Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (18 page)

Without introduction or prologue, rising from the throne on which he sat, the diadem of his office shining bright from his forehead, the Source sparkling behind him like some great crown of clear water, the Prime began to speak. ‘Some time ago, the Aelerian embassy announced the Commonwealth’s intention to go to war with the Kingdom of Salucia, offering as explanation violence done towards their ambassador, among a number of other grievances. We did not object, under the condition that said expedition not pass into the Salucian heartland itself – in short, that you made no effort, as you have in years past, to sack or conquer the Salucian capital. Two years and more have passed since we offered that agreement, and your armies have repaid whatever evils you claim the Salucians have done you. Your stated aims have been satisfied – Salucia has been chastened, your city regained. And yet we receive reports from the Sentinel of the Southern Reach that you have even now strengthened your forces, and plan an expedition towards the coast. What possible purpose is there in this continued belligerence?’

Eudokia stood silent for a long moment, eyes wide and quivering, then muttered something too softly to make out.

‘She will speak louder,’ a voice interrupted from the back. ‘I cannot hear her.’

‘There seems to be some sort of mistake,’ Eudokia said, louder this time, though barely.

A Well-born seated towards the front, one of those who had been engaged in dialogue with the Prime, one of the few, Eudokia suspected, who ever saw fit to raise his voice in counsel, began to speak. ‘In the past, when we have called Aeleria to account for their misbehaviour, a member of your Senate has been sent to answer, rather than some old female without any clear public function.’

‘You are correct, of course, my Lord,’ Eudokia said. ‘And I know that the Senator Gratian was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to explain our policies to the Lords and Ladies of the Roost. I know only that the Prime commanded my presence at the Conclave this morning – I could hardly think of refusing.’

‘The politics of the Dayspans is as opaque as they are inane,’ the Prime explained, ‘and the Sentinel assures me that the workings of the Senate do nothing more than obscure the direct involvement of this woman, to whom all true power has devolved.’

Eudokia would have been very good at many things. She would have been an excellent seamstress, a very skilled poet, a more than adequate torturer. She would have been the greatest mummer who ever put on a mask, who ever played a role, who ever feigned misfortune, misery, madness or love. She proved it just then, a quivering and confused facade dropping across her face. ‘I have only very briefly met with the Sentinel,’ she repeated, ‘and cannot answer for her confusion. Please forgive me.’

Calla snorted unbecomingly, then looked down at her feet ashen-faced.

‘I know the Sentinel well,’ the Prime continued, after a long and not kind look at his subordinate. ‘And I can assure you that she rarely makes mistakes of such an order. Is it not the case that you are behind the war faction of the Aelerian Senate? That you are their binding agent and animating force, this war with Salucia is the result of your plots and strategems?’

‘I would not like to contradict the Prime,’ Eudokia said, a bold try at diffidence, given the unfamiliar terrain.

‘Speak, Dayspan,’ said another. By his colours, a stark purple and grey, Eudokia knew him to be the Lord of the House of Kind Lament, though without this aid she would have been utterly lost. He looked the same as all of them, tall and unfathomably perfect and entirely bored. ‘You need have no fear of offending us, so long as you give the truth.’

‘You will receive it, Lords, I swear it, upon the Self-Created and all his children. Upon the Sun God, upon Tolb who keeps company with the low—’

‘You need not labour your way through the entire pantheon.’

‘Of course, my Lords, of course. Forgive me. In Aeleria it is not considered proper for a woman to speak in a public forum, and I find I have little talent for it,’ Eudokia finished neatly, and in her second language.

‘Indeed,’ said the Lord of the House of Kind Lament, who seemed to be the Prime’s main adversary, at least among his own species. ‘Is it not the case that those locusts unlucky enough to exist outside the reach of our example suppose the females of their species to be incapable of handling tasks of any complexity? That they hold no power or authority within their realm?’

‘I have heard this to be true,’ the Prime admitted. ‘But it seems that the Revered Mother is a unique case.’

Eudokia willed a blush to her cheeks – no easy task, but then Eudokia had a very strong will. ‘I am privileged to hold the position of Revered Mother, but this is a religious office, carrying some small weight of dignity but no political importance whatsoever. Perhaps this is confusing the Prime.’

‘The Lord of the Red Keep is entirely clear on your role within the Aelerian Commonwealth,’ he responded.

The Lord of the House of Kind Lament spoke to the Prime in their own tongue, and the Prime responded in kind. They were expressionless and imperturbable, but Calla possessed no such stock of reserve, and Eudokia could read from her face that the exchange was less than friendly.

‘You will answer the Prime’s questions in so far as it is commensurate with your own limitations,’ said her new-found advocate. ‘Nothing more will be required of you.’

‘As you say, my Lords,’ Eudokia acknowledged, dipping her head and then falling silent.

‘Well?’

‘Forgive me,’ Eudokia said, blushing again, discovering that the habit could come when she needed it, ‘I’m afraid I had forgotten the question.’

‘Why do your armies march north towards Hyrcania?’ the Prime asked. ‘What is the continued purpose of your bellicosity?’

‘Again, my Lords, I must protest that I am as ignorant of violence as a meadowlark,’ except for a man she had once beaten to death with a heavy iron skillet, and the perhaps-less-than-occasional victim of the internecine machinations within the Commonwealth, and of course the virtually innumerable corpses whose misfortune was to find themselves at the wrong end of the growing empire of which she was leader. ‘And hold no place within the war councils of my nation. Still, it seems clear enough – your orders were that we not enter into the Salucian heartland, and our armies have not done so. So far as I can understand, we have stuck well within the restrictions demanded by this august body.’

‘True to the letter,’ the Aubade admitted, ‘not to the spirit. You make a wasteland of Salucia, pointlessly ravage their territory, destroy their industry and farms, to no end or purpose that we can identify. Is it vengeance alone that calls forth your armies? Is it nothing but your species’s … petty love of cruelty?’

‘Justice is not revenge, my lord, and the gods mete out what punishment they suppose fit.’

Those Above all looked much the same to her, but she recognised the Lord of the Ebony Towers when he rose to speak, from his beauty, which was somehow beyond that even of the other Eternal, so straight and so tall and so very fair; and also because she was Eudokia, and forgot neither insult or injury. ‘Blessed are the dead, never to have seen this moment,’ he affirmed in his flat monotone. ‘Blessed are those who have yet to be born, that they have no share in this humiliation. A locust sits before you, unbowed and unchained, insults the Prime, lies without scruple or regard, as is the nature and essence of its species, while the Conclave allows her temerity to continue unchecked. This false and cloying insistence upon her own ignorance, which any of you not blind or drunk must see is nothing but a thin facade, cannot hide from me the naked arrogance and ambition which is the very heart of this creature, and of the nation of which she sits at the head. The Aelerians require, as does every other Low-born and not infrequently, a reminder that they exist due to the forbearance of their betters, ought be grateful for every day of life and crust of bread we allow them.’

‘The Lord of the Ebony Towers overstates the case,’ the Prime said quickly, ‘but in certain regards he is correct. The might of Aeleria is worthy of consideration, and cannot be allowed to wax in such strength so near to our own borders. As I see it, the arrival of further reinforcements in the field can only be seen as an outright provocation, and warrants swift retaliation.’

‘Surely the Prime does not suppose even the locusts mad enough to march upon the Roost?’ said one of the Eternal in the audience. Eudokia could not see who but it did not matter; it might have been any of them, the consensus opinion, pronounced as if the sentence of the assemblage.

‘I suppose nothing of the sort. But to allow Aeleria to violate with impunity the balance of power risks putting the very structure of our society at risk. The Salucians must continue to act as a distraction and counterweight for the Commonwealth, else within a few generations they will grow large enough to pose a true threat to our nation, one which might not so easily be countered.’

‘The Conclave made clear their dictate, and even the Prime admits that we have not violated it,’ Eudokia said. ‘Hyrcania is untouched, our armies far from the interior of the nation. Is the law in the Roost such that it might be changed at the whim of one individual, however powerful?’ Had any of the Eternal been thinking closely on the matter, they might have noticed that for a woman borne down by the sheer weight of awe, Eudokia had no problem presenting a compelling argument for her cause.

‘What would a human know of law?’ the Shrike asked. ‘What would a rat know of poetry? The Dayspan forgets that her species is, always and for ever, deserving not only of reprisal but of extinction, that the punishment for the crime remains only in abeyance and not cancelled. Were we to ride out tomorrow and kill every single thing which walks on two legs and grasps desperately with five fingers, leaving alive only one mewling babe to weep for your misfortune, that would be just and more than just, that would be evidence of our too-tender heart.’

‘Extermination,’ one of the other Eternal quipped, ‘how reasonable.’

‘Retribution, at the very least. In the city below they murder our servants with impunity; is it any surprise that outside our walls the locusts breed and gather and roar, just as their namesakes, and that they think to ignore our commands? What further provocations must we allow before answering?’

‘The Lord of the Ebony Towers is conflating the particular with the general,’ the Prime said. ‘And the indiscretions of the Commonwealth need not be repaid upon the species entire, though they do need be repaid. It is the judgement of the Sentinel of the Southern Shores, one confirmed by the Prime, that the Commonwealth of Aeleria has violated our directives, and stands in breach of the covenant. It is, furthermore, the Prime’s recommendation that this violation be repaid swiftly – that an order should be given to the Aelerian Senate demanding the immediate dispersal of their armies, and that this order be supported by the arming of our own forces, to answer with steel should our directive be ignored.’

‘This again?’ asked the Lord of the House of Kind Lament, or perhaps one of the others, all faceless to Eudokia in their perfection, interchangeable almost-divinities. ‘Your answer to every development is war with Aeleria. Be it some skirmish in some distant province or rain on your garden party, the prescription is always and for ever war with Aeleria.’

‘My sibling will forgive me if I suppose the stability of our city and empire to be a thing worth fighting to ensure.’

‘No doubt my sibling will offer me the same courtesy if I do not suppose every minor feud which takes place among the locusts requires the full marshalling of our armies. Should Aeleria or Salucia or any other of the human nations be in possession of some or other city, what is that to the Prime? What is that to any of us? And despite the Lord of the Ebony Towers’ perpetual ill-humour, in fact I find myself in agreement with this Dayspan. The Conclave forbade any attempt to invade the Salucian capital – they have made no such attempt. What, then, would be the purpose in our taking the field? Must the entirety of the Roost defile ourselves by descending to the ground simply that you might again have occasion to practise your bladework?’

‘Thank you, my Lord,’ Eudokia said, bowing deeply, ‘it is good to find that there is still justice in the Roost, as there was in days of old.’

Again the Lord of the Ebony Towers rose, and again Eudokia was struck by his extraordinary and ethereal beauty, as well as the absolute implacability of his contempt. ‘Hatchlings, ill-bred, head-struck, snake-bit, moon-maddened, false sons and untrue daughters. Inconceivable that ever an interruption was required of your endless amusements. You have grown so lazy that you allow this … thing to stand within sight of the Source itself, and to lie, to manoeuvre, to twist and to deceive. She runs her fingers across your strings and you sing just the note she wishes.’ He turned his eyes and the full force of his hatred on Eudokia alone. ‘Vermin, dogs and rats – worse than rats, for a rat at least has the sense to flee from the light of day and the footfalls of its betters, while you strut and preen and love the attention. Such mad and inconceivable vanity, such titanic and unfathomable self-delusion. We ought to drown you all in blood,’ he averred, eyes bright and beautiful and impossibly enticing, and for a moment Eudokia could imagine that death might come not as a shrivelled skeleton, but as a man in the full blossom of youth, beautiful and naked, understood that thing that draws a moth towards a candle-flame, the glorious flicker-flash and then nothing. ‘We ought to make a desert of your nation as a reminder to your fellows not to have thoughts above their station. And as for the thing in front of us, you ought to give her to me for a day, in punishment for her temerity and so that we might know the truth; that last I can promise you, there are rooms and chambers within my black walls which are for no other purpose but that.’ Pronounced through a porcelain mask, his face unmarked with anger, his voice as even and steady as the beat of a drum.

For once Eudokia did not need to force a simulacrum of fear, her heart beating thrice-speed in her chest, the blood fleeing from her face into the far extremities of her body, her voice pitched high and broken. ‘My safety was promised, my Lords,’ Eudokia said, her attention on the Lord of the House of Kind Lament, ‘you swore it, my Lord, you swore it yourself—’