Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “As the Major was once, I understand?”

  Anger surged. I controlled it, almost. “You must discuss that with him, Governor.”

  He smiled approvingly. “A diplomatic answer. I am pleased that you did not leap to his defence. When will you go north to your leader?”

  “The landholders meet with the Teannasach in a few weeks. I must be there then. Will that suffice?”

  “It will. Perhaps a meeting could be arranged for a few weeks after that?”

  “I will ask,” I said.

  Chapter 8

  Gods, I thought, walking back to my workroom, I do not have the skills for this. I needed to talk to someone, and it couldn’t be Cillian. Or Lena. But with Druise away, who was there? My countryman Randall, sent by Dagney to teach languages to the officers here, crossed my mind, briefly, but I rejected the idea: Linrathan or not, I didn’t trust him. He liked Decanius, and that was enough to make him suspect. I was on my own.

  I wrote notes on the meeting, and ate a solitary meal. Then I crossed the fort to a long, low building, the scent of wood shavings rich in my nostrils as soon as I opened the door. A man looked up from the bench where he was planing a board. “Lord Sorley. I just checked that yew I offered you. It’s ready. Do you remember where it is?”

  “I do,” I said, and went through to the storeroom, where wood dried on racks. Yew was bow-wood, but when I’d come to the carpenter some days before, explaining my need, he’d offered me several pieces.

  I hadn’t heard, officially, that I would sit my scáeli’s exams in the late summer or early autumn, but I had to presume I would. As part of demonstrating my skills, I was required to construct a new ladhar, beginning with seasoned, uncut boards, a process that took several months.

  The carpenter had been happy to make space in the workshop for me and lend me tools as I needed them. He’d been at the soldiers’ commons several times when I’d gone with Druise to play of an evening, and he liked music. I took one piece off the rack and carried it back to a bench. I’d brought the ladhar I used most often with me, as a template. I’d built it, too, at the Ti’ach; I’d built several, over the years. I enjoyed the precise work, and the smell and feel of the wood as I cut and shaped it, but it all took a lot of time. My master’s instrument — for that was what it would be — should be finished to a very high standard. Often they included ornamentation, in silver or gold or sometimes jewels, but that wasn’t possible now. Or was it? I had money; toscairen were paid well enough. I would have to talk to the metalworkers, I thought. Then I turned my mind to the measurements: I couldn’t get this wrong.

  Hours later, I put the pieces I had cut into a chest, and locked it. I couldn’t risk them being accidentally lost, or used for another purpose. I cleaned the tools, and returned them to their drawers, and then I picked up the broom. “Leave it, Lord Sorley,” the carpenter said.

  “Not a chance,” I said, and swept up the shavings and sawdust I’d created. The carpenter grinned appreciatively.

  “I watched you working,” he said. “You can have a job here any time you want.” I handed him the record book I had to keep, for him to sign.

  “But all I can build is a ladhar,” I said. “Not much use to you.”

  “You’d soon learn,” he teased. My answer hadn’t been true, either, I reflected as I walked back to the headquarters. I could build both barns and barrels, if I had to: my father had ensured both Roghan and I were competent with almost all the tasks required on the estate.

  I stopped to see Lena; singing to Gwenna soothed her, sometimes, and the colic hadn’t subsided yet. But the baby was quiet, quiet as a sleeping kitten in Druise’s arms.

  “Sorley!” he said, grinning up at me. Lena took her daughter from him, and he stood to embrace me. I hugged him, hard. He smelled of sweat and horse; he’d come straight to see Gwenna, I thought.

  “Where were you?” Druise asked, as I poured myself wine. I explained.

  “I would like to see this,” he said. We talked about woodworking for a few minutes, Gwenna, remarkably, still sleeping quietly.

  Druise drank the last of his wine. “I should go,” he said. “Cillian will be at the baths now, yes?”

  “Yes,” Lena said. “But Gnaius will take care of him. You haven’t seen Sorley for some time, and don’t you deserve a little time off? You’ve been on hard duty.”

  “Not so hard as Captain Talyn,” he said. “All I did was translate. She had to be the host, and polite. The man is a serpens.” He stretched, rolling his shoulders. “The baths would be good. If Cillian does not need me, then I will go to the soldiers’ bathhouse.” He stood up. “Come with me, Sorley?”

  Should I? But Druise knew the boundaries of our relationship. And we’d both been alone for too long.

  Baths and wine and a private reunion took us to early evening. We’d eat in the soldiers’ commons, later. Druise was not one to linger after lovemaking: either he’d fall asleep immediately, or get up after a minute or two. But today he stayed beside me, stretched out on the bed with his hands behind his head.

  “I am glad to be back,” he said. “The Procurator is an ass.” He added something extremely rude in Casilan. “Talyn had to tell him if he did not stop his behaviour with the women of the village, we were leaving. He touched a woman’s buttocks and she nearly punched him. He said it was an accident, that he had been reaching to touch the horse and she had stepped in front of him, but it was a lie. I was there.”

  “How was he with you?” I’d been surprised when Druise had been sent as the translator. Only a few weeks earlier, Decanius had had him arrested for desertion. Cillian, sick and shaking, had intervened to save him, and now Druise was indisputably sworn to the Princip.

  “He treated me like a servant.” He grinned. “I expected that. The soldier who agreed to be his aide hates him, and he will ask to be sent back to Casil this year. He does not share his bed,” he added, “although Decanius offered him gold. So the Procurator is frustrated.”

  I laughed. “Serves him right. Did he proposition you?”

  “Yes. No gold, though. Stupid man.”

  “You would have said yes, if there had been gold?” I teased. I put a hand on his stomach, the muscles firm, taut.

  “No,” he said. “I have to like my bedmates. Even if I have been ordered to be with them.”

  “Have you been?”

  “Once or twice. For information, yes?” He stretched, arching his abdomen under my hand. I watched the ripple of muscle in his solid, scarred body. “Who is the new Governor?”

  “Livius, his name is.” I was growing uninterested in conversation.

  “What does he look like?” I told him.

  “If it is who I think it is, he is decent. He was Governor of a little province to the east; little, but rebellious. But few problems, under him.”

  I slid my hand lower. “Enough politics.”

  I woke in the night, Druise snoring lightly beside me. Words he’d spoken had been circling in my sleeping mind; not a dream, quite, but I had almost seen the implications. Ordered to, for information. Had he been in Casil, with me? I couldn’t see how. He’d been assigned to us from the beginning, before anyone reporting to the palace could have known I was a lover of men. And the only ladhar had belonged to one of Irmgard’s women, so they hadn’t even realized I was a musician.

  Cillian was sending Druise back to Casil with Faolyn, to set up a conduit of information. I had not thought of how that might happen, or not of all the ways. Surely, though, he would not ask this of Druise? Not after his own experiences.

  I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. He wouldn’t do this. Not to Druise — and not to me. I stared up into the blackness. When Druise knows he is going east, I thought, talk to him. Find out. Don’t speculate.

  But I was Linrathe’s envoy, and Druise would have his orders. Would he tell me?

  Chapter 9

  Druise accepted the assignment without question, except to mourn leaving his Kitten. He
would leave in a week, or a little more. I couldn’t find the courage to ask him what he and Cillian had spoken about regarding how he was to find his informants. I did not want to be told I wasn’t allowed to know. Nor did I want to hear my suspicions were correct.

  The Governor hadn’t asked to meet with me again. I spent time with Lena: Gwenna screamed less, but she wasn’t a happy child. Druise, when he wasn’t busy, came to carry her, humming to her endlessly, or sat with her sleeping on his lap. I tried to do the same, but she was fractious with me, turning her head away listlessly. Lena was both exhausted and worried. Kyreth, and Talyn, and even Gnaius commiserated, but they all agreed: colic, and it would pass, in time.

  Cillian was with the Casilani officials and Casyn or closeted in his workroom far too many hours of the day, in my opinion. But when I mentioned it to Lena she just shook her head. “He isn’t neglecting us, Sorley, but there is little he can do. He takes her willingly, when he’s here; but if she needs someone to walk with her, he can’t do that. And he can’t read in our rooms,” she said, “with Gwenna crying so much, or just grizzling, and there are so many records he needs to review.”

  I’d helped with records, in Casil. So had Lena, but she was far too busy with Gwenna – and far too tired. Late in the afternoon, when I thought Cillian would be back from the baths, I returned to their rooms. As I expected, he was there, and so was Druise. Gwenna slept on Druise’s lap, and Lena was curled up against Cillian, nearly asleep herself. She opened her eyes long enough to smile at me.

  “Käresta,” Cillian said, “go and sleep properly. Gwenna is fed; she does not need you for a few hours.”

  “Maybe I will,” she murmured. “Except she’ll need changing.”

  “I will do it,” Druise said. “You need sleep, Lena.” She didn’t argue any more, just kissed Cillian and made her way to the bedroom.

  “Kyreth was here today,” Cillian said. “She has suggested ginger steeped in warm water to soothe Gwenna.” He indicated an odd cup, shaped almost like an oil lamp with a long spout, on the table between the chairs. “Small drops in her mouth, using that. It seems to have worked.”

  “Good,” I said. “Maybe Lena will get more sleep. And you.”

  “I am tired,” he admitted.

  “Lena told me you’re reviewing records. Can I help? I have little to do, for a week or two.” I went to the sideboard. “Wine?”

  “Water it well,” Cillian said. I poured three cups. I put Druise’s on the table beside him. He glanced up, smiling his thanks before his eyes returned to the baby. I handed Cillian his. He took it, and as he did his fingers curved around mine. A thumb brushed my wrist. I nearly gasped. “My lord Sorley,” he said. “Thank you.”

  I turned away to take my own cup. What had just happened? It hadn’t felt accidental, but it must have been. Had there been a tremor in his hand he couldn’t control? Since Casil, he had occasionally touched my fingers in thanks, and he was tired, and in pain — that had to be the reason. I sat down. “The records,” I said again. “Can’t I help?”

  “You cannot.” He took a drink of the wine. “Not because I would not welcome your help, but because Decanius had made much of our friendship to the Governor, and I want no doubts about your independence as Linrathe’s toscaire, nor of your impartiality with regard to the decisions made for Ésparias.”

  I sat back. “I suppose you’re right. But isn’t there someone, one of the junior officers, who could help?”

  “Yes. Not a junior officer, though. Talyn is going to assist, as soon as she is sure the new officer leading the reorganized regiments understands what is needed there.”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” I said, relieved. “He’s been doing much of the work anyhow, with her advising Casyn.”

  A short while later, Druise gently transferred the sleeping Gwenna to Cillian’s lap. “I will be back,” he said. Cillian gazed down at his daughter, stroking her hair gently with one finger.

  “Just think,” he said softly, in Linrathan, “had you and Turlo not gone to the ship, that first full day in Casil, and left Lena and me alone, she might never have been.”

  “So I can claim some responsibility for her?”

  “You can,” he said, smiling. He looked up. “Just as I can claim some for you and Druisius, can I not? How intertwined our lives all are now, the four of us. “

  “Five,” I said. “How you can separate Druise from his beloved Kitten for several months, I do not know.”

  “I am sorry for that. And for separating the two of you, Sorley. Truly.”

  If I was going to ask my question, it had to be now. “I’ll survive,” I said. I paused. Had I the courage? Apparently not.

  “I wouldn’t have seen that much of him, anyhow,” I said instead. “I’ll be back and forth to Dun Ceànnar, and maybe the Ti’ach, depending on when my scáeli’s exam is. If there is one.”

  “Do you truly doubt that?” he asked. “I suppose you will be away a lot, won’t you? I will miss you.”

  “There are other xache players.”

  “No one with whom I can speak my own language, mo charaidh gràhadh. And as you said, we have things between us to resolve.”

  Had I said that? Gwenna made a small noise. He stroked her back, and she settled back into sleep. I remembered his fingers on mine, the brush along my wrist, and desire shot through me, intense and immediate. I looked away.

  “Perhaps not the best choice of words,” I prevaricated.

  “Or perhaps they were,” he said. I didn’t reply. Where had Druise gone?

  To get us food, it transpired. He returned with a kitchen cadet, carrying trays laden with bowls of fish stew, and a loaf of bread and some cheese. With the utmost gentleness he took Gwenna from Cillian. She woke, and blinked at him, and while we ate he fed her more ginger water, and took her through to the nursery to change her. We heard him singing to her, softly. Only after she was sleeping in her cradle did he eat. Lena didn’t stir.

  I took the empty dishes to the kitchen. My hands full, I left the door ajar. Coming back, I heard their voices, and my name.

  “You will be careful with Sorley,” Druise said. Not a question, and not the tone of a soldier to his officer.

  “When have I not been?” Cillian replied. “Since he was sixteen, Druisius.”

  “Does he know?”

  “I have made certain indications. Nothing more.”

  “But you will act, while I am gone?”

  Cillian laughed, a wry, almost bitter sound. “If it is ever possible, and only if I am entirely sure Lena means what she says.”

  “She does, I think,” Druise replied. “We have talked too, yes? She is angry about many things, but not this.”

  “She has a right to that anger,” Cillian said softly. “I have not been shelter for her, for too long. I am breaking yet another vow.”

  “A tree can be shelter in a storm,” Druise said, “but only if its roots and branches have grown in all directions. Or it will fall when the wind changes.”

  This time Cillian’s laugh was one of amusement. “I had not taken you for a philosopher. But perhaps you are not wrong.”

  “Cillian.” Not Major, I noted. “This is possible, yes? But not without risk.”

  “The risk is what worries me.”

  “But what happens, if you do not act? We go on as we are. Maybe we are happy. Content. Maybe not. I think maybe not. Sorley is angry, too, yes? He misses his home. He is confused about me. Something will break, I think.”

  Silence. I began to step forward, when I heard Cillian’s voice. “Are you considering staying in Casil?”

  “I am sworn to return.”

  “Then a different question: might you ask to be posted south?”

  Druise chuckled again. “It would be warmer. But no.” His voice became grave, and somehow reflective. “I have done many things, good and bad, and here is a new life for me, yes? I am no idióta. I wish not to lose all I have here, especially Kitten. An instrument has value
to more than one musician in its lifetime, and sometimes to more than one player at a time.”

  “Thank you, my wise friend,” Cillian said quietly. “You have eased my mind.” When he spoke again, his tone had changed. “At least you are not angry with me.”

  “No? You think I want to go to Casil?” I could hear the grin, though. Cillian laughed. My cue, I thought, and scuffed my feet on the flagstones, making enough noise to tell them I was outside the door. Both men were sitting, relaxed and companionable, and I guessed they did not think I had overheard anything.

  “Now you are back, I am going to dice,” Druise said. “You will stay, so if Kitten cries you can fetch her?”

  I agreed, and brought the xache set from the sideboard. The baby and Lena slept, and Cillian and I played the game as we had a hundred times before. We were on the second match when Lena appeared, tousle-headed and yawning.

  “There is food, käresta,” Cillian said, indicating the bowl keeping warm on the hearth. “Eat before Gwenna wakes.”

  She bent to kiss him. I stood up.

  “Don’t leave,” Lena said.

  “I’m going to. You have little time together, just the two of you,” I said. “Don’t argue. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Back in my room, I thought about what I had overheard. It nagged at me. I wasn’t sure what they’d been talking about — certain indications? — but what had shaken me had been the tone of their voices. They had sounded like equals together, regardless of differences of rank and education. Druise was closer to his age, but that wasn’t why. Cillian, I thought, was considerate of Druisius’s feelings, but not protective, whereas with me... You will be careful with Sorley. Anger rose, shocking me: not just at Cillian, but at my lover too.

  I am twenty-five, I thought. I am Linrathe’s toscaire to this land, with Liam’s trust, and Casyn’s. I did dangerous work in Linrathe during the war, and took on an even more dangerous journey east. Yet even Druise had spoken of me as if I were a child, homesick and confused, needing gentle handling.