Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “Out in the wilds, trying to survive, and he’s talking about books and history? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “It shouldn’t,” she said drily. “But looking for those voices was my thought, not his, and one I would like to pursue. But to do so, I will need to read Linrathan, as well as speak it.”

  “I’ll ask Dagney to send some from her collection,” I said. “In the meantime, I’ll write some out for you, and I will teach you Linrathan. If Cillian is going to insist on working all the hours of the day, it’ll give us something to do.”

  A headache had begun its rhythmic pulse in my left temple as I returned to my workroom. I needed willow-bark, or the baths, and the first was simpler. Not only Lena’s concerns fuelled the pain. Be circumspect with the books, Cillian had told me. I knew why now: the one I had so idly begun was a history of rebellion within Casil, of the overthrow of a dictatorial Emperor. A history of treason and betrayal, and of its planning.

  Chapter 20

  15 years after the battle of the Taiva

  Marai, riding openly in daylight in Linrathe? Druise shrugged. “I know what I saw.” We waited. Two men rode out of the valley before us. They were indeed Marai. I pushed my cloak a little further back, my eyes never leaving them. Swords, but each rider had both hands on their horses’ reins; cloth riding clothes, not leather.

  “Good morning,” I called in Marái’sta.

  “Good morning,” one called back. “Are we on the right track for the school? Cillín’s school?” He pronounced Cillian’s name as it would be in northern Sorham.

  “And what might you want with him?” I asked. They stopped a few paces away. The speaker was young, mid-twenties, I judged, the other man closer to my age. Dressed the same, but I thought the one speaking was of higher rank, the way the second man remained just a little behind, his eyes alert and moving. Just as Druise’s would be.

  “I am Vidar,” he said. “I am come at my father’s behest, with questions.”

  “Who is your father?” I asked.

  “Who is asking?” he replied, with cool confidence.

  “Lord Sorley, scáeli to the Ti'ach na Cillian,” I said. I wasn't, actually, lord of anything, but Ruar had insisted I keep the title.

  “Lord Sorley!” His face brightened. “I am a friend of Bjørn’s. My father is the Earl Aaro.”

  That explained a lot, although I still didn't understand why they were riding in Linrathe alone. Perhaps Ruar had thought insisting on an escort would be interpreted as an insult to his wife’s cousin? But surely, a guide, at least?

  “I am surprised to see you without a guide, Vidar Aaroson,” I said. “It is easy to lose the way among these hills.”

  “I refused,” he answered. “I like wayfinding. It is a challenge, especially in a new land. We have not been lost,” he added, proudly.

  “Well,” I said, “you are on the right track, to be sure. But I will ask you to wait while I speak to my companions.” I turned my horse to ride back to where Druise and Gwenna waited. Gwenna spoke Marái’sta, but Druise did not. I switched to Casilan.

  “If he is who he claims to be, he is cousin to the Teannasach’s wife,” I told them, “come to speak to Cillian.”

  “About what?” Druise asked.

  “He didn't say,” Gwenna said. “But he’s very relaxed, isn't he? Sure of himself.” Two years a cadet, I thought, and she’s better at this than I was when I was made toscaire.

  “He may be,” Druise said, “but his guard is not. I don't like this.” He chewed his lip. “I'll escort them to the Ti'ach. Gwenna, say nothing, and give no hint you can understand them. Sorley, tell them I'm your guard, and that you're sending me with them for their safety.”

  Which would not be a lie. The torpari guard at the Ti'ach would be on them as soon as they crossed into our lands.

  “We'll wait for you at Dun Ceànnar,” I said.

  He nodded. “I'll send word if I can't come.”

  I reined the gelding around. “Vidar,” I said, keeping my voice conversational, “I appreciate your liking for wayfinding, but I must send my guard with you to the Ti'ach na Cillian. You are lucky to have ridden so far into Linrathe without incident, and I would not want the Ti'ach’s patrols to accost you in error. Ésparias ensures they are well-protected, and Linrathe cooperates.”

  He heard the veiled warning. His eyes narrowed fractionally, but he smiled and made a gesture of acquiescence. “I appreciate your concern for our safety, Lord Sorley,” he said.

  “Druisius speaks no Marái’sta,” I added. “Do you speak Linrathan?”

  “Some. Enough to get by, I am sure. Will we reach the Ti'ach today?”

  “Easily. And so you know, the correct title within Linrathe for Cillian is Comiádh.”

  “Comiádh.” He tried the word out. “I will remember. Thank you, Lord Sorley. Safe journey, wherever it is you ride.”

  We turned our horses off the track to allow them to pass. Druise rode up to us. “Do what Sorley tells you, Kitten,” he said to Gwenna. He gave me a wry grin. “Maybe this will deflect Lena’s wrath over the puppy,” he said to me. “But if I take the brunt of it, amané, you will know.”

  I watched them ride away before I glanced over at Gwenna. For all the years of being guarded, she'd never been in a potentially dangerous situation before. Nor had she ever heard Druise give her a direct command, expecting to be obeyed. Her bodyguard, not her friend.

  “Is Athàir in danger?” she asked me. “Or my mother?”

  “You tell me, Gwenna,” I said. “What did you see?”

  “The second man was his guard,” she said. “He was watching Druise, mostly. I guess he knew Druise was our guard?” I nodded. “But his hand didn't go to his sword. So he didn't feel very threatened.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “The young man — Vidar? — seemed genuinely glad to know who you were. But you didn't give my name, so you didn't want him to know who I am. So you think there might be a threat.”

  “I’m being cautious,” I agreed. “Again, Gwenna, why?” We had begun to ride again, at a walk.

  “They are Marai,” she said.

  “And?”

  “There are Marai who want to kill Mathàir. Or hurt me, or Colm. Because she killed Fritjof.”

  “Yes. I’m likely erring in caution, but I promised to take care of you. I think Vidar is who he says he is, but that he rides unescorted worries me a little. I wonder why Ruar would allow it. So I didn’t volunteer your name.”

  “But if he had asked you, you would have had to tell him, wouldn't you?”

  “I would, yes.”

  “So you can't lie to me about anything?”

  “I cannot, no.” Not to a direct question. I did not have to offer information, but my oath to the scáeli'en council required me to tell the truth if asked, unless what was requested was someone else’s secret.

  “Is that why you're asking all the questions, instead of letting me ask? And you didn't answer my first question. Are my parents in danger?”

  “I doubt it. And I wanted to know what you saw, without being influenced by my opinion.” She was Cillian’s daughter. Why was I surprised she saw through my dissembling? “But I fully intended to tell you.”

  “Did you? And that’s a question, Sorley.”

  I tried not to laugh at her indignant tone. “I know, Gwenna. Yes, I did, and here is what I think. Vidar is the Earl Aaro’s son, and he’s here to talk to your father about setting up a school of some sort in Varsland. He’s old enough to have children of his own and he may be thinking of them, and their part in a larger world, now Varsland trades with Casil.” None of this was untrue. I waited for her next question.

  But none came. We rode a little faster on the broad track. Gwenna was a good rider, and the dun mare she rode a seasoned traveller. The horse had been one of Lena’s army mounts, although not the one from whose back she had killed Fritjof at the Taiva. When it had been time from Gwenna to graduate from her hill pony
to a horse she could take to the White Fort, Lena had given her the mare.

  My own gelding had travelled from the Ti'ach to Dun Ceànnar so many times I thought I could have slept in the saddle and he would still deliver me safely. Ruar had granted me freedom from my toscaire’s oath when he had appointed me to the Ti'ach: I could not be both an envoy and a scáeli. But I had remained an unofficial advisor to him, and a messenger, sometimes, and I made the journey several times each year.

  We stopped by a stream to eat and let the horses drink. A ring of stones made a convenient place to sit, and we ate cheese and smoked fish and bread companionably. “Sorley?” Gwenna said when she had finished eating. “You're going to tell me why my father broke his oath, aren't you?”

  “You should know. You are just old enough now, I believe. We believe, all four of us.”

  “You have known him longer than anyone, haven't you?”

  “In a way, yes. Since I was sixteen, although I did not see him again for two years, until I came to the Ti'ach. And even then he was travelling quite a bit.” Nor had we been close. Cillian had made sure of that.

  “In our classes, the General has told us we need to learn as much as we can about both our enemies and our allies, to understand their motives,” Gwenna said. “So I want to learn more about Athàir, before you tell me his reasons for betraying Linrathe.”

  I said a silent thank you to Casyn for implanting the idea in Gwenna’s mind. He was an old man now, nearly seventy, but he still taught the officer cadets. “Something to do,” he'd told us, the last time he visited the Ti'ach. “Faolyn needs advising, of course, but I cannot be seen to be too much of an influence on him.”

  “A sensible approach,” I said to Gwenna, “and one worthy of a diplomat in training. The General would be pleased. Where would you like me to start?”

  “Why are we at the Ti’ach? Shouldn’t Athàir be in Ésparias, advising Faolyn?” She rushed on, forestalling anything I could have said. “I know what I’ve been told, that it is for his health, but when I said that at the White Fort there were looks and whispers. Tell me the truth, Sorley.”

  “It is a long story, Gwenna,” I said. “His health is part of it. Your father,” I grinned, “tends to work too hard, if you hadn’t noticed, and there was so much to be done once the war was over. So many negotiations with Casil and at first he couldn’t be part of it. He was too ill.”

  “Was he?” She thought about that. “I suppose he must have been. But no one tells me about that time, after he didn’t die when he was expected to. All I know is that he recovered, and after a while we came here.”

  I glanced at the sun. I needed a few minutes to gather my thoughts, and to prepare myself for the memories. “We should mount up. The track is wide enough for us to be side by side; I’ll tell you as we go.”

  Chapter 21

  “I'm not sure that even with all my scáeli’s skills I can truly help you see what those months were like,” I began, when we were riding again. “Your father was in immense pain: every movement was agony. He could not walk, and we did not know if he ever would again. Gnaius and Druise forced him through exercises twice a day; they exhausted him, and he needed strong drugs.”

  “Drugs? Athàir? But he hardly accepts even willow-bark, and he waters his wine more than mine,” Gwenna protested.

  “But then he had no choice,” I told her. “Gnaius had been very clear about it. He told Cillian that if the pain was not controlled, it would place too much strain on his frail body, and the fever would return. So he accepted the drugs.” Just as now, some nights, he accepted the mix of cannabium and willow-bark that helped him relax and freed him of the worst pain for a few hours.

  “He must have hated that,” Gwenna murmured.

  “He did,” I said. “They affected his mind, his clarity of thought. Can you imagine it, Gwenna? Your father unable to think clearly, unable to hold a book for very long, or write; he couldn't understand a xache game, or follow more than a simple conversation. These things bothered him more than his physical limitations, in truth.”

  “He wouldn't be himself,” Gwenna said, aghast. “He couldn't be the Comiádh.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Your father’s fear, and your mother’s. And I was away a lot: I was toscaire, then, to Ésparias and to Casil. Your mother was frightened, and very alone. You know what happened at Tirvan, and at all the women’s villages. Her mother was dead, and her sister was in Casilla, a very long way away, and with a newborn of her own by then. Not that she would have asked her to come.”

  “Why not?”

  I did not know what Lena had told her daughter. “Her experiences were so different from your aunt Kira’s,” I said, “and from almost all the women’s. Only a very few villages escaped the raids by the Marai. She was carrying you, who had been conceived in love — love and light and laughter, she told me once — and their children, born and unborn, came from rape. She did not feel comfortable being with Kira, I think.”

  “What about Talyn?”

  “She was there, yes, but you have to understand how busy everyone was, in the aftermath of such a terrible war. Your father was far from the only severely wounded soldier, and there had been many deaths. Talyn simply could not spend much time with Lena.”

  “I can't imagine my mother afraid and...and weak.”

  “It’s difficult, isn’t it?” I agreed. “But she was. She had lost so much, and she was terrified she was going to lose your father too.”

  “But I thought...” She frowned.

  “Oh, he was going to live. Your mother did not care that he was scarred, and not graceful any longer — because he had been, Gwenna. Cillian was the most beautiful man I have ever met, handsome and elegant, and he danced like a swallow in flight. But none of that mattered: what Lena feared was that his injuries, to body and mind, would make him bitter and withdrawn. That he would not love you, or her.”

  “Athàir? Not love us?”

  “Love,” I said, “is not simple, Gwenna. It comes with responsibility, terrible responsibility towards the ones you love, and what if you believe you cannot meet that obligation?” You run away, I thought. As I had, to my everlasting shame.

  “He thought he would not love me?”

  “Only before you were born,” I told her. “I saw that doubt disappear when Gnaius put you in his arms when you were only a few minutes old. He was frightened of being a father, but he kept his promises.”

  “I thought he always kept his promises,” she said. “He’s told us they are binding, and should be made sparingly, and only if we can keep them. But he broke his oath to Linrathe, and that is a special kind of promise.”

  “He did,” I said. “You asked me to help you understand. It’s your father as a man, with fears and wishes, a man who made — makes — mistakes, that you need to learn to see, Gwenna. May I tell you something?”

  “Yes,” she said, a little doubtfully.

  “When I first met him, I didn't see the man, either, only how...exciting he was, in my northern hall. And even through the journey to Casil, and back, and the war, and all that came after, I was a bit like you. I saw my hero, an ideal of unattainable perfection, I think, not the imperfect human he is. And learning he was indeed imperfect, very much so, was as big a shock to me as it’s being to you, right now.”

  “But you were grown up.”

  “In years, perhaps. Not so much in wisdom.” I had another truth I needed to begin to weave into the tale; one that she must acknowledge if she were to fully understand Cillian’s actions. But gently. “For all his mistakes and his faults, he’s the best man I know or have ever known, and he deserves your love, and your brother’s, and your mother’s and mine. Don't judge him too quickly.” The sky was clouding over. I wanted to reach Gedwinstorp before it rained. “We need to ride faster, Gwenna.”

  We were drenched by the time we reached the torp. Our horses were led away to be fed and watered and groomed, and we went into the hall for much of the same. The K
onë took Gwenna to change into dry clothes, and I was shown to the room they always gave me, the one every Eirën or Harr kept for scáeli'en and toscairen and travelling teachers seeking a night’s accommodation.

  Old Gedwin and his son Gedi were sitting by the fire drinking ale when I returned to the main hall, ladhar in hand. I would pay for our room and board with news and song. I accepted a mug of ale, settling down to talk of sheep and the price of wool: things that concerned me as the overseer of the Ti'ach’s lands.

  “Did you have visitors last night?” I asked, in a lull in the talk.

  “Aye,” Gedwin said. “Two northmen, with a letter from the Teannasach for safe passage. Kinsmen of yours, Sorley?”

  Were they passing themselves off as men of Sorham? The news didn't help my vague unease about Vidar. “No,” I said. “Kinsmen of the Teannasach. The letter didn’t say?”

  “It did not. Only that they were to be offered hospitality as we would any traveller from Linrathe. Bound for the Ti'ach, were they not?”

  “They were. We met them on the road. I sent our guard with them. He may come through here tomorrow, or the next day; Druisius, his name is.”

  “There'll be food for him, and a fresh horse, if he needs it. But a guard, Sorley?” Gedwin frowned. “For a scáeli?”

  “Not for me. For the Comiádh’s daughter.”

  “Aye, of course. Because of what her mother did. You are going north?”

  “To Dun Ceànnar, first, then north. The first Ti'ach in Sorham opens this summer, and I am going to arrange their music program.”

  He nodded. “And the lassie goes with you?”

  “I do,” Gwenna said from the door to the women’s rooms. “Thank you for your hospitality, Eirën Gedwin. I am a cadet in Ésparias, training to be a diplomat, a toscaire of sorts. I should know the people and lands of Linrathe and Sorham better than I do, for that reason, and so Sorley agreed to bring me with him.”

  “You are welcome, my lady Gwenna,” Gedwin said, rising with a glance to his son, who also stood. I wondered when she had prepared the excuse for travel; it was well thought out.