Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  He walked on, and around him the city got nastier and dirtier, got grimmer and greyer and duller. Hard men, and boys striving to be so, eyeballed him, but none for very long, not even the crews of adolescents that lazed in the afternoon sun, mean and scrawny and looking to make a meal of anything. A big man, and not particularly well dressed, and did you get a look at his eyes? Flat and empty and unblinking, and how much you think he could have on him, not more than a couple of tertarum, and you won’t be getting those without a good fight. No – this one was not prey.

  So Bas spent his afternoon, as he’d spent many such since returning to the capital of the Commonwealth whose standard he had planted atop the burnt-out remnants of a half-dozen lands. At nightfall he found himself near the docks, in one of those neighbourhoods that rarely saw anyone lucky enough not to reside within its confines, where even the most virgin traveller would quickly realise themselves unwanted.

  He could have walked into any tavern in the area and it would have been the same. The bartender looked up, narrowed his eyes, went back to doing nothing. The space he owned, or at least managed, bisected the bottom floor of a larger building, narrow and long and dark. There were tables, and chairs for those tables. There were holes in the walls for the evening to leak through. There was a fire in one corner, but it wasn’t big enough to warm the place.

  Bas took a seat at the bar. One leg of his stool was shorter than the others. ‘Whiskey,’ he said.

  The bartender gave him a look like he’d have preferred to serve Bas a few strong fingers of hemlock, but then he reached beneath the counter and pulled out an unlabelled bottle and a dirty glass.

  ‘Leave it,’ Bas said.

  If the bartender hadn’t already been scowling, he would have started then. ‘Let’s see your coin first.’

  Slowly, deliberately, Bas loosed his purse from his belt, dropped it onto the counter with a thump and a jangle. The bartender’s face flickered all the way from contempt to avarice. Bas pulled a silver tertarum out and placed it next to the bottle, making sure to open the drawstring wide enough for the publican to get a look at the solidus that remained behind.

  After an hour the bottle was empty and the place had started to fill, with dockworkers and sailors and anyone else who had a few bronze nummus to rub together and a desire to forget themselves. Labourers trying to wash away the day’s sweat, men enjoying their narrow window of freedom. Bas did not like them.

  He got up from his chair and made his way towards the back. A longer walk than he would have thought; the bar seemed to stretch on and on, the flickering candlelight rendering the patrons wall-eyed and slack-jawed and chinless. Perhaps that was not just the flickering candlelight.

  Bas watered the little patch of dirt outside, then returned to his seat. In the interim three men had slipped in and taken up a position at the opposite end of the counter. In the interim lots of people had probably slipped in, but it was the three men that Bas marked out as being worthy of notice. The first had a Salucian-style dagger at his hip, and he kept resting his hand on it, like he was afraid it might run away. The second was a fat man who thought himself a big one. The last was dressed well, better than he should have been, better than anyone working an honest job in this part of the city could hope to dress.

  It took a longer time to get the second bottle of whiskey than the first, not because it was busier, though it was, but because the bartender was pretending he didn’t see Bas waving. But he brought it over, finally, and Bas pulled out his purse and gave over another tertarum, though the first should have covered it.

  Bas left his purse on the counter after he’d paid, sitting next to the whiskey. Halfway through the bottle he pulled out a small pile of solidus and started to play with them, stacking and restacking them, shuffling them through his fingers absentmindedly, or perhaps purposefully. Bas could feel the tension growing just behind his eyes, like a bad headache. It had been building for days, a background hum at first but getting louder and louder until now it seemed to drown out even the nearby conversations, not that Bas imagined any of these to be worth listening to. Bas wasn’t sure if he was drinking whiskey to try and quiet the sensation or to bring it to a head, but either way he kept on drinking.

  At the other end of the counter the bartender and his three friends were conversing quietly and shooting Bas sidelong stares of indeterminate enmity. Bas ignored them, shuffling the thick octagonal solidus, letting them ring out against each other. When he’d made a ghost of the second bottle Bas turned it on its side and stood up from his seat. He wasn’t sure if the stumble he took while leaving was deliberate or feigned.

  Outside the air was cold, would be unpleasantly so in a few minutes, but overheated from the whiskey and the fetid air of the bar Bas enjoyed it, wrapped himself comfortably in the evening. The moon hung so low that he worried it might scrape its belly raw on the chimneys and steeples of the skyline. He heard them coming out of the tavern behind him, but still he waited a few seconds before turning, savouring the night, anticipating the moment to come.

  There were four of them, they had picked up an extra hand before they’d walked out of the bar. That was smart. Smart of the three that had been watching him, Bas meant, not smart for the one who had joined up belatedly. Maybe not smart for any of them. Bas had been planning on leading them into an alleyway, making them come at him one by one, but in the end he didn’t do that, perhaps because he didn’t want to leave the moonlight.

  The four men who were coming to hurt Bas aligned themselves in a semicircle in front of him. The one with the dagger pulled it out and pointed it at Bas and started to say the things one says in that situation, but Bas didn’t hear or wasn’t listening.

  There came a moment when the speaker with the nice-looking dagger realised all a-piece that Bas was bigger than he’d thought, bigger or perhaps just more frightening. And his eyes went wider, just round the edges, but Bas was waiting for it, had seen it on a dozen-dozen men across the length of the continent. And Bas smiled on the inside and struck out with his hand, going for the man’s knife – which wasn’t a smart move, really, wasn’t the sort of thing any master of arms would teach, try to disarm a man barehanded. But foolish or not, all of a sudden the knife was spinning out into the ether, a quick flash of moonlight against steel and then it was lost in the muck.

  The speaker stopped speaking then, except to make a sort of grunting sound when Bas broke most of the teeth in his jaw and left his nose a mass of raw pulp. If the other three had moved on him just then they might have had a chance, especially as one them was flourishing a boot knife. But that isn’t really the way it works, not in this sort of a situation at least. The most important thing in any fight is to get the other man thinking about what will happen if he loses it, because once that fear sinks in he already has.

  Bas caught the second thug with a shot on the chin that was as close to perfection as you’ll find this side of heaven, or hell, the ideal punch, a punch that sent the unfortunate recipient comatose before he had hit the ground, eyes dull and senseless. He landed badly, Bas heard a sharp crack that was probably the man’s neck, though he wasn’t certain and anyway didn’t really care.

  The one who had been speaking and had been holding a knife but was now not doing anything but bleeding tried to run away then, run away or maybe try to retrieve his lost weapon, Bas wasn’t sure. In the event it didn’t matter – Bas grabbed him by the scruff of his long hair and jerked back sharply, and some of the hair came out but not all of it, and what didn’t come out was attached to the unfortunate man’s head, as hair often is, and then the man was lying on the ground. Bas gave him a short, savage kick against the temple and he stopped moving.

  Bas took a strong shot to the skull then, hard enough to send his vision blurry. The fat man had thrown it, though Bas had to admit that looking at him closer there was some muscle beneath all that flab. Bas had met a few men in his life who were stronger than he was, stronger like they could take him arm-wrestling or car
ry a heavier load, but a fist-fight wasn’t either of those things, and what counted more than anything was hand speed and ferocity. When Bas had been a young man he’d been marvellously fast, had performed feats of agility that had, quite literally, been immortalised in song. He wasn’t fast like that any more, hadn’t been fast like that for ten years at least – but for a person his size he was still quick as all hell, and certainly he was much quicker than the big man, who had probably been getting through fights his whole life by bearing up to a guy and falling on him. That was what he tried to do then at least, and it wasn’t a bad bit of strategy, wrap Bas up so his friend with the boot knife could get a lick or two in.

  Bas’s first jab tapped the man’s eye closed, and his second rang the man hard enough that he dropped his guard, and the third jab you couldn’t really call a jab, in so far as it broke the man’s cheekbone and a wing of his teeth and probably a few other bits of his face – Bas couldn’t say for certain in the bad light.

  The last one was still holding that boot knife, and Bas laughed at him, not because it was so funny really but because Bas was filled up with the spirit of the thing, overcharged with energy. And he bore down on the man who, knife or no, was backing away as quickly as a person can go back, which is not as fast as a person can go forward, as Bas proved just then. And Bas put his hands round the hand that was holding the knife, and he twisted, and the man screamed and dropped the knife, and then Bas put his hands up round the man’s head, and he twisted a second time, but this time the man did not scream and what fell in the mud was not a knife.

  And then it was done, and Bas could breathe again, and he did, long, slow, deep breaths. One of the men was dead and another was well on his way to joining him, and wherever they were going or had gone Bas thought probably neither was enjoying the moonlight, not as Bas was doing. The remaining two were unconscious or wished they were, insentience a reprieve from the misery plaguing them.

  Bas payed no mind to any of them, not to the corpses nor to the men who would have made him one. He felt like he always did after a good scrap, focused and clean, though there was blood on his shirt and also soaking into his hair. And behind it that dull sense of sadness, as after a birthday, or a sunset, or an orgasm.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that Bas’s re-entry brought the bar to a complete halt. Some of the men didn’t see him and some of the men who saw him hadn’t been paying attention to him earlier, had no foreknowledge of the attempted ambush. The bartender knew though, slunk lower the closer Bas got, until they were in front of each other and his neck reached barely above the counter.

  Bas looked at him for a while. Then he slapped a solidus down on the bar, hard enough to set the wood shaking. ‘I forgot your tip,’ Bas said.

  The bartender’s jaw was fluttering up and down, and his eyes seemed slowly but surely to be forcing themselves out of his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said finally, though he left the coin where it was.

  21

  Calla sat at a corner table in the Falling Dew, one of the many bars running along the easternmost edge of the Second Rung. Across from her Bulan rested in a wicker chair, framed by broad glass windows pulled tight against the winter’s chill. In the twilight beyond, custodians lit the wrought-iron street lamps, the flickering orange throwing relief on the modest limestone houses, on the squares and promenades, on happy-seeming workers making their way back to their families; and past them, the edge of the Rung, a sheer rock face, the bay below rendered silent by distance, the crashing waves muted, the cries of the seabirds inaudible. From where Calla sat it might have been possible to imagine that this was the entirety of the Roost, a populace well provided for and content, and beyond them the ocean. Possible for someone, perhaps, though not for Calla, at least not any longer.

  ‘Magnificent view,’ Bulan said, the way one says something to interrupt a silence.

  ‘Magnificent,’ Calla agreed, or at least echoed.

  In fact the view was nothing like the one Calla enjoyed from the summit of the Red Keep, or could be afforded from many of the other small drinking houses and eateries sited across the First Rung. But it was almost the hour of the Woodcock, before the sounding of which all non-resident humans atop the summit of the Roost would need to find themselves below it, or face unpleasant consequences. Bulan’s bracelet, acquired at immense expense, allowed him to roam the public areas of the First Rung in the daylight hours, but offered him no protection from evening’s fall. By contrast a quick glance at her own brand and the custodians guarding the gate to the summit would fall over themselves ushering her upslope. It was one of many privileges that Calla had only lately found herself reflecting on.

  Bulan finished packing his long-stemmed pipe, lit it with the beeswax candle that dripped bright rose onto the willow table, settled it into a contented smile. They had spent the afternoon in a frantic bout of lovemaking, hours lost to the thrust and pull, hours that Bulan no doubt took as evidence of his own amorous abilities. Calla was happy to let him continue under that misimpression – it was best to allow a man his illusions, it did no harm to anyone. But in truth her fervour for copulation had very little to do with the Chazar, though he was reasonably skilled and not untender. Calla had found within herself these last weeks a passion that she could not previously remember possessing – a passion that was as much manic as erotic. Pinned by Bulan’s arms, beneath the broad swell of his chest, grunting in unison, there were long moments when she was free of any thoughts beyond the immediate. Others might turn to drink, or one of the many narcotic powders and philtres that were popular on the higher Rungs, but Calla’s responsibilities were such that she was unwilling to fog her mind, even briefly.

  She imagined she had carried off the facade competently enough, until Bulan leaned forward and set a hand atop hers. ‘Will your troubles spoil the moon’s arrival, as they did the sun’s departure?’

  It was her first real smile of the day, and the day was almost over. ‘Am I read so easily?’

  ‘It would speak little of Bulan if he could not decipher the mood of a woman who has shared his bed.’

  ‘You seemed obtuse enough while lying in it.’

  ‘At the time I had practical motivations for feigning ignorance.’ Bulan’s hands were large and strong-seeming, though with a pleasing softness that spoke of long hours holding a quill or sifting an abacus. ‘But they are spent now, unless …’ He drew half-jesting eyes towards the doorway, laughed when she blushed. ‘No? Then it is pointless to maintain the charade any longer. Pass your burden to one who would help shoulder it. It is said that there are seven hundred and seventy-seven names for the One God, and that the last and holiest is “He who listens”.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘You would need to come to Chazar to prove me a liar, and there seems little enough chance of that,’ frowning as he said it.

  Calla sighed, slipped one hand free of Bulan’s, gulped down some of her wine. ‘It’s nothing you haven’t already heard,’ she said.

  ‘The boy’s death?’ Bulan asked, knowing the answer. It had been a month since that hellish descent to the Fifth Rung, long enough for a bruise to fade, a wound to scab over, a blister to burst. And Bulan had done his best to play chirurgeon, especially in the first days afterwards – held her close, given attention to her venting. To little enough avail.

  ‘Of his life as well,’ Calla said. ‘The poverty and the decay, the stench and sound of the pipes, the sheer misery …’

  ‘Is he so different to any of us? What is life but an accumulation of troubles too soon ended?’

  ‘Your words are glib,’ she said, ‘and lack merit. Ennui is not despair, nor melancholy destitution.’

  Bulan’s pipe, jaundiced meerschaum carved in the shape of a Catoblepas, had grown cold waiting on the table. He brought the wick of the candle against it a second time, took a few shallow breaths, releasing soft clouds of scented tobacco. ‘I have stood in the slave markets of Partha, where mothers sell their children into short
lives of servitude, where the handsome and pretty are made into chattel, where young boys are culled for the chop. Where misery is bought and sold, a commodity as any other. I have smelled that filth, I have heard their desperate cries. If you imagine that the Roost has some monopoly on misfortune then you are a fool.’ His eyes softened. ‘Though I know otherwise.’

  ‘Perhaps I am a fool,’ she said. ‘Twenty-nine years atop the Roost, and I barely gave thought to what went on below me.’

  ‘And what would you have done had you known? How would you have remedied the misfortune of so vast a swell of strangers, you without power or influence? Pain is a well without a bottom. Were any of us to understand, in full measure, the depth of the world’s suffering …’ He shook his head. ‘Indifference which hews near to cruelty – this is an essential quality of our species. And perhaps not of our species alone.’

  ‘The Shrike is an … abomination,’ Calla hissed, surprised at her own sudden rush of fury. ‘His actions cannot be held against the rest of the Wellborn. He is mad, but there is madness among humans as well.’

  ‘And yet your lord did not stop him.’

  ‘He could not, I told you. He did not have the right.’

  ‘One does not codify insanity into law – perhaps the Shrike is not so unique a specimen as you might prefer to believe.’

  ‘Your tongue is sharp, as ever. But your eyes have failed you, as they sometimes do. The Aubade is as distant from the Shrike as the sun is the moon.’

  Bulan swallowed that without reaction, drumming his fingers aimlessly against the table. ‘Have you ever raised a dog?’

  ‘The Aubade possesses an esteemed bestiary, though canines are thought too common to occupy it.’