‘It was quite the ugliest piece I ever owned,’ he assured Eudokia without evident irony. ‘I was planning on breaking it myself, after the end of the business day, so really you’ve done nothing but save me the trouble.’
Calla’s attention, Eudokia was displeased to discover, was back on the door, or perhaps the individual she had just seen leaving it. Had Steadfast so botched her play as to give the girls some warning of her plan? Surely not. There was no way, after all, that Eudokia could have known who Steadfast was, apart from an awkward and ill-behaved stranger. And indeed, as Eudokia made her way further into the shop, Calla attended her without any further evidence of concern. Eudokia spent some time modelling a large golden brooch, though in the end she dismissed it as being too heavy a burden, both of weight and ostentation. She was more pleased with a silver and sapphire torc from far-flung Chazar, held it up to the light, inspected the craftsmanship.
‘Would it go with his eyes, do you suppose?’ Eudokia asked.
Calla spent some time considering, and behind her Jahan shook loose a line of paper from somewhere within the folds of his robes, set it beneath the base of a heavy statue on a table nearby. The statue was an eagle, wings cast wide, eyes cruel. The parchment detailed the expected movements of the Aelerian forces then marching on the city, and the pass signs by which they would know their Roostborn liaisons, and a number of other details of the plot to come.
‘I think it would,’ Calla said, handing it back to Eudokia.
Eudokia smiled widely, at the affirmation or perhaps at something else, and in purchasing the necklace she did not haggle quite so vigorously as might have been expected.
Back outside the hour of the Kite was turning towards the hour of the Woodcock, though the market showed no lessening of its freneticism. ‘You were honest, Captain, when you spoke so exultantly of the wonders of the Exchange,’ Eudokia said.
‘It pleased me to hear that you think so, Revered Mother,’ he said, almost blushing. ‘Is there somewhere else we might escort you?’
‘Perhaps only back home,’ Eudokia said, revealing a tired smile. ‘I’m afraid all the excitement is almost too much for me.’
The captain sketched a bow and led them back in the direction they had come.
‘Such expressions of enthusiasm,’ Calla said, ‘for a place you would as soon see in cinders.’
‘Not at all,’ Eudokia said, smiling toothily, ‘I’d prefer to see it mine.’
‘Aeleria’s, you mean.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And what sort of city would it be, beneath Aeleria’s possession? Beneath your laws and tithes?’
‘Better for some. Worse for others. There is no wind which blows only ill, and no good fortune which is not diluted with misery.’
‘Miserable, for instance, for Calla of the Red Keep? Or the proprietress of the clothing store you so enjoyed? I am told that in Aeleria, despite your sterling example, women are allowed no public role. Cannot conduct business, or hold political office, or even formally own property.’
‘A slight simplification,’ Eudokia observed, ‘though broadly true.’
‘One struggles to understand why you would allow such a situation to continue, given your role within the Commonwealth.’
‘Why encourage the competition?’
‘Your wit is sharp as ever, though it does nothing to change the fact that were you ever to reign in the Roost, as impossible and absurd a suggestion as that is, that woman would never again be allowed to operate her shop, nor Calla to oversee the Red Keep.’
‘You claim kinship from our shared aperture? Ought I to feel the same sentimentality for anyone else with the same arrangement, any halfwit or whore, because she might give milk or bear seed? Do you suppose men think the same, call each other brother for the nubbin of flesh between their legs? You’ll forgive me when I admit the similarities do not seem so distinct as you make them out to be. When the gods created Eudokia, child, they broke the mould.’
They had come again to the outskirts of the market, and the captain hurried off to find their palanquin, quartered with a number of others in a lot nearby. In the square across from them two children tottered uncertainly towards a nearby flight of pigeons, laughing, scattering the birds at peck.
‘You have a peculiar notion of your self-worth,’ Calla said.
‘Quite the opposite in fact – it is one I hold in common with every other human being who yet resides above the ground, present company not at all excluded. Whatever lies you may tell yourself, your actions belie the truth. You love yourself and those few close to you, and you feel indifference to that vast multitude failing to enjoy so privileged a position. Such a perspective is an essential necessity for any sentient being. The death of a thousand strangers in a land you will never visit is of less consequence than a cut to your finger too small to require a bandage.’
‘I have sometimes noticed this tendency, in those lacking in basic scruple, to universalise their immorality, as if hoping to ameliorate guilt by spreading it more broadly.’
‘Tell me then, Calla of the Red Keep – you weep for the benighted and oppressed females of Aeleria, labouring in backward ignorance? Do you reserve any of that torrent of sympathy for the multitude of women held daily in despair as a consequence of your own country?’
‘In the lower Rungs as well, there is no legal distinction between the sexes. A woman on the Fifth Rung is free as a woman on the First.’
‘Free to do what, exactly? Free to squabble over bread? Free to watch her children die impoverished? What comfort do you suppose it is to the females of the Fifth that they are no more miserable than their husbands? You judge the health and prosperity of your society by your own privileged position – an understandable bit of blindness, and one which further proves my point. When you say that the people of the Roost are free and happy, in fact what you mean is “I am free. I am happy”. Indeed, this is all anyone means when they say such a thing. There is no universal – there is only the particular.’
‘Even you do not really believe what you are saying,’ Calla retorted. ‘This mad self-regard, this titanic narcissism. I was there when you attended on Leon the night he was injured, and did not suppose your consideration feigned.’
‘It was nothing of the sort. Leon is my nephew – I would sacrifice bodily for him, I would steal and maim and kill in defence of his interests. But I do not suppose that my affection for his person is common to the species, nor do I extend that sympathy to every other nephew of every other woman who ever lived. We look after our own, Calla of the Red Keep. That is the very best thing that can ever be said of us.’
The palanquin made its way down the boulevard. Eudokia offered the captain an elaborate series of thanks by the end of which even she felt winded, then passed to the entrance of her vehicle. Jahan squatted and offered his hands as platform, then raised Eudokia up into the coach. Before pulling shut the curtain she crooked a finger and gestured Calla forward.
‘For the feeling I bear him,’ Eudokia said softly, ‘and for the feeling he bears you, I will do my best to save you when the time comes. But be careful, Calla of the Red Keep – Eudokia is far from omnipotent. And what is to come will be terrible beyond all reckoning.’
33
Leon was staring up at the ceiling, but when Calla came in he bolted upright and pulled his mutilated hand back below the covers. Weeks in bed had not done anything good for his complexion, which was sallow, or for his tone, which was slack. She would discover what it had done to his mind soon enough.
‘Welcome, Seneschal,’ Leon said. ‘You will forgive me if I do not rise.’
‘I can overlook it.’ Next to Leon’s bed there was a stool and a table and a small shass set, the game far advanced.
‘You and your aunt?’
‘Yes.’
‘White is losing,’ Calla said after a moment.
‘True.’
‘And who is white?’
‘Who do you suppose?
’
‘The Prime asked me to express his deepest and most sincere apologies. If there is anything else that you desire, know that you would be treated with great attention in the Red Keep.’
‘The Prime has done more than enough for me already,’ Leon observed, ‘and if my quarters are not quite what might be expected on the First Rung, I have no complaints about my treatment.’ His smile was forced, and false, and sad. ‘The solitude has allowed me to return to my studies.’
‘Do not suppose my absence indicative of a lack of concern.’
‘What should I suppose?’
‘Things have grown … tense, within the Roost. The attempted assassination of the Prime, the movement of your armies – I was not sure it was wise for us to be seen together, wise for either of us.’
‘You might well have been right,’ Leon admitted. ‘And while I confess myself happy that you’ve broken your self-imposed exile, I can’t help but wonder what it was that changed your mind?’
Calla explained the matter neatly, simply. Sixty seconds at the most, and then the spreading silence, Leon’s eyes tightening. A final slow nod. ‘Could you get some water from the pitcher on the table? The one on the table has been diluted with a narcotic.’
Calla rose, poured a cup and brought it over to him. He took it while sitting up in bed, but it remained in his good hand unconsidered for a long time before he spoke. ‘You are certain that this man you saw at the Exchange was the same Steadfast who spoke at the meeting of the Five-Fingered?’
‘Confident enough that I came to you,’ she said. ‘Confident enough that we are having this conversation.’
Leon stared out the window for a long time without speaking. His room offered no particularly prepossessing view, just a small courtyard in which some of the servant children were playing rat-in-a-hole, and above them the gabled rooftops of the Second Rung, and above that the sky and the sun and the gods. ‘It would be entirely characteristic for my aunt to be in touch with whatever dissident forces within the Roost exist. It would be even more like her to have created them, to have sown in some distant past the seeds of your current misfortune. It would not take very much, not so very much at all. Down on the lower Rungs they have been left to rot for so long as to grow mad with hate, indeed it seems in retrospect surprising rebellion has taken so long to develop. There is more than enough discontent to tap within this paradise you have created.’
‘True enough.’
‘Though not immediately relevant. Let us assess the situation further. Eudokia is in touch with the Five-Fingered. To what end? Simple enough. One hardly needs to be in my privileged position to see that the Revered Mother has been working to bring about war against the Empire for the better part of five years. Far more than that, in fact, but the last five years it was obvious to anyone who thought to pay attention. Indeed, I have often found myself wondering, given the nakedness of her provocations, why the Roost did not think it fit to retaliate.’
‘They are lazy,’ Calla said quietly. ‘They have grown so used to their strength that they cannot imagine it would ever be challenged. And they do not suppose you a threat.’
‘Their arrogance may yet be justified,’ Leon admitted. ‘Though my aunt is scarce familiar with defeat. Regardless. The Aelerian army is on the march. I have no head for military affairs but it is said to be quite the largest force ever assembled, twice the size of what was brought to bear against the Roost in the last war. In a few days, or perhaps a week, they will arrive at the walls of the Roost. When they grow close enough for Those Above to concern themselves, they will assemble en masse, and ride down from the Source, and slaughter my countrymen like scythed wheat in autumn. A certain massacre, you say, as do the Prime and the rest of the Eternal, as does every wag in every bar and cafe and bazaar from the top of the Roost to the middle. Murdered to a man, and then Those Above will march into Aeleria and make of it a wasteland. It would be a curious fact indeed if, alone among the creatures of the Roost, Four-Fingered and Five, Eudokia Aurelia alone did not see what was coming.’
‘Perhaps she has more faith in your armies than the Eternal. Everything that has happened these last months, and still it is impossible for them to imagine that you present a threat.’
‘They are the most madly arrogant things that were ever bred, but that is neither here nor there. And besides, my aunt prefers her contests more certain. I do not suppose that she is willing to risk everything on a simple clash of steel. No, she has another card to play, one that your stroke of memory seems to have laid bare. Something involving the Five-Fingered, but what exactly? My understanding is that apart from their recent provocations they are everywhere on the run, the Eternal and their patrols on the lower Rungs proving effective in battering them into submission. Indeed, from this perspective their naked attack on the Prime can be seen as a last desperate attempt by forces nearly defeated. Or it could be seen as an unpleasant augury of things to come.’ He was not smiling but there was good colour in his cheeks, and he sat fully upright, rubbing the palm of his good hand against his forehead, as if to tease out some excess strand of thought. ‘There are too many variables,’ he said finally. ‘The broad outline of the thing is clear, but the specifics remain unknowable. The only option remaining is to find this Steadfast.’
‘Easier said than done – I know his assumed name, and could pick him out of a crowd, but I’ve no idea where he lives, and I don’t suppose he calls himself Steadfast in mixed company.’
‘To set that question aside for a moment, in favour of two of my own.’
‘Which are?’
‘First, why have you not already brought this matter to the Aubade?’
‘What would I tell him? That I suspect the Revered Mother of malfeasance? I more than suspect it, I am certain of it. But suspicion is not proof.’
‘He would trust you.’
‘He would trust me,’ Calla agreed. ‘And he would listen to what I tell him. And he might, perhaps, kill your aunt, and he might kill you, but regardless that would do nothing to stop whatever machinations have already been put in place.’
‘It would be quite pointless,’ Leon admitted. ‘As well as being personally unpleasant. Though speaking of such consequences, I am forced now to ask my second question – why would I be interested in helping you, Calla of the Red Keep? Whatever else Eudokia is, she is my aunt, and Aeleria my country.’
Calla said nothing for a long moment. Then she reached out and stripped the covers off him. He flinched but made no move to return them. His pointer and long finger were severed roughly down near the knuckle, and the first joint of his ring finger jutted out awkwardly.
‘Far from lovely,’ Leon admitted, affecting a sneer. ‘But I’ve had a few weeks to grow used to it.’
‘A spare month was sufficient for you to forgive the men who savaged you?’
Leon laughed bitterly. ‘I admit the end is rather fuzzy, but my impression is that they were well paid for any injury they did me.’
‘And their masters who sent them? Do you not suppose their actions warrant a response?’
‘Yes, what a glorious thing revenge is. How wise and how fruitful!’ He drank most of the water in his glass, wiped his chin with his savaged hand. ‘Do you know that I killed a man, Calla of the Red Keep?’
‘I did not.’
‘I shoved a sword into his back, while his attention was otherwise occupied. No very admirable or heroic a feat, I admit. I don’t imagine it will ever be immortalised in song, though it has found firm purchase in my memory.’ He blinked twice. ‘You sit at the bedside of a murderer. Oh, I had my reasons, of course. He had been in the process of attacking my aunt. And no doubt he had, or thought he had, sufficient reason for trying to attack her. And no doubt she had sufficient reason for doing whatever it was that caused her to be attacked. And so on and so on, endless and pointless as one of your Eternal. Searching, one does not struggle to find a pretext for violence.’
‘It’s not simply a question o
f justice,’ Calla said softly. ‘War is coming. Do you wish to see your people made corpses? Or mine? All the wonders of the Roost destroyed, the Eternal expunged entire? Or the reverse, your countrymen slaughtered, your capital ravaged and broken? If we knew what your aunt was planning, perhaps we might find some way to avert it. Perhaps there is still some hope. Perhaps there is still time to stop it.’
‘I fear you are over-sanguine on the matter. What have you ever seen of my people, Calla, that made you think them irenic? What have you ever seen of anyone?’
The clocks chimed across the Second, announcing the evening and the hour of the Woodcock. Calla was seated on the edge of the bed, and she moved closer then, engaged him with her eyes. It was not a ploy, or if it was it was one so natural, so instinctive, that it could barely warrant criticism. ‘Then do it for me,’ she said. ‘Because I will not sit idly while my home burns, and I will not throw myself at the feet of the Revered Mother and beg for shelter. However slim the chances, I will venture them. With you, there is some hope of success. Without, I will surely die. Help me because I need you, and because I am asking.’
Below her Leon swallowed hard, gathering up his courage, managing finally, intertwining with arm and hand and tongue. It was not until she was beneath the covers that Calla realised Leon was a virgin, from the way his flesh quivered when she brushed against him. Impossible to imagine a boy of the First Rung reaching twenty-and-two without having taken a woman to bed – she had supposed it uncommon even in Aeleria – but it was indisputable, he betrayed his innocence in his excitement and his joy, in his hardness that pressed against her, in the thinness of his breath. Or perhaps it was more than that, for Calla, who had been no stranger to the sex act since her sixteenth year, found herself near as excited, each laboured touch sending frissons along her tanned skin and up her spine. His good hand fumbled with the back clasp of her robes, and then with her ripe breasts, unsure of himself. But what he lacked in expertise he made up for in passion, in sheer joy, shuddering at every brush of skin against skin, eyes wide and warm and kind. She lifted his ruined hand to her lips and kissed the wound tenderly, and he blushed and he moaned, for is that not the last and the kindest gift a lover gives? To forgive what is flawed and broken, more than forgive, to cherish?
Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 Page 27
