‘The boy is not his aunt, my Lord.’
‘He is the citizen of a nation which will be at war with your own, in not so very long a time. You ought not again see him.’
‘Is this an order, my Lord?’ Calla asked, feeling a sudden frantic flutter between her breasts, one that surprised her with its vehemence.
The Lord turned back to the enclosure; the jocund creatures within were doing everything possible to regain the Prime’s attention. ‘Do you know what the genius of the Founders was, Calla?’
‘I wouldn’t presume to say, my Lord.’
‘There are those, even among my kind, who would say that their brilliance lies in having created the laws by which the Roost abides. But they did not make the law, Calla, any more than I made the seeds that sprout in my garden, than I made the fish or the birds or the beasts that populate it. There is a law beyond the will of men or of Eternal, an ideal and a perfect order. It fell to the Founders to codify it. It falls to us only to correctly interpret it. The birds fly, Calla, and the fish swim. These things strut and dance and play. All beings act according to their innate purpose, find joy in its execution, confusion and misfortune if they fail to follow their natural course. A bird is no less than a fish because it does not swim, but nor would I think to submerge it in water. It is more than the duty of Those Above to rule, it is our nature. It is our nature, as it is the nature of the Dayspans to serve. But to reign over a thing is not to control it absolutely, and to command not the same as to be obeyed. The wise gardener allows for his flowers to sway towards the sun, and a skilled falconer gives his birds long leash. Your species is no less complex, and I would not think to convince you with too blunt an instrument.’ He reached over the fence with sudden swiftness, grabbing the smallest of the blithesome creatures below, inspecting it at arm’s length. ‘As to the boy Leon, I give no orders. You may follow what course of action seems for you the wisest. Though it would please me were you to consider my counsel.’
Calla bowed her head in silence, insulted but not sure why. Did she not believe the same? Were not her life, and the lives of her father and ancestors beyond that, dedicated to this very truth? Was not her service to the Lord a source of great pride, indeed the chief source of her esteem?
‘What is this festival, of which you spoke a moment ago?’
Though that moment seemed a long time past to Calla just then, she dragged her mind back across the run of conversation to find it in her memory. ‘A tradition they hold to on the Second Rung, my Lord. There is a breed of tree that blossoms for a few days in summer. Their arrival is a source of celebration for those humans living beneath them. The children paint themselves and gorge on candy, the adults sing and dance and drink more than they should.’
The creature in the Prime’s hands stretched forward, brushed a long pink tongue against his face. ‘Particularly in the light of the Lord of the Ebony Tower’s … misfortune, it is necessary to remind the people downslope that they play a crucial role in the Roost, a role that is not dismissed by Those Above. Inform whatever relevant authorities on the Second that I will attend this … Blossom day celebration.’
‘Of course, my Lord,’ Calla said, managing to smooth over her sudden second of shock, ‘immediately.’
Allium was the name of the man responsible for overseeing the aquatic pavilion, and he stood at the side of the enclosure, pretending he had not heard their conversation, feigning ignorance being a speciality of all those humans blessed to serve Those Above. The Lord turned and handed the beast to him. ‘The two larger ones grow nicely,’ he said, ‘though I scarcely suppose we need three of them. Have this one destroyed.’
25
Outside the streets were quiet and sweltering, the descent of evening doing little to lower the temperature. It was always hot in the summer on the Fifth, the closely packed tenements holding on to the day’s warmth, the occasional breeze trickling in from the harbour the only source of relief – but it was not always quiet. Indeed, in normal times the people of the Fifth ameliorated the heat by flooding the few public spaces to be found, sitting on rooftops and lined up along the canals, hanging out of windows, passed out happily in the street.
These were not normal times. A month since Pyre had killed the Lord of the Ebony Tower, since he had left his skull on display in the centre of the Fifth, at once a threat to Those Above and a challenge to his own people, a reminder that, whatever else the Four-Fingered were, they were flesh as man is flesh. They had not caught him, obviously, but then the demons were less concerned with justice than they were with retribution, and one of Those Below was as good as the next, and any number of them had died in the weeks since he had made a corpse of the Shrike, broken and bleeding in the Cuckoo’s cells, executed summarily by cudgel or four-fingered hand. Criminality of any sort was considered evidence of rebellion, every pickpocket and smuggler a dissident and a threat. Unused to fear, sensing on some dim level the coming age, they had reacted in the only way they knew how – as if a man might grapple with time, land a punch against the future! After more than a year of being frightened even to leave their headquarters, the Cuckoos had returned in force, buoyed by the occasional presence of some slumming Eternal, their ferules red-slicked and ready. And so the people of the Fifth stayed packed five to a room in their miserable apartments, sweated and fanned themselves, grew thick with their own reek, peeked outside their curtained windows with fear – or perhaps anticipation.
Inside, in the basement of an indistinct tenement, Pyre sat at the end of a slim wooden table, Edom and Steadfast opposite, the former explaining something in his quiet, easy, confident voice. The basement had the virtue of being comparatively cooler than the evening above, but that was as much as could be offered. After days used as a bedroom, study and toilet the air was foul, and below ground the sound of the slurp was loud and acutely unpleasant. There was a cot in the corner where Pyre lay at night, and sometimes even managed to sleep. There was the aforementioned table, big enough for Pyre though not really for the three of them. There was a thick wax candle, the single source of light, reflecting in the dark brown of Pyre’s eyes.
‘We are agreed, then?’ Edom asked.
‘On what?’ Pyre asked after a long moment, turning his gaze back into the present.
Annoyance warred with fear on Steadfast’s face, reached an uncomfortable armistice. ‘On the need to pull back our operations.’
‘For a time,’ Edom added. ‘Until things settle down.’
They must have been talking about it for a while, Pyre realised just then, wondered how much time had been lost staring at the little flicker of flame. ‘To what purpose?’
‘Cloistered as you’ve been these last weeks, perhaps you do not fully appreciate the situation above—’
‘They hanged five men at the docks this morning,’ Steadfast interrupted. ‘On a gallows right above the thoroughfare, feet wriggling above the quay. Smuggling salted cod – these days apparently that is a hanging offence. Tomorrow there is to be a quartering, done the old-fashioned way, with heated iron and four horse – the leader of one of our cells, they say, caught with an apartment full of Aelerian steel.’
Pyre looked over at Grim, who had replaced Hammer as Pyre’s bodyguard and counsellor. Indeed, with Pyre unable to so much as show his face above ground, Grim had become deputised to inform the other cells of Pyre’s orders, to coordinate the activities of the Dead Pigeons – which, against the violence and the cruelty of the Cuckoos, had not slowed. ‘None of ours,’ he said.
‘Of course he isn’t,’ Steadfast said, ‘he’s just some unfortunate, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, a sop for the fear and the hatred of the Cuckoos upslope. And tomorrow he’s to be tortured and murdered, in your name.’
Pyre scratched at the black bristle running in uneven patches down his chin. ‘The cruelty of the demons is proverbial,’ he agreed. ‘As it has always been. As it will be until the dawn.’
‘The Fifth never saw a demon until you
started killing bureaucrats upslope.’
‘If one must be a slave, be a beaten one,’ Pyre said, quoting one of Edom’s epigrams. ‘An unmarked back will be a badge of shame in the age to come. And as for you, Steadfast, sympathy is a virtue in grandmothers, but it is not a luxury that can be afforded those of us who labour for the redemption of the species. You would have the Dead Pigeons curtail our activities in hopes that this would … satisfy the Cuckoos?’ As if he had finished up a bit of arithmetic, but remained uncertain on the result. ‘That it might curb the bloodshed of the demons?’
Edom had not seen Pyre since that evening, months earlier, when they had met with the council. He had grown thinner in his captivity, naught but gristle and firm muscle. His shirt was cheap cloth, scratchy and undyed, and beneath his muscled shoulders there were unbecoming traces of yellow. His cheeks were thin and acne-speckled, and his eyes very wide.
Edom cleared his throat and added a faint hint of disappointment to his eyes, let his smile droop just ever so slightly. From deep within his broad chest he drew out the voice of a caring father, sympathetic, understanding, judgemental, overpowering in its self-certainty. ‘It will do us no good, Pyre, the First of His Line, to greet the dawn with the entirety of the Roost slaughtered. We are the shepherds of the species, are we not?’
‘Indeed we are, Father, and we cannot afford to be blinded by affection towards any particular member of our flock. Those who are lost, who are snatched and devoured by the demons, they are fuel for the fire, they are the horn signalling the age to come. Do you not understand, Father? We are no longer preparing for the moment. The moment is here. We are amidst it, encompassed by it. These men whom the Cuckoos arrest, whom they torture, whom they kill, they are blessed, fortunate above all other men, martyrs for the dawn to come. There could be no greater honour than to perish for the redemption of the species.’
‘An honour they did not choose,’ Edom said.
This point was lost on Pyre, or perhaps it simply failed to sway him. ‘In the struggle for the future, there are no neutral parties. These men will be remembered in the hymns of the coming age, their names will echo down through history, their service to the cause never forgotten. Nor has their blood been shed in vain – every cruelty distributed upon us by the Four-Fingered is a burr, a seed; and the crop they raise will be bloody retribution for the demons, and redemption for their slaves.’
‘Till the morning of the new age,’ Grim said from behind him, eyes rapturous.
Pyre nodded firmly. ‘No, Father, this is not the time to be holding back our forces – indeed, quite the opposite. We must torment and brutalise the enemy at every turn, we must be unceasing in our aggression, we must make clear, to free men and slaves alike, that we have not been cowed by the demons, that our blades are sharp and our souls on friendly terms with death. Now is the time for the lordlings upslope, and the demons above them, to know what it is to fear – to discover that there is no portion of the Roost to which they can justly lay claim, that they can never be safe from the righteous hand of the Five-Fingered, not surrounded by their castles and their towers, not however high they build their walls.’
Sweat beaded down off Edom’s long nose, caught itself in the mask of his white beard. ‘What are you suggesting, exactly?’
Pyre did not answer. He had started to nod along as he spoke, and he continued to nod, an even rhythm, carried along by his own internal harmony. ‘Forgive me for saying so, Father, but you have misread the situation. And despite whatever the demons may imagine, despite what they suppose in their mad and bloody ignorance, this last month has been no victory for them. If I had planned it out in consultation with the demon king himself, it could have worked no better. They fear us, Father, do you not see that? Every bruise on every human shouts it to the sky, and every bit of cruelty from the Cuckoos brings the day of reckoning that much nearer. For the first time in centuries and millennia, the demons walk the streets of the city, and they do so armed and fearful. They know, they understand, they intuit, what you yourself have not yet come to realise. The war has not begun – the war is over. There is no war. There is only our species coming to realise its own strength, as a boy grown to manhood. How many men live in this city? How many women? How many are there to stand against us, how many demons in their castles of stone? It is not their strength that has kept us in thrall to them these last centuries, it is our cowardice, our indifference The remedy to that indifference is blood; ours or theirs, it will make no difference. Now is the time to steel ourselves, Father, to be merciless, to turn a blind eye to the suffering of our people. What is the death of a man, or ten, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand, what is any of it set against the future of the species? What is any of it set against destiny, fate, against the will of the gods?’
Grim stared up at where the sky would have been, if it hadn’t been blocked by a ceiling and four storeys above that. Steadfast looked pale, and sickly. Edom was not smiling, though Pyre had turned his gaze back to the candle, and on the future, and did not notice.
26
Calla led Eudokia upward into the Red Keep, down hallways of burnished brass and thousand-thread carpet, up ebony-oak staircases, hanging braziers steaming sweet smoke.
‘Will there be some sort of public funeral in recognition of the tragic loss of the Lord of the Ebony Tower?’ Eudokia asked. ‘Where I might tender the proper respect?’
‘There already was. His corpse was taken to the Cliffs of Silence at the north of the Rung,’ Calla said. ‘His flesh was given to the birds. His bones were returned to his castle. No humans were present.’
‘Though the same apparently cannot be said of his death.’
Calla whipped her head back round, stared hard at Eudokia, at her flat eyes and her imperturbable good humour. ‘So it is reported.’
‘And what will be the Prime’s response, against this unimagined act of violence? Surely the Eternal have mustered some response.’
‘A question better asked of the Prime himself.’
‘No doubt. But you can guess easily enough, can’t you? A clever girl like you. I am told that your Prime’s pet project has been taken up in the conclave, that even now squads of Eternal filter through the lower Rungs, searching for signs of rebellion and meting out appropriate punishment. For the first time in decades, perhaps centuries, Those Above have seen fit to descend to the depths of their own city. Do you think it is a happy time to be a resident of the Fifth Rung?’
‘I’m not sure it was ever a happy time to be a resident of the Fifth Rung,’ Calla admitted quietly.
‘Clever girl,’ Eudokia repeated. ‘Leon asked me to bid you greeting,’ she went on, as if just remembering it. ‘And also that he will understand if, given the new developments, you think it better to cancel your meeting next week.’
‘What new developments?’
But Eudokia didn’t answer, only nodded slightly and entered the drawing room.
The Aubade sat silently in the shallow of a great bay window, long tendrils of summer rain spiralling past to the bay far below. The glass panes were sprawled open, and for a long time he seemed not to notice Eudokia’s arrival, though of course this was choice and not ignorance. He had heard the door open, he had heard the footfalls up the stairs. His pose of ignorance was either an outright insult or simply one more manifestation of the comprehensive disregard that Those Above seemed to possess for everything that was not themselves. Somehow, Eudokia suspected the latter.
‘Lord Prime,’ Eudokia began, bowing in the Eternal greeting.
‘Revered Mother,’ he responded after a moment in his curiously clipped tongue.
‘Might it be possible to shut the window?’ Eudokia asked. ‘At my age skin grows thin as parchment, and these old bones take chill easily.’
After a long moment the Prime slid two of his four fingers upwards against the heavy glass, closing the aperture firmly.
‘My thanks.’
‘I admit to some confusion, Revered Mothe
r – after your passionate protestations of innocence in the Conclave, it hardly seems appropriate for you to be meeting, in any sort of political capacity, with the head of the Roost’s government. Should I not be having this conversation with Senator Gratian, as official representative of your nation?’
‘Indeed you should – regrettably, though, Senator Gratian has just this morning come down with an unexpected but rather vicious bout of intestinal distress. He sends his most sincere apologies.’ In fact, the sudden eruption of his illness – a diagnosis that had, needless to say, been provided by Eudokia – had proved a source of what could only be called jubilation for her long-time pawn. Short of being savaged by wild dogs, or dropped from a very great height, there were few things Gratian would enjoy less than facing the Prime with the Senate’s news.
He need not have worried. Eudokia had long ago come to appreciate the necessity as well as the wisdom of obscuring her direct involvement in the political machine, of working through stalking horses and hidden agents. But still, but still – the better part of her life spent in bringing about the moment, the endless machinations and subterfuge – who but Eudokia deserved to make that final cast?
‘It is with heavy heart that I come to you this morning,’ she said.
‘Strange,’ the Aubade said after a moment. ‘You scarcely seem bent with despair.’
‘One must maintain appearances.’
Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 Page 22
