Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy

by Marian L Thorpe

  He frowned. “I thought that was the council?”

  “Well, yes and no. The council is elected to make sure the rules of the guild are followed. At Partition, the group of women who founded Tirvan decided what village’s rules would be and how we would live. They formed the guild that is Tirvan.”

  “So village rules are different from one place to another?” Garth asked.

  “Some of them,” I said. “But some were set once by larger guilds that operated over many villages. There used to be a fishing guild, and in theory I—and Maya—belong to it.”

  “What did it do?”

  I thought back, trying to remember what Dessa had taught me all those years ago.

  “It set the term of our apprenticeships, so they would be the same in all villages. Dessa told us that at one time, a small part of what we earned would have gone to the fishing guild. If we had needed money to buy Dovekie, or had a disagreement over fishing grounds that could not be settled by the village council, we would have sent word to Casilla, and representatives would have come to settle the issue. But that stopped a long time ago.”

  “Are guilds described in the Partition agreement?” Garth asked.

  “Yes,” Casyn said.

  “Could a new village guild be formed?”

  “Would the Emperor grant such a request?” I asked Casyn.

  “To answer you both,” Casyn said, “there is nothing to stop a group of women from requesting permission to start a new guild and a new village. As far as whether Callan would grant such a request,” he went on, “I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair. “Callan does not see himself as bound by tradition, which could lead him to reject a claim made on the basis of the rules of Partition. On the other hand, he might see it as fair recompense. The problem for this new guild would be twofold: where to find land for such a village and what the Empire’s responsibility towards it would be.”

  We fell silent. I sipped my wine, trying to imagine a village open only to those who had chosen exile. Would chance have given them the right mix of skills? What would Maya, whose trade was the boats and the nets, do in a land-locked village? What would I do?

  Nothing. I had not chosen exile. Maya was planning a future that did not, could not, include me.

  The men resumed talking, but their words swirled and eddied around me, unheard. Aasta brought dinner: rabbit stew and dark bread. My stomach growled, reminding me that I needed food. I took the bowl Aasta offered me and a slice of bread from the basket.

  The men talked of inconsequential things at dinner, Bren and Casyn telling stories of their younger days on the Wall. They had all of Garth’s attention, and I found myself drawn in by the tales. Bren rarely looked my way, speaking only to Garth and Casyn. The rain fell steadily, and even through the thick walls of the inn, we could hear water running in the gutters and splashing on the cobblestones.

  Sari came to clear the plates, bringing us dried fruit and biscuits, and, at Casyn’s request, another jug of wine. “We’ll stay here tomorrow,” he said. “One day of riding in the rain is enough, and the horses could use the rest. Siannon has a bruised frog. He’ll benefit from a day on straw.”

  I accepted another cup of wine. Without it, I reasoned, I doubted I would sleep tonight. My initial shock had passed; now anger crept in to replace it. Perhaps I should just go to Karst with Garth, and then—what? Go home? Ride to the Wall up the eastern track, braving mountain storms and bears? I looked up. Casyn and Bren spoke quietly together, but Garth was watching me. I took a mouthful of wine, avoiding his questioning eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke late the next morning, with a dull headache and heaviness in my muscles. I lay in the bed until the need for the chamber pot forced me up. Downstairs, Aasta gave me tea. After the third cup, heavily sweetened, I began to feel better. I ate a piece of dry toast. In the common room, Bren and Garth played xache. Outside, the rain continued.

  I wandered around the room. Like the other inns, this one had low ceilings and a flagged floor. The walls were whitewashed between the timbers. Small windows under the eaves on either side looked out on the courtyard and the road. I had no idea how to pass the time. At home, we spent wet days in the repair of nets and traps or other chores. A long wet spell in winter usually meant a few days of games and stories. I played xache fairly well, I thought, but I had no one to play with. In any case, I suspected Bren and Garth had the only set the inn owned.

  After some thought, I went out through the kitchen and along the corridor that connected the inn with the outbuildings. In the stable, I asked the ostler, Dorys, where to find Clio’s tack. Dorys showed me the harness room where I found the saddle soap and the necessary brushes and rags. I sat down on an upturned bucket in an empty stall to set to work.

  The saddle had started to gleam under my ministrations when I heard Casyn calling my name. “In here!” I called back.

  He came to the stall.

  “How is Siannon?”

  “Better,” he said. “He’ll be fine for tomorrow, if the rain stops. May I talk with you while you work?”

  “If you like,” I said. He left in search of another bucket. I sat down to re-soap the cloth. I had started on the bridle when Casyn returned. He sat, hands resting on his knees, watching me in silence for a little while.

  “I sat by the fire for a long time last night, thinking about Maya and what she and the other exiles want. I thought about what we asked of all of you, and how that has changed what the Empire is. Two hundred and thirty-three years have passed since the last assembly of men and women in the Empire. I think it is time for another.”

  I stopped rubbing soap into leather to look up, frowning “Another assembly?” I said. “With all of us? Where?”

  “Probably the winter camp site,” Casyn said in an amused tone. “And no, not quite all of us. The entire population of the Empire was not at the Partition assembly. Men and women were chosen to represent the views of larger groups.” He leaned forward, intent on his vision. “Maya has a point. Both men and women have consciously chosen to change the precepts of the Partition agreement. Surely, we must forge a new contract, and what better time than now? For the first time in ten generations, men and women have lived together, worked together, and trained together. Dern, Bren, and I, and for that matter Callan, all think differently of women than our fathers did. Lena, can you say that you see us, men and the Empire itself, in the same way as you did in the spring?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said slowly. “I have been thinking about this, a bit, while we have been riding. It seems to me that we—women, I mean—are schooled not to think beyond our village, its needs and customs. There’s so much I do not know about the Empire, or even about the next village. Some of it is my own fault. I should have listened more at lessons, but some of it I was never taught.”

  “I am not much of a scholar,” Casyn said, “but I have read what histories there are. The women’s villages have become more inward-looking in the past few generations. There used to be, according to the records, more travel between villages, and the guilds met once a year. A trader’s guild moved from village to village, bringing goods and news and ideas, and there were travelling musicians.”

  “What happened?”

  “You know what happened. This lesson you did learn, Lena.”

  The tunnels, I thought. Late springs, early winters, little food, not even enough to provision the men. Only a few children born, because the village could not afford more. “The heavy snows. Of course.” He nodded.

  “I always thought it was just the north. But the histories say otherwise. That was when the Wall was built to keep the northern people penned in. They were starving and beginning to raid southward.”

  “How long did the cold last?”

  “Maybe thirty years,” he said. “Long enough to change how the villages functioned, to make self-sufficiency their first concern. When the weather warmed again, the village councils needed every woman to farm and fi
sh. Travel would have been discouraged as well as, consciously or not, much teaching about the world beyond the village.” He stood. “Please keep this to yourself, for now, Lena. We will talk again before our ways part.” He smiled down at me as he left, his grave, slow smile. His hair was greyer than it was in the spring. Did Gille miss him? They had partnered only briefly, a month or two, but much longer than the Festival liaisons. We live apart and die apart, Casyn had said in the spring, in a voice shaded with regret. I wondered, for the first time, if we had to.

  When the bell rang for the noon meal, I had not finished cleaning the tack. After Casyn left I had sat, bridle in hand, trying to make sense of what I had heard in the past day. How could we give Maya and the other exiled women what they wanted, and at the same time shape a new contract between the villages and the military, and maybe even between women and men? Maya’s group wanted the old ways. Casyn was thinking of something new.

  The rain had stopped. The clouds moved east, and the day brightened. I walked across the wet courtyard. Sari came out of another building. The laundry, I thought, from the smells that came from the opened door, falling into step beside me.

  “I have the message for Maya. May I give it to you at the meal?”

  “Wait till the end, so as not to have it food-stained.” A thought struck me. “Sari, does this have anything to do with Maya’s plans for a new village?”

  “You know about it! I wasn’t sure. Yes, of course it is. The note is just to say that I would like to join them when I am adult and can choose.”

  “And this would be allowed?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said impatiently. “I couldn’t choose exile because I’m too young. But I would have. I did not want to fight, and I’m glad I did not have to. Fighting is for men.”

  “I fought.”

  “Then why are you looking for Maya?” she demanded. “You won’t be welcome. I better go,” she said in a different tone. “Aasta will need me.” She veered off towards the kitchen. I watched her run, trying not to resent the doubts her comment had surfaced. Would Maya even want to see me? I had fought. And killed.

  We ate barley soup with goat cheese and bread at the long table. “We can ride tomorrow,” Bren announced cheerfully. He had beaten Garth twice at xache.

  “Will you play with me, this afternoon?” I asked Casyn. I had things I wanted to ask him. He looked surprised but agreed.

  When Sari came to clear the table, she brought me the sealed note. I slipped it into the pocket of my trousers and went to the kitchen. “May I have a mug of hot water?” I asked Aasta. “I have a headache and would take some willow bark. I have some in my pack.” She poured water from the kettle, giving me the mug without comment. I went down the hall to my room to make my anash. The bitterness, without honey, no longer bothered me. I wondered if I still needed to drink it, and if the irregularity of the hour each day I did drink it would have consequences. I would know in a few days. Beyond that, I refused to think. I took the note from my pocket and put it inside my pack.

  I won the toss. We sat alone in the common room. Bren and Garth had gone to see their horses. I made my opening move. Casyn countered. We worked through a standard opening. Casyn knew his game and would beat me, I realized, but no matter.

  “Casyn,” I said quietly, “At the Partition assembly, what happened to those who did not vote for Partition?”

  He slid a piece along the squares. “Some accepted the choice and lived out their lives under the new order.”

  “And others?”

  “Exile from the Empire,” he said. “Slavery, for some.”

  “Where did they go?” Exile from the Empire meant leaving the bounds of the Empire forever. I moved a piece; a bad choice. Casyn took it. “North, or over the mountains. They were given six weeks to get beyond the borders. After that, they would be captured and killed, or enslaved.”

  “And the men castrated, as Garth would have been?” I asked. I could not help myself.

  Casyn put down the taken rider. “Garth was being trained as a medic,” he said calmly. “Medics serve in the field and are part of the army. He would not have been castrated. How do you know of this, Lena?” I reddened.

  “Dern told you,” he surmised.

  “We were talking one night about killing, about sending others to kill or be killed,” I said. “It was very late, and we had drunk more wine than was wise.”

  “It is a barbaric practice,” Casyn said, with an edge to his voice. I looked up, surprised. “The forces of the Empire accept change very slowly, and with much resistance. The threat of castration overcomes most boys’ fears about fighting. That is the argument and the justification. But if one studies the records, for the generations we have kept them, the number of boys who cannot bring themselves to serve in the field has not changed. There are always a few. The refusal to fight has not been bred out of them, which is the real thinking behind the practice.”

  I moved a xache piece almost randomly, not thinking about the game. “Are you speaking for yourself, or as the Emperor’s advisor?”

  “Both,” he said after a moment. “Callan feels as I do, but that cannot be said to anyone, Lena, not even Garth, or Dern, were you to meet up with him again. Our father, who was a brave man and a good soldier, fathered a third son, Colm. It was clear from the earliest days that he would never make a soldier. He is a scholar and a historian. He taught Callan and me what we know of the Empire’s history, but he paid a high price.” I could hear the bitterness in his voice.

  He looked at the board. “We aren’t really playing, are we?” he asked. I shook my head. He leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps this invasion by Leste was a blessing,” he said. “Perhaps now we have a reason to talk of change.”

  “Did you talk of this, with Gille?”

  “A bit,” he said. “It was her idea for me to ride with you, so that we could talk. If you were to choose maybe half-a-dozen women to represent Tirvan at an assembly, Lena, who would you choose? Beyond yourself, and the council, of course.”

  I considered. “Tali,” I said after a moment, “and Dessa. Maybe Kyan. And Casse, for her long experience.” I thought a while more. “I would have chosen Siane, too. Her views were shared by only a few others in the village, but they should be heard.”

  Casyn nodded. “You will be a fine council leader one day, Lena.”

  “But never a general,” I said lightly. He looked at me appraisingly.

  “Would you be, if you could?”

  I thought of the blood spilling over my hands, and of Tice’s body in the willow. I shook my head. “No.”

  “I would have said the same at eighteen,” he said. I wanted to ask him to explain, but he continued on. “When you stop at the inns, after we part, you might plant the thought of an assembly, just a hint, a suggestion made over wine and talk, nothing more. My brother needs to be seen to be serving the wishes of his people, not calling for a new order from the chair of the Emperor.” He reached out to move a piece one square forward.

  We played out the game, Casyn winning in five moves. I could not find a way to ask him to explain what he had meant about not wanting to be a general. It seemed too private a thing for me to probe. When we had finished playing, I went back to the stable to finish cleaning my tack, and to think. I thought I understood, a little, how Maya had felt in the spring, her world shifting toward an unrecognizable future. The familiar task provided comfort, and I gave myself up to it.

  In the late afternoon, the rattle of hooves on the cobblestones broke the stillness. A lone rider came through the archway and dismounted, handing his reins to Dorys. She led the horse, a bay gelding, wet with sweat, into the stable. I went to help her. “Who is it?” I asked, unbuckling the bridle.

  “Major Turlo,” she said. “He’s ridden hard today.” She called to her apprentice. “Walk this horse till he cools, then curry him down well. I’ll make up a bran mash for him. Keep him away from that water trough,” she warned. The girl grinned at her, taking
the horse by his bridle.

  Turlo, I remembered, had been the soldier sent to Berge. I put my tack away and washed the smell of saddle soap off my hands. Then I crossed the yard.

  The day had brightened considerably through the afternoon, and the common room seemed dark. The men stood near the fireplace. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw that the newcomer had the reddest hair and beard I had ever seen. I stopped, uncertain. Red hair belonged north of the wall. I remembered what Casse had said about the raids, and the rapes. I stepped forward.

  “Lena,” Casyn said, “this is Major Turlo. Lena was a Cohort-Leader and instrumental in winning the battle at Tirvan.”

  Turlo shook my hand. Younger than Bren and Casyn, he had bright blue eyes. “Good for you, lass,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the wrong side of the women of Berge. They fought well—only lost four, and the whole thing was over in a few hours.”

  “We lost four, too, but it took nearly three days to finish it. And without Garth, I am not sure what we would have done.”

  Turlo looked from me to Garth. “There’s a story here. Let’s have some wine and hear it.” He strode over to the kitchen door. “Aasta,” he called, “some wine, if you will, and five cups. And something to tide us over till supper. I’ve been riding since before dawn, and you don’t want me keeling over on your hearth.” I laughed. I liked this man. He seemed genuinely interested in what had happened at Tirvan, unlike Bren.

  We arranged ourselves in chairs near the fireplace. “The invaders came at dawn,” I started, “although we’d seen the sails the day before and were ready. All our cohorts lay in wait, hidden, and when the Lestians landed we let them move up into the village before we began the defence.” Aasta came out with a tray bearing wine and small savouries. She put the tray down on the table, but she did not leave again, seating herself on a stool to the left of the hearth. I continued. Turlo listened without comment until I described recognizing Garth. He whistled, low and long.

  “Luck was with you, Garth,” he said, reaching for the wine flask. “Go on,” he said to me. I took a sip of my wine before continuing on. I did not look at the men, but stared into the flames, trying to remember the order and the details of those hours and days. I told of the search for the Lestians, of Tice’s death, of the raid at the burying.