He shook his head. “No. I will send him a letter, when we stop, to reach him tomorrow. He needs time to prepare himself.”
“He has no other children,” I said, half a question.
“No. A few months after we were sent to Casilla, he contracted the swelling complaint. You know it?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s a child’s illness.”
“Yes,” he said. “I had it, I remember, before my father came for me. But Callan must not have. He was eighteen, and in grown men there can be swelling here, too,” he indicated his groin, “and those that have that sometimes cannot father children, afterwards.”
“If he had known of Cillian’s birth, what could he have done? You said he risked his life by his liaison with Hafwen, so how could he have acknowledged the child?”
“Ah,” he said. “There is a difference between leaving your post to consort with a woman of the north, and at a later time acknowledging a child by the same woman. It was not the liaison itself, but the questions that would have been asked of the how and when, if our commander had discovered the relationship. By our laws, Callan was guilty of desertion, and I of abetting desertion. The penalty for that, as you know, is death.”
“Dear gods,” I said. “And you have just told Cillian this, knowing how he hates the Empire and the Emperor?”
“A gamble,” Casyn said. “Only our reputations can be hurt now, mine and Callan’s, and even then, I doubt it would be anything more than a nine-day’s whisper.”
We rode on. Peewits flew up from the flat land on either side of the road, circling, piping their mournful two notes. As we crested a small rise, I saw ahead of us a watch-tower, a small fort for two or three soldiers, and on the road before it, Cillian and Birel, still mounted. Two soldiers stood with them, one holding Cillian’s horse’s reins, one standing beside him, sword drawn.
“We’ll stop here to eat,” Casyn said. He trotted Siannon forward. The soldiers saluted him. “Stand down,” I heard him say. “Sergeant, please remove the shackles, so that Guard Lena and Cillian na Perras may dismount.”
My legs felt light without the iron shackles. Birel and one soldier led the horses off; the other remained with us, his hand on his sword’s grip. Casyn motioned us in through the arched doors of the structure. “The latrine,” he said, pointing to a wattled enclosure just inside the gate, “is just there.” I glanced at him for permission, and at his nod went to relieve myself.
I emerged to find a soldier waiting for me. “In there,” he said, pointing to another wooden hut built against the interior wall of the tiny fort. Inside, once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw Casyn and Cillian seated at a table. Birel was busy at a small stove. I sat. Casyn was writing.
“Do you have anything you wish to say to the Emperor?” he said to Cillian. Cillian shook his head, not looking at Casyn. The general folded the paper. Birel brought over a small brazier. Casyn took his wax from his belt pouch, heated it, and sealed the letter, imprinting the wax with the carved stone in his ring. “This,” he said to one of the soldiers, “must reach the Emperor at the White Fort with haste, but daylight riding only. Go now.”
“Sir!” A quick salute, and the soldier was gone. Birel brought tea to the table. I heard the clatter of hoofs on the road, already galloping: he would ride at speed for an hour or so, switch horses, and keep going until he was too tired. The note would then be handed over to another rider.
I sipped the tea. From the wooden platter on the table I took a slice of dark bread and a piece of smoked fish, chewy and salt. We ate in silence. The fish made me thirsty. I drank a second mug of tea. Casyn got up and went out. I heard his footsteps on the wooden stairs that led to the watch-tower’s platform, and the murmur of voices. I tried to think of what I could say to Cillian. He had eaten almost nothing. In the dark room, his eyes were hollow and black.
Birel finished clearing up. “I’ll walk you to the latrine,” he said to Cillian. Cillian pushed himself up and went out, followed by the sergeant. I stood too, and went out into the daylight, bending to wipe my greasy hands on a patch of damp grass. Cillian came out of the latrine; Birel went in. I saw Cillian glance at the gate.
“Don’t,” I said quietly.
He turned his head towards me. “I wasn’t going to,” he said. “I’m not that stupid.”
“Riding off like that wasn’t exactly bright,” I said. “You’re lucky Casyn is a reasonable man.”
“You’re still defending him,” he observed.
“You’re a minging idiot,” I said. “You went running off as if you were trying to escape. The soldiers here could have killed you, should have, would have, probably, if Birel hadn’t been right behind you.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to escape. I just needed…some distance. Some space.”
“I know,” Casyn said from behind us. “That is why I let you go. But not again, Cillian na Perras. Nor do you speak to me again as you did, or you will be riding on a leading rein with your hands bound and your mouth gagged. Do you understand?”
Cillian’s mouth twisted. He looked at me, closed his eyes. “Yes, General,” he said.
We walked and trotted along the road, not saying much. I watched the rise and fall of the land, and the birds, and the deer that bounded away, letting my mind wander back over the last two years, and beyond. Occasionally Casyn would relate a bit of history to do with the Wall’s construction, or the road. At midday, we reached a larger fort, not as big as either the White Fort or Wall’s End, but substantially larger than the small watch-towers. Here the horses were unsaddled and fed, and allowed to rest. By now, my legs and back ached, and I too was glad of the break.
Cillian was still quiet, but his face showed less strain. As we walked across to the kitchen, I noticed that the men here were not all Empire’s soldiers; a group of Linrathan men crossed the open space. One, with a subtle gesture of hand and chin, pointed us out to his companions.
Birel escorted us to a small room at the back of the fort headquarters. Food and drink were brought. Surprising me, Birel did not stay with us. “The door is guarded,” he told us, as he left.
I picked up a piece of bread. There was a small pot of a creamy substance: I prised a little bit out with the wooden knife that had been provided to taste it. Goose fat. The flocks would have been moving north a few weeks earlier, fat from their winter foraging, the hunting parties busy. I spread some on the bread, adding salt. Cillian looked away. “Eat something,” I said, beginning to lose patience with his self-pity. “You need the energy.”
He made an exasperated sound, but reached forward for the bread. “You saw my countrymen, pointing me out?” he said.
“Pointing us out,” I replied, around a mouthful of food. “They could have just been surprised to see a woman at the fort. Most of the other Guards will have gone home to their villages.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.” He ate a piece of bread. “I thought you said the Emperor was reasonable? If he’s anything like his brother, I don’t think that’s true.”
“Why? Because he threatened to gag you, after you swore at him? He’s our jailer. What did you think he would do? By the gods, Cillian, he let you ride away. How many men would have done that?”
“You’re defending him again,” Cillian pointed out.
“I’m not,” I protested. “Well, maybe I am, but you’re being unfair. I remember Donnalch threatening to send you back to the Ti’ach because you couldn’t keep a civil tongue towards him, either. Is the problem our leaders, Cillian, or you?”
“And where in this fucking world has your politeness and compliance got you, Lena of the Empire?” Cillian snarled. “You’re going to be sentenced to death, just like me. Why do you still believe our leaders are kind and reasonable men?”
Why indeed? “Because they have always treated me that way, I suppose.”
“Even when they are trying you for treason? They do not care about us. Get that through your head.” He pushed his chair back
, standing to pace the tiny room.
“You are wrong, Cillian,” I said. “Finn—he was a junior officer—told me they are trained to remember every soldier, and to live their lives to honour those who die, to give those deaths meaning.” As I spoke, the reasons I had been trying to find became abruptly clear to me, the pattern obvious, like my sudden understanding of the map on Perras’s wall. I already knew why I had given Casyn my trust; I had told my mother, just a couple of days before. Casyn had offered me a wider world, the adventure I sought, but one where I bore little responsibility beyond following orders. Because the times I had chosen my own path, when I had voted to learn to fight, and again when I had not ridden north when Casyn had first asked, both choices had lost me Maya.
Hating myself, for what I had not done, and for what I could not be, I had given my allegiance unquestioningly to Casyn and the Emperor, to their strength and knowledge and calm certainties, to their ability to shape the future. They had seemed, I realized, omnipotent. I went to where I would be welcomed and needed, where most of my choices were made for me, and where I might, just possibly, find a purpose to my life.
But, I thought, with piercing clarity, neither Casyn, nor even Callan, are the Empire: it is an idea, a political structure, and it does not care about me. Casyn may, does, but the machinations of Empire are not his to command, and they may not even truly be Callan’s. The choice that will be made this time isn’t about me as a person, but about the value of one Guard in the greater stratagems of war and peace. My purpose is to be something to be bargained, nothing more.
“They are decent men,” I said. “You will never make me believe they are not, Cillian. But that does not make the rules of the Empire right, or just, or even some of their decisions the right ones, and,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I do not think, any more, that I can trust them, as agents of the Empire, to show mercy to us. And that makes me angry, angry at them, and,” I felt tears rising, “angry at myself, for letting myself hope that they would save me, and you.”
Cillian sat down at the table. “Forgive yourself,” he said, his dark, shuttered eyes holding mine. “Because you are no different than most others: you were told a story and you accepted it. Just like Donnalch let the torpari and fisher-folk of Linrathe believe he wanted to invade south to free the oppressed women of the Empire, just like your men believe that the legacy of the Eastern Empire is so sacred that there is no other life for them but the army, we are given reasons, reasons that sound plausible and rational and even unarguable, for why we are to do what our leaders wish. There was a time I tried to believe it all too, but that time is past.”
“I think it may be for me, too,” I whispered.
“Good,” he said. “So what are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What can we do? You’re not suggesting we try to escape?”
He shook his head, impatience visible in every move. “Of course not. How are we going to defend ourselves, at the trial?”
“I tried to ask you that yesterday, and you wouldn’t even think about it.”
“I was not going to begin planning anything with you while you were still thinking your Emperor would just wave his hand and say, ‘forgive them’,” he answered. “I have no illusions about Lorcann. He’ll have me beheaded as quickly as he can say ‘guilty’. I need you to tell me what you know of the Emperor that might help us sway his judgment. How does he want others to see him? That’s probably the most important question, but consider not only your own people, but ours. Tell me what you know, Lena, not what you feel.”
What did I know? “I was told,” I began, “that he does not see himself bound by tradition. I would agree with that. At the Midwinter proclamations, before the war with Linrathe began, he announced two changes: one to the military, one to how we—men and women—live our lives.”
“Which were?”
“Cadets would have a choice, beyond soldier or medic: they could become builders, without the need to also learn the skills of warfare. And for us, there was to be a new Assembly, a new discussion of our existing Partition agreement, to validate it or to change it.”
“Do you know what predicated these changes?” Cillian’s voice was calm, his tone one of interest. He sounded, I thought, exactly like his father, asking me questions about my experiences on the road to the Winter Camp.
“The first one, the choice of becoming a builder, for the cadets, came from his own brother’s experiences. Colm, the historian, was Callan’s twin, so he knew that whether a man could be a good soldier, or not, had nothing to do with who his father was, or his mother, for that matter.” I hesitated. “Do you know what is done to boys who cannot fight, in the Empire?”
“I do,” he said. “They are castrated. It is unspeakable.”
“Both Casyn and the Emperor agree with you,” I said, noting the faint flash of surprise on his face. “That is why they wanted another, honorable path for such boys.” I watched as he assimilated this new thought.
“And the Assembly?” he said after a minute.
“The rules of Partition had been broken once we agreed to fight. Callan did not believe we could just go back to those rules, once the need to fight was no longer there. A new Assembly was needed.”
“This was his idea?”
“Yes,” I said. “And not only his idea, but one I—and I imagine other women like me, on the road after the fighting was done—were charged with spreading, quietly and subtly, to other women, to make it appear that the desire for a new Assembly came from the women’s villages.”
“Now that is interesting,” Cillian said. “Callan understands the importance of stories in shaping choices, it would seem. How can we use that?”
“Cillian,” I asked. “What do you see, in your mind, when you are putting all these ideas together?”
“What do I see?” He looked at me, puzzled.
“Yes. All these facts, these ideas, what do they look like, inside your mind?”
He leaned back, his hands behind his head, eyes closed. “Like a map,” he said, “with all the ideas connected by lines, or threads. Those that I can’t connect are off to the side. If I bring one of those onto the map, it changes the connections and sometimes the positions of the others.” He opened his eyes. “Does that make sense to you?”
I nodded. “Listen,” I said. “Listen to this: ‘He chooses his strategy and deployment based on this picture in his mind, a picture that changes with season and weather, or time of day, and yet he always knows what will happen.’” I quoted. “Someone said that to me about the Emperor once, Cillian. Your father’s mind works like yours. Use that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Cillian had opened his mouth to answer me when the door swung open to admit Casyn. “Time to ride,” he said. “Finish your food.”
Five minutes later we were back up on our horses, the shackles reattached, clattering out of the fort. I glanced over at Cillian. His face was shuttered, distant: I guessed he was thinking out possible defenses. The sky had clouded over, and a strong wind gusted from the west, presaging rain. I had told my mother the weather would hold for her journey to Tirvan, I thought, but if the winds had been favourable, she could already be home. And this might be only local rain, the coast south of us still sunny and calm. I had seen weather change between one headland and another, when we had explored the coves and inlets for new fishing grounds.
I let my mind drift back to my life in Tirvan, remembering the scent of rain on the dust of the practice field as we learned to use the secca. That thought took me to a conversation with Dern, captain of Skua, over wine one night, when I had suggested that I had not followed Maya into exile due to cowardice. Is that true? he had asked. I had denied it, telling him that I had chosen to stay because the survival of Tirvan mattered more than one person. Did I tell him—and myself—the truth? At the time, I thought I had.
But what did it matter now? Whatever my true motives, I was here, facing the consequences of a choi
ce I had made. How that choice followed on from a web of earlier decisions hardly mattered. It could not be changed. All I could do was to tell the Emperor what I believed: I had not considered the possible ramifications of my escape for Donnalch, nor for Darel, nor for the truce. I had been focused on bringing word of the imminent invasion to the Empire. I should have seen the probable consequence, at least for Donnalch. I had known Dagney was afraid for his life, that he was a captive, and that Fritjof had already had Ardan killed. But I had been afraid of the arranged marriage to Leik, and that fear had blinded me to any other consideration.
Anger surged through me again. I should have thought about it more, and because I hadn’t, Donnalch was dead, and Darel. How would I ever face Turlo? What could I say to him? My horse tossed his head, uncertain of what my tightened hands and clenched knees asked. I forced myself to relax. “Shh, Suran, it’s all right,” I murmured to him.
Beside me, Cillian urged his horse up to beside Casyn. They spoke, but the gusty wind made it impossible for me to hear any words. I saw Cillian nod in response to something Casyn said, and then the next gust of wind brought the first drops of rain with it. In less than a minute the rain fell hard and cold, the wind whipping the drops so strongly they stung where they hit bare flesh. I brought Suran to a halt and turned to pull my riding cloak out of the saddlebags. I shrugged it on, pulling the hood over my head; in its deep pockets were leather gloves. Around me, the men did the same.
Suran’s chestnut coat turned dark, and water dripped off his mane as we continued eastward. As we approached the next watch-tower, Birel trotted his horse up to beside Casyn. I saw Casyn shake his head. I guessed we would not stop. We had distance to cover, rain or no. Casyn raised our pace to a trot, warming both the horses and ourselves. We passed the watch-tower, situated at the top of a small rise, and continued on, catching up to a small group of carts moving supplies toward the next fort. The men saluted Casyn, staring at us.
The rain came in waves, never really stopping but giving us respite from the drenching every so often. In one of the breaks I turned to look at the sky behind us: it looked lighter toward the horizon. Perhaps the rain would stop soon, I thought. I straightened to see a horseman galloping toward us, a messenger, from the speed he was riding.
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 60