“She would envy you, then,” he said lightly.
When I finished speaking, he glanced at his brothers before turning back to me.
“What do you know of the Partition agreement?”
“What all women know,” I said. “Two hundred years past, an assembly was called to resolve the differences between what the men of the Empire and the women of the Empire wanted. They talked and argued for nearly two weeks, and in the end, voted for what we have today: the women’s villages and the Empire’s army, and all the rules and the customs that have grown up around those.”
“Do you know how many women and men voted for Partition?”
“No,” I said, surprised. “I don’t.” I had never thought to ask.
“It was a majority of both men and women, but not quite six in ten were in favour. Nearly half the Empire’s people did not want Partition, but preferred a free choice in how to live.”
“And they had to abide by Partition or choose to be exiled.” He looked surprised. “I asked Casyn: I wasn’t taught it.”
The Emperor shook his head. “None of us were. Until Colm found the records in a storeroom at the eastern fort, it had been completely forgotten. Very likely, the actual result of the vote was never widely known. But I have known now for nearly a decade, and over those years, I have found myself wanting to know if we—all of us, the Empire—still want to live this way.”
He chooses his strategy and deployment based on a picture in his mind, a picture that changes with season and weather, or time of day, and yet he always knows what will happen, Garth had said. It had niggled at me, then.
“May I ask you something, sir? If this is presumptuous, please forgive me. I am not schooled in the correct protocols.”
He grinned. “In this private conference, you may speak freely.”
“Someone told me, once,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “that in planning a battle, or a campaign, you always seem to know what will happen. When you planned the campaign against Leste, did you see in asking the women’s villages to fight, that when it was done, we would have little choice but ask for a new assembly, either to affirm Partition or create something new?” I took a breath, suddenly, deeply angry. “Were we pieces in your game, Emperor?”
He took it calmly, with a brief glance at Casyn. “Yes,” he said simply, “and no. The need to have the women’s villages defend the Empire against Leste was real. The reasons Casyn gave to you at Tirvan were the truth. But did I see the outcome you spoke of? Yes. But I did not, and I swear this on my honour as the Emperor, I did not manipulate the threat to us from Leste. The Lestian invasion was not of my making.”
“And if it hadn’t happened? How would you have brought about a new assembly?” I could feel Casyn watching me. I wondered if Colm was still recording our conversation.
“I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps I would have just asked if it was wanted.”
“I think we would have said no.”
“Probably,” Callan agreed, “but the seed would have been planted. If the question was asked again, two or three years later, the answer might have been different.”
I heard a cough at the door. Colm got up to open the flap, revealing Birel and another man bearing trays of food and wine. They came in, to arrange the food on low tables, add coals to the brazier, and silently leave. Colm poured wine for us all. My anger had gone, vanquished by the Emperor’s calm reason.
Bread and cheese, apples, walnuts were handed around. Callan, it seemed, ate much as his men did, although I doubted they drank wine of this quality. I felt uncomfortable.
“Sir,” I said suddenly, “please forgive me. I overstepped.”
He took a drink of his wine. “Not at all,” he replied, easily. “Those who advise emperors should be able to challenge them as well. It would concern me if you did not want to know the mind of the man whose ideas you were spreading. Casyn told me to expect no less.”
We ate. Our conversation, it seemed, was over. Afterward, Casyn stood. “I will walk with you, Lena.” We emerged into the midday sunshine.
“You could have warned me.”
“I could have,” he agreed mildly, “but then you would have thought about what you wanted to say. I preferred the conversation to be unrehearsed. You did well.”
“I challenge the Emperor, and you call that doing well?”
He stopped. “Yes, Lena, I do,” he said. “You are not under his command, for all that we will treat you as a soldier while you are here. You owe him courtesy, which you have given, and honesty, which is what he heard from you. If there is to be a new assembly, women must be prepared to speak their minds and not defer to the title.”
I could see Casyn’s logic, but it still made me a bit uncomfortable.
“Casyn…General,” I amended, as we were in public. “What am I to do, here? You’ve said you will treat me as a soldier, but where and how should I spend my days? I can’t always eat with you. Should I spend my time alone?”
“There is no reason you cannot mix with the younger officers when they are off-duty. Darel, for one, would be glad of your company. Your ponies will need exercise, of course, and I thought you might like to spend some time with Colm, when his duties allow. You might find it interesting to learn more of the Empire’s past.”
“I would,” I said slowly, “but has he the time?”
“He will find a few hours, I think.”
After we parted, I walked back to my tent to change into my riding clothes. I found the horse-lines, and Plover, but no Clio. I asked the soldier on duty.
“Gone to be reshod, Cohort-Leader. A nice little Han mare, if I may say so.”
“She is,” I agreed. “I’d like to curry the piebald. Is there a brush I could use?” He brought me one, seeming unsurprised by the request. I thought of Casyn with Siannon, and Dern with Tasque. Officers, it appeared, frequently took care of their own horses. I gave Plover a good currying while he stamped and snorted with pleasure, rippling his skin under his coat. I remembered what Inge had said, and rubbed him between his ears, breathing in the warm smell of horse. The grooming soothed us both.
The day was sunny and cool, with a light breeze. Back at my tent, I built a fire pit, and from the firewood someone had stacked by my tent, I made a fire, heating water to wash my clothes. The sun had dropped well down in the western sky, and I had just hung the last shirt over the line I had strung between two trees when I heard footsteps.
“Cohort-Leader,” Colm greeted me. “Are you busy?”
“I’m just finished.” I hesitated. “I don’t know how to address you.”
“The men call me Advisor, but in private my name will be fine. My brother tells me you would like to learn some of the Empire’s history.”
“I would,” I said, marvelling once again at Casyn’s generosity. With everything he must have to do, he still found time to talk to Colm about me? “I’m beginning to realize how little I know. Casyn has told me a few things, and of course I was taught a little as a child, but much seems to have been missed.”
“Where would you like to begin?”
“Let me build up this fire, first” I said. “I have wine, if you like?” He assented, and after I had put a few more logs on the fire, I ducked inside my tent to find the bottle and two cups I had received earlier from the stores tent. He pulled two rounds of wood close to the fire to make rough seating. I poured the wine, handing him a cup.
“Thank you,” he said, sipping. If he noticed the rougher quality compared to what he drank with Callan, he made no sign.
“What was life like, before the Partition agreement?”
“That is a difficult question,” he said. “There is nothing written to tell us exactly how people lived. But I’ve made a study of old records, from before Partition—tax rolls and tally sheets, the court records. Such things tell a story, if you know how to hear it. It would seem that men and women, for the most part, lived their lives together in the villages that now belong to women.
They owned land, separately or together, and learned and practiced trades. The army was then a trade like any other: a choice for men, not an obligation.”
“Only for men?”
“I think so. I find women’s names mentioned rarely in the army’s records, and even then, it’s not clear what their role is. I think perhaps some of the cooks and launderers may have been women, and even perhaps the horse-masters. But I don’t think they fought.”
I watched Colm as he spoke. In the sunlight. I could see more resemblance to Callan, but his features lacked Callan’s definition and strength. He reminded me of Siane, after her leg was smashed, and she could no longer farm; softer, a blurred copy of her previous self.
“What happened to bring about Partition? I was taught only that it came about because the men wanted to invade north, and the women didn’t.” I had accepted that, all my life, but no longer.
“There’s some truth in that. The Emperor of the day, Lucian, offered free land in the north to any man who joined him in the conquest of those lands. Many chose to join him. The Empire at that time had grown crowded, as unlikely as that seems now, and arable land was in short supply. But then Lucian had to tax the villages more to feed his larger army, and the villages, depleted of much of their workforce, had difficulty providing the food. The headwomen of all the villages—for women have always run the village councils—objected. They banded together and approached Lucian to demand an assembly. From that assembly came Partition and our lives as we know them today.”
“But we didn’t take the north,” I said, frowning.
“Many who would not live under the rules of Partition fled north, so when Lucian marched beyond what is now the Wall, he found an organized resistance and a larger fighting force than he had expected. Some of them had been trained in his army and knew his tactics. His invasion failed, and the border was set. We patrol it to this day.”
“When word of the planned invasion by Leste came, did you remind the Emperor of Lucian’s failed invasion?”
He smiled. “You are quick. I did not need to. Callan forgets nothing.”
We talked for some time. Colm told me of Lucian’s successor, Mathon, who had built the road, and expanded the eastern fort. He described the small forts that predated the Wall and then the building of the Wall, when the increasing cold led to more border raids. “Some accounts indicate that before the Wall was finished, women and children slipped through the border patrols and begged for refuge at Berge where they were taken in. The red hair of their Northern fathers remains not uncommon in Berge to this day, as you have seen in Turlo.” He glanced at the setting sun. “I must go. Casyn and my twin will be looking for me.”
“Your twin?”
“Callan and I are twins. He is the older, by six minutes, something he never let me forget when we were children.”
It explained so much—not only Colm’s apparent acceptance in the camp (although who could argue with the Emperor about whom he chose to be his advisors?) but also Casyn’s conviction that parentage alone did not make a soldier. I wondered if Garth knew.
“If you like,” Colm said, “I’ll introduce you to some of the junior officers. It would be good for you to have some companions in camp.”
We walked together to a large tent set among smaller sleeping tents. “This is the common area for the junior officers when they are off duty,” he explained. The door flaps were tied back, and inside I could see three men playing dice.
“Advisor,” one man said, standing.
“Lieutenant,” Colm said. “May I introduce Cohort-Leader Lena, from Tirvan. She will be in camp with us for some days and needs to learn our routines. Cohort-Leader, this is Finn, Lieutenant of the Fourth.” With that, he was gone. Finn looked to be in his early twenties, stocky and pleasant-faced.
“If you would rather I did not join you, Lieutenant, I’ll go back to my tent.”
“Not at all. We would be glad of your company. Our own gets a bit stale after a while.” He introduced me to the others. They seemed genuinely pleased to have me there. I accepted a cup of ale and found a chair.
“Tirvan,” Finn said. “That’s quite far north. How fared you, in the fighting?”
“I’ll tell you, if you like, but would you answer something for me, first?”
“Certainly, if I can.”
“How is it decided who comes to the Emperor’s camp? You’re from the Fourth, Lieutenant. The young soldier on guard duty the night I arrived was from the Third. And you, “I gestured to the others, “are all from different regiments.”
“We’re seconded to the Emperor’s Regiment for a year,” Finn explained. “It’s part of every officer’s training. Cadets like Darel are sent if they are considered to have potential as officers. I was here as a cadet. I think most of us were. If a senior officer comes to serve with the Emperor, he may also bring some men along.”
“How big is the camp?”
“There are one hundred and sixty men, and ten officers, not including the Emperor. And various officers who come and go, like Major Turlo, and General Casyn, although he will stay, now, I think.” He paused. “You know the General, I believe?”
“He came to Tirvan in the spring to ask us to learn to fight, and then stayed, to help train us, and be our blacksmith for a time. I had no idea he was a general for the longest time.”
“Almost all the men who went to the villages were senior officers, but they did not want that known. I imagine the council leaders knew, in each village, but otherwise it was felt that the villages would rely too much on their expertise and not develop their own. Tell me of your defence plan, and how the fighting unfolded.”
I explained, painting them a picture of how Tirvan sat on its hillsides, and the harbour and coves, and how we had planned to use the tunnels and hiding places in the village. I told them of the waterfall, of learning to climb up it, and of burning the forge. I told them of the caves in the hill fields, and how they had almost been our undoing.
“When Pel was taken, we weren’t sure what to do.” I paused. “But one man we had captured during the fighting was not truly of Leste. He was a spy for the Empire.”
“A spy!” one of the other officers, Gulian, exclaimed. “I heard rumours of this. How did you know he was telling you the truth when he claimed to be such?”
“I recognized him. We were children together in Tirvan. He agreed to try to rescue the child, and did so, killing the invader in the process. And that was the end of it.”
“Casualties?” Gulian asked.
“Four dead,” I said. “And some wounded. One was seriously burned when we set fire to the forge.”
“It sounds a fine campaign.”
“Did you go to Leste?” I asked. Dern had told me a bit about that part of the fighting. As in the villages, it had been quick and fairly bloodless, except for some of the King’s Guard.
Finn shook his head. “Not I. I was here as part of the Emperor’s Guard. But Gulian and Galdor went.”
They spoke of the island. They described the long and low terrain, terraced with grapes and other fruits and spices, and they spoke of the fear of the women and children in the towns and villages. Only old men and boys remained in Leste to defend the island. When it became clear that the Empire’s soldiers had orders not to kill, but to subdue—“Hard, that was, learning to wound rather than kill,” Galdor said—most surrendered quickly. Only the King’s Guard fought with conviction, and they were outnumbered five to one.
“Of course, we have garrisons there now,” Gulian said. “I hope to serve on Leste after my time here. I’d like to be warm again,” he added, with a mock shiver.
“But it is warm,” I protested.
“Perhaps to a northerner,” he grumbled. “I was born in Casilla.”
A steward came in with food, spreading it out on the long table. If my presence surprised him, he did not show it. He lit more lamps, placed them on the table, and set four places. We ate roast fowl, and potatoes, and nutty, spiced
parsnips with a good wine. Afterwards the steward brought tea, and tiny squares of honey-soaked pastries stuffed with walnuts. I had rarely eaten so well.
“Is the food always this good?” I asked, refusing another pastry.
“Here at the camp, yes,” Finn said. He took the pastry I had turned down. “But not on campaign.”
“Or up at the Wall,” Galdor added.
After dinner, they offered to teach me to dice. Forbidden real gambling, they played for points, “and glory,” Finn said. Four dice were tossed from a cup, and the one who came closest to twenty-one, but not over, won. The game involved no skill, just pure chance, and we played as if the future of the Empire hung on the outcome.
Galdor won. Hugely pleased, he laughed a deep, rumbling laugh. Finn stood. He seemed to be the leader, whether by length of commission or by natural leadership, I didn’t know. “We’re on duty an hour before dawn, so it’s time to retire. If you’re up that early, Cohort-Leader, please join us for breakfast. Otherwise, we would be pleased to have you join us again, tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ve enjoyed this evening,” I said truthfully. They had demanded nothing of me, the conversation remaining on military matters, food and drink and the dice game. When had I last simply had fun? I said goodnight, walking through the dark camp to my tent.
I stretched out on my camp bed, not yet ready to sleep. Someone had lit the brazier in my absence, and the tent was comfortably warm. I chuckled, remembering Gulian’s complaints of the cold.
I thought about what he had said of garrisons on Leste. Was Leste now subject to the Partition agreement? How could I not have asked Casyn this, or Dern? If not, could the Empire have two provinces, with different ways of life? Surely that would breed discontent. I would have to remember to ask.
Chapter Twenty-One
I awoke to the trumpet announcing watch change, an hour before dawn. The sides of my tent flapped, and I heard water dripping. I swore, remembering my washing.
I put my head out of the tent. The air had turned colder, and a fine, light rain fell. I pulled on my heavy pants and found my jacket. After visiting the latrine, I made my way to the junior officers’ commons. None of the officers were present, but a steward appeared almost immediately.
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