Recluce Tales

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Viera steps into the cabin through the corridor hatchway. “Captain Altyrn will be here shortly, Lady.”

  “Thank you. How are our inadvertent passengers faring?”

  “The Mirror Lancers are well settled. The Magi’i families and students are … less settled.”

  “There should be some spaces for them. The fireship does not have a full crew.” Not close to a battle crew.

  “The Mirror Lancers have taken the spaces for the ship’s marines. The others are where the crew settled them. It is cramped.”

  “We will all feel more cramped before this is over, I fear.” Mairena rises from the table, steps away from it, and waits.

  Kiedron does not look at either his mother or his sister.

  Before long, the Mirror Lancer captain enters the stateroom, inclining his head to Mairena, then to Kiedron.

  “If you would join me on the deck, Captain.” Mairena leads the way, but says nothing more until the two of them stand alone on the windy deck under the heavy gray clouds, with the hatch to the stateroom closed. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I expect that you have had many demands on your time, and I fear I will make yet another, or at least a task for you to oversee.”

  “Lady Empress?”

  “It may be necessary for Lord Kiedron to lead troopers. He was to be sent to Kynstaar. That is not possible. Even if events do not necessitate such leadership, he needs to learn how to handle a blade far better than he does, if only to understand what is required of Lancers. He has had training. It will not be sufficient. He must be pushed to his limits, until the blade is part of him.”

  The older captain nods slowly. “I can see the necessity. He is the heir. Will he be willing?”

  “He believes he is. He is not. He will be willing. I must talk to him first, but I thought it might take some time for you to consider and work out the best way for him to learn. He also needs to learn about tactics. We are likely to have some eightdays before … what may come.”

  “That is not much time…”

  “He will learn, Captain.” Mairena’s voice softens. “I am not placing on you the need for him to have that will. That is between him and me.” She can sense the captain’s doubt, but she merely adds, “It will be so.”

  Altyrn inclines his head. “I will see to it and inform you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I also have posted a guard at the foot of the ladder. I hope he will not be necessary.”

  “Again … my thanks.”

  The captain bows, then makes his way down the ladder.

  V

  After breakfast on fiveday, Mairena looks across the sitting room table at Kiedron. “Your blade tutor will be here shortly.”

  “I still don’t see the hurry in this,” he replies.

  “Do healers start to learn healing the day of battle?” asks Mairena. “Or after someone sickens?”

  “I know that,” replies Kiedron in an exasperated tone, “but it’s not as though I’m going to be going into battle.”

  “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” Mairena glares at her son. “I’m not talking about battles. I’m talking about your being able to defend yourself. Your father and your grandsire, and every Emperor after Lorn, who was the last to actually take the throne with both blade and chaos, had armies to protect themselves. Regardless of what happens, you won’t. There are exactly two companies of Mirror Lancers here, and they’ll be hard-pressed to defend the ship and the Magi’i families on board. Besides, you need to get in the habit of working.”

  “What about you?”

  “You don’t think it was work saving you both? You think that the ship being ready, with a boiler fired at all times, just happened?”

  “You arranged this? You didn’t tell Father? You did it behind his back?”

  “I told him.” You told him as much as you could, without him flying into a rage. “He dismissed what I saw as the dreams of a frightened and weak woman.” Mairena smiles coldly. “Do you, my son, want to follow his example?”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “Father has never listened to Mother or me,” interjects Emerya. “What’s worse is that he didn’t even notice that he didn’t.”

  “You could have told the First Magus.”

  “I tried. He was too frightened of your father. Triendar tried to reason with your father, but he was ignored as well. And don’t tell me that the honorable Major-Commander Quaeras, the fearless leader of the Mirror Lancers, would ever listen to a mere woman, who avoided the most high and signal honor of wearing chains only because she was a healer.” Mairena does not bother to hide the blazing sarcasm of her words.

  “Father never made you wear them,” Kiedron points out.

  “He did insist that I wear the gold-and-malachite bracelet of a healer.” Which was just a different way of making the same point.

  “That’s different.”

  Emerya raises a single eyebrow, an expression Mairena has never been able to duplicate, a fact that has pleased and amused Emerya more than once. Kiedron is so focused on his mother that he does not notice.

  At that moment, there is a single sharp rap on the stateroom door. Viera moves from where she had been seated in the small chair in the corner to the door, where she raises the peephole shutter. “It is Captain Altyrn, Lady.”

  “Have him enter.”

  Altyrn steps into the sitting room and inclines his head to the Empress. He is alone and wears the working greens of a Lancer. He also carries two wooden wands shaped like sabres.

  “I had not expected…,” offers Mairena, moving forward.

  “There is little else I can do at the moment, and who else is better qualified to spar with Lord Kiedron to see what will best improve his ability with a sabre? He cannot practice all day, but a glass in the morning and another in the afternoon should afford him a good start. Undercaptain Terazyl will help him with tactics of small units, and he and I will work with Lord Kiedron on logistics and other matters.”

  “Lord Kiedron and I appreciate your willingness to do this.” Mairena refrains from casting a sidelong glance at her son, hoping he will be gracious.

  After the barest hesitation Kiedron says, “I do indeed, although I fear I have much to learn.”

  “We all do,” replies the captain. “I had thought the side deck. It is wide enough and long enough … and … secluded.”

  “That might be best.” Kiedron’s tone is suitably wry.

  “I would also suggest just wearing an undertunic, ser,” added Altyrn. “Sparring practice warms one up.”

  “Just a moment.” Kiedron steps into his sleeping room and removes his green shirt, then returns.

  Once the two men leave the sitting room for the side deck, Mairena closes the hatch, then watches through the porthole nearest the hatch, as Altyrn removes his outer shirt as well and folds it over the railing. For several moments, Altyrn asks questions, and Kiedron answers. Although Mairena cannot hear either questions or answers, she continues to watch as both men take their positions. Kiedron, at a prompt from the captain, lifts his wand. In only a few moments, Kiedron’s wand is on the deck.

  Pick it up. Mairena does not voice the comment, but purses her lips.

  Slowly, all too slowly, Kiedron does so. The Mirror Lancer captain says something. Kiedron stiffens for a moment, then nods. As the two resume the sparring exercise, Mairena slowly releases breath she had not realized she was holding.

  Again, after several moments, the captain disarms Kiedron. This time, the young man reclaims his wand quickly and immediately takes what Mairena sees as a defensive posture. Altyrn nods. After several engagements, which reveal to Mairena that the captain is indeed accomplished—or at least far more so than her son—Kiedron again loses his weapon.

  This time, Altyrn steps up beside Kiedron and positions him, then shows a move in slow motion, directing the younger man to follow his example.

  After a time, when she can watch no longer, although Emerya still
watches from the adjacent porthole, Mairena crosses the sitting room and leaves by the main entrance. She walks forward along the center passageway to the hatch leading out to the covered but open deck directly beneath and slightly forward of the bridge. The air is warmer, and the sky a lighter gray than it had been on fourday.

  She glances forward over the turret that holds the untested firecannon, although none could tell that merely by appearance, a fact that Mairena hopes will prove useful in the seasons and years ahead. Supposedly, behind two gunports are smaller firecannons that work—at least at times. The water has calmed, and the Kerial almost seems to glide through the low waves that appear grayish green.

  Mairena catches sight of a sail ahead, slightly to port, but the ship, likely a merchanter, does not alter course toward the Kerial. In fact, as she watches, the distant ship begins to turn to the west, out into the Southern Ocean, as if to avoid the Kerial. She wonders what the master of the fleeing ship thought when he caught sight of the strange vessel, so unlike anything that has sailed the Southern Ocean in generations.

  How long she watches the fleeing merchanter, she does not know, not exactly, but it is likely close to a glass because the sails of the other ship are barely visible off the starboard forequarter when someone clears his throat behind her.

  “Lady Empress?”

  Mairena turns to face the Lancer captain. His green shirt is draped over his forearm, and his undertunic is soaked. “Yes, Captain? How did it go?”

  “He is better than I hoped … but he has much to learn to meet your expectations.”

  “It is not a matter of my expectations, Captain. It is a matter of his survival.”

  Altyrn inclines his head, but does not speak, merely offering a pleasant smile.

  “I assume that one of the functions that Kynstaar served was to make that point to sons of the Magi’i and Mirror Lancers who persevered and went on to become officers.”

  “I would not disagree with your observation.”

  “Then you will continue to press him?”

  “Most assuredly. The task will be to make him angry enough to press himself without demanding more than he thinks he is capable of.”

  “While you increase the demands bit by bit?”

  The captain nods.

  “Thank you.”

  “In turn, I will thank you. Many will not.” Altyrn’s smile is rueful. “I had no consort to lose, unlike many on board.”

  “I appreciate that. I fear you are right, and that unhappiness will begin to show itself in the days ahead.”

  After Altyrn leaves, Mairena again surveys the calm sea, so at odds with the gray clouds that are beginning to lift from the ravaged land that had been Cyador. And that will never be called such again.

  VI

  Early on eightday morning, not long after dawn, Mairena stands at the railing of the deck off the stateroom quarters as the Kerial makes its way past a rounded cape. Somehow, it is familiar, although it has been years since she sailed from Cyad to Fyrad with Lephi … and that was a time when he was but the heir, a ruler-to-be with great dreams, and very much in love—or lust—with her.

  How much life changes … As she half-watches the coast, not nearly so devastated as the shores nearer to Cyad, she considers those changes, how some, such as her life with Lephi, are gradual and how others, like the devastation that struck Cyador, are brutally swift. And neither has been favorable. She also wonders why some emperors, like Lorn and Alyiakal, who faced decline, were able to reverse that trend, while Lephi, for all his efforts, was not. Is it the times or the man? Were the circumstances more favorable? Or were their consorts more able? More supportive?

  After a brief time, she glances back at the cape. Could it be Cape South? If so … what has happened to the tall spire that graced the top of the hill? Or is she mistaken? It has been so long … and so much has happened.

  A few moments later, hearing the slightest sound of footsteps, and order-sensing the approach of someone, Mairena turns to see Captain Heisyrt approaching. “Good morning, Captain.”

  “Good morning, Empress. We have passed Cape South,” says Heisyrt. “Did you notice?”

  “I thought the cape was familiar, but I was not certain. I did not see the spire.”

  “Nor did I, but it is Cape South nonetheless. Everything else matches the charts … and I have sailed this way too many times not to know it. What the Accursed Forest did must have toppled the spire. After hundreds of years … it is gone.”

  Mairena nods. Gone … like everything the Magi’i built over centuries, wiped out in an instant.

  “One can hope that some shred of Fyrad remains … or some other city.”

  “One can hope,” agrees Mairena, knowing full well the ambiguity of her words, even as she knows the likely falsity of that hope.

  “I must hope until it is proven false.” Heisyrt inclines his head to the Empress. “Until later, Lady.”

  “Until later, Captain.”

  After Heisyrt has departed, climbing the ladder up to the bridge, Mairena again studies the coast, not that she expects to see much, for there had been no towns and villages immediately east of Cape South even before the devastation. Is there less destruction on the land here because there were fewer towns? She has no answer to her own question.

  Some short time later, Viera slips out the side hatch and walks quietly to the Empress. “Lady…”

  “I presume you’re telling me that breakfast, such as it is, awaits us. Is Kiedron up?”

  “Yes, Lady. Both he and Lady Emerya are awake.”

  “And your place is also set at the table?” Mairena’s voice is firm.

  “Yes, Lady.”

  “Have you heard anything I should know?” Mairena asks.

  “Very little, Lady,” replies Viera. “Some of the women are asking the Lancer captain and the ship’s officers when they will be able to return to Cyad.”

  “Didn’t they see what happened?”

  “Some think that you created an illusion.”

  “I’m not a chaos magus, and healers can’t do that.” Mairena shook her head. “If Fyrad is also destroyed … will that convince them?”

  “Some … perhaps.”

  “Hasn’t seeing the devastation along the coast, day after day, given them some thought that it cannot be an illusion?” The Empress shakes her head sadly. “I suppose the destruction of everything one thought imperishable is too much to bear.”

  “And you, Lady?” asks Viera. “How are you bearing up?”

  Mairena is struck by the kindness in the voice of the younger woman, although Viera is less than ten years her junior, so struck that it takes her several moments to reply. “Better than most, I think.” The result of fewer illusions, no doubt. Oh, Lephi … how did it ever come to this? After a moment, she asks, “What about you, Viera?”

  “The same as you, Lady. I had few who knew me, and I lost none who cared.”

  Few who knew Viera, thinks Mairena, and how many really know you, especially as a person, and not as the Empress of Light? Or love you? Lephi had, once, too many years before. She almost shakes her head. “We’d better join them. Poor breakfasts are even poorer when cold.”

  When Mairena enters the stateroom, she sees that Viera has set a place for herself, but on the side where Emerya sits, with an empty chair between her and the young healer.

  For now … that will do. Mairena seats herself at the head of the table, knowing that Lephi would be outraged. Except you don’t have to worry about that. That thought is accompanied by a feeling of sadness, made sharper by her recollection of the happier times that had been … if years ago.

  Mairena seats herself at the head of the table, and Viera slips into her place silently. In moments, both her son and daughter appear. Emerya says nothing as she seats herself.

  “More peasant porridge,” mutters Kiedron, wrinkling his nose.

  “It won’t hurt you,” replies the Empress, “and it might give you a better understanding of
what most people eat.”

  “I understand—”

  “Kiedron … please think before you speak.” Mairena’s measured words are iron hard, but hold a hint of exasperation.

  “I didn’t finish what I was going to say.”

  “You didn’t have to,” interjects Emerya.

  Kiedron glares at her.

  His sister ignores him, taking a mouthful of the grayish porridge.

  Mairena thinks about saying more, but decides against doing so. She eats silently.

  Not long after they finish eating, Captain Altyrn arrives. The Empress refuses to go to the porthole to watch Captain Altyrn instruct her son, much as she would like to see how he fares. Instead, she forces herself to concentrate on how she might best accomplish her aims in the days ahead. She does look up from the armchair where she has been sitting when Kiedron re-enters the stateroom.

  Her son’s undertunic is soaked, and he drops, rather than sits, into one of the chairs by the stateroom table.

  “How did your session with Captain Altyrn go?” asks Mairena.

  “I’m getting better. I can tell that, but I still can’t lay a blade on him.”

  “He has a lifetime of practice.”

  “But he’s getting old,” replies Kiedron. “He’s got gray hair.”

  “Aren’t older Magi’i still powerful? Aren’t older healers better healers? Why shouldn’t an older Mirror Lancer still be good?”

  “But I’m soaked, and he’s just damp.”

  “That’s technique, dear. He knows the blade so well that he doesn’t have to work as hard as you do. In time, if you keep working, it won’t take as much effort for you, either.”

  “How much time?” asks her son sardonically.

  “As much time as it takes. That is the way with everything, you’ll discover. It’s one thing your father never understood.”

  “Nothing comes to those who wait,” is his rejoinder.

  “That is not what I said. Nor what I meant. Some things take longer. Some take less. A ruler must have the skill to determine which. The captain has practiced with a blade for years, but most likely not that much at one time, except perhaps when he was your age. If you work hard and long now you should come close to his skill in a much shorter time.”