Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘Much indeed,’ the Aubade said.

  29

  Eudokia had been late at work, as she was most nights, and like most nights she hadn’t got to her chambers until the moon was past its zenith. Alone, as usual. There were two activities best enjoyed in bed, and Heraclius was only a competent partner at one of them. She had too much to do the next morning to spend the hours preceding it with a pillow over her ears trying to block out his snoring, or being poked awake by his elbows, or quietly contemplating whether, if she were to murder the man with her fingernail scissors, she’d be able to hide the body before the servants came awake. Yes, was the answer she had come to some weeks earlier when he had last managed to plead his way into her bed, and since then she had thought it better for everyone if she was never again offered the opportunity.

  Eudokia had changed into her shift and turned off the lantern and fallen swiftly asleep. She made it a point not to toss and turn, not to eat up the few hours she was able to allot each day towards unconsciousness. Sleep was like any other activity, in so far as Eudokia saw no point in doing it half competently.

  She woke dazedly some hours later from a heavy slumber. There had been something in her dream, something she was worried about or needed to do, but it was gone now and trying to recall it only made it dissipate more swiftly. Eudokia yawned, stretched, peered her head out of the window next to her bed. Spring had been slow to arrive, but these last weeks the first buds had started to form, and the soft breeze tapping at the window frame wasn’t at all unpleasant.

  The mansion was three lines of a square overlooking gardens that became fields if you walked through them for long enough, though Eudokia rarely did. Her suite of rooms was on the top floor of the main building, offering the crowning view of the estate. A view that, as Eudokia took a moment to indulge in it, seemed too clear for so early in the morning, as if illuminated by some source other than the moon.

  ‘Fire,’ Eudokia realised, and at that exact instant she heard the clanging of the bell that was meant to warn the staff of just this state of affairs. Excellent, Eudokia thought. Now I don’t need to waste my voice with screaming.

  Eudokia walked over to her wardrobe, pulled on a cotton robe and a heavy wool one over that, spent a few seconds wondering if she should take anything else but decided against it. What few papers she hadn’t destroyed on principle were locked tight in a safe below the desk in her study, an iron monstrosity that should survive the inferno. Or perhaps it would all burn up together, Eudokia had no idea really, and there was nothing for it regardless. Her jewellery was worth a small fortune, as were her clothes, but she owned too many to go picking through them in the dark.

  The door leading to Heraclius’s quarters swung open and the man himself came sprinting into the bedroom naked, penis flapping back and forth like a caught fish. He leaned in close enough for her to smell his sleep-breath and screamed, ‘Fire! There’s a fire!’

  She pushed him back to an appropriate distance with one hand. ‘That would seem to be the case,’ she said, then sat back down on the bed and pulled on her shoes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Heraclius asked, still yelling.

  ‘I’m not going to sprint outside barefoot,’ she said. ‘And speaking of which, you might want to put on some trousers.’

  Heraclius looked down at his nudity, up at her, down at his nudity. Then he ran back into his room.

  ‘I’m not waiting,’ she informed his back.

  Theodora was just about to knock on her door as Eudokia opened it to leave, which Eudokia found to be a touching bit of loyalty, if pointless. ‘Mistress, there’s—’

  ‘A fire, yes, thank you Theodora. Where is Jahan?’

  Jahan had a small suite of rooms some distance from her own, though he seemed rarely to use them. Thinking about it now, Eudokia realised this was the first time in years that she had opened her door and not seen him standing outside it.

  ‘I’m not sure, mistress. I haven’t seen him.’

  Eudokia took note of that. ‘Make sure the rest of the servants’ quarters have been alerted, and assemble in the back gardens. Hopefully someone will have done something about bringing us water by that point.’

  Theodora nodded and sprinted down the hall. Eudokia herself headed down the main stairs, and her steps were light as a child’s and she had to stop herself from smiling. ‘Enkedri the Self-Created, whose eyes are the sun and moon, whose hands shape the star fields, whose heartbeat anchors the world,’ she prayed silently, ‘please destroy the east wing. If you destroy the east wing and leave the rest of the house undisturbed, I’ll sacrifice ten red heifers in your honour, and I’ll wield the blade myself.’ She thought about it for a moment, weighing the theoretical. ‘If you destroy the whole lot of it, however, you’ll only get five.’ That seemed a more than reasonable agreement, though it did assume that Enkedri had a particular love of heifer corpses, which was a sentiment as popular as it was unproven.

  Reaching the ground floor she noticed a smell of smoke and a faint uptick in temperature, though that last might have been just her imagination. The fire bell echoing loudly throughout the grounds was very much reality, however. Eudokia felt – and there was no other word for it – giddy. Hers was a realm of long-laid plans and silent traps, of slow strategy and delayed gratification. She found it rather thrilling to be in the midst of an immediately dangerous situation, one that required speed and surety. She had always thought she’d be good at it, was pleased to have the opportunity to test herself. Then again, Eudokia had always thought she’d be good at everything.

  She was making for the back gardens when a house slave she had never noticed before came running towards her, flapping his arms. ‘We can’t go out that way, mistress,’ he said. ‘The fire has spread.’

  Eudokia could see a faint glow further down the corridor, and she knew the man was not lying. ‘What do you propose?’

  ‘We can cut through the servants’ quarters and come out through the front – won’t take but a moment,’ he assured her.

  Eudokia nodded and waved her hand at the man, and after waiting a second to make sure that she was following he took her round the back of the staircase and into a small corridor leading towards the kitchens. He was tall, with a long scar running down his cheek, too ugly to be serving as one of the front help, though he was dressed in her livery rather than as a groundskeeper.

  The back kitchen was set up for the slaves’ breakfast, the big round table taking up the centre of the room covered with half-eaten plates of food. They’d even left a pot of what Eudokia took to be porridge bubbling away on the stove nearby.

  ‘It’s just through this way,’ her guide was saying, ‘we’re almost there.’

  The pot was a heavy thing and, needless to say, quite hot, so Eudokia made sure she had a firm grip on its handle before calling the attention of the house slave and tossing the contents into his face. He dropped as soon as it hit him, his screams deafening, then curled up into a ball on the floor, rubbing his melting face with melting hands.

  Eudokia could understand now why it had become traditional to drop vats of boiling things on people during sieges. She could also understand why the gods, in their infinite wisdom, had provided human beings with skin. Absent it and she could see the pink of raw flesh and something white that she could only assume was bone. ‘I certainly hope I got that right,’ Eudokia thought to herself, though she took some comfort in the knowledge that if she had just thrown a pot of boiling porridge in the face of an innocent servant, his body would be consumed in the coming blaze, and she wouldn’t hear any more of it.

  Still, Eudokia wasn’t altogether heartless, and she couldn’t help but acknowledge the man’s screaming as quite the most terrible thing she thought she had ever heard. It was some relief when she noticed the hilt of a knife peeking out from his breeches.

  ‘I’m fairly certain we don’t provide those for staff,’ she said aloud.

  But her would-be assassin didn’t hear her, and h
is screaming only got louder. The water had burned away his eyelids, or at least he couldn’t bring himself to close them, and his eyes were red as pulp.

  Eudokia looked around for a moment and grabbed an iron griddle that was hanging from the wall. The man was dying but not fast enough, and she didn’t suppose he had come alone. She lifted the skillet above her head and brought it swiftly and without hesitation down against the top of the man’s skull. He went limp as soon as he’d been struck, but Eudokia gave him two more, just to make certain. Blood splattered onto the floor and onto the walls and onto her robes.

  Clang, clang, clang went the fire bell.

  Eudokia pulled the dagger out of the man’s belt, held it in her palm for a moment, getting used to the balance. She took a quick look back down at the way they had come, but it had filled up with smoke. This would explain the fire’s rapid spread, and Jahan’s unexpected absence as well. She grabbed a lantern from the wall and headed onward.

  From the servants’ quarters Eudokia moved swiftly towards the main hallway, hoping to escape out of the front door and then make her way around the grounds to find help. This was the plan, at least, though it derailed quickly enough when her lantern caught the movement of a man ahead of her. A moment later and the illumination was sufficient to show he was not one of hers. Though dressed in a reasonable approximation of a servant’s outfit, he had a small sword as his side and his eyes had the blank look that you’d see in a smith at the forge or a carpenter at his table – a professional engaging in his chosen occupation.

  ‘Whatever you are being paid,’ Eudokia said coolly, ‘I am in a position to pay you more. And you are in a position to ask for it.’

  Either he was too stupid to answer or smart enough to know that nothing she said in the moment would be held to come the morning. Eudokia still had the dagger in her waistband but she didn’t bother to do anything with it. Knife work was no speciality of hers, as she imagined it was of this man’s.

  He moved swiftly towards her, weapon half drawn, then stopped and turned his head back to look the way he had come. Whatever it was that had grabbed his attention, Eudokia couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything in that moment but the rushing of blood in her veins, and couldn’t think about much more than the idea of it splattering on the walls. But then there was something protruding from her would-be assassin’s breast, something that glinted in the light of her lantern. And then he was sliding to the ground, and behind him stood her nephew, naked to the waist, his small sword slick with blood. ‘We’ve been attacked!’ he said, a child’s response to the situation, though there was nothing childlike about the red that covered his hands up to his elbows.

  ‘We’re being attacked,’ Eudokia corrected. ‘Now hurry to the stairs.’

  ‘Is it Andronikos?’

  ‘There’ll be time enough to determine the culprit,’ she said, ‘and to arrange a fitting punishment. Or at least, there might be, if you stop talking and hurry to the gods-damned stairs.’

  Though they weren’t so very far up those when Eudokia heard a commotion that could only mean her pursuers had found her. When they reached the second floor she pointed down the hallway. ‘Hide until they come after me, then double back the way we came. Find Jahan, if he hasn’t been killed. Otherwise find anyone, and have them meet me at the main door.’

  ‘I’m not going to just leave you,’ Leon said.

  How much better a place the world would be, Eudokia thought then, if people would just do what she told them. How much better for everyone. It was probably the single most frequent thought that Eudokia had, but she was thinking it particularly strongly just at that moment. ‘They’re not after you, you silly little child. You don’t matter at all. Listen to me and we might have some chance of saving the both of us.’

  She all but knew this was a lie, wondered if he did. Probably not – otherwise, he would have stuck around out of some ingrained sense of gallantry. This tendency towards purposeless heroism was something she would need to shake out of him, assuming she survived till morning. Eudokia grabbed him and held him tight, then released him, put both hands against his chest and propelled him down the hallway. He stared at her for a long second, then turned and ran as she had instructed. Eudokia did the same in the opposite direction.

  She moved down the darkened hallway at a rapid pace, but not so quickly that the men following her wouldn’t notice her lantern. When she could hear them distinctly she ripped open a side door and threw herself inside. It was one of the dozens of spare guest rooms, hadn’t been used for years, sheets still covering the furnishings. The key was in the lock and the lock still worked, thank the gods, and she turned it quickly and then broke it off. She inspected the environs for a few swift seconds, then made her way over to the window.

  Here she found her first bad luck of the day, not counting the fire or the group of men trying to kill her. The window was warped into the frame. She shoved the tip of her knife into the bottom crack, began to work to loosen it, actively but not frantically.

  Eudokia hadn’t really supposed that she had lost her pursuers, but she had been entertaining the notion that they might take a while to narrow down her location. A vain hope, she realised when she heard the sounds of footsteps coming down the hallway and then hands futilely trying the knob.

  ‘Domina,’ a voice said. ‘Open the door, for the love of Enkedri! The fire is spreading, we don’t have much time.’

  ‘Come in then, quickly!’ Eudokia said, still working at the window.

  ‘The door is locked, Domina.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Eudokia said, ‘I’ll open it.’

  After a few seconds during which Eudokia did nothing of the sort, she heard a soft chuckle waft its way inside. ‘Open the door, Domina.’

  ‘I can’t be certain that would be beneficial to my health.’

  ‘If you let us in, I promise, we won’t harm you.’

  ‘Quite a lot of trouble to not make any trouble for me,’ Eudokia thought to herself, but she answered in a quivering voice, ‘You swear? Upon Enkedri and his children?’

  ‘Upon Enkedri the Self-Formed, and Siraph his consort. On Terjunta who watches over soldiers, and Eloha who sprung from the depths.’ He was speaking loudly but in the pauses Eudokia could hear them working at the hinges of the door.

  ‘And the minor ones as well?’ Eudokia called back from the window. ‘On bright-plumed Avas, and Kairn the dicer, and on Tolb who lives among the low?’

  There was a pause on the other side of the door. ‘On all of them.’

  ‘And on the demigods? On two-headed Amphisbaena, and Catoblepas, and the Skolopendra herself?’

  ‘Open the fucking door,’ the voice said.

  ‘That friend of yours in the kitchen died in as much misery as any human being has ever endured, and I confess that murdering him gave me no small thrill.’

  A nasty chuckle sneaked in through the keyhole. ‘Why do you suppose we got into this business?’

  Eudokia broke open the window only a few seconds before her assailants managed to do the same with the door. She shoved the dagger into her belt and threw her lantern back into the room, and the burst of heat gave her a moment to scamper outside. Eudokia hadn’t climbed anything since her first bleeding, but there was an old trellis next to the ledge and one hardly needed to be a squirrel to go hand over foot. She reached the roof as quickly as she could, swung herself on top of it. It was formed of hard red clay tiles, and Eudokia loosened one with the point of her dagger and waited silently for her pursuers.

  ‘Get back down here, you withered old cunt!’ the face from the window yelled.

  Eudokia couldn’t quite make out the trajectory of the stone she dropped, though she took the scream that followed to be a positive sign. It wouldn’t be enough to keep them off for long, and the trellis was too firmly attached to the wall to do anything with, but at least it would delay her pursuers, beyond being thoroughly enjoyable in and of itself.

  She forced herself to h
er feet, saw, for a moment, her estate stretching out beneath her, made clear by the light of the moon and the light of the fire they had set, and felt a moment of dizziness from the height or the smoke or from being pursued by men hoping to kill her. But she shook through it, began to make her way forward as best as she was able. A short way down she slipped and felt her ankle do something that it wasn’t supposed to do – it was close to agony but she did not scream, indeed barely slowed, steeled herself and rose quickly, ignoring the pain shooting up her body. There would be time enough to bandage it, she consoled herself, or it wouldn’t be an issue long.

  The roof was shallow and went on for ever, and Eudokia moved across it as swiftly as she could make herself, which she knew was not nearly swiftly enough. When she reached the top she dropped onto her arse and slid down the other side, careful to catch herself just before the edge. Thirty links below – she hoped it was not more than thirty links – a balcony stretched elegantly over the front gardens. She didn’t give herself time to think, just pushed herself over, and when her ankle gave out as she landed she didn’t make a sound either, or at least not very much of one. She did rest on the balcony for a few seconds after, however, breathing shallowly, the pain in her leg as bad as anything she had ever felt.

  Eudokia didn’t remain motionless for very long. The banisters in the balcony were wide and she slid through one, hanging by her fingertips, feeling the nothingness below. She had meant to rest there a moment, but made the mistake of looking down and found herself falling.

  Eudokia had never stinted on upkeep – it was one thing to let an unused wing lie fallow, quite another to allow the magnificent gardens that surrounded it to degenerate. The hedge tore her robe apart and scratched her deep enough to draw blood and did not entirely stop the pain of her landing, but it almost certainly kept her from breaking her neck.