Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘By Enkedri, they look so miserable.’

  Eudokia shrugged and settled back into her cushions. ‘They look poor, Leon. Do you imagine there are no slums in Aeleria? On our return to the capital you might take a stroll round the outskirts of the docks – though bring Jahan along, less you lose your life during this object lesson.’

  ‘This is not my first encounter with poverty, Auntie,’ Leon said, and to his credit he did not close the curtain. ‘But I don’t think I’ve ever seen despair quite like this.’

  Eudokia took a sip of her watered-down wine and considered the matter. ‘Perhaps. Our unfortunates can, at least, console themselves with thoughts of national destiny, or of religion at least, though a meal sanctioned with prayer is no more filling. But I think it more likely that the juxtaposition between the start and end of our journey exaggerates in your mind the extent of the depravity. Grime is grime, famine is famine, and despair the universal constant of the species, the single blessing which the gods distribute among the faithful and unbelieving alike.’

  ‘The gods did not decree this squalor,’ Leon said. ‘The gods did not pack them into tenements or deprive them of any chance for improvement. This misery is attributable to four-fingered hands.’

  ‘You think them unique in this? You suppose it is some curiosity of their species, unshared by ours? Surely I’ve taught you better than that. A second helping, a larger share. It is in our nature, nephew, to mistake our wants for needs and to suppose any good fortune well-earned. If the gods did not decree that the poor be miserable, then they decreed that humanity care more about their own desires than the well-being of a stranger, which is the same thing in practice.’

  ‘Then there is no hope for them?’

  ‘They might rise, I suppose. Tear down what the Eternal have built, nest in their homes. But that would only be to change the pilot, and not the ship’s course.’

  ‘You have no great excess of optimism in you, Auntie.’

  ‘I’m not sure I agree. I have great faith in the happy outcomes of those plans put in motion by Eudokia. As for that far larger portion of human events, well,’ she shrugged. ‘A sure path to madness, despairing over things that cannot be changed. Another date?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Leon said, ‘no.’

  Eudokia took it instead, chewing through the sweet leathery pith, flinging the stone out the window.

  ‘Why, exactly,’ Leon asked, pulling shut the curtain and sitting back to face his aunt, ‘are we doing this?’

  ‘I need to meet a man.’

  ‘At your age!’

  Eudokia snorted.

  ‘For what purpose?’ Leon asked.

  Though of course this did not receive an answer.

  ‘Why exactly is my presence necessary for the resolution of this … as yet undefined liaison?’ Leon asked.

  ‘I had the vague though unpleasant suspicion that our escort might prove a hindrance to the free passage of information which is at the heart of all useful discussion.’

  ‘And you imagined I might do something to help alleviate this situation?’

  ‘Such had been my hope.’

  ‘Then I’m to be the architect of a stratagem without appreciating its purpose?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Eudokia confirmed.

  ‘And why would I be willing to help you?’

  ‘Apart from maternal piety?’

  Leon laughed.

  ‘Because you’ll enjoy yourself doing it. A simple thing, all told, just distract the captain and his men for ten minutes or so, when I give you the signal.’

  ‘How do you suggest I perform such a feat?’

  ‘I’m sure something will come to you in the moment.’

  ‘You rely a great deal on my wit.’

  The palanquin had come to a halt. A knock against the side and Jahan pulled loose the curtain. ‘Of course,’ Eudokia said before alighting, ‘you are my nephew, after all.’

  Eudokia was no sailor, had no particular interest in the docks as such, and indeed at first glance found little of fascination. Larger than Aeleria’s, grander, busier, but the essential features of the thing – the stone quay, the porters alighting overladen from the bellies of the caravels and dhows, the fake beggars and the strutting whores and the foam-maddened sailors, they were not so very different from anywhere else in the world. ‘Magnificent,’ Eudokia lied neatly to the captain of the custodians, who stood stiffly beside her. ‘As is everything in your fair city.’

  Leon shuffled out of the palanquin a few moments later, looking as if he had spent the brief interim drinking a bottle of liquor in a rapid fashion. His shirt was half-tucked into his trousers and freshly stained with wine, and he blinked at the sun as if its presence was an unhappy surprise. ‘What in the name of the Self-Created are we doing here, Auntie?’ he asked, in a tone far from his usual patrician lilt.

  ‘This, dear nephew,’ Eudokia continued with a disheartened look at the captain and his men, ‘is the greatest port in the world. Ships from the length of the coast and from far beyond come here to trade, from Chazar and old Dycia, from—’

  ‘Yes, yes, wood, sail, rope, hairy men. We have ships in Aeleria, and they look very much the same. I cannot possibly see what it is that required my attendance during this little escapade, and before noon at that.’

  Eudokia could feel a smile spreading to the corners of her mouth, hid it with a grimace and turned to the captain. ‘You’ll have to forgive my nephew – he’s … a bit—’

  Leon burped loudly. ‘Where can we find something to eat around here, Captain? My aunt sups on nothing but fruit, and after a long evening one wishes for something more substantial. Oil is a counterbalance to alcohol, once they’ve both reached the stomach. It’s common knowledge.’

  ‘I – had not heard that,’ the captain admitted, brushing Leon’s hand off his shoulder and turning back to Eudokia. ‘Was there somewhere in particular you wished to see, Revered Mother?’ His neat hair and his formal bearing were sufficient proof, so far as Eudokia was concerned, that he was spying for the Prime.

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ Eudokia admitted. ‘The current is heading east – shall we follow it?’

  A resolution to which the captain was perfectly pleased to agree. It did not occur to him until later that the current always went east at that time of the morning.

  The docks were thick with people, as diverse an array of humans as could be found anywhere on the continent, a packed mass of nations, languages, ethnicities, colours and professions, all happy to make way before their escort of custodians, as the prow of a boat cuts through the water.

  ‘Why don’t they use the canals to move these goods upslope?’ Leon asked. ‘It seems like it would save everyone a lot of trouble.’

  ‘The canals are the province of the Eternal alone, sir,’ the captain informed them. ‘We Low-born are forbidden to use them.’

  ‘For anything?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What if I wanted to say, take an afternoon swim?’

  ‘That would not be allowed, sir.’

  ‘But Those Above never use the canals.’

  ‘No, sir,’ the captain admitted, gazing past and around Leon at the surrounding crowd, committed to the safety of his charges regardless of any personal feelings of enmity. ‘Not often.’

  ‘I’ve been here in the Roost for months, and I can’t once remember seeing them use one.’

  ‘Those Above rarely descend below the First, sir.’

  ‘Exactly, they never descend below the First.’

  ‘Rarely, sir.’

  ‘Fine, fine, rarely. But still, so rare that really there could be no very good chance at all that one would be around to see me taking a swim.’

  ‘That’s not really the point, sir.’

  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to make use of them, if the Well-born don’t feel like doing so. That’s just selfish, that’s all that is.’

  ‘The canals are forbidden to we Dayspans,’ the c
aptain said, finally beginning to grow angry, ‘as I’ve explained to you several times. It is a law of the Roost, inviolate and absolute, one extending back to the Founding, and I would no more allow it to be disobeyed than I would—’

  ‘One moment,’ Leon interrupted, a sudden smile on his face, breaking away from the crowd and towards a small food cart perched a precarious few links from the bay. A light-skinned Dycian stood behind a brazier frying bits of meat and red-fleshed pepper. Leon leaned in close and said something to the proprietor in his native tongue, and he smiled and shrugged and responded in kind.

  ‘Captain, tell me,’ Eudokia began, pointing off towards the bay ‘Where is that ship from?’

  The captain’s eyes turned from Leon, following the direction of Eudokia’s finger towards a caravel listing at a far quay. ‘I … can’t say, mistress. I am no seaman.’

  ‘Chazar, do you suppose? Or is it Parthan?’

  ‘As I said, mistress, I rarely descend below the Second.’

  ‘Certainly not Salucian.’

  ‘If you are certain.’

  Leon returned then with the fruits of his expedition, two bags of brown paper reeking of cooked fat. ‘One for me, and one for you, Captain – an insufficient reward for your service, but take it with my compliments all the same.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the captain began, ‘but we’re not supposed to eat when on duty.’

  Leon shrugged and threw away the now unneeded second bag. A porter, bent-backed, carrying a load of wool upslope, stepped in it, cursed, looked around at the Cuckoos and hurried on. By all outward evidence oblivious to the misfortune he had caused, Leon tossed a bit of fried liver into a fool’s grin. ‘Whatever you say, Captain. Now, back to my afternoon dip …’

  They continued on to the disharmonious beat of Leon’s rambling idiocy, staccato bursts of pointless questions and inane observations that left the captain exasperated and Eudokia holding back laughter. The great stone quay was interrupted by a finger of land jutting out into the bay, thickly crowded with administrative offices, merchant houses, branches of the great banks upslope. They were passing one of these buildings – handsome, well-built, indistinguishable from any of its neighbours – when Eudokia cleared her throat loudly. A few steps further and Leon went finally silent, halting mid-sentence, his pose of easy arrogance replaced by one of fervent concern. ‘That – that little bastard! He stole my purse!’ And indeed the purse was no longer there, his belt looking naked without it.

  Eudokia had known it was coming, it or something like it, but even still she found herself half-believing the act, so frantic seemed her nephew in that moment, as if contained in his leather pouch were not a few bits of gold and silver, but the antidote to a poison he had recently ingested, or the secret names of the gods themselves.

  ‘Calm down, sir,’ the captain said,

  ‘Calm down,’ Leon said, face growing furious, piglike despite his high cheekbones and slender nose, ‘calm down! Fifteen tertarum I had in there, and one of those bastard Dycians stole it!’

  ‘Sir, I assure you—’

  But Leon was gone, swearing furiously and tearing back off towards the quay, in desperate and, somehow Eudokia could not help but suspect, fruitless search of his lost purse. The Custodians looked at the captain, the captain looked at Leon’s fleeing back.

  Eudokia snapped her fingers loudly. ‘Well? Go after him.’

  ‘Forgive me, mistress, but my orders were to ensure your safety while you visited the Fifth Rung. Ensure your safety at every step of the way. They were very clear on that point.’

  ‘Jahan is more than sufficient guardian, I assure you, no one will think to try and murder me in the public square. My … imbecile nephew, however, might well find himself in trouble while chasing after his purse, or, gods help us, if he actually manages to find the man who stole it.’

  Which, upon brief consideration, the captain had to admit seemed true, though on the other hand, on the other hand …

  ‘He may not have the wit of a beaten mule, Captain, but he is the only child of my only sister, and should anything happen to him she will make my life a misery, and should that happen, believe me, I will not endure such misfortune alone.’

  The expanse of their robes hindered their movement rather less than Eudokia had been expecting. She waited until they were lost in the crowd before heading into the small stone building, above which a sign read, COBBLE AND CO., FACTORS.

  There was a front room and a dowdy, unfriendly looking woman making sure that no one passed beyond it, but there was time for neither delay nor subtlety and before she could voice objection Eudokia made a gesture to Jahan, who made a different gesture at the woman, which convinced her to adopt a course of silence. The inner office was well appointed, a great walnut desk taking up most of the room, a back window open to allow the sea breeze to enter. Luxurious, but then Steadfast could be relied upon to line his pockets. So far as Eudokia was concerned, that was all about which he could be trusted. He was scrolling through a ledger when the door opened, and then he was staring up in wide-eyed consternation. He could not, of course, have been expecting Eudokia’s arrival, but all the same she thought the depth of his shock was no very strong evidence of the stability of his nerves.

  ‘Thank the gods,’ Eudokia said, setting herself down neatly into the chair opposite Steadfast.

  ‘What – what …’ It would be a long few moments of hysteria, Eudokia knew, if she did not plough forward.

  ‘It had been so long since I’d seen or heard from you, Steadfast, that I assumed the worst had happened. Our various avenues of communication blocked, your messengers failing to arrive as they should, and I left supposing some terrible and bloody misfortune had befallen you. Oh, what joy it brings my heart, to see you upright and healthy! And how deep does it grieve me, to think how perilous a situation you find yourself in, just how uncertain your well-being truly remains!’

  Somehow, in that moment, Jahan seemed rather more present, though he did nothing in particular.

  ‘The death of the demon has changed everything,’ Steadfast said weakly. ‘The Cuckoos press against us at every point. We were forced to pull our agents back downslope, for fear of losing them altogether.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The Five-Fingered, of course.’

  ‘Whoever was speaking of the Five-Fingered? I was speaking to you, Steadfast, and felt curious as to why our personal means of communication has been suspended. Surely you haven’t forgotten our arrangement?’

  ‘No,’ Steadfast said, his head hung like a dog. ‘Forgive me, Revered Mother.’

  ‘Much better. Now, quickly and to the point—what happened to the demon?’

  ‘Pyre killed it,’ Steadfast muttered.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Killed it and left its head in the middle of the street. Not far from here, in fact.’

  ‘He has a flair for the dramatic, that one. Where is he now?’

  ‘Gone to ground, no one knows where, not even Edom. Only his own people.’

  ‘The boy grows to wisdom,’ Eudokia said to Jahan, who snickered but made no further answer. ‘Tell Pyre to send men to investigate the Perpetual Spire, and in particular its roots on the lower Rungs. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Perpetual Spire,’ Eudokia repeated, ‘and the depth of its foundations.’

  ‘I heard you,’ Steadfast snapped, though after a long stare from Eudokia he dropped his eyes to the desk.

  ‘I simply could not bear it, Steadfast, were our communication to once again be hindered. It would throw me into the sort of emotional dismay the results of which are unlikely to be beneficial to anyone.’

  ‘Whatever we can do, Revered Mother,’ Steadfast answered, the colour returning gradually to his face.

  ‘Here’s what you may do. Every evening at half past the Nightjar’s hour, you will send a boy wearing a red cap to visit the Full Purse bar, on the Second Rung. Not the same boy every night – a diffe
rent boy, with the same red cap.’

  ‘This is not my first venture into the clandestine.’

  ‘How happy I am to hear it. Should there be a plant there, he need do nothing. Should that plant ever be absent, he will know that I require a meeting with you and your master, to be arranged immediately.’

  ‘Edom is not mine to command. I cannot snap my fingers and compel his attendance.’

  ‘But I command you, Steadfast. Should I command it, you would get down on all fours and bark like a dog, you would pull something sharp down-side against your wrist, you would walk smilingly into a bonfire. And in that vein, you will bring Edom where I tell you to bring him, if that means binding him and carrying him upslope on your own two shoulders. When I give an order, Steadfast, it is not for you to determine reasons why it cannot be followed, but only to obey.’

  ‘Yes, Revered Mother,’ he said finally.

  ‘I fear, Steadfast, that our long absence from one another, this time you’ve spent here in the Roost, has given you an inaccurate conception of your own position, may even have caused you some confusion as to the ultimate object of your loyalties.’

  ‘No, Revered Mother,’ a line of slaver over thin lips, ‘no, nothing of the sort, I assure you.’

  ‘What were you, before you met me, Steadfast?’

  ‘No one, Revered Mother,’ Steadfast said ‘I was no one.’

  ‘And who knows but that you might again return to such a station? You are mine, mine entirely. I own your right earlobe, and I own your left. I own your hair, your bone, your skin, your organs and viscera and genitals and toenails, every piece of flesh and every drop of blood. I own them entirely, free and unencumbered. This facade of obedience which you provide to Edom is that and that alone, and it would be excessively unwise if ever you were to forget it. Wouldn’t it?’

  He answered in the affirmative, though too quietly for Eudokia’s tastes.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it?’ she repeated.

  This time when he spoke, it was loud enough to be heard from outside the open window.

  ‘Well,’ Eudokia began, standing without the aid of her cane. ‘This was, as is every interaction with you, Steadfast, a source of almost ineffable joy. I will sup off its memories through boring afternoons and dismal evenings to come. One last question, before I leave you,’ she continued, turning back from the open door, ‘How exactly do you suppose the demons knew where the boy would be?’