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

access hole leading down into the bowels of the mountain. As children they had dared each other to explore it, crawling into the dark with a candle nub for guidance, but when they had been eight little Crimson, Bandage’s second cousin, had gone down and never come back up, and that had been the last of the game. Still, it made for a good place to kill time, if you could get past the smell and the dark. ‘What’s gospel?’ Thistle asked.
    Felspar was handsome and clever, but more handsome than he was clever, a truth that he ignored to his frequent misfortune. By Thistle’s count, every third or fourth scrap they got into was on account of Felspar’s not being able to keep his mouth shut, relying on Treble’s size and Thistle’s savagery to save him from trouble. But then, down here in the Barrow, belligerence was not considered an unpardonable sin, and Thistle wasn’t the sort who minded a good brawl, or was particularly concerned as to what sparked one. What was the point of having boys if you couldn’t use them to bail you out, now and again?
    Treble was big and dim and loyal, though you could never be sure of the degree to which the last was a function of the second, whether he would have your back from virtue or simply because he couldn’t imagine another option. Thistle didn’t suppose it mattered much. Treble’s character didn’t seem to be spoiling, and as for his wit, well – there were even fewer signs of change in that department.
    Rat was as far from Treble as you could get, dark and always smiling. He hadn’t yet lost his baby fat. Thistle wondered at what point baby fat just became fat, suspected that Rat was fast approaching it. Rat wasn’t born in the Barrow – his father had been a baker up on the Fourth Rung – but when he had died of the plague his mother had lost the shop and had to move downslope. Perhaps it was this early brush with prosperity that was the cause of the Rat’s vague softness.
    They were the core group, though you could add the Brothers Calc and a few others. Urn the Youngest, the third of his name still extant, had been a mainstay as well, but the previous winter he had humiliated himself in a dust-up with some boys from upslope, left Felspar to deal with three of them on his own, and so by the rough and reasonable code of conduct adhered to in the Barrow he was no better than a dog, his name unfit for mention.
    ‘It’s hot,’ Treble said.
    ‘That’s news to you?’ Thistle asked.
    Treble shrugged. He’d done his best.
    Between the four of them they had enough tobacco for two cigarettes, and they went ahead and rolled them, Felspar doing the honours. Thistle felt that he rolled better than Felspar but Felspar felt otherwise, and it was too hot to fight over it, Treble had got that much right. The sun brought a rolling sort of boil that made it impossible to do anything but rot. With a dozen Salucian pennies or even a few bronze nummus they could have bought a bottle of potato liquor and sipped their way into evening. But it was empty pockets all round, and nothing to do but stew.
    ‘They’re having a dig tonight up at the East Stay. Supposed to have a band and everything,’ Rat said.
    ‘Be three pennies a head, at least,’ Felspar answered.
    ‘We won’t keep them, we try and march our way to the East Stay.’
    ‘The coin, or our heads?’
    An open question, not worth a response. Rat wasn’t really suggesting they go to the East Stay, he was just talking because there wasn’t anything else to do. There is a common misconception that poverty breeds crime, but in fact this skips a step. Poverty breeds boredom, and boredom leads to crime. Two hours of aimless waiting and Thistle and his boys were ready to pull a smash and grab just to relieve the monotony.
    It took longer to figure out where to pull it, though. Couldn’t do it in the Barrow; their faces were too well known. Try rolling someone in the neighbourhood and you end up getting a visit from a member