Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (39 page)

Only a fraction of it would be sold within the Roost itself. For the human civilisations of the surrounding lands, and even those far distant, the Roost operated as a great way station, goods unloaded and bought and sold and then repackaged and shipped off to some distant corner of the continent. And the heart of this tremendous engine of commerce was not the docks, which after all were too far downslope for any respectable citizen to venture, but the Perennial Exchange, a vast and labyrinthine market that took up much of the Third Rung. It was justly famous the length of the continent, one of the wonders of the Roost, to be compared – if found wanting – with the Source itself.

And today’s visit from the Aubade would be the first time, to the best of Calla’s knowledge, that any of Those Above had bothered to take a look at what was one of the great economic engines of the world, taking in more in taxes and tariffs than most nations produced in sum.

She had accompanied Bulan on a visit one afternoon, so he could show off his prowess as a trader and the respect that he was granted by the petty merchants who occupied the market – as if Calla, living among gods, would be impressed by the pretensions of the Salucian silk trader trying to undercut Bulan on his next shipment. But still, Calla had to admit, it was a marvellous place, a microcosm of every land and language, reckless men with more to win than lose yelling at one another in the pidgin tongue they had developed, a language ideal for barter and insult. Fortunes were made and lost, dreams fulfilled and shattered, a swirling morass of glorious anarchy, ever-changing, perpetually unsatisfied, mad with desire and ambition. What was greed and vanity in one person became, by some curious bit of algebraic chicanery, something almost like a virtue when practised by the surging masses, a liveliness and voracity that one could not help but find invigorating.

She had mentioned her visit off-handedly to the Aubade upon returning to the Red Keep. He had listened carefully and then shocked her into silence by informing her that he would be visiting it come the morrow, and that Bulan would make himself available as escort. Calla had managed to convince the Aubade to give Bulan more time to prepare a proper reception, had pushed back the date a week, but his mind was set on the project and to try to dissuade him would be pointless and insulting.

Calla was nervous. She had arranged to meet with Bulan before the Aubade’s arrival; they were standing at one of the many small piers set along the canals that snaked through the Rung. The market, which grew faster than a glutton, had long since expanded to overtake this pier, though this seemed no very great problem, given that the Eternal never used it. Or at least had not used it in a long time, such a very long time that weeds the size of men grew out of the water and the quay was buttressed on both sides by food stalls.

Bulan was nervous also, but he was doing a better job of hiding it. Not a man unused to strain, indeed seemed to be one of those rare few who thrived upon it, who swallowed toil and trial and grew stronger from it. But still, this was not some trivial bit of barter, or a long con he was trying to pull on a rival. On the one hand, there was the great renown to be had in escorting an Eternal out among humans, even the possibility that the Aubade might be so impressed as to grant him some access to the infinite fortune it was believed, not entirely falsely, that all Eldest possessed. On the other hand, it was a widely known bit of Roost lore that any Eldest might kill or wound a human without punishment or penalty.

So Calla could appreciate that Bulan might be feeling some flutter of agitation before his meeting with the Aubade. He was dressed in an elaborate suit of robes that he had bought for this occasion, or at least that she could not remember seeing before. They were made from the skin of a spotted animal native to Bulan’s homeland, and they were quite beautiful – though they had been more so before Bulan had sweated through them. ‘In Chazar,’ he said, turning towards her, ‘it is the custom of a man who makes an appointment to show up for that appointment at the time he has made it.’

‘In the Roost – which, perhaps it has escaped you, is where you currently reside – it is the custom of the Eternal to do whatever they wish, at whatever moment they wish to. Happily, the Lord of the Red Keep was never one to hold too strongly to tradition, and is generally known to be punctual.’ She slipped her arm underneath his, allowed him to pull her tight. ‘Worry not, Bulan, son of Busir.’

‘Worry?’ he said, as if the word was unfamiliar and he hoped to commit it to memory. ‘I am not a man who has ever been troubled by that particular emotion. I am a man, however, who has other things to do today besides squire around your lord.’

‘Then a happy day this is for you,’ Calla said, disentangling herself from him and smiling cruelly, ‘because he swiftly approaches.’

Calla could hear the Aubade before she could see him. A spindly youth came sprinting down the banks of the canal, or at least as close to a sprint as he could manage in such close environs, yelling, ‘A High! A High!’ Pedestrians stopped to watch; even the mad press of business seemed to ease for a moment, the brokers and merchants taking a scant few seconds away from making money to gape in awe at the craft and the thing that rode atop it.

The ship arrived, finally, the Aubade himself at the prow. Looking at him standing there, his hair-stalks dyed rainbow and cascading down nearly to his ankles, thin robes of silk and samite and silver, three heads taller than the tallest man on the Rung, Calla could hardly condemn the crowd for their rapt attention.

He alighted from the craft almost before it landed, his leap so smoothly executed that a rumbled gasp made its way through the horde. The Aubade seemed not to notice. ‘Greetings of the sun to you, Calla,’ he said, then turned to her companion. ‘I am correct in believing you to be Bulan?’

Bulan had been anticipating this moment for a week, and still his courage almost failed him. But he smiled through his awe and dropped smoothly into the Wellborn greeting, performing it with an excellence that spoke of long practice. ‘Good day to you, my Lord of the Red Keep,’ he said. ‘I hope the light finds you well.’

The Aubade took a long look around at his environs – not a casual glance, but a slow, penetrating gaze, a sincere attempt to grapple with what was in front of him. ‘This is the Perennial Exchange,’ he said, self-evidently.

‘It is indeed, my Lord,’ Bulan said. ‘The beating heart of the Rung. Every moment we are speaking a fortune is made or lost, a man thrust upwards to the spiral of his ambitions, or brought crashing down towards disaster and despair. Bulan bids you welcome to his home.’

‘The Roost is not your home,’ the Aubade said.

‘But the Exchange is not quite the Roost, as you shall see,’ Bulan said, smiling. ‘And anywhere there is money to be made, that place is Bulan’s home, as surely as once was the belly of his mother.’

The Aubade made no comment, except to motion to Calla, and Calla turned and nodded at Bulan, and Bulan bowed again and walked deeper into the thick of the market. He was an excellent guide, it soon become clear, offering a running commentary on the stalls that they passed – what they sold and to whom they sold it, the origin of their goods and their likely final destination. To hear him speak there was no trader, merchant, exporter or vendor who Bulan did not feel to be running his business with at least partial incompetence. Everything was an opportunity to Bulan, every sale made was one that he could have handled more skilfully, were he not already busy with his other labours.

‘Tell me, Bulan,’ the Aubade began while looking through the stock of a bead merchant, twirling his hands through the long strings of multicoloured shell and glass that hung down from the awning. The owner was a Dycian woman, or at least she looked Dycian, dark and heavy; and unlike more or less everyone else that they had seen on the Third Rung, she did not seem particularly impressed by the presence of the Aubade in her establishment. ‘You are a man well travelled, yes? You have seen something of the diversity of your species?’

‘If I would be too polite to claim such, I am not so humble as to refuse it if offered.’

‘What do you think of the Salucians?’

‘Rich,’ Bulan said. ‘Rich from their plantations and their ore. And cunning – everything they say has two meanings and both are likely to be lies. But they lack courage – or perhaps they simply have faith in their friends.’

‘The Dycians?’

‘Clever,’ Bulan said. ‘Sharp traders and good pirates. Arrogant as well, unbelievably arrogant, given that they live with the Aelerians’ boot on their neck. Though if you meet one, you’d best avoid mentioning that fact unless you are very quick with a knife.’

‘And the Aelerians?’

‘They are loud, and boastful, and often speak nonsense, and soon you come very close to discounting them altogether – but then they do something so clever that you begin to wonder if their earlier foolishness was not a feint. They cannot haggle, but they have more of everything than everyone else, and can sell it cheaper, so it doesn’t matter. The wharves of their capital are flooded with the furs and amber of the March lords, and now the fruits and spices of the Baleferic Isles. Behind all of their demands is a naked pike, and the hard men who carry them. And they are proud – by Enkedri, how they are proud. They accept no insult, brood upon every injury until they can repay it tenfold.’

‘And Those Above?’ Calla asked.

Bulan smiled but did not answer, and they walked onward.

There seemed neither rhyme nor reason in what caught the Lord’s fancy, or least none that Calla could detect. He would pass rows of stalls selling the most exquisite silks or jewellery, only to spend half an hour inspecting a butcher shop. Twice he instructed Calla to purchase the entirety of a store’s stock, glorious, shining days for the owners, the sort of windfall that one might dream of but would be a fool to expect.

After they had bought out the contents of a small glassware dealership, the Aubade halted abruptly in front of a squat, wooden building with a sign displaying a fat man holding a bag of coin and a flagon. ‘This is what you would call a bar?’

‘Or a tavern, or a public house.’

‘Are these part of the Exchange?’ he asked.

Bulan laughed. ‘They are the very heart of it! These hand-to-hand transactions, these petty vendors –’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘The real money is made wholesale, not a half-dozen necklaces sold to passers-by, but the raw silver ore to make them. And what better place to discuss the specifics of a deal than a tavern? If you come away victorious, you are only a few steps from a celebratory libation; but should success fail to crown your efforts, you are no further distance from succour.’

The Aubade listened to Bulan finish his speech, and then without saying anything to indicate his intentions walked quickly inside. Bulan and Calla followed swiftly.

The restaurants and drinking establishments that Calla usually visited were on the First and Second Rungs – quiet, well stocked, beautiful little places, where a few glasses of wine could be consumed quietly by soft candlelight. The Fat Man, or the Happy Sot, or the Banker’s Draft, or whatever this bar was named, was of an entirely different sort. It was large enough to hold a hundred people comfortably and had no doubt often held far more than that, alcoholics and lechers and happy-seeming whores. At this time however, just after the hour of the Kite, it was mostly empty, a few hardened alcoholics waiting in the wings, the single employee a smiling man behind the counter who nearly went into fits when the Aubade made his appearance.

Calla whisked the Lord away to one of the far tables and Bulan ordered a flagon of red wine and a few skewers of grilled meat. It was impossible for the Aubade to consume anything that had also been prepared for the consumption of humans, even had the quality of the fare approached his standards – which of course it did not. But he seemed to be enjoying himself all the same, inspecting the environs and watching Calla and Bulan consume their order. At the very least he did not seem bored, which was rare for an Eternal.

‘Tell me, Bulan,’ he said, ‘of your homeland.’

Bulan smiled, poured himself some more wine. ‘She misses me,’ he said. ‘From across the eastern sea, I can still hear her call for my return.’

‘And you? Do you not miss it as well?’

‘I miss her every day, my Lord,’ Bulan said, no longer smiling. ‘I miss the blossoms in the springtime, and the prayer calls that go out from the temple of the One God. I miss the food, for there is much to say of this city but honesty bids me add that there is not a single soul living here who is capable of correctly cooking lamb. I miss hearing the words of my own tongue spoken, and I miss my sisters and my mother, who weeps for me every evening, and prays for me at daybreak.’

‘Then what is it that has brought you so far from Chazar?’ the Aubade asked, with what seemed to Calla to be true interest. ‘What has brought all of you, this vast assortment of the human species, from the joys of hearth and home?’

‘Yes, Bulan,’ Calla said, having drunk enough at this point to be feeling cheeky. ‘What could possibly tempt you to remain so far from the pleasures of your country?’

Bulan was as quick-witted a man as ever she had come across, cleverer even in speech than in thought, and he was not at all a dullard. But he waited for a time before answering. ‘The fifth ship.’

The Aubade thought this over for a moment. ‘A curious answer.’

‘I am here in the Roost to set up a factor as a clearing-house for my own goods, so that I don’t have to pay one of the larger interests a gods-damned third, which is what they charge.’ He looked bitter for a moment, then shrugged. ‘What I will charge also, once I am up and running. And when it is in place I will be able to send my small fleet of trading vessels further afield than ever before, and have a place to store my stock until it has reached its peak price.’

‘But still I have not heard tell of this fifth ship,’ the Aubade said.

Bulan smiled. ‘Next year I will have five ships making the western run – down to Aeleria, then out to old Dycia, then back to the Roost, then the long voyage home to Chazar.’ He held up five fingers, each ringed and manicured and slightly plump. ‘A pair of these will never return –’ he bent two digits down into his palm ‘– lost on the shoals or taken by pirates. I have a full bond on all of them, ships and cargo, though of the two I will lose, only one will ultimately pay out. Of the remaining three ships, one will meet with foul weather off the coast of Calabar, have to spend the winter in port, won’t return until the summer after next. And I’ll have to pay the crew extra for their time, and some of the stock will have rotted, and I’ll be lucky to make a profit of two against five.’