Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (30 page)

Her horse, ever hateful, ever furious, tore eastward at a thunderous pace, as if it had always been waiting to do so, as indeed perhaps it had. She did not look backwards, though Bas watched until he could make her out only as a black dot against the flat landscape, wishing in vain that he had told her what her name meant.

A brave man, Bas. All of the songs said so.

D
usk descended on the Second, on boughs of trees thick with white blossoms, on scenes of joy, of frivolity, of ribaldry. Of men blushing and women laughing and lovers embracing passionately, in dark corners of warm bars and wedged tight on public benches and in the midst of crowded thoroughfares, the obstructed traffic accepting their misfortune with good humour, a small price to pay for being above ground, and that ground, the Roost! Liquor poured like the water from the Source, kegs of light ale and casks of dark, bowls of rum punch, flutes of pink cordial, snifters of buttery brown booze, and wasn’t this the time to break out that vintage Salucian red, and if not now, then when? And now it was. Every cafe, barroom, tavern, hostelry and restaurant had its own band, a complementary cacophony that somehow never devolved into bedlam, the competing strands united in the singular purpose of merriment. And if, among all this amusement, there was some distant scent of danger as of smoke, there was a vague glimmer of the violence that had engulfed the lower Rungs, there was perhaps even some slim cognisance that it might spread – was this not, in the end, only reason to embrace the evening more fully?

Leon waited beside a sparkling stone fountain, watching the proceedings with a wide and reasonable grin, looking tall and handsome, dressed in the Aelerian style but with a touch of grace to him all the same. Or at least some of the other denizens of the Second seemed to think, a buxom brunette breaking away from her giggling and identical coterie, throwing a necklace of flowers over his shoulders and planting a kiss just off his mouth, a smudge of bright purple lip-paint, and then she laughed and sprinted off into the mob.

‘Come, Leon of Aeleria,’ Calla said, arriving a moment after, hoping her smile hid any distant tick of jealousy. ‘Let us escape, before the women of the Roost devour you whole.’

He said something in response but it was too loud for her to hear it, as it was too dark to see his blush. The street lights by common consent were dimmed during the Blossom Festival, to offer a better view of the budding efflorescence and the moon above, and the fireworks that would crown the public spectacle, and finally also to allow for any private entertainment that might be best preserved beneath the cover of darkness. Calla took his hand, because it was so busy, of course, because there was otherwise a chance of him getting lost, and then she led him to a just slightly less crowded side street and into a bustling tavern. The main floor was packed, but the proprietor was an old friend and had kept a table waiting for the Prime’s seneschal.

Not just a table but the best table, in fact, a little alcove just above the street. Calla ordered a flagon of red but promised herself she would only drink some of it.

‘Captivity seems to suit you,’ she said.

‘It is true; for a citizen of a nation with which the Roost is technically at war, I have found my privileges little curtailed. We are forbidden from leaving the city, and my aunt has had some people posted to watch her. That seems to be roughly the limits of the Roost’s interest. And where, may I ask, is the architect of these policies? Has the Prime changed his mind regarding the evening’s excursion?’

‘The Prime’s word, once given, is as certain as the rising sun or the coming of the new moon, is as certain as anything you can imagine.’

‘Unfortunate,’ Leon said with a smile that showed teeth. ‘I had hoped to have you alone for the whole evening.’

Calla laughed, feigned wide-eyed surprise. ‘And where would you have me, Leon of Aeleria?’

And now the light was good enough to make out the blush clear, though to Calla’s eyes it made him no less fetching. The server came back then with their wine, and Leon thanked her with a courtesy that was just the proper side of elaborate.

‘You’ve an impressive grasp of our language.’

‘Auntie insisted. Roost, Salucian, Dycian, a smattering of Chazar, though I’ve never used it outside of my study. I admit that at one point my … facility with languages was a source of pride, though no longer.’

‘No?’

‘Relatively little difference between them, all things considered, flowerings of the same essential root. Having no comparison to the complexity of the Eternal’s tongue, and the truly mammoth task that would be required to comprehend it.’

‘More than mammoth – impossible.’

‘Truly?’

Calla looked around sharply, but it would have required more than a casual aside to interrupt the evening’s revelry. ‘A curious attempt at humour,’ she said finally. ‘No human is capable of grasping the nuances of the Eternal’s speech, not to the faintest or vaguest degree. Even the suggestion of such is a blasphemy of the most … profound and hideous kind, of the sort which perhaps no foreigner could fully appreciate.’

‘Then you ought to be rather more careful about how you display your erudition,’ he said.

Calla looked down into her cup. She should have been fearful or at least concerned, but in fact in that moment what she felt was pride and the sly good humour of a disobedient child. ‘When did you notice?’

‘That first night I met you,’ he said. ‘Those Above do not look at us when they speak, a happy bit of discourtesy, in your case at least. If ever they thought you worth their attention, I fear your deception would not last an evening.’

‘And you, Leon?’

‘I find it hard to place my eyes elsewhere,’ he admitted.

Outside, a soft summer wind trailed the blossomed limb of a cherry tree against their window, the soft white bud, the moonlight beyond. Inside, Calla’s heart fluttered.

She told him of the Book. Passed down from her grandsire six times removed, a secret compendium of the High Tongue, of its fluid consonants and ethereal vowels, of its esoteric grammar, syllables shifting based upon the time of day and the placement of the moon and the seasons and whether you were standing up- or downslope of your interlocutor. Of the assiduous observations made over the course of a century and a half, a bequest of knowledge stretching back through the generations. Endless hours spent behind barred doors, sifting through its secrets, adding to them when she was certain of her conclusions. Words muttered with curtains drawn on moonless nights, endless practice after long days of work, falling asleep exhausted and numbed, having dreams in which she and the Aubade conversed casually in her secret tongue. She told him of her facility, which was near to fluency, an accomplishment that was her chief pride, that was unequalled in the human history of the Roost; which on point of death need always remain a secret.

She had never spoken of it before, not so fully at least, not to anyone. He did not answer for a long time afterward, considering the matter with the serious interest that she found one of his most attractive qualities. ‘No one else knows of your expertise?’

‘The Prime suspects. But we’ve never spoken of it outright.’ A sudden and belated hiccup of fear, and Calla added, ‘No one must ever know of this, do you understand? Not even your aunt.’

‘My aunt has, I’m sure, come to the same conclusion as I have, though you need not worry she’ll say anything to anyone. And I understand better than you do, I think. Our minds are as some great edifice, a mansion or a castle. A room might be rearranged, a wing perhaps renovated, some minor alteration to the exterior or the facade. But the bedrock core of it remains the same, yes? The pillars and the foundations. Were they ever to shake loose, the entire thing would crumble. You would need – it would be a requirement – to do anything you had to to defend against that possibility. A man will believe whatever lies he must.’

‘Is not honesty preferable to falsehood?’

‘We are a febrile species, and prefer our truth diluted.’

‘The Eternal are rather more resilient.’

‘Are they?’ Leon asked quietly. ‘I am not so certain this is the case.’

There was a tapping on the window then, and Calla looked down to discover a pretty girl, dressed garishly, pressing her face against the glass, and behind her a youth strumming on a lute. Calla swung the pane open and called for a song. The girl’s voice was thin and wavering, but she was enjoying herself immensely, and the boy who accompanied her was not altogether incompetent. The song itself was a bit of doggerel about the war to come, and the ease with which the Aelerians would be defeated, and how afterward everyone would be happy as they always were, and the vocalist leaned forward and stroked her hand against the top of Leon’s boot as she sang the more vulgar verses. At the end of it Calla gave them three drahms, and then, laughing, three more. Leon feigned offence at first, crossed his arms and turned his head away, but after a moment he laughed and dropped a solidus into the hands of the girl, who winked and smiled and pranced onward.

The prelude to the Nightjar’s hour chimed happy and loud across the Rung, and Calla called for their bill. They were to meet the Prime downslope a ways, at one of the innumerable small harbours that had been built along the canals, in some distant age when the Eternal had been more likely to descend from the First. From there they were to escort him to a nearby public garden, a far cry from the splendours of the Red Keep but it seemed enough for the people of the Second, who would be attending the festivities in great numbers, greater even than normal, as the news of the Prime’s participation had managed to increase enthusiasm for what was already one of the most beloved evenings of the year.

The flagon of wine was near empty and she delivered the killing blow before standing and setting off on feet that were, if not wobbly, perhaps not entirely sure. Leon rose as well, and seeing her unsteadiness or, perhaps, for some other reason, offered his arm. They walked with more joy than hurry, and more hurry than grace, travelling downslope on a bed of fallen flower petals, a bright white carpet for their steps. They passed children in garish face-paint, devouring sticky-sweet buns and brightly frosted butter cakes. They passed a thick-shouldered man in a travelling coat too heavy for the season. They passed a circle of dancers, citizens of all ages swaying back and forth in happy if arrhythmic fashion, a fiddler and a girl with a drum in the centre trying their able best to keep everyone on the beat. The fresh scent of the blossoms mingled with Leon’s own musk and Calla found herself unsure which she preferred. Just off the path a pair of lovers huddled beneath a large blanket, and what exactly they were engaged in none took the time to see. Two men, tall and unsmiling, in something like porter’s clothes, skirted past a laughing band of youths trying without success to scale one of the blossoming trees. The surface of the canal was covered with a merry line of white flowers, the current like pale cream. A short, squat, very dark young man sat on the edge of the quay, arms and shoulders naked to the night. In the distance Calla could make out the Lord’s pleasure craft gliding silently through the evening, silvery sails reflecting the moonlight, the Aubade himself standing on the prow, Roostborn watching from the banks with wonder.

‘He has no brand,’ Calla said suddenly, as much a surprise to her as it was to Leon, and to the seated boy himself, who looked up with sudden unmasked hatred. ‘He has no brand!’ Calla shouted again, the full meaning and weight of that only now becoming clear to her then, a sudden spurt of fear accompanying the repetition.

The boy was up from where he sat faster than she could have thought, and he had something in his hand that Calla could not make out clearly but feared all the same. He was fast but Leon was faster, intercepted him before he could reach Calla, the two grappling, then Leon twisting and the boy going sideways into the canal. Calla was still screaming and then the surrounding mass of people was screaming likewise, the shift from jubilation to terror surprisingly swift; at the first sight of steel the dancers and the climbing youths, the lovers holding hands, the children eating sweets, broke and ran. Left to struggle against this current of flesh were the broad-shouldered man beneath the too-heavy travelling cloak, and the two false porters who had not been smiling, and the boy who was pulling himself out of the water and not smiling either.

‘Stupid fucking slave-bitch,’ he said, eyes so thick with loathing that they might well have been open wounds. ‘Ruined the whole damn thing.’

Leon stepped in front of her, a noble if pointless effort because there was nowhere to run, no escape from the long knives that shone bright in the moonlight. A twist of steel, a jet of red blood on the white blossoms, Leon screaming and collapsing, Calla screaming also but staying upright, wanting to offer him comfort but feeling some strange injunction against dying on her knees, a pitiful sort of rebellion but it seemed better than nothing. And perhaps this was the reason also that she ceased to scream, though the boy with furious eyes and a bloody knife drew closer, Calla a poor substitute for their target but, it seemed, she would do.

And then suddenly he was behind them, looming, silent. He must have leaped from the ship and come sprinting along the banks of the canal, too far a distance to have possibly crossed in so short a time surely but what was impossible for a god? There was an instant, distinct in Calla’s memory forever after, the dawning realisation of his presence on the part of her assailants, an interruption of the bloody savagery that had prefaced it, and the bloodier savagery to come. That moment was vivid, but not the tumult that followed, the dim light and the frantic motion and the terror that had surrounded Calla’s conscious mind all conspiring to render it opaque. Four of them and well-practised in violence, but they were as nothing before the Aubade, who edged out of the way of their blades with seeming unconcern, without a sound of exclamation, and then a motion that was too swift for Calla to follow and one of the men was dead, and then a second motion that was too swift for Calla to follow and so was another. This left the third, the largest, squaring up against him, and then the Aubade made a motion as if clapping his hands, though the sound was muffled, and then what was left of the man was on the ground and Calla did not dare to look at him directly, nor at the Aubade himself, who was covered in something slick and pink and foul.