“As I am, right now. I apologize. I should have been more careful.”
“It was an accident. I slipped, not long before,” I pointed out. “Don't be so hard on yourself. You are only human.”
“That,” he said, with a quirk of his lips, “is not universally agreed. But I am trying.”
“In both senses of the word,” I said. Had he really just made a joke against himself?
“I am sure.” He sounded serious.
“I was teasing, Cillian,” I said. “I do actually like you, you know.” I did, unexpectedly. He was odd, frequently stiff and distant, but his patience and constancy, and the respect he had earned from me for his self-discipline, were winning me over.
“I doubt I am worth liking,” he said, “but thank you.”
“You saved my life,” I said sharply.
“That may be worth gratitude. Not necessarily liking.”
“Why diminish yourself? Why shouldn't I like you?”
“You do not know me, Lena. What I have been, and done.”
“You aren't giving me much chance to know you, are you?” I shoved another branch into the pyramid of wood I had built. My annoyance with him was increasing.
“No,” he said. “I'm not.” He sighed. “I am not an easy man to know, Lena. Nor to like, although you profess to. Personal conversation is discouraged, for toscairen. Reticence has become a habit, reticence, and cynicism, I am told. I am not proud of some of what I have done, both for Linrathe, and for myself, in the past, and that colours my outlook. But I am attempting to learn to move away from old habits, of thought and reaction. A fresh start, as it were, if one can do that at my age.”
I sat back on my heels. “That's better,” I said. “You've told me something honest.” I glanced at the sky. “It's going to be cold tonight, I think. It's hard to believe it's summer, up here.”
“I cannot take my turns with the fire. I'm sorry.” He generally added wood at least once in the night; I did too, if it burned low when I woke.
“Don't worry. If you're cold, wake me.”
Stars gleamed above me, thousands of them. I got up to add wood to the fire. I heard a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp, from Cillian. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “I stretched in my sleep, I think.”
“I can make more tea.”
“Don't bother. The pain is receding.”
I went to him, placing my fingers on his ankle. Even through the wrapping, it felt hot. I moved my fingers up a little, checking to see if the inflammation had spread. “You're cold,” I told him.
“A bit. But the fire is high again.”
“I can sleep beside you. We've done it before.” Reluctantly, on a small boat in the sea. It had kept me, and probably both of us, alive.
“I'll be all right.”
“If you say so.” I went back to my blankets. Why was he like this? Did he not trust himself, if I slept beside him? I realized I was making an assumption: I didn't even know if he was attracted to women. Or maybe he knew about Maya, and that made me repulsive to him. Stop thinking about it, I told myself. Go to sleep.
Four days passed. I hunted; we played xache, and I always lost, but it took more moves, now. Afterwards, we analyzed my play, Cillian showing me that I tended to risk too many pieces in my attempts to capture his queen. I might take that key piece, he pointed out, but lose the game.
On the first full day at this camp, I'd killed a kid of the goat-deer. Staying here for a few days, I could smoke the meat, and I had a use for the skin. “If I cut a square from the hide,” I told Cillian, “and keep it weighted as it dries, it will shrink and go hard. If it works, we can draw a xache board on it.”
He looked impressed. “A fine idea,” he said. “Well done.”
“Wait to see if it works,” I told him.
We ate roasted kid, and a few early berries from a spreading ground plant. I recognized its small red fruit as edible. As I ate, I felt a familiar drag in my groin. I'd been expecting it: the moon had been full, a night or two earlier. “Do you want willow-bark?” I asked, digging into my pack.
“No. Just the salve. I dislike drugs, unless absolutely necessary.”
“Just tea for me, then.”
“Are you unwell?”
“No. Just my bleeding time. I think I told you I am in pain, the first couple of days.” He nodded, apparently unperturbed. He is thirty-three, I thought, watching him rub salve into his ankle. He must have known enough women for this to be just part of life. I'd had to explain to Garth, but he'd been eighteen, and raised away from women.
As if he felt my eyes on him, Cillian looked up. “Some time ago,” he said, “you asked me why I was so unpleasant to you, at the Ti'ach. You deserve an answer.”
“Only if you want to tell me,” I replied. Why now?
“I do,” he said. “I told you I am not easy to know. But there was one man with whom I was comfortable, a son of one of the Eirën, but not by his wife. Alain was born to one of the torpari women, but he had been acknowledged and, unusually, accepted. We flew falcons together, and talked of ideas, and he did not care I had no father. The day you came to the Ti'ach,” Cillian went on, “one of your escort brought me a letter, telling me Alain had died of wounds received weeks earlier, from a battle near the Wall.”
“No one told me,” I said.
“They didn't know,” he said quietly. “I might have told Perras, or Dagney, I think, but with your arrival, it wasn't the right time. Perras was so excited about Colm's book. I never did tell them, in the end; nothing could be changed, after all.”
I remembered something. “Is that why you...went away? Rode somewhere, I think?”
He gave me a questioning look. “Yes.”
“It's what I would have done,” I explained. “Or gone out on my boat, alone on the sea, if I'd been at home. I understand: an Empire's soldier was the last person you needed to see, just then.”
“Nor did I want to ride north with Donnalch, as it was his war that had killed Alain. But it was what I had to do, although I made my dislike of it more than clear.”
“Cillian,” I said, caught in the intimacy of the moment, “I may transgress here—but was he more than a friend?”
“Not Alain, no.” He didn't seem to mind the question. “I am not even sure I would have used the word friend, until I knew he was dead. It is not a relationship I think of as applying to me.”
I could think of nothing to say. With another man, I might have offered an embrace. “I know what it is to lose a friend,” I said finally. “I'm sorry, Cillian.”
“That is kind of you, Lena,” he replied. “Especially since it was I who was explaining my behaviour.”
“At least you weren't responsible for his death.”
He frowned, studying me. “Were you, for your friend's?”
“Yes. She was my cohort-second, at Tirvan. I ordered her back on patrol when she was upset about something, and she was killed. I should have known better.”
“You see that as your fault?”
“My responsibility. Tice was angry at something that had changed her life, and during the invasion she had confronted the source of that anger. I think it blinded her to danger, and she didn't hear the man who killed her.”
“Did she not also have a responsibility to control herself, to put anger aside to do her job?” He didn't sound judgmental, but rather the teacher again, offering a differing viewpoint.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But what I should have known is that she couldn't, and therefore I should have ordered her off duty. That is where I failed.”
“Anger can be very hard to let go,” he said, softly. “The philosophy I attempt to adhere to, as explained in the Contemplations of Catilius, an Emperor of the East whose writings we know, says to be angry at something means you have forgotten that everything that happens is natural. But I could not believe that Alain's death was natural, and that it was my reaction to it that was at fault. We are
here in part because my volition to act rationally failed. All we can do, Lena, is learn from our mistakes, and not let it happen again.”
“Like xache? Life isn't that simple,” I snapped. “My turn to apologize,” I said immediately. “I'm irritable, because I'm in pain. When the tea works, I'll be human again.”
I made tea again before bed, and the next morning.
“You are in pain every time?” Cillian asked, watching me.
“Every time, for a couple of days.” He might as well know what to expect. “Except if I drink anash every day,” I added, “and I don't have enough to do that for more than a few months. Nor was my mother sure it was safe to use for a long time.”
“But you have, or you would not know its effects,” he observed.
“Yes. We all did, in Tirvan, when the invasion drew close. Probably in other villages, too. A precaution, against what might happen.”
“I see,” he said. “Wise, under the circumstances.”
“Yes,” I said briefly. I didn't really want to discuss this. “Look, Cillian, I might as well be blunt.” I said. “I will have to wash cloths, and myself, frequently, for a few days. I know from Jordis that this is very private, in Linrathe. I will be as discreet as I can be, and I apologize if you are made uncomfortable.”
“I would just say tell me when you are going to bathe,” he said, “but I am rather constrained, for now.” Both of us preferred to be clean. We washed every couple of days, alerting each other beforehand for privacy.
“I will find a place out of your sight,” I said.
“Did you know,” he said, “that some ancient scholars thought women could control the weather, during their bleeding? And destroy insects in fields of grain, just by walking around the field?”
“Seriously?”
“It is what they wrote. Whether or not they actually believed it is another matter.”
“I wish I'd known that, a time or two fishing. I wonder what I would have had to do, to control the squalls?”
“Strip off your clothes, I believe,” Cillian said. “I remember you getting the boat under control in those gusts of winds. Would you have just stopped that frantic action, to undress?”
“Very practical advice,” I said, laughing. Any discomfort I had felt discussing my bleeding with him, had disappeared. Probably his intent, I realized. “Did they really write that, or did you just make it up?”
“Oh, there's more,” he said. “Cures for mad dogs, and diseases, and tarnishing metal. Very powerful, a woman is, at this time.” I'd never seen more than a fleeting smile before. Now he looked truly amused.
“I thought these ancient writers were full of wisdom?”
“They can be. But in some cases, the writings are full of ridiculous ideas, as I have just described.” He started to laugh. “As a boy, the people with no heads and eyes on their chests gave me nightmares.”
I tried to imagine. “I can see why.” Laughter changed him, relaxing his usually austere aspect. “Cillian,” I said. “I've never seen you laugh before.”
“I don't, often,” he said. “Mostly with Alain. And there hasn't been much to laugh about, since. But this morning—you are very different than Linrathan women, Lena, open and unbothered by what is natural. I could not have said what I just told you to any other woman I have known; she would have been horrified that such things were written. But you were just amused.”
“When you live with only women, most of the year,” I said, oddly pleased, “of course it's just natural. But not all Empire's men are comfortable with the process, either.”
“No? That surprises me.”
“Should it? After all, they live apart from us from the time they're seven. I don't know how they learn about a woman's cycle. If it coincides with Festival, women just don't participate. I wouldn't be surprised if some men never know.”
“I had not thought of that.”
“I had to explain it, to Garth,” I said. He looked at me questioningly. “Garth was at Tirvan, during the invasion.” No need to go into the complex detail. “Afterwards, he and I rode south. I was taking word of Tice's death to her village, and he had an obligation to meet, in the same village. We were together for a couple of months.”
“Not just as travelling companions, I think?” Cillian asked. Fair enough, I thought. I'd asked him about Alain.
“Not just.”
“May I ask you something else?” His voice was hesitant.
“You can.” I couldn't lament his lack of openness, and then be reticent myself.
“How old are you, Lena?”
Not what I had expected. “Are we past midsummer? We must be.”
“Yes, by a few weeks now.”
“Then I'm twenty,” I answered.
“Two years adult?”
“Three, in the Empire, for women. Why?”
“I was just thinking about what I was doing, in those early years of adulthood. Travelling, teaching, learning.” An odd inflection, on the last word. “Not so different than you, if you exclude fighting.”
“A large exclusion,” I said. “But I see your point. We have both—wandered.”
“Good training, for what we are doing now.”
“Mmm.” I wanted to go back to an earlier part of the conversation. “Cillian, I think I may have given you the wrong idea.”
“About?”
“Garth and me. We were lovers, yes, for a short while. And I cared for him. But it was his sister, Maya, who was my partner, on the boat, and in life. I loved her. I know that is—not accepted, in Linrathe, and if it bothers you, I won't talk about it again. But,” I shrugged. “I thought you should know.”
“Maya chose to leave Tirvan, rather than fight? Jordis told me,” he added, at my look of surprise.
“Yes. Garth and I went to look for her, afterwards.”
“Did you find her?”
“Yes. She wanted nothing to do with me, then and again later, because I'd fought.”
“Why did you think your relationship would bother me?” He sounded genuinely curious, not asking a question to begin a teaching dialogue.
“Someone told me such relationships were not accepted, in Linrathe.”
“At the torps, you are right. Is that where you were?” I nodded. “But at the Ti'acha, we take a wider view, understanding that men and women are not all the same in how they desire.”
“More wisdom from the ancients?”
“In part, yes.”
“And you, Cillian?” I asked suddenly. “Women? Men? Both?”
He was silent. “The answer to that is not simple,” he said finally. “Women, once. Men—no, with one possible exception, unexplored. That broke a heart, I believe, which I regret. But neither, by choice, for some years.”
“By choice?”
“Yes. The reasons for which I will not share, Lena. Not at this time, and likely never.”
“Is that why you don't like to be touched?”
“Largely, yes.”
“I'm glad you told me,” I said. “It's easier, when I understand at least a little. I have no need to know more.” I studied him. “But it's annoying, too.”
“In what way?”
“I like you more every time we talk. And I am used to touching people I like, affectionately. Remembering not to will be hard. You will forgive me, if I transgress, sometimes?”
“I will forgive the occasional touch, if you do your best to not make it a habit,” he said. “Has your pain gone?”
“It has. I should get water, and hunt, and then we can play xache.”
Chapter Two
When Cillian's ankle could stand it, we began to make our way east again. The days blended into each other. I lost track of how long we had been on the move. We each gained our share of cuts, bruises and blisters, suffered through bouts of digestive difficulties, and burned red in the summer sun. The constant diet of meat, supplemented by what berries we could find, and any plants I thought I recognized as edible, kept us going, but
we'd both grown thinner.
We were easier with each other, after the days waiting for Cillian's ankle to heal. He smiled more, and told me more stories from the ancients, many of which made us both laugh. I honoured his request, and rarely touched him, but the occasional time I did, he didn't flinch.
A bank of heavy cloud rolled in late one afternoon. By the time we made camp, it was raining, and the rain continued over the next three days. On the third afternoon, the wind picked up, and the rain became icy, and driven.
“We need to find shelter,” I said.
Cillian nodded. “A fire will be difficult, tonight,” he said grimly, over the wind. A group of boulders provided a little protection. Cillian built a fire, but it smouldered and smoked, providing little heat. We would eat dried meat tonight: I couldn't have cooked, even if one of us had killed something.
“The wood is only going to get wetter,” he said, piling more beside the stuttering fire.
“Put it in one tent,” I suggested. “We should share the other tonight, Cillian. It's too cold to sleep apart.”
He didn't argue. I helped move the wood into the one tent. Then we crawled into the small space of the other, throwing packs in ahead of us. I could just sit upright in the centre; Cillian, taller, could not.
Wind shook the oiled fabric, rain battering the outside. So far, the tent was dry, but it would leak at some point if the rain remained this hard. “We're drenched,” I said. “We have to put on drier clothes.” I had begun to shiver. I stripped off my wet tunic and breeches; my underclothes were almost as wet. Ignoring Cillian, I removed them as well, and found only slightly damp replacements in my pack.
He'd changed as well, but his hair still dripped water. “Dry your hair,” I said, “or you'll just make everything wet again.”
“Not easy, when you can't sit up,” he said.
“Then I will.” I found my drying cloth, and edged over to him. “I'll be quick,” I said, rubbing the cloth over his hair. “That's better.” We ate some strips of meat.
“Not enough room to play xache,” Cillian observed.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Not history, or battles, though. We've been travelling together for—how long?—and I still know very little about you. Or you me, for that matter. Not big things—we do know some of them, I suppose, but the little things.”
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 65