Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 Read Online Free

among equals if not the outright leader of Those Above, and nearly ten of them had been as his chief seneschal. During none of them had he ever felt it necessary to call her after the end of her working day. At the very top of his vast citadel, illuminated by the fat autumn moon and its attendant stars, he had run through the situation, explaining the matter slowly, persuading rather than commanding.
    ‘I know what I’m asking of you,’ he had said, standing still against the evening, his four long fingers bent round themselves, shoulders straight, tendrils of hair like strong hemp twisting down to his ankles. ‘And would have you understand the same. It could be – it will be dangerous. But there are currents at work in the Roost that must be investigated, and they stir in corners of the city where no Eternal could be seen. I have put my trust in your line for half a dozen generations – will you give me the same honour?’
    Calla would have said yes to anything at that moment, would have said yes out of sheer pride, even if she did not sense as well as the Aubade that her city was angled atop a precipice, even if she did not have, whatever he might think or know, as deep and profound a love for her home as did any Four-Finger.
    Calla thought of that passion then, tried to recall some flicker of it, to kindle that flame into a light strong enough to illuminate a path forward. Late afternoon and the porters were making their last run of the day, bent-backed men carrying goods and foodstuffs upslope without complaint – or, anyway, with no complaint they thought worth voicing. The children of the evening were just beginning to shake themselves out from whatever holes they scuttled into during the day, the men dressed better than the porters and standing conscientiously and stiffly upright. Two women who could only be, even to Calla’s unpractised eyes, whores, lounged on the steps of a tenement; blank faces and bedroom eyes, not yet covered in the paint they would use to attract their evening coin.
    A fat man coming out of a bar noticed her air of uncertainty, lurched over with a rooster’s gait. ‘Everything all right there, girlie? You lost or something? You need some help, maybe?’
    Looking at him, unpleasant smile and chicken fat greasing back stringy hair, Calla was reminded again of who she was. ‘You might move downwind, and relieve me of your stench.’
    The lounging whores laughed loudly and without kindness. The fat man scowled nastily, lust to cruelty in three snaps of a finger, like most of his sex. Calla ignored him and continued onward.
    She could find the docks; anyone could find the docks, one needed only to walk downslope until one could walk downslope no more, until the mud streets gave way to cobblestone, the vast quay that girdled the eastern base of the mountain and stretched into the bay. On a different day, in different circumstances, it would have been something to see. Even early in the evening it bustled, foreigners and Roostborn. Silk-clad Parthans and servile Salucians and unsmiling Aelerians. Here and here alone among the vastness of the Fifth there seemed to be some semblance of order, the occasional custodian dressed in blue robes and carrying heavy ferules. As little interest or control as the Eternal and human authorities of the Roost had for the lower Rungs, the docks were a different story. Most of the Roost’s food came from the plantations outside of the city, the only avenue of work for a downslope youth who refused to turn porter, but everything else – ore and raw materials, trade goods, wine and ale – came from the surrounding nations, as tribute or trade, swallowed in the bellies of the towering wooden ships that obscured her view of the sea, transported thousands of cables across the Tullus coast, spat back out again here at the bottom of the Fifth Rung.
    The docks, at least, were clearly signed, and Calla walked swiftly east along the wharf, then over a high-arching,