For a time it was impossible to move; all breath was lost to her, she had to count to thirty just to bring her heart down to a twice-normal beat. It took longer for her to dislodge herself from the indentation she had made in the broken bush. By that point she could hear them from the roof, yelling back and forth at each other and trying to figure out where she had gone. Forcing herself out of the indentation she had made, she crawled along in the shadow of the shrubbery. She was close to the main door, perhaps she could hide long enough for assistance to arrive.
But the moonlight ruined any chance of subterfuge; one of them spotted her and gave a yell. Eudokia pushed herself to her feet, screamed at the pain, felt a hot flicker of shame at her weakness, forced herself onward. A few steps forward she took a quick look behind her, saw two of her pursuers leap straight from the second storey, out over the balcony she had clung to and into the bushes below. The third was not so lucky; jumping a second or two later, he swivelled in the air as he fell and landed awkwardly, groaned loudly and then went still. Her second one tonight, Eudokia thought excitedly – but that still left two, and two would be more than enough to kill her.
If she could have run she might have tried it, just on the slim chance. But she couldn’t – indeed she could barely stand, and so she decided simply to stand upright and face what was coming. It seemed clear to Eudokia that she had reached her last few moments above the ground. Well, she wasn’t the first person to find herself in this situation. And she would meet it, as she had met every challenge she had ever faced, with the dignity and poise of her ancient line.
‘A merry chase,’ the first man said. He was the one that Eudokia had dropped a tile on, and it had shattered his nose and most of his teeth, leaving the centre of his face a mass of pulp. He was smiling through it, though. ‘A merry chase, but we’ve come to the end of it.’
‘You’re bleeding,’ Eudokia observed.
He laughed and pointed his weapon at her. ‘It’s a shame I can’t spend any time on you. I like the tough ones. They’re more fun to break.’
Eudokia didn’t bother to respond – there was no point in wasting any more time on the man, a degenerate and a barbarian, unworthy of her final thoughts. She pulled the dagger out from her waistband, trying to decide whether to aim it at her throat or her chest. She settled on the former – an odd angle, but she wouldn’t need to worry about striking through bone.
And then the front door opened and Jahan was there, without a single scrap of clothing, blood on his moustache and his chest and his genitals; whether his blood or someone else’s, Eudokia could not be sure. Leon was close behind him, sword drawn and looking quite furious, though in that moment Eudokia’s attention was occupied more or less entirely by the Parthan. This seemed equally to be the case for the two men who had been about to murder her, and who would have found the task easily accomplished if they had struck in this brief interlude. But the sight of her naked bodyguard, ichor-covered and furious, was the sort of thing that might give even a dangerous man pause, and her would-be assassins twisted their attentions rapidly towards him, hoping to make some sort of defence against his rage.
To no avail. Unpractised as she was in warfare, Eudokia found it impossible to make out the individual movements by which Jahan subdued her two attackers. All she could say was that at first there were two men holding small swords, and Jahan himself was unarmed, and then there was one man holding a small sword and another on the ground trying to breathe through a shattered trachea, and then the only person holding anything was Jahan, lifting the remaining survivor into the air by the throat.
Phocas had not been wrong, all those years ago, when he had claimed Jahan as the most dangerous person he had ever met. He had proved that by defeating two armed men barehanded in less time than it would take to recite a stanza, but he proved it doubly then when he held back from killing the second, holding him above his head like a helpless babe. ‘Leave this one alive?’
Eudokia shook her head ‘There’s no need. It’s clear enough who sent him.’
Jahan nodded, wrapped both hands round the throat of the almost-corpse. Eudokia did not hear the crack, but when Jahan let go of him the man was most certainly dead.
They inspected each other for a moment. Naked, Jahan was somewhat uglier than she had realised. ‘There were four of them outside my room,’ he said. ‘Two of them knew what they were doing. You were gone by the time I could get there.’
‘Heraclius?’ she asked.
Jahan shrugged. ‘I didn’t look.’
Leon sprinted down the steps and grabbed Eudokia in a fierce embrace. ‘Thank the gods,’ he said. Then he said it again.
She let him hold her another moment, then pushed him away. Now that her life was no longer in danger her body had got round to feeling pain, particularly in the ankle she had landed on when falling, which was at once quite agonising and strangely distant. ‘Is that a knife sticking out of your chest?’ she asked Jahan.
‘Yes,’ Jahan said without looking down.
‘We’d best get that taken care of,’ Eudokia said. ‘To the back gardens.’
‘Do you need me to carry you?’ Jahan asked.
‘It would hardly seem so,’ Eudokia said, hobbling onward.
30
Thistle paced his way upslope, eyes swivelling in the early-evening light, consciously stopping himself from fingering the dagger he had started carrying. It was six weeks since Thistle had made peace with Chalk, and three since Pallor, who was the man forty-five minutes’ walk west, had laid claim to a stretch of docks that had traditionally lain in Rhythm’s territory; the docks itself and the protection and smuggling money that came with it. At first it had seemed like the usual bluster, the kind of disagreement that would be taken care of by negotiation or appeal to the authorities, those shadowy higher-ups within the Brotherhood who were never seen but whose whisper was law, and who generally didn’t like having their cut lessened on account of bloodshed. Then one evening Pallor had smashed up a gambling house Rhythm ran, an act that Rhythm felt required repayment. They’d been going tit-for-tat ever since, broken bones and stolen coin, no corpses but you couldn’t think that would last for ever.
Thistle was nervous being too far from his home turf. Mostly these days he did not leave the neighbourhood; mostly these days he barely left his house, had lost his taste for cheap bars and slightly more expensive whores. There did not seem to be much these days that Thistle hadn’t lost his taste for. He spent the balance of his time on his roof, looking down and thinking things that he chose not to share with anyone. But one night every week, or at least almost every week, Thistle slipped down from his perch and scuttled his way upslope. He would come back hours later, long after midnight, looking tired and uncertain, and wet if it had been raining.
There were more of them every week, till they couldn’t all sit on the fruit crates and had to stand, till they were packed into the place thick as lice. Not all of them from the Fifth either, plenty of well-fed men looking nervous at being so far from home, upslopes creeping down the mountain to hear the word of the new prophet. Thistle would go and sit quietly in the back and leave when the speech was done, didn’t stick around to talk to anyone or to let anyone talk to him. Nor did he mention it to any of his people downslope, not to Rhythm or any of the other folk at Isle’s, not to Felspar or Treble either.
Thistle arrived early to find the warehouse barred and shuttered, like the rest of its siblings on the block. He had missed going the week before; Rhythm had needed him to ride herd on a crew of porters carrying some illicit goods upslope, holding a head-knocker in one hand and feeling like a phony, wondering if everyone else felt the same. Had the Cuckoos cracked down in the interim? He thought he would have heard rumour of it, but perhaps he was wrong. Looking at his face just then you could not have said with any certainty what it was that he felt. Despair? Relief?
‘It’s not here tonight,’ said a voice from behind him, one that Thistle recognised.
; It was the first thing the Edom had said to him since he had saved his life almost a year before. The first thing he had said directly to Thistle, at least, though every speech he gave seemed to have been aimed at the young man from the Barrow.
‘We’ve had to move it to a larger location,’ Edom said. ‘Do you know the quadrant on the Fourth Rung where the charcoal burners work?’
‘Not really,’ Thistle said.
Edom nodded, his grand leonine head bobbing up and down. ‘Do you still let them call you Thistle?’
‘Yeah.’
Edom grunted unhappily. ‘Walk with me,’ he said and turned himself upslope without waiting to see if Thistle would listen.
Thistle did listen, hurried to catch up and then matched Edom’s gait. Edom was taller and walked with a brisk but even pace, like he was hurrying off to fulfil some not at all unpleasant task. Thistle expected him to say something but he didn’t, not for a long time, not till they were nearly within sight of the boundary.
‘Have you ever been this far upslope?’
It galled Thistle that he had not, but he found he could not bring himself to lie to the man. ‘No.’
‘Yours is one of our smaller chantries. Most of our members come from the Fourth Rung, or even the Third.’
‘I’m not a member,’ Thistle said.
Edom rocked his head back and forth, as if the question remained uncertain. ‘Do you know why it is you are called Thistle?’
‘What my mother named me.’
‘And do you know why she named you that?’
‘No.’
‘Because she knew no better. In the rest of the world a name is a salute to the gods, a tie to the past, a prayer for the future. But the Time Below stripped us of our memories, and our myths, until we could not even recall the names of our ancestors. We returned to the sun amnesiacs, and in our frivolousness we call our children whatever foolish thing meets our fancy. Doggerel, all of it, though on the upper slopes the words are sweeter-sounding.’
Thistle had never before thought to consider the origin of his name, had no idea if what Edom said was true. Though as ever when Edom spoke Thistle had the sense of turning a bend to discover himself atop a high vista, looking down over things he had thought large and solid and finding that they were neither.
They followed the walls east, towards one of the checkpoints leading up to the Fourth. Thistle was starting to get nervous, looking down at the naked flesh of his wrist. He didn’t have authorisation to go any higher into the Roost, not the temporary bracelets that guaranteed passage for a fixed period of time, nor the tattoos that marked the owner as being a permanent resident. Without one of them the Cuckoo would never let him through – at best he’d suffer the humiliation of being turned away, at worst they’d decide to shake him down, maybe even find his weapon.
But Edom didn’t seem concerned, strode onward casually. The challenge was implicit and Thistle wasn’t one to back down. And the truth was, though he wasn’t altogether comfortable admitting it to himself, Thistle had come to trust Edom, didn’t suppose he’d be leading him into folly.
The Fifth Rung had a gradual upward slope, a few degrees that would find you, after several hours’ walk, standing some quarter-cable above sea level, staring at the boundary to the Fourth. Walls thrice the height of a man and formed of solid basalt, the Rung itself beginning atop them, an intricate series of locks allowing for the pleasure craft of Those Above to ascend or descend.
Those Below, of course, made do with stairs. The gate leading up to them was heavy-looking and intricately wrought and seemed not to have been shut in a very long time. It was manned by a Cuckoo, looking much like every other Cuckoo Thistle had ever seen.
‘Good evening, Adze,’ Edom said.
‘Good evening, Edom.’
Thistle had never heard a Cuckoo speak to anyone with respect before, wasn’t quite certain how to take it, like a rat standing up on its hind legs and asking for directions.
‘And how is the wife? Recovering swiftly, I can only hope?’
‘Oh yes, yes indeed. This was an easy one, thank the Founders. Not like the first.’
‘And the babe herself?’
The Cuckoo grinned so wide that Thistle thought his head might split into two. ‘Oh she’s a pip, you can see it already. She stares at you, sir, not something you see so much in newborns, I don’t think. Shows intelligence.’
‘She gets that from her mother?’
Adze laughed and slapped Edom’s shoulder. ‘She certainly doesn’t get it from me!’
Edom laughed along with him, and it didn’t seem to be feigned. Either Edom was an exceptional liar, or he was exceptional in some other fashion. ‘I was going to take my friend up to Rose Park, let him get a sight of the new blossoms. That won’t be a problem, will it?’
Adze looked at Edom for a moment, smiled and held out his hand. It took Thistle a moment to realise he should grab it, and a moment longer to shake off the disgust of going flesh to flesh with a Cuckoo.
‘Adze,’ he said.
‘Thimble,’ Thistle muttered. Adze let go of his hand. Thistle resisted the temptation to wipe it vigorously against his jacket.
‘Enjoy yourself up there,’ Adze said, waving.
‘Best to your wife, and the budding genius.’
Adze laughed. ‘Will do, Edom, will do.’
Thistle and Edom ascended the stone staircase and on into the Fourth. The lower portion of the Rung looked very similar to the upper portion of the Fifth. Admittedly, they were some ways above the slurp, which was a point in its favour, but apart from that you would have been hard pressed to mistake the tightly packed tenements for paradise. The people looked like they did around the docks, or near enough – a bit better fed, maybe, but not much, and at one point they passed a number of youths who could have passed for the Barrow boys waiting out another evening.
Thistle might have noticed this if Thistle had been in the mood for noticing things, which at that moment he was not, so comprehensively occupied by rage that he couldn’t think of anything else. His vision was starting to blur and there was a copper taste in his mouth like blood.
Edom chuckled. ‘You think me a hypocrite?’
‘All those big speeches, you dip your head to the first fucking Cuckoo you see.’
‘What have you ever heard me say that made you think the custodians were my enemy?’
‘Tear down the edifice, you said.’
‘And burn it to ash,’ Edom agreed. ‘But that man is not the system, only a victim of it. You hate him. Why exactly? Because he upholds laws that you find abhorrent, that hold down his fellow man. That newborn we spoke of, that’s his third, and what loyalty do you think he ought to have beyond what he feels for them? Should he jeopardise their future for your sake, for the sake of your people? Would you do the same for him, Thistle? This man whom you hated without knowing, without thinking about for more than a moment?’
‘You know how many times I’ve been hit by a Cuckoo?’
‘And how many times have you been struck by Adze, who just took your hand?’
‘One’s the same as the other.’
‘No, Thistle,’ Edom said, halting abruptly and letting his smile curdle off his face. ‘You could not be more wrong, not if you had a week to come up with a piece of foolishness. That is how they think of us, and I will not have you repeat their lies. Adze is Adze, and Thistle is Thistle, and Edom is Edom. What is it that you think I preach, Thistle? Hate?’ Edom shook his head. ‘You must hate the Four-Fingers, and what they have done to us, as you must hate injustice, as water hates fire and light abhors the darkness. But if you imagine the sole of my message to be hate, then you have received but the least part of it.’
‘And what is the greater?’
‘Love, of course. These are your people, Thistle – every one of them, from the boys you grew up with to those poor fools on the First Rung, slaves to their core and not knowing it. You must love those closest to the devils most of
all, because it is they who have been most terribly wronged. You, at least, know where you stand – they imagine cruelty is kindness, and the rough back of a four-fingered hand a lover’s caress. These people know nothing except what is. It is my task – it is our task, boy they call Thistle – to show them that there is more yet that could be. But until that day comes, until the light is brought to that poor man, that poor man and all those like him, all one ought to feel for them is pity.’
‘I didn’t need to hear your speech to hate the fucking Four-Fingers.’
‘Perhaps you have less to lose than he. You do not see it, but you are blessed, my young friend – the veneer that these unfortunates cling to, the paltry returns they receive for their endless generations of service, which blind them to the injustice which they suffer – you never laboured beneath it.’
‘Being poor ain’t no fucking blessing.’
‘Poor in what, Thistle? What are you poor in? Not intellect, nor strength. Certainly you are not poor in your sense of self-pity – indeed, by that standard you are as well provided for as anyone I’ve ever known.’
‘Don’t think that costume is fooling anyone,’ Thistle said heatedly. ‘Where you from, Edom? The Third? The Second? I bet you never went to bed hungry,’ he continued, pointing a finger at the man. ‘Not once in your whole damn life.’
‘My father owned a general store. I was born a few blocks from here, in fact, so perhaps I cannot claim this unique grasp of poverty that you boast of so proudly. And what of it, boy they call Thistle? Does the place of my birth affect the truth of my words? Indeed, you were born to misfortune – does that justify a lifetime of foolishness? A lifetime of squandered potential, inflicting misery for a few bits of silver? You think I don’t know how you got that pretty coat, what you had to do to earn it? I know better than you, boy they call Thistle – know better than you just what it is you are wasting, when you consent to carry a knife in the service of some cheap criminal.’
Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 Page 33