Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy

by Marian L Thorpe

  “Your aunt was glad, in a way, to see him go. He was growing headstrong, and we have no experience with raising boys over seven. He needed the discipline of cadet school,” my mother said. “And he—well, not just Pel, but all the boys of age—were wild to be gone. They threatened to take the ponies and find the army themselves, when no men came in the spring,” she added.

  “Pel would have done it, too,” I said, contemplating. “Especially after Garth taught them to ride. How did you stop them?”

  She laughed. “It was Casse. She rounded them up and told them, in no uncertain terms, that the ponies belonged to Tirvan, they were needed for the hunt, and if they took them, they would be guilty of theft. And thieves, she pointed out, were punished severely in the army; not only would they have disappointed their fathers, they would have robbed themselves of any chance of advancement. I am not sure if it was those reasons, or when she told them bluntly that their only work in the army would be digging latrines and cleaning them, too, that convinced them, but convince them she did.”

  I laughed. “Good for Casse,” I said. “And Dessa? How is she?” Dessa had been my apprentice-master on the boats. Her partner, Siane, had been killed in the failed invasion by Leste, leaving Dessa to raise Siane's daughter.

  “She is better,” my mother said. “And Lara,” she added, brightening, “is apprenticed to me, or to me and Kira, I suppose, as of last autumn.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I can see Lara as a healer,” I said, “but I did not think she would leave Dessa. Before I left, she was like her shadow.”

  My mother nodded. “She was. But in the spring after the invasion, when Dessa began fishing again, Lara was sick with worry every time she took the boat out. It was Kira who began to spend time with her, taking her to pick herbs, talking to her, reassuring her. So, when she turned twelve, and asked the council to let her apprentice with us, well, we could not say no. And Dessa approved. Lara is slight, as you know. The boats would not have been a wise choice.”

  “I'm glad,” I said. I was suddenly homesick, the stab of longing a physical pain. I wanted to see Tirvan again, the unpainted clapboard houses on the hill, the jetty and the boats, my upstairs bedroom in my aunt Tali's house. I wanted my boat back, my Dovekie, built for a crew of two. I wanted to soak in the baths and watch the golden eagles hunting over the high fields where the sheep grazed. But I could, I realized. I could go home now, when I was well enough, surely?

  The next morning my mother came in with something in her hands. I was standing, restless and unsettled, looking out the window at the glimpse of the sea beyond the roofs and streets of Berge. I turned as my mother came in.

  “I have something for you,” she said. I looked at what she held out.

  “Colm's history!” I gasped. “How? It was taken, at Fritjof's hall.” I recognized the other book, too: my journal. I took them from her, turning them over in my hands.

  “Cillian had them,” she said. “They had been given to him to begin translating. He knew they were precious to you—and to Perras, he said—so he took them. I thought it was time you had them back.”

  I stared at the books. Even if they had not been taken from me, they would have been lost with my saddlebag, the night we stole the boat. Cillian had saved them. My hands trembled. Tears stung my eyes, and then I was sobbing, deep, racking sobs that brought back my cough. My mother put her arm around me, and guided me to the bed, sitting with me, holding me, as I cried, and coughed, and cried some more.

  “Clio,” I said, or rather wailed, when I could speak at all again. “I left her there. I had to, but I miss her—and what will they do with her?” I said between sobs. “They will have ridden her to war, and she could have been killed.”

  “Shhh,” my mother soothed. “You had no choice, Lena. You did the best you could, and you did well.”

  Anger took the place of grief, suddenly and violently. I pulled away from my mother. “You are right,” I shouted. “I had no choice. I was a hostage. I was meant to be at a house of learning, not forced into marriage with a prince of a people I didn't know existed. I said I would go, I would be the hostage, because I didn't...I couldn't disappoint Casyn again. I owed him that. He said I was like a daughter to him—how could I say no? But I went to learn…” I stopped. Even through my flaring anger I knew what I was saying was wrong. I had not known what being a hostage entailed when I agreed. And how could Casyn have known what he was sending me to? I shook my head, my anger turning against myself. My mother was murmuring something.

  “Don't listen to me, Mother,” I said wearily. “I know it's not Casyn's fault, or the Emperor's. It's just how things turned out. They couldn't have known.”

  “You are allowed to be angry,” she said. “None of this—none of the last two years—is what you thought your life would be: there have been forces beyond your control, as well as the consequences of your own choices.” I swallowed, nodding. She went on. “And when we doubt our own choices,” she said gently, “it can be easier to let others make the next decisions for us, or do what we think they would want us to do. It's why there are three council leaders in the women's villages, Lena, so our decisions are never made alone, and two of us must agree.”

  “But how do you know your choices are right?” Even to my own ears, I sounded about ten. But my mother just put her arm around my shoulders, and pulled me to her.

  “We often don't,” she answered. “Lena, do you want to tell me what happened with Maya?

  I shook my head, tears leaking from my eyes. My mother rocked me gently. “Your letter reached me, although it took a very long time,” she said. “You sounded so hopeful, when you wrote: Maya had come to Casilla, and you had found work on the fishing boats, and there was Valle to raise. I thought you were still there, you know, until Casyn's first message came to tell me you had been sent north, as a hostage to the peace. Why did you leave Casilla, Lena?”

  “She sent me away,” I whispered.

  “Maya sent you away?” I heard the surprise in my mother's voice.

  The tears rolled down my cheeks. I did not try to check them. “She wanted Valle to herself, because he was Garth's. She could accept Ianthe; she was Valle's aunt, too. But I didn't have a claim, she told me, so I didn't need to stay. She and Ianthe could raise him, without me.”

  “Did she know about you and Garth?”

  “I don't know,” I admitted. “I never told her, but maybe she guessed, from all the time we spent together on the road. Or maybe Garth told Ianthe, and she told Maya. I don't know,” I repeated.

  “Oh, Lena,” my mother said. “Why didn't you just come home?”

  I sat up, wiping my eyes. “I was going to,” I admitted. “And then Dian came, looking for supplies and recruits, and she told me how hard the fight was on the Wall. And Casyn had asked me to come north, and I hadn't. I thought about how I had had a choice, but Garth and Daryl and Finn and all the other young men didn't—and I could be useful. So I went.”

  “To where you were wanted, and where you didn't have to make choices,” my mother said gently.

  I pulled away from her slightly. “Yes,” I admitted slowly. “But it was more than that, Mother. Casyn had trusted me to be a leader at Tirvan, and a messenger on the road, and had made me privy to some of the inner thoughts of the Emperor. The Emperor himself had trusted me. Even when I was working in Casilla, helping to raise Valle, the thought was at the back of my mind that I had betrayed their trust. So, I went to the Wall.”

  “Did you never think that we needed you in Tirvan?” The question was asked gently, without accusation.

  “No,” I said. “Tirvan was fine without me.” She sighed.

  “You are so like your father,” she said, surprising me.

  “My father?” I said.

  “Yes,” she answered. “The Festival you were conceived, he told me right from the start he wouldn't be back to Tirvan. If I birthed a boy-child, he'd come back to claim him at the appropriate time, but otherwise, no. He liked
seeing new places, he said. In reply to my letter telling him of your birth, he sent a doll—do you remember it?” I nodded. “And I never heard from Galen again.”

  “I met him,” I said.

  “Did you?” She sounded surprised. “So he's still alive.”

  “Well, he was around midwinter,” I clarified. “He'd ridden in from the eastern end of the Wall, where it meets the Durrains, for supplies and probably with information. Turlo introduced us. He seemed likeable. We talked for a few minutes; he asked about you,” I remembered. “I have a sister, he told me, in Rigg, and two brothers at the cadet school at the Eastern Fort. Then he wished me luck, and rode away.” I shrugged. “But why do you say I'm like him?”

  “Oh, Lena,” she said, a trace of amusement threading her voice, “adventure. Do you remember asking me why you couldn’t ride away with the men, when you turned seven?”

  “Did I?” I said. “I don’t remember that.” But her words brought back, not a memory, but a feeling, an inchoate longing, mixed with a vague sense of failure.

  “And then later you always wanted new coves to fish, new directions to sail. And you certainly didn't get that from me! I've never been out of Tirvan in my life, until now.”

  “But I wanted to come home,” I protested. “I was going to, until the Wall was breached, and Casyn needed me to ride south to ask for help. And I'm coming home with you now, when I'm well enough.”

  “If the Emperor will let you,” she said gently.

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You are still sworn to his service, you know, and bound by the terms of the truce between him and Linrathe. For which you stood hostage, Lena. Just because we gave—are giving—aid to Linrathe against a common enemy does not mean the truce is superseded. The Emperor may choose to send you back to the house of learning you first were at, and is within his rights to do so.”

  “I don't think he would, though.” I answered. “Callan is a just man.”

  “He is also an Emperor at war,” my mother said. She sighed. “Try not to worry about it, Lena. Do you want to read now? Or write in your journal? I’ll leave you in peace, if so.”

  “Maybe I'll try to write a bit,” I said. “A lot has happened. I'm not sure I can remember it all.”

  “It may come back, as you write. I often found that, when I wrote notes about childbirths.” She stood. “Tomorrow, if the day is dry, I will take you outside. You need to begin to walk, to build up your strength.”

  I smiled at the thought. “Then I hope the day is dry,” I said. “I'm feeling like a newly-sheared sheep. I just want to get out of this pen and back to my fields.”

  She laughed. “Good. One more day, and you can be out in the air again.”

  When my mother had left, I opened my journal. I had written nothing since my arm had been injured the first time, saving Donnalch's hawk. So much to remember. I would make a list, I decided, to begin with, and then fill in the details. I picked up the pen, dipped it in the inkpot, and began.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Three more days passed. True to her word, my mother took me out, first into a walled courtyard that caught the sun, and then for longer walks, into Berge itself. We stopped a lot, sitting on whatever was at hand: sometime the steps of a house, sometimes a low wall. But by the third day, I could walk to the harbour overlook, although my mother would not allow me to attempt the long descent down to the sea itself.

  Berge itself felt both familiar and unfamiliar. The village was perhaps twice the size of Tirvan, and unlike my home village, which straggled down a reasonably gentle slope to the harbour, Berge had two sections: the houses and workshops on the top of the cliff, and those at the harbour. A track angled down steeply between the two halves of the village, with a few buildings along it. More stone had been used in building here, especially at the harbour level, perhaps for strength against the wind and tide. The Wall could be seen easily from Berge, its line along the northern horizon following the contours of the land, extending from the fort at the land's end, down the cliff, to end at the military harbour. From my vantage point at the top of the cliff, I could see several ships at anchor. One of them, I thought, might be Skua.

  The on-shore breeze brought with it the smell of fish, and I could hear voices from the harbour and the occasional jangle of rigging. Seabirds soared along the cliffs, their grace in the air changing to clumsiness when they landed at their ledge nests. Out to sea, I watched the gannets fishing, their black-tipped wings folded as they dove vertically into the water, almost always coming up with a fish in their beaks. Some fisherwomen hated them, thinking they competed for fish, but I loved watching their precision and skill.

  But as much as I wanted to watch the birds and the sea, my eyes kept returning north, to the ships and the fort and the Wall. I thought of the conversation my mother and I had had, sitting on a stone wall in the morning sunshine the day before.

  “Why hasn’t Cillian come to see me?” I had asked again.

  “Lena, think,” she had answered. “This is a women’s village of the Empire. Cillian is a man of the north. How could he come?”

  “Oh,” I had said, feeling stupid. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” But the exchange had reminded me of something else. “Why was I brought to Berge, and not treated by the Empire’s medics, anyhow?” I had asked. “At the White Fort, Guards weren’t sent to the nearest woman’s village if they were injured or ill.”

  “Who nursed them? Not the actual treatment, but who dealt with their personal needs, if they were unable to take care of themselves?”

  “Women,” I had admitted. “So here, with Berge so close...”

  “Exactly,” she had said. “The medic had drained your cuts, and poulticed them, exactly as Marta or I would have done, but you needed constant care, and the women of Berge could do that better than the army could. Remember, you had brought word of imminent invasion, and all hands were needed to respond to that.” She had sighed, then. “I know you are restless, Lena, and you have questions that I cannot answer. But you must be patient.”

  I was not good at patience. I felt almost as much a hostage here in Berge as I had at the Ti’ach: I had little choice in what I could do, and my future depended on what Callan—or more likely Casyn or Turlo—determined. I needed something to do, and I knew I lacked the strength to make the walk down the cliff to the harbour and back, even if I could have been useful once I was there. I was writing my journal, slowly, but I could not do that all day. I looked north, one last time, and stood to begin my slow walk back to Marta’s house.

  This was the first day my mother had allowed me out alone. I was grateful for that: I needed space and solitude, and while I was surrounded by houses and other people out about their business, their brief greetings did not intrude on my thoughts, and the long views sufficed to make me feel less cooped up. As I walked back through the upper village, I resolved to ask for some light work, something that would occupy my hands for a few hours a day, at least.

  The mid-day meal was ready when I arrived, bread and smoked fish, and some spring greens, served at a table on the broad porch of Marta’s house. I had my appetite back, and I ate hungrily. When the meal was over, I stood to carry dishes to the kitchen.

  “Lena, you don’t need to do that,” Marta, Berge’s midwife and healer, said. “Kyreth can do it.” Kyreth was her apprentice, a girl of fourteen, who had brought me drinks and food when I was still bedridden, and listened while my mother and Marta had discussed my progress.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I need something to do. Let me clean up, so Kyreth can do other work. I have caused you enough extra work, these past weeks. Let me start to make up for it.”

  “All right,” Marta said, with a glance at my mother. “But let Kyreth bring the water from the well. You should not be carrying the bucket yet.”

  I conceded this point. While I moved from porch to kitchen with the plates, Kyreth fetched water to fill the kettle simmering over the banked fire. Then, w
ith a brief “Thank you, Lena,” she disappeared, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

  When the kettle steamed again, I swung it away from the fire, carefully lifting it off its hook. It was the smaller kettle, the one used to heat water for tea, but even so the weight of it tugged at the scars on my chest. I rested it on the kitchen table before I took the last steps over to the counter where the basin awaited, put it down again, and counted to twenty before I lifted it again to tip the water into the basin.

  Washing dishes had never been such hard work. Four plates, knives and forks, and a few serving bowls, and by the time they were washed, dried, the wash-water poured away and the kettle returned to the fire, I needed to sit. I had done little that used my upper body in the last weeks. My chest ached. I explored the area with my fingers: no bleeding, just the tenderness of healing tissue after use.

  I rested, looking out the kitchen window to where Kyreth worked in the herb garden. I wondered what else I could do. Washing hung on a clothesline, moving slightly in the gentle breeze. I would fetch that in, when the warmth of the day began to fade, I decided. I got up and went outside, to tell Kyreth.

  And so it went, for a week, ten days: I did household chores, more each day, and began to run errands for Marta, delivering salves and teas, finding my way around Berge. The scars hurt less, and I grew stronger. When it was sunny and dry, I would linger at the top of the cliff, watching the sea, breathing in the familiar smells. I thought about returning to Tirvan. The thought made me oddly uncomfortable, and I tried to analyse what it was. Surely I wanted to go home? It was all I had thought about, many times, on the Wall, and as a hostage. But when I turned my mind to my village, to my little boat Dovekie, to the work out on the sea and at the jetty, I felt the inertia of reluctance underneath the pull of the familiar.

  On a clear afternoon, I sat on the wall above the harbour watching a small boat, in design and size almost identical to Dovekie, sailing in to the jetty, crewed by two women, working together with the competence of long practice. Observing them, I realized the source of my vacillation about going home. Who would I fish with? Or live with? As I analysed this thought, I saw it was deeper than that. My life in Tirvan had been, since earliest childhood, shared with Maya. We had been friends, then lovers, then partners in life and work. In the weeks between her exile and when I had left Tirvan to search for her, invasion, and aftermath had distracted me. While I had missed her, deeply and intensely, there had been too much else to think about and do. I had not considered what my life there would look like without her, forever. Now, confronting that truth, I wondered if it was truly the life I wanted. There would be a thousand reminders of her at Tirvan. But if I did not go home, then where? What would I do? Stay a Guard on the Wall? Go to Han, and learn to breed and train horses? Go back to Casilla and the fishing fleet there?