Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  Phrattes laughed. ‘Indeed, Revered Mother,’ he said. ‘It was that very eventuality that I had arrived to discuss with you.’

  ‘One might almost imagine now would be the time for that conversation.’

  ‘The great man has accepted the first instalment of our money.’

  Eudokia’s money, he meant, though there was no reason to point this out. ‘The specifics of the transaction?’

  Phrattes reached into the folds of his robe, handed over a tightly bound roll of parchment. ‘A note of credit has been exchanged from the Slate Bank of Chazar into the great man’s personal account, as you wished. He was willing to accept the funds direct – indeed, I daresay his concerns were centred around the rapid arrival of the coin, rather than obscuring his involvement in the transaction.’

  Jahan returned while Eudokia was looking over the figures, walked over and set a cup in front of Phrattes in such a way as to spill most of it.

  ‘I must admit, Revered Mother,’ Phrattes said, ‘that your reputation for cleverness does you less justice than you deserve.’

  ‘Have I that reputation?’

  ‘Too cunning by far, is the mind of the Domina, if she supposes that her humble servant is capable of deciphering her enigma.’

  ‘I assure you, she does not suppose anything of the sort.’

  ‘To succour an enemy, in his moment of weakness? This is no winning stratagem of which I am aware.’

  ‘You have made your first mistake already, Phrattes, if you think the great man my enemy. Circumstances have clouded his judgement, and I anxiously look towards the moment when I might bring clarity to this unfortunate soul.’

  ‘And when do you imagine that moment will come, Revered Mother?’

  Eudokia had a certain smile that she gave sometimes, a smile that was the full stop at the end of the sentence. She gave it to Phrattes then, though for once in his life the Salucian seemed slow to grasp the subtext.

  ‘If I had a better understanding of our destination,’ Phrattes said, all smiling teeth and hungry eyes, ‘I could be of more help as a guide.’

  ‘Is that your position?’

  ‘What does one call someone who runs ahead of you, mapping out the path – who pursues your quarry relentlessly and with cunning, who tracks him and sets him up for the kill?’

  ‘We call that thing a dog,’ Eudokia answered sweetly.

  Phrattes laughed at the insult, but he couldn’t quite make it reach his eyes. That was fine. Eudokia did not require masochism in her servants – they need not enjoy the whip, so long as they knew enough to pretend.

  He left shortly thereafter, and Eudokia returned to the chamber, slipped her shoes off and put her robe back on the hook. Heraclius had taken her injunction too literally, was standing at the door stroking himself. The last spur of appetite was gone now, her mind taken up with plots and stratagems. How foolish the motions of lust seem when unaccompanied by the spirit! Like badly done pantomime.

  But at this point there was no way out of it barring a fight, and so Eudokia slipped herself beneath the covers and allowed him his pleasure, nodding along at his exhalations. It said little for Heraclius that he seemed unable to distinguish between the actual enjoyment he had given her earlier and the simulacrum she was currently performing. At least it ended quickly enough. Heraclius slipped into slumber, she slipped into the adjoining bathroom to wash her thighs before returning to bed. You couldn’t really blame them for the trouble they made, it was in their very nature – from the first, the gods had decreed that men were ever to make a mess without being called upon to clean it.

  She’d need to find something for him, Eudokia was thinking as she got back into bed, now that she knew she didn’t want him any more. If he was tougher she could have got him a post in the army – but he wasn’t tough, he was just big, and she didn’t imagine it would take any longer for the hardbitten men of the thema to come to that discovery than it had taken her. Perhaps a vice consulate in one of the coastal cities, something to get him far enough out of the capital that she wouldn’t need to worry about his making any awkward scenes at social gatherings.

  Not that it could do much to injure her reputation among that half of the city who had long ago decided on her as the embodiment of all of their fears and fantasies, the ‘whore-bitch of Aeleria’ and whatnot. She took a sort of perverse pleasure in cataloguing the innumerable rumours, exaggerations and falsehoods that fluttered around her bedchamber like cherubs – the extra-species dalliances, the stud farm of young men she kept locked in her basement, stealing away their vitality along with their fluids. All nonsense, sad to say. One slow afternoon Eudokia had spent a few minutes backtracking through the history of her bedchamber, had come to the pleasant-sounding number of twenty-and-two. She’d known senators to reach twenty-and-two in a lost week of revelry, stumbling from whorehouse to whorehouse along the Way of Silk. Twenty-and-two didn’t seem so vast a sum for a woman of fifty, who had lost her husband against the Others. You’d think they expected her to pine endlessly for Phocas, let dust gather between her legs. Well – it would spread quickly enough over her corpse. Until that day came, Eudokia would take what enjoyment the world offered her.

  Jahan interrupted her meditations with another knock on the door that very nearly removed the thing from its hinges. Heraclius snorted at the disturbance, pulled the blankets closer around him and rolled towards the wall. Eudokia envied him his torpor – how easy a thing being a fool must be, she mused, as she wrapped her robe round her and went to check on the disturbance.

  Orodes was dressed as an Aelerian tradesman, breeches and a billowy shirt, and he had that curious pallor and ambiguous set of features that might reasonably be attributed to any of the nations running along the Tullus Coast. His body gave an impression, if not of fitness particularly, than at least of strength and mass. He had beady little dagger-prick eyes, and though Eudokia could see he was working hard not to sneer, his efforts were not entirely crowned with success. Eudokia did not like him. Eudokia thought that perhaps no one had ever liked Orodes, that his mother, taking her first look at the boy, still covered in her own fluids, had thought to herself, ‘Eh.’ Orodes was a man who existed by being useful, rather than because anyone particularly enjoyed his company.

  Jahan farted loudly in the corner, drawing Orodes’s attention away from Eudokia, a reminder of the Parthan’s presence, a veiled if graceless threat.

  ‘How good of you to make the visit,’ Eudokia said, nestling into her chair. She could feel him watching her flesh hungrily, was happy to see him doing so, and not exclusively out of a sense of vanity. A man is controlled by his passions, and the stronger and more obvious those urges, the easier he is to herd.

  ‘Domina,’ Orodes said, and bowed awkwardly before taking the seat opposite her.

  ‘And how is the Badger?’

  ‘Busy, Domina, busy.’

  The Badger ran a bar near the docks in Hyrcania, and the neighbourhood that surrounded the bar, and some of the neighbourhoods that surrounded that neighbourhood. Eudokia only ran the Badger, which from her perspective was much easier. Whenever possible Eudokia preferred to work with criminals and kingpins, who could be relied upon to look after their own practical interest, rather than politicians, who sometimes got their pretensions of morality confused with the real thing.

  Five years the Badger had been her stalking horse in Salucia, or one of them at least, and so far had proven himself as competent as he was greedy – which, to Eudokia’s way of thinking, was all you could ask of anyone. She had never met the man in person, of course. That was why Orodes existed, to serve as go-between.

  ‘I have delivered your message,’ Orodes said. He spoke Aelerian with only a very slight accent.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Eudokia said. ‘And?’

  ‘My employer foresees difficulties.’

  ‘Your employer?’ Eudokia crossed her eyes in an exaggerated show of confusion. ‘But I am your employer, and I most certainly do not anticipat
e any problems as regards my orders.’

  ‘My immediate employer, I should have said.’

  ‘Indeed, you should have said that. Is this a question of money? I hardly think you have anything to quibble about, when it comes to funds.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is not a question of compensation. You are asking the Badger to go against the interests of Salucia, to make himself a traitor to his nation.’

  ‘Nations, countries, cities, species, races, tribes.’ Eudokia held her hands open, as if to suggest how little weight she gave them. ‘There is one universal division, written on the heart of all living creatures – there is you,’ Eudokia said, making a short cutting motion with her hand, ‘and there is everyone else. I cannot imagine the Badger has come so far in the world and not struck upon this truth.’

  ‘Would the Domina feel the same way if it was Aeleria that she was being asked to betray?’

  ‘But it’s not the same thing at all.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No – because, of course, I run Aeleria, while you and your master are slaves in Salucia. What is well for the Commonwealth is well for me. The same cannot be said of your position.’

  ‘There is more to it than patriotism. The Badger is … concerned at the wisdom of your proposition. He thinks perhaps you underrate the dangers.’

  ‘Is that what he thinks?’

  ‘Public discontent is easier stoked than extinguished,’ Orodes said.

  ‘What a lovely epigram. You’ve a bit of the poet in you.’

  ‘You’ll be a thousand cables away from the conflagration when it starts,’ Orodes said. ‘We will remain very much in the thick of it, then and in the days to come. The Badger fears that the trouble you wish to make could well spread out of hand.’

  ‘Sneak a look at my breasts another time, and by Enkedri and his children, I will have Jahan remove that portion of your body which leads you unto distraction.’ Offered in so sweet a voice that Orodes didn’t realise he’d been threatened until some seconds after Eudokia had ceased speaking. When he did he blushed with shame, but the red bloom faded to a pale pink as he took in the rest of the Domina’s words.

  ‘And not with a blade, either,’ Eudokia added.

  Jahan shattered a nut in his left hand.

  ‘You were speaking of fear,’ Eudokia added. ‘A topic, I admit, of great interest to me. What a valuable thing dread is, how wise the gods were to implant it in our souls! Can you imagine a world in which we had not been gifted so vigilant and attentive a ward? The species wouldn’t last a day, we’d all be leaping off cliffs and sticking our hands into hot coals just to see what it felt like. Truly, fear is the better part of human wisdom – one might say that the whole of prudence consists of ranking our fears appropriately, and dealing with each according to the severity of the danger represented.’

  Jahan cracked another nut, slipped the meat into his mouth and let the shell remnants fall onto the carpet.

  ‘And if I may say so, Orodes, both you and the Badger seem to have got your priorities of terror confused, like a man dying of famine worrying about next year’s seed! Because whatever pitfalls are inherent in the design I have outlined, they are not equalled, they are not approached, by the absolute certainty of punishment that hangs over your head, if you make the irreparable error of refusing to obey my orders. I pay the Badger to eat the people that I tell him to eat. Does he imagine himself the only carnivore on my payroll?’

  At that moment Orodes seemed to be incapable of imagining much of anything, save how dearly he counted his manhood.

  ‘Tell your immediate employer that if he finds himself unable to fulfil my request, I’ll turn to one of his rivals – perhaps the Chimerae, or the Blue Serpent – so many vie to do me favours. But whomever it is, their first task, by way of demonstrating fitness for the occupation, will be to kill the Badger, you, and all of his people, in a fashion as painful as it is imaginative.’

  ‘Domina …’ Orodes began finally, so pale that Eudokia worried he might mess on the carpet, ‘please, I … I’m not—’

  ‘You’re not much of anything, Orodes, but we must make use of those tools available to us. And the best service you could render me would be to etch this moment indelibly into your mind. So when next you stand in front of the Badger, and he objects to the course of action I have prescribed, and provides the same excuses that you have just offered – you will know for certain how little any of them will satisfy me, and of the severity of my displeasure made manifest.’

  For a man who made some part of his living with a knife, there was very little choice left for Orodes. He nodded and looked down at his boots.

  ‘I offer no empty threats,’ Eudokia said, standing smoothly. ‘If you can convince our friend to stick to the agreement he long ago made with me, all to the good. And if you cannot,’ she leaned forward, still smiling, ‘if you cannot, then you would be wise to remove yourself from Salucia at whatever speed can be managed. Go to sea, take up service with a crew of mercenaries, join a mummers’ band and travel the length of the continent. It will not stop my vengeance – though it may delay it, for a time.’

  Eudokia returned to her bedroom, brushing aside the open door. Heraclius was awake and sitting upright. She disrobed, watched his eyes widen as the robe struck the floor. ‘I find myself requiring your services once more,’ she said.

  20

  Bas woke up just after the dawn, coming to quickly, alertly, pointlessly. He stared at the ceiling until well after the sun had dragged a line of shadow past his bedpost. Occasionally he scratched himself. Mostly he lay very still.

  Eventually he pulled himself upright, leaked last night’s liquor into the bedpan. Then he pulled his trousers off the bureau, sniffed at them uncomfortably. He visited the public baths every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes for hours each time, but still the scent of the city seemed to have worked its way into him. Bas had no exaggerated regard for cleanliness – on the plains he had often gone weeks without bathing, dirt and sweat and sometimes blood accumulating till it was visible on his skin. But that was the honest odour of labour and perhaps death, not the fetid swelling of the metropolis, of too much flesh packed too closely together, of faeces and urine distributed inconsiderately beside cooking meat.

  It had been two months since he had entered the capital, and Bas had spent most of it trying not to rot. The forces being accumulated for what seemed the increasingly inevitable war with Salucia were still filtering in from throughout the Commonwealth, and even after they arrived it would be several months of training before they were even capable of marching across a parade ground without accidentally spearing one another.

  He dressed, he went to the kitchen, he ate a few pieces of dried jerky and a half a loaf of day-old bread, masticating grudgingly. He drank three cups of tepid water and stared out of the window at the alleyway that back-ended against his house, a little trickle of raw waste running down the middle, plump turds drying in the morning sun. He pulled his boots on and walked outside, squinting against the light.

  Bas hadn’t known much about the capital when he’d chosen his quarters, and given that fact he supposed he could have done worse. If his neighbourhood had nothing to particularly recommend a visit, at least it seemed to have a slightly higher percentage of tradesmen and workers than it did pickpockets, broken-down drunkards and painted-up whores. No one had figured out who he was yet, or if they had they kept quiet on it. No, they hadn’t figured it out – there wasn’t anyone in this thrice-damned city that could keep a secret. If anyone had known who he was he’d be getting mobbed by attention-seekers and unexpected friends.

  A twenty-minute walk east along the Way of Gold would take Bas to the centre of the city, to the shining monument to civilisation that was the Senate Hall, to the high white temples and squat grey offices that surrounded it. Bas did not walk east. Bas had not walked east one single time since moving to the capital. Some days he walked west, along the Way of Stone out towards the outskirts of th
e city, though you could perambulate until evening and never lose sight of the sprawl. Some days he walked north, on the Way of Timber towards the low rung of hills where the lesser nobles had their estates.

  Today he walked south. It had been an easy winter, the ground was unfrozen and the road upturned mud, made worse by the endless procession of carts and palanquins. But still it was better than ducking through the alleyways, piles of refuse like caltrops, thoughtless housewives slopping buckets of shit out of second-storey windows. Or maybe it wasn’t better, because at least on the side streets you could avoid some of the hawkers and the vendors, the thieves and the conmen and the whores and the endless, faceless lines of beggars.

  One of these grabbed at Bas’s sleeve as he walked by. ‘A bronze nummus, a single bronze, for a man who lost his sight in service of his country!’ His voice was plaintive and desperate and carried the stench of alcohol. ‘I served in the Eighth Thema under Phocas himself, when we marched against the Birds! Took a blow at Scarlet Fields, I did, and haven’t been able to see since!’ He pointed at the dirty gauze wrapped round his eyes.

  But this last must not have been very thick, because when Bas turned his gaze on him – an unfriendly gaze, since Bas well knew that the Eighth Thema had not left the capital during the war against the Wellborn, had been garrisoning the city for half a century – he shivered back into his ditch.

  The Marchers were masters of subterfuge, double-talk and outright dishonesty. Theirs was a culture that held that a man’s only purpose lay in the conquest of other men, mental victory being preferred to physical as it left your victim alive to bear scorn. Bas had spent many an hour warming himself by a counsel fire, getting drunk on some chieftain’s liquor, swearing friendship and loyalty, only to find a week later that selfsame chieftain had gone ranging, taking scalps and women. Duplicity was not the sole province of the capital, Bas knew, but the honest inheritance of the entire species. Still, there was something about that particular brand of falseness as was practised in the capital that set his teeth grinding against each other and turned his hands into fists. At least on the Marches you might knife a man for lying to you – here it was the coin of the realm, and you were the odd one for not accepting it.