Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (23 page)

Time passed. Bas left the infirmary and went back towards his tent.

Still early evening but the fires burned bright and high, as if to ward off more than the dark. Isaac and Hamilcar and some of the other boys sat around one of them, passing wineskins and talking, loudly and without any particular purpose, hoping to drown out thought with noise.

‘I’d prefer an arrow,’ Isaac said. ‘That way you don’t see it coming.’

‘You ever listen to the sound a man makes with an arrow in his lung?’ Hamilcar shook his head. ‘Horrible, sucking thing. Goes on for a long time. Maybe if you’re lucky and you get one in the eye, but if you are not being shot at by Hamilcar then you are unlikely to be so fortunate. Better off losing a sword fight, at least the man standing over you is usually kind enough to finish the job.’

Bas would need to write a letter to the boy’s kin. He did not know at the moment what he would say, but he knew the words would come. They had always come before, letters crammed against one another, spelling dicey – it was never Bas’s strong point – pointless sentences and false paragraphs. Bas had no truth to offer, no secrets, only that fact which everyone knew, that the answer to life’s riddle is death, and we all discover it too quickly.

‘Not always. Sometimes you’re too busy to see the thing through fully, let a man drop and move on to the next.’

‘You’ve got to make sure you give a good enough account of yourself so that whoever ends up doing you hates you enough to spare a moment.’ Hamilcar added, raising his a flask to his lips. Wine ran eight times what it would have cost in the capital, and Hamilcar never seemed to be without an extra flagon, though his famous luck at cards had run sour these last weeks and months, and Bas had heard unhappy rumblings that his debts were stretching from tawdry to perilous. And was it Bas’s imagination or was the Dycian down one or two of his trinkets, the twist of gold that once hung from his beard or a few of those jewelled rings?

Whatever he had spent on it, he was not slow to share, nor Isaac slow to avail himself of his friend’s generosity. ‘The best any of us can do.’

‘One less Aelerian,’ Hamilcar said, after a moment. ‘That’s a thing worth toasting.’

Isaac rolled his eyes and spat into the dirt. ‘With your wine.’

Deep in his cups and desperate for quarrel, Hamilcar refused to let up. ‘I’ll provide the drink,’ he said. ‘I’ll set the table. A great feast in honour of our dead comrade! May all of the Commonwealth’s children go the same way, and more swiftly.’

The other men at the fire, who knew Hamilcar less well than Isaac and Bas, and who liked him less than that, grew sullen and fierce-eyed. Even Isaac, used to Hamilcar’s black moods and his bitter humour, felt it warranted a response. ‘Who do you imagine this fools? You were as close to the boy as any of us, and will mourn as hard.’

‘For whom would I mourn?’ Hamilcar asked. ‘An enemy of my people? Of all people who would rather remain free than become servants of the Commonwealth?’

‘Of a friend – of a man who fought beside you, who carried himself without complaint, who held up his end of the line.’

When next Hamilcar spoke the skin sat empty in the dirt beside him. ‘Oh, he was brave enough, our little noble. He did not bend before the Marchers’ spears, nor the swords of the Salucians. Is that the only virtue? Can no thought be given to what a man ought to show bravery for, if that cause might be worth serving? How many brave men were needed, on the day of Dycia’s fall? A thousand thousand just like him, brave boys and eldest sons and patriots, all willing to die, none ever wondering what they died for.’

‘You were pirates,’ Isaac said, more, it seemed to Bas, because someone needed to say something than because he really believed it.

‘Every merchant is a pirate,’ Hamilcar said. ‘And everyone who lives on the sea is a merchant. We were the best at both, but we had no monopoly on either.’ Hamilcar was slurring his words by then, rare for such a practised drunkard but there it was, consonants slanting against one another like a line of outflanked hoplitai. ‘When you decided our harbours were required to war against the Marchers, you summoned up a grievance to justify your need.’

It was just talk, it didn’t mean anything, except that this war against the Salucians had dragged on too long, and the Others loomed clear behind them. And the boy was dead, in the ground and not coming back. They did not come back, that was something that Bas had learned long ago. Arcadius with his dark hair and his two children who he had never seen, would never see after a Marcher lance had put him down, four years prior. Valens who had taken an arrow in the side the day Dycia had burned, pulled the thing out and staunched the wound with a rag, led his men over the walls, fought for long hours, sat down quietly in the dust in the late evening after the thing had been decided, died quietly and without any preamble. Jon the Sanguine, dead on land he had conquered, dead by the smallest creature that lived on it, two holes in his ankle from a reed-snake. A woman’s face, details blurred by youth and the time passed since youth, warm hands holding him, a song in a language he didn’t know, her words interrupted by the hacking cough that had killed her.

‘And what would have happened to you if we hadn’t?’ The voice was mean and quiet and after a moment Bas recognised it as his own. ‘Would you have bought a farm, tilled the earth, grown cane and potatoes? Or perhaps you’d have taken up a trade, set aside your bow for a loom.’

‘Hamilcar could have done many things,’ Hamilcar informed them. ‘If fate had not made him the slave of his enemies.’

‘You’d be swinging from a gibbet, the kites feasting on your eyes. Your own people would have done it to you, and the children would play beneath your corpse and the old women spit on the ground when they passed. You can’t be but what you are, Hamilcar, a man too lazy to build but strong enough to take. I didn’t make you a killer, you were always a killer. I just gave you something to kill. You ought to be grateful.’

‘Grateful? I was born on the docks, did you know that, Caracal? My home was one of those you burned in your great act of heroism, my people among those slaughtered in the hymns that collect around your name.’

‘Was that the first time you saw a city burn? The first time you heard a woman scream? Or just the first you heard one scream in Dycian?’

‘And how about your own chorus, Caracal? If they were to rise up with one voice, if they were to sing their song of despair, how loud would that be? How many men have you killed or caused to be killed? How many women? How many children?’

‘I’m a soldier, nothing more. I go where I am pointed.’

‘The world’s last innocent! And with enough blood on his hands to water a rice field.’

The moon had risen low in the sky, a jagged little sliver of light, like a boot knife, offering little by way of illumination, serving only to contrast the intensity of the night. An owl hooted, and a dog barked in answer, one of that vast pack of scavengers that followed after the themas, nourished on offal and waste and blood-turned mud. Bas was standing and Hamilcar was also, close enough for an unfriendly touch.

‘We took Dycia for the same reason that we took Oscan, for the same reason that we took the Marches, for the only reason that matters, that ever mattered – you weren’t strong enough to hold it. And you talk too fucking much, Hamilcar.’

‘It took you twelve years to say that,’ Hamilcar said, his eyes bright in the firelight. Isaac looked back and forth between them, hand steadying on his weapon, considering if there was not some way to stop what seemed the certainty of violence, and if not, whether to kill Hamilcar himself or allow Bas the privilege. ‘Twelve years.’

A spruce log burst in the fire. From far off, in some distant corner of the camp or beyond, carried to them on the wind, there was the sound of laughter. The killing moment passed, Bas and Hamilcar a hand’s breadth from one another, blood slowing, heart returning to its normal beat, leaving the two tired and faintly ashamed, as after an awkward coupling.

‘Go to bed, Hamilcar,’ Bas said. ‘There will be enough death to come. For both of us.’

P
yre was the first into Isle’s bar that evening, Hammer holding the door for him. Pyre liked to come in first if he could, believing that the shock of his sudden arrival often did more to ensure the outcome of the conflict than even superior numbers. Of course he had those as well, four men, well-trained and specially chosen, Tallow from the Third Rung, dark as burned sugar and very slick with the Salucian-style blade he carried, thick-necked Asp, cruel-eyed Splinter, Harrier who had played in a band near the docks before he had heard the truth, who had sworn never to tune a string save he did it as a free man.

And Hammer of course, Hammer who had not left his side for more than a day since his initiation, Hammer who had once been known as Seed. Against the five of them there was only Spindle, sitting at a table near the bar, too big for his seat as he was for most of the things that surrounded him, a bushy beard covering a mouth that had been known sometimes to smile. He wasn’t smiling now, of course; indeed at the sight of the Dead Pigeons his face seemed distinctly unfriendly.

‘Isle’s is closed,’ Pyre said, loudly enough to wake the drunk dozing in the back of the room. The rest of the crowd didn’t need the announcement, had already realised that Isle’s was no longer a place they wanted to be just then, might have permanently lost that distinction. Half a minute later and there were only Pyre and the men he had brought and the dark-haired giant who obstructed their passage, upright and leaning against the bar.

‘How you been, Spindle?’ Pyre asked.

‘All right before today.’

‘No, in fact you’ve been living a life clouded by sin and foolishness, as I once was.’

‘I’d heard you’d taken up with these fanatics. Couldn’t quite believe it. Do they know what you used to do for us? Do they know what you were? What you are?’

‘These are my brothers, Spindle. There is nothing which I would not share with them, no sin to which I would not admit, openly and with hope of forgiveness. You too might enjoy this camaraderie, were you to consider it. But now is not the time to speak of the truth, though I hope that time comes for us sometime soon. I need to see Rhythm.’

‘You have an appointment?’

‘I’ve had an open invitation for two years now, one I’ve too long delayed.’

‘Rhythm never mentioned that to me,’ Spindle said. There was a moment when Pyre thought things might turn nasty, because while the five of them could take Spindle in the end, he would not go easy; he was a deft hand with the dirk peeking up from his belt and those hands were large as a normal man’s skull, and they led to arms and shoulders that were equally oversized. There would be a great deal of cutting before Spindle went cold.

But then something seemed to leave him, dribble out of his coin-sized nostrils and his mouth full of broken and yellowed teeth. ‘What happens if I let you in?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Pyre said, nodding at Hammer, ‘because there isn’t anything that you can do to stop us.’

Spindle spent a moment acknowledging the truth of this, and then his great shoulders stooped downslope and he tilted his head towards Rhythm’s office.

Hammer came inside with him, because Hammer had taken to Pyre as Pyre had taken to Edom, as a righteous man would look after his firstborn son, someone whose existence was more important than his own, who needed to be guarded with more caution and more cruelty. The other three remained behind to watch Spindle, in case he had any untoward ideas.

Rhythm was an ugly man. Thick-necked, bald-crested, pockmarked. He had reached middle age, no small feat for a man in his profession, a business that was mostly about greasing palms but which had at its root, as did most things, the naked threat of violence. A little smile began when he saw Pyre, honest if bitter. He was sitting at one side of a not particularly well-made desk, and Pyre took the seat opposite. Hammer closed the door and stood in front of it, and Pyre knew without looking that he had one hand on the hilt of his weapon.

‘Hello, Rhythm.’

‘Good evening, Thistle. Been a while.’

‘That’s no longer my name.’

‘Names are like trousers, you swap them if they get stained?’

‘Thistle was a lie that I believed. Pyre is the name I have chosen.’

‘A man can call himself an eagle,’ Rhythm opined, ‘that don’t mean he can fly.’

In the Barrow, which was where Pyre was born and raised, the men were porters, slaves as all the humans of the Roost but the most pitiful, the most abject, the extent of their servitude written in their bent backs and bowed legs. Or they were bums, drunkards, wastrels so beaten and pathetic that they had ceased to perform that most basic and elementary task required of all living things, the care and nurture of their own seed. Pyre’s father had been both: first a porter, and then a bum, and then one night when Pyre was around eight a corpse bobbing up in one of the canals. ‘An accident’, his mother had told him, too much to drink, though even as an eight-year-old Pyre had not really believed her, even as an eight-year-old Pyre had understood that a man might prefer death to life.

And in all the Barrow, from the straits upslope down to the broken pipe that signalled the boundaries of the docks, Rhythm had been the only figure thought worthy of emulation, the closest thing to a free man that the Fifth seemed to have. Didn’t have to tote a pack, wasn’t chained to the counter at some five-copper-a-day general store, didn’t even have to dip his head to the Cuckoos. All he needed to do was hold a knife, and sometimes use it.

‘Are you trying to get me angry?’ Pyre asked.

‘A little. Is it working?’

Pyre shook his head slowly.

‘It would have two years ago.’

Pyre nodded.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to show.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Ain’t you, though? I didn’t believe it at first. All these stories cropping up about this fanatic from the Fifth, lightning raids on the Cuckoos, men who could out-savage even the Brotherhood Below. How’d you get to Ink, exactly? That was the nastiest son-of-a-bitch I ever had the misfortune of kicking up coin to.’