Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (36 page)

Perhaps no reality could have matched the legend, but Pyre could not help but feel that he might have approached nearer to it. A big man, but old, his face like a cracked pane of glass, withered and well-lined. Still, his eyes were flat and hard and gave away nothing, and among a group of men who were remarkably savage even by Pyre’s standards, when he said a word that word was taken as if had been passed down from the foot of Enkedri’s great throne.

‘It is well to see you still alive, Pyre,’ said the Dycian, in the pidgin travellers’ tongue that was an amalgamation of all of the languages of the Tullus coast, mostly gutter Roost Speech with a few loanwords from the Salucians.

‘Blessings of the gods upon you this day. May the light of the coming dawn illuminate your path.’ Courage had taken this opportunity to find somewhere else to be, happy to let Pyre take the lead.

‘I sometimes get the sense,’ continued Hamilcar, who, in contrast to his superior, always seemed to be grinning, ‘that your man is not so fond of us as we are of him.’

‘He says you drink too much.’

‘What else is there to do but drink?’

‘Alcohol is a tool the demons use to weaken us. The Five-Fingered abstain from it.’

Hamilcar laughed and wiggled his digits. ‘And yet these held a skin of wine scarce five minutes past.’

If the Caracal followed any of this, he gave no indication. With each interaction Pyre tried his best to determine whether he was playing dumb or was the real thing, and he had yet to arrive at a conclusion. He muttered a few words into his subordinate’s ear, but his eyes didn’t leave Pyre.

‘He wants to know when we will move,’ Hamilcar translated. ‘He says the longer we stay here, the more likely we are to be discovered.’

‘The neighbourhood is ours,’ Pyre said simply. ‘The people here are proud followers of the word – there are none who would think to inform. And we have our own forces ready to intercept anyone who would try.’

Hamilcar – presumably – translated this into Aelerian for the Caracal’s benefit. He said a few sharp words in response.

‘The Caracal wants to know how you can be certain?’

‘My followers are utterly reliable, they can be—’

But Hamilcar cut him off. ‘The Caracal was not asking a question – he is saying you can’t be certain, not about that, or about anything. Every second spent here is a second which might potentially lead to disaster.’

‘He is right, of course,’ Pyre admitted. ‘But there is nothing else for it. Your army has been slower to approach than I had anticipated, but our people are in contact with them daily. We will move when they are ready.’

Hamilcar translated this. Bas nodded, but his eyes were on Pyre’s own. He spoke again.

‘The Caracal wishes to know something.’

Pyre shrugged.

‘They say you killed an Other.’

‘A demon?’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘It’s true.’

Hamilcar said something in Aelerian to Bas, who chewed over it like salted jerky, then spat something back.

‘He wants to know how you did it. Was it just you, or did you have help? Did you trap the thing, or surprise it?’

‘It was the will of the gods,’ Pyre said simply. ‘Whom Enkedri chooses, that man is invincible, though he be unarmed, though he carry nothing but a stone, he will be victorious against whatever stands against him.’

Hamilcar looked at Pyre a long time before translating this, and even in the dim light Pyre could detect contempt in his rich brown eyes.

‘The Caracal says that he has seen battle from the far Marches to old Dycia to Salucia itself,’ Hamilcar said after a moment. ‘And in none of them can he remember having seen Enkedri taking the field.’

‘Perhaps the Caracal knows less of war than he supposes.’

‘I will do you a favour,’ Hamilcar said, smiling suddenly, teeth white against the dark of the warehouse, ‘and not translate that.’

Bas looked at Pyre for one moment longer, then nodded and headed back towards the rest of his men. Pyre was about to make for the exit when Hamilcar reached out and grabbed him with one calloused hand.

‘Did you want something else?’

‘Do you wonder why there are two hundred men of my country, interspersed among the throng?’

Pyre shrugged. He could feel the need for sleep building heavy against his eyes. ‘You are auxiliary forces of the Commonwealth.’

‘And do you know how we became so?’

‘I don’t,’ Pyre said flatly, in a way that suggested he was not strongly interested in the answer.

‘It was penance,’ Hamilcar explained. ‘For our temerity in opposing the Aelerians’ desire to swallow our homeland. They are clever people, the Aelerians, they make use of what they find. Why kill us when we might kill for them? A slave is better than a corpse.’

‘I have more to do today than sit around in the dark, swilling wine. Is there a point to this story?’

‘The Aelerians sacked my city as well, but I didn’t help them do it.’

‘The Roost is not my city – the Roost is the city of the demons, the Roost is a festering sore on the earth, the Roost is a cage in which I and my people are bound. The Aelerians are helping only to free us from it.’

‘And then they will march home, leaving all of this behind? You presume a great deal on the magnanimity of your new comrades.’

‘They will rid themselves of the tithe they have so long been forced to provide,’ Pyre said. ‘And of the humiliation of being beneath the heel of the Eternal. Are not the Aelerians human, as I am human, as are you? Are not we all united in this struggle?’

A long pause, during which Pyre could hear the rattle of dice in the dark, and the loud cursing of the Aelerians, and of course the slurp, the slurp, always the slurp. And then Hamilcar began to laugh, loud enough to drown out the rest of the noise, loud enough to draw the attention of onlookers, of Courage and of the nearby Aelerians, and then he shook his head and went off to join the Caracal.

An hour later, on a cot in the basement of a safe house, exhausted beyond measure and yet unable to sleep, Pyre stared up at the ceiling and thought about the laugh.

L
eon began to put on his face as they passed through the gate to the Fifth. From the cool, keen-eyed composure that was his normal look he scratched away prudence and good humour, and to it he added terror and a dash of foolhardiness. By the time they alighted from the palanquin he was fully inhabiting this new role, flinging a handful of coins at their bearers and then sprinting towards the quay, pulling her behind him in train. The harbour was as busy that day as on any other, nor was there any shortage of miserable men, so their passage caused no particular stir.

By the time he came rushing into the entrance Leon could add honest fatigue to feigned desperation. There was a waiting area and a woman seated inside it but Leon ignored her, shouting something incoherently and bursting into the next room. It was the modest office of a mid-level clerk, a few shelves, windows through which the bright afternoon sun and the salt air of the bay entered freely, a squat desk. Sitting behind this last was the man that Calla had seen all those long months ago, when the Aubade had first detailed her to spy on the Five-Fingered. The year sat heavy on him, or perhaps the day had already proved particularly trying. Turning to settle her in one of the chairs, Calla offered Leon the slightest nod of confirmation.

‘Steadfast, thank the gods,’ Leon said, turning back to face their quarry. ‘Thank all the gods that you’re here.’

‘Who – who are you?’

‘She always said that if things fell apart, then Steadfast was the man to go to. That no one else would be trusted but Steadfast. She always said that. Very often, at least.’

‘Who?’

‘My aunt, of course.’

‘Your aunt? What the hell does your aunt have to do with this? Who are you and what are you doing in my office? Speak swiftly, before I call the Cuckoos.’

‘The Cuckoos!’ Leon’s laugh had something manic in it, something despondent. ‘I fear they’ll be here swifter than either of us would like! Indeed I fear they may very well be on their way! I am Leon of the line of Aurelia, nephew of the Revered Mother,’ the smile melting his face, eyes wide and mournful, and he dropped into the remaining chair. ‘May the gods grant her rest on the other side.’

There was a ceramic flagon on the desk, probably not water although Calla would never learn for certain, as Steadfast poured himself a cup but did not offer anything to his guests. ‘They … have her?’

‘She would never have allowed that,’ Leon said, somewhere between pride and despair. ‘That was why she carried essence of toadbane round her neck.’

‘A prudent woman, even to the end,’ Steadfast said, and between the drink and the news he seemed to have calmed down slightly. ‘Who is this?’ he asked, turning suddenly to Calla.

‘I couldn’t leave her,’ Leon half-explained. ‘She’s carrying my seed.’

Calla allowed the blush to spread across her face, thinking it would play to the role.

‘How quickly can you call it off?’ Leon continued. ‘What are the passwords? Where are your messengers? There might still be time to save something.’

Steadfast took a long time to answer, working through this unexpected development. ‘Why would we call it off? Your aunt’s … noble sacrifice has surely—’

Leon’s pose of desperation was alloyed with sudden, blistering contempt. ‘Are you mad? If they knew of Eudokia’s hand in it then they know of everything else! You’ve traitors in your organisation, that’s the only possible explanation.’

Whatever had been in the flagon, there was a good deal less of it when Steadfast next responded, having forgone the glass entirely. ‘Perhaps … perhaps it was bad luck, or inattention, or—’

‘Bad luck?’ Leon repeated, shouting this time. ‘Inattention! From the Revered Mother herself? Are you daft or just drunk? If they knew enough to get her then they know everything, and the plan can’t very well succeed under those circumstances. There’s nothing to do but regroup, try to save some part of our forces.’

The day had already been, so far as Steadfast was concerned, quite the most stressful he had ever survived. Leon’s arrival had pushed him from anxiety towards outright terror, and just then the fingernail’s grip on composure that he had maintained collapsed. ‘There’s nothing to save!’ he shouted. ‘We gambled everything on this mad plan of your aunt’s! There’s no going back now!’

‘Anything is to be preferred to seeing our forces slaughtered in ambush! You need to call off the attack.’

‘And how in the hell do you suggest I do that? It’s after the hour of the Kite, Pyre and his forces are already in position! Even if I could get him a message he wouldn’t listen to it, pig-headed fanatic! And by now your countrymen have already reached the Perpetual Spire; there is no force on earth that can call them off. Your aunt’s mad arrogance has doomed us all! Doomed us all!’

Leon had so far proved himself every bit the scion of Eudokia, maintained his facade impeccably. But this revelation was so sudden and extraordinary that for a few fractured seconds his mask fell away. ‘Then there’s no other choice,’ Leon said, trying to cover for his indiscretion. ‘We must flee the city, try and take shelter with the army beyond the walls.’

Steadfast didn’t say anything for a moment, but he narrowed his eyes. ‘When did they take your aunt?’

‘An hour ago, perhaps two.’

‘How did you get down here so quickly? Who let you use a palanquin?’

‘We slipped out the back while they were busy with her, and flagged one down on the second,’ Leon lied, neatly but too late. ‘Why does any of this matter now?’

‘By the gods,’ Steadfast said, rising suddenly, ‘I’m a fool.’

It was the product of instinct and of need, not of conscious forethought. Calla was sitting in her chair and then she was standing, and then the fractured top half of the ceramic flagon was powdered across Steadfast’s skull. She was altogether shocked at the audacity of her own behaviour, though presumably not quite so shocked as Steadfast himself, who had collapsed backwards over his chair and now lay supine, groaning piteously.

Leon was the only one of the three who seemed unsurprised by the development, already out of his seat and moving quickly round to the other side of the desk. ‘It was neatly struck, Calla,’ he said, unwinding the bandage from his injured hand and gagging Steadfast tightly with it. ‘Now if you would be so kind as to bring me the sash from that window curtain.’

But Calla stared down at her victim for a long time before answering. ‘What for?’ she said finally.

‘At this point we need either to bind or kill him, and there should be enough blood for all of us come the evening.’

When they walked out of his office a few minutes later they did so hand in hand, moving upslope at a swift clip. ‘Not so fast, not so fast,’ Leon reminded her, ‘we are two lovers out for an afternoon stroll, there is nothing that concerns us, no need for such haste.’

‘Did you not hear what he said? The attack is about to begin, we’ve no time to waste!’

‘I heard him very clearly,’ Leon said through a false smile, wrapping her arm round his neatly. ‘There is little enough we can do about it regardless – certainly getting murdered on our way upslope will not assist in the furtherance of our cause.’

And seeing the wisdom of this Calla managed to fall into his rhythm, though every moment she was certain there would be alarm, some cry of warning and then the entire Rung would descend upon them, the bent porters and the mean-eyed youths, though by the time they were out of sight of the docks Calla began to feel a slow ebbing of her terror.

It returned in force with the thick scent of smoke that struck her as she came within sight of the Fourth Rung, the scent of smoke and the distant sound of battle. Calla had no idea who Pyre was, but the hour of the Kite was long past, and whatever he had set in motion, it seemed, had already begun. On the Third the smoke was thinner, but still an occasional scream reached them on the wind. On the Second there were Cuckoos everywhere, it seemed, posted at the intersections of every major thoroughfare, though their presence did little to reassure Calla, indeed quite the opposite – because looking at them in their shapeless blue robes and their cudgels, readying themselves for war, swinish faces, pink hands, looking well-fed and nervous, Calla felt certain that if these men were responsible for the safety of the Roost then things were very bad, things were very bad indeed.