Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 Read Free Page B

would remain in the hands of that person most capable of wielding it, and Eudokia did not suppose there to be any question as to where that lay. ‘The strain upon you has been a terrible thing, and you have borne it manfully. But what great task was ever accomplished without sacrifice? One must wager to win, and the stakes in this game are not gold nor silver but blood and sinew and the spirit that animates them. The gods have set this task in front of you, and will not fail so long as you answer it.’
    Konstantinos was smiling now, not broadly but the hint of it at least, eyes filled with visions of a future in which the world knew him to be everything he had always supposed himself to be.
    Such a narrow thing, between arrogance and dejection! Best to bring him back down a notch. ‘And finally, you ought not let your guilt trouble you so, for the simple reason that you are not really in charge, and never were. If anyone will have to answer to the gods for this tally, it will be Eudokia.’ She smoothed out the folds of her robes. ‘Now if there’s nothing else, it’s been a very long day, and I could quite use a bath.’
    Konstantinos was up swiftly, off to speak to an attendant and see to the Revered Mother’s demands.

3
    C oming through the basalt walls and into the Fifth Rung, Calla’s mouth had gone dry and her knees had started shaking like a drunkard’s hands. She had imagined that this was as frightened as she was capable of, that she had reached the very apex of her terror; indeed it was this ignorance that had allowed her to continue downslope, certain that she had reached her moment of truth, and that so long as she continued through it, pushed beyond it, she would find strength on the other side.
    For a time this was even true. Her steps eased, she enjoyed a growing sense of confidence. The men who gave her passing looks did so out of lust and not because they saw through her disguise, which was identical to that worn downslope, homespun robes and boots that were more comfortable than lovely. She would betray herself when she spoke, she knew, but then there was some fair portion of the Fifth who had once been servants or workers on the higher Rungs and had lost those positions from misfortune or misbehaviour. And anyway she wouldn’t need to do much talking, only to listen and to remember.
    But when Calla first heard the call of the pipes – like a fat man’s belch, mud leaking into boots, other, less pleasant things – and when they came into sight, splitting out from the depths of the sloping mountain on which the Roost was built, weaving through the crumbling tenements and one-room shacks and worn storefronts like the bleached bones of some long-dead giant, the full and unhindered force of her folly descended upon her. Alone, alone entirely, for the first time in her life beyond the reach of the Lord’s four-fingered hands, outside of the protection she enjoyed by virtue of who she was and where she lived, by virtue of being born in a portion of the Roost where the Eternal held a strict monopoly on the use of force.
    She pulled herself off the main thoroughfare, set her back against an alleyway, watched the shadows gather, wondering at the time. There were no road signs below the Third Rung, at least none that Calla could identify. The landmarks with which she used to navigate upslope, the Perpetual Spire on the easternmost edge of the Rung, the Source rising above that even, the centrepiece and the highest point of the city, were long since lost from view. On the First and the Second the great clocks rang out at regular intervals, but downslope there seemed to be no public timepieces of any kind, and Calla felt as lost temporally as she was geographically, unmoored entirely from her life’s ambit.
    When he had summoned her late the evening prior, Calla had known that there was something momentous afoot. For thirty-one years she had served the Aubade, Lord of the Red Keep, now the Prime, first