Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘Well, then,’ Irene said, ‘I’ll take my leave of you.’

  ‘A pleasant day to you both,’ Eudokia said.

  Irene fell into a mocking curtsy and headed out the way she had come. Heraclius followed her, stopping and turning to throw Eudokia one last look – regret or despair, she wasn’t sure which – but the door was fast shutting and he scurried out before it closed.

  Eudokia picked up the ball of yarn she had put aside at the beginning of the conversation and turned back to her knitting. ‘Domina?’ Jahan asked, and was it her imagination or was there a bit of a tremor to his voice?

  ‘Instruct Orodes to push the event forward,’ she said. ‘Everything else remains in place.’

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ Jahan said, and this time his voice was settled as stone.

  34

  Things had got nasty in the Barrow, in the Barrow and up at the Straights and even out towards Seven Points, nasty all over the Fifth. You could feel it come in with the heat and the wet, this sense of fear and uncertainty, like everyone was holding their breath. Two months Rhythm and Pallor had been pricking each other to death, shallow wounds but painful, the two neighbourhood kingpins on a collision course. The normal pace of illicit work had slowed to a crawl, the whorehouses shuttered, gambling dens closed; even the usual constant shuffling of contraband had turned to a trickle. The Cuckoos had stayed out of it so far, but they wouldn’t for ever.

  Thistle had gone back to sleeping on the roof, and not just because of the change in weather. He had a couple of bricks that he kept near the ledge, had the vague notion of dropping them if someone came by that he thought deserved it. Thistle didn’t think that he was important enough for Pallor to bother to send people after, and there was something of an unwritten rule about staying away from a man’s family. But then again the thing about unwritten rules is that they aren’t written down and there’s no one to enforce them, and so in the evening Thistle curled up in his coop, and kept his blade within easy reach.

  It was from the roof that he saw Spindle, moving swiftly with two new men as a tail, hard-looking ex-dockers Rhythm had brought in as reinforcements. Spindle himself was wearing a full travelling cloak despite the heat, and beneath it Thistle knew were all sorts of nasty things, throwing-knives and brass knuckles and daggers so long that Thistle was not clear as to why they weren’t called swords. He had the hood of his cloak up round his head, but his scowl was visible from three streets away.

  They’d caught Chalk coming out of his favourite whorehouse two weeks earlier, and it turned out he was made of flesh after all, as a few pokes with a shiv revealed. Credit due, he hadn’t gone easy, crawled for a long time before he died, trails of blood leading downslope a half-cable. It hadn’t meant fuck all to Thistle, one less rabid dog in the world, but Spindle had somehow got it mixed up that Chalk had been his friend and had taken the whole thing with uncharacteristic fury. The two of them had been at Isle’s when the news came in, and Thistle had grabbed one of the bar backs and sent him straight to find Rhythm, told him to get the boss-man down as soon as he could make it. It was a close thing, by the time Rhythm had shown up, Spindle had worked himself into such a fury that he was ready to march over and knock on Pallor’s door that very night, by his lonesome if necessary. It had taken everything Rhythm had to threaten, cajole and beg Spindle into composure, but in the weeks since the big man had lost that good humour which had once been his second most notable quality.

  If Thistle didn’t lament the loss, nor was he so stupid as to miss what Chalk’s exsanguination meant. It had been ten years since there had been open war between the various tentacles of criminality that made up the Brotherhood Below, ten years of easy graft and constant corruption. Thistle wasn’t altogether sure what had broken the long period of fruitful malfeasance, or if maybe Rhythm wasn’t thinking whether he would have been better off letting Pallor get away with whatever scam he had been running. Not that it mattered now – it was blood for blood, there wasn’t any going back.

  So Thistle watched Spindle make his way down the street, sitting on the end of the roof doing little tricks with his knife. Letting it tumble between his fingers and swivelling it in the palm of his hand, gimmicks that at first had made him proud as a flush rooster but which now he barely even realised he was doing. He didn’t see much of Felspar or Treble or any of the old boys these days, because he didn’t have anything to say to them and because he didn’t want to bring trouble down on their heads. If he’d saved more of what he’d been making he’d have moved out of his mother’s place, but he hadn’t and so was more or less stuck. And there was something about the idea of exiling himself from the homestead that secretly made Thistle miserable, perhaps even a little frightened, though he’d never have admitted it.

  Spindle stopped in front of Thistle’s stairs, then cupped his hands and bellowed, ‘Thistle! You up there?’

  The two men he’d brought with him stood around trying to look tough, and mostly succeeding. Thistle didn’t like either of them. He thought he saw something like water behind their eyes, and anyway if they were worth having around they’d have been worth having around full-time, right? Not just brought in after your first choice got himself dead.

  Thistle leaned far enough over the ledge for Spindle to get a look at him, held up one finger. Spindle had never come out to see Thistle personal before, and he had certainly never come with a crew. This was it, Thistle felt with certainty; they were going to do what they should have done a month prior, snap the back of Pallor’s organisation. Or maybe Pallor would do the same to them. Thistle didn’t imagine Chalk was the only one without an honest claim to immortality.

  Thistle had been waiting for this moment for months and months, before things had gone sour with Pallor, as soon as he’d joined up, before that even. The moment when he’d make his bones, prove to Rhythm and everyone else that he was a soldier in good standing, a two-fisted razor-fiend you’d best cross the street before offending. The moment when he’d see whether or not he was really any of those things, if the facade he’d been wearing these last months – hell, most of the last couple of years – went more than finger-deep. And now that it had finally come, what was it that Thistle felt? Excitement, certainly; his nerves jangled unevenly. Fear, some fear, though not as much as he had expected. Mostly what he felt, staring down at Spindle and what was coming for both of them, were mingled sensations of relief accompanied by a strange feeling of boredom – the story wasn’t any good, wasn’t interesting or special, but at least it was almost over, and anyway there was nothing to do but play it out to the end.

  Thistle slipped his blade into his back-sheath and pulled his shirt over it. He walked downstairs with slow, deliberate certainty, made sure to jump over the loose step that he had never fixed. Why hadn’t he fixed it, he wondered now? Had he been so damn busy? What had happened to all that time that he had slept and slunk and frittered away?

  Mother was waiting for him when he came down, standing in front of their doorway, her eyes shifting nervously between Thistle and her feet.

  ‘Now’s not the time, Ma,’ Thistle said. In his mind that was the end of it, and he was somewhat surprised when she stayed where she was, had to stop himself short or he’d have run her down. A year ago they’d been the same size or maybe he’d had a few fingers on her, but now she barely came up to his shoulders and he made a point of being careful not to squeeze her too roughly when they embraced. Not that this came up much. ‘I gotta go, Ma.’

  It always took her so damn long to speak, and then whatever she said was pointless, just something to fill the silence. ‘I know what’s going on,’ she said.

  Thistle didn’t really think that was true, or at least not very much true. ‘All right.’

  ‘I know who you’ve been working for,’ she said.

  ‘It’s no kind of secret, Ma. The whole fucking neighbourhood knows.’

  ‘Don’t curse in front of me.’

  Thistle figured it was pretty late i
n the day to be talking about profanity, with his knife pressing hard against his spine. ‘Sorry,’ he said anyway.

  ‘I know you’re working for Rhythm.’

  ‘You need to get out of the way now, Mum. I got someone waiting.’

  ‘They can wait a while longer,’ she said, and like he’d twisted a spigot she burst into tears, no preamble to it at all: one instant she was sad-looking but steady, the next in full-on mourning. ‘He can wait for ever!’

  It occurred to Thistle that Spindle and his boys could probably hear his mother shrieking from outside; the walls weren’t thick enough to hush a whisper. And though Thistle knew he probably should be past the point where this mattered to him, the thought of the rest of his crew listening to his mother weep caused him a sharp stab of shame. ‘It’s my job now, Ma. I have to go and take care of it.’

  ‘What would your father think?’ she yelled at him, and Thistle thought, by the Time Below, she must be far gone if she supposes that old bastard has any more claim on me dead than he did alive. ‘I won’t let you go,’ she said, and she put her arms round him, somewhere between an embrace and a restraint.

  Coming down the stairs Thistle had felt empty and steady and prepared for what was to come, as prepared as he was going to get, anyway. Looking at his mother now, worn lines around her eyes, he could feel himself starting to think again. And that made him angry, angry at himself as much as her, though she ended up getting all of it. ‘You took the money easy enough though, didn’t you, Ma? You weren’t worried when I was bringing home a slab of pork every day, didn’t ask where it came from. Didn’t wonder about Apple’s medicine, or the dresses I bought the girls.’

  He regretted it as soon as he said it, not because it wasn’t true or because she didn’t deserve to hear it, but because she started weeping harder. ‘I should have said something six months ago,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not six months ago, it’s now. And this isn’t a good time to talk.’

  Her hand was wrapped round his wrist, displaying more strength than he’d have thought she possessed. ‘Don’t go, by Enkedri the Self-Created, who watches over all of us. By Siraph his consort, by—’

  ‘Praying don’t work for Apple,’ Thistle said, and he threw everything he had into it. ‘Why the hell would it work for me?’

  She wasn’t a strong woman, his mother, except in so far as she had held together a family of six for twenty years. But she couldn’t hurt anyone, which the Fifth Rung had taught Thistle was the only true measure of power. She forgot to keep crying in the moment after he had said it, her eyes went wide and she took a deep intake of breath like he had punched her in the stomach.

  Thistle took off his purse and shoved it into her hands and hurried down the steps before she could say anything else. Spindle was waiting outside, and if he noticed that there was anything wrong he had the good sense not to mention it.

  Rhythm had spent the last month floating between a network of safe houses, corner bars and small tenement rooms, moving every few days or even more frequently when he was feeling mistrustful. Only Spindle knew where he was at any given point, a set-up the specifics of which Thistle knew better than to question. They stopped in front of a random tenement building near the Sweet Water canal, random except that there was another thug waiting outside of it, an ex-sailor by the name of Chestnut. He nodded at Spindle and Thistle as they walked in, nodded at Thistle just like he had Spindle, acknowledging their superiority in the hierarchy. Another day and that would have puffed Thistle’s chest, but his mind was still taken up with what had just happened, and what was soon to, and he barely noticed.

  Spindle walked them up a set of crooked stairs to the second floor, which was dark and loud and miserable. The building had been subdivided away into almost nothing, whole families crammed into the closets. Spindle walked them through three consecutively smaller cells, tramping across the bedrooms of small children already well versed in despair, past their drunken mothers and squat, waddling grandmothers.

  Rhythm was the most important man in the neighbourhood. He made more in a week than a family of porters made in a year, maybe a lot more. He could buy anything he wanted, or at least anything that anyone on the Fifth would want to buy. Men touched their foreheads when they saw him, made sure to speak well of him in public places, well and loudly.

  The room he was sleeping in was big enough for a makeshift bed and very small table and an equally sized chair. It was windowless, which seemed like a reasonable security precaution but didn’t do much for the heat, which was sweltering, or the smell, which was more than sour. There was a bottle of liquor on the table and a heavy fighting knife beside it. Rhythm had swapped the garish costume that he preferred for worn trousers and a tunic, and he had been wearing them a while, to judge from the stain and the odour. He looked sallow, and anxious and savage. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Wish I could offer you a seat, but …’ He made a gesture at the room that Thistle supposed was meant to indicate that there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, though Thistle knew that already.

  Thistle wasn’t sure how the hell they managed to cram him and Spindle and the three other guys into the room, it seemed like a job for a group of contortionists rather than thugs. But they did, even managed to close the door afterwards, and as soon as it was shut Rhythm started to speak.

  ‘I know some of you have been wondering why we waited to answer for Chalk. I had my reasons. No point in ending trouble in a way that’ll bring us more down the line. I needed to talk to some people, make sure hitting Pallor wouldn’t upset anyone that matters.’

  Thistle imagined this meeting, Shade or maybe Shade’s boss sitting upslope a few cables in some well-appointed restaurant, him and a couple of men like him, eating fresh oysters and drinking bottles of wine worth more than a Barrow tenement. Sometime after the meal was over they’d have got round to discussing the trouble their subordinates were making in a part of the city as impossibly far away as the moon, debated the matter half-heartedly a while. And then one of them would’ve said something like, ‘hell, I don’t care, let him off the guy if he’s so keen to do it.’ And then Shade or Shade’s boss would’ve said ‘Fine, done, now what are we going to drink with dessert?’

  ‘I got the OK two hours ago,’ Rhythm said, smiling for the first time in the conversation, maybe for the first time in weeks. ‘Pallor disappears tonight, and we don’t need to worry about any older brothers coming to look in on him.’

  ‘Good,’ Spindle said. ‘Fucking great.’

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ Rhythm said. ‘We’ve still got to go out and do the thing.’

  ‘Hell, boss,’ Spindle said, ‘that’s the easy part.’

  Pallor hadn’t bothered to go to ground, arrogance that would be proved foolishness if Rhythm had his way. Instead he had holed up in the back room of his gambling house and added on a couple of extra hitters, just daring Rhythm to come and say hello.

  Well, Rhythm was the risk-taking sort. The six of them – Thistle and Chalk and Rhythm and the three new heavies Thistle didn’t give a shit about – were going to go in full force, and make sure they were the only ones coming back out again. The plan was not exactly overwhelming in its complexity, and though Rhythm ran through it twice, they were out of the room almost as soon as they went into it. Which was all well and good as far as Thistle was concerned, since someone – Chestnut, he thought – had his elbow wedged into Thistle’s back, and the stench verged on overpowering.

  Thistle was the last out, and before he could leave Rhythm put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You ready for this?’ Rhythm asked.

  ‘Do I look ready?’

  Rhythm took a few seconds to answer, but then he nodded brusquely. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You do.’

  They moved in three groups so as not to give Pallor any notice they were coming, one of the old guard with one of the new, presumably to make sure that no one scampered off – though what exactly Thistle was to do if Chestnut decided to do a runner was never exactly clear to
him. It didn’t happen, anyway; Thistle figured Chestnut was probably too stupid for the possibility to even occur to him. They were the first to arrive, so Thistle took up a position in the shadow of a nearby alleyway.

  Chestnut was nervous and jittery and wanted to talk to Thistle. Thistle was nervous and jittery and wanted Chestnut to keep his fucking mouth shut.

  ‘I guess this is it,’ Chestnut said.

  Thistle thought even Chestnut would be able to figure out the answer to this question.

  ‘How many men you think they got in there?’ Chestnut asked.

  ‘Sixty-seven,’ Thistle muttered.

  Spindle and his partner showed up a moment later, shutting down any further conversation, and Rhythm and his man came by not long after that. No one said anything but Rhythm shot Thistle a look like ‘get ready’ and then he nodded at Spindle, who nodded back and strutted up to the entrance.

  Spindle rapped twice on the door, heavy blows with his huge hand. The door opened and a face stuck itself out and then Spindle’s knife stuck itself into the man’s throat, a masterful bit of work, the man dead before he could even scream. Spindle clambered over the corpse and Thistle found himself the next one through the door.

  Sprinting inside, weapon out, pulse echoing so loudly in his head that it took him a moment to realise he was screaming. But that was fine, surprise was out now, they were going for sheer terror, and if you didn’t feel a little spurt of ice in your veins at the sight of Spindle and his bloody knife tearing through the place, you had to be made of stone. Pallor’s few patrons that night were not made of stone, it turned out, and they scrambled away from the gambling tables as fast as their stubby little legs could carry them. A towering heavy was standing guard next to a back door, and he yelled a warning at the same time as he pulled his own weapon. He and Spindle circled each other for a swift handful of seconds and then Spindle went at him fast and hard, and Thistle didn’t exactly see what happened but whatever it was it left Spindle standing and his opponent dying on the ground.