Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  Just after mid-day I knocked on Lena and Cillian’s door, and pushed it open. Lena looked up from where she sat feeding Gwenna. A young woman — I would have said girl, but she too held a nursing baby, its hair fox-red — sat beside her. Seeing me, she pulled a shawl over the baby and her bare breast, flushing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize —”

  “Tyrvi, this is Sorley,” Lena said. “You may have heard your father speak of him. Tyrvi has come from Berge to help with Gwenna. We needed a wet-nurse; I do not make enough milk to feed her properly. It’s why she cried so much; not colic at all. Tyrvi is Turlo’s daughter, Sorley.”

  “I know your father well,” I said to Tyrvi. “Your child has his hair.”

  “Yes,” she said shyly. “He does. He is called Darel, for my brother.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Two months.” She stood, holding out an arm. “I’ll take Gwenna now, Lena, and finish both their feeds in the nursery.” Lena detached Gwenna from her breast, gently, and gave her to the girl. Gwenna made a few noises of protest, but Tyrvi murmured to her as she carried the two babies to the adjoining room. Lena adjusted her shirt.

  “How old is she?” I asked, very quietly.

  “Fourteen. At least she was not taken as a slave. Kyreth brought her to me, not long after you left. Gwenna wasn’t gaining weight, and she was lethargic, but always wanting to feed. Gnaius weighed her for two days running, and declared I needed a wet-nurse. Tyrvi wanted to be where her baby’s grandfather mattered, not his father. How could I refuse?” She had walked over to me as she spoke. I held out my arms, and she came into them, sighing. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Cillian?” I asked.

  “He is — all right. Working too hard, and not sleeping well. He missed you.”

  “Is he coming to eat?”

  “No, because he doesn’t know you’re here. He would if he did, but usually he eats with Casyn, or in his workroom. If he eats at all. Shall I fetch him? Or shall we talk, just the two of us?”

  I could tell which she hoped for. I didn’t mind: I was reluctant to face him, for many reasons. “Just us,” I said.

  Food — bread, olives and cheese — awaited us on the low table. “What is it you’re doing?” I asked, as we sat. “What work, I mean?”

  “Inventories, of weapons and harness and the like.” She reached for a piece of bread. “Nothing interesting, but I needed something to do, and the Procurator insists this must be done. The man counts or measures everything.”

  “And what is Cillian doing?” I bit into an olive. I’d developed a taste for them in Casil.

  “Thinking of counterarguments to the changes the Casilani want, mostly. Trying to predict what they will demand next, and reading through old records when he isn’t in meetings. Talyn helps with that, now.”

  “Couldn’t you help him too, rather than count swords?”

  “He hasn’t asked.”

  The tone of her voice made me put my food down. “Why not? What’s wrong?”

  “I think he’s angry with me, because I...” Her voice trailed off.

  “What? Because you couldn’t feed Gwenna enough? That’s not your fault.”

  “No. Not that. But, Sorley, I was — relieved, in a way. I cannot be just Gwenna’s mother and nothing more. At Tirvan, I would have been working again a week or two after her birth, with Dessa or Siane, if I couldn’t go out on the boats. There were always women around to help, and because of Festival and the babies all being born close together, someone else could feed her, too, if I’d gone out to fish. No one brought up their babies alone.”

  Nor had they at Gundarstorp, I reflected. “And you think Cillian is angry because of this?”

  “Maybe. Yes. He adores her, Sorley; you saw that, before you left. When he is here, he’s always holding her, playing with her. Singing to her, even, the cradle song you wrote. I don’t think he understands how I can want to do something else.”

  “Because his own mother never had the chance?” I asked. She nodded without speaking. “Has he said this?”

  “No. He is just — distant. Not cold; he’s affectionate enough, but it feels as if he’s reminding himself to kiss me, or put his arms around me.”

  “And...” I hesitated. “Nothing more?”

  “No. And not because it is too soon after the birth now. He can’t, still.”

  I winced. I had a tiny glimmer of understanding of what making love had meant to them. “Lena, couldn’t that be why he is detached? Remember what he said when he was arguing to not marry: that under the circumstances, it was unfair to you. Why Dagney did not ask you to swear vows of bodily fidelity, even though he did.”

  “He didn’t,” she said. “Neither of us did.”

  “But — ” I thought back. Hadn’t he? “Oh, gods,” I said. “Did he think it wasn’t necessary, because he would never recover?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “No. That wasn’t why. Hasn’t he said anything to you?”

  “No. What?”

  She shook her head. “I asked him not to promise it, although he would have. It would have been inappropriate. But this is all theoretical, Sorley, and likely to remain so for a while yet, Gnaius says.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said gently. “But, Lena, shouldn’t you talk to him?”

  Her jaw tightened. “If I ever saw him for more than a few minutes, I might. But when he comes from his treatments in the late afternoon he goes immediately to Gwenna, and how can I interfere with that joy? Without you or Druise with us in the evening, he returns to his books soon after we eat. Maybe Irmgard was right, Sorley.”

  “I told her she was wrong then, and I’m telling you the same now,” I said angrily. The Marai princess had dismissed Lena as not worthy of Cillian’s intellect. “You were part of all the planning for the negotiations in Casil, and all the work we did together on the Boranoi treaty. He should be consulting you.”

  After the meal, Lena went back to her storerooms, and I went looking for someone in the Governor’s retinue. I found one of his assistants and requested a meeting. I would be told when, he assured me. Then I kept myself busy until late in the afternoon.

  The bath attendant frowned at me: I’d just been there, earlier in the day. “The Major Cillian?” I enquired.

  “He is here, yes.”

  “Alone?” He confirmed it.

  Cillian’s greeting was genuine, his smile warm, but his face had grown thinner again, the lines on it more pronounced. “Gods,” I said, after I had slipped into the water. I didn’t offer the kiss of greeting. “You look terrible. Are you working too hard?”

  “I must.”

  “Why?” I inquired, settling back on the bench.

  “There is much to do, to counter what Casil demands of us, and what I in naivety agreed to.”

  “What do they want now?”

  “To divide the country into administrative districts, each with a Sub-Procurator. The mensores are sending in more reports, which we are not allowed to see. Casyn — ” he took a deep breath. “Casyn is not arguing, or not strongly. Token objections, I would say.”

  “And you?”

  “I try to limit what is actually done, counter with carefully researched arguments about Ésparias’s laws and traditions. But I fear in the end all arguments will fail. Did you bring the books I asked for, mo charaidh?”

  ‘Yes.” I’d nearly forgotten them. “They’re in my room.”

  “Dagney had no objection?”

  “None. They’re yours, after all.” I paused. “It’s strange, at the Ti’ach, without Perras.”

  “It must be.” He studied me for a moment. “As you will find it strange here this summer, without Druisius.”

  “I suppose I will,” I said. I didn’t really want to talk about Druise.

  “You could have resigned your position and gone with him.”

  “Resign?” I almost said, ‘I am going to’, but Daoíre’s last words stopped me.
/>   “I did, if you recall.”

  “But you weren’t in the middle of important negotiations,” I protested.

  “Were we not?” An enigmatic answer; they always were, whenever conversation touched on that time.

  “Why did you resign?” I’d never had the nerve to ask before. He rubbed his chin, not looking at me.

  “Too many secrets,” he said. “Too many half-truths and evasions, and innocent people being caught by them. More than my conscience could allow, by then.”

  I hadn’t expected such a raw answer. “Gods,” I said, deflecting, “maybe I should resign, before I am corrupted.”

  “You? I doubt you could be, mo duíne chiòntach.”

  The description irked me. “Cillian, I am far from innocent.” I saw the tiny flicker on his face. He’d seen, here in the baths, the marks Druise’s teeth left on my skin; he’d given me an assessing look the first time, but that was all.

  “In this you are,” he said.

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “I cannot resign, not now. Ruar trusts me, and I will not disappoint my Teannasach.”

  “Another innocent.”

  “Why are you so cynical suddenly?” I spoke sharply. “Cillian, you sound like you did years ago. Before your exile. Before Lena.”

  “For some of the same reasons, I suppose,” he said. Then he smiled, unexpectedly, reaching out a hand to touch mine under the water. “I am frustrated with the Princip, and a little angry at myself. It has been a difficult few weeks, with Gwenna not well, and the talks. Forgive me.”

  He would have worried about his beloved daughter; regardless, he would have tried to be calm and rational in the face of that worry and the demands of his work. I studied the lines on his face. Only fatigue? “How bad has it been?”

  He glanced over at me, surprise evident. “Bad enough.”

  “And no Druise, to help you.”

  “I must learn to deal with this on my own,” he said.

  “It’s been — what? Eight weeks? Ten? Don’t be a fool, Cillian. I’m here now.” Without Druise, he’ll need me, I thought, to my immediate horror. Did I want Cillian fighting the desire for poppy, just so I could be the one to help him through it? I wasn’t an innocent, but I wasn’t an adult, either, if I really thought that.

  “It should not be you I turn to, when the cravings occur.”

  Irritation flared again. “Why not? Or don’t you trust me to be capable of supporting you through them?”

  “I have no doubts about your capabilities, my lord Sorley,” he said. “My distrust lies elsewhere.” He smiled, a little sadly. “Now we know what was wrong with Gwenna, I will be all right.”

  “I hope so,” I said. He was distancing himself, from me, too. “I’ll get your books after the baths. Do you want them in your workroom?”

  He shook his head. “No. Our private rooms, if you will. Now, tell me how things are in Linrathe, and what happened at the council meeting.”

  “Very little, in truth,” I said. “Most landholders see no issue with the treaty, and only one objected to Ruar as Teannasach, because of his age. He swore allegiance anyhow.” I didn’t think I’d tell Cillian what had been said about him, by Liam or Utar or anyone.

  “And the tribute?”

  “Likely timber.” I heard Gnaius’s voice in the antechamber. “It was fairly boring, if I am truthful.”

  “Often they are,” he said. “And you must be circumspect: Linrathe’s toscaire, not my friend. I understand.”

  I only nodded. What was there to say?

  Chapter 19

  Anger at myself bubbled as I went to fetch the books and xache set. My thoughts had been those of a child, eager for the attention of an adult. Then again, I thought, Cillian is still treating me like one. That wasn’t entirely true, I admitted immediately, but it wasn’t wrong, either. Mo duíne chiòntach.

  Lena was not in their rooms. I put the books and game down on the table. Tyrvi opened the door to the nursery. “Lord Sorley,” she said. “I wondered who it was.”

  “Just Sorley,” I told her. “Please.”

  She closed the door behind her. “The babies are sleeping,” she said quietly. “You wrote the song the Major sings to Gwenna, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Do you like music, Tyrvi?”

  “I like to sing.”

  My interest sharpened. “Do you? Songs from your village?” She nodded. “Could I hear them, some time? I collect songs,” I explained, “and Lena knows only one, I think, and it isn’t even from Tirvan.”

  Her cheeks turned a pale pink. “But I have no training, and you are a musician.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just sing them to the babies sometimes when I’m here. Will you?”

  “All right.” She cocked her head at a sound from the nursery. “That was Darel. I had better see to him. Then I could sing a song for you.”

  I settled down on a chair, picking up one of the books I’d brought Cillian. I opened it, reading a few lines, then more. I was still reading when Tyrvi returned with her son in her arms. She sat across from me, the baby on her lap. “This is a lullaby,” she said, and began to sing a simple tune. I listened intently, recognizing similarities with cradle tunes I knew, but the words were very different.

  I took the ladhar I left here from where it hung on the wall, and adjusted its tuning. “Sing it again?” I asked, and this time I played along. She smiled in delight. The baby gurgled on her lap.

  After another repetition I had both the variations of the tune and the words. I’d write them down later, but as long as I knew the tune, the words would come. “You remind me of one of my students,” I told her. “Niav, her name was. She loved to sing too.”

  Her eyes were older than they should be, suddenly. “Did the Marai take her?” I nodded, not sure what to say. She looked away.

  “At least she can sing her songs to her baby,” she said. “They belong to us, the babies, and they are needed, aren’t they? Because so many people died.”

  “They are,” I said softly. There was sense in the thought, a way to find something good after the violence and terror. I wondered who had suggested it to her.

  Gwenna wailed from the nursery. Tyrvi got up. “She’ll need changing and feeding again.” She touched my ladhar with one finger. “I’ll sing for you again, if you like, Lord Sorley.”

  I was engrossed in the book still when Lena came in. “I came to bring Cillian’s books,” I told her, “and then I started reading one.” I closed it, not wanting to talk about its contents.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked, unfastening her badge of rank and putting it on the sideboard.

  “Yes. Briefly. He was distant with me, too, Lena, just as he was in Casil. It’s not you.”

  “I suppose, then,” she said, dropping into a chair, “I should be happy he remembers to be affectionate, even if it feels forced. Or was he not, with you?”

  “Not really.” Nor had I wanted him to be. “Lena, at the Ti’ach — I had never been to his room before this winter. Students do not go into the annex. But he wanted his books, so I did. It was stark. His only personal possession, the xache set — it’s here, by the way — was under his clothes in the chest.” Not quite true, but I didn’t think it was my place to tell Lena about the diaries. “Twenty years, or more, probably, he has followed Catilius, and the other philosophers of his school, and I think they are solace and strength for him now.”

  “To deal with the pain, and the cravings,” she said.

  “And other things. Including the work.”

  She sat silently, her eyes unfocused. “Then I must find my own source of solace and strength, mustn’t I?” she almost whispered. “Have I been foolish, Sorley? Thinking we would have again what we did for a few brief weeks away from diplomacy and politics?”

  “Lena, he loves you. This is temporary.”

  “Is it? Do you remember saying that with me, he was truly happy for the first time? In the weeks before we met you, in the Kurzemë village and af
ter, he was a different man. I saw him change, the moment he realized who was on the ship, and that our past lives had caught up with us.”

  “But, Lena,” I protested, “not back into the man he was before. Nor is he that now.”

  “That may be true,” she said. “It is true. But neither is he the man I came to love over that winter of exile. Nor am I that woman, I suppose.”

  What could I say? I hadn’t known her, bar a few days at the Ti’ach, and I certainly hadn’t known Cillian in the freedom of exile. I had seen only the change from the cynical and bitter man he had been in his last years in Linrathe. “He is,” I said, “somewhere inside him.” But so was the cold and angry man, too, by that argument.

  “Perhaps,” Lena said. “But the pain will never leave him, and his mind will always need occupation, both to distract him from that pain, and to challenge him. He would have stayed at the Kurzemë village out of a sense of obligation, a duty, but I argued, telling him the work was not sufficient for his intellect.” She took a deep breath. “So I cannot complain now he has something that meets his needs. I can choose my reaction to this. That is what Casyn — and Catilius — would tell me. So I will. Soon. But right now, what I’m feeling is angry.”

  Not what I had expected her to say. “I suppose,” I said, groping for words, “that’s reasonable. You wanted to go to the Ti’ach as soon as possible, didn’t you?”

  “I did. And yes, I’m annoyed about that, but I almost understand. It is something else that angers me.”

  “Which is?”

  “He has never taught me Linrathan. I can’t talk to him in his own language, except a phrase here and there. It’s another sort of distancing, isn’t it? Dagney started to teach me, but he didn’t make any attempt to continue it, after she left.”

  But he had found time to learn Heræcrian. My idea. I winced a little, inside.

  “Do you want to, still?”

  “Of course I do!” She frowned at me. “The Ti’ach is still our dream, even if it is postponed, and I’ll need the language. But it’s more than that. Long ago — ” She stopped. “Not so long ago, really; a year, or less, Cillian and I talked of finding the voices of common people in history. He suggested perhaps the danta were the best place to look.”