Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy

by Marian L Thorpe

  Pel looked unhappy. “I wanted to watch the knife play.”

  “It won’t start for another hour,” I said. “Go to the harbour now to tell Dessa that I said she may use Dovekie for as long as she needs her. If you’re quick and don’t linger at the boats, I’ll teach you a move or two with the knives before we start practice this morning.” Pel brightened and jumped up. He glanced at his mother for permission, running out the door almost before Tali had finished saying “Go.” I cut a slice of bread, spreading honey on it.

  “Don’t let him become a nuisance.”

  I shrugged. “There’s always a gaggle of them about, the small boys and some of the girls. It won’t hurt them to learn a bit.” I finished my bread and took a sip of my tea. It had cooled, so I drank it down. “Would you send him to the practice field when he gets back? I want to speak with Tice before the others arrive.” I rinsed my mug and plate, setting them to drain on the wooden rack over the sink. From a basket on the table, I took an apple and a pear. Tali filled a water bottle. “What are you doing today?” I asked.

  “Picking more apples,” she said. “They’re a bit green, but they should dry well.” She grinned. “If a big storm blows up and drowns all the invaders, we’re going to be sick of smoked fish and dried apples this winter.”

  I laughed and went out into the sunlight. From long habit, I turned to look out to sea. A haze hung over the horizon, but the white sails of fishing boats dotted the bay. I walked up the hill to the empty practice field, my sandaled feet kicking up small clouds of dust. I stopped in a shaded corner and began the stretching exercises Casyn had taught us. Methodically, I counted my way through the routine, one-two-three, one-two-three. My skin gleamed with sweat when I sensed rather than heard someone approaching. I looked up.

  “Good morning,” Tice said.

  “And to you. Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The wine helped. Did you stay with Dern long?”

  “We talked for a while longer,” I said. “Tice, I want you to teach us to dance.”

  “To dance!” she exclaimed.

  “Will you?”

  “I can try,” she said, “but we don’t have much time. I don’t know if what I can teach in a few weeks can make much difference.”

  “In a few weeks, we have learned the sword and the secca, and the bow, for some.”

  “True,” she said. “I’ll do my best, cohort-leader.”

  I grinned. She pulled her dark hair back off her face and tied it, then joined me in the stretches. When our muscles felt loose and supple, we switched to knife play, and then to wrestling. When Pel arrived with his friend Salle, we taught them the simpler moves with the wooden knives. They went off to the far corner of the field to practice. Tice and I sat in the shade of the tree. I gave her the pear, and we sat in silence, savouring the crisp tartness of the fruit.

  I tossed my apple core aside. “Show me how to move more quietly, before the others get here.”

  “I can show you some things,” she said. “But unless you have danced the dances of Karst since you were a babe newly on your feet, you—or any of the cohort—will never be truly silent.”

  “Anything would be an improvement. I couldn’t sneak up on a hibernating bear.”

  Tice laughed. “You’re quieter than you think,” she said. “Your body has learned some grace from the knife-play, and the beginnings a different sort of balance than you needed on the boats. But come,” she said, on her feet in one swift move, extending a hand to help me up, “I’ll show you what I can.”

  Patiently, she explained how to roll my weight along my foot and push off lightly from the ball of my feet and from my toes. I practised this for a while. My movements felt exaggerated and artificial, but I did make less noise. We had moved on to the steps of the first dance learned by Karst children when Dern arrived. I stopped, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Taran taught me that dance, too, when we served together,” he observed. “Come, Lena,” he said, grasping my hands. “Dance with me.” I stopped myself from stepping back. His hands felt cool and dry against my moist palms. Our heights matched. “To the left, to begin,” he said, sliding his left leg sideways in the first move of the simple dance. I looked at my feet and followed.

  After two or three steps, I looked up to find Dern also watching his feet. Tice slowly chanted the moves, and I relaxed. We managed a dozen steps or so before our feet collided. Dern stumbled, and I stopped. We looked at each other, his hands still holding mine. For a handful of heartbeats, we stood, his eyes travelling from mine, down to my lips, and back again to meet my gaze. I flushed, pulling my hands away. “I was never a dancer,” I said.

  “And I am out of practice. Apologies for my awkwardness. Shall we return to the knives, where we know the moves?” He turned away to begin his warm-up exercises. Tice caught my eye, grinning. I felt myself flushing again and busied myself with my knife.

  The cohort began to arrive a few minutes later. After the stretching exercises and basic moves, I sent half the women to work with Dern, and Tice and I began the remedial work with the other half. We worked on grip and angles, on wrist actions and on movement. By the end of two hours, I could see a marked improvement in the entire group. Lara arrived with water. We took turns drinking before stretching out in the shade for a well-earned rest.

  After the break, Tice took over. As a group, we kicked off our sandals, to learn how to walk in a new fashion. Dern excused himself and went back down the hill towards the forge. The cohort practised silence—foot-silence, anyhow. Laughter and muffled curses punctuated the activity, especially when the time came to judge each woman individually. Freya topped us all.

  With about an hour left in the morning’s training, I called a halt. The cohort settled into a rough half-circle on the grass.

  “You’ve all worked hard this morning,” I said. “But we’re going to introduce something new now. I think you’ve all noticed how graceful Tice is, how smoothly she moves?” Several heads nodded. “I’d like us all to move our bodies like that, and to help us learn, I’ve asked Tice to teach us to dance.”

  “To dance?” Aline said, unknowingly echoing Tice’s reaction of the previous night. “I’m not going to learn to dance. We were chosen to learn knife skills, not to dance.” She sounded disgusted. I almost laughed, remembering how black and white the world seemed at fourteen. “You’re not my apprentice-master,” she continued. “Casyn chose me, not you.”

  “As he chose me to lead this cohort,” I said quietly. “So you will do as I say, and as Tice says, and you will learn to dance. Not for pleasure, but for the precision of step and balance and movement it teaches. I will be learning right beside you. It is Tice who is the master in this. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she muttered, but she did not meet my eye. Had I misjudged my response? I thought of Casyn’s words: In battle, there is no democracy.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s get started.”

  I went to my mother’s to eat. Neither she nor Kira answered my call. They were out in the village, I surmised, checking on Nessa’s newborn or one of the other soon-to-deliver women. I took some cheese and bread and sat on the porch, where breezes from the sea cooled the air a little. I watched the gulls over the sea, and the sails of the boats out on the fishing banks, the blue-and-white of Dovekie among them. There was a line of clouds on the horizon, building up from the heat. Rain later, with a bit of luck. Will Maya have shelter, if it rains wherever she is? Does she have food? My chest tightened. I blinked back tears. No, I thought. Think about something else. Think about correcting Gayl’s balance.

  A while later, I saw my mother walking up the path, looking tired. I got up to bring her water. She sat on the porch, drinking thirstily. “Ranni’s labour started. I’ve left Kira with her for a bit. She’s capable of handling the early stages, now.”

  “Will it be all right?” I asked. Nessa had lost one of her twins at birth a few days earlier, after a long and difficul
t labour.

  “Everything seems normal, but she’s scared, with it being her first baby. And with the times. I shouldn’t stay away long.” She poured herself another drink. “I will be calling meeting tonight, or tomorrow—tonight if the rain comes early.”

  “Why?”

  “Skua will arrive soon,” she said. “Her crew of men will be going into battle soon, chancing death. We are a village of women facing the same truth for the first time. I won’t deny either group comfort, but neither can we risk new pregnancies. All of us, apprentice to elder, who are of childbearing years must begin to drink anash tea as soon as possible.”

  Anash tea, if drunk before and after Festival for a few days, and each day during, prevented pregnancy. A poor harvest or a bad winter meant general use at Festival, but an individual woman drank it whenever she did not wish a Festival liaison to result in pregnancy. I thought of Dern and forced the thought away.

  “Apprentices?” I asked. “But we don’t allow apprentices liaisons.”

  “No,” my mother agreed, her voice tired, “in usual times, we do not. But we feel, Gille and Sarah and I, that we cannot deny that these are not usual times. In the coming raids, some of us will die or be raped. These are not Empire’s men. Providing the council agrees with us, we won’t stop liaisons between Skua’s crew and our girls and women, regardless of status. And all of us will drink anash tea until the war is over, both against wanted encounters, and unwanted.”

  “I see,” I said slowly. I did see, but I didn’t want to drink anash. I fetched my mother some food, and we sat on the porch and ate and drank cool water. After another half hour, I went back to the practice field.

  Dern did not come back in the afternoon. I wondered where he was, and with whom. The cohort worked and danced for another two hours, until the thunderheads building in the western sky rumbled, and the fishing boats ran back into harbour ahead of the storm. I went down to the docks to help unload and prepare the boats.

  Lightening flashed, and the first fat drops of rain splashed into the water when we finished. The air smelled of wet dust and the sharp tang that followed lightening. I stood on the dock, holding my face up to the rain. Maya loved thunderstorms, loved the feel of the rain and the play of light and shadow in the clouds. She would sit in the window of our room on summer evenings, watching the storms out over the sea and the seabirds playing on the storm winds, laughing in pure delight. A wave of loneliness poured over me.

  I closed my eyes. Behind me, I could hear someone moving around on the boats—Dessa, probably, inspecting for storm-readiness. Work provided the antidote. I opened my eyes and went to help her, checking ropes and hatches while the rain grew stronger.

  By the time we finished, my hair and clothes were dripping. I walked up the hill, grabbed a change of clothes and a towel, and went to the baths. Someone had tacked an announcement of meeting tonight to the door. I went in, rinsed my feet and hands, and sank into the hot pool. For a while, I just floated, letting the warmth ease my tired muscles. The gentle movement of the water against my skin comforted me. Maya had excelled at back rubs, working the kinks out of neck and shoulders, aching from hauling nets. I missed her touch, missed not the pleasure but the solace of lovemaking, the basic human need for connection. If I wanted, I knew, Dern would meet that need, both mine and his.

  I considered. Maya and I had paired before puberty, her sadness evoking some instinct for protection in me. We had become lovers as adolescents, and in the eyes of the village had partnered in all senses. Liaisons with men had little effect on most partnerships between women, although some women, like my aunt Tali, who had truly and deeply loved the man who fathered her elder children, chose to live partnerless. We’d talked about this: Maya had wanted no children to give up to the Empire. I remained ambivalent, but childbearing had nothing to do with how I felt. Loneliness did. I wanted, simply, arms around me, the scent and warmth and feel of another body against mine.

  The sound of the door opening startled me out of my reverie. Dessa, I guessed, correctly, and Siane with her. They joined me in the hot pool, Dessa supporting Siane carefully as she edged into the pool. “Ranni’s doing well,” Siane said, once she had settled. “We stopped on the way up. Gwen thinks it’ll be another five or six hours.”

  “Good,” I said. Dessa moved forward and began to rub Siane’s bad leg. Siane sighed, leaning back. I had seen this a hundred times, but in my current state of mind this casual, accepted support of each other rankled. I wanted the same, and Maya had taken it away.

  I left the baths, saying goodbye to Dessa and Siane. I dried and dressed, going out into the early evening. I walked along the gravel path, passing the forge and Casyn’s cottage. Through open windows, I could hear the murmur of voices: Casyn and Dern, I surmised, planning tactics. The storm had cooled the day and an evening breeze, gentle now, blew off the sea. I felt a sudden urge to be out on the water. Why not?

  I readied Dovekie, rowing her out beyond the shelter of the harbour, to where the winds would fill her sail. The sun westered in a clear sky, only a few wisps of cloud trailing eastward behind the storm. I shipped the oars and set Dovekie’s sail, tacking northward along the coast. Seabirds soared and plunged around me, hoping for fish. The breeze blew more stiffly here. I became lost in the familiar, the feel of the tiller under my hand and the smell of the sea around me, the rush of water against Dovekie’s side and the cries of the gulls overhead. I sailed north, until the land curved out to meet me. Beyond that promontory, the bay gave way to the open Lantanan Sea, wilder and crueller: no place for a lone sailor even on a calm summer’s evening. I brought Dovekie about, heading home.

  “How do we know anash is safe to use for weeks on end?” Kyan asked, after my mother had explained both the council’s reasoning and decision on the subject. “Or for young girls?”

  “To answer the first,” my mother said, “let me tell you that I read what books I have carefully. While I cannot say with certainty that anash is safe for long use, it is clear that, before Partition, most women drank it regularly to space their pregnancies and to limit them. I wish I had more books, but I could find nothing to suggest there was any danger attached to the practice.”

  “Fair enough,” Kyan said. “But for the girls?”

  “I truly do not know. It was first used against the Eastern fever, so it would have been given to girls, surely. I gather our foremothers learned of its other properties accidentally. I doubt its use is a greater risk than pregnancy for girls of twelve or fourteen. If a girl is capable of conceiving, she needs to use the means to prevent it.”

  “But a twelve-year-old?” Siane said, her voice wavering with fear. “Or even younger?” Siane’s daughter Lara, only eleven, had remained home tonight, but when she brought water up to the practice field, I had noticed how her shirt pulled against her developing breasts. Her menses could begin at any time.

  “Rape,” Sara said, “especially in wartime, has little or nothing to do with normal desire. Rather it is an act of domination and aggression. Age will not matter, if it comes to that.”

  Casse stood to speak. “I doubt anyone here but Gwen knows my mother was not Tirvan-born, but came from Berge to be the smith here a hundred years ago,” she said. “I was born when she was thirty, so these memories are very old. When she was a girl in Berge, raids from across the border were not uncommon, and rape happened. Do not think it cannot, here.” She sat down again.

  Siane buried her face in her hands. I shuddered.

  Sara continued. “For girls below apprentice age, the use of anash is a decision for the girl and her mother. The council will not interfere. But for girls of apprentice age, we deem the use necessary.”

  “What do I say to her?” Siane said, clearly not expecting an answer. Sara chose to answer regardless.

  “That is between you and Dessa and Lara, Siane,” she said. “You have some time. We see no need for the younger girls to begin drinking anash more than a week or two before the autumn equinox.
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  “Perhaps,” my mother added, “I can be of help.” Several women assented eagerly. “We can talk after meeting is done,” my mother offered. “But now we need to speak of the older apprentices. We are proposing that those sixteen this year and above be allowed liaisons with Skua’s crew, if desired.”

  Freya’s mother, Binne, stood. “I asked my daughter,” she said. Freya sat with the other senior apprentices. This age group came to meeting at the invitation of council leaders, to hear debate and to learn the protocols, but they had no right to speak. “Freya would like the right to choose a liaison this summer. If we lose, she knows that may mean no choice at all, and she would prefer her first experience with a man to be something she wants, with a man of her choosing. I cannot find fault with her argument.”

  “Except,” another woman said, “that we could make the same argument for those younger than sixteen.”

  “How old are the ship’s crew?’ Marna asked.

  “I asked Dern that,” Gille said. “There are no cadets; the youngest will be about eighteen.”

  “Fifteen is just too young,” Kelle said. “We structure our apprenticeships so that we have little experience in making decisions until we reach sixteen; we observe, and do what we are told. I couldn’t have made a good choice about this at fifteen.”

  “Nor I,” said her sister Salle. “I agree with Kelle.”

  “Shall we vote?” my mother asked. Hearing agreement from the women of voting age, she continued. “Two votes, then. First, in the red boxes, we vote on the requirement of all apprentices under sixteen to drink anash, beginning shortly before the equinox. Second, in the black boxes, we vote on whether to allow apprentices sixteen this year and older the opportunity for liaisons with men from Skua’s crew.”

  The council leaders distributed the pebbles, and we voted. Both proposals passed, although fewer women voted for the first proposal than the second.