Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘Your Worship,’ he said, and all but collapsed to his ankles in executing the bow.

  ‘Revered Mother will do fine,’ Eudokia said, taking a seat in her chair. Phrattes she allowed to remain standing. ‘We Aelerians are a humble people,’ she lied baldly, ‘and have no need for the grand forms of address that bejewel the nobility of other lands.’

  ‘Why be jealous of title, when your own quality is so manifestly evident to all the clear-seeing and right-thinking?’

  Eudokia couldn’t help but be impressed with the flattery – she rarely heard praise executed so well. ‘Sit, please.’

  Phrattes made sure to lift his robes before doing so. ‘The great man has been approached,’ he said simply.

  It was another mark in Phrattes’ favour that he knew to wrap up his pleasantries swiftly. ‘And?’

  ‘The great man is interested in peace, as are all right-thinking people.’

  ‘A blessing to be reckoned above all others,’ Eudokia agreed. ‘And what would the great man want in return?’

  ‘He has let it be known that he would accept forty thousand in exchange for his support.’

  Forty thousand meant that Phrattes had been asked for thirty and thought to pocket the rest. She noticed the gold sheen of his belt buckle and revised her estimate. Phrattes had been asked for twenty-five. ‘And what has he promised, to expect such honey?’

  ‘The great promise little to the small, as Her Worshipfulness well knows. And the small know to insist on nothing, when invited to the tables of the great.’

  ‘It is wise to keep one’s sense of scale,’ Eudokia agreed. ‘But we are in Aeleria, which sees distinction only in merit. And in Aeleria, we consider it unwise to purchase a thing without seeing it.’

  ‘With the coin in his account, I think the great man would be willing to put something in writing.’

  Eudokia thought this over as she finished her tea. ‘Thirty-five,’ she said, setting aside her cup and standing. If Phrattes was clever he would know to accept his honorarium with the same grace that he had exhibited throughout the rest of the conversation.

  As indeed he did. Phrattes put his cup on the side table and rose with a grace and speed admirable in such a heavy man. ‘It will require the most delicate negotiations,’ he said, bowing neatly, ‘but I shall see that they are performed.’

  Eudokia gave him a kiss in farewell, tried not to wrinkle her nose at the cardamom.

  Back at the table, Leon had decided to take back with the hawk, and had made her next move as instructed. ‘Have I told you yet,’ he asked, hesitating between two pieces, ‘how little that ribbon suits you?’

  Eudokia wore a stretch of bright crimson over her forearm, an accessory that had gained favour across wide swathes of the city’s population in the last month. ‘Red is not my colour,’ she admitted. ‘But when national honour is at issue, vanity needs go by the wayside.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised that you felt such passion on the subject of Oscan.’

  Oscan had been Aeleria’s outpost in the north-east, the boundary between the Commonwealth and Salucia. As part of the indemnity that had been forced on Aeleria after the Others had intervened between the two nations, it had been made a free city, no longer part of the Commonwealth proper. Meant to punish Aeleria for its belligerence, it had ended up as a perpetual source of conflict between the two countries and a wellspring of discontent to the Aelerian populace.

  ‘The plight of our beloved countrymen, split from the bosom of the Commonwealth by an unjust peace, is always in my mind. I spent three weeks in Oscan, as a girl, during my first tour of the Aelerian lands. A beautiful city, white stone and green gardens.’ Of course Eudokia had never come within five hundred cables of Oscan, but she wished her nephew luck in proving it.

  ‘Senator Gratian said something very similar, not two days past.’

  Appropriately enough, as she all but wrote the man’s speeches. Still, it was a good reminder to be less free with her talk in the future. It would hardly do to make people think that she was cribbing her best lines from that halfwit. ‘A man of great wisdom, the senator.’

  ‘You should try not to smile when you say that,’ Leon said, moving an eagle.

  Eudokia stole one of his wrens. ‘Duly noted.’

  He hadn’t seen that coming, which disappointed her, but what disappointed her more was that he let her see it on his face, and allowed it to affect his next words. ‘All the pith and genius of the senator notwithstanding, I fear that his side will be disappointed. Scouring the Baleferic Isles of pirates is one thing – it costs little, people enjoy easy victories and public festivals. But the people haven’t quite forgotten what happened the last time we feuded with Salucia, and the heavy, four-fingered hands of their protectors.’

  ‘They haven’t forgotten at all,’ Eudokia said. ‘Which is why you’re wrong.’

  ‘War with Salucia will hardly sit well with the merchants.’

  ‘Salucia won’t be going anywhere. For a season the trading fleets will be sent south rather than north. When next they return, the markets will be rich with silk and spices, and the native traders desperate for our steel and slaves – the only difference is they won’t need to pay a tariff to sell them.’

  ‘You expect the moneychangers to see beyond their interests?’

  ‘I rarely expect anyone to see past what’s immediately in front of them. Which is why it’s really best that those rare few blessed with vision make a point of exercising it. We call that leadership,’ Eudokia said, pushing her wren forward innocuously. ‘In truth, you overcomplicate everything. The people dislike Salucia because they have always disliked Salucia, because their parents did and their parents before them. Oscan is a poisoned pill; if anyone in that misbegotten swamp had a lick of sense they’d never have accepted it. It would not require coal oil to start a conflagration.’

  ‘And the Others? Do you rank them so low, as well?’

  Eudokia smiled but didn’t answer. In the long silence, Leon turned back to inspecting the board, seeking some way out of his predicament. He was a tenacious sort, her nephew, and it rankled him to be beaten so soundly.

  But even the most bull-headed of men will face the inevitable, given enough time. ‘The game is lost,’ Leon said.

  ‘For the last three moves.’

  ‘Perhaps even sooner.’

  ‘When you sat down.’

  Leon smiled. ‘I should have taken that wren, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘It is not enough to be intelligent,’ Eudokia said, setting up the pieces for a second game. ‘One must also be vicious.’

  13

  The Source was the most singular engineering feat that had ever been attempted. To create it had required the labour of a dozen generations of humans, two dozen, perhaps more, perhaps many more, slaving away in the dark, hollowing out the mountain and crafting the vast system of pipework that pumped water from the Bay of Eirann to the summit of the Roost. The Conclave, as the structure surrounding the Source was called, was a budding flower of white marble and pure gold, with its face half open to the sky. There were humans throughout the world who would have drowned their children to get a look at the facade, and cheerfully made the rest of the family into corpses at the thought of taking a peek inside. Here the official policy of the Eldest was hammered out. Here, today, at this very moment, the destiny of a dozen human lands was being written. It was no exaggeration to suggest that Calla was standing at the very navel of existence.

  All this being true, Calla strained with every fibre of her not inconsiderable will to stifle the yawn that had been working its way up through her diaphragm over the course of the last five minutes. Her legs ached and her mouth was dry and she had a desire to urinate that was rapidly moving from irritant to a source of major concern. Most of the rest of the Eternal seemed to regard the affair with a similar lack of interest, at least in so far as they had chosen not to attend this month’s gathering. The great amphitheatre was half empty, vacant benches outnu
mbering the full. In Calla’s memory, admittedly very brief by the standards of the High, she could not recall it ever being otherwise.

  For their part, the servants in attendance also seemed uninterested, though at least they had incomprehension as an excuse. It was an open question, the degree to which her fellow seneschals understood the High Tongue. Certainly, even the least accomplished among them could claim a basic understanding of the language, the greetings and honorifics, simple articles. Sandalwood and some of the cleverer ones no doubt understood more than that, though being clever they were loath to show it.

  But no human could claim anything close to her own degree of competence, Calla knew this as a fact, as she knew that her fluency owed nothing to her own ability, or at least not much, and everything to the book. In the distant memories of her childhood she could see it clearly, her father at his desk, studying it with one eye always on the door. Twelve generations it had been handed down, from her many-times grandfather Felum, who had been seneschal to the Aubade’s father, impossible as that seemed. Hundreds of years of effort into understanding the language of Those Above, effort that would have been repaid with the severest cruelty had it ever been discovered. ‘Read it every day,’ her father had told her when finally giving in to her demands to study it, ‘but only add when you are certain. And for the sake of everything, never, never speak of it.’ Calla had kept to these commandments even as a child, and doubly so since the death of her father had made the book her own exclusive charge.

  ‘Then we’re agreed,’ the Prime said, jolting Calla back into the present, ‘the tithe from Salucia to be set at seventy slate of iron, forty slate of silver, and three hundred of grain?’

  There was no official response to her query, but then the rules of procedure in the Conclave were curiously informal. There were no votes taken, and any High was allowed to speak for as long as they wished, whenever they wished. Decisions were reached as part of a broad consensus, after every participant felt that they had expressed themselves as fully as they desired. Among humans it would have been a recipe for anarchy. That it had endured since the Founding was evidence of how different the Four-Fingered were from the Five.

  ‘That settles external business,’ the Prime said. ‘Now to move on to the Roost itself—’

  ‘If you would excuse me, Prime,’ the Aubade interrupted, ‘in fact that is not quite all of it.’

  The Aubade was dressed in emerald silk robes tight enough to show the muscles of his chest. Round his neck hung a chain of sapphires, like the petals of an orchid. Calla had had no inkling that he was going to speak, all of a sudden her great swell of boredom receded with his first word.

  ‘If my siblings have read the most recent dispatch from the Sentinel of the Southern Reach, they know that in the last six months alone, the Aelerians have established themselves as the dominant power in the Baleferic Isles and won a signal victory in the Western Marches.’

  Calla supposed with something resembling certainty that the majority of Those Above had not read the most recent dispatch from the Sentinel of the Southern Reach. The machinations and manoeuvres of the human nations to the west were of less interest to most of the four-fingered inhabitants of the Roost than the latest bit of steamwork, or the day’s carnal gossip. It was an attitude that had trickled down towards the Roostborn humans as well, who often had only the most distant idea of what lay beyond the boundaries of the Fifth Rung. Calla herself, if she were to be honest, would have to admit that she had only the faintest notion of what exactly the Western Marches were, and none at all as to the location of the Baleferic Isles.

  The one exception to this rule was of course the Sentinels themselves, the seven Wellborn who oversaw the human nations, and who were the source of the often-ignored intelligence that returned to the Roost. It was not a coveted position. A Sentinel held their post for twenty-five years, a quarter of a century in exile. When they left, a stalk of their hair was ceremonially removed and burned, never to grow back, a mark of pride – or of shame, it was unclear. Upon their return a Sentinel was required to spend another five years in a special demesne in the east of the city, in quarantine lest their pollution spread.

  ‘I thank our sibling for bringing this fact to our attention,’ said the Lord of the House of Kind Lament. Quietly, and not to his face, the Lord of the House of Kind Lament was known among the Roostborn as ‘the Glutton’, for the love and dedication he showed towards his table. Though, in truth, like all the other Eternal, there seemed to be no excess flesh anywhere on his person, and he stood in the Conclave long-limbed and beautiful.

  The Aubade continued as if he had not heard the interruption – even by the standards of his species, the Aubade had a magnificent talent for disdain. ‘She furthermore informs us that their Senate has been making worrying claims upon the former Aelerian city of Oscan – which, my siblings will recall, was the price that we demanded twenty-five years ago for their temerity in advancing on Salucia.’

  ‘We are all well aware of the Roost’s recent history,’ the Glutton said.

  ‘And yet you seem to learn so little by it,’ the Aubade replied.

  ‘I have perused the Sentinel’s missive,’ the Prime said, in an attempt to check the growing dispute, ‘and wonder what point the Lord of the Red Keep wishes to raise regarding it?’

  ‘When we smashed the Aelerians, we did so to check their continued northward expansion, and to ensure that they failed to become the dominant human power on the continent. Only the first was realised. Though they have turned their attentions on nations to the south and west, away from our own interests, the naked ambition remains unchanged.’

  ‘My sibling’s dislike of Aeleria is well known,’ the Lord of the House of Kind Lament said. ‘His vision on this matter is not unclouded.’

  In the time of her grandfather five steps removed, the Aubade had spent his quarter-century as Sentinel of the Western Reach, in Elsium by the Sea. It had been during his tenure that Aeleria had begun their first wave of expansion, sacking and destroying the city. He seldom spoke of it, though it was said by the other Eternal that his experience there had changed him, imprinted the curious, melancholic character that was now his hallmark.

  ‘I, for one, appreciate the Lord of the Red Keep bringing this subject to our attention,’ a voice said.

  As it was impossible in theory, and unwise in practice, for a human to speak the true name of Those Above, an elaborate system of nomenclature had developed, every Eternal in the Roost having at least one nickname and often two or three. Sometimes they referred to some quirk of their physical appearance, or the castle in which they lived. Sometimes the names were in affectionate admiration, or recognised some extraordinary deed. Sometimes they referenced an event that had long since passed out of human memory, descended down through the generations without the accompanying story – thus the Lady of the Immaculate Safehold was known as ‘Hibiscus’ for reasons no one living could even begin to guess at.

  But everyone knew why the Lord of the Ebony Towers was the Shrike, and not simply because he was young for an Eternal, perhaps not so much older than Calla even, and had been given his sobriquet by the humans of her own generation. All of the High were alien, unknowable, sometimes terrible the way a storm is terrible, or the grip of winter. But there was something in the Shrike that was more than alien, more than indifferent – most Eldest did not look at you when they spoke, seemed barely able to distinguish a human from the scenery around them. But the Shrike saw you, saw you the way a cat sees a limping mouse. His household humans were equally foreign, did not eat or drink or play where the other humans of the First Rung ate and drank and played; did not, so far as Calla could tell, ever leave the estate, except when accompanying the Lord himself. But all the same, strange rumours sometimes slipped out from within the confines of the Ebony Towers, nasty things, things that Calla could not help but believe.

  The Shrike was also said to be among the finest musicians on the First Rung, and one of the mos
t talented draughtsmen. It was broadly agreed that there was no more beautiful male of the species – except for the Aubade himself, and of course it was obvious enough where Calla’s sympathies lay in that contest.

  ‘By what right do these … Aelerians go to war without our say-so?’ The Shrike always attended the Conclave but almost never spoke – and when he did, what he said was short and sharp and ugly and often true. He wore interlaced robes of black silk, and his face was covered with white powder like a porcelain mask. The two humans who accompanied him seemed more than usually silent. ‘Are they not our bondsmen? Have they not sworn obedience to the Roost, and are their tithes not proof of this?’

  ‘The Five-Fingered are fractious and violent creatures,’ the Glutton explained, as though he were talking to a child. ‘There has never been a period in their history when they were not killing each other. It would be waste and folly to attempt to police every individual act of violence that these … animals perpetrate.’

  ‘You’ve made an impressive virtue of apathy, sibling,’ the Shrike said.

  ‘No doubt this is all very exciting to the Lord of the Ebony Towers,’ the Glutton said, after a moment lost in silent offence, ‘but to those of us who have spent more than a Locust’s age here in the Conclave, the manoeuvrings and diversions of the petty human provinces to the west are not of such overwhelming interest as to demand the entirety of our attention.’

  ‘I have spent longer than that observing the musings of the Conclave,’ the Aubade intervened. ‘And longer still studying the behaviour of Those Below. And if you confuse the Aelerians with the trumped-up princelings of the southern kingdoms then you have mistaken a broadsword for a butter knife.’

  ‘The Lord of the Red Keep has the truth of it,’ the Shrike said. ‘Perhaps the Aelerians require another lesson in that respect. Perhaps it is time we reminded them of their proper place. It has been too long since Those Below have heard the beating hooves of our cavalry.’