“Six.”
“That many?” Siane said. “Well, those six, barring complications, should be able to participate in the training.”
“We always work during pregnancy,” someone said. “This should be no different.”
“I’m willing to learn what I can for the next five or six weeks,” Mella said, “but I can’t deny that I am getting clumsy.” She smiled ruefully, her blue eyes crinkling, “Of the others who became pregnant last autumn, Ranni’s is a first pregnancy, and she nearly lost the baby a few weeks back, and Nessa is carrying twins and is even more awkward than I am. But there must be work in planning and carrying out a defence that isn’t dependent on being able to shoot a bow or throw a spear.”
“A tactical role, I think Mella means,” Casse said, “which is where I think I might be able to help a bit.” Casse had led hunting parties for many years and had spent hours out in the fields.
“For you, yes, and I can see Nessa in that role,” Mella said. “But for myself and Ranni, I was thinking more of giving support, supplying arrows or new spears. Something like that.”
“But,” I found myself saying, “you’ll still need to defend yourselves, if it comes to that. At the very least, all of us will need to be able to use a knife.”
“Lena has a point,” Siane said. She shifted, grimacing as she bent her leg. “If we are willing to participate, a role will be found regardless of physical limitations. That isn’t really what we’re here to decide. But what about those of us who don’t wish to fight? I’ll assume for the moment that all of us who voted that way did so for the same reason: we find the taking human life abhorrent. What is to be expected of us? You know that I do not hold that belief lightly.” We all knew Siane found the concept of taking life repellent. She ate no meat or fish, and even the man who had fathered her daughter held a medic’s post, not a soldier’s. Sara had chosen wisely, I realized, in appointing Siane to lead this group. Whatever our decision, it would be respected by all because Siane had led us.
“Perhaps,” Casse said gently, her wrinkled face compassionate, “you should tell us what to expect of you.”
“A fair request,” Siane acknowledged. “I spent most of last night wrestling with this. I don’t believe I can kill a man.”
“Not even,” I asked, “if he were trying to kill you?”
“Not even then.”
“What if it meant life or death for Dessa? Or for Lara?” The woman who spoke was my senior by a decade. I did not know her well, but her son had played with Pel until Festival this spring. He had ridden away with the soldiers only six weeks ago.
Siane said nothing. We could see the struggle of her conscience reflected on her face. We waited. When she finally spoke, her voice choked with emotion. “I thought of that, too. Truly, I thought of little else. For Lara,” she said, “I would kill.”
Casse reached out to squeeze her hand. “Do not judge yourself harshly. We all would, for our children.” Her gaze turned to me. “Lena, would you endanger yourself to protect Maya?”
“Of course,” I said.
Casse held Siane’s eyes. “You see?” she asked softly. Siane nodded.
“Individual convictions must be acknowledged and respected,” Casse said firmly, “but not to the point at which they endanger others. I propose this: all able-bodied women in Tirvan must, regardless of how they voted or of personal belief, learn to defend themselves with a knife. More than that will be up to each woman and her conscience.”
I thought of Maya, of her passionate conviction that women did not fight, did not kill. I wondered if she would see the necessity of this ruling, or if she would think only that we had betrayed her beliefs.
“What if a woman refuses?” I asked, though I knew the answer. We all did.
Casse, once a council leader, answered anyway. “Then she is free to leave Tirvan,” she said. I held her calm gaze for a moment. I saw compassion in her eyes. Compassion and pragmatism, my aunt had said. I tried for pragmatism. Using a knife? Maya could do that. We gutted fish and killed the occasional seal. She could agree to that, for self-defence only.
“I second the proposal,” I whispered.
The clang of the meeting bell called the village back. Gille pulled the bellrope steadily as the women filed in. From where our group sat together, as required, I saw Kyan and Dari come in. Maya was not with them, nor did she accompany her mother. Then I spotted her with Dessa. Terror filled me. What had we done? How could we make her fight when she so passionately believed it wrong? Who gave us that power? I leaned forward, gulping air. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. A hand gripped my shoulder. “Courage,” Casse said quietly. “Find it. You have it in you.” No, I don’t, I thought, but my breathing steadied under her strong fingers. After the last women hurried in, Gille let the bell swing to silence.
My mother spoke in a clear voice. “Women of Tirvan, we have called you to hear a binding decision. Eight women, one tenth of the council, have debated this question. Seventeen of us voted not to fight. What will be asked of those seventeen, in the weeks of preparation to come, and when the fighting begins?” She turned. “Siane, you led the debate. Have you reached a decision?”
“We have,” Siane answered.
“Tell us, please, so we may know the ruling.”
Siane stood, leaning against a chair to support her bad leg. No one moved. “I was one of the seventeen,” she said. “You all know my views. This is our ruling: We will all learn to fight to the point that we can defend ourselves. All of us, without exception.”
A buzz of voices rose in the hall. Casse’s grip on my shoulder had not lessened. When I saw Maya rise from her seat beside Dessa, I tried to rise, too, but Casse held firm. The voices stilled. When Maya’s eyes found mine, they held an expression I could not read. Then she looked straight at Gille. “I dissent,” she said, in the ritual words. Even from across the room, I could see she was shaking, but her voice barely wavered. “I know what I say and what I do. I dissent. I will not fight.”
Sara and Gwen moved to stand beside Gille. “Maya,” my mother began, “do not do this.” She turned to me, anguish on her face and in her voice. “Lena, can’t you stop her?” But even as Casse released me, and I stood to go to her, Maya spoke again, the third and final and binding time. “I will chance exile,” she said. “I dissent.”
Chapter Three
I tried to run to her, but hands caught me. I twisted and kicked helplessly. The bell tolled once. Gille spoke the answering words—words we had all learned, but I had never heard spoken.
“Maya, daughter of Tali,” she said with grief coursing through her voice. “You stand against the will of the Tirvan council. Go you now from this hall, and by tomorrow at sunset, go you from Tirvan. All doors and gates and harbours are closed to you, Maya, for three years and a day. You are exiled, and no longer welcome here. Go you now.”
I heard Tali sob.
I watched Maya go to her mother. Tali bent to hold her daughter, rocking her. After a minute, Maya pulled away. She said something, very quietly. Tali shook her head, and Maya repeated it. Then she turned. Even from across the room, I could see the determination in her eyes. I was struggling again to pull away from the many arms that held me when I saw Maya mouth the word “No.” I stopped. Maya turned back to Gille.
“Tomorrow morning, I will be gone. I go on foot and alone,” she said. Her voice echoed in the silent hall. “I will go now, to prepare. I will sleep tonight at my mother’s house.” She paused. “Alone.” She did not look at me again. “Farewell, women of Tirvan.” She turned on her heel and walked out.
My aunt Sara held Tali by the upper arms, speaking low and urgently. Dessa still restrained me, but my strength was suddenly gone. I slumped against her. Dessa guided me to a bench. I let her sit me down. Nothing made sense. I heard Dessa speak, but her words had no meaning.
Distantly, I realized others were leaving. Women stopped to speak to me and to Tali, but I heard only noise. Someone broug
ht me tea. I held the cup, registering the warmth. Finally, only my family remained: my mother, Sara and Tali, and Gille, in her role as headwoman.
My mother put the mug of tea to my lips. I swallowed obediently. The warm liquid suffused my throat, and the fog in my head cleared a little. I sipped again, then took the mug from my mother.
“Oh, Lena, I am so sorry,” she said, sitting beside me. She put her arm around me. “I didn’t think it would come to this.”
“She said,” Tali said, her voice flat, “she would go to look for Garth.”
Sara and my mother exchanged looks. “I’m not surprised,” Sara said.
“But,” I said, finding my voice, “Maya isn’t brave. How could she do this? How could she walk away from Tirvan and all she knows?” And from me. Tears pricked my eyes.
“Lena,” my mother said, “this isn’t bravery. In Maya’s mind, Tirvan is deserting her. There are some things that perhaps you don’t know, that Maya has never told you. Did she ever talk of Garth’s leaving?”
I shook my head. “She would never speak of it.”
“Then I will,” my mother said. “Unless, Tali—?”
“No,” my aunt said. “Better from you, Gwen. It’s not a good memory.” My mother straightened, letting me go. She stood, her hands automatically retying her hair.
“You know,” my mother said after a moment’s thought, “that Maya was just a few months short of her sixth birthday when the time came for Garth to go with his father. What you don’t know is that he did not want to go. Most boys are happy to join the men. Pel, as you know, is already talking of little else. Garth was different. He liked the sea and the woods and was happiest herding the sheep and watching the gulls. He threatened to run away, and Maya swore to go with him if he went.”
“In the end,” Tali interrupted, her voice low, “we had to drug him. Mar took him, a day early, from his bed, so heavily dosed with poppy that he wouldn’t wake until they were far from Tirvan. We drugged Maya, too, a lesser dose, but enough to keep her from realizing what was happening.” I could see the strain in her face as she spoke.
“And then,” Sara sighed, “we convinced her that tradition said Garth had to go, and that tradition ruled us all. We had many long arguments when I would take her with me to gather herbs for dyeing. Somehow, over that long summer, we won her over.”
“Now,” my mother added, “we are seeing the fruits of what we did all those years ago. She missed Garth so terribly, Lena. You must remember.” I nodded, thinking back. I, too, had been only five, but I remembered Maya crying, endlessly, inconsolably. I had tried, even then, to entice her into games, but she would not be distracted. Finally, the tears had stopped, leaving a solemn, quiet child.
“When we apprenticed together,” I said, remembering, “she always wanted to know why things were done the way they were. The answer that seemed to satisfy her the most was ‘it has always been done that way’.”
Tali continued. “That summer, she prayed endlessly. If we couldn’t find her, we only had to look at the holy spring. But when her offerings failed and her prayers weren’t answered, she turned her back on the goddess and turned to tradition as a source of meaning and consistency.”
“Maya would say,” my aunt Sara added gently, “that she isn’t rebelling. That it’s we who have rebelled, gone against tradition. In her mind, she’s doing the only thing she can to maintain the old ways.”
“Could she find Garth?” I asked.
Tali shrugged. “If Garth is alive, she might find him by asking every patrol she meets. She knows their father’s name and the number of his company. But the seventh were posted to the far reaches of the Wall the year after Garth left, and Mar was killed ten months later. When the message finally reached me, it contained no mention of Garth. I did nothing. Garth belonged to the Empire by then, and I was afraid to unbalance Maya again.”
“And if she does find him?”
“I don’t know,” Tali said. “Maybe she thinks they’ll run away together, as they promised when they were children. She may think that Garth will honour that oath over his oath to the Empire, if he lived to make it. I do not know, Lena.”
I nodded. Regardless of our love for her, there were places in Maya that neither Tali nor I knew. “May I go to her now, to say farewell?” I asked.
“No, Lena,” Gille said. I had opened my mouth to protest when she cut me off. “Not because I forbid it, but because she did.” I frowned.
“Maya knows the ritual words as well as any of us,” Gille reminded me, gently. “She knew exactly what she said when she commanded that you stay with Gwen. It is her right, as an exiled woman, to protect you, her partner, from blame. She will go without seeing you again.”
“No,” I said, “no,” and then the tears started. My mother held me. When nothing remained but desolation, they took me to the baths. The heat of the pool stopped my shivering, and they gave me wine and poppy. They must have carried me to my mother’s house, but I do not remember. I slept, dreaming the dreams grief and the poppy bring. In the morning I woke, as Maya had eleven short years before, to an empty world.
I heard the meeting bell through the waning effect of the drug. In my dreams, the bell had rung first as a warning and then become the tolling-bell for a funeral. My head ached when I finally woke. I closed my eyes against the light of the room. Maya would have left at sunrise. I lay on my back, trying to think through the pain and noise in my head. I could tell from the sun’s position that perhaps four hours had passed since dawn. Maya would have climbed the track up into the hills to find the military road. If I got up now, packed some food and clothes, I could catch her. But the road ran north to south, and footprints would not show on its cobbles. How would I know which way to go? Maybe she left a sign.
No. I opened my eyes. My head throbbed. We had never spoken of the world beyond Tirvan, never travelled in thought to Berge, or Casilla. I had no idea where she would go. Besides, she had told me to stay, and in that command absolved me of what she knew I would choose. For all my wishing, for adventure, for something new, at the end of the day, I always turned for home. I would not follow her.
Shamed, I wept again, tears of anger and self-loathing, deep, racking sobs. I slid off the bed and wrapped my arms around my knees, my body shaking. When the sobs ended, I sank onto my side and lay still, my mind empty.
Eventually, the need to relieve myself forced me to get up. I used the chamberpot. Then, reluctantly, I washed and dressed and went downstairs. I drank some water, feeling it cold against my raw throat. I stepped outside into the late morning sun, and with nothing else I could think to do, turned towards the meeting hall.
I hesitated at the door, but Siane beckoned me in. The plans for the defence of Tirvan had begun. Casyn had organized us into planning teams—food, supplies, fortifications, secure penning of our herd animals. Every detail mattered. Casyn himself sat with a group of women.
“They’re talking about weapons—spears and knives, how many we’ll need, and what metal there is at the forge,” Siane explained, when she saw me looking their way. I nodded, not really caring. I wondered where to go. My head throbbed dully. I felt as if I moved against a tide.
“Where are the other fisherwomen?” I asked, looking around.
“Over by the south wall,” Siane answered. I thanked her, turning to thread my way through the groups to join them.
“Lena,” Casyn approached me, his face grave. “I regret I have brought sorrow to you so soon.” He touched my shoulder lightly in what seemed a formal gesture. I murmured thanks. Part of my mind registered surprise that he knew my name. He nodded. Not knowing what else to do, I nodded too, and went on to join my group. They made room for me, speaking quiet words of sympathy and concern. Dessa reached over to squeeze my hand.
“We’re talking of how we can catch as many fish as possible,” she explained. “Casyn thinks we may be besieged, or the fields burned and cattle slaughtered. If either of those happens, we might need to r
ely on smoked fish over the winter.”
I tried to concentrate. I didn’t think I really cared, but the planning gave my mind something to do.
“We could start the pilcod fishing early,” I suggested. The pilcod were the small, schooling fish of the cold waters to the north.
“Will they be there?” someone asked. “We’d be six weeks early. They won’t have moved south yet.”
“We can sail further,” I said.
“It’s rough further north, dangerous.”
“They’ll be feeding where the waters change,” Binne countered. “We can fish just inside the chop line, stay in sight of each other. Should be safe enough.” Some fifteen years older than I, Binne fished from Petrel with her partner. She had let Maya and me sail Petrel a time or two when we were trying to decide what to buy for ourselves. Dovekie had been built to the same plans.
“And we’d be out longer.”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
“Is anyone else willing to sail out to catch pilcod?” Dessa asked. “I think there should be at least three boats, maybe five, to be safe. I’ll go. Anyone else?”
Several fisherwomen shook their heads. Others conferred with their fishing partners. “We’ll go,” Binne spoke up, “I won’t take my apprentice though,” she said. “Can someone else take her on for this?”
“I’ll put her on Curlew,” Dessa said. “I had a mind to send Freya with Lena, anyhow, so that’ll make space.” Dessa’s boat, large and graceful, needed a crew of six. Maya and I had apprenticed on Curlew.
“We’ll go, too,” another pair confirmed.
Everything we spoke of made Maya’s absence palpable. These women had trained us and worked alongside us every day. I clenched my jaw against the scream that wanted to burst out. My head started pounding again, and I lost the thread of the talk.
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 4