Empire's Reckoning
Page 1
Empire’s
Reckoning
Marian L Thorpe
Table of Contents
Title Page
Empire's Reckoning (Empire's Reprise, #1)
Empire’s Reckoning
The World of Empire’s Reckoning
The Story So Far
Paths Untrodden
Epigraphs
DEDICATION | for | Bjørn Larssen | Thank you
Chapter 1 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 21
Chapter 22 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 28
Chapter 29 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 30 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 38 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 39
Chapter 40 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 41 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 46
Chapter 47 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57 | 13 years earlier
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 62 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 63 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 64 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 65 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Chapter 66 | 14 years earlier
Chapter 67 | 15 years after the battle of the Taiva
The Vocabulary of Empire’s Reckoning
The Characters of Empire’s Reckoning
Chording Chart | Paths Untrodden
Author’s Note
Other Books
About the Author
Arboretum Press
Empire’s Reckoning
Copyright © 2020
Marian L Thorpe
Arboretum Press
Guelph, ON, Canada
www.arboretumpress.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except for brief excerpts used in reviews.
ISBN (print): 978-1-9992101-4-4
ISBN (e-book): 978-1-9992101-5-1
A catalogue record for this book is available from
Libraries and Archives Canada
Cover Design by Anthony O’Brien
www.bookcoverdesign.store
Maps by Marian L Thorpe
The World of Empire’s Reckoning
The Story So Far
Empire’s Legacy, the first trilogy set in this world, so similar to and so different from northern Europe after Rome’s influence has waned, follows the protagonist Lena from her fishing village to the armies of the Empire and beyond. The series, which introduces all four main characters: Lena, Cillian, Sorley and Druisius, concludes with The Battle of the Taiva, fought against the Marai of Varsland.
In the novella Oraiáphon, which bridges Empire’s Legacy and this first book of the next trilogy, the narrator switches to the musician Sorley, and introduces the character of the Procurator, Decanius. Cillian’s unexpected recovery from severe wounds (in which Sorley plays an instrumental role), threatens Decanius’s plans to enrich himself at the Empire’s expense. In retribution, he has Druisius, Sorley’s lover, arrested. (More happens, but that’s what you need to know if you’re starting here.) The past timeline of Empire’s Reckoning follows on almost immediately from the end of the novella; the present timeline is 14 years later.
Paths Untrodden
(Sorley's Song for Cillian)
My true love's eyes are darkly gleaming
In candlelight and music's lure;
One night alone, at spring's fair dawning,
To keep me longing through the years,
To leave my soul bereft and mourning.
You danced that night with grace unfettered,
A glance my way, a touch bestowed.
Your dark hair swept by supple fingers.
Too soon the day, the calling road,
The shaken head when asked to linger.
A long, long path, and distance boundless,
Years of sorrow and empty days
Till chance or fate together brought us,
So far from home, in summer's blaze,
With war behind and war before us.
The gods and time have blessed us both
With love's reward for all our years
Of wandering on lonely ways;
A respite offered for our cares,
A soul to hold ours, all our days.
But candlelight and music's memory,
Dark eyes gleaming over wine
Revive that youthful love and longing
For graceful fingers touching mine
For kisses left at day's first dawning.
My life's companion loves me truly
My heart is his and his is mine,
But older love is not forgotten
There is, by fate, or god's design
A yearning still for paths untrodden
You danced that night with grace unfettered,
A glance my way, a touch bestowed.
Your dark hair swept by supple fingers.
Uncharted ways might be explored,
Still dreams this wistful, loving singer.
Epigraphs
Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth, but the plain single vow that is vow’d true.
Shakespeare: All’s Well That Ends Well
≈
Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.
John Donne, The Calm
≈
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes
Is the deed ever truly done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mudtime.
DEDICATION
for
Bjørn Larssen
Thank you
Chapter 1
15 years after the battle of the Taiva
“
Why are there so many secrets in this family?” Gwenna’s voice wasn’t raised; if anything, it was lower, colder than normal, her clenched fists reflecting her anger. “No one tells me anything. My classmates laugh at me, because they know more about you than I do. It’s not fair.”
“Kitten,” Druise began. I shot him a warning glance, too late. Gwenna rounded on him.
“Do not call me Kitten,” she snapped. “I hate it!”
“Gwenna,” Cillian said firmly, “if you cannot be civil, you must leave. If you are prepared to outline your complaints in a manner both calm and logical, you may join us after dinner for a while, and I,” he glanced at Lena, who nodded, “we, will listen. But you may not shout at any of us. Go to your room, please.”
She glared at him, but even Gwenna, as angry as she was, would not gainsay Cillian. Both because he was the Comiádh, and because he was her adored father. Colm looked up from the book he was reading. “May I go too?” he asked. “I want to finish my drawing.”
“Of course,” Lena said. “Bring it to show us, later.”
“Properly labelled,” Cillian added. He held out an arm to embrace his son, kissing him on the temple. Gwenna stood sulkily near the door. She opened it as her brother approached, then turned on her heel to look directly at her father.
“I am not a child. Stop treating me like one,” she said fiercely. The door closed, quietly — she was not that defiant — behind her.
“Gwenna has a point,” Cillian said quietly. “I did not fully realize our part in the victory over the Marai was taught so early in the officer cadets' education.”
“Perhaps it’s an extra class, for those who will become diplomats?” Lena suggested.
“Perhaps. In either case, she needs to hear the truth from us. But I worry.”
“About what?” I asked.
“She is volatile. More so than usual,” he amended, at Lena’s raised eyebrow. “I do not quite trust her to differentiate between what she deserves to know, and what she can speak about. When a secret shared must remain a secret.”
I stood to pour myself more tea from the pot on the sideboard. I stopped behind Cillian to put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll have to elicit a promise,” I said. He looked up at me. I was leaving in two days, for much of the summer. He leaned back, a tiny movement, acknowledging the touch.
“I suppose I will, my lord Sorley,” he said. “When she is calmer.”
A gentle knock at the door and Apulo slipped in. “Am I early?” he said, seeing that I was pouring tea.
“No,” Cillian said. “We had an upset daughter to deal with. Have some tea, Apulo, and tell me if any of the new students has a voice to be cultivated.”
I handed Apulo a mug of tea and listened with interest as he spoke intelligently about the three new students’ singing voices. “The boy has the most potential,” he said, “if his voice remains true. Both girls carry a tune adequately, but nothing more.”
“The boy plays, too,” I said, “and with some skill. Apulo, he’s yours for the summer, although Tamm can give him some instruction on the ladhar while I am gone.” I was riding north into Sorham, to supervise the beginning of a music program in the newest Ti'ach, recently established in my homeland. By tradition, scáeli'en travelled alone. I turned to my partner. “And you on the cithar, Druise, if you want.”
“Why not?” Druise said. “If I am teaching the others anyhow.”
“I am ready,” Cillian announced. He pushed himself upright, reaching for his walking stick. Apulo stood, going to Cillian to ensure he was steady. They would go to Cillian’s treatment room in the annex, where there was a high bed for massage, and shelves for Apulo’s oils and lotions, and from there to the baths Druise and Apulo had built, the first summer here. I might join Cillian in the hot pool later, I thought.
“What is Colm drawing?” I asked Lena idly, finishing my tea.
“A squirrel skeleton he found,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It was old, and bleached, so I let him keep it. Cillian found him an anatomy book from somewhere, so he’s labelling the teeth and bones as best he can.” Colm was as precise and thoughtful over his work as his father, and by nature self-contained, but a loving and generous child. Privately, I thought he was what Cillian might have been, had his childhood been different. Where Gwenna, tall and inherently graceful, looked almost exactly like her father, the strong stamp of Callan’s line evident, Colm was a blend of his parents. He had Lena’s skin colouring and her hazel eyes, but, like his sister, Cillian’s dark hair. He had been born into the peace of the Ti’ach, to a calm and ordered life, and I wondered sometimes if this had contributed to his happy, unbothered personality, so unlike Gwenna’s. Her first year had been different, and difficult.
“Amané,” Druise said, “should we review what you expect from the students this summer?”
“I suppose we should,” I replied. We made our way to my teaching rooms — ours, really, as Druise taught here too, but by convention they were mine, as I held the appointment as scáeli to the Ti’ach na Cillian. When they had been Dagney’s rooms, she had used one as a bedroom, but Druise and I shared a suite of rooms in the annex, where students were never allowed. So there were two rooms to use for teaching, and the instrument room, so even when Lena was teaching aspects of danta interpretation, we all had space.
We went over the students and what I thought they should be learning for much of the next hour. Tamm would work with the younger ones on the ladhar, and Apulo on voice with them all. “Gwenna is competent on the ladhar, too,” I said. “It won’t hurt her to start helping the others with tuning and fingering.”
“She is angry at the world,” Druise said, “and in no mood to help anyone. I will wait to suggest that, yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Although you know what Cillian would say.”
“That it is her role in life. I know,” he said. “But she is fourteen, Sorley.”
“Two years an officer cadet, and heir to Faolyn. She doesn’t have the luxury of being moody. What were your sisters doing at fourteen, Druise?”
“Marrying,” he said with a shrug.
“As was mine,” I said, “or at least being betrothed. And I could do a day’s work in the torp, and you were a soldier.”
“A day’s work overseeing, you mean,” he said. It was an old tease between us. “What does a lord’s son know of work?”
“Tell me when you have sheared sheep for a day,” I replied. He chuckled.
“I will miss you,” he said softly. “It is many years since we have been apart for so long.” I glanced at the door; firmly shut, and we were in the rear of the two rooms. He was violating one of our rules, but I saw no harm in it. No one could hear. Or see. I leaned over to kiss him, just lightly.
“I’ll miss you, too,” I replied. I would have liked to take him with me, to see my homeland, even to take the time to travel to Gundarstorp, my ancestral holding now in the hands of my brother Roghan. But I could not take a guard, and I would have no other way to explain, in Linrathe or Sorham, Druise’s presence at my side. Here at the Ti’ach, our rooms in the annex gave us privacy, our hours with Cillian and Lena gave us acceptance, and Apulo’s care of our rooms and laundry and his responsibilities for the baths meant no servant ever had cause to suspect we were anything but friends. A necessary deception made easier by the traditions of the Ti’ach, which also prohibited any signs of affection between Cillian and Lena in front of the students. We had our public lives, and our private ones, and we kept them separate.
“Tomorrow,” he said, grinning, “we will say goodnight early, yes?”
“Yes,” I assured him.
“But not tonight, though,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“No.”
“He will miss you too,” Druise said. “Lena will have to improve her xache game.”
“He can play Gwenna,” I suggested. “She’s better than I am, already, when she concentrates.” I stretched. “Baths, Druise?” He shook his head.
> “Tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you at dinner, then,” I said.
Apulo was just helping Cillian into the pool when I arrived. “Are you joining us?” I asked.
“Not this time,” he replied. I didn’t press him. I slipped into the water beside Cillian, luxuriating in its heat. My shoulders and neck, bent too long over my instrument or that of my students, needed relaxing.
“Is Colm coming?” I asked. We maintained the rules of bathhouse use from Wall’s End: no mixing of sexes, although that did not extend to Cillian and Lena, alone. The baths were strictly for family, except for the occasional Casilani envoy.
“No,” Cillian said. “Druisius?”
“No.” We regarded each other. A smile played on his lips.
“Sorley,” Apulo said. “Do not let him try to get out without us both.” I grinned. Apulo fussed over Cillian more than Lena did.
“I won’t,” I told him.
“Mo duíne gràhadh,” Cillian murmured, when Apulo had left us. “You are going home.”
“Back to Sorham,” I said. “Home is here.”
“Will you go to Gundarstorp, though? To see your brother, and your family?”
“Yes, likely. The new Ti'ach is only a short ride south, as you know.”
“And you believe Roghan will provide for it? I am still not entirely happy that there are no lands to support the school, but asking the lords to give up part of their estates and their people is not reasonable, not yet.”
“I wonder,” I said idly, feeling the heat of the water beginning to relax my neck and shoulders, “which Teannasach ordered the lands given for the first Ti’acha?”
Cillian told me, without hesitation, of course. “But our leaders had more authority then,” he added. “Ruar cannot do the same, or not without causing discontent.”
“You would think,” I said, “that after eight years all the Härren would have accepted Sorham is part of Linrathe again. They were pleased enough when Ruar married a Marai woman, after all.”
“But an earl’s daughter, not royal,” Cillian said. “Was that a mistake, I wonder?”
“There was no royal daughter,” I pointed out. “And the marriage bound powerful earls to Ruar, and to Linrathe.” We’d discussed this a hundred times. I wondered why it was on Cillian’s mind tonight.