Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (17 page)

There would be a grand ball held outside the Source once evening fell, everyone from the First Rung and everyone who was anyone from the Second in attendance, dressed in pale imitation of their masters but beautifully none the less. There they would laugh and dance and drink and very likely find themselves walking home with someone they hadn’t known before the evening had begun. In nine months a great many children would be born, a belated autumnal blossom.

But for the moment Calla was perfectly content to sit quietly and enjoy doing very little. The Jade Terraces were not one of the larger gardens on the First Rung, but they were Calla’s favourite all the same. Nestled where the Canal of Bowed Branches split off from the East Isthmus, overlooking the House of Indefinite Solace and the Mansion of the Gilded Stars, ringed by the towers of more distant estates. The First Rung was made up of the great castles of the Eternal, one for each of the lines and a fair number that had fallen out of use, their owners having died without heirs.

A group of children from the neighbouring manors were laughing and playing loudly in the small copse of trees nearby. For a child the Anamnesis was a special and extraordinary delight, a time for tasting fine things and being allowed up past one’s bedtime. Calla could vividly recall the first time she had been allowed to attend the evening’s ball, dressed in beautiful if childlike finery, holding her mother’s hand and wondering at all there was to see. It was the only strong memory she had of the woman who had birthed her. The next winter she had fallen asleep one evening and never woken up.

Calla’s reverie was broken by the pack of children, who had been gradually edging closer to her and now had deigned to involve her directly in their play. The eldest, or at least the tallest, a dark-haired girl with thick shoulders and an imposing mien, stopped in front of her for a moment, making sure she had Calla’s attention before speaking.

‘I am the Prime,’ she volunteered.

‘How very lovely to see you again, my Lady,’ Calla returned neatly.

The children all but collapsed in a fit of giggles, the less courageous retreating to the shelter of the trees.

‘I am the Prime,’ the girl repeated.

‘Quite so,’ Calla agreed.

‘Because she is the most beautiful of all the High, and also the wisest. And everyone has to do what I say, because I am so very wise.’ This last seemed to be aimed at the rest of the children first and foremost, and she stayed silent a moment for it to sink in. Pleased with her work, she turned back to Calla. ‘Also I am the strongest and most fierce.’

A second child, tow-headed and short of a front tooth, shook his head vigorously. ‘The Aubade is the strongest of the Eldest, everyone knows that. And I am the Aubade!’ He had a stick in one hand and he wagged it at Calla. ‘I am the best fighter in the whole world! And I have a horse that is tall as an oak tree, and my sword is as big as … a second oak tree!’

‘Is it?’

‘’tis,’ the young Lord insisted, confident on the point.

‘Well then,’ Calla said, rising up from her perch and performing the bow of greeting with a grace and solemnity that few with five fingers on their hand could hope to match. ‘May the sun shine on the both of you this morning, my Lord and Lady.’

The Prime did her best to return the gesture, though her enthusiasm did not translate to success. Belying the qualities of his namesake, the false Aubade, made nervous by Calla’s movement, turned and ran back to the safety of the trees.

A hand pulled at Calla’s skirt and she looked down to notice a third child, brown-haired and dark-eyed and a bit plump. ‘I am the Wright,’ he said to her quietly, as if it remained something of a secret. ‘He is the greatest of all of the smiths, and the most clever with his hands, and also, they say, a great musician. I am also clever with my hands, and my mother says that we look alike, the Wright and I. And she works in his kitchens, so she would know.’

‘The resemblance,’ Calla acknowledged, ‘is as plain as the beak on a bird.’

The child nodded and smiled, then turned without saying anything and returned to making piles with dirt.

‘I do not think that Tallow looks very much like the Wright at all,’ the child Prime said, with a touch of her namesake’s imperiousness.

‘Have you seen the Wright, then?’

‘No,’ the girl admitted, ‘but Tallow does not look like what I imagine the Wright looks like.’

‘And who is he?’ Calla asked, pointing at a child who had taken up residence in the lower branches of one of the trees and was scowling fiercely down at the rest.

‘I am the Shrike,’ he snapped, happy to be noticed, ‘bloody-handed and cruel, and if you are smart you will be very afraid of me. Every night I sup on the eyes of naughty children, and I will do so to you, if you do not eat everything on your plate, and speak respectfully to your parents.’

‘I shall take care and do both,’ Calla assured him quickly. But this seemed insufficient assurance to the Shrike, who began to roar from his spot in the tree, as well as making fierce gestures with his hands.

‘Ignore him,’ the Prime said. ‘He is not really the Shrike at all, but in fact my little brother, Cinnabar. Mother told him that story last week to try and get him to eat all his peas. But he did not eat his peas,’ the girl lamented, ‘and now he insists that everyone must call him the Shrike, and refuses otherwise to answer. It is getting quite embarrassing.’

‘Little brothers can be embarrassing, I have been told with great confidence.’

‘Whoever told you so spoke truthfully,’ the Prime said, before running off to engage the rest of the troop in some new diversion.

Soon Calla left her red wicker chair and strolled towards a wine stall in the west corner of the park. It was little more than a counter beneath a silk awning, but it was perched on a small hill and gave a lovely if understated view of the canal and the southern portion of the First Rung. On other days she had sat there and watched the Eternal float by on their skiffs, intricate things of glass and silver and white wood that looked more like waterfowl than boats. The water was empty now, of course, with all of the Eldest at the Source, but still it was a far from unpleasant vantage point.

Calla was vaguely friendly with the girl running the stand, knew her by face but not name, and they chatted pleasantly, about what Calla would be wearing to that night’s ball, and what sorts of food might be served to the humans, and what sorts of food might be served to the Wellborn. And then Calla decided to give her full attention to the wine, which was red and strong and a little bit sweet.

The man at the other end of the counter was olive-skinned, with kinked black hair tied into a knot atop his head. He was not quite handsome – his waistline bulged more than was absolutely necessary, and his cheeks were a bit too close to jowls for Calla’s taste. But his eyes were a very rich brown, and his lips were full as a woman’s and covered a line of even, smiling teeth. He was dressed in the robes of a Chazar, overlapping bands of coloured silk. Gold weighed down his earlobes, and a jewelled chain hung from his neck. At his wrist was an elaborate interlocking bracelet, an expensive passkey that allowed non-natives to ascend above the lowest Rung of the Roost. Calla watched him watching her from the corner of her eye, stretched her neck sideways to show off her profile. How fine a thing it was, she thought then, as she thought often, to be young and handsome enough to call the attention of a stranger.

She didn’t need to wait very long. When she turned back to look at him he was nearly upon her, but he stopped short and executed a bow of greeting with skill, something even most Roostborn could only accomplish indifferently. ‘May the sun shine long on you this day.’

‘And you as well.’

‘I am Bulan of Atil, child of Busir the poet.’ He had a rich, deep voice, and his accent was slight and not at all unpleasant.

‘I’m afraid I’m unacquainted with the man,’ Calla said, sipping from her flute.

‘You’ve missed little,’ Bulan acknowledged. ‘He was a sot, and his rhymes far from noteworthy. His son, however, is a gentleman of distinction and renown.’

‘Your brother sounds indeed like a person worth meeting. Is he about somewhere?’

Bulan smiled, took a seat on the stool next to Calla. ‘Weep for Bulan, as he has no siblings – no brother with whom to take refuge against the rain, no sister to give him succour from the cold.’

‘Bulan seems to have done well enough for himself,’ Calla said. Up close he smelled faintly of vetiver.

‘Appearances can be deceiving. At the moment, Bulan lies skewered, a broken, hopeless man, who will remain so until he is redeemed from his fate.’

‘And whatever could be done to redeem the good man from such misfortune?’

‘You might offer him your name.’

‘Calla, of the Red Keep.’

Bulan brought one hand swiftly to his chest, as if overtaken by the moment. ‘Calla of the Red Keep,’ he repeated, ‘how shall I repay your kindness?’

Calla made as if she were thinking this over. ‘Perhaps another glass?’

Bulan smiled and signalled towards the bar girl. ‘If you are a member of the Red Keep, then you would serve the Aubade himself.’

‘You’re well informed, for a foreigner.’

‘It is my business to know things – though in truth, one barely needs ears to have heard of the Aubade. The Roost rings with stories of his accomplishments, with the tales of his great deeds.’

‘When you put it that way,’ Calla agreed, ‘it’s not really so impressive at all.’

Bulan laughed, easily and without affect. ‘And what is he like, the Aubade?’

Calla took a long time to form a response, not because she needed it but because she was conscious of Bulan’s eyes on her, and of how fine she looked in profile, while gazing out into the distance. ‘He’s the most extraordinary being in all of creation,’ she said, the definitive word on the subject.

Bulan brushed his hand lightly against hers. ‘If I were a less polite man, I might be inclined to argue that point.’

Calla felt a blush form on her cheeks, smiled along with the bloom. ‘And what is it you do, Bulan whose father was no very great poet?’

‘I buy things cheaply and sell them dearly.’

‘A lucrative industry.’

‘There is quite a bit of competition, I am afraid.’

‘Then you have recently arrived in the Roost?’

‘I’ve been here since late summer, looking after various interests.’ Amongst many other things, the Roost was the largest and richest trading port in all the world. Foreigners from across the seas came to trade at the Perennial Exchange on the Third Rung, which sold what scraps the Eldest were willing to part with, as well as acting as a clearing-house for the goods and products of the rest of the continent.

‘The crafts of the Roost are second to none,’ Calla said, as if this were a well-known fact.

Bulan shrugged. ‘The clockwork mechanisms of the Eternal are indeed very fine,’ he said. ‘And their arms, though of course those are not sold. Apart from that?’ He shrugged. ‘The cloth is better in Dycia, the fruit better in the Baleferic Isles, and the slaves better in Partha.’

‘I’m sorry you seem to find our city less than satisfying.’

‘Bulan is never satisfied,’ he said, brushing aside her censure. ‘Though he might almost feel so, here atop the city, surrounded by such … beauty.’ The First Rung was reserved for the Eternal and those who served them directly. Even the most lavishly prosperous merchant prince or highest-ranking custodian was forbidden to own property on the crest. For a foreigner to purchase the right to visit cost a small fortune, and the bracelet on his wrist suggested Bulan was being less than ingenuous about his wealth. ‘Beautiful, and very curious.’

‘And what is it that you find so peculiar?’

Bulan made a gesture with his hands that seemed to encompass everything in view, opened his mouth to speak but was driven back to silence by the arrival of the hour of the Eagle, announced by the many steamwork chronographs set about the First Rung.

Bulan waited for the chimes to end before continuing. ‘To begin with, Bulan has travelled the length of the world, from Old Dycia to distant Partha. And for all the differences in those lands, in custom, clothing, cuisine – time, at least, has remained constant. Here alone I find myself at a loss.’

‘Those Above divide the day into eight hours, starting at dawn – Lark, Starling, Eagle, Kite, Woodcock, Nightjar, Owl and Crake. We have just begun the hour of the Eagle, when the sun stands at its zenith and looks down upon the Roost with pleasure.’

‘A discerning creature, the sun. Tell me also, Calla of the Red Keep, of the curious reverence the Eternal hold for all things avian? Truly, there seems nothing in this city not named after some winged creature or other.’

‘Not reverence, sir,’ Calla said, pursing her lips. ‘Those Above feel kinship with the birds, appreciate their beauty and cruelty – but they worship nothing but themselves, and the world they have built.’

‘And yet, I had the impression that today was a feast day. What is it exactly that we are celebrating?’

‘Today is the anniversary of the Founding of the Roost. When the first drop of water flowed up from the Bay of Eirann and spouted from the Source, and Those Above renounced their wandering, and pledged to build a city that would be the envy of the world.’

‘They were not unsuccessful.’

‘It is also the day when the humans of the surrounding lands swore their allegiance to the Roost, entered into eternal fealty to Those Above.’

‘This is why Bulan always reads a contract twice.’

‘Here in the Roost,’ Calla said, ‘we hardly suppose ourselves to have got the worst end of the deal.’

‘Perhaps not everywhere in the Roost,’ Bulan said, but he said it quietly and while signalling for another glass of wine for himself. ‘When was this exactly?’

Calla shrugged. ‘Impossible to say. The High do not keep track of time in quite the way we do.’

‘And the humans of the Roost? Do they not count the years, like other peoples?’

‘The humans of the Roost take after their masters, in this regard.’

‘It seems a strange way of doing things,’ Bulan said.