“First, to the General,” he said.
“And then?” He did not answer, simply shaking his head. I realized it was unfair to ask him. “Where is Cillian?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“In the fort’s prison,” he said. “The northmen asked us to hold him.”
Why? I did not ask. We rode to the gate-tower that faced Berge. On the flat ground bordering the fort, men were practicing swordplay. No one looked our way. The wooden gates swung open at Birel’s command, moving noiselessly on their huge iron hinges. The street beyond was cobbled and ditched. Buildings lay on either side. I recognized them from the White Fort: barracks and stables, workshops and the baths, and in the centre, where the two major streets crossed, the headquarters. The shouts of officers, the ring of hammer on anvil, the smell of roasting meat from the kitchens; all were familiar.
Outside the headquarters Birel halted. We dismounted. A cadet appeared to take our horses. I followed Birel through a courtyard, where a cracked bowl as wide as I was tall sat in the centre, an incomplete border of blue tiles around its rim. I wondered what it was for. The walls of the courtyard were pillared and arched; every second arch was a window, some shuttered, some open. The centre archway on each wall held a door. Birel stopped. “Give me your bag,” he said. I complied. He opened the door on the eastern wall, but did not cross the threshold. “General,” he said. “Guardswoman Lena, as you requested.” He gestured to me to enter.
Casyn sat at a beneath the window, writing. I blinked in the dimmer light of the room. He held up a hand, telling me to wait, as he finished what he wrote. I looked around. On the plastered walls, I could just make out a faint pattern in places, diamond shapes under the whitewash. I glanced down at the floor, remembering the pictures in the floor at the White Fort, but here the tiles were dull and worn. Casyn turned to me.
“Guardswoman,” he said. “You are well?”
“I am, General,” I said. “And I thank you for the horse. I have been riding daily, and can spend several hours in the saddle without discomfort.”
“Good. Let me tell you what will happen now,” he said bluntly. “I have been in correspondence with the Emperor. He wishes to oversee your trial himself, so we will be riding to the White Fort tomorrow, along with Cillian of Linrathe. Lorcann and our Emperor have chosen to hear your trials together: one trial, one consequence. A united voice.”
“To send a message to the Marai, and to those who might support them,” I said.
He nodded. “Exactly. And I must ensure that there is no difference in how you and Cillian are treated, now you are here at the Wall’s End fort, so when our interview is done you will be taken to the prison, Guardswoman, for this night. And you will both ride shackled. We must be seen to be punitive.” He frowned. “Is your mother gone?”
“She sails this afternoon,” I said.
“Good. Have you anything to say to me, Guardswoman, before the sergeant escorts you to the prison? We will debrief on the ride, but is there anything you would wish others not to hear?” His voice was formal, brusque, but his eyes were not.
“Yes,” I said, relieved I had this chance. I owed it to Cillian; he had saved my life. Perhaps I could save his. “General, you know I am good at seeing likenesses; it was how I recognized Garth.” He nodded. “I think…” I hesitated, looking for a way to say this, “Is it possible that Cillian could be the Emperor’s son?”
His eyes widened. He said nothing for some moments, thinking. “How old is he?”
He had not dismissed the idea. “Thirty-three.”
“What do you know of his mother?”
“Only that she was very young; she lived just north of the Wall, and he has always been told his father was a soldier of our Empire. As far as I know, his mother died very soon after his birth.”
“Do you know her name?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“What did you see in Cillian, Lena, to make you think this?” he asked.
“The first time I saw him, I thought I knew him. Then I decided I was wrong, but every so often I would see a glimpse of something, a reminder—and then one day he was very angry, and he was exactly like the Emperor, on Midwinter’s Day, after Colm was killed. And since then, I can’t not see the likeness.”
He leaned back in his chair, thinking. “Have you said this to anyone else?”
“Only Cillian himself,” I answered.
“Cillian? Why?”
“Because he hates the Empire, General,” I said, a flash of anger heating my words, “and I needed him on my side, on our side, to bring you word of the Marai, to not see us as another enemy.”
“Well,” he said, “I may wish you had not done so, but I follow your reasoning. But did Cillian?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I fell ill too soon after the conversation to be sure. But he saw that an alliance with our Empire was better than being conquered by the Marai, although reluctantly, I believe.”
“It is likely of little importance,” Casyn said, “except that it might affect how he comports himself, at the trial. Do you have any influence with him?”
“Probably not,” I said. “And what will it matter, General, if execution is to be the consequence, and the trial only a formality, a sham?”
His grave eyes studied me. “I did not say that, Lena,” he said. “I said much depended on it. The Emperor has the right to determine another punishment, another consequence, but both he and Lorcann must agree.”
“Banishment,” I said.
“A possibility,” he agreed. “Do you see, then, why it is important for Cillian to be co-operative, at the trial?”
I damped down the leap of hope that had arisen at Casyn’s words. It was a chance, but a chance dependent on three men: one stranger, angry at the death of his brother; one little better than a stranger, angry at the world, and one the Emperor of a nation at war once again, who had to balance his new and fragile alliance with Linrathe against one life. But still….
“I do, General,” I said. “I will do my best.” I would do as Casyn requested, but this time it was for me, I thought. “I will be allowed to speak with him?”
“I will ensure it,” he said. He stood. “Now, Guardswoman, I will have Sergeant Birel escort you to the prison.” He went to the door. Birel entered promptly: he must have been just outside, I thought. How much had he heard?
Casyn returned to his desk to scribble a note. “Give this to Cormaic,” he said to the sergeant. “We ride to the White Fort the day after tomorrow. Tell that to Cillian, please.”
“Yes, sir,” Birel replied.
“General,” I acknowledged.
“Dismissed,” he said, already turning to his papers. I followed Birel out through the courtyard and along a cobbled street, past barracks and workshops, to a small building adjoining the western wall of the fort. Built of stone blocks, it had been lime-washed once, but now only flakes of a whitish-grey remained; along with the lichens that grew on the bare stones, it gave the building a motley look. Small windows just below the roof were barred, and the door was guarded.
The guard saluted Birel. “Sergeant?”
“Place Guardswoman Lena in a cell adjoining the Linrathan’s,” Birel instructed. “They are to be allowed free conversation, and she is to have the same exercise daily as the man.” He turned to me. “I will return the contents of your bag, Guardswoman, once I have searched it.” I was led to my cell; a tiny room, big enough to hold a pallet on the floor, and a bucket, and nothing more. The door was an iron grate, allowing me no privacy. Cillian’s cell was directly opposite. I had seen him stand as we came in, hands on the grate of his door.
“Lena,” he said. “You are well?” He was pale, thin, his hair longer and unkempt.
“I am,” I said. I walked into the cell, hearing the door locked behind me. “And you?”
“Well enough,” he said.
“I am to tell you we ride for the White Fort the day after tomorrow,” Birel said to Cillian, forest
alling anything further he was about to say. Cillian only nodded. We watched the two men leave, hearing the outside door close and the key turn.
“We have leave to talk,” I said to Cillian. “Talk freely, I mean. I have just come from the General Casyn.”
“How kind of him,” Cillian said, sinking down onto his pallet. “Having saved the Empire, and Linrathe, we are rewarded with prison cells, but are allowed to talk freely to each other. So very generous.”
“Be reasonable…” I started to say. I stopped. Why was I defending the actions of our leaders? “You’re right,” I said, letting my banked anger flare. “It’s minging unfair. Have you been locked up here the whole time I was sick?”
“Not quite,” he said. “At first, I was given a decent room in one of the barracks, and consulted for hours on what I knew about the Marai, and their boats, and where Linrathe’s forces might be, all reasonable questions, given the threat. I drew maps and estimated distances and was useful, Lena, useful to Linrathe and the Empire. But then word came back that the Teannasach was dead, and suddenly I was here, by the direction of Lorcann, to be tried for treason. Treason! After we saved them, you and me.”
“Did you know they are trying us together, the Emperor and your new Teannasach, to show a united front to both our peoples? We are game pieces, Cillian, nothing more.”
He looked up at that. “That’s a different song you’re singing,” he said quietly.
“Ah, gods,” I said, “I’m minging angry, Cillian. I feel like I’ve been lulled by reasonable words and gently-phrased requests ever since Casyn first came to Tirvan.” I moved restlessly in the cell, wanting to pace, but there was not the space.
He laughed, a dry, mirthless sound. “Now you know why I have no love for the machinations of power, whether they are practiced by Emperors or Teannasacha.”
“What do you know of Lorcann?”
He straightened on his pallet. “Older than Donnalch, by a year or two. Hotter-headed, quicker to anger, holds a grudge. That was why Donnalch was chosen Teannasach over him.”
Not good. “Callan is calm, thoughtful, even reasonable—or so I used to think,” I amended. “But if he is angered, then he is cold, ruthless even.”
For all his bitterness, Cillian was clever. He smiled. “So, we must be careful not to anger either of them. That is what you are saying, isn’t it, Lena? And ‘we’ really means ‘me’, does it not? But what is the point? The punishment for treason is death.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I read through the history of the Empire again. There are a couple of instances when Emperors banished those who had committed treason, or murder, rather than executing them. If Birel returns my books I will show you the passages.”
“Emperors, maybe,” he countered, “but in Linrathe’s law the punishment is death. So perhaps you will be spared, but not I.”
He had answered my question. Treason, I thought, probably meant death in all lands. But Garth should have died, for desertion, and yet the Empire, Casyn and Dern and ultimately the Emperor, had found another way for him to redeem his failure. Why not us?
Time passed. Coarse bread and a cup of water arrived, and with it my pack. I opened it, going through the contents. The books had been returned, and my blood-cloths, but my jar of salve for my scars, my tiny sewing kit, and my flint and tinder had been taken. I slid the history through the bars toward Cillian, telling him which pages to read. He read, squinting in the poor light, then slid the book back to me, shrugging. “So the Emperor has the right to commute a death sentence to exile,” he said. “I don’t think it matters.”
I wanted to scream at him. Why was he giving up so easily? Because he was right, I thought. Lorcann would demand death, and regardless of what might be done under the Emperor’s prerogative, Callan would stand with Lorcann.
A night and a day and another night passed. My dark thoughts of the first night did not linger; I woke the next morning believing once again that Casyn would find a way to convince the Emperor to pardon us, or at least commute our sentences to exile. I tried to talk to Cillian, but he, sullen and uncommunicative, spent most of his time sitting on his pallet, his knees drawn up, staring at the floor. If I spoke to him, he would answer, but he refused to be drawn into discussion of any possible defense. I gritted my teeth, holding back my frustration: for a man known for his skill in the analysis of strategy, he was not making any effort. As soon as what little light came in through the high, barred, windows faded, he curled himself under the single blanket and slept, or feigned sleep.
My own anger crawled through my gut and my mind, directed now inwardly, at my own choices. I lay awake in the dank cell, in the blackness, asking myself hard, brutal questions. Why had I gone along with everything asked of me, from the first day Casyn had addressed us in the meeting house at Tirvan? Just who had I been trying to please, or defy? I tracked my actions, my thoughts, back through the last two years, and beyond, but I found no answers.
A banging on my door awakened me. The cell was dark. I glanced up at the window. The sky was a dark grey, not yet dawn. “What is it?” I asked.
“Get up,” the guard said. “You ride today.” I heard Cillian mutter something from the opposite cell. I got up, used the bucket, straightened my clothes. I did not look at the door. If the guard watched me, there was nothing I could do about it, except crouch in such a position that only my thigh showed. I picked up my pack—I had used it as a pillow—and waited. My mouth tasted foul, but we had been given no water.
We were escorted out of the prison, one guard for each of us. Outside, two horses stood, tacked and ready: Suran and a dark horse, larger and heavier. “Mount,” one of the guards said. I swung up into the saddle. My guard took my bag, pushing it into the saddlebag, before fastening a shackle to one ankle. He passed the attached chain under the belly of my horse, and shackled it to my other leg. I glanced at Cillian; he was chained in the same way. I expected our wrists to be next, but, surprisingly, it was not so. We sat on the horses. Sparrows chirped from under the eaves of the prison. The guards said nothing. I watched the sky pale, the stars growing dimmer, and then I heard the clop of hooves along the cobbled street. Casyn rode up, Siannon’s roan coat gleaming in the faint light, Birel beside him.
“Guardswoman,” Casyn greeted me. “Cillian na Perras, good morning. We have a long way to ride today; hence, the early start. We are to be at the White Fort the day after tomorrow, by mid-day if we can. We will stop to eat in an hour or so, but let us get underway.” The western gates had been opened as he spoke. He rode forward.
“Follow the General,” Birel said. “I will bring up the rear.” We rode out of the fort. The street became a wider road, swinging south and then east around the wall of the fort. The eastern sky was a pale pink now. I glanced up at the tower at the southern gate, making out the silhouette of a soldier. At this early hour, only the guards on the night watch would see us leave. I wondered if Casyn had planned it that way.
Once past the fort, the road ran parallel to the Wall. The chains jangled quietly as we walked the horses, the weight of the shackles and the chains pulling down on my legs. Shorter stirrups would be more comfortable. I would ask for them to be adjusted, at our first stop.
Casyn slowed Siannon. “Ride beside me, Cillian,” he said. “You too, Guardswoman.” We did as he asked. “I have questions for you, Cillian na Perras,” he said. “Sergeant, fall back, if you please.”
“About what, General?” Cillian answered. “I have told you all I know, of the Marai and their ships and their numbers.”
“This concerns you, not the Marai,” Casyn answered equably. He waited, ensuring, I supposed, that Birel was out of hearing. “Tell me of your mother. Her name, and where she lived.”
“Lena has told you her children’s tale, then?” he answered. “That I am the Emperor’s long-lost son, like a character in one of our danta, our story-songs? Based on a fleeting resemblance of dark hair and a grim mouth, or some such?”
“Not only that, although the resemblance is there,” Casyn said. “Did you know, Cillian, that the Emperor is my brother? Or that we were in the same regiment for many years, so that he and I were stationed together on the Wall, some thirty-four years past?”
Cillian did not reply for a minute. “No,” he said finally, his voice subdued. “I did not know that.”
“And so, I am probably the only other man who knows of Callan’s love for a young girl called Hafwen, whose family had a small holding perhaps an hour north of the wall, and who brought milk and meat to the fort for trade. That was allowed then, for there was, more or less, peace between Linrathe and the Empire. Callan was on guard duty, the first time Hafwen came with her father. A story that simple, and that old, Cillian. Was Hafwen your mother?”
I looked away from the pain on Cillian’s face. “Yes,” he said. “That was her name.”
“He called her Wenna,” Casyn said, his voice soft.
“He deserted her,” Cillian said flatly.
“We were ordered south,” Casyn said, “unexpectedly, and immediately. There had been a massive storm on the Edanan Sea, with the loss of many ships and extensive damage to both the harbours at Casilla and the Eastern Fort. We rode out with only a few hours notice.”
“He could have left word, a letter, something!”
“He did,” Casyn said. “He wrote a note, to be left with the quartermaster.”
“She never got it,” Cillian said flatly. “Why should I believe he ever wrote it?”
“Because I intercepted it,” Casyn said. “He was my brother, and he had already risked his life to see Hafwen, and mine, because I covered for him when he left his post. The note was tangible proof. I destroyed it.”
“Fuck you,” Cillian snarled, clapping his heels into his bay’s ribs. The horse sprang forward, running full-out along the road. “Sergeant!” Casyn called. Birel immediately kicked his own horse into a gallop, following him. “Just keep him in sight,” Casyn shouted.
“Does the Emperor know?” I asked Casyn after a moment.
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