Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (41 page)

Still, Eudokia wasn’t altogether heartless, and she couldn’t help but acknowledge the man’s screaming as quite the most terrible thing she thought she had ever heard. It was some relief when she noticed the hilt of a knife peeking out from his breeches.

‘I’m fairly certain we don’t provide those for staff,’ she said aloud.

But her would-be assassin didn’t hear her, and his screaming only got louder. The water had burned away his eyelids, or at least he couldn’t bring himself to close them, and his eyes were red as pulp.

Eudokia looked around for a moment and grabbed an iron griddle that was hanging from the wall. The man was dying but not fast enough, and she didn’t suppose he had come alone. She lifted the skillet above her head and brought it swiftly and without hesitation down against the top of the man’s skull. He went limp as soon as he’d been struck, but Eudokia gave him two more, just to make certain. Blood splattered onto the floor and onto the walls and onto her robes.

Clang, clang, clang
went the fire bell.

Eudokia pulled the dagger out of the man’s belt, held it in her palm for a moment, getting used to the balance. She took a quick look back down at the way they had come, but it had filled up with smoke. This would explain the fire’s rapid spread, and Jahan’s unexpected absence as well. She grabbed a lantern from the wall and headed onward.

From the servants’ quarters Eudokia moved swiftly towards the main hallway, hoping to escape out of the front door and then make her way around the grounds to find help. This was the plan, at least, though it derailed quickly enough when her lantern caught the movement of a man ahead of her. A moment later and the illumination was sufficient to show he was not one of hers. Though dressed in a reasonable approximation of a servant’s outfit, he had a small sword as his side and his eyes had the blank look that you’d see in a smith at the forge or a carpenter at his table – a professional engaging in his chosen occupation.

‘Whatever you are being paid,’ Eudokia said coolly, ‘I am in a position to pay you more. And you are in a position to ask for it.’

Either he was too stupid to answer or smart enough to know that nothing she said in the moment would be held to come the morning. Eudokia still had the dagger in her waistband but she didn’t bother to do anything with it. Knife work was no speciality of hers, as she imagined it was of this man’s.

He moved swiftly towards her, weapon half drawn, then stopped and turned his head back to look the way he had come. Whatever it was that had grabbed his attention, Eudokia couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything in that moment but the rushing of blood in her veins, and couldn’t think about much more than the idea of it splattering on the walls. But then there was something protruding from her would-be assassin’s breast, something that glinted in the light of her lantern. And then he was sliding to the ground, and behind him stood her nephew, naked to the waist, his small sword slick with blood. ‘We’ve been attacked!’ he said, a child’s response to the situation, though there was nothing childlike about the red that covered his hands up to his elbows.

‘We’re being attacked,’ Eudokia corrected. ‘Now hurry to the stairs.’

‘Is it Andronikos?’

‘There’ll be time enough to determine the culprit,’ she said, ‘and to arrange a fitting punishment. Or at least, there might be, if you stop talking and hurry to the gods-damned stairs.’

Though they weren’t so very far up those when Eudokia heard a commotion that could only mean her pursuers had found her. When they reached the second floor she pointed down the hallway. ‘Hide until they come after me, then double back the way we came. Find Jahan, if he hasn’t been killed. Otherwise find anyone, and have them meet me at the main door.’

‘I’m not going to just leave you,’ Leon said.

How much better a place the world would be, Eudokia thought then, if people would just do what she told them. How much better for everyone. It was probably the single most frequent thought that Eudokia had, but she was thinking it particularly strongly just at that moment. ‘They’re not after you, you silly little child. You don’t matter at all. Listen to me and we might have some chance of saving the both of us.’

She all but knew this was a lie, wondered if he did. Probably not – otherwise, he would have stuck around out of some ingrained sense of gallantry. This tendency towards purposeless heroism was something she would need to shake out of him, assuming she survived till morning. Eudokia grabbed him and held him tight, then released him, put both hands against his chest and propelled him down the hallway. He stared at her for a long second, then turned and ran as she had instructed. Eudokia did the same in the opposite direction.

She moved down the darkened hallway at a rapid pace, but not so quickly that the men following her wouldn’t notice her lantern. When she could hear them distinctly she ripped open a side door and threw herself inside. It was one of the dozens of spare guest rooms, hadn’t been used for years, sheets still covering the furnishings. The key was in the lock and the lock still worked, thank the gods, and she turned it quickly and then broke it off. She inspected the environs for a few swift seconds, then made her way over to the window.

Here she found her first bad luck of the day, not counting the fire or the group of men trying to kill her. The window was warped into the frame. She shoved the tip of her knife into the bottom crack, began to work to loosen it, actively but not frantically.

Eudokia hadn’t really supposed that she had lost her pursuers, but she had been entertaining the notion that they might take a while to narrow down her location. A vain hope, she realised when she heard the sounds of footsteps coming down the hallway and then hands futilely trying the knob.

‘Domina,’ a voice said. ‘Open the door, for the love of Enkedri! The fire is spreading, we don’t have much time.’

‘Come in then, quickly!’ Eudokia said, still working at the window.

‘The door is locked, Domina.’

‘Just a moment,’ Eudokia said, ‘I’ll open it.’

After a few seconds during which Eudokia did nothing of the sort, she heard a soft chuckle waft its way inside. ‘Open the door, Domina.’

‘I can’t be certain that would be beneficial to my health.’

‘If you let us in, I promise, we won’t harm you.’

‘Quite a lot of trouble to not make any trouble for me,’ Eudokia thought to herself, but she answered in a quivering voice, ‘You swear? Upon Enkedri and his children?’

‘Upon Enkedri the Self-Formed, and Siraph his consort. On Terjunta who watches over soldiers, and Eloha who sprung from the depths.’ He was speaking loudly but in the pauses Eudokia could hear them working at the hinges of the door.

‘And the minor ones as well?’ Eudokia called back from the window. ‘On bright-plumed Avas, and Kairn the dicer, and on Tolb who lives among the low?’

There was a pause on the other side of the door. ‘On all of them.’

‘And on the demigods? On two-headed Amphisbaena, and Catoblepas, and the Skolopendra herself?’

‘Open the fucking door,’ the voice said.

‘That friend of yours in the kitchen died in as much misery as any human being has ever endured, and I confess that murdering him gave me no small thrill.’

A nasty chuckle sneaked in through the keyhole. ‘Why do you suppose we got into this business?’

Eudokia broke open the window only a few seconds before her assailants managed to do the same with the door. She shoved the dagger into her belt and threw her lantern back into the room, and the burst of heat gave her a moment to scamper outside. Eudokia hadn’t climbed anything since her first bleeding, but there was an old trellis next to the ledge and one hardly needed to be a squirrel to go hand over foot. She reached the roof as quickly as she could, swung herself on top of it. It was formed of hard red clay tiles, and Eudokia loosened one with the point of her dagger and waited silently for her pursuers.

‘Get back down here, you withered old cunt!’ the face from the window yelled.

Eudokia couldn’t quite make out the trajectory of the stone she dropped, though she took the scream that followed to be a positive sign. It wouldn’t be enough to keep them off for long, and the trellis was too firmly attached to the wall to do anything with, but at least it would delay her pursuers, beyond being thoroughly enjoyable in and of itself.

She forced herself to her feet, saw, for a moment, her estate stretching out beneath her, made clear by the light of the moon and the light of the fire they had set, and felt a moment of dizziness from the height or the smoke or from being pursued by men hoping to kill her. But she shook through it, began to make her way forward as best as she was able. A short way down she slipped and felt her ankle do something that it wasn’t supposed to do – it was close to agony but she did not scream, indeed barely slowed, steeled herself and rose quickly, ignoring the pain shooting up her body. There would be time enough to bandage it, she consoled herself, or it wouldn’t be an issue long.

The roof was shallow and went on for ever, and Eudokia moved across it as swiftly as she could make herself, which she knew was not nearly swiftly enough. When she reached the top she dropped onto her arse and slid down the other side, careful to catch herself just before the edge. Thirty links below – she hoped it was not more than thirty links – a balcony stretched elegantly over the front gardens. She didn’t give herself time to think, just pushed herself over, and when her ankle gave out as she landed she didn’t make a sound either, or at least not very much of one. She did rest on the balcony for a few seconds after, however, breathing shallowly, the pain in her leg as bad as anything she had ever felt.

Eudokia didn’t remain motionless for very long. The banisters in the balcony were wide and she slid through one, hanging by her fingertips, feeling the nothingness below. She had meant to rest there a moment, but made the mistake of looking down and found herself falling.

Eudokia had never stinted on upkeep – it was one thing to let an unused wing lie fallow, quite another to allow the magnificent gardens that surrounded it to degenerate. The hedge tore her robe apart and scratched her deep enough to draw blood and did not entirely stop the pain of her landing, but it almost certainly kept her from breaking her neck.

For a time it was impossible to move; all breath was lost to her, she had to count to thirty just to bring her heart down to a twice-normal beat. It took longer for her to dislodge herself from the indentation she had made in the broken bush. By that point she could hear them from the roof, yelling back and forth at each other and trying to figure out where she had gone. Forcing herself out of the indentation she had made, she crawled along in the shadow of the shrubbery. She was close to the main door, perhaps she could hide long enough for assistance to arrive.

But the moonlight ruined any chance of subterfuge; one of them spotted her and gave a yell. Eudokia pushed herself to her feet, screamed at the pain, felt a hot flicker of shame at her weakness, forced herself onward. A few steps forward she took a quick look behind her, saw two of her pursuers leap straight from the second storey, out over the balcony she had clung to and into the bushes below. The third was not so lucky; jumping a second or two later, he swivelled in the air as he fell and landed awkwardly, groaned loudly and then went still. Her second one tonight, Eudokia thought excitedly – but that still left two, and two would be more than enough to kill her.

If she could have run she might have tried it, just on the slim chance. But she couldn’t – indeed she could barely stand, and so she decided simply to stand upright and face what was coming. It seemed clear to Eudokia that she had reached her last few moments above the ground. Well, she wasn’t the first person to find herself in this situation. And she would meet it, as she had met every challenge she had ever faced, with the dignity and poise of her ancient line.

‘A merry chase,’ the first man said. He was the one that Eudokia had dropped a tile on, and it had shattered his nose and most of his teeth, leaving the centre of his face a mass of pulp. He was smiling through it, though. ‘A merry chase, but we’ve come to the end of it.’

‘You’re bleeding,’ Eudokia observed.

He laughed and pointed his weapon at her. ‘It’s a shame I can’t spend any time on you. I like the tough ones. They’re more fun to break.’

Eudokia didn’t bother to respond – there was no point in wasting any more time on the man, a degenerate and a barbarian, unworthy of her final thoughts. She pulled the dagger out from her waistband, trying to decide whether to aim it at her throat or her chest. She settled on the former – an odd angle, but she wouldn’t need to worry about striking through bone.

And then the front door opened and Jahan was there, without a single scrap of clothing, blood on his moustache and his chest and his genitals; whether his blood or someone else’s, Eudokia could not be sure. Leon was close behind him, sword drawn and looking quite furious, though in that moment Eudokia’s attention was occupied more or less entirely by the Parthan. This seemed equally to be the case for the two men who had been about to murder her, and who would have found the task easily accomplished if they had struck in this brief interlude. But the sight of her naked bodyguard, ichor-covered and furious, was the sort of thing that might give even a dangerous man pause, and her would-be assassins twisted their attentions rapidly towards him, hoping to make some sort of defence against his rage.

To no avail. Unpractised as she was in warfare, Eudokia found it impossible to make out the individual movements by which Jahan subdued her two attackers. All she could say was that at first there were two men holding small swords, and Jahan himself was unarmed, and then there was one man holding a small sword and another on the ground trying to breathe through a shattered trachea, and then the only person holding anything was Jahan, lifting the remaining survivor into the air by the throat.

Phocas had not been wrong, all those years ago, when he had claimed Jahan as the most dangerous person he had ever met. He had proved that by defeating two armed men barehanded in less time than it would take to recite a stanza, but he proved it doubly then when he held back from killing the second, holding him above his head like a helpless babe. ‘Leave this one alive?’