Read Online Those Above: The Empty Throne Book 1 by Daniel Polansky - Free Book Online

for an Eternal, and more heavily muscled, though the extra weight did not seem to affect his grace and agility. His eyes were a pure and vivid gold. He was still young by the standards of his kind, and the thick strands of his white hair stretched from his waist back up to his forehead – except for a gap in the centre of his plumage, one tendril notably absent.
    After breakfast they would begin the long grooming sessions required to prepare the Lord for his day. First the dyer, carefully choosing which colours would grace the Lord’s hair that day, rich strands of ebony and crimson. Then on to his tailor, fifty years in service and his eyes were still as sharp as his sewing needle. They would consult on the day’s patterns, and a half-dozen of the Lord’s personal servants would help him don whatever costume he decided on. In his sense of personal fashion, as in everything he did, the Lord was perfect – but still, Calla had always thought him at his most exquisite before all that, in this moment of nakedness. A lifetime of observing him should have inured her to his charms, but it hadn’t.
    ‘Your meal awaits you, my Lord,’ Calla said. His morning robe hung over the wall, and Calla took the liberty of handing it to him. He shifted himself into it in one swift movement, covering his hairless chest and his dangling member, and then he strutted off to take his repast without another comment.
    His name, of course, was not the Aubade. But the High Tongue, a language of whistles with rapid changes in tempo and tune, was entirely indecipherable to humans – or at least it was said to be so. Like all the First he had been given a name in the common human speech, a sobriquet that had become colloquial from long usage. The Aubade had been the Aubade since dim antiquity, before Calla’s grandfather’s father had quickened, and those qualities that had earned him his sobriquet were as evident in the present as they had been a century earlier.
    Calla followed the Lord to another corner of the garden, one set near an elevator that rose up from the kitchens, steam-powered and mostly silent, large enough to carry up a live bull, though admittedly that particular fare had never been offered. The Lord’s table had been set moments before – there was a member of the staff whose sole job was to wait for Calla’s arrival, and to take that as the signal to begin putting out the feast.
    It was no small task, either. Breakfast for the day was dumplings filled with muskrat liver, candied quince in plum liquor, slow-roasted pork belly and numerous other delicacies, each plate arranged neatly on a swivelling circular platform raised just above the table. The Lord sat cross-legged on a green cushion in front of the feast and brought a bit of watercress to his mouth.
    ‘And how went your evening’s entertainment?’ the Aubade asked, after sampling a few of the plates.
    Calla had spent her one free evening that week having dinner with the head chef from the Estate of Gilded Stone. ‘Well enough, my Lord.’
    ‘But not splendidly?’
    Calla smiled. ‘Splendidly, my Lord.’
    ‘What a high bar you set for your prospective mates, Calla.’ He spent a moment in consideration. ‘Not that you aren’t worthy of excellence.’
    ‘Thank you, my Lord,’ she said. He did not acknowledge her response and she had not expected him to. Those Above had no notion of flattery, nor of dissimulation generally. A thing was said because it was meant, not in hopes of eliciting a reaction.
    The Aubade turned his attention back to his feast, though not with any great relish. He expected an elaborate table, but in truth the Lord seemed to take little excitement in it. Those pleasures which inspired his passion tended towards the more abstract. ‘I had thought of visiting the courses today,’ he said idly, forking a caramelised prawn.
    ‘Of course, my Lord. Your ship awaits you.’
    ‘And the Lord of the Sidereal Citadel sent me a message last night,