Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (26 page)

Not that there was much need for such secrecy. Only Manuel had made any serious attempt at winning the position – no other counter-claimant had arisen, and it would have been impossible to mount a rival campaign without drawing attention to the fact. As for the acolytes themselves – cloistered members of one of the holiest and most ancient religious orders, sworn to silence and poverty – how could one even dream of corrupting them?

To do so would have required a silent, tireless campaign, years and years in the making. One would need to have been quietly inserting or twisting personnel for decades, introducing candidates as apprentices, shepherding their promotions through the ecclesiastic ranks, ensuring that these men, who had made devotion to the gods their life’s work, put their loyalty to – or fear of – you above even divine mandate. Who was capable of such foresight? Of such intricate and subtle planning, of silently building contingencies without any certainty that they would ever be of use, just one of a thousand, thousand, malfeasances, subversions set aside for a rainy day, tendrils stretching throughout the body politic? Who would be capable of accomplishing such an immense task, or be audacious enough even to consider it?

Finally, mercifully, the ritual came to an end. A blank-eyed acolyte brought Eudokia a clay vessel, which she broke against the base of the Empty Throne. From the wreckage she drew a small slip of vellum, stared at it, blinked twice and brought her head back, as if having difficulty making out the words. Finally, she announced in a voice loud and sonorous, a voice that echoed out to every corner of the great hall, ‘Senator Andronikos Narses.’

Manuel managed not to cry or break into a rage, but his eyes expanded to twice their usual size and he turned a distinct shade of pink, neither of which she thought sat well with his reputation for unflinching stoicism. It took the new Archpriest a few seconds to adjust to the unexpected honour. He blinked several times and looked about the audience, as if supposing a second Andronikos was about to leap up from his seat and claim the honour.

When that didn’t happen, however, he managed to get to his feet and cross over to the dais. Midway his expression changed from shock to good humour. He had not sought the office, but since it had come to him of its own accord, who was he to deny the will of the Senate? Clearly the representatives of the people, in recognition of the great love their constituents felt for him, had decided to do him this honour. It is an easy thing for even very clever men to believe better of themselves than they warrant.

Eudokia embraced him, watching over his shoulder as Manuel simmered, twisting at the end of his worn robe as if he meant to tear it off and run screaming naked through the hall. ‘My congratulations on your assumption, Honoured Father,’ she said quietly.

To make Andronikos Archpriest of the Cult of Enkedri, and to do it quietly, had taken Eudokia twenty thousand solidus in bribes and a far more sustained and subtle campaign than she had been required to wage on her own behalf. To judge by the smile that she wore while greeting her new colleague, she seemed happy to have paid the price.

C
alla was quite sure she had never seen an individual as terrified as had been the Marshal of the Seventieth District when late that morning the Aubade, the Shrike, the Wright and the Prime herself had appeared suddenly on his doorstep. There had been no warning of their arrival – on that point, the Aubade had insisted. He wanted to see how the Roost’s administration ran under normal circumstances, rather than be presented with any artificial pageantry. Two hours previous, Calla and the Aubade had embarked on one of the swift oared vessels that Those Above used to traverse the city’s waterways. They had met the rest of the party at the intersection to the south canal, and begun their long, slow descent. It was a strange and uncomfortable journey – though the waterways across the city were reserved exclusively for the use of the High, in practice few Eternal ever bothered to venture below the First Rung. At the boundary to the next the ancient but still functioning system of locks had lowered them twenty links to the Second Rung, and after that they had been alone. Alone on the estuaries themselves, though the unexpected passage of an Eldest downslope drew the attention of innumerable humans, standing and gawking in wonder.

Calla thought it was wonder, at least, though certainly by the time they had reached the Fourth Rung those humans who had bothered to halt their bustle for a moment and take a look at the assemblage seemed distinctly more terrified than enraptured.

‘The festival was continuing as normal until the trunk was opened, yes?’ the Prime asked.

‘Well, that, that was when we noticed the … the …’

‘The dead bird,’ the Aubade supplied.

The marshal flinched. ‘The carcass, yes. That was when we noticed the carcass.’

Unlike the Constable for the Fifth Rung, the Marshal of the Seventieth District seemed to be a native of the territory that he nominally controlled. An old man, light-skinned, though at the moment he maintained a rose colour that Calla did not suppose a sign of good health.

He was wise to be nervous. The interview had not gone well.

To begin with there had been some difficulty in arranging seating for the four High and their human companions – apparently there were not twelve functioning chairs in the whole of the building. Calla found herself wondering seriously if there were twelve functioning chairs in the entirety of the Fifth Rung. That matter had only been settled by bringing a bench in from a different room and stuffing Calla and Sandalwood and the rest of the humans onto it.

It was an inauspicious opening, and things improved little once they were all seated. The marshal had never spoken to an Eternal before, struggled to understand the strange tempo and style of their speech, a task made no easier by the fact that he seemed little brighter than a radish. For Calla’s part, she was hoping simply to get through the morning without falling asleep upright. She had spent the previous evening at Bulan’s, and she was avidly regretting her nocturnal recreations. Foolish to have slept anywhere but her own bed what with all there was to do that day, but lately Calla had become a bit of a fool for the Chazar merchant, found he occupied her spare thoughts – jokes he had made, evenings they had shared, a peculiar trick that he had learned to perform with his tongue.

‘And what was it that led you to your suspects?’ the Aubade asked.

‘Well … they confessed, didn’t they?’

‘But before they confessed – what was it that tailored your investigations in their direction?’

‘They was … they was just the sort of people that liked to make trouble, like that,’ the marshal said lamely. ‘Troublemakers, they were.’

‘Not any longer,’ the Shrike said in the High Tongue. For all he had insisted on being a member of the commission, the Shrike had so far treated the entire episode as being unworthy of the time and attention required.

‘Who had access to the cabinet?’ the Aubade asked.

‘Supposed to be just the mummers themselves,’ the marshal said. ‘But they didn’t know anything about it. The casket is kept in storage during the rest of the year.’

‘And these … mummers,’ the Shrike broke in, deigning to use the human tongue, ‘what form has their punishment taken?’

Calla felt confident that if the marshal could reverse time by eight hours he’d visit the most heinous and unpleasant torture upon the unfortunate mummers, so as to have an answer to this question. His salvation came from the Wright, who had not yet spoken. ‘Surely, sibling, you don’t imagine that these men would be so foolish as to commit a crime which would leave them the prime suspects whilst simultaneously ruining their livelihood?’

‘I put nothing beneath the intelligence of a human,’ the Shrike responded, using human speech.

‘And the marks inscribed beneath the dead bird?’ the Aubade continued, as if the Shrike’s aside had never happened. ‘These five-fingered prints? What do you know of them?’

‘The Rung has no shortage of graffiti, my Lords,’ the marshal said. ‘It would be an impossible task to run down every symbol and picture.’

‘How like a human, to desecrate their own nest,’ the Shrike said.

‘Your contention then, Marshal, if I understand it correctly, is that a group of troublemakers decided to commit blasphemy of the sort which they must have known would result in a death most terrible, and they did this because, being troublemakers, they like to make trouble? Does this seem credible to you?’ The Aubade asked.

The marshal took a very long time to answer. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you not suppose it more likely that this is the work of some faction within the Fifth Rung? One that works against the harmony and order for which we strive, who saw the trouble on the Anamnesis as a way of spreading their cause?’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ the marshal said, too terrified to be lying. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ he repeated, assuring them or perhaps only himself.

The Wright was staring at a small yellow jacket withering out the last of its life in a nearby dustbin. The Shrike was inspecting his nails, which were long and sharp and painted black. The Prime was looking at the Aubade in her vague but benevolent fashion. Only the Aubade himself seemed to be paying any attention to the proceedings. ‘What I’m trying to understand,’ he continued, ‘whoever was responsible, is what grievance would drive your people to this act of rebellion? What have we done to earn their enmity?’

If the Aubade had made the calculated decision to reduce the marshal to a mewling ball of fear, he could not have been more effective. It must have seemed a cruel attempt at humour to the poor man, a set-up, because who would be foolish enough to tell the High themselves of their failure? In any case, he could not find it within himself to answer, though he opened his mouth once or twice as if he might make the attempt.

‘We will get nothing more from this man,’ the Aubade said in his native tongue, then stood and left the building.

‘Finally,’ the Wright said, following him out. The Prime and the Shrike joined them, and then it was Calla’s turn, and the turn of the other humans in attendance. The marshal did his best to compose himself and give some sort of an appropriate farewell, but between the breakdown he seemed on the verge of having and his ignorance of protocol, this ambition remained unrealised.

Outside it was cold and wet and the sky was grey, though you could see very little of that last, the horizon being broken almost immediately by the endless line of tenements. A dozen custodians stood at what they likely imagined to be attention, having been pulled together frantically after the Eldest had already arrived. The custodians on the upper Rungs served little more purpose than to guide the flow of pedestrian traffic, but so far downslope Calla surmised that they probably played a more active role. In truth they seemed not so very different from criminals themselves, their uniforms patched and faded, with scruffy hair and unpleasant eyes.

Those Above did not seem to mind the rain, or even much notice it, though they loved parasols for their beauty. They continued their conversation as if beside a roaring fire, or a sunlit field.

‘That was quite substantially pointless,’ the Prime said. ‘I hardly think that Dayspan could have been less helpful if he’d been trying.’

‘Perhaps he was,’ the Shrike said quickly. ‘Perhaps his ignorance was a cover for nefariousness.’

‘Perhaps the mud conspires to ruin your shoes,’ the Aubade said. ‘Perhaps the clouds collude to hide the sun. That man is innocent of everything but cowardice and stupidity. Though it hardly says much for the quality of our administration if someone so incapable is put in charge of an eighth of a Rung.’

‘It goes along well enough,’ the Wright said, leading the way towards the canal and the ships waiting there for them. The return trip would be longer than the journey down, the oarsmen forced to beat their way upcurrent, the long wait at the locks that would allow them to ascend from Rung to Rung. But at least they would be out of the rain, beneath the comfortable awning of the ship. There was a little brazier in the back, and they would warm themselves beside it while a pot of mulled wine did the same.

Except that the Aubade remained standing, rather than follow the remainder of the party, and of course Calla did the same. After a few paces the Prime realised that the Aubade was not following, and turned back to look at him. ‘Are you not returning?’

‘I’m going for a stroll,’ the Aubade said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You three are welcome to return, of course. I’m going to take a walk downslope, perhaps take a look at where the crime occurred.’

‘The marshal said it had been cleaned up weeks ago,’ the Shrike said. ‘What do you seek to accomplish, apart from dirtying your robes?’

‘I won’t know it until I see it,’ the Aubade said. ‘And I certainly won’t find it without looking for it.’

It was clear that the Shrike saw little purpose in the errand, and for once Calla found herself in agreement with the Lord of the Ebony Towers. The expedition had thus far been unpleasant and rather useless, and she saw absolutely no need to extend it out any further. Unlike the Shrike, Calla of course had no choice in the matter. She steeled her shoes for ruin and her soul for hideousness, and followed her master downslope.

Their too-thick escort hurried after them, beefy, frightened-looking men carrying cudgels with noisemakers attached to the handle. It was clear that this was not an activity with which they had much familiarity, because they seemed confused at how to go about executing it. Were they to walk in front of the Wellborn, and clear the way? Or would that be a sign of disrespect, to stand forward of Those Above? They seemed finally to decide the latter to be true, and took to trailing behind with Calla and the rest of the humans.

‘What in the name of the Founders is that?’ Calla asked the leader of the guards, a portly fellow whose main concern seemed to be standing very quietly and not drawing attention to himself.

They were the first words she had spoken and they seemed to take the poor fellow distinctly by surprise, as if he had thought her mute or tongueless. ‘What are you talking about?’