Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2

by Daniel Polansky

‘What seems to be the problem?’ a voice asked.

  She would have known the speaker was important even if the two guards hadn’t snapped to attention, shoulders rising and levelling off, eyes straight ahead. It was the same tone of command that she might have given to a scullery maid or a new assistant at the bestiaries, assertive and self-certain. ‘She is ignorant of the password, and has declined to show her brand.’

  ‘This is your first time here, sister?’ the boy asked. Not boy, man, younger than Calla and shorter but with wide shoulders and round biceps. His eyes were dark and blunt as an extinguished torch, and they seemed somehow familiar, though she could not recall the circumstances of their last meeting.

  ‘I was told that all humans are welcome at the meeting of the Five-Fingered,’ Calla said. ‘That there is a man here who would speak something I needed to hear.’

  ‘The second is the truest thing in the world,’ he said, ‘though the first is sadly outdated. There are some so clouded as to imagine themselves our enemies, and thus precautions must be taken. May I see your brand, sister?’

  Calla knew well the tone of voice, one she had often used herself, polite but unyielding. She brought the folds of her robes up from her wrist, displayed the ink that had been applied earlier that morning. It was good work, Calla knew, but not too good, nothing like the elaborate tattoo that ran up her other arm and to the nape of her neck, which she had powdered over with heavy make-up and which was now obscured by a length of scarf.

  ‘This would make you a worker on the cerulean section of the Second Rung, yes?’

  Head halfway to a nod, another flicker of warning or terror and she turned it into a head-shake. ‘The third, my lord,’ she said, looking down as if frightened, no very difficult emotion to fake. ‘I am a maid for a family there.’

  He did not smile, but there was some indefinable sense of easing. ‘I am no lord,’ he said. ‘Rank, title, these are lies created by the demons, meant to separate and weaken us. You are human, and thus my sibling, and there need be no question of hierarchy between us. I congratulate you on your courage in coming so far from your home,’ he continued, nodding to the guards and waving her inside, ‘and I welcome you to your first meeting of the Five-Fingers. Your future starts tonight.’

  A stage had been erected at the back of the warehouse, though Calla could only make it out through the mad press of bodies, windows shuttering open and closed through the great wall of flesh. Elbowing her way to a clear view took the better part of ten minutes, and was an unseemly and unpleasant task. The crowd were porters and shop-owners and petty craftsmen and outright vagrants, they were small-time thugs and washerwomen, they were cooks and servants, they were human as she was human and as unrecognisable to her as the back of the moon. She ended up standing beside a family of five, a thick-shouldered husband and a homely wife, three young children standing seriously below them. After a while a man appeared on the stage, middle-aged, handsome, shifty-looking. Calla stared hard at his face, willing herself to remember, folding his image into the recesses of her mind.

  ‘Five years ago,’ he began, ‘I heard the truth, and was reborn Steadfast, the First of His Line.’

  A cheer from the crowd.

  ‘Are you ready to hear the same, brothers and sisters? Are you ready to be reborn?’

  A louder cheer, and longer, though when Steadfast brought his hands up it quieted with surprising speed, this mob of downslope ruffians, five hundred souls at least, every one staring silently forward with keen intensity, nothing to be heard but the occasional cough. And then Steadfast removed himself, and the man they had all come to see arrived from off stage. At first glance he did not seem like much, this man who had set the lower half of the Roost on fire with his words, who had drawn this crowd like bees to honey or wild dogs to raw meat. Near fifty, if Calla was to take a guess, though you would only say so by his bright white mane. His shoulders were broad and he stood straight and unbowed, and his eyes were clear blue even from a distance. But he was not handsome particularly, and apart from the hair there was nothing noteworthy about him.

  But when he spoke – at his first words, which were sonorous and bright, and which she could hear clearly though she was halfway back in the crowd – Calla understood.

  ‘What is your name?’

  He allowed the silence to extend out again.

  ‘What is your name?’ he repeated.

  This time there were scattered shouts of response from the crowd, Mouse and Hinge and Burr, downslope names without beauty or even much sense. On the First Rung and the Second, children were named after flowers and spices, after sweet-smelling plants, after precious minerals and things beautiful or thought to be so. Down here on the Fifth they seemed to title their spawn after anything that caught their fancy, with less thought than Calla might have given to her supper.

  He did not ask the question a third time, only looked on disapprovingly, at those who had spoken and those who had remained quiet. ‘Those are not your names. Those are the names they have given you, lies that you have supped upon since birth, falsehoods swallowed down with mother’s milk. Untruths that have blinded you to your patronym, to your history, to your very future. In a time that has been forgotten, in an age the memory of which was obliterated, we roamed wild and proud across the land, with our own leaders and our own priests, blessed by the gods, free as man was meant to be free. Until the demons came,’ – voice dipping an octave into horror and hatred. ‘Without law or justice, thinking themselves divine, jealous of our innocence. They slaughtered your ancestors as cattle, and those they did not kill they enslaved, forced to labour for an unknowable eternity beneath the ground, out of sight of the sun, out of sight, they supposed, of the gods themselves. They broke us, and they thought we would remain forever broken. For generations beyond counting, you have laboured beneath that yoke, knowing nothing different, thinking, in your delusion, in your ignorance, that it was justified, that your bounds were ornaments, that your slavery freedom, that you were what they said you were.’

  The crowd was not quite silent – there was still the rustle of clothing and heavy drawing of breath, here and there a cough or a mutter – but when Edom clapped his hands together it echoed loud and clear through the vast hallway.

  ‘It is time to wake now from this nightmare, my brothers and sisters. It is time now, finally, finally and long past time, that you free yourself from your delusions, from your bounds. Free yourself from the whoremongers and the child-poisoners, the gamblers with their loaded dice and false tongues, the knife-boys who come to your businesses and your homes and tell you that what little you have scrimped and saved and salvaged is not yours at all, that it is theirs. And above them, faceless and unknowable, three or five or seven cables upslope, the Cuckoos and their masters, Five-Fingered as you and I but made blind by their own self-hatred, by the depths of their loathing, by their desperate and foolish and impossible adoration of the demons. The world was promised you,’ Edom said, his voice rising until it filled every nook and cranny of the warehouse, until it extended into the furthest back corners, until it seeped into the mind and the heart and the soul of everyone blessed to hear it. ‘And it is to you to redeem that promise. It will be your strength that frees your children of their servitude, that will begin a new chapter in the history of your race. I am Edom, the First of His Line, and if a free heart beats in your chest, if you yearn for a future beyond that which they have promised, then you are already one of us, and must but speak the words.’

  When it was finished, every man and woman and child packed into the warehouse, five hundred souls easily, matched the motion of the man on stage, reflected it, hands uplifted, fingers splayed, Calla making it along with them and not sure in her own mind if it was pretence.

  Afterwards she left the gathering swiftly, well-graced with fear.

  4

  The Salucians could not fight for shit.

  This had been Bas’s feeling twenty-five years earlier, and thus far he had see
n nothing to force him to reconsider the opinion. The three themas he had brought from Aeleria were newly raised and largely unblooded, and he would not have given all of them for half of his beloved Thirteenth, still serving on the Marches far to the east. But they were chariot-bearers of the war god himself compared to the Salucians. Their infantry were all peasants, badly equipped and worse led. The nobles served in the cavalry, and they looked very impressive – their saddles were trimmed with silver and samite, and the pommels of their weapons elaborately crafted – and Bas supposed that it was their wealth as much as their lives that they sought to protect in similarly fleeing each conflict at the first sign of bloodshed. The only part of the Salucian forces that could fight at all were not Salucian, but foreign mercenaries called forth from distant lands by the promise of gold. The Chazar wielded a sort of hooked spear that worked well enough in pulling a man off a horse, and well enough in cutting him up once they’d done so, and had been the only reason that the battle at Bod’s Wake had not been a rout. But there weren’t many of them, and there were a damn sight fewer after Bod’s Wake. During the last war the Salucians had their numbers stiffened by large contingents of plainsmen, light cavalry having crossed half the length of the continent for the promise of steel weapons and men to use them on. But a quarter-century of grinding western expansion had sapped the marchers of their strength, and the Salucians were left in the unfortunate position of having to fight their own war.

  No, the Salucians could not fight – but they could build, as the great stone citadel in front of Bas evidenced, and they could hide behind what they had built, and at the moment it seemed those two skills were enough to make up for the lack of the first. Four months they had been stuck outside of Oscan, the Salucians waiting for the weather to do what their blades and spears and arrows could not. The city had been the proximate cause of the war, a vague satellite of Aeleria, annexed by Salucia after the Commonwealth’s armies had been slaughtered by the demons during the last war. It was common knowledge within Aeleria, remarked upon often and in passionate tones, that the citizens of Oscan lamented daily the betrayal that had forced them beneath a foreign yoke, that they would with a moment’s notice rise up against their hated oppressors.

  That there had been no such signs of pro-Aelerian resistance, not a message passed by arrow nor a throat-slit Salucian nor the dark black smoke of burning buildings, was something Bas had noticed but not remarked upon or felt any way about. The wheel was in motion – the wheel had, in fact, never stopped, its rotation a constant in the more than forty years with which Bas Alyates, called Caracal or sometimes the God-Killer, called worse things also, had walked above the ground. No doubt it had been in motion far longer, as ever man felt greed, as ever man felt hate, as ever man had grudge against man and the hands with which to answer said grievance. Bas did not consider the justice of it any more than he might the falling rain, or the kindled light of day that was just now rising over the horizon.

  Morning coming but not yet arrived, and Bas made his way through the great Aelerian camp with the aid of a servant and a large torch. By far the larger portion of the army was still asleep, what was to come was still, hopefully and nominally, a secret and only those units who would be taking part in the assault had been alerted. As he grew closer to the walls Bas found the first evidence of the battle to come, men thumbing the edge of their weapons, checking the straps of their armour, sipping swiftly through their double ration of liquor.

  Theophilus sat on a small travelling stool, staring at the walls with no great excess of enthusiasm. ‘Legatus,’ he said, making a vague effort to rise and salute, stopping once he received Bas’s expected gesture to remain seated.

  Compared to most of the rest of the soldiers under his command Theophilus was a veteran, an old hand, a year on the Marches and nearly two here in the east. And in truth there seemed little enough of the boy Bas had first met, well-formed but soft, and so desperate to make a good impression as to be near worthless. He had blooded his sword and had swords blooded against him. He had worn calluses into his hands with a trench shovel, had shat out his innards with flux, had drunk too much and vomited on his boots, had grown hard, mean little eyes. And if all that wasn’t enough, you could tell he was a true soldier by the face he wore, mute and unmovable as a stone, saving all energies, physical and mental, for some great future trial and having none therefore to fritter away on excess feeling or unnecessary speech.

  ‘They’re ready?’ Bas asked.

  ‘They won’t get more ready before the morning.’ He waved to his adjutant – squat-shouldered, pug-nosed, a name Bas had never learned – and the man ran over to refill his cup of coffee.

  ‘If their spies haven’t told them you’re coming, they’ll figure it out by the time you mass ranks,’ Bas said. ‘Subterfuge is out, so don’t make an attempt at it – go hard enough at them and they’ll bend, go a little harder and they’ll break.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you inside,’ Theophilus answered, taking the mug from his boy.

  Nothing else worth saying and Bas did not attempt it. In truth, he had little enough role to play in the day’s events. Bas had spent the better part of the last ten years on the Marches as Strategos for the Thirteenth thema, responsible ultimately for everything it did, every bent pike and late patrol, every failed stratagem and dead soldier. As Legatus in the western army, his purpose was less clear. Konstantinos was responsible for overall strategy, the leaders of the individual themas were responsible for executing his commands. Bas got the sense at times he was little more than a mascot, like the donkey the Thirteenth had kept that one summer when he had still been a pentarche, a spotted thing that someone had taught to drink whiskey. What had happened to that mule, Bas tried to remember, staring up at the walls? Yes, they had eaten him when winter came. A man of greater imagination might have supposed that an unprepossessing portent.

  ‘Then you will attack today?’ she asked from behind him.

  Bas did not smile, though there was a brief second where it looked like he might. She moved with such grace and silence, it still astonished him, even having seen her daily or near daily for the better part of two years. ‘You know I can’t say.’

  ‘You do not need to. What else would explain the commotion in camp, and your mustering at the front?’

  What else indeed? The only time Bas had ever seen another Eternal they had been locked in mortal combat, and so Bas was not entirely sure of how the Sentinel of the Southern Reach compared to the rest of her species. He had the vague sense that they were not as diverse in type as humans, though he couldn’t have said for certain if this was true. She resembled humanity in the way that a horse resembles a mule, larger and finer and better formed. He was not sure if other men would call her beautiful; with her eyes that were like slabs of amethyst, with her fingers that would have stretched a fair length of his forearm, with her height and her tiny, beak-like nose. He was not entirely sure if he thought her beautiful either, or at least he did not allow himself certainty on the subject.

  The Roost claimed ownership over all the lands of the continent, by right of their ancient presence, predating not only the Aelerians, who had only come to the continent a scant three centuries before, but even the Salucians and the Dycians and the Marchers, who had resided there for millennia prior. In the eyes of the Others the human nations were their vassals, demonstrated this fealty by yearly tithe – as well as, in theory at least, obeying their commands. The Sentinel of the Southern Reach had accompanied the Aelerian army to remit these orders, though in practice she did little more than observe and occasionally comment in a fashion more acerbic than practical. Bas had named her Einnes to facilitate their communication, though as Bas was the only human with whom she spent any time in conversation, he was also the only one who used or even knew of this name.

  ‘And you will lead them, then, Slayer of Gods?’

  ‘I had not thought to do so,’ he said, which had been true before she had mentioned it, though
now that the thought had been introduced he had to admit that it held a certain interest.

  ‘It is one of the many things that I do not understand about your species – Those Above would be ashamed to demand a thing of another, rather than to accomplish it ourselves.’

  ‘Your slaves would likely dispute that point.’

  ‘My slaves are too well-trained to dispute with me upon anything.’

  He could never tell if she was joking. ‘Fair point.’

  ‘The gate seems well defended.’

  ‘We’ll take it,’ Bas said, a pinprick of pride for his army and his men. ‘Theophilus knows what he’s doing. And the Salucians have no love of war.’

  ‘And you, Legatus? Are you so enamoured of that mistress?’

  ‘She’s always been good to me.’

  ‘Let us hope her affection remains undimmed,’ Einnes said, purple eyes still as the surface of a stone. ‘Watch yourself, Slayer of Gods. Die today and I will lose the chance to kill you.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want that,’ he agreed, watching as she slipped back to her tent, then stalking off to the front of the camp.

  The great western gate of Oscan, where once long trails of caravans had entered on their way to the market, where pilgrims and travellers had received their first view of the great border city, had long months earlier been closed, garrisoned by men with short bows and curved blades. It was the most obvious point of attack and therefore the most heavily fortified; there would be nothing clever in today’s battle, no stratagems or tricks, only muscle against muscle and steel against steel. The hoplitai getting ready to force it had traded in their customary long pikes, were making do with the short stabbing swords that were their secondary weapon. A picked contingent of the largest and strongest had been assigned to shoulder the turtle, a giant aegis of beaten steel and hardened leather, proof, hopefully, against the arrows and stones and heated oil of the Salucians. Chalked up and down its sides were clever blasphemies in Aelerian and vile profanity in gutter Salucian, and at the end was an iron-beaked ram. Driven with sufficient force this might be enough to cause a breach in the gate through which the rest of the force, and the army behind them, might enter. Such, at least, was the hope.