Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘Perhaps if my Lord of the Ebony Towers had ridden out to face them,’ the Aubade said, ‘he would not speak so casually of their spears.’

  ‘Regrettably, my youth made it impossible for me to take part in the conflict,’ the Shrike said, ‘though my understanding was that we emerged victorious.’

  ‘Indeed – we crushed the flower of their army beneath the hooves of our stallions. And three years later they were marching west to the plains, and south to Old Dycia. The Lord of the Ebony Tower might take a moment to meditate on the lessons of that.’

  ‘I think the Lord of the Red Keep makes too much of slaughtering Locusts,’ the Shrike said. ‘While I recognise the renown he has earned in battle, I do not feel the need to brag every time I step on an ant.’

  ‘What a handsome quality is arrogance, especially when paired with youth.’

  Here the Prime broke in smoothly. ‘Would it satisfy the Lord of the Red Keep if we were to indicate to the Sentinel that the Aelerians must cease their efforts against Salucia, or risk incurring our displeasure?’

  Calla got the distinct sense that this did not satisfy the Lord at all, but it was clear the mood of the room was against him. The Aubade had his supporters among the Wellborn, others who thought, like him, that the Roost was insufficiently active in policing the human nations, but they were in the minority. ‘I think it in the best interests of the Roost,’ he said.

  ‘For our next order of business,’ the Prime continued, ‘the Conclave shall hear the words of Cormorant, Chief Constable for the Fifth Rung, to explain the disobedience his people demonstrated during the Anamnesis.’

  There were more humans in the Roost than could ever be overseen by the small core of Eternal that lived on the First Rung – devolving some of the levers of power was a practical necessity. As a result the greater part of the Roost was overseen by the humans themselves. The custodians maintained order and punished crime, bureaucrats collected taxes and oversaw commerce. In this it was much like any other city – except that all true decision-making power remained in the hands of Those Above. Mostly, they cared little enough what went on beneath them, and a position within the civil order was a lucrative and easy sinecure. On those rare occasions when the Eldest decided to take an interest in the bottom four-fifths of their city, however, the position got a good deal more stressful.

  No doubt the Chief Constable for the Fifth Rung was thinking something along those lines just at that moment. He was a handsome man run to fat, dressed in a tasteful set of robes that were just the slightest bit too small for him, and he had been sweating through these at a greater rate than the material was prepared to accept, splotches of wet appearing beneath his arms and at his neck. The Chief Constable for the Fifth Rung, needless to say, did not live on the Fifth Rung, and was certainly not born there. Probably he managed to find his way down there on occasion, though Calla found it hard to imagine these were very frequent.

  At least he managed a competent greeting, bowing low in the traditional fashion, his hands behind him. ‘As the Conclave is no doubt aware, on the afternoon of the last Anamnesis, the Fifth Rung’s celebrations were interrupted by a heinous act of terror. A small group of miscreants, acting stealthily and without the connivance of the performers, killed and hung an eagle from inside the steamwork chamber that is the centrepiece of the ceremony. The custodians, acting swiftly and with certainty, tracked down and captured the responsible parties. Their guilt being impossible to deny, they admitted their involvement unreservedly. Given the nature of their crime, the gravest possible consequences were seen as not inappropriate. The convicted were drawn and quartered, with a limb sent to each corner of the Rung, to remind the people of the swiftness of justice and the continued assurance of order.’ Speech completed, the constable bowed again, as low as his age and weight would allow. It was rare for a human to testify in the Conclave, but he had managed himself competently. He seemed for a few brief seconds like a man relieved of a great burden.

  ‘What motivated these men to their act of disobedience?’ Another interruption from the Aubade.

  Calla suspected the better part of the Conclave could have lived without it. She was positive that, for his part, the constable would have preferred his interview long finished. ‘Who can understand the acts of a deranged mind, my Lords? There are many among the lower portions of the Roost for whom sanity is not a given.’

  ‘You say they confessed to the deeds?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘And in their confession gave no explanation?’

  ‘What exactly is my brother’s concern in this matter?’ the Wright asked in his native tongue, the first time he had bothered to speak. ‘Surely you cannot feel that the sentence was less than rigorous?’

  ‘My concern, sibling,’ the Aubade answered in human speech, still staring at the constable, ‘is that an act of rebellion has been committed against the Roost, and the reasons and perpetrators remain unknown.’

  ‘The constable has reported that the perpetrators have been found and punished,’ the Wright said.

  ‘And what evidence has the constable presented?’ the Aubade asked.

  It took a long time for the constable to realise this was a question directed at him, and longer still for him to answer it. ‘As I said, my Lord, the suspects confessed openly to their involvement.’

  ‘Was torture involved in soliciting this confession?’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Torture,’ the Aubade explained, ‘physical force applied against the body. Blows to the face and neck. Edged weapons. A razored lash. I’m told an open flame is effective.’

  ‘I believe they were, my Lord, as is protocol.’

  ‘I would think that, beneath such tender ministrations, one could get a Five-Finger to confess to nearly anything.’

  The constable had nothing to say to that – was saved, if saved could be the word, by the Shrike himself. ‘I would take the opportunity to second the Lord of the Red Keep’s concern,’ he said. ‘The punishment meted out to the Locusts responsible for this atrocity seems ludicrously lenient.’ He spoke now in the human tongue, and turned his eyes towards the unfortunate constable. ‘You say that those who have sinned have been punished – what about the collective sin of your species, who allowed these traitors to nurse at their breasts, who sheltered them, and who are thus every bit as guilty as those responsible for the deed itself?’

  ‘You find a weed, and you’d burn the field?’ the Aubade said crisply. ‘What magnificent gardens you must possess.’

  ‘If the Lord of the Red Keep has quite finished sharpening his nails,’ the Wright interrupted, ‘perhaps he might clarify his point? Should my brother feel the constable to be incompetent to hold his position, I hardly suppose the Conclave will resist him in appointing another.’

  ‘And replace him with whom? Another, equally incompetent? The issue at hand is not with the constable, who is no better nor worse than any of his colleagues. The issue is that we have forsaken our responsibility to govern the entirety of our city, have abdicated the duties demanded of us so long and so thoroughly that they have devolved onto an individual such as this.’ The Aubade gestured at the unfortunate constable, who, despite having no idea what was being said, seemed to have some sense that it was not complimentary.

  ‘And does the Fifth Rung so often enjoy the presence of the Lord of the Red Keep?’ the Glutton asked.

  ‘Your blow is well aimed – I am as much at fault as any among you. And we can well see what effect this neglect has had. Those Below look to us to guide and teach them, to watch over and protect them. We have failed to do so, and the result is violence, anarchy, disorder. My Lord of the Ebony Towers speaks of collective responsibility, but he has confused the guilty parties. Each and every one of us stands condemned – it is to us that the governance of the city has been given, and it is we who bear the weight for the misery of its inhabitants.’

  Looking about the Conclave, Calla hardly had the impression that
the collected Eldest were overwhelmed by their sense of shame.

  ‘And what is it you would have us do, then?’ the Prime asked finally.

  ‘I propose that the Conclave send a committee to the lower Rungs, to determine what grievances have caused this act of rebellion, and to determine what means are required to satisfy those grievances.’

  ‘You meet antagonism with an open palm?’ the Shrike asked. ‘Would one train a raptor in such a fashion, or discipline a dog?’

  ‘My sibling is welcome to visit my aviary whenever he wishes a lesson on proper husbandry,’ the Aubade said smoothly. ‘And it speaks ill of his wit that he can imagine no way to change a thing’s behaviour save by beating it.’

  ‘Who among us would make up this commission?’ the Prime asked quickly.

  Since the Founding, when Those Above had foresworn the wandering of their ancestors to create and populate the Roost, to leave the summit of the city was considered, if not quite blasphemous, at the very least extremely distasteful. The Eldest lived in the sky, or as close to it as they could reach, and in general left the First Rung only to make war.

  ‘Myself, of course,’ the Aubade said. ‘And also my Lord of the Sidereal Citadel, if he were so inclined. I would hope that the Prime herself would appreciate the gravity of this situation, and act accordingly, though of course I do not presume to speak for her.’

  The Prime stood silent for a moment, though it was impossible to read anything of her thoughts on her perfect, immutable face. ‘I shall accompany you,’ she said simply.

  The Wright agreed as well, though he looked less than pleased about it, and it was starting to seem that the Conclave might finally come to an end when the Shrike spoke up unexpectedly. ‘I could hardly allow my esteemed siblings to undergo the discomfort of a descent without agreeing to share their sufferings.’

  The Aubade stared stiffly at the Shrike but said nothing. There was nothing to be said – the Shrike had as much right to join the committee as anyone, could not be kept off it. The Prime nodded and declared the Conclave over, and the meeting broke up like a rain cloud burned off by the noonday sun, the Eternal disappearing through the great white-gold doors that led to their pleasure craft. Even after a lifetime of observing them, Calla found herself in something like awe of the matchless synchronicity, each individual moving as smoothly and exactly as if they had been a flock of geese turning in flight. Of course, their human servants mucked up the gears some, bumped into each other or teetered down the stairs, but still – one had the sense that if it were not for the humans, the few thousand Wellborn present could have evacuated the building in a flat half-minute.

  Calla could appreciate the viewpoint because, alone among the assemblage, the Aubade did not bother to move, remained watching the Source long after the rest of the Conclave had disappeared, staring into its waters without comment or motion. ‘And so they scatter back to their games, even as the very thing starts to blaze,’ he whispered in the High Tongue, after many moments had passed.

  For once even Calla had the good sense to pretend she hadn’t heard anything.

  14

  Bas stood in a vast and sumptuous hall, overly vast and overly sumptuous by any conceivable standards, let alone the rustic ones to which Bas held. He was watching the crowd and resolutely not playing with his collar, though it was an act of will to resist ripping off his stiff, hideous robes and running out into the bushes, naked and screaming.

  An inappropriate coda to the gathering, which after all had been thrown in his honour, as part of the general revelry accompanying his ascension to Strategos. Nominally, at least, though it did not seem to Bas that the hundreds of strangers surrounding him needed their arms twisted to attend a party.

  He had reached the capital two days before, spent the better part of the interim being gawked at or fed, something between a circus freak and a pig being fattened for slaughter. That afternoon he had received the medal of Blessed Terjunta, official emblem of his promotion. He had thought that would be the end of it, which in retrospect was clear foolishness. Nothing in the capital happened without a gala to celebrate it.

  Bas noticed the senator who had given him his honour approaching out of the corner of his eye, steeled himself for the conversation as he had in the past prepared for a cavalry charge. On the senator’s arm was one of that staggeringly beautiful race of courtesans the capital bred like cattle, round-chested and hollow-eyed. Accompanying them was a small pack of very important people whose names Bas had not bothered to learn. He’d have been grateful if they’d been willing to offer him the same courtesy.

  ‘Hail Bas the Caracal, executor of justice, the shield behind which Aeleria flourishes.’

  The day had been filled with these flourishes, each new interlocutor vying to cover him in panegyric. It had become quite winding. ‘Senator Gratian,’ he said.

  Bas would have preferred to look at the senator and feel nothing – it wasn’t his business to feel anything for the senator. But were he to have been honest, Bas did feel something, and that thing was not kind. A fat man, was the senator, though no doubt he would have called himself stout or hardy or some other word clever men invent to make white sound black. The senator couldn’t have carried a pack for half a day’s march, let alone stood shoulder to shoulder with a pike in his hands, but at his order tens of thousands of men would launch themselves across the map, death and terror trailing close behind.

  ‘Long years it’s been since I’ve seen you, old friend. Not since the fall of Dycia.’ Gratian had been the ambassador to that nation in the days just before it fell. Fell was the wrong way to put it – was pushed, one had to acknowledge, and Gratian had done quite a bit to set the thing teetering. ‘Fifteen years, and it’s as fresh in my mind as the morning’s rain.’

  To whom was he speaking? The big-titted bitch on his arm? Presumably her presence in Gratian’s bed was a guarantee. Or was it the other senator in sackcloth standing beside him, who reeked of sweat and self-importance, and who Bas felt fairly certain was trying to manoeuvre himself in such a fashion as to have Bas’s shoulders brush against his chest? Certainly he wasn’t talking to Bas. ‘My memory isn’t what it was,’ Bas said, turning to the drink in his hand, a too-sweet summer wine that he didn’t care for but finished anyway.

  Gratian began to speak to his woman with the awkward deliberateness of a theatre aside. ‘The Caracal is modest, as is proper for a soldier. But a politician is bound to no such code, and I can tell you that nothing could be more calculated to inspire awe in the heart of any true-born son of Aeleria than the sight of our victorious forces bringing the Dycian menace to heel. The Caracal carried the battlements all but single-handed, his great red blade singing a song of terror among the hordes.’

  How the senator could see any of that, having been a good cable back from the front lines, ensconced in a tent that could have comfortably fitted half a thema, Bas was not sure. In fact Bas could remember very little of it himself, the taking of Dycia having been lost amidst the innumerable scenes of bloodshed clotting his memory. ‘Singing a song of terror’, by the gods.

  Bas noticed he was holding on to an empty glass, took it as an excuse to absent himself. Gratian didn’t seem to much mind – greeting him had been a way to remind everyone of how important he was, and of his long history, perhaps even friendship with the Caracal, and there was no point in Bas staying around to spoil the myth.

  Bas flagged down a house slave, let him pour some of what everyone else was sipping into his cup.

  Issac was sitting at a table drinking very heavily and staring out at the assemblage, the red ruin of his ears clear in the lamplight. Theophilus had been quickly stolen away by a mass of young men and women, friends from a youth that seemed far removed. He had his arm round a very pretty girl but Bas could see by his expression he wasn’t listening to whatever it was she was saying. Bas wondered why the very pretty girl was unable to discern the same at so much shorter a distance.

  Hamilcar was th
e only one enjoying himself, taking up a place by the bar and holding court with a cast of inebriates thrilled at the novelty of speaking to a black man. Hamilcar had found the approach to the centre of Aelerian civilisation to be an unalloyed pleasure, thrilled at each stuttering step away from the plains, from the public baths to the improved quality of whoreflesh. He had also somehow managed to acquire what he insisted was the costume native to his people, a leopard-print robe and a strange, brimless hat. It was almost indescribably ugly, and in all his time in Dycia Bas had never seen a man wear anything of the sort. But it was what the crowd seemed to want, and Hamilcar enjoyed living down to the expectations of his audience.

  ‘A charming city, your capital,’ he was saying. ‘Though I’m afraid it’s got nothing to match Old Dycia. The water warm as the air, the little gardens of palm and avocado and pineapple, the ladies in their gossamer, light as perfume.’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s a lovely climate,’ said a busty woman with enough make-up round her eyes to be mistaken for a badger.

  ‘It is said the weather breeds the finest roses, and the most potent men.’

  Hamilcar’s soon-to-be lover made a little tittering laugh that Bas found to be just the wrong side of vile. Presumably Hamilcar felt differently. What her husband thought – or so Bas assumed the perfumed sot holding her arm to be – Bas could not say.

  ‘Hamilcar,’ Bas interrupted. ‘A moment.’

  ‘Please do excuse me,’ Hamilcar said, smiling at each member of the couple in turn. ‘The Strategos calls, and it is not for us mere mortals to dispute the will of the Caracal himself.’

  The halfwits that Hamilcar had been overawing looked at Bas with something more like bewilderment than curiosity, the same look he’d been getting since he’d left the Marches, as if he had a second head growing next to his first. Bas took Hamilcar by the arm and walked him over to a corner.

  ‘Watch yourself,’ Bas said. ‘These bluebloods love an excuse to stab a man with a sword. I saw two senators kill each other the night before Scarlet Fields because one had said something disrespectful about the other’s boots. You’d think they could have just waited twelve hours, let the demons save them all the fuss.’