Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 (39 page)

‘Do I?’ Leon asked, brushing her hand away. ‘Ten years at least you’ve been planning this, since Dycia fell, and then the long campaigns out west. A masterful stratagem, Auntie, I confess freely there was never in all the world a thing more clever than you. I hope you find the ocean of blood to come sufficient reward for your genius.’

‘There was no death before Eudokia? There was no hatred, there was no savagery or avarice? No man ever looked at his neighbour and felt the edge of his hatchet with his thumb? No man ever dreamed of a life without labour, of a life lived upon the toil of others? It was Eudokia and Eudokia alone who brought evil into this world? A wise captain trims his sails with the wind – do you imagine that there is anyone so clever, so powerful, as to force upon the infinite chaos of the world a pattern that is unnatural to it? What happens today was certain to happen. Perhaps I sped it up a few decades, perhaps not even that. The Eternal … an inapt name I’m afraid. That which is green will grow black. Like bubbles of soap, we expand and burst and leave nothing more behind.’

‘There is nothing else? No ethic, no purpose? By the gods, what a bleak portrait you paint.’

‘The gods?’ Eudokia gave a mocking little laugh. ‘Listen close, child, I will tell you of the gods, of the single commandment they have written clear across all creation. Are you ready? The strong devour the weak. It is the way of all living things, of every creature that flies, walks, crawls, slithers or swims. The weed strangles the flower, the ant eats the cricket, the wolf the stag. And we? We humans? We eat everything. The Others were strong once, and in their strength they made slaves of us. They are weak now, old and trembling, and what they have built but cannot hold will become ours. In time, no doubt, Aeleria will falter as well, decaying from its own richness, and some fiercer, crueller peoples will usurp our position. But at least I won’t be around to see it.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Leon said, standing suddenly. ‘There is more to life than this endless savagery. And you count your victory too swiftly. Calla and I have deciphered your stratagems, broken your spy. Even now she is at their Conclave, revealing your betrayal. There is still time to stop this, to halt the conflict to come. Still time for reconciliation between the peoples of the Roost, still time to save it from destruction.’

And now for the first time Eudokia could hear the first hint of her bloody yield, a distant scream; somewhere nearby something terrible was happening to someone – but then, is this not always the case? Does not every passing moment bear witness to cruelty, barbarity, brutality?

‘War is not the wind, boy,’ Eudokia said, shaking her head sadly, ‘it does not change its course at a moment’s notice. You have doomed her with your innocence. I had hoped to save her, as much because I liked her as because of your … obvious affection. But your intransigence has made that impossible. That brave, foolish child. That foolish, foolish child. Raise the city? The Eternal to redeem their bondsmen? The rivers to run backwards, the mountains to collapse. The hawk does not share meat with men, and I fear you have seen the last of Calla of the Red Keep.’

Leon swallowed hard and turned his face to a sneer, as if contempt would be protection against the misfortune his aunt had predicted. But he did not wear it long, indeed it began to quiver almost as soon as it had formed, his eyes wide and wet, and then he turned and sprinted out of the garden.

Eudokia would wish ever after that she had done something to stop him.

T
he Conclave was full for the first time in human memory. The white marble benches were crammed with the flesh of the Eternal, so busy that the lesser servants were forced to take up space outside, clustered tightly around the entrance. Never before in her lifetime, perhaps not since the last war against Aeleria, perhaps not even then, had so many Eternal been present in one place at one time.

There were so few of them – by the Founders, there were so few. Enough to choke the Conclave, but not enough to fill a corner of a corner of the Second Rung. There were neighbourhoods downslope that Calla did not know the name of, which held within their boundaries five or ten times their number. The Aelerian host, resting outside of the city and, terrifyingly, having taken up residence inside as well, were surely many times as large.

They did not look fearful, though whether that was because they did not yet appreciate the danger, or that they were bold enough to face it without flinching, Calla could not say. Given that he had been predicting this event or something similar for the better part of the last five years, given that he was now enjoying the rare honour of having his madness confirmed as truth, the Prime seemed very little pleased. He began the meeting swiftly and with a minimum of ceremony, and when he rose to speak he turned directly to the heart of the matter.

‘Siblings,’ he began. ‘The Lady of the House of Rose and Sorrow avers the Aelerians are less than five cables from the Roost. If not checked their riders will be at the foot of the Roost in hours, and their infantry by the morning. I am informed by the chancellor that downslope is in rebellion from the docks to the Third Rung, and that every available custodian is required to stop it from spreading any further. Likewise, the rumours you have heard are true. By some or other stratagem, the Dayspans have fortified the Perpetual Spire, and a force of unknown size now rests within walls of the First Rung. The custodians spent the night trying to retake it, without success. A number of our siblings have fallen in the same attempt.’

‘By the Founders,’ said the Lord of the House of Kind Lament, ‘we ought have done as the Lord of the Ebony Towers bid us, and drowned the locusts in their own blood.’

‘We ought have done many things differently,’ the Prime said imperiously. ‘But there is no time to discuss guilt or past foolishness.’

‘The external threat must be dealt with first.’ Having been wrong in every past prediction did not prevent the Lord of the House of Kind Lament from further augury. They were not so different from humans as they liked to believe, Calla thought then, though she was unsure to take comfort or warning in this fact. ‘We scatter the locusts below, then we return to deal with their counterparts on the First.’

‘The forces inside the Roost are surely waiting for just such an attempt,’ answered the Prime. ‘Would you leave our hatchlings to the mercy of the Aelerians? We cannot rely on the custodians alone to defend the Rung.’

‘Then we divide our forces. We keep a body here to ensure that the Spire is quarantined, and the rest of us ride down to dispose of the Dayspans.’

The Sentinel of the Southern Reach rose to speak then, the missing stalk of her hair seeming very distinct. ‘Fifty thousand Aelerians march on us this day. They have spent two years supping on the corpse of Salucia, and they come well-nourished but unsated. Whatever my siblings may have convinced themselves of in this long autumn of foolishness, they will not break at the sight of our forces, nor at the first charge. We will need every lance if we hope for victory.’

‘The Lady of the Ivory Towers has spent such time among the locusts as to confuse herself with their champion. However large the army they have amassed below, it is yet an army of humans, no more concern than an army of rats.’

‘The Sentinel,’ she corrected. ‘And the Lord of the House of Kind Lament is every drop as foolish and blind as I ever remembered. Should we see tomorrow’s sun, I will settle his insult at the courses.’

‘Enough,’ the Prime said. ‘This is no moment to waste on strife. It is unthinkable to allow the Rung to remain unprotected. A contingent must remain to hold the First, and another must be offered to the custodians to try and put down the rebellion which is taking place below. What is left will ride out to confront the army at our gates.’

‘That will not be enough,’ the Sentinel answered.

‘It is the only option available to us.’

‘If you will forgive me, my Lords and Ladies, that is an alternative yet to be examined.’

It was Calla’s voice, though she only realised it when they all at once turned upon her, row upon row of unblinking, single-faceted eyes, terror as though a yawning sinkhole had opened up below her. Since waking up that morning with Leon’s head upon her shoulder, since long before, she had been planning this speech, choosing her words, but in the moment itself she found her mind blank. It was the language itself that inspired her beyond this first exquisite moment of fear. A quarter-century of practice but Calla had never dared enunciate above a whisper, and she discovered then that it was not meant to be spoken at all in fact but to be shouted, to be sung. It was not language but a prayer, a poem, a love-ode. The words came all of their own, somehow, the Eternal’s language but in her own voice, her own dialect, as much her own creation as a newborn child.

‘I am Calla of the Red Keep, whose family has faithfully served the Prime for seven generations. The Roost is the only home I have ever known, the only home I have ever wished. I have always imagined that in time an eighth member of my line would one day assume the role of seneschal, would perform the duties and obligations of the office as had their mother and grandfather and their ancestors before them. That our rituals and traditions, hallowed by age, would remain inviolate and unchanging.’

In her brief pause Calla could hear the scattered droplets of the Source falling against its basin, the attendant humans quiet by custom and made doubly so by fear, the Eternal watching her with pregnant and unknowable silence.

‘That was an error, one that we have all been operating beneath. Today we see that the Roost was a far more fragile thing than we had ever supposed. The humans downslope – ignored, oppressed, abused – have taken shelter in the false promises of the Aelerians, and the result is as you have seen. The enemies of the Roost swarm towards our gates, and will soon be inside. As humans were the cause, so they will be the remedy. You say that you have not the numbers to assault the Aelerian armies below and to protect the upper Rungs simultaneously, but all the while you hold your hand upon an unsheathed blade, a vast army upon which you might call. The subjects of the Roost are more than fearfully passive, or made monstrous with misfortune. There are many like me who would fight for their homes, who would die to stop it from becoming a satellite of some foreign power. Equipped with weapons from your armouries, they could maintain the quarantine here on the First Rung, they might even be strong enough to halt the spread of violence below. They would rise to meet our mutual foes, they would fight to protect what is theirs – if their service was recognised, if they were called upon. With a militia drawn from the First and Second Rungs, you would not need to split your forces. You could meet the enemies of the Roost with the full might of your army, rather than piecemeal. No doubt there are many among you who imagine such a thing impossible, but if today has taught us nothing else, it is that humans are capable of more than you suppose.

‘An audacious proposal, my Lords and Ladies, as is my presenting it. But crisis demands audacity and there can be no question but that we are at that moment. Our sole certainty is that by tomorrow morning the Roost will be changed irrevocably. Either it will be consumed in fire and blood, the homes of the Eternal become the abode of the Aelerians, millennia of history undone entire – or it will be transformed, reborn into a city all of whose members are called upon to serve it to their fullest, and to demand an equal share in their labour. A city in which Those Above and Below strive in concert towards the betterment of both species. We will set out on this journey together, or we will die alone.’

And as she came to the last word she found that she could almost see this future unfolding below her, a syncretic fusion of the two species, a city undivided, without rancour, where the hideous misery of the lower Rungs was ameliorated by the vast wealth that resided above it, in which the superiority of Those Above was tempered with justice and even mercy, in which the splendours of the Roost were accented with freedom, a jewel more priceless even than that which graced the Prime’s diadem.

It was a beautiful dream – Calla was privileged to die staring at it.

She did not feel the blow, or only for a short, shattered instant, her neck snapping like a dry twig. And it was well for her that she died so quickly, because what was done to her person after by the nearby Eternal, and even those somewhat more distant, was cruel beyond measure, ripping and tearing with their strength that was so much greater than that of a man. And also because, with the darkness falling so swiftly, she never knew that the first strike had come from the Prime, hoping, perhaps, to end quickly the suffering that Calla’s temerity was certain to cause, or simply as savage and blood-mad as the rest of his species, his and not his alone.

J
ust after the hour of the Eagle, with the sun high and hot in the sky, a snaking line of metal and flesh descended from the Source to the main gates on the Fifth Rung, a sudden pulse passing down through the metropolis, rattling crockery off the walls of Second Rung mansions and shuddering the foundations of slum tenements, riding straight through the barricades, even the fiercest Dead Pigeon not so mad as to try and obstruct its passage. Twenty years since Those Above had gone to war, the kaleidoscopic fluttering gonfalons, the horses monstrous and spiteful, lances couched and cruel-looking, thousands of riders in synchronous and perfect union. The fate of the city, the fate of the nation, the fate of much of the world, would be decided in the coming few hours – it would be seen whether this army of heavy cavalry would be sufficient to break the Aelerian line, and forestall in blood the future that was to come.

Some short time later Pyre and a handful of Dead Pigeons marched upslope from their base at the top of the Fourth. The Roost had been in open rebellion since the night before, and thus far everything had gone according to Pyre’s plan, everything had followed within the clear rut of destiny. The custodians were weak and undisciplined and represented no serious threat to Pyre and his men. Here and there in the savage skirmishes that had taken place across the Rung an Eternal had made their presence known, in the blood and brain and bone of humans, but they had been carried down by the sheer mass of men against which they contended. Their casualties had been terrible, Courage and Mace, Badger and Grim lost when they retreated from the walls, Frost and his entire cell slaughtered by a single Eternal. But they had martyred themselves gloriously, and their losses had been made good ten times over by the army that had arisen, as Pyre knew it would, from the cobblestones and the slurp itself, men ignorant of the word but willing to die in its service.