Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (11 page)

Theophilus was nearest and moved to engage with this man whom Bas had never met before and who wished him dead as much as anything had ever wished for anything else, as much as parched earth wished for rain. Looking at him now as he had not a moment earlier, Bas could tell he was one of the Oscan upper crust, his clothes once fine but now faded, and also that he had no idea how to use his weapon, that he had probably not so much as held a fighting knife in the hours before his suicidal assault. But the curious thing about a knife is that it will cut as surely in the hands of an incompetent as in those of a master, and in the face of his unskilled but not ineffectual flailing Theophilus was unable to close.

‘A city of bones, Caracal!’ the man screamed, his blade whistling in the air, Theophilus dodging just out of reach, ‘and you the cause! What hell awaits you, Caracal! What torment the gods have in store for your soul! Monster, demon, sower of discord and hate!’

Bas had not seen the blade in the moment before it landed, was unsure even after where Hamilcar had hidden it, though unsurprised that it existed and even less at the unerring accuracy with which it was thrown. There was a flash in the torchlight and then a pommel jutted from just below the man’s neck, and his eyes rolled back up into his head, and he tumbled backwards to join Bas on the ground.

Theophilus moved to help him to his feet, checking him over for wounds, saw there were none and remarked, ‘Swift as ever, Caracal. Swift as ever.’

Isaac stood over the near-corpse, watched the last fluttering of his chest with the cool disinterest of a professional, as a cobbler might inspect a bolt of leather. ‘A fine throw, seated as you were.’

‘With my off hand at that,’ Hamilcar said. He had come up from the table and dropped down beside the dying man, put one knee on the body, grunted and pulled the blade loose, being careful to dodge the spray of blood that escaped its release. ‘Though in truth, I’d be ashamed to miss him at such a range.’

‘Did you know him, Caracal?’ Isaac asked.

‘No.’

‘War drives men mad,’ Theophilus said.

Though thinking on it, then and later that evening, restless on the soft bed in his stolen quarters, Bas found he could not dispute any of the charges his would-be assassin had levelled.

O
n a cold, sunny day in winter they set Apple into the bay.

There were no graveyards in the Roost. The demons disposed of their dead by excarnation, leaving their bodies exposed on the cliffs at the top of the city to be picked dry by the birds. Those humans living upslope burned their corpses with little fanfare. In imitation of their masters they denied the existence of any divinity, supposed religion to be one of the many sorts of prejudices that they, alone among the species, were wise enough to be free of.

Of course it was an open secret that the inhabitants of the lower Rungs still clung to a slim belief in the pantheons of the surrounding lands, some choosing to offer their prayers and small sacrifices to Enkedri and his siblings, others to Mephet, Bull-headed god of Salucia, but most to a syncretic combination of the two. So it was not a general lack of piety that prescribed all but the barest rites for the corpses of the Fifth Rung; it was that there was nowhere to bury them, not with so many living cheek to jowl, and having abided in such a fashion for thousands and thousands of years. Most did not have six square feet to occupy when they had been alive, there was no possibility of finding such space for them after death. And anyway, below the ground were the pumps, and the sewers – a few shovel-fills and you started hitting pipe.

But still there was the sea. The canals were the exclusive province of the demons, but of the ocean itself even Those Above were not so mad as to think themselves owner. So it was that Mama and the three girls and Pyre and a handful of neighbours had taken Apple’s body from their house, cleaned and wrapped in white cloth, and carried it downslope to the small quay set aside for this purpose, which had seen who knew how many of Pyre’s ancestors sent out into the waves, an endless succession of flesh swallowed by the boundless sea. The craft they had purchased was waiting there for them, like a rowboat but smaller. They settled the body atop a bed of scrap wood and dry kindling, then set it adrift, Pyre himself throwing the torch. The smell of sea foam mixed with woodsmoke, and then with another smell, sweet and unpleasant, and then that was lost as well.

Mama did not weep. Of course she had been weeping all the previous evening, and the day before, when Apple had breathed his last, and the week before, when it had become clear how little time her youngest son had left. She had wept for a long time prior to that as well, a torrent falling fruitlessly to the earth, salt water with which to poison the ground. The girls cried to make up for it, though Pyre thought that only Thyme and Shrub, the two eldest, really understood what was going on.

Pyre did not cry either, though there was a moment, just before they put his little brother into the waters, his body so shrivelled and pale, when he very much wanted to. And this surprised him, because Pyre had rarely thought much of young Apple, now that it was too late to remedy the situation he could admit honestly that he had never been any sort of brother, not when he had been a boy, too caught up in misadventure and foolishness, and not now that he was a man. These last two years there had been barely a moment to dedicate to his family, and perhaps he had known also that there was nothing to be done, that Pyre had no more say in whom the gods chose to take than had Thistle.

He held his mother’s hand on the short walk back to their tenement. The guests would arrive soon, adding plates of food to the feast that had already been prepared, and the people of the neighbourhood, who were decent despite what they had suffered, though sometimes Pyre had trouble remembering this, would do their meagre best to help a woman forget the death of something that had once lived inside her. It had been three months since Pyre had seen her, every waking minute since committed to the cause, to the mission, every waking moment and the better portion of his dreams, coming to fierce in the dead early hours of the morning, reaching for the knife hidden below his pillow in whatever safe house he was holed up in, realising it was not needed, not yet.

Pyre would not stay. It had been dangerous, perhaps even foolish, for him to have come this far. There were men in the Barrow who remembered Thistle, and who had heard of Pyre, and who were yet so foolish as to think to better their lot by doing him injury. Unbeknownst to his mother Pyre had stationed a pair of his people in one of the other rooms in her tenement; hopefully they would provide some warning if the Cuckoos ever managed to figure out who she was.

Pyre walked his mother to the doorway. She stood looking at him for a long time before she spoke. ‘It was a good boat.’

‘It was what we could offer, though less than he deserved.’

‘He is with the gods now.’

‘We all are.’

‘You are safe?’ she asked finally.

‘As much as I can be.’

‘And the work?’ she asked. Pyre did not quite know what his mother thought he did for the Five-Fingered. Only that in those rare moments when he could afford to stop in and see her, when he felt it worth the risk, she looked at him in a way that she never had when he had been a layabout or a thug, and though she feared for his life, she had never asked him to stop.

‘The truth is as the sun,’ Pyre answered. ‘Only a fool would seek to deny it, and with as much success.’

She nodded and held him tight and then went inside to mourn her youngest child.

Hammer was lounging in a caddy-corner alleyway, unobtrusive and unobserved. Against Pyre’s orders he had shadowed them down to the jetty, as Pyre had known he would.

‘Any trouble?’ Pyre asked quietly, following the larger man through the narrow lane between his and the next strand of tenements. It had been an easy winter, and the withdrawing layer of rime had left behind broken spindles and stray bits of cloth, chicken bones and pig entrails, turds fresh and turds powdered.

‘He was where you said he’d be,’ Hammer answered. ‘And he came along without any fuss.’

‘Yes,’ Pyre nodded. ‘He was never much of a fighter.’

They came to the back door of a neighbourhood grocery, one of the dozens of safe houses that were scattered across the Fifth Rung and the Fourth and even some of the Third. A Dead Pigeon stood guard outside; Talon, tall, dark-skinned, very good with his fists. His father was a merchant of some renown and he had grown to manhood clad in soft silks, with personal tutors – all luxuries he had forsworn after hearing the truth. He nodded briskly and waved them down.

Through the back entrance was a small storage room, crates of empty liquor bottles and small sundries. Without saying anything Hammer moved a stack of these, revealing a small door behind it. He knocked twice, then paused, then knocked once, then paused and knocked again. The door swung open a moment later, another of Pyre’s many comrades standing behind it and ushering them into the basement below.

Razor, the First of His Line, was tied to a chair, and he smiled a bit when he saw Pyre, muscle memory as much as anything else. They had been friends for as long as they’d been alive, Barrow boys from back in the day. His name had been Felspar then, as Pyre’s had been Thistle, according to the arbitrary nomenclature that ruled downslope, mothers naming their children after any passing thing that found their fancy. They had been close as brothers – or at least Pyre, not having known what that meant, had thought so. A passer-by seeing them together at five, at ten, at fifteen, would not have noticed much difference; the usual Fifth Rung runts, natty clothing and nasty eyes, making what trouble their inclinations suggested and their limited means allowed. Smash-and-grabs and cheap cons that went wrong as often as they went right, frantic dashes downslope to the docks or up to the Straits, looking for scrums and generally finding them.

But Pyre did not smile in answer. The two men standing on either side of Razor, the two men responsible for his captivity and, one could only assume, the line of bruises growing on Razor’s face, did not smile either. Hammer very rarely smiled, did not start then. After a short moment, Razor’s face shared a grim, even line with the rest of them.

‘Hello, Felspar.’

‘Hello, Pyre. I’m sorry about Apple.’

‘Thank you.’

There was only the one chair, and it was clearly occupied. Unprompted, Hammer grabbed one of the heavy crates from the corner, pushed it in front of the captive. Pyre sat down on it but did not say anything, just watched Felspar with heavy eyes.

‘I was scared to death the first time I had to do this,’ Pyre said finally.

‘I’m scared to death right now,’ Felspar responded, and gave another weak smile.

‘His name was Chalice, he was a tradesman on the Fourth Rung. We were not well acquainted, but he had known the truth for years, long before Edom’s name had made its way down here. He was one of the men responsible for security, before that task was turned over in its entirety to me. It was an important position; it was also, potentially, a lucrative position, should the man holding it decide to make business with our misguided fellows, and the Four-Fingered monsters for whom they labour.’

Again Pyre went silent. Within the heavy stone walls the city sounds were obscured entirely; all that Felspar could hear was the slurp and his own beating heart, and to break free for a moment from the relentless rhythm of the latter, he asked, ‘Can I have a cigarette?’

Pyre nodded to Hammer, who began to roll it. ‘The organisation was growing; many were hungry for Edom’s truth, already half-formed in their hearts, waiting only to be pronounced. Likewise, there were many who feared the word, who saw it for what it was; a blade sharpened, an arrow notched, a spark brought to tinder. The demons knew to fear it, and their human servants, still befogged, knew as well. Chalice had debts. Against them he set his integrity, the future of his children, the very soul of his species. The first time that one of our meetings in his section was raided, I thought it bad luck. The second time I grew suspicious. The third time I knew. I knew. But certainty is not proof; do you understand? You cannot kill a man because you dislike him, or even because you distrust him. That is not justice. I had Chalice brought to me – I determined, one way or another, that I would find the truth.’

Pyre held the pause for a moment, as a child with a ball or a god with the world.

‘It was a room like this one. He was in a chair, as you are. I stood over him with a blade. He was older than me, a full-grown man while I was barely more than a cub. He began to speak; first angrily, demanding to know what was happening, why he had been taken, on what authority did I hold him prisoner? And when I did not answer he went quiet, and in the silence I could hear his guilt. I could hear it and so could he, as if the three of us, he and I and his sin, were sharing the room, as if it was seated between us. But even then, when I knew, knew for a certainty, knew the way I know the five fingers at the end of my hand, still I was frightened. For his crimes demanded only one sentence, one I had never before delivered, one I feared to pronounce.’

Hammer handed Pyre the cigarette he had rolled. Pyre lit it off a nearby candle, brought it tenderly to Felspar’s lips.

‘But from inside this fear there came truth, truth that swallowed and eclipsed my terror and Chalice’s terror as well. Because it was not Pyre sitting in a room with Chalice, not Pyre who would be required to judge the truth of Chalice’s words, to pass sentence, to carry it out. It was the future in combat with the past. The new age dawns, and we are driven on before it. And staring at the face of it, as I did in that moment with Chalice, as I am in this moment right now, one can understand the futility of falsehood, of anger or despair. The will of the gods is clear in all things, clear and immutable, and it is to us only to recognise that truth, to grow towards it as a plant does the sun. Chalice understood that, in the last, before we did to him what needed to be done. And I think you understand it now as well, Felspar. Behind me walks the spirit of a people who will be free. I am a slave to its destiny, as are you.’ Pyre pulled the cigarette out from his old friend’s lips. A bit of smoke escaped into the close air of the room. ‘When did they approach you?’