Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  23

  Bas stood outside his tent, watching their approach. Watching her approach. It was early afternoon and it had been raining for much of the morning and Bas was not wearing a cloak. Bas had discovered since returning to the capital that what the Aelerians called midwinter the Marchers would have called early autumn or, more likely, nothing, since the Marchers were hardy folk and the vague dampness that passed for cold here in the east would not have warranted their notice. He told himself that this lack of clothing explained the chill, but despite Bas’s many other talents he had no gift for rationalisation, or at least less of a gift than most.

  It was a modest-sized group that traveled the great northern road leading out from the city and up to camp, but only one of them could possibly be the Sentinel of the Southern Reach. Her horse was black as a night beneath ground, and bigger than any such animal he had seen since the war. She rode the monstrosity smoothly and her escort, a silk-clad courtier and a half-dozen savage-looking Parthans, struggled to keep up.

  She swung down from the saddle before she had brought her animal to a full stop, a demonstration of agility that would have impressed a March lord, but which she did with a distinct suggestion of casualness. Bas had heard that the Eternal trained their horses to hate the smell of man, and perhaps this was the case, because the Sentinel’s animal seemed agitated, tossing its great thick neck back and forth. The Sentinel brought her head up against it, whispered strange-sounding words. Enough to quell the thing’s fury, though even still it carried a clear hint of menace, as a sheathed sword or a naked woman.

  By then her lifeguard had arrived and dismounted. The Parthans were as black as Hamilcar and seemed far meaner. Each carried a talwar and any number of small, sharp, curved metal things hanging in their loose robes. Bas would not have backed any three of them against the Sentinel, perhaps not any five, perhaps not all of them together. But the Senate, in a rare display of good sense, had determined it would be unwise to allow the Roosts ambassador to wonder about the city unattended. That they had felt the need to compose her lifeguard of foreigners spoke to the consensus of Aelerian sentiment towards the Four-Fingered.

  As this animus was shared to no small degree among the themas, Bas had some concern about the Sentinel’s visit. At this point the camp was skeletal, the huge masses of raw recruits he’d been promised slow to arrive. There were probably not twenty men among the few hundred sitting about in the barracks and waiting for something to do who had taken part in the last war against the Others – which was, admittedly, closer to thirty years back than twenty-five, and had ended with few humans left alive to swear vengeance.

  But still, Aeleria had hated the devils since the last king and all his line had been killed at the Lamentation some three centuries past. Bas wondered if the Sentinel had taken part in that as she had in the Battle of the Scarlet Fields, if the human blood on her hands dripped back through the centuries, if locked somewhere in that head of hers was the memory of a man who looked distantly like Bas being pushed to the ground and dispatched with no modicum of grace nor dignity, of his wife and mewling children sent to join him. It didn’t matter to Bas, but he knew it did to many of his countrymen.

  The point being that he was perfectly happy to have the Sentinel surrounded by a number of large, violent, well-compensated men who had no particular affection towards Aeleria and could be expected to cut down a couple of raw recruits if that became necessary. Bas was less than pleased to see the one remaining member of the Sentinel’s entourage arrive then, a man named Kantoleon, the chief liaison between the Other and the nation in which she resided. Quite apart from his tardiness he gave the impression of being no very competent horseman, and the ride out from the city had left him winded and dishevelled. He dismounted awkwardly, and after a long moment savouring the dirt beneath his feet, he bowed to Bas and began the formal introductions.

  ‘Strategos Bas Alyates, the Caracal, this is our emissary from the Roost, the Sentinel of the Southern Reach.’

  ‘We have met,’ she said, as if to remind Bas of this fact.

  ‘I recall.’

  Kantoleon was still struggling to regain his breath – you’d have thought he’d sprinted out here, rather than ridden – and Bas took the opportunity to inspect the Sentinel once again. You would not quite call her beautiful – too alien, too foreign, despite her long hair and fair skin – but perhaps something close. Her violet eyes were impossibly strange and he noticed now, as he had not before, that her fingers had one more joint that did his own.

  ‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, Strategos, for taking a few moments out of your busy schedule, to escort us on a tour of the camp,’ Kantaleon said.

  Bas grunted. He supposed that what was primarily required of a man in Kantaleon’s position was oily obsequiousness, but still he couldn’t help but feel he was carrying the point too far. It had been Kantoleon who had approached him a week earlier, tried to explain the situation, though his speech was so labyrinthine, so choked with excuses and subterfuges that it had taken Bas half an hour to figure out what was being asked. The Sentinel wished to inspect the training of the new thema, and had requested that Bas be her guide. Would the Caracal consent to act as such? In theory the Sentinel could go anywhere and do anything she wanted, or very nearly so, but it seemed that in practice she rarely left the sizable hunting preserve the Senate had granted her a half-day’s ride out of the city.

  Bas supposed he could have said no, and what would they have done about it? And he was going to say no, had planned to say no. So it had come as something of a surprise to him when he ended up saying yes, and he had spent fully the rest of the day trying to figure out why he had done so. Boredom was a great part of it – by Terjunta, he was bored, that sort of boredom in which he had come to recognise the seeds of potential madness. And certainly she was a magnificent thing, and just to be able to look at her for a few minutes was a source of what in another man you might have called happiness.

  As to why the Sentinel had asked for him specifically, Bas could not possibly explain. Bas had little enough understanding of what motivated the actions of members of his own species, would not have begun to guess at what drove something as foreign as the Sentinel. Perhaps, at bottom, it was simply that Bas did not fear her, did not feel uncomfortable in her presence, or at least not any more than he felt uncomfortable around everyone.

  It was a rest day; the hoplitai-in-training were killing the slow hours in their barracks, or inside the city if they had been lucky enough to get a day’s pass. But still there were no few of the Commonwealth’s children milling about, hoping to catch a look at the new arrival or simply having nothing better to do. Parthans were not very highly thought of among the Aelerians, and the Others even less so. Bas did not imagine there were any among his ranks so mad as to want to fight their way through a well-armed bodyguard to earn the right to be killed by the fists of the Sentinel, but the bristling stares she received from most of the passers-by would have wounded anyone capable of normal human empathy.

  A characteristic that seemed entirely absent to the Sentinel. After a moment inspecting the scene she walked swiftly into the heart of the camp, Kantoleon and her lifeguard following after. Bas was taken by surprise, had to hurry a bit to catch up with her long, graceful steps.

  ‘How many men are in a thema?’ the Sentinel asked, turning to Bas.

  ‘Ten thousand, my Lady,’ Kantoleon answered.

  She looked at Kantoleon curiously, as if she had just met him, as if his existence at this moment was a source of utmost confusion to her. Then she turned back to Bas. ‘How many men are in a thema?’

  ‘In theory, ten thousand, though I’ve never served in one that was up to full strength. You have to assume a twentieth of them are sick at any given time, more if you are in garrison, far more during a siege. There’s a somewhat smaller number of deserters, or dead men kept on the rolls so their comrades can have a few more cloves of bread.’

  �
��And how many themas does Aeleria count?’

  ‘Fourteen, my Lady. Fifteen when this one comes to full strength.’ This from Kantoleon again.

  ‘I was not addressing you,’ the Sentinel said, as if she were supplying information, rather than offering rebuke.

  ‘Fifteen,’ Bas confirmed, ‘once this has come up to strength.’

  ‘And where are they located?’

  ‘Most are scattered about the Marches,’ Kantoleon cut in, ‘and the rest are garrisoning other posts throughout the Commonwealth.’

  ‘You may leave now,’ the Sentinel said, her eyes still on the camp set up before her.

  ‘Forgive me, my Lady?’ Kantoleon asked.

  ‘You and the lifeguard,’ she said, ‘may return to the manor. I have no need of you.’

  Kantoleon was a man who made his living with veiled suggestions and half-truths – blunt speech left him uncomfortable and faintly ashamed. He hemmed and hawed for a moment, but without forming a clear sentence. Then he performed a curious, mincing sort of motion, like a bow but with several awkward hand gestures, and fell back the way they had come. After a moment the Parthans did the same, though before they left, the leader, or at least the one dressed most garishly, gave Bas a long, slow look. Bas ignored it. He didn’t need to be reminded of what would happen if the Roost’s emissary was murdered in the heart of an Aelerian camp.

  ‘I cannot tell if that man is deliberately trying to infuriate me,’ she said, after they all had gone, ‘or if stupidity is a customary part of officialdom in your country.’

  ‘Both,’ Bas said, turning and walking down towards the armoury.

  With Kantoleon no longer around to hamper their conversation, the Sentinel could give full vent to her curiosity. She asked about everything, a constant stream of questions, queries and interrogations. Whether or not she was putting the information together in a coherent way, however, Bas could not say. Each question seemed to exist as an autonomous and complete thing, having no relation to its predecessor. One moment she would be demanding some piece of information that seemed relevant – how long were the pikes used by the themas, and were they all the same size – and then she would move on to something that seemed to Bas utterly trivial – how many nails were used in shoeing a horse, and why had the third cohort chosen the wolf as its figurehead?

  He could not say that he found it unpleasant. True, she was brusque, had little understanding of the conventions of human speech, but this did not bother Bas, who was himself no very polished conversationalist. ‘Surely you must know some of this,’ he said, after she had spent a quarter of an hour asking Bas to describe the process by which a pentarche is promoted to tetrarche. ‘How is the army organised by your people?’

  ‘The Roost has no need of an army,’ the Sentinel said, as if surprised at the very concept. ‘Why would it? The Roost is the Eternal, and every Eternal would sacrifice themselves in its defence.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Not the hatchlings – what you would call children, I suppose. Nor the very aged or infirm. But everyone else. The last time we rode against you, there were not fifty of my kind left within the city.’

  Bas was struck by her curious lack of guile. Was she so innocent as not to understand that Bas had been and might again be her enemy? Or was she just too arrogant to imagine that he’d ever be able to take advantage of this information? And if it was the latter, was she right? For surely, the last time the demons had ridden out against Aeleria, they had been equally certain of their superiority – and had not at all been proven wrong.

  ‘And among your people? Why have these men decided to enter into the Commonwealth’s service?’

  ‘Not all of them did. Some are convicts who thought a stint in the thema better than death on the galleys. Many are second or third sons with nothing to inherit and no trade to take up. Some of the very foolish ones might even have had some notions of heroism or love of country, though we usually break that out of them after a few days.’ Bas shrugged. ‘Who can say why a man does a thing?’

  ‘And why did you choose to serve?’

  ‘I was born into the thema,’ Bas said uncomfortably.

  ‘You did not indicate that this was a possibility.’

  ‘It usually isn’t.’ Bas said. And this would normally have been enough for him, not a man much given to discussing the past, or at least his past, but then for some reason he ended up adding, ‘I was born outside of a garrison on the edge of the Marches.’

  ‘But the females of your species are weak, and do not fight in your armies.’

  ‘They do not fight in our armies, that is true,’ Bas said. Then, after a moment, ‘She was a camp-follower.’

  ‘Where did she follow the camp?’

  ‘Wherever it went, I suppose. She was a whore,’ Bas clarified, or thought he clarified.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A woman who sold herself to men for money.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Was her client.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Sentinel said, ‘that makes sense.’

  ‘My mother died when I was a child. A man of the Thirteenth took me in, made sure I had something to eat and wear until I was old enough to join in formally. Armies breed bastards like rotted meat does flies. I was luckier than most,’ he said, meaning it. The lot of the Commonwealth by-blows in foreign lands was not a kind one, and it was worse, as most things were, on the Marches. A whore did not need a child, for all that her profession seemed likely to make one. Those that weren’t exposed to the elements one evening would likely as not die within the first year anyway, of cold or from lack of food or from one of the illnesses that arise when one is freezing and hasn’t eaten well. An orphan, without even the limited protection that their mother might provide – well, they were as worthy of pity as any other living thing.

  The thema had proved Bas’s salvation. The Thirteenth were a pack of savages, but they’d seen to him just the same, fed him from their own stores, let him sleep at their fire, given him cast-off clothes, even once found milk for him when he’d grown sick. At five he’d been a mascot, marching along with them, singing their fighting songs, the old hands laughing at his stumbling grasp of profanity. At eight he’d been an extra set of hands, carrying supplies, foraging for wood and food, performing what small tasks he’d been capable of. At twelve they’d started training him with a sword, not training him as you would a child either, but real practice, with blunted blades and light padding. At fifteen he’d taken the oath – three years younger than the law demanded, but he was big enough to shoulder a pike, and as far as the men of the Thirteenth were concerned their job was to spread the law of the Commonwealth more than to follow it.

  ‘And you?’ Bas asked. ‘Why are you here?’

  She had a way of speaking as if everything she said were as obvious and unquestionable as dirt. ‘Since the Founding, the Wellborn have posted Seven Sentinels across the lands, to ensure the human nations operate in harmony with one another.’

  Except that the Founding of the Roost, so far as Bas understood it, had taken place closer to three thousand years ago than two, when the greater part of the continent would have been no more than old-growth forests and untamed plains. What had the job been like, back in those distant days, he wondered? There were still towers scattered across the continent that were said to have been the product of the ancient Sentinels, strange and wondrous things, crumbling but still beautiful.

  ‘And why are you one of those seven?’

  ‘Is it not a thing to be proud of, to uphold one’s duty to one’s kind and country?’

  ‘It depends on the kind,’ Bas said, ‘and the country.’

  ‘No,’ she said after giving it a moment’s thought. ‘I do not think it does. And I do not think that you think that, Strategos.’

  Bas realised he was smiling. ‘Call me Bas.’

  ‘Bas,’ she repeated, or acknowledged.

  ‘And what am I to call you?’

  ‘H
ere I am called the Sentinel of the Southern Reach.’

  ‘That’s a title,’ Bas said. ‘Not a name.’

  ‘Is a thing not named for its purpose?’

  ‘If that were the case,’ Bas said, ‘very few of us would be named anything.’

  ‘The name I am known by among my people is private. In any case, you would not be able to understand it, nor to pronounce it. No human can.’

  ‘And the humans in your charge? They must call you something.’

  ‘Of course. They call me Lady,’ she said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

  Bas did not want to insult her by laughing. ‘And what if you and another of your kind were standing together, and a servant needed to draw your attention?’

  ‘My humans are far too well trained to interrupt a conversation between two of the Eternal,’ she said. ‘I suppose if there were some sort of emergency, they would refer to me by my full title.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I am the Lady of the Ivory Estate.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the Ivory Estate,’ Bas said.

  Another stuttered pause while she tried to understand why this was relevant. ‘It’s no longer Ivory,’ she acknowledged. ‘But it was in my grandmother’s day, when it was first built.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Now it’s mostly blue.’

  ‘The Lady of the Ivory Estate,’ Bas repeated. ‘It does not trip lightly off the tongue.’

  ‘I suppose …’ She fell silent for a moment, then another one, as if working through some complex problem in her head. ‘I suppose you might give me a name.’