Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “First after his family,” Daoíre said.

  “Aye,” Liam said. He coughed, shook his head for patience as he found his breath. “I cannot kneel, Ruar. You have my oath as your great-uncle and your regent, Teannasach.”

  Daoíre swore next, and Oisín, and then Bhradaín, before the Eirënnen came, one by one, to pledge their loyalty to Ruar. Birgit, too: women did not usually make the oath, but as a landholder she was required to. When she and the others arrived home, their torpari men would swear too, their lords standing proxy for the Teannasach. Men who were not landholders: the army, the Comiádha, the travelling teachers and traders, the scáeli’en; all would swear the oath too, at different times and places. Unless Ruar refused a man: it was his right. I wondered if he would accept Utar’s.

  Bhradaín, recording who swore their allegiance this day, bent close to my ear. “See who is last,” he murmured. “Utar, and others whose lands abut the coast and the Sterre. They will bear watching, in the years to come.”

  Ruar took their oaths. Wise, I thought, to not encourage division this early in his leadership. I had not seen Liam or Daoíre offer him advice, although it was quite likely Utar’s obstinacy had been known, and the counsel given privately.

  “We will stop for food and drink,” Daoíre said. “After the meal, it will be time to discuss details of how tribute is to be paid.”

  “I will go for my rest,” Liam said quietly. “Toscaire, you may stay for the meal, but the discussion afterwards does not concern you.”

  I began to nod, before the words of my toscaire’s oath flashed across my mind. My loyalty is to the people of Linrathe. “Liam,” I said, “forgive me, but I believe I must remain. How can I know the thoughts of Linrathe’s people, and serve their interests, if I am not here to witness?”

  His face contorted, colour rising. “Great-Uncle,” Ruar said calmly, “Lord Sorley is correct. He is not yours, or mine, to command. What we will speak about this afternoon concerns him directly in his role as toscaire. He should be present.”

  Liam’s fist clenched and unclenched. Spittle formed at the edge of his lips. “Witness, then,” he said. He struggled to stand. “But keep your mouth shut and learn from your elders. As you must too, Ruar.”

  Chapter 16

  “You’ve earned your ale,” Daoíre said, when we were seated again, and the servants were bringing food and drink.

  “I shouldn’t have lost my temper at Utar.” I drank gratefully.

  “Why ever not?” he asked. “He’s an obstructive idiot, and ridiculous, spreading those old rumours.”

  “Started by Donnalch’s distrust?” I asked. I’d worked it out, once I’d calmed down a bit.

  “I’ve always thought so. Donnalch never said much about why he didn’t trust Cillian, and maybe that wasn’t for the best: it allowed speculation.” He eyed me. Ruar had left with Liam, saying he would see him safely to his room. “May I say something, Sorley? You’re too nice. Too much the peacemaker. You’ll need to be tougher in these negotiations. You shouting at Utar’s the first time I’ve ever seen a spark of anger from you.”

  I nodded. “I know.” Daoíre turned to speak to someone, leaving me with my thoughts. My mother, sweat soaking the bedclothes, her face flushed and thin. Grasping my hand. “Somhairle, do not fight with your brother,” she’d whispered. “You are nearly a man; he is a boy. He will need your guidance and comfort, not your anger. Promise me.”

  I’d promised: what else could I do, knowing she was dying? She’d closed her eyes, breathing heavily. Then she’d opened them again. “Do not neglect your music,” she’d said, “and be careful. So careful, my son.” They were the last words she spoke to me: she died that night.

  In the months following my father had dealt with his grief by working almost every hour of the long northern days, and the task of comforting my younger brother and sister had fallen mostly to me. How could I be angry with them, bereft and confused as they were? And I’d promised. I learned to damp down my own feelings, playing peacemaker between them and sometimes between Roghan and my father; and when I felt frustration and rage begin to rise, I’d turned to my ladhar. My ability to play with emotion and depth began that year after my mother’s death.

  But anger had become a foreign feeling to me, and expressing it almost impossible. That it — or at least something more than mild irritation — had surfaced these past months confused me, making me uncomfortable. That it was engendered mostly by Cillian bewildered me even more. Even today, it had been Utar’s comments about him that had raised my ire.

  In the early afternoon, when Liam returned, the council reconvened. “We must determine tribute,” he told the assembled landholders. “This is our proposal.” I listened as he told them of the need for timber, and the proposal to float it down the Tabha to a harbour built at its mouth. “For a fair rent,” he said, to the Eirën whose land that was. He spoke of the forts planned, and the labour needed, and nothing else.

  During one heated discussion on who had torpari to spare to harvest the timber, Ruar bent his head to mine. “My great-uncle told us this morning he wants no rumour of trade with the Marai. You are not bound by his wishes, or mine, but in this I think he is correct. It is too soon.”

  “You think I should say nothing to the Eirënnen,” I said.

  “Not yet. There will come a time when their opinions will be sought.” He met my eyes, and he was only a boy again. “Do I overstep, Sorley? Am I trying to sway you?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re just giving me your thoughts. I will consider them, Ruar. And I am pleased I heard them from you, and not Liam.”

  I listened to the council for two days. I heard a fair amount of argument about details, but little about direction; for the most part, the Eirënnen had only minor issues with the treaty. By the third day, when the talk had turned to who might have ewes to sell, or hands to send to a neighbouring torp at harvest, I began to listen with only half an ear, and to wonder about returning to Wall’s End. Liam had not attended, this third day, and Daoíre and Oisín moved among the men, Ruar with one or the other of them, making suggestions and calming tempers. By mid-morning, I was bored enough to join Hagen: his lands abutted the Ti’ach’s, and I knew them fairly well. If I could help anyone, it would be him.

  “Sorley,” he said when I sat down. “Should I put the meadows along the water to the plough, if I can find seed? They’ve been grazed, but we’ll not have sheep in numbers for a few years yet.”

  “If those meadows are like the Ti’ach’s, they’re wet,” I said. “Better leave them to the sheep, and plough better drained land, if you can.” He’d be late getting the barley in, but it needed only three months to be ready to harvest. We talked a while longer, before I asked, “You’ve no factor?”

  “Dead,” he said succinctly.

  “Go see Anndra,” I suggested. The Ti’ach na Perras, unlike some, had no appointed factor to oversee the farming of its lands. Perras had preferred to work with one of the torpari men, husband to the housekeeper Isa. What Anndra did not know about the Ti’ach’s lands, he’d said to me more than once, wasn’t worth knowing, and Dagney had been happy to keep the accounts.

  “Aye, I will,” he said. “Although you’ve given me good advice. You know, Sorley, you should be toscaire to the landholders, not to the foreigners. You understand us, and our ways and needs.”

  “If I fail my scáeli’s exam,” I said with a grin, “I just might consider that.”

  He laughed. “As likely as that is, with the Lady Dagney as your teacher for all those years. I’m riding home in the morning. Join me?”

  “If the Teannasach and his regent allow it,” I said, “I’d be happy to.” I liked Hagen, and company on the road would be welcome.

  Dinner that night was raucous; there would be sore heads in the morning. But not mine. Liam appeared briefly, long enough for me to request of him and Ruar that I might leave in the morning. “Aye,” Liam said, “you have your instructions.”

>   “I was hoping you would stay,” Ruar said. “I wanted to learn more about Casil.”

  “I’ll return,” I said. “But I should not keep the Governor waiting.”

  “I suppose,” he said, making a face. “I am coming with Daoíre to meet him, in the summer.”

  “Perhaps,” Liam said sharply. Ruar didn’t reply. But it reminded me of what else I wanted to do. Excusing myself, I poured a cup of ale and found Daoíre. He followed me to a quieter corner of the hall.

  “I was thinking about what you said,” I told him. “That I am not strong-minded enough to negotiate with Casil. I never thought Liam would ask me to be toscaire to the Eastern Empire. Talks with the Princip — that I can do. Casyn’s nearly a friend. But Decanius was too much for me, and while Livius is friendlier, there’s iron behind his smile.”

  “Are you suggesting you want to resign? You are all we have,” Daoíre said. “No one else can speak Casilan properly, and no one else has been there.”

  “I won’t resign, not yet,” I said. “But I’m not the right person. I don’t think quickly enough, or subtly enough.”

  He chewed his lip. “You can be little more than an intermediary, I suppose. It will mean more travel, back and forth, and letters. If we recall Randall, can he teach me to pronounce Casilan properly?”

  “He’s fluent now, so yes.”

  “Then perhaps I will. And perhaps when I come to meet the Governor, with Ruar,” he glanced over to where the boy sat, “and it will be with Ruar, regardless of what Liam says now, I will stay, and you can revert to being only our toscaire to — what is the new name?”

  “Ésparias.”

  “Ésparias. Or maybe you can resign then, and become the scáeli you are clearly meant to be.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “But you have seen how carefully we handle the old man. Say nothing to him. I will let you know, in time.”

  “Meas, Daoíre,” I said. He turned to go, then swung around.

  “Sorley. Say nothing to Cillian, either. I know you and he are friends, but this is Linrathe’s business. Remember your oath.”

  Chapter 17

  Music drifted out from Dagney’s workroom when I ran up the steps into the hall a few days later. The door was open, so I didn’t knock. She put her ladhar down as soon as she saw me, rising to give me a long embrace. “My dear,” she said. “Did you get my letter?”

  “No, but Bhradaín had received his, and he told me. In the autumn?”

  “Or late summer. Have you enough time to build your instrument, if it is early rather than late?”

  I grinned. “I anticipated a little, and began it some weeks ago. It will be of yew, but I’m afraid I have little chance of ornamenting it properly.”

  “It is the sound that matters,” she said. “How is Cillian? And Lena and the baby?”

  “Cillian,” I said, taking the seat she offered, “works too hard. Yes, already. Would you expect anything else? And Gwenna had colic, and screamed endlessly, but it had eased when I left.” I told her of the Governor, and the request to send Faolyn to Casil, and that Druise had gone with him.

  “Not for all the years the boy will be there, surely?” she said, frowning.

  “No. Just the summer, to smooth his way. He’ll be home in the autumn.” When I would have a difficult truth to tell him. Maybe it would be best if I resigned my toscaire’s role completely, if I passed the scáeli’s exam. I could wander then, as so many did.

  While Isa prepared a meal, I went to the room she’d given me in the annex. I dressed in fresh clothes, and thought about shaving, deciding against it. In the corridor, I stopped outside Cillian’s room. He’d asked me to bring the xache set back to Wall’s End, and to collect some books for him. I’d take the xache set now, I thought, while I was here.

  I opened the shutters to let light into the room. Unheated, the air felt damp, and unsurprisingly, the wood of the chest had swollen, the lid hard to open. I ran my hand around the edge of the open box to make sure I hadn’t damaged it. Perhaps because I had been looking carefully, when I took out the bag with the xache pieces, I noticed something. The chest appeared deeper on the outside than on the inside. I took out the folded blankets that were all that the chest held now, and when I did a compartment below became obvious, the leather hinges and handle in full view.

  You cannot trespass, Cillian had said, when I’d told him I felt uncomfortable rummaging through his things, and yet as I lifted the panel — also with some difficulty — I felt as if I were. Then I knew I was, because neatly arranged in the hidden space were diaries, their covers labelled and the handwriting changing from a child’s to Cillian’s now-familiar adult hand. I sat back on my heels. Had he forgotten they were here? I closed the compartment’s lid, replaced the blanket, and took the xache set.

  Then I went to Perras’s study. The room, empty of Perras’s warm, welcoming presence, echoed with silence and loss. I opened shutters and examined the bookshelves. The books had been arranged logically, and I found the three Cillian had wanted without difficulty. The titles meant nothing to me. With a pang of sadness, I closed the shutters again, and took the books to Dagney.

  She glanced at them. “Those are all Perras’s, and therefore Cillian’s. He does not need to return them.”

  “Cillian told me to be discreet about these books. He said they might be considered subversive, by the Casilani. Do you know why?”

  “This one,” she touched the smallest of the three, “is an account of the life and death of one of Heræcria’s philosophers. He challenged their form of government and was executed as a result. I don’t remember much more than that. The others I do not know. But, yes, the first could be considered controversial.”

  “I wonder why Cillian wants them?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “Have you seen these?” I showed Dagney the xache set.

  “Not for years,” she exclaimed. “They were all Cillian brought with him, other than his clothes. He asked for them?”

  “He said he wanted Gwenna to have known them all her life.”

  She took one of the pieces, turning it in her fingers. “When the Eirën who was lord to Cillian’s family wrote to Perras, asking if we would take Cillian so young, he said ‘the boy exceeds my own sons at xache, and they are twice his age’.”

  “He exceeds everyone at xache. Except his father, the General Turlo once told me.”

  “I remember the first time he won playing Perras. He was eleven or twelve. Perras was so pleased.” She smiled at the memory. “The pupil surpassing the teacher.”

  “Did he ever disappoint Perras?” I asked impulsively.

  “Disappoint? No more than any other student, and never for the same thing twice, if I recall. I had more responsibility for his behaviour — for all the students’ behaviour — beyond the classroom, and he could be as thoughtless as any boy, but not excessively.”

  “And as an adult?” She looked at me sharply.

  “What are you asking me, Sorley?”

  “Something he said to me more than once. That he doubts he deserves to be loved. I wonder why; what he might have done to think that way. I thought if he had disappointed you or Perras, it might be part of it.”

  A look of pain crossed her face. “There were choices he made, as a man, that Perras wished he had not. But completely redeemed, by later decisions. I should find a way to tell him that, if it is preying on his mind.” She frowned. “Should I have seen this, Sorley? He said nothing to me, nor did Lena, in the months I was there.”

  “Nor has he to me, since Casil,” I told her. “A fear well hidden.”

  “Nonetheless, a concern,” she said.

  What had he done? There were the diaries, carefully hidden. They might hold the answer, but telling me I could not trespass did not extend that far.

  But later, after I bade Dagney good night, I paused outside the door to Cillian’s room. Then I went in. Placing the candle I carried on the desk, I opened the chest again.

  I looked at the diaries fo
r a long time before I reached for one. The first one, labelled in a childish hand with Cillian’s name, and his age. Slowly, hating myself, I opened it, to the first page.

  The Comiádh tells me I play xache well, I read in Linrathan. I have not cried in five days. I will not cry again.

  I closed the book. I could not read this. I had no right.

  Chapter 18

  I left early the next morning. As I mounted my horse, I looked first at the track up from the courtyard, then south across the stream and the long valley. Cross-country might be faster. I rolled my eyes at my own folly and turned up the track. Half a day could not make that much difference.

  When it began to rain again in the early afternoon, I was glad of my decision. I checked the books and my ladhar again, securely wrapped in oiled hide, found my hat, and kept riding. I slept that night at a guardpost on the Wall, reaching the fort in late morning. As I rode through the opened gate I had been holding the thought of the baths and perhaps a massage close for the last hour. Leaving my horse at the stables — it would get a rub-down and food and drink before I did, I thought wryly — and carrying my saddlebags, I entered the building, squelching with every step.

  “Sorley!” Lena’s voice, from behind me. I turned. She was wearing her uniform, and she was holding papers. I frowned.

  “Lena? Why are you in uniform? Where’s Gwenna?”

  “I’m working,” she said, “and Gwenna is with her nursemaid.” Said almost casually, but I heard a tightness, tension, in her voice.

  I hesitated. “I’m drenched. I must change. Can we eat together at mid-day?” An hour, or a little more.

  “Certainly. My time is mine to order, when I’m not needed in meetings. Our rooms?” I agreed, and with a quick smile she turned back the way she had come. A small fire burned in my room, driving out the damp, but it looked bare, somehow. I stripped off my wet clothes, found a light tunic and breeches, and went to the baths.