Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  It was only then that Thistle made the connection between the man who had saved his life a half-year earlier and the disturbance at the Anamnesis that had so excited him, that he had thought about secretly for weeks and months afterwards. Thistle felt as if Edom were looking directly at him. Everyone who heard Edom speak thought that, but in Thistle’s case it was actually the truth.

  ‘A new world is coming, my brothers,’ Edom said, after a long pause. ‘Will you be a part of it?’

  There couldn’t have been more than thirty men in attendance that night, but if you had heard the roar that erupted in response, you’d have thought there were far more – five hundred men, a thousand, ten, the entirety of the Rung. An explosion of passion the likes of which Thistle had never seen, sufficient to reduce the hardened porters and dockworkers and cheap thugs in attendance to a state of near mania. The man next to Thistle grabbed him suddenly and pulled him into a bear hug, and it was only after a moment that Thistle realised he was hugging the man back, and that the wetness he felt on his cheeks wasn’t perspiration, or at least not entirely so.

  Thistle shoved himself free of the man and sprinted for the exit. One of the guards said something as he broke out the back but Thistle couldn’t hear him, heading swiftly into the night air. The sleet had turned to snow and now stuck heavy on the ground, thick as cobwebs and white as fresh milk. It disappeared near as soon as it touched him, thawed by the heat kindled inside his chest.

  25

  The citadels of the Roost were as varied and diverse as the menagerie of creatures that blessed the Lord’s gardens. The Haunt of Stars was silent and subtle and ineffably quiet, brought a sense of composure and peace and faint sadness. The Red Keep was like a ray of late-afternoon sunlight crystallised into one towering and magnificent edifice, warm and welcoming and noble. The Prime’s demesne was a vast and infinitely mysterious creation, with things strange and beautiful hidden beneath every stone and behind every redoubt, a tableau of perfection carefully delineated over the course of the epoch.

  But even among this extraordinary collection, one could not help but recognise the Sidereal Citadel as being unique. The Wright, as his name would suggest, was famed among Those Above and Below for his genius in the creation of steamwork, curious mechanisms of metal and glass that walked and danced and performed many other sorts of wonders. During the course of his long life – for he was quite a bit older than the Prime even, had, in fact, stood as guardian for the Aubade himself in that impossibly distant period when the Lord of the Red Keep was still a hatchling – the Wright had rebuilt his manor according to his predilections. Everything that might be powered by water or steam rather than human muscle was done so: doors opened seemingly of their own accord, bridges between the towers dropped at the turn of a crank, awnings and balconies appeared unexpectedly from hidden indentations. Sterling orrery corresponding to no celestial pattern of which Calla was aware hung down from the ceilings, and the walls were adorned with automated tapestries depicting mounted Eternal riding into combat, or the cycle of a flower from bud to blossom.

  It was to see the newest of the Wright’s creations that the Aubade, the Prime and their respective entourages were standing on the top of the highest tower in the Sidereal Citadel. Like the Red Keep far to the east, the Wright’s castle was located at the outermost edge of the First Rung – but whereas the Red Keep stood overlooking the bay and the ocean beyond, the Sidereal Citadel lay suspended above the Second Rung and far below one could watch the humans go bustling about their day.

  Not that anyone was actually watching them, not with the strange splendours on offer at eye level. The Eldest loved flying things of all sorts, kites and fluttering pendants and the air-filled sacks that had become all the rage in the last few years, heated pouches with little baskets held beneath them that Those Above would use to flit undirected across the city. The Wright’s new craft, however, was in a class entirely of its own. The largest part of its bulk consisted of a half-dozen great packets, each slowly swelling with smoke from oversized silver braziers set beneath them. They were strung to the hull of a canal boat composed of interwoven willow, with a bronze beak at the front. But sliding out from the sides of the frame were two sets of wings like those of a dragonfly, purple silk stretched over metal wires. Eight stout men, two to each side, sat crammed onto narrow benches, waiting to turn their muscle towards the contraption. If they were frightened of their imminent sojourn into nothing, they didn’t show it, smiling and whispering to each other, reckless and without fear, like their lord.

  Inside the hull Calla could hear the sound of metal pushing against metal, and swarming in and out of it were the Wright’s servants, humans wearing plain working clothes, checking screws and bolts and the endless minor details that would mean the difference between glorious victory and a fiery death below. The Wright was explaining the inner workings of it to the Aubade, elaborately and in great detail, though between translating it mentally from the High Tongue and the sheer complexity of the conversation, Calla understood very little.

  In fairness, the Aubade seemed to be in little better shape. First in nearly every other task to which the Eternal set themselves, he had no head for steamwork, nor much understanding of its intricacies. What he did possess, however, was a keen sense of etiquette, and he had graciously spent the past half-hour listening to the Wright’s explanations of the contraption he had built.

  ‘In principle, of course, it’s a relatively simple variation on the classic system of air-bladders to provide lift, merged with wings to provide forward movement. Where my genius comes into play is that I’ve miniaturised the essential components, creating a vehicle capable of guided flight in a fashion never before conceived.’

  ‘Can you call it genius before the thing’s flown?’ the Aubade asked. ‘If it drops like a stone, wouldn’t the quality be more accurately called madness?’

  ‘I suppose you would have to call it both. Some of the rudder problems, in particular, I had to solve were quite taxing. Even if it fails overall, the specific advances I’ve made are definitive evidence of brilliance, speaking objectively.’

  ‘It won’t fail,’ the Aubade assured him, ‘and you are quite the cleverest thing the Roost has ever produced.’

  ‘Perhaps not ever,’ the Wright said, after giving the question some thought. ‘But certainly contemporaneously.’

  The Wright pulled his sibling aside to explain some or other feature of the craft and for a moment Calla was left alone with Sandalwood. It was the first time they had spoken since their visit to the Fifth Rung months earlier. Part of that was because of Bulan, who had gradually gone from being an occasional dalliance to something more serious. But more of it was that seeing him served as an unpleasant reminder of that horrible morning and, illogical and unjust though it was, Calla found herself resenting him for it.

  Though today, at least, that memory seemed attenuated, unfocused. Early spring but the weather was already warm, and all across the summit of the Roost shoots of green could be noticed, the first scent of flowers lingering in the nostrils. It seemed a day for renewal, for casting away burdens.

  ‘May the sun shine bright on you, Calla of the Red Keep,’ Sandalwood said with mock formality.

  ‘In a few minutes you should be able to make that request of him directly,’ she said.

  Sandalwood smiled. ‘I am not sure that the Lord’s expedition will carry us quite so high.’

  ‘Perhaps the next time. It is an extraordinary thing you have created.’

  ‘I think, as I had so little to do with its construction, it might not be too immodest of me to suggest that you do not truly understand the truth of those words. The Wright is …’ Sandalwood fell silent. ‘It is a privilege.’

  ‘A vice can be made of modesty, as of anything,’ Calla said brightly, slipping one arm beneath his. ‘And today’s victory is nearly as much yours as your master’s.’

  He blushed and began to answer, but the Wright called out to him then
, needing his input on some or other aspect of the craft, and he smiled and dipped his head. She watched as together they inspected the array of machinery, talking quietly and making small adjustments. If it was the Wright’s child, then at least Sandalwood had proven instrumental in its delivery. He looked handsome, sharp and focused, and happy the way someone is happy when they are performing a difficult task with skill. Once he looked over to see if she was watching him, and he smiled to see that she was, and she smiled to see that she had made him smile. Afterward, with the Aubade’s permission, she might take the evening off, invite Sandalwood out for a celebratory libation and perhaps even take him home after. Bulan wouldn’t like it, but then Bulan would never know, and anyway Calla felt more than confident that she was not the only woman privileged to grace the Chazar’s bed.

  Lost in thought, Calla had not noticed the Aubade drift away to speak with the Prime. The two of them conversed quietly at the outermost reach of the precipice, their beauty a palimpsest against the endless blue of the afternoon sky. Their liaison continued with all the haste of a fleeing tortoise, a pace that might well see Calla’s children dead before flowering. He had sent an etching two weeks earlier that might have been of her face, or of the sky before a winter storm, and she had responded with a special blend of joss that still lingered happily in the corridors of the Red Keep.

  Alas, it seemed this was not the time for love. ‘The reports from the Sentinel of the Southern Reach are that the Aelerians continue their preparations,’ the Aubade said. ‘And that the war party is ascendant.’

  The Prime was staring out at the Wright’s masterpiece, and seemed less than thrilled to have to turn her attention away from it. ‘With all there is to see today, can’t we speak of something else?’

  ‘I take no joy in politics, nor of turning our talk towards them. But the Aelerians are a threat that needs to be taken seriously.’

  ‘Those Below are never happy except when they’re killing each other,’ the Prime said. ‘I have stood beneath the sun for two hundred turnings, and there have not been ten when the Dayspans were not at war.’

  ‘You do not need to tell me of the Five-Fingered,’ the Aubade said. ‘I’ve spent as much time observing them as any of us.’

  ‘Experience does not necessarily lead to understanding,’ the Prime said. ‘There are many in the Conclave who would say that your time as a Sentinel has tainted your judgement – that the destruction of Elsium by the Sea rendered you antagonistic towards the Aelerians, and over-willing to intervene in human affairs.’

  It was to the Aubade’s credit that he could consider this suggestion without rancour. He deliberated for a time before speaking. ‘In truth, I think of my years outside the Roost but rarely. My memories of Elsium by the Sea are faint and ill-preserved. Though there are times when I can recall the sound of the water lapping against the sands, and am filled with the most terrible sense of despair, as if there were nothing in the world for me but to hear that sound again.’ He fell silent, and despite his words seemed very much lost in memory, blinked twice to shake himself free of it. ‘But that is not to the point – my past history is used as a comfortable excuse to ignore me, to continue blind to the truth.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That the humans are a threat to us. That we have thought too long of them as chattel, and must readjust our understanding.’

  The Prime turned her gaze away from the airship and onto the servants who were running over the top of it. ‘They seem quite threatening.’

  ‘You look at your house servants and the people of the First Rung, and you imagine them to be representative of the species. But you are wrong, as wrong as you would be to call a wolf a dog. They are clever, and they learn quickly, and they are cruel, terribly cruel. You imagine their short span is a weakness? I am far from sure of that – their nearness to death makes them mad to leave something of themselves behind. They do more in a day than we do in a month, and with lives so brief can barely give a thought towards the future.’

  ‘One wonders why they have not sacked the city and killed all of us.’

  ‘I ask myself that often,’ the Aubade said. ‘Once they were too fractious to turn their attentions towards us. Now I imagine they simply overrate our strength.’

  ‘There is as much danger in fearmongering as in complacency. I rode beside you the last time we met the Aelerians, and well remember your blade among them. If the Locusts are so desperate to meet their death, then it will be no very great struggle to bring it to them.’

  ‘I suppose it is a factor of our span, that makes it so difficult to adjust to time’s passage, to imagine that there might yet be things that we have not seen, that tomorrow might not arrive identical to yesterday.’

  ‘Does life bore you so, that you need make monsters out of shadows and demand that we all follow you in pursuit of them? Or is it sheer bloodthirst that would have us descend upon the Aelerians with fire and sword? I had not thought that you and the Lord of the Ebony Towers would have so much in common.’

  For a moment the Aubade seemed bright and terrible as the noonday sun, the mention of the Shrike leading him towards fury. ‘I would think you know me better than that.’

  After a moment the Prime dipped her head. ‘Yes,’ she said, which was no very great apology but it seemed it was all he would get.

  Calla thought they both looked happy to see the Wright waving over to them, bringing their conversation to an abrupt end. The expected moment had finally arrived. The Wright bowed to the Prime and then to the Aubade, pulled his robes tight about him and in one easy leap cleared the gangway to land upright. He gave a signal to two of the house servants still standing on the tower, who swiftly released the ties that anchored the ship.

  The assembled crowd held its breath in wonder and terror. The strange, hulking, absurd contraption, freed from its bounds, rose slowly up into the air. Sandalwood called the beat of the rowers, one-two one-two, and the ship lurched forward, making its way out into the naked air. The Wright stood on the bow, enjoying this moment that his long months of labour had created. You could not quite call it graceful – the craft bobbed violently, could be no very comfortable berth for those ensconced inside. But, awkward or not, the thing flew! It did not float or glide – it flew as a bird, wings humming in even but rapid time, the balloons a bright burst of colour against the azure sky. Calla laughed and clapped her hands in sheer wonder, and she was far from the only one.

  Who, looking at the craft, would have doubted the truth of the Prime’s words? Calla had heard that the humans on the lower portions of the Roost, and those benighted souls beyond it, credited the High with all sorts of supernatural abilities, said that they could read minds and call down lightning with a word – nonsense, of course, though she could understand how such stories had begun. For were they not worthy of myth, these creatures among which she lived? Were they not legends, though they stood and walked as men?

  Calla was looking at Sandalwood, who was standing beside the Wright with a smile to match his lord’s, and so she didn’t see whatever it was that exploded actually explode, only heard the sound and felt a sudden wave of heat and force that knocked her to the ground, head turning tortuously, a drone in her ears that was more like a pain than a noise.

  It took Calla a long time to stand; her arms wouldn’t do what she told them to and her legs proved similarly rebellious. When she finally managed it she discovered the front of the craft was thick with smoke, and the chittering left wing that had so amused her a moment before was gone completely, bits of falling debris the only evidence that it had ever existed. One of the rear sacks had burst and the ship listed vertically, the humans manning it tumbling towards the prow.

  The buzz in her ears died enough for her to hear the chorus of five-fingered screams. The explosion had knocked the Wright to the deck of the ship, but he was back up swiftly. He grabbed the nearest human, one of the rowers, a man bull-necked and stout, and threw him over his shoulder as if he were a sa
ck of wheat. Then he sprinted across the deck and made a smooth leap onto the dock.

  Calla was so focused on the Wright’s escape that she did not realise the Aubade was making the reverse journey. Without preamble and seemingly without consideration he tore across the deck, building up speed for the jump. Calla’s heart was in her chest and then her lord was in the air. The ship hung some far way out from the precipice, and the Aubade barely made it, catching the tip of the bow with one hand. Calla screamed then, adding her voice to the crowd, but the Aubade continued on unflappable, swinging himself up and darting straight into the hull.

  The fire had spread so rapidly that this was now obscured entirely by black smoke, and what happened next Calla couldn’t make out clearly. The rest of the assemblage, human and High, had been reduced to chaos, the Wright’s servants shrieking and running back and forth along the quay. One of the unfortunate crew members came sprinting out from inside the hull, engulfed in flame and shrieking so loudly and so terribly as to drown out, for a moment, the rest of the cries. Then he was over the edge and falling and his voice soon lost. Another eruption of sound and the side air sack was gone as well, and the weight of the ship began to pull unceasingly downward.

  And then the Aubade came out of the smoke, a human slung over each shoulder. There was an instant when he stood unmoving on the trembling deck of the ship, marshalling his energies for the task in front of him. Calla was screaming at him to stop, that he could never make it, that he had barely made it the first time. Later she would realise how mad this was, since of course staying on the ship was suicide, but in the moment somehow she did not realise it.

  Perhaps the ship had drifted closer to the tower, or perhaps the Aubade’s first leap had been below his normal standards, because this time he cleared the distance easily, landing, by coincidence or design, just in front of Calla herself. Midway through his leap the final air sack popped desultorily and the craft plunged like a stone, dropping so rapidly that Calla barely had time to mark its descent before she heard – no, felt – the impact below, a caterwaul of crushed steel and wood and flesh that seemed to shake the very foundations of the city.