Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 (51 page)

Calla realised that she was sobbing.

Alone among the Eternal the Aubade had not joined the indulgent throng. He was sitting on a stool on one side of the courses, having removed his helmet and breastplate, and two of his household attendants were carefully tending to his wounds.

Calla held her robes up with the tips of her fingers and sprinted over to him. ‘It is finished, my Lord,’ she said, still weeping, stumbling through her words. ‘It is over.’

Dark red ichor leaked down his face, darker than the blood of a human, the same colour as the sword that he had carried. But his eyes were as cool and implacable as ever, and he answered without hesitation: ‘It has not begun.’

T
histle had been on his knees so long that they had started to hurt and then gone numb and then started to hurt again. He had not eaten anything for more than a day, hadn’t had a drop to drink since before midnight, six long hours before. He was in the basement of a butcher shop on the Fourth Rung, a small stone room empty of furnishings except for the small altar at which Thistle knelt. The only illumination came from two flickering candles on top of it, a plain wooden bowl between them. Thistle had been meditating on these lights for hours, until they seemed to encompass within their small, sputtering flames the entirety of the world he had known and was poised now to leave behind.

‘Who is this who comes before us?’ Edom asked.

Thistle kept his head down and did not answer.

‘He cannot tell us,’ an unknown voice informed him, ‘because he does not know.’

‘Why does he not know?’ Edom asked.

‘Because his name has been stolen from him.’

‘Does he consent to take his place among his brothers?’ Edom turned his eyes now on Thistle and Thistle felt their weight like a burden, like a porter on a long jog upslope. ‘Does he swear eternal fealty to the cause of his species, to their freedom, to their prosperity, to their future unjustly denied?’

Thistle did not speak, but he held out his right hand. Edom made a shallow cut on Thistle’s palm, held it in place as it dripped little blooms of red into the bowl. He performed the same operation on his own hand, which Thistle only now realised was thick with scars old and new.

It wasn’t much of a wound, but Thistle found himself light-headed after receiving it, some combination of the heat and not having eaten, or perhaps just the unconscious shuddering of an organism about to be born anew.

‘What did they call this boy?’ Edom asked.

‘He was Thistle, the false-known,’ a voice answered.

‘And who is he now?’

Thistle had been frightened that, weakened as he was, he would prove unable to rise, would dishonour himself at this pivotal moment of his existence. So he threw himself into it, forced his body into motion and rose up quickly, too quickly, almost stumbled before righting himself.

But he could feel the swelling goodwill of his new brothers, steadying him with their own strength. ‘Pyre,’ he said with a force and confidence that surprised him, that ignored how tired and hungry and weak he felt, that left his body light and his head full of fire. ‘Pyre, the First of His Line.’

Pyre raised his hand open-fisted, five fingers above his head, the shouts of his companions echoing in his ears, the death of a nation on his lips.