Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (11 page)

Thus the Prime could not be said to rule exactly; she gave no orders, possessed no special powers or rights. It was her quality that imbued the rank with meaning, rather than the reverse. For even amongst this race of near-divines, there were none to match her – not in wealth, not in dignity, not in beauty nor in accomplishment. Her estate was the largest in the Roost, a sprawling thing that dwarfed even the Red Keep, itself one of the larger of the Eternal’s estates. She was regarded as the greatest practitioner of all the arts that defined their culture – her incense was the subtlest and most pleasing, her brushwork finer than any other, her skill with harp and lute unparalleled. In the Conclave her counsel was regarded as much the wisest and most temperate, though in the last war against Aeleria she had been at the vanguard, and acquitted herself with noteworthy ferocity. Across the length and breadth of the First Rung, which was to say the Roost, which was to say the world, there was simply none to match her.

None but the Aubade – Calla had her pride, after all.

But even she could not pretend that there was anything in the Red Keep to compare with the grandeur of the Prime’s estate. The woods they walked through made the east aviary seem positively diminutive by contrast. It had been three hundred years since the Lord’s father had brought the first cuttings to the Red Keep, but the Lady’s forest was far older, went back almost to the Founding. Each seedling had been carefully chosen, planted in some infinitely distant past, lovingly cultivated, pruned and shaped. It was a living masterpiece, a millennium of careful planning married to virtually unlimited resources.

The path got smaller before disappearing altogether a half-cable into the forest. Calla held her breath in expectation.

‘They’ll find us soon,’ the Aubade said.

Calla blushed. ‘Is my excitement so obvious, my Lord?’

He neglected to answer, continuing forward into the wood, seemingly without direction. Even with the path gone the walk was easy, the ground a soft carpet of moss, undisturbed by weed or prickly bush. The late-summer foliage would be gone within a week, and in defiance it seemed to throw itself into one last explosion of colour, fireweeds and flecks of white hellebore and bright yellow strands of trumpet vine. Threads of sunlight leaked through the canopy above, but it was difficult to make out anything much further ahead, beyond a general impression of beauty and of soft, green, living things.

The Lord noticed it first, of course, and waved in its direction, though it took a while for Calla to make it out amidst the camouflage of flowers. But after the first became clear she quickly noticed more, hiding among the trees, gazing at her shyly.

The personal bestiary of the Prime was as famous as the reserve that surrounded them, a menagerie of creatures unique to her demesne, cultivated by generations of her ancestors and the Lady herself. Foremost among them were the velvet deer, and Calla could see why. They were the size of large dogs, hornless and wide-eyed. Their coats were reddish purple, notable even at this distance for the fine quality that had given the animals their name.

Calla brought her hands up to her lips, as if to catch the escaping sigh.

One of the deer was trying to work up the nerve to approach, dancing forward a few steps, then back again. Calla laughed and clapped her hands, and the beast spurred away shyly. But by then the other deer had lost their inhibitions, and they began to arrange themselves around the Lord and his party. They evinced neither fear nor wariness, indeed seemed to be gazing at Calla with the same interest and wonder as she at them. After a moment one came forward and nestled itself against her. She laughed again.

‘Oh, my Lord,’ she said. ‘How magnificent.’

‘She is a wonder, the Prime.’

The herd had accepted them completely now, sniffing at the bearers and the packages they carried, blinking up at the Aubade. After a moment some of their number began to draw away, but slowly and with frequent backward looks.

‘Best follow them,’ he said, and proceeded to do so. Calla could barely bring herself to break away from the creature that was, even now, rubbing her softly with its long neck, as glorious and carefree as a sunbeam. But she managed it – there were other wonders yet to explore, she reminded herself.

Their escort frolicked circles around them as they walked, pausing to nibble at the flowers or drink from the little streams running through the grounds. These last were clear as crystal and babbled kindly and were dotted with wide, flat stones so one could cross without wetting one’s feet. Running along the bank were brightly coloured clusters of giant mushrooms, thick-stalked things that came up to her knee, bright red caps flecked with white. The flickering sunlight weakened and withdrew, and as prelude to evening the bell crickets struck up their tune, each variant chirruping in a different pitch and rhythm, the resultant symphony as complex and subtle as anything that could be written with four fingers or five.

They began to see other parties in the distance. Each had begun their journey at a different quay, but the wiles of the velvet deer had ensured they progressed towards their final destination. By custom they were not to speak to each other until they had been greeted by the hostess, and so each group continued as if ignorant of the others.

The central pavilion had been built over a small lake, atop a floating wooden platform. An intricate net of walkways radiated out from the tent, the freshly painted banisters wrapped with vines and flowers. The pavilion itself looked like a large silk tent, coloured verdant green to match the forest, but Calla somehow felt certain there was more to it, and was eager to discover whether she was correct. It wasn’t until she grew close that she realised the velvet deer had disappeared back into the forest, their purpose fulfilled. An unpleasant reminder that time continued its progress.

The Prime stood on the pathway leading into the floating web, greeting each guest in turn. She was dressed in a skintight gown that covered her completely from neck to ankle but somehow hid nothing. Her hair was shaped into a sphere fully nine links in diameter, stained jet black. Her face was painted with gold leaf. Her eyes were a blue so dark as to be nearly black. She did not smile, but had she, you’d have seen her teeth were white and straight and perfect. Beaming down from the apex of her comb was a diamond every bit the size of a fist – the fist of an Eternal, to clarify, not a human. It was the only outward signifier of her position.

‘Prime,’ the Lord said, performing the bow of greeting fluidly.

‘My Lord of the Red Keep,’ she said, returning the courtesy. ‘I greet you on behalf of the Lord of the Ivory Towers and the Lady of the East Estate, on the occasion of their binding.’

Those Above consummated sexual relationships with the frequency and ritual of a bowel movement, but to commit oneself fully to another was as rare as a double moon, and one celebrated with all the extravagance of which the Eldest were capable. It meant not only that the participants were to adhere to the most rigid standards of monogamy, but also that the pair intended to reproduce, an event always rare among the Eternal and particularly so in the current age.

‘I accept your greeting,’ the Aubade said. ‘And I hope that their union is a fertile one, that brings honour to the Roost and to their line.’

This was part of the formula, the same exchange that the Prime was waiting to perform with the rest of the guests in line behind them. No doubt there was more that they might have said to each other; but decorum reigned over everything in the life of the High, and anyway, the evening was far from over.

Calla followed the Aubade across the walkway, felt it sway faintly. The lake itself was marvelously clear, swarms of iridescent fish darting through the depths, ebullient and wondrous and forgotten as soon as she caught close sight of the pavilion. Twelve cells surrounded the main chamber, separated by pure silk walls of different colours and complementary patterns, doorways cut into it on each side. By some cunning contrivance each wall had been set to revolve in alternating directions and at slightly different speeds, and occasionally the openings would align and one could see deeper into the heart of the pavilion, at the pleasures awaiting therein. Whatever engine drove its revolutions was invisible, and made so little noise as to be drowned out by the partygoers and the soft music.

In the first chamber the walls were azure with gold trim, and a staff of humans awaited to take the slippers of the new arrivals, and to wash their feet in basins of heated water. In the second chamber the walls were orange with pink offsetting, and cool drinks and warm towels were presented to revive the guests after their journey. In the third the walls were crimson with sterling silver, and couches had been set up around bright crystalline water pipes. They continued like that, each room more fabulous than the next, and hard though Calla tried she would not be able to remember all of them afterwards.

Deeper into the pavilion a cell had been set aside for gifts, and the bearers who had accompanied Calla and the Lord were finally able to relieve themselves of their burdens. After doing so a member of the Prime’s staff led them back the way they’d come, out of the pavilion and presumably to some sort of waiting area. Only the Eldest and their highest-ranking servants were allowed to enjoy the cornucopia of delights the Prime had prepared. If Calla did not give the three porters a second thought, it must be said in her defence that there was much for her to think of at that moment.

With the gifts delivered and the bearers gone, Calla was able to spend a few minutes exploring the pavilion on her own. Some of the High insisted on keeping their servants near them at all times, but the Aubade was not one to have his hand held. In a sea-blue chamber further towards the core Calla found Sandalwood inspecting one of the silk curtains, looking handsome in his long green robes, if not quite young. He had been the Seneschal for the Lord of the Sidereal Citadel for fifteen years, though she had known him far longer, since she was a small child. He had been like an elder brother to her, growing up. He had been more than that for a time. What they were now, it was hard to say. A friend, at the very least.

‘The Pavilion is our work,’ he began. ‘It took my Lord a week to conceive of it, and us six months to build. It’ll be destroyed come morning,’ he continued, wistfully but not unhappily. The Lord of the Sidereal Citadel, known among the low-born as the Wright, was famed as the most brilliant and forward-thinking of all the steam workers who graced the First Rung.

‘It is magnificent,’ Calla said, because it was and because she wanted him to be happy. She wanted everyone to be happy, that night; and it even seemed like everyone might be.

‘It was no small thing to get each cell to run opposite the next,’ he said, shaking his head ruefully. Though in fact he was the sort of person who never seemed happier than when he was in the midst of solving some technical problem. ‘Has there ever been anything like it?’

The floor, which in the rest of the pavilion consisted of woven reeds, was in this chamber alone formed of one unbroken plate of glass, offering unobstructed views of the lake below. Bobbing along beneath was an array of floating crystal lanterns, through some genius of construction inextinguishable. Prismatic carp swarmed around these bubbles of illumination, while shifting-hued octopods crawled along the lake floor. Moustachioed catfish, so fat and mean-looking that even the squid seemed uninterested in disturbing them, floated lazily through the water grasses, proud as any Eternal.

‘No,’ Calla said confidently. ‘There has not.’

He smiled and trailed his hand down her back. She leaned into him, and they stood together silently for a few moments.

The Woodcock’s hour chimed, signalling that it was time for the ceremony to begin. The guests, four-and five-fingered alike, found themselves filtering back outside, to the long circular platforms extending out from the main pavilion. Half of the Eternal in the Roost were crowded out along the floating deck, along with their human servants, and Calla could not find much of a view.

Although for once that evening, there was not very much to see. The Eldest had no gods to swear by, and there was no officiant to perform any ritual. The Lord of the Ivory Towers and the Lady of the East Estate, each dressed in traditional and elaborate finery, swore loyalty to each other, gave succinct but lovely promises of fidelity. Then Those Above gave a whistling cheer in their foreign tongue, the humans remaining silent, and the couple joined hands and walked deeper into the pavilion, and deeper still, the spinning sections quickly obscuring them from view. They would continue on to the heart of the tent, and there they would consummate the union, the blessings of their act shaking centrifugally out to all those in attendance.

With the departure of the couple, the festivities could begin in earnest. Drink flowed more freely, Those Above spoke louder; even the humans began to unwind, to flirt and chatter among themselves. Between the warm afternoon and the long walk over and, perhaps, the libations in which she had indulged, Calla found herself a touch overhot, was pleased to forsake the pleasures inside the pavilion for the cool evening air.

And by now it was well and truly evening, a fact reinforced by the arrival of the glow-bugs, whole flocks of them appearing as if by magic. Another product of the Lady’s long breeding, each individual insect produced light in a different colour, though by some strange instinct those of a similar hue grouped together, swarming clouds of crimson and cerulean and heliotrope winking in and out of the firmament. Hanging from the boughs of the trees were open silver cages baited with some sort of sweet or scent that drew in the flickering creatures, creating a living source of illumination softer and clearer than any lantern.

White-robed servants brought trays of food and drink for Eldest and human alike. The edibles were as magnificent as everything else that evening, though Calla could not bring herself to eat more than a few nibbles. She felt as if she could subsist on nothing but the warmth of the evening, on the sounds coming from the forest, on the reflection of the moon against the lake, on beauty itself.