Those Below: The Empty Throne Book 2 by Daniel Polansky Page A

immediately.
    His companions looked across at each other.
    ‘The Caracal knows something we do not,’ Hamilcar observed.
    ‘No certainties. Only suspicions.’
    ‘And what are those?’
    ‘Three themas have been ordered to Oscan by the Senate. The Fifth, the Eighth, and the Thirteenth.’ Isaac banged the table twice in recognition of their old thema, but Bas continued on above him. ‘When they arrive in early spring we will have amassed the largest army in the history of the Commonwealth. Do you suppose we have collected them for leverage at the negotiating table?’
    ‘And what does the Protostrator say of these things?’
    ‘Konstantinos keeps his own council,’ Bas said.
    ‘And his stepmother?’ Hamilcar asked.
    Theophilus looked hard at Isaac, who looked hard at Hamilcar, who for once decided to shut his mouth further. Even among men well familiar with death, the Revered Mother’s was not a name with which to joke.
    ‘Are you the Caracal?’ asked a man from behind him, the next in the steady line of well-wishers and sycophants drawn to Bas like flies to carrion.
    Bas’s shoulders slumped a bit but he didn’t answer, or turn to look at the new arrival.
    ‘Yes, he’s the Caracal, you can tell by the fact that he’s bigger than everyone else,’ Hamilcar said flippantly, ‘and he’s trying to get drunk, which given his size is not so easy a task.’
    ‘Piss, off,’ Isaac added, blunter in all things and more protective of his leader.
    Bas’s cup was most of the way to his mouth and he had stopped paying much attention when something happened to Isaac’s face, eyes starting to swell, and then Bas with that dim instinct for survival that lived in the hidden areas behind his conscious mind had flung himself sideways off the chair, shoulder banging against the hard wood of the floor. The man he had not bothered to turn and look at was standing over him then, a bright bit of steel in his hand, his eyes mad and wide and hateful.
    ‘Murderer!’ he screamed. ‘Thief! Ravager! Killer of women and children, bastard son of a whore!’
    ‘How could he have known that last one?’ Bas wondered grimly.
    Theophilus was nearest and moved to engage with this man whom Bas had never met before and who wished him dead as much as anything had ever wished for anything else, as much as parched earth wished for rain. Looking at him now as he had not a moment earlier, Bas could tell he was one of the Oscan upper crust, his clothes once fine but now faded, and also that he had no idea how to use his weapon, that he had probably not so much as held a fighting knife in the hours before his suicidal assault. But the curious thing about a knife is that it will cut as surely in the hands of an incompetent as in those of a master, and in the face of his unskilled but not ineffectual flailing Theophilus was unable to close.
    ‘A city of bones, Caracal!’ the man screamed, his blade whistling in the air, Theophilus dodging just out of reach, ‘and you the cause! What hell awaits you, Caracal! What torment the gods have in store for your soul! Monster, demon, sower of discord and hate!’
    Bas had not seen the blade in the moment before it landed, was unsure even after where Hamilcar had hidden it, though unsurprised that it existed and even less at the unerring accuracy with which it was thrown. There was a flash in the torchlight and then a pommel jutted from just below the man’s neck, and his eyes rolled back up into his head, and he tumbled backwards to join Bas on the ground.
    Theophilus moved to help him to his feet, checking him over for wounds, saw there were none and remarked, ‘Swift as ever, Caracal. Swift as ever.’
    Isaac stood over the near-corpse, watched the last fluttering of his chest with the cool disinterest of a professional, as a cobbler might inspect a bolt of leather. ‘A fine throw, seated as you were.’
    ‘With my off hand at that,’ Hamilcar said. He had come up from the table and dropped down