Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “A hard thing to learn,” I said. “How much did you tell her?”

  “All of it. The tears were for her father.”

  “He has induced tears from all of us, over the years,” I said. “Except you, I suppose, and Colm.”

  “Only Colm.”

  “What? When did he make you cry?”

  “You think I could do everything I did that winter, day after day, and not feel the pain I caused him?”

  “Why am I suddenly learning these things about you?” I asked crossly. “First you reveal you wanted to be a doctor, and next that you cried for Cillian’s pain? Why didn’t you let me know that at the time? And don’t shrug!”

  He gave me a wry grin instead. “Could I risk such weakness?”

  “I cried in front of you.”

  “You cry in front of everyone.”

  I put my arms around him. “Druise, I couldn’t have survived that winter without you. None of us could have. Especially Cillian. We asked a very great deal of you. I should have realized the strain you were under.”

  “My job,” he said, as I knew he would. I kissed him, once, and again.

  “I asked for these rooms because there is a door between them,” I told him.

  “Was that wise?” He pulled back to look at me, his eyes troubled.

  “I told the steward I needed to be close to Gwenna’s bodyguard. And there will be no chance, after we leave here.”

  “I thought no chance at all,” he said, smiling slightly. “I am going to have a nap. Wake me when you need to, amané.”

  He was asleep in minutes, a knack I had never developed, and often wished I had. I wondered how often he had been up in the night to check on the shepherd; I hadn’t thought to ask. I’ll let him sleep for as long as I can, I decided. I used to get angry at Cillian when he said he didn’t deserve Lena, or me, but I understood now. Why did I deserve Druise?

  Chapter 29

  14 years earlier

  It would have been very easy that night to seek out company: Evan, or another. Some of my frustration was simple physical hunger too long unsatisfied, but I wanted more than that. I wanted to be held, to hear soft breathing — or even snoring — beside me, and the ease and excitement of a partner whose rhythms and desires I had begun to know. My jealousy, I gradually understood, came not from knowing that Cillian and Lena were lovers again, but from the security inherent in the intimacy they shared. The shelter. I was alone, and lonely.

  I did not go in search of comfort. I slept, with the help of more wine, and the next day and the next I met with Livius and wrote letters and did all the things asked of me as Linrathe’s toscaire, and one day I did play xache with Cillian in the late afternoon, joining him after his massage in his workroom. Before Apulo arrived, the adjoining room had been connected internally, and a treatment bed and shelves for Apulo’s creams and unguents and the mild drugs Cillian allowed himself. The requirements of the massage used to treat Cillian’s injuries was unsuitable for the public tables adjoining the baths, Gnaius had decreed.

  But just as after Gwenna’s birth, I felt inconvenient, superfluous to Cillian and Lena’s life. Some nights I drank in the junior commons, some officer from my classes always willing to name me guest, and once or twice I diced with the soldiers. I did not accept the propositions that came my way, although later, in my empty bed, I wondered why.

  I spent a day in the carpentry shop. The pieces of the ladhar had been cut; now I was shaping them to produce the curved frame, alternating darker and lighter strips. The ladhar would look like the Casilani bows, I thought. I wondered if that was where the idea for the instrument had come from: you could pluck a strung bow to produce a note, and differently-sized bows — or bowstrings of different thicknesses — made different sounds. Something to think about.

  Satisfied with my hours of work, and needing to wet my dusty throat, I went to the senior officers’ commons. I was avoiding the soldiers’ commons, not wanting to meet Evan. Talyn, my frequent sponsor, sat at a table across the room. To my surprise, Lena was with her.

  The steward nodded at me. I walked over to their table. “Am I interrupting?”

  “Sit down,” Talyn said. “I needed a drink, and Lena too. We spent the day with Livius’s staff, going over land ownership again.”

  “Are you done?” I asked, accepting wine from the steward.

  “No. We have maps to look at, tomorrow. Village land boundaries,” Lena said. “I can remember Tirvan’s, I think, and Talyn is sure she knows Han’s. If we can show the maps are accurate for those two, and perhaps Berge’s — Kyreth might know theirs — then Cillian believes we can argue for all the boundaries being right on the maps.”

  “Are the boundaries clear?” Gundarstorp’s land was delineated by physical markers: standing stones, mostly, but sometimes the run of a wall, or an ancient tree. I’d walked and ridden them since earliest childhood, learning the extent of the land I was to inherit.

  “Mostly. Decanius, apparently, has been critical of the stones being just stones, though; in a proper Casilani province, they would be engraved with the details, apparently. He is doubtful of their precise positions, we are told, because it would be easy to substitute another stone or tree, to claim more land.”

  “Gods,” I said, taking a drink. “What does the Governor say?”

  “That if he is satisfied, the boundaries will remain as they are, but not all villages will remain in the hands of women, or only women.”

  “That will not be popular.”

  “No,” Lena said slowly, “and yet I think he is right. There are not enough women now, and so many are young. Settlers are coming from Casil, and eventually from Linrathe, aren’t they?”

  “Someday,” I said, “probably.”

  “Be careful where you say that, Lena,” Talyn said, “and to whom. Don’t add to the problem you already have.”

  “What problem?” I asked.

  “Not here,” Talyn said. “Shall we go to see Gwenna?”

  No one but Tyrvi was in their rooms, Tyrvi and the two babies. Lena picked up Gwenna, handing her to Talyn, who held her with experienced hands and half her attention. Gwenna gurgled and smiled: now she wasn’t hungry all the time, she was a happy baby.

  “Tyrvi, I have work to discuss with Captain Talyn,” Lena said. “Would you take Darel out for half an hour? Gwenna can stay with us.”

  “More wine?” she asked, when the girl had gone. I accepted a cup, but she made tea for Talyn and herself.

  “What problem?” I asked again, when we were settled. The two women glanced at each other.

  “Cillian,” Lena said.

  “My cousin,” Talyn said, “is not well thought of by either soldiers or officers. What is said ranges from his bad advice being the cause of the Emperor’s death, to siding with the Casilani in the talks.” She held up a hand at my splutter of denial. “He is also accused of purposely giving away much of our land’s autonomy to save Linrathe’s.”

  “He hates this treaty!”

  “You know that, and I, and Lena. But think, Sorley,” Talyn said, with force. “Who are Cillian’s friends? He plays xache with a Casilani ship’s captain and discusses philosophy with his Casilani physician. He does not go to the baths publicly. He prefers the company of his Casilani soldier-servant and you, a Linrathan musician and envoy, to the officers of his rank. On top of which he holds a commission as a Major seen as undeserved by many. Why Turlo and Callan insisted on that, I do not know. Colm was Advisor, with no military rank; why could Cillian not have just been given that title?” Gwenna began to fuss, probably at Talyn’s tone, I thought. Lena took her, jiggling her into silence.

  “Turlo said he had to have rank,” I said, “to be his adjutant at the negotiations with Casil. I can’t speak for the Emperor.” Druise had mentioned the unrest among the soldiers. So had the steward, not very long ago. But if it had spread to the officers... “When did this start?”

  Talyn shrugged. “There’s always been a bit of
it, complaints about this unknown Linrathan exile influencing the Emperor and my father. But it’s grown worse as the changes are implemented.”

  “Does the Princip know?”

  “I imagine he’s heard rumours,” Talyn said. “But — Sorley, this is only for your ears, please — my father sees his dead brothers in Cillian, especially Colm, and because of that will tend to ignore what is said. There were complaints about Colm, too, officers and men who thought a castrate should not advise an Emperor.”

  “Casyn is tired,” Lena said. “He’s had no time to grieve, and he never wanted to be Princip.” She had got up to walk with the baby, who was turning her head to look around.

  “I almost wish I could have taken the title,” Talyn said, “but I have neither the rank nor the experience. Cillian nearly has the rank, but it would be impossible now. I would worry even if he were co-regent, were my father to die. By the time Faolyn is eighteen, I hope the position will be that of a figurehead, but just now it requires an active strategist.”

  “Which Cillian is,” I said. “The question in many minds seems to be for whom? He has to be told, Lena.”

  “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “He must. I’ll do it, Talyn.”

  “Better you than me.” Casyn’s daughter grinned. “Although I would have, you know.”

  “I cannot blame people for thinking much as I did, and for the same reasons, at least about his feelings toward the Eastern Empire,” Lena said to me a few minutes later. She dropped her voice to a murmur. “But now we know his real thoughts — the irony, Sorley.”

  “That they see him as favouring Linrathe worries me,” I told her. “It all worries me, Lena. Do you want me there when you talk to him?”

  “Not this time,” she said. “I think, Sorley, there are things he may not want you to hear. Don’t be offended; it would just be from a fear of hurting you, nothing more.”

  I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t argue. “About Linrathe?” I guessed.

  “In a way.”

  Cillian himself told me what Lena had said to him, in summary, at least. “She is completely right,” he said with a wry smile, over wine and xache two nights later. He’d sent a messenger to ask me to join him. “I have consulted with Casyn, and I must spend even less time with Lena and Gwenna, and with you, and be seen around the fort. I will dine with the senior officers at least three times a week now and attend the baths on occasion. Casyn tells me the scars I carry will remind others of my service to Ésparias.”

  “What does Lena think of Casyn’s directives?” I moved a piece, capturing one of his. He raised an eyebrow.

  “An interesting move,” he said. “Lena? She is resigned to the need, and perhaps a little pleased.”

  “Pleased?”

  “She believes I need to listen more to other officers. She also has valid concerns about her own authority as lieutenant, which should not be compromised by what factions within the army think of me.” He moved a piece, effectively blocking what I planned to do next. I shook my head at my failure to see the obvious.

  “She has told me often enough that I have become too authoritative,” he went on. “And again, she is not wrong. I must appear very sure of my arguments in discussions with the Casilani, and that spills over into my private life. I am attempting to amend that.” He watched me slide a piece along the board, a stalling move on my part. “I am surprised you have not complained.”

  I looked up from the board. “Sometimes I feel like I am still your student, so I suppose it’s much the same thing.”

  “Do you?” he asked. “I do not intend that, mo charaidh. I am well aware you are not. Why have you not told me?”

  “I haven’t seen that much of you,” I said. Another stalling move. I took a breath. “Cillian, Talyn told us you were being accused of giving up too much here, to keep Linrathe free. I have never claimed that, but I did say to Liam once that the treaty you negotiated for us was proof you loved the land of your birth. Could that have got back to the men here, perhaps through Randall?”

  He leaned back. “Perhaps. Or perhaps it is a conclusion anyone can make who sees the differences between the two agreements. Do not worry over it, mo charaidh.”

  Anger flared. I had voiced a reasonable concern. “By Rögnir, Cillian, stop condescending to me!” I stood, pushing back the chair noisily. “We can finish this later.”

  “Sorley.” I stopped, my hand on the door. His voice was very quiet. “The student I have made you recall? Is it the one I last saw at the Ti’ach, almost ready to leave us, or the one you were at eighteen?”

  “Is there a difference?” I didn’t wait for an answer.

  I stalked around my room, swearing. Why did Cillian still treat me as — what had he called me? An innocent. Someone who had to be treated with care. Even Lena had said as much. And Druise: Be careful with Sorley. I swore at him. Hadn’t he concurred with Cillian that I needed gentle handling?

  I went back over the overheard conversation in my head. Slowly, grudgingly, my anger at Druise dissipated. Whatever he had been saying to Cillian, it had not been to diminish me. Then had Druise known of Cillian’s treasonous thoughts? Certain indications. It fit.

  Had Druise been concerned how I would react, what position I might take? Pain stabbed at my temples, my jaw and neck too tight. My churning mind needed more space than this room. The night was warm enough to be out. I closed my door and walked softly down the corridor.

  I should have turned left from my room, to reach the first exit from the building. But I didn’t. I let my feet take me right, and right again to the corridor where Cillian’s study was. Light flickered under the door. I stopped. My head pounded in time with my heart. No, I told myself. You are too angry. Keep walking. I continued down the corridor, toward the door that would take me out into the night.

  Then I turned. At Cillian’s door I knocked, my quick triple tap.

  “Come,” he called, just loud enough. I went in. He was contemplating the xache board, studying the game we had left unfinished. “Sorley,” he said. “Have you come back to finish the game? It was your move.”

  I picked up a piece almost at random, moving it the requisite spaces.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He frowned a little. “You are still upset.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He sat back. “Will you pour us both wine?” I did as he asked, but I didn’t sit. “How do I make amends?” he asked. “I was dismissive, I admit.”

  I drank a little wine, for courage, although it would not help my head. “Before Druise left,” I said, “he came to talk to you. About me. I overheard much of that conversation.”

  “I see,” he said. “I believe I remember the conversation to which you refer. What do you think you heard?”

  “That in your eyes I am still a boy.” I let anger blossom again. “That I don’t know you, and that I need to be treated carefully. Still, Cillian? After Casil, after your illness, after trusting me with your plans? How dare you treat me as if I am a child?” I had never spoken to him like this. I could feel myself trembling.

  The lamplight flickered. He picked up a xache piece, turning it in his fingers, his eyes hooded. I waited. His fingers tightened around the gamepiece. Deliberately, carefully, he put it down, spreading his fingers wide as he did. “You misunderstand,” he said.

  Chapter 30

  15 years after the battle of the Taiva

  A loud snore brought me back to the present. I forced the memory away: it was not for here, not in this room where I watched Druise sleep. He and I had our rules: our lives might be interwoven with Cillian’s and Lena’s by work and vision, responsibility and love, but some aspects were our own, kept distinct and discrete. The dilemma Ruar had handed me was not one of those, though, and I wanted Druise’s thoughts. But he needed sleep. Later would do.

  I did not see Gwenna until the mid-day meal, served in a small chamber off the great hall to just the three of us, along
with Helvi and Amlodd, the scáeli to Dun Ceànnar. I thought her subdued, although she handled the light conversation adroitly.

  “Will you play tonight, Sorley?” Amlodd asked. I could not, unless he gave me permission, not here where he was scáeli.

  “I will. May Druisius play too? You will not have heard the cithar, I expect?”

  “I have not,” he said. “But would you show me the instrument before tonight, Druisius? I am curious to see its construction and hear its tunings.”

  “Gladly,” Druise said. He would always talk about music; it was what had brought us together, in Casil. “I must speak with Sorley after the meal, yes? After that?”

  “I will be in the hall,” Amlodd said. “By the fire.”

  “May I speak with you too, Sorley?” Gwenna asked. I heard the plea.

  “After Druise and I are done, yes,” I said gently.

  “You might like to stay by the fire too, Gwenna,” Helvi suggested. “You would play for the Lady Gwenna, Amlodd?' Her suggestion was a command, couched politely.

  After a suitable time, Helvi rose to indicate the meal was done, and I took Druise back to my room. I told him, in Casilan, what Ruar had proposed, that morning.

  “No!” he said.

  “No. It will not happen. Cillian promised.” He had never mentioned anything about this third alliance, the completion of the triangle linking our lands together.

  “Will the Governor expect it? He was happy with Faolyn marrying Ruar’s sister.”

  “He was,” I said, “because he saw it as bringing Linrathe even closer to Ésparias, especially once he understood that Faolyn could then influence the choice of Teannasach, should something happen to Ruar.” Livius had been subtly and masterfully convinced of the benefit, sealed by the offer of a percentage of the tariffs imposed at the trading port. He in turn had convinced the Empress. “But,” I said reluctantly, “Gwenna is Faolyn’s heir, and her children after her. I doubt marriage into Varsland is what Casil would consider appropriate. But Cillian must have a plan to join the Marai to our...confederation.”