokia wondered, as she had wondered many times in the past, why men suddenly grew engorged just when any attempt at serious affection were certain to set one’s preparations back an hour. Presumably it was a veiled attempt at control, insistent that lust dominate any external considerations. Under different circumstances, Eudokia had no problem playing the submissive, even found it erotic. But, of course, that was play and tonight was mostly work. She pushed Heraclius away and went back to her make-up.

  And he seemed to forget it quickly enough, returning to his dresser to continue his own preparations. ‘Have you seen my gold chain?’

  ‘Did you check your closet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Check your closet.’

  Heraclius disappeared into said armoire, returned with a medal she had procured for him last year in recognition of a state service that he had never actually performed. ‘It was in the closet,’ he said, smiling that gorgeous smile that increasingly failed to hide the vacuity beneath.

  ‘Next time,’ Eudokia said, giving herself a final once-over before standing, ‘check before asking me.’

  He seemed dimly to recognise this as reproach.

  ‘Now remember, dear. Wait forty minutes, then slip out the back door and come in through the front.’

  Heraclius pouted, another affectation that he imagined to be ingratiating but which was really just insipid. ‘Must we truly?’

  ‘You’d rather we descend the main stairway arm in arm?’

  ‘Who would object? You know as well as I do that once the Revered Mother commits an indiscretion the whole court adopts it as custom.’

  This was more flattering than accurate, though it held a fair portion of honesty. In truth, Eudokia was little enough concerned about causing gossip. In matters political, there were still a handful of other players who imagined themselves her rival, but in the social arena, Eudokia’s position was as secure as if she had been seated on a mountain of skulls.

  ‘Well?’ Heraclius asked, drawing close enough to her that she could smell through his perfume to the scent of his flesh beneath. ‘Shall we throw caution to the winds and announce ourselves together? Why ever not?’

  When at all possible, Eudokia preferred not to lie. A lie was an admission of weakness, evidence that you needed to fear the target of your dishonesty. Occasionally imperative, never preferable and, in this circumstance, happily unnecessary. Eudokia allowed herself to be pulled tighter, gave Heraclius a light kiss where his neck joined his shoulder. ‘Because I don’t want you stealing any of my shine, darling,’ she said, retreating and smoothing out her dress. ‘Forty minutes, no sooner.’

  Eudokia left a sulking child in her bedchamber, though it did nothing to dampen her spirit.

  The herald announced her just as she reached the top of the staircase, and she descended with the slow grace that had long since become second nature. The party was in full swing – the chamber musicians talented, the dancers beautiful, the food excellent, the decor bright and stylish. This all but went without saying – it was her party, after all, and among her manifold other accomplishments, it was widely agreed by that swathe of Aelerian society whose opinion mattered that the Revered Mother had no close second when it came to playing host.

  Eudokia could see Prisca making a beeline for her almost as soon as she had reached the floor, a small, plump, dark-haired girl dressed in a perfect reproduction of the moment’s high fashion, though somehow without the personal style that would have rendered the costume complete. ‘Revered Mother, please, do you have a moment?’

  Prisca’s eyes were magnificently bright, and between that and her pleasant if lopsided smile, she managed to slip just barely onto this side of pretty. ‘Of course, darling. There’s a seat in the corner I’d be happy to fill. These shoes were not meant for standing.’

  Prisca so hummed with enthusiasm that it was a struggle for her to remain silent during the minute-long trek to the side alcove. When they arrived she all but flung herself into the cushions, began her chatter even before Eudokia was seated.

  ‘I can’t wait any longer, Mother, I swear, not another moment. He’s all I think about, day and night.’

  Eudokia made soothing sounds and scanned the gathering, keeping careful count of the faces, ensuring that the evening’s actors had all arrived.

  ‘Father’s dead set against it of course.’

  ‘Fathers are always against their daughters marrying,’ Eudokia said, forcing her eyes back to the girl. ‘It’s the way of the world.’

  ‘He says Galerius is only interested in our money, and that we haven’t very much anyway, and that if I only wait a little while longer he’ll make a match that will have me forget Galerius completely.’

  ‘Your father is a wise man,’ Eudokia half lied.

  ‘He’s a fool! I could never forget Galerius. As soon ask the flower to forget the sun!’

  ‘Ask the flower to forget the sun’ had been the refrain to one of the more grating of last season’s popular ditties. Eudokia had forbidden it to be played in her presence, but the thing had taken off anyway. Likely Prisca didn’t even realise she’d stolen the line.

  ‘He’s the noblest man in the whole kingdom,’ she continued, ‘and the handsomest!’ Though Eudokia felt confident that it was the second that Prisca found more important. ‘And his eyes, Mother, have you seen his eyes?’

  ‘Both of them.’

  ‘You mock me, Mother, and perhaps you are right to do so. I know I can sound like a girl, but my love is as true and honest as anyone ever felt for anyone.’

  This was a rather definitive statement to be making of such a vast swathe of the world and its history, Eudokia thought. ‘Your passion does you credit, but your father’s will is iron. You know as well as I that his consent is necessary for your betrothal, and that he will not give it.’

  ‘Revered Mother, surely there must be something that you could do?’

  ‘Me?’ Eudokia said it as if the idea had never occurred to her. ‘It saddens me to say this, but the vagaries of fortune have placed your father and me in somewhat opposing camps. I don’t imagine he’d take kindly to any suggestions on my part.’

  Prisca said nothing for a time, her face flushing rose, trying to work up the courage to spit out her request. It was some way from fascinating, especially as Eudokia already knew the punchline – had written the joke in its entirety, in point of fact. ‘Revered Mother, if only Galerius had some government position, something that would prove his suitability, I’m sure I could convince my father to allow our marriage. Oh, Mother, you don’t suppose … I don’t suppose … you don’t imagine …’

  But even Eudokia had limits to her patience, and whi
le she would have preferred Prisca to be the first one to raise the issue, she couldn’t very well wait around all night for the girl to remember her words. ‘That I might find an office befitting a man of Galerius’s talent and ability?’

  Prisca nodded frantically.

  Eudokia struck her index finger against her cheekbone twice, in even rhythm. ‘Voting for Second Consul is next month. I could put in a strong word for him among those electors who remain unaware of his quality.’ Which would be the entirety of the population, Prisca excluded.

  The girl was so beside herself with gratitude that she seemed on the verge of crying, a possibility that would only enmesh Eudokia further, and which she moved quickly to avoid. ‘Think nothing of it, child, think nothing of it at all. To do my small part to bring together such a powerful love – well, I’m not so old as to have forgotten what youth was like.’

  But that proved to be too much for Prisca, who succumbed completely to the tide of emotion, throwing her arms round Eudokia’s shoulders and weeping salt water into her dress. Eudokia let her continue on like that for a few moments, somewhat less than thrilled, before pushing her away lightly. ‘Find a bathroom, girl,’ Eudokia said. ‘Your make-up is all a-run.’

  Prisca managed this task on her own, and Eudokia retreated to the main room. Irene was in the corner looking painfully beautiful, surrounded by a semicircle of men with ravenous eyes. Eudokia was slightly surprised to find Heraclius among the wolves. Presumably he imagined he was engendering some sense of jealousy by paying more attention to her handmaiden than to her, but in fact she was thrilled to have him out of her hair for a few hours, busy as she was. Irene gave Eudokia a little nod as she came in, then turned her attention back towards her suitors.

  Konstantinos had arrived some time earlier, and the gala had predictably and gratifyingly celebrated his arrival with a sustained bout of applause, applause that he did a less than competent job of pretending he did not enjoy. There were moments when her adopted son looked so very much like her husband Phocas that it caught the breath in her throat. The same hair, dark as a clouded evening, the same brown eyes, at once jovial and vital, the same high cheekbones, the same shoulders. Phocas had been dead for almost three decades now, cut down at Scarlet Fields, the defining battle of the Seventh Other War, and still hardly a week passed that she didn’t think of him. If he had lived, how different it all would have been.

  Eudokia broke herself free from memory, went to save her stepson from his current predicament, cornered by the senatorial grandee of a rival faction.

  ‘Our forefathers—’ Manuel was pontificating, but Konstantinos was quick to take Eudokia’s arrival as an opportunity to interrupt the senator, so Eudokia never enjoyed the benefit of whatever scintillating bit of wisdom the senator was about to bestow.

  ‘Revered Mother,’ Konstantinos said, greeting Eudokia with a quick kiss. Manuel settled for a stiff bow. The Incorruptible, they called him, though what vice could be found in exchanging basic pleasantries, Eudokia could not figure.

  ‘Dearest child,’ Eudokia returned. ‘Senator.’

  Manuel Ogust, senator and protector of the Empty Throne, was easy to spot, inevitably the worst-dressed person in a crowd. As part of his claim to an anachronistically rigid sense of morality, Manuel steadfastly refused to adhere to fashion, making do with an undyed robe of coarse cotton – the same style of dress that had been popular in the days when the Throne had been filled. Supposedly, at least, though Eudokia found it hard to imagine she had ever had an ancestor so lackwitted as to wear hemp when silk was available. The robes were a clever bit of political propaganda, but they’d have served as well had he worn the costume in public, and made do in private with some form of dress that did not hold odour as a jail does convicts.

  Apart from his choice of wardrobe, there was little enough in the man of interest. He was a fine speaker, if you liked them loud and easy to understand – which for most people was the very height of genius. He had never taken a bribe in his life, or at least never been caught doing so. He ate simply, abstained from drink, eschewed luxuries of all kinds. The common folk considered his abstemiousness evidence of the most rigorous sort of morality, but Eudokia knew it to be nothing more than a fetish. That a man preferred sackcloth to silk was no evidence of moral genius, and if Manuel’s vices weren’t quite as obviously on display as his virtues, still they were clear enough if you looked.

  Like everyone else, Eudokia had heard the rumour that beneath his robe of homespun cloth, he wore undergarments of the sort frowned on by the more decent type of whores. Eudokia had trouble imagining someone so boring could have such an interesting secret, though she liked believing it anyway.

  ‘I was just warning your son on his latest victories,’ Manuel said.

  ‘Congratulating, I think you mean.’

  ‘I choose my words with care,’ Manuel said, eager to find offence in anything.

  By Enkedri, it was like having a conversation with a rabid dog. ‘Your eloquence, of course, is renowned throughout the furthest reaches of the Commonwealth,’ Eudokia said, hoping to placate him.

  Manuel swallowed the encomium smoothly and continued. ‘Warned because victory is the bread of tyrants, as it is of fools. The people gorge themselves on easy successes – on the celebrations thrown in our honour, on the trains of foreign captives, on cheap wars of choice. They begin to think that all conflict is so inexpensive, and so fruitful, and they grow loud in their demands that it continue. Continue endlessly, without regard for the wisdom of the contest or the justness of the cause. A republic cannot be an empire.’

  ‘The pirate-lords of the Baleferic Isles were a threat to all of our commerce in the south seas,’ Konstantinos said. Manuel had snapped his gaze back onto the boy as soon as he had begun to speak, Eudokia forgotten entirely. ‘We had no choice but to go to war against them.’

  The war against the pirates had been nothing of the sort, but a punitive expedition against a weak and scattered force of bandits and renegades, leaderless, each island-despot leaping at the chance to avoid being executed by the vastly superior forces she had arranged for her stepson to command. That it was being touted as a victory of such importance by the common folk and even a few of the more foolish senators could be attributed to some combination of Eudokia’s own machinations and the inherent gullibility of all people. More the latter than the former, most likely, but a fair deal of the former as well. She found the realisation that her propaganda had apparently been so effective as to seduce Konstantinos himself to be more disturbing than surprising. He had his father’s shoulders, and eyes, and skill with a blade, and easy way with people. But the savage genius that had made her husband, even in the short time he had lived, one of the dominant men in the Commonwealth – that, sad to say, young Konstantinos would never possess.

  That was fine, though. That was what Eudokia was there for, after all.

  ‘We have been paying off the pirates since before I was sworn to office,’ Manuel was saying. ‘A thousand gold solidus each spring, and our merchants left free to ply their trade. Do you know what your little expedition cost? Thirty thousand solidus, and that’s not including the upkeep on the garrisons. It’s a strange victory that costs thirty times that of defeat. One wonders at the bargain.’

  ‘No bargain at all, Senator,’ Konstantinos began, gradually speaking louder in an attempt to be noticed without giving notice of it. ‘The dignity of the Empty Throne is not for bargaining, not to be sold for twelve months of peace, not to be bartered away that we might save a few gold. Are we a nation of bookkeepers, to prize riches above honour? Have we truly decayed so far from the nobility of our ancestors?’

  Disadvantageous comparisons to the ancients were Manuel’s stock-in-trade, and you could see that he did not appreciate being on the other side of the cliché. ‘The dignity of the Empty Throne rests on the happiness of its people, on their commerce and on their labour. It took two thousand men to break the back of the pirates, two thousand so
uls who will never till a field or bring their crops to market, who will never dig foundations or erect a wall. The Empty Throne counts her children dearly, does not fritter them away for war’s transient glory.’

  ‘These dead men you speak of,’ Konstantinos began, and one would have been hard pressed to argue that he had not broken into outright oratory by this point, ‘they are not abstractions to me, not numbers to be charted on an abacus. These were my comrades, brothers in arms. If you think I take the loss of a single one of them lightly, Senator, than you have gravely mistaken me. The men who have fallen in my service, in the service of the Commonwealth, to keep her free and safe – they were no strangers. Nikephoros and Romanos who were lost when their ship went down with all hands, Basil of the laughing eyes, who stormed the last redoubt before being caught with an arrow. Their names are written on the innermost fold of my heart, and I can assure you – not a one of them would wish to be back amidst the living, if being so meant tarnishing the honour of their beloved motherland.’

  Konstantinos could add necromancy to his list of other talents, apparently, though Manuel was taken back by the sheer force of his personality. ‘Forgive me, if my words have given offence.’

  ‘No apology is necessary, Senator. You speak what you believe to be in the best interests of the Empty Throne – no one can fault you for your patriotism, though I believe in this particular regard, you are mistaken.’ He gave an appropriately decorous bow. ‘If you would excuse me, I’m afraid I need a word with my dear mother.’ He took her by the arm and walked her casually away from the scene of his victory.

  ‘Basil of the laughing eyes?’ Eudokia asked, bringing her glass up to cover her lips. ‘I’m afraid I never had the opportunity to meet the man. Who were his people, do remind me?’

  ‘Not my best work,’ Konstantinos admitted. ‘But he seemed to lap it up easily enough.’