Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (31 page)

Bas’s first jab tapped the man’s eye closed, and his second rang the man hard enough that he dropped his guard, and the third jab you couldn’t really call a jab, in so far as it broke the man’s cheekbone and a wing of his teeth and probably a few other bits of his face – Bas couldn’t say for certain in the bad light.

The last one was still holding that boot knife, and Bas laughed at him, not because it was so funny really but because Bas was filled up with the spirit of the thing, overcharged with energy. And he bore down on the man who, knife or no, was backing away as quickly as a person can go back, which is not as fast as a person can go forward, as Bas proved just then. And Bas put his hands round the hand that was holding the knife, and he twisted, and the man screamed and dropped the knife, and then Bas put his hands up round the man’s head, and he twisted a second time, but this time the man did not scream and what fell in the mud was not a knife.

And then it was done, and Bas could breathe again, and he did, long, slow, deep breaths. One of the men was dead and another was well on his way to joining him, and wherever they were going or had gone Bas thought probably neither was enjoying the moonlight, not as Bas was doing. The remaining two were unconscious or wished they were, insentience a reprieve from the misery plaguing them.

Bas payed no mind to any of them, not to the corpses nor to the men who would have made him one. He felt like he always did after a good scrap, focused and clean, though there was blood on his shirt and also soaking into his hair. And behind it that dull sense of sadness, as after a birthday, or a sunset, or an orgasm.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Bas’s re-entry brought the bar to a complete halt. Some of the men didn’t see him and some of the men who saw him hadn’t been paying attention to him earlier, had no foreknowledge of the attempted ambush. The bartender knew though, slunk lower the closer Bas got, until they were in front of each other and his neck reached barely above the counter.

Bas looked at him for a while. Then he slapped a solidus down on the bar, hard enough to set the wood shaking. ‘I forgot your tip,’ Bas said.

The bartender’s jaw was fluttering up and down, and his eyes seemed slowly but surely to be forcing themselves out of his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said finally, though he left the coin where it was.

C
alla sat at a corner table in the Falling Dew, one of the many bars running along the easternmost edge of the Second Rung. Across from her Bulan rested in a wicker chair, framed by broad glass windows pulled tight against the winter’s chill. In the twilight beyond, custodians lit the wrought-iron street lamps, the flickering orange throwing relief on the modest limestone houses, on the squares and promenades, on happy-seeming workers making their way back to their families; and past them, the edge of the Rung, a sheer rock face, the bay below rendered silent by distance, the crashing waves muted, the cries of the seabirds inaudible. From where Calla sat it might have been possible to imagine that this was the entirety of the Roost, a populace well provided for and content, and beyond them the ocean. Possible for someone, perhaps, though not for Calla, at least not any longer.

‘Magnificent view,’ Bulan said, the way one says something to interrupt a silence.

‘Magnificent,’ Calla agreed, or at least echoed.

In fact the view was nothing like the one Calla enjoyed from the summit of the Red Keep, or could be afforded from many of the other small drinking houses and eateries sited across the First Rung. But it was almost the hour of the Woodcock, before the sounding of which all non-resident humans atop the summit of the Roost would need to find themselves below it, or face unpleasant consequences. Bulan’s bracelet, acquired at immense expense, allowed him to roam the public areas of the First Rung in the daylight hours, but offered him no protection from evening’s fall. By contrast a quick glance at her own brand and the custodians guarding the gate to the summit would fall over themselves ushering her upslope. It was one of many privileges that Calla had only lately found herself reflecting on.

Bulan finished packing his long-stemmed pipe, lit it with the beeswax candle that dripped bright rose onto the willow table, settled it into a contented smile. They had spent the afternoon in a frantic bout of lovemaking, hours lost to the thrust and pull, hours that Bulan no doubt took as evidence of his own amorous abilities. Calla was happy to let him continue under that misimpression – it was best to allow a man his illusions, it did no harm to anyone. But in truth her fervour for copulation had very little to do with the Chazar, though he was reasonably skilled and not untender. Calla had found within herself these last weeks a passion that she could not previously remember possessing – a passion that was as much manic as erotic. Pinned by Bulan’s arms, beneath the broad swell of his chest, grunting in unison, there were long moments when she was free of any thoughts beyond the immediate. Others might turn to drink, or one of the many narcotic powders and philtres that were popular on the higher Rungs, but Calla’s responsibilities were such that she was unwilling to fog her mind, even briefly.

She imagined she had carried off the facade competently enough, until Bulan leaned forward and set a hand atop hers. ‘Will your troubles spoil the moon’s arrival, as they did the sun’s departure?’

It was her first real smile of the day, and the day was almost over. ‘Am I read so easily?’

‘It would speak little of Bulan if he could not decipher the mood of a woman who has shared his bed.’

‘You seemed obtuse enough while lying in it.’

‘At the time I had practical motivations for feigning ignorance.’ Bulan’s hands were large and strong-seeming, though with a pleasing softness that spoke of long hours holding a quill or sifting an abacus. ‘But they are spent now, unless …’ He drew half-jesting eyes towards the doorway, laughed when she blushed. ‘No? Then it is pointless to maintain the charade any longer. Pass your burden to one who would help shoulder it. It is said that there are seven hundred and seventy-seven names for the One God, and that the last and holiest is “He who listens”.’

‘Is that true?’

‘You would need to come to Chazar to prove me a liar, and there seems little enough chance of that,’ frowning as he said it.

Calla sighed, slipped one hand free of Bulan’s, gulped down some of her wine. ‘It’s nothing you haven’t already heard,’ she said.

‘The boy’s death?’ Bulan asked, knowing the answer. It had been a month since that hellish descent to the Fifth Rung, long enough for a bruise to fade, a wound to scab over, a blister to burst. And Bulan had done his best to play chirurgeon, especially in the first days afterwards – held her close, given attention to her venting. To little enough avail.

‘Of his life as well,’ Calla said. ‘The poverty and the decay, the stench and sound of the pipes, the sheer misery …’

‘Is he so different to any of us? What is life but an accumulation of troubles too soon ended?’

‘Your words are glib,’ she said, ‘and lack merit. Ennui is not despair, nor melancholy destitution.’

Bulan’s pipe, jaundiced meerschaum carved in the shape of a Catoblepas, had grown cold waiting on the table. He brought the wick of the candle against it a second time, took a few shallow breaths, releasing soft clouds of scented tobacco. ‘I have stood in the slave markets of Partha, where mothers sell their children into short lives of servitude, where the handsome and pretty are made into chattel, where young boys are culled for the chop. Where misery is bought and sold, a commodity as any other. I have smelled that filth, I have heard their desperate cries. If you imagine that the Roost has some monopoly on misfortune then you are a fool.’ His eyes softened. ‘Though I know otherwise.’

‘Perhaps I am a fool,’ she said. ‘Twenty-nine years atop the Roost, and I barely gave thought to what went on below me.’

‘And what would you have done had you known? How would you have remedied the misfortune of so vast a swell of strangers, you without power or influence? Pain is a well without a bottom. Were any of us to understand, in full measure, the depth of the world’s suffering …’ He shook his head. ‘Indifference which hews near to cruelty – this is an essential quality of our species. And perhaps not of our species alone.’

‘The Shrike is an … abomination,’ Calla hissed, surprised at her own sudden rush of fury. ‘His actions cannot be held against the rest of the Wellborn. He is mad, but there is madness among humans as well.’

‘And yet your lord did not stop him.’

‘He could not, I told you. He did not have the right.’

‘One does not codify insanity into law – perhaps the Shrike is not so unique a specimen as you might prefer to believe.’

‘Your tongue is sharp, as ever. But your eyes have failed you, as they sometimes do. The Aubade is as distant from the Shrike as the sun is the moon.’

Bulan swallowed that without reaction, drumming his fingers aimlessly against the table. ‘Have you ever raised a dog?’

‘The Aubade possesses an esteemed bestiary, though canines are thought too common to occupy it.’

‘I have owned many. To protect my property and to chase rats and for company. Some are clever, some foolish. Some large, some small. Some will roll onto their back when they see you, some will bite your hand should you try and feed them. But they are all dogs – their variations do not obscure this essential fact.’

‘Busir was your father’s name – and his father? And his father before that? How far back does your knowledge go? I can recite my lineage for three centuries, and for all that time, the Aubade has watched over us.’

The first hint of annoyance seeped into Bulan’s oaken baritone. ‘Such studious shepherding, and with no hope of gain! I have misjudged the High entirely.’ Their table was in the corner, and the bar was not busy, but Calla swivelled her head round nervously all the same – it was unwise to speak so loudly of Those Above. ‘I had been under the impression that you were his servant, responsible for seeing that his wants are swiftly fulfilled, but perhaps I am mistaken.’

At some point, without entirely realising it, they had shifted positions – in Calla, pride ran stronger than guilt. And not in Calla alone. ‘It is only four-fingered hands that drip with blood? In Chazar no one is impoverished, nor brutalised? There is neither desperation nor vice?’

‘I have already said otherwise. You may be sure of this, Calla of the Red Keep – in all the world, should you see anything of grandeur, of artistry, of beauty, you may know that it is built upon the bones of one man, the flesh of another, the misery of a great many. The Roost is not unique in subjugation – though, as in everything else, the Eldest manage it with a skill no human can match.’

Calla bit her lip and fell silent, as much because she was afraid the other patrons might overhear the conversation as because she could not, in that moment, think of a retort.

Bulan seemed not to take any great joy in his victory. ‘The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out. The moon wanes and waxes. Man lives and screams and breeds and dies; the One God alone knows the why of it.’

‘I do not believe in your One God,’ Calla said petulantly.

‘Then no one knows,’ Bulan said. ‘Or at the very least, I do not.’

Calla did not know either. Her wine glass was empty, as was the pitcher the waitress had drawn for them what seemed only a short while ago. A steady rain had begun to beat against the windowpane, a hard, cold rain. The sort of rain that made one grateful to have a roof to shelter beneath, and a fire to keep warm beside, the sort of rain that reminded one that not everyone had either of those things.

‘The boy is dead, Calla. Regret will not revive him. There is cruelty in the world, yes. There are miseries uncountable. But there is the moonlight,’ he said, gesturing towards the evening. ‘There is wine, and music, and the feel of flesh against flesh.’ He proved this last by leaning forward and caressing her cheek. ‘Bitterness avails no one.’

But Calla had spent her life enjoying the moonlight, and wine, and music, and the other pleasures of which Bulan spoke. She had never been unaware of the sparkling joys that infused her existence, had relished them, had followed the practice of her masters in setting, if not hedonism, then at least beauty, as the purpose and cornerstone of her existence. ‘Perhaps I am new to the novelty,’ she said, slipping away from his touch, ‘but the taste is yet strong on my tongue.’

‘You will have long years to grow used to it,’ Bulan said, tapping out the ash from his pipe in too forceful a fashion. ‘Despair is a common garnish.’

They ordered another flagon of wine, drank it in a silence that seemed loud. At one point Calla opened her mouth as if to say something, but after a moment her lips closed round it. From the First Rung Calla could hear the chiming of the hour of the Woodcock, signalling the firm arrival of darkness.

‘It grows late,’ Bulan said, finishing what little was left in his own glass. ‘Shall I arrange you a palanquin back to the gates of the First? Or perhaps there is somewhere else you’d like to spend the remainder of the evening?’

Calla thought about Bulan’s apartments, his warm bed, wanted to find herself in it, and not simply as recompense for using him as a convenient if unwarranted target of her anxiety. He smelled of rosewater, and beneath that of his own musk, ripe but not unpleasant. His eyes, unaccustomedly hard these last moments, had reverted to their canny softness. Calla saw herself once again lost in his embrace, solving, however briefly, in sweat and seed, that equation which had bedevilled her ever since visiting the Fifth Rung a month prior.

‘There is no need for a palanquin,’ Calla found herself saying. ‘I can make the walk.’

‘As your preference,’ Bulan said, frowning, one more unfortunate amidst the multitude.

W
hen Andronikos finished his wedding toast the whole party, five hundred souls at two tiers of long, wooden tables, erupted into applause, Eudokia first among them. It was far and away the best speech that she had ever heard him give, pithy and funny and even faintly insightful, qualities he had never previously demonstrated in his past pronouncements. But then, love is a more interesting subject than politics, if equally treacherous.