Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (29 page)

‘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 Mother – 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.’

‘Indeed.’

‘The Senate has considered the ultimatum put forth by the Conclave, that the Aelerian army return immediately to the capital and to their garrisons further west.’

‘Have they? Was there great debate, in your Senate House? Did the grandees and the wise men of your nation discuss the matter in vigorous counsel?’

‘How could I know, my Lord, not having been there to witness it?’

‘I would suppose your servants sufficiently trained not to require direct oversight. Regardless, continue.’

Though she did not, not for a long moment at least; she savoured each detail: the sound of the warm rain that beat against the windows, the smell of camphor emanating from the braziers hanging in the corner of the room, and the smell of the Prime himself, clean and sweet and not at all unpleasant. ‘By order of the Senate, in response to the continued aggression of the Salucians, aggression that has been exacerbated and allowed by the Roost and Those Above, Aeleria does hereby declare ourselves independent, autonomous, owing fealty to no nation nor overlord. All past duties are extinguished, any future claim of fealty repudiated altogether. The Sentinel of the Southern Reach is no longer welcome in Aeleria, or in any land to which Aeleria holds claim. Whatever peace is to be made with the Salucians will be determined without the assistance or input of Those Above. The Roost is yours, and the plantations which surround it. Should the other human nations wish to continue in their servitude, that is their business as well. But never again will an Eternal think to claim Aeleria among their inheritance. Never again will Aeleria send tithe, nor obey the orders of the Conclave. The Commonwealth is sovereign, absolute and recognises no master.’

The Eternal did not laugh – or at least, Eudokia, who had been watching them closely and for the better part of nine months, had never seen one laugh, not a chuckle, not the upturned corner of a lip. But some ineffable sense of levity overcame the Prime just then, limbs easing of tension, as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders. ‘I hardly need to take this to the Conclave. Your terms are entirely unacceptable. There is no such thing as Aeleria; it is a fiction which you have been allowed to maintain because we did not care to disabuse you. You own nothing, not the land that you stand upon, not the water you drink or the air that you breathe. All are received in trust from us, who came first, who were masters of the very earth while your kind were little better than dogs.’

‘So be it,’ Eudokia said. ‘Then there is only war left between us.’

‘That would seem to be the case,’ the Prime agreed. ‘Shall I speak freely with you, Revered Mother?’

‘There seems, at this point at least, little need for obfuscation.’

‘Indeed. The last three years have been the most difficult of my life, though they represent some bare fraction of my span. I have long been filled with the most abiding sense of … dread, I suppose, as if I was standing atop the Cliffs of Silence, staring down at the bay below. Desperately I have worked to convince the Eternal of the seriousness of the situation, of the need to marshal our forces against your Commonwealth. Continuously, my hopes have been disappointed. I do not mind saying, now that there is no longer any need for masks, that my people often seem to me foolish, frivolous, undeserving of their role and position. They are unified only in their pursuit of pleasure, in their unwavering desire to follow their own urges irrespective of the outcome. No warning I gave them was sufficient to convince them of the seriousness of the situation, no call to action loud enough to be heard above the sounds of their own merriment.’ The Prime opened the window again, two long fingers pushing against the clean pane, and the rich odour of summer entered the room, the ripening orange trees, the roses and the tulips and the dahlias. ‘Almost nothing, at least. What a gift you have given me in your foolishness, Eudokia of Aeleria. The madness of you locusts, to think yourself fit not only to subvert our wishes but outright to reject them! This will galvanise my people as no other thing might, this will, finally and fully, allow me to release the strength of Those Above against you who seek to stand against it.’

‘How happy a moment this must be for you then, my Lord.’

‘In fact, I find myself of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, there is this inescapable and abiding sense of relief. Of … joy, I suppose, though I am not altogether sure that this is an emotion which I possess, and if not whether we are incapable of it as a species or if its lack is a peculiarity of my own person. On the other, the dawning awareness, the continual and uncomfortable realisation, that perhaps of all these things that are said of me – that I am moribund, or war-loving, or so obsessed with my own person as to seek to create crisis I might then resolve, criticisms I have dismissed – are, in the light of this new information, revealed perhaps to be more valid than I had thought, or would wish.’

‘I’m afraid I’m having some difficulty following the complexity of your logic, my Lord. A natural enough position, given the innate inferiority of my species.’

‘You mock, and yet I think never, in a lifetime which exceeds yours as yours does an insect, have I ever thought that to be more certainly the case. Eudokia Aurelia, the wisest and most clever of the Five-Fingered. Who rules Aeleria from the shadows, whose whispered words have destroyed mighty kingdoms. And till this moment, I confess, I nearly believed it. There is something about you, some strange quality which seems almost to make you an equal of one of my kind. Or at least, I was fool enough to suppose. Such madness,’ he said, as if the thing itself was impossible to believe. ‘Truly, I must reconsider my judgement on your species. Perhaps it is as my siblings have said, and an excess of empathy has led to error.’

‘Such is often the case, my Lord Prime – though I confess it is not a problem I have found in abundance here among your people.’

‘True, that at least is a personal peculiarity – as a species we are quite thoroughly brutal. And so I shudder to think of the cruelties it will mean for your own race, your nation, your hearth and your home.’ The Aubade paused for a moment, turned to look out the window at the rain cascading down towards the water below. ‘We can be very cruel. I am afraid that after we finish with the army you send against us, I will not be able to stop my siblings from marching on your capital, as we did in ages past. The … Lamentation, I believe it is called in the Commonwealth? When we brought fire and sword to your people, when we slaughtered your king and his line and anyone else who might hope to claim distant kinship? I wonder what name your grandchildren will give to the horrors that will soon befall you? I wonder if there will be any left alive still capable of such sentiment, or if the thoroughfares and avenues of your city will be emptied entirely, with none remaining to recall your name or the misfortune you caused. Such foolishness. Such madness. And all of it will lie at your feet, Revered Mother. The blood that will come, the torrent and the river, the rotting flesh and the weeping children, are on your head. There is nothing I can do now to halt the tide, not even if I wished to, not even if I thought it was undeserved. When mongrel dogs rut in your castles and sparrows nest in your temples, when your people weep and moan and subsist on stonecrop and goutweed and on the flesh of their own children, when the spines and viscera of your senators and generals and noblefolk are left drying on the broken walls of your city, know well that it will be due to the foolishness of Eudokia, Revered Mother.’

‘Whatever comes of this,’ Eudokia said, and for once the false humility that was her habitual garment was cast aside, and the bare audacity laid naked beneath, ‘It will indeed be by my hand.’

T
he brewing summer storm whipped her travelling coat east, towards the Roost, towards what was to come. She held the reins in a four-fingered hand, and the great beast at the other end pawed the ground furiously, snorted at the gale and the damp and the still-hateful smell of man. They were on the outskirts of camp, within the distant site of the last pickets.

‘Is it wise to travel alone?’ Bas asked. Einnes had dismissed the lifeguard of mercenary Parthans that had been her occasional companions since he had met her years earlier. ‘There are many cables between here and your home, and the roads far from safe.’ Which was to put it mildly. Once word spread of Aeleria’s invasion – and word would spread, in all likelihood it already had – what little was left of civil authority in the territory they were marching through would collapse completely, the usual spread of banditry and chaos, one of the lesser misfortunes of war. ‘You might do better to travel with an escort.’

‘There are not so many cables,’ Einnes responded, a warning or a threat or a promise. ‘I shall be there in ten days, travelling alone. Mounted on what passes among your kind for horses, it would take them twice as long, perhaps longer. And as for the dangers of the road—’ the hilt of a long blade jutted above her shoulder, and a glance over at her stallion revealed any number of other weapons, a curved hatchet, a lance with three sharpened prongs, ‘—it will be good practice for what is to come.’

Bas nodded.

‘Did you know?’ she asked.

‘That the Senate would vote for war?’

‘That war was coming.’

The wind shifted then, for a moment, carrying the sounds of camp towards them. The mobile forges, metal struck against metal, instruments of death being born. And the men who would carry them, laughing, swaggering, cursing, fearful, violent, uncertain. All the potential of a vast and disparate nation, focused and sharpened towards one single end. What was the point of making such a thing, if not to use it?

‘We both knew,’ Bas said finally.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘It was to be expected. Your lives are so short, so madly brief. It would be impossible to learn anything in time to put it into practice, and so each generation is left to recreate the idiocy of their forebears, to leap nimbly over the same cliffs’

‘Perhaps,’ Bas said simply. ‘I think we are more dangerous than you suppose. Take care, Einnes.’

‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever hear that name again,’ she observed, though with the flat and affectless way she said everything, Bas could not tell how she felt about it.

‘Probably.’

‘What possessed you to give it to me? Some old friend? Some old lover?’

Bas had never had a woman for whom he had not paid, and none of them stood out in his memory particularly. ‘Not a lover.’

‘Then what?’

Though when no answer proved forthcoming she paced back over to her steed. The flanks of her horse came up near to the top of Bas’s head, but Einnes mounted without assistance or difficulty; one hand on the pommel and she vaulted into the saddle.

He made sure to look at her then, to look and remember, the stalks of trailing hair, that strange jut of a nose that altered the entire cast of her face, the cheekbones high and cruel, those eyes like, like, like—

‘On the last day, you will find me at the front vanguard,’ she said. ‘Beneath the sigil of the white heron.’

‘I’ll find you,’ Bas promised in a low voice that nonetheless reached her. ‘I’ll find you.’