Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (25 page)

‘And what then?’

‘Nothing then. This is the end of it as far as you need be concerned, a bad dream that you get to wake up from. I’d expect to discover that whatever cut you get from Shade, you’re going to start getting a hell of a lot less – but that’ll be settled between the two of you.’

Tin didn’t say anything for a while – doubtless it was enough trouble to keep from crying again. ‘All right.’

‘And Tin …’

‘Yeah?’

‘I ever hear of anything like this happening again, I’m going to let Chalk take care of you, and I won’t be particular about how he does it.’

Thistle did not imagine this would be a problem.

‘Spindle, you’re on clean-up.’

‘Take her to the bay?’ Spindle asked.

Rhythm scratched his chin, shook his head. ‘Best put her in the pipes.’

‘Not the pipes, man,’ Spindle said. ‘This is my favourite shirt. You know you can’t never get the smell out, once you go down there.’

‘I know,’ Rhythm said, slapping the bigger man on the shoulder. ‘I’ll cover it.’

Thistle hustled back down the stairs, making sure to keep quiet. He kept going when he reached the bottom, couldn’t stop himself, out the door and into the afternoon. The sunlight did nothing to pierce the sense of unreality that had descended ever since he’d first met Rhythm, the feeling that what was going on wasn’t quite happening to him, was a dream or a story he was being told.

Rhythm came walking out a few moments after, but he didn’t say anything, just blinked at the light for a while and took off round the corner. Thistle followed him, cause why not at this point? The tenement back-ended against a canal, one of the endless arteries of the Roost’s waste, draining slowly out towards the sea.

Rhythm rolled a cigarette and lit it. Thistle did the same. After a moment of smoking and staring out at the draining water Rhythm made a sudden and unexpected motion, reached over and relieved Thistle of his shiv. ‘What’s this, then?’

Thistle shrugged, looked down at his feet, feigned guilt he didn’t feel. In fact he was half happy that Rhythm had seen it, the blade speaking of his strength and seriousness. ‘Protection.’

‘You mean it’s so you can put the slant on somebody, knowing you’re carrying weight in your back pocket.’

Thistle shrugged. ‘You never carry a knife?’

‘Not to sit on my porch. Not to buy a dozen eggs. Not because I like the feel of it dangling next to my cock. You know what happens if the Cuckoos find this on you? What they’ll do to you?’

‘Cuckoos don’t mean shit to me,’ Thistle said.

One quick motion and Rhythm had tossed the thing into the water, and on his return stroke he gave Thistle a good backhand, hard enough to knock Thistle’s cigarette out from its perch in the corner of his mouth.

Blood on his tongue, Thistle brought his head back round to face Rhythm, made sure he stared at him straight on.

‘I can’t quite make up my mind about you, boy,’ Rhythm said. ‘Are you stupid or just playing at it?’

Thistle didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t know. After a while Rhythm turned away, looked out over the canal. They watched the current slide past, fresh turds and slick lines of grease and endless bits of detritus.

‘I guess you caught an eyeful in there,’ Rhythm said. ‘Maybe two.’

‘I can keep my mouth shut.’

‘I’ve heard loud men say that.’

‘Then I guess Spindle will be putting two bodies into the slurp.’

Rhythm rolled another cigarette, lit it and handed it to Thistle. It was the best smoke Thistle had ever had, and not only because Rhythm used better tobacco and had a smoother roll.

‘Why’d he do it?’ Thistle asked after a while.

‘The same reason anyone does anything,’ Rhythm said. ‘Because he knew he could get away with it.’ Rhythm reached into his purse, pulled out some metal and handed it to Thistle. Thistle held it in his palm but didn’t look at it. ‘You ever need work, stop over at Isle’s and ask for me,’ he said, before heading back towards the main road.

When Rhythm was out of sight Thistle looked down to discover that he had two gold solidus in his hands. It was more money than he’d ever seen or expected to hold, more than his mother made in a half-year of washing, more than he’d have made in three months as a porter.

And it wasn’t nearly enough.

T
o become the Archpriestess of the Cult of Enkedri had cost Eudokia dozens of favours passed and taken, hundreds of hours of political manoeuvring and ten thousand solidus in bribes. In return, she had been granted the rank of ‘Revered Mother’, an annual stipend of two hundred solidus – she only had to live another thirty-five years to break even – and the right to be present at the selection of her male counterpart. This meant as a side benefit that Eudokia, alone among the women of the Commonwealth, was allowed entrance into the Senate Hall, those hallowed corridors in which the policy of the nation was theoretically hammered out.

As it turned out, the Hall’s facade, which she could view any day of her life and had on many, was far and away the most impressive thing about the building. The inside itself was draughty, strangely designed and not nearly as clean as she imagined it ought to be. Built some three hundred years prior, it was designed in imitation of the Conclave, the centrepiece of the Roost. Eudokia had never been to the Roost, so she could not say with absolute certainty, but she suspected that it was a very poor copy indeed. Or perhaps the Others’ reputation for engineering was, like so many other things in these sad days, no more than myth.

To Eudokia’s eyes, the only bit of the panorama that could have any claim to grandeur – and she included the participants in this – was the Empty Throne itself, which had priority of place in the centre of the building, on a raised dais that no one seemed ever to go near. It was a magnificent thing – polished ebony twice the height of a man, straight-backed with golden trim and inlaid with precious gems. In the three hundred years since the last king had been slain, he and all of his line, it had remained vacant. Supposedly, at least – though you had to figure after three centuries one of the cleaning slaves must have worked up the nerve for a brief lounge.

Regardless, it was empty now, and Eudokia stood at the foot of it, dressed in the ceremonial robes of her office, which were ugly and cumbersome and immensely uncomfortable. There were many reasons that Eudokia had decided it was to her advantage to become head of the Aeleria’s official cult, but a love of the accoutrements had not been one of them.

The last Archpriest had been the son of one of the Commonwealth’s oldest lines, a bloviating, tiresome windbag. Already ancient when Eudokia had first taken up her mantle fifteen years past, she had enjoyed the dubious pleasure of watching his onward march into senility. During the last decade of their partnership he had become consistently incapable of remembering her name, calling her Euphemia or Eilexia or even, occasionally and for no reason she could perceive, Dafne. Beyond that he had the unfortunate habit of passing wind during the more elaborate portions of the ceremony, and falling asleep during the quieter bits.

Which was to say that Eudokia had not greatly mourned her partner’s death, a sentiment that seemed to be shared by the larger portion of the gentry. Not that this lack of despair was to any particular degree a consequence of his incompetence. Rather, as Archpriest was a position elected by the Senate, every member of that august body could look forward to a healthy gratuity passed their way by one or more of the claimants.

This time, at least, the outcome seemed all but certain. It was well known that Senator Manuel had set his eyes on the office long ago, the result of the strong sense of piety that the rest of the Senate feigned but that he seemed actually to possess. You couldn’t tell it from his robes, but Manuel had as much money as anyone in the kingdom, though in fact he hadn’t needed to spend much of it to secure his position. Manuel was a valued part of Senator Andronikos’s coalition, and no one would be fool enough to go against the two of them. For almost ten years effective control of the Commonwealth had been split between their faction and that collection of politicians, soldiers, bankers and merchants who were, unbeknownst or not, Eudokia’s own. A balance had long held; for her part, Eudokia encouraged Aelerian expansion towards Dycia and the Marches. Andronikos and Manuel had encouraged peace with the Salucians, which meant peace with the Others, and left her designs on the outskirts of the Commonwealth more or less unhindered.

One might have thought it a curious marriage: Andronikos, the man of culture and learning, a gallant as a youth, a libertine in old age; Manuel, austere and humourless. The curious constellation of beliefs and policies that had led to their coalition seemed ramshackle at the very best. But then, all alliances are ramshackle, and built upon convenience.

All alliances are also temporary, a fact of which Eudokia was doubly aware, and which explained her attendance at the Hall that day, and much of her work before that.

The ceremony itself was not due to begin for another few minutes. Manuel himself was standing amidst a crowd of admirers, and Eudokia crossed the floor to add her premature congratulations to those he was already accepting.

‘Revered Mother,’ Manuel said as she approached, and he even managed something like a smile, the joy of the day enough to overpower his traditional misogyny. ‘How blessed this must be for you, to stand for the first time at the very altar of freedom, the heartbeat of ancient and noble Aeleria.’

‘I confess to mingled feelings of awe and discomfort,’ Eudokia answered, bowing deeply. ‘Truly, Honoured Father, it is every bit as majestic as one could ever hope.’ She put her hand to her mouth as if she had made a slip.

If she had, it wasn’t one that offended Manuel. ‘Not quite yet, not quite yet.’

‘Forgive me, of course. The announcement has yet to be made. All the same, if you would allow me to say what a joy it will be to give worship to the divines in the company of a man whose piety and wisdom are a byword across the Commonwealth.’

‘I can only hope that the gods see fit to grant your prayers,’ he answered, though his smile expressed confidence in their favour.

And why not? If there was one thing Eudokia had learned about the gods, it was that they could be expected to side with whoever carried the heaviest purse, or the largest stick, as the case might be. Manuel was the second most important member of the Senate’s leading political coalition, and had spent no inconsiderable fortune on bribes and gifts assuring his ascension. If under such circumstances a man could not have some hope of reward, then what was the point of righteousness?

At that moment Eudokia caught sight of Gratian out of the corner of her eye, standing alone in another part of the hall and looking somewhat the worse for wear. She excused herself and went to make sure he wasn’t about to embarrass her.

He looked pale as wax, and there was the sour scent of sick on his breath. Eudokia managed to keep herself from grimacing as he gave her a kiss of greeting, but it was an act of will.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Revered Mother,’ he said as he pulled away.

‘I always know what I’m doing. And when I don’t, I fake it very competently.’

‘Manuel is a bad person to get on the wrong side of.’

‘Who speaks of sides? Of factions? Of camps, cliques or circles? My sole concern is for the future of the Commonwealth, and the betterment of its people – I would never think of insulting Senator Manuel by suggesting he feels differently.’

‘If you imagine sweet words are enough to make the man ignore the injury you’re about to do him, then you’re not who I took you for.’

Eudokia adjusted Gratian’s robes, speaking only when she was close enough to ensure that her words would be lost before travelling past his ears. ‘I am exactly the person you took me for, and you’d be wise not to forget it.’

Gratian went from looking like a man who had just been sick to a man who was about to be so. It wouldn’t do to have him vomit here on the floor of the Senate, and Eudokia moved quickly to try to calm him. ‘Be easy, old friend,’ she said, resting her hand on his. ‘Things will work out as we’ve planned.’

‘They’ll see our fingers in it.’

‘It’s not the first time I’ve slipped one on a scale.’

‘This is not a provincial governor we’re appointing, or a stolen consulship. This is the highest religious office in the land, and one Manuel has been lusting after for the better part of his sixty years.’

‘If you had such concerns you’d have been better off airing them when there was still some hope of altering our course.’

‘I did air them – vigorously, and more than once.’

Eudokia sighed, removed her hand. There was no point in trying to grow a man a backbone through reason. A coward’s motivation was fear, and that meant you needed to be the thing that he feared most. ‘Then I suppose I must have ignored them, as I’m doing now. You don’t need to have an opinion on what I do – you don’t even need to know why I do it. All that’s required of you, at the moment, is to smile when it happens. So …’ she traced an upturned semicircle in the air in front of them, ‘smile.’

The grin Gratian managed held very little in the way of jollity, but it was the best of which he was capable. One of the priests was signalling to her from the foot of the Empty Throne. It was time to get started. ‘And for the sake of the gods,’ she said, turning one last time to Gratian, ‘have something to drink. You reek of vomit.’

The ceremony took the better part of an hour, lengthy invocations to each of the high gods, jugs of wine decanted in libations, silent moments lost in prayer. Eudokia had very little to do except stand silently and occasionally hold aloft some relic or another, and she managed to fulfil her role adequately. Throughout it all she kept an eye on Manuel, who was perhaps the only person who actually seemed to be paying any attention.

Though if the remainder of the congregation seemed to be only very casually involved in the proceedings, who could blame them? The fix was in, there was no mystery or surprise to any of it. In solemn procession that morning each had cast their ballot in the brass cask that had been preserved since the very birth of Aeleria. From there, following ancient practice, it had been carried into the chambers beneath the hall by the black-robed acolytes of Tolb. Safe from foreign eyes and outside intrusion, they had carefully tallied the votes. A centuries-old tradition, upheld when the Empty Throne was filled, inviolate since before the birth of the Republic.