Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy

by Marian L Thorpe

  “Fifty-eight days,” Cillian said. “There isn't much to know about me, Lena.”

  “Of course there is,” I said. “What's your favourite food, or drink? What's your best memory? The sort of things friends share, you know.”

  “I don't, actually,” he reminded me. “But if you wish. What are the answers to those questions?”

  “I will tell you, only if you give me an answer back. One for one.”

  “That is fair,” he agreed.

  “Fish, then, freshly caught, and cooked lightly, almost immediately.”

  “Lamb,” he said, “in early summer.”

  “Mmmm. Yes.” I said. “I'm surprised. You don't seem that interested in food, really.”

  “I appreciate good food. Or less good, when that is what there is, and I am hungry. But in either case, I prefer not to overeat.”

  “Drink is harder. Cider, and wine.” I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and body. I wasn't getting warm.

  “Wine, in moderation.”

  “See? This isn't so hard. Now, my best memory, that I'm willing to share, anyhow. The first time Maya and I took our new boat out, just the two of us, alone on the sea.” He didn't reply.

  “Cillian?”

  “It is a very old memory,” he said softly.

  “This is a game,” I said. “You don't need to tell me, if it's private.”

  “Perhaps I do,” he answered. “I have my reasons. It is barely a memory, more a feeling of warmth and safety, and my grandmother singing to me, I think. At the farmhouse which was home, until I was seven.”

  I swallowed. I hadn't expected such raw honesty. “That's beautiful,” I said. “And sad, at the same time.” I shuddered.

  His eyes narrowed. “You're shivering.”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I'm not getting warm.” A hard spasm shook me, my teeth chattering. Cillian reached out, pulling me towards him in one move. “You hate this,” I protested.

  “I will hate it more if you die of cold,” he said. “Lie down, facing me.” He pulled the blankets around us both. “You should have said something.” He began to rub my back. I shook, violently. He swore. “Closer,” he said. I tucked my head into his shoulder. “Hands in my armpits,” he instructed. “You are dangerously cold, Lena.” I knew I was. All of us on the boats knew the risks of cold, especially wet cold. His hands rubbed my back, my thighs, my arms, encouraging blood flow, never letting my body move from his. Gradually, the shaking died to shivers, and stopped.

  “I'm all right,” I said eventually.

  “You are not in immediate danger,” he said, “but you are not all right. If you get cold again, before you are truly warm, you will die. Stay where you are.” His arm held me tightly.

  We lay listening to the rain. His hand moved rhythmically on my back, small circles. “I think you just saved my life again, Cillian,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Can you sleep now?”

  “I think so.”

  “Turn over, then; you'll be more comfortable. But don't move away.” I turned so my back was against him. He pulled me close. I could feel his breath on my neck, warm and reassuring. At some point, I slept.

  His arm still held me close when I woke, warm, in the morning. His breathing told me he was still asleep, for which I was glad, because feeling his body against mine had evoked in me a stab of desire stronger than any I had felt in a long time. I fought the urge to turn to him, to offer what I knew he would not accept. I would only embarrass us both. I sighed, shifting slightly.

  My movement woke him. He lay still for a moment, not letting me go. “Are you warm now?” he asked.

  “Yes. Thank you again.” I sat up, oddly reluctant to leave him. I crawled out of the tent, to a world washed clean and cold, the sky a brilliant blue. “It's a beautiful day,” I called back. “We should let everything dry, before moving on.”

  Cillian rebuilt the fire with the marginally drier wood from the other tent, while I strung ropes to hang clothes. The temperature hovered near freezing. I made mint tea, just for something warm.

  Neither of us seemed in much hurry to leave. There was an odd intimacy to the morning, as if our physical closeness last night had been more than it was. The tent dried slowly. Cillian went to gather more wood, taking his bow, and returned with a rock squirrel.

  “We're not going anywhere quickly,” I said. “Should I cook it now?”

  “Yes. They are plentiful. I think you—and maybe both of us—should be eating more, Lena. You are very thin. I hadn't realized just how thin, until I was rubbing warmth into you last night.”

  I looked down at myself, and then at him, critically. “I see what you mean,” I said. “You are thin, too. But I haven't felt hungry.”

  “Nonetheless.”

  “Right,” I said. “So let's get this rock rat cooked.”

  We didn't leave that day. The sky stayed clear. “It will be very cold tonight again. We should share the tent, and the blankets,” Cillian said, at the evening fire.

  “Likely wise,” I agreed. We played xache after eating, until my fingers began to drop the pieces.

  “Tent,” Cillian said. “You're getting cold.”

  I wasn't chilled, though, so under the blankets I didn't need his body heat too. I pillowed my head on my pack, yawning. “It's too early for me to be sleepy,” I complained.

  “Too little sleep, last night. Do you want to sleep, or talk?”

  “Talk. Three more facts?”

  “Why not?” His voice sounded amused.

  “Something you love, something you hate, and...the name of your first love.”

  “You start.”

  “I love sailing,” I said, “but really, it's the space, the emptiness out on the ocean. I felt the same, almost, riding across the grasslands.”

  “Freedom matters to you,” he observed. “I too love solitude, time just to be quiet, to think.”

  “You know what I hate,” I went on. “Being manipulated. Being used.”

  “We agree on that,” he said. “Although I think I have been averse to it, much longer.”

  “You are somewhat older,” I said.

  “I have also done my share of using people. It makes it worse.” He didn't elaborate.

  “First love?” I queried, after a moment. “Maya, for me, from very young.”

  “I have no answer for that question,” he said.

  “You don't want to tell me?”

  “There is nothing to tell. I have never been in love.”

  “Not even once?”

  “No.”

  “Why do your answers keep making me sad?” I said crossly. “I would hug you if you didn't dislike it so much.”

  “You could try, if you like,” he said, very quietly. “Last night was not unpleasant.”

  I bit my lip. What had that just cost him? I slid over, putting a hand on his chest and the other around him, carefully, lightly. I could feel the tension in him. I kept a distance between us, like dance partners. Slowly his hand came up, not to hold me as I expected, but to stroke my hair before settling on my back. He relaxed a little. I stayed very still. Could he feel how hard my heart was beating? His, under my hand, was equally fast. For the same reason? I fought the desire suffusing me. Nothing he wants, I told myself. Nothing he would respond to, from what he had said. Do not risk this fragile friendship.

  “Well?” I murmured. “You haven't run away.”

  “No,” he replied. “I haven't. Thank you.”

  “Well, good,” I said. “It makes life a little less awkward, especially if we're sharing this tent.”

  I heard him chuckle. “I suppose it does,” he said. He turned over. “Good night, Lena.”

  I moved away, a bit. I thought life had become a little more awkward, not less. But it was only physical desire born of proximity. Nothing more. I could cope.

  A few days later we crested a high ridge. As usual, Cillian was in front, so he could give me a hand on steep or rocky places. He stopped.
“Lena,” he said, “come and see.” I climbed up beside him. In a gap between two peaks, a glimpse of a flat plain could be seen.

  “Oh!” I breathed.

  “It's still a distance away,” Cillian warned.

  “But we can see it!” I said.

  “A grassland,” he observed. “Space and emptiness for you.” He put his arm over my shoulders, touching me voluntarily for the first time without a pressing reason. I slipped an arm around his waist.

  “Thank you, Cillian,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For remembering. For keeping me safe. For being you.” I felt his sudden stillness, a breath not taken. “Cillian? Is something wrong?”

  “No,” he said softly. “Nothing wrong at all. Just that no one has said that particular thing to me, ever.” His hand moved on my shoulder, a brief caress. I looked up at him. Something has just happened, I thought, but I don't know what.

  “We have come a long way together,” I said.

  “Further than you know. You are a good friend, Lena.”

  “So are you.”

  “No. I am still learning. But you have helped me, forced me, almost, to keep a promise I made.” He took my hand. In a gesture that seemed both practiced and completely honest, he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you.”

  I blinked back unexpected tears. “Will you explain, some day?”

  “Perhaps. Some day. When I am sure I have succeeded.”

  A huge bird soared ahead of us, circling low over the ground before disappearing back into the valley. “That was no eagle,” I said.

  “No,” he answered, “it wasn't. Or not one I've ever seen. That was bigger than a sea-eagle, even.” We climbed up the last part of the ridge. Beneath us on the valley floor, directly below a rocky outcrop, a half-grown youngster of the goat-deer lay, still alive, jerking its head in a futile effort to avoid the bird's massive, hooked beak, aimed at its eyes.

  I ran down the hill. As I approached, I swung my walking stick at the bird. It hopped back, but did not fly. “Keep it off the kid,” I directed Cillian. I turned to the animal. It struggled to rise, but a bone protruding from a foreleg told the story: it must have fallen from the rocks above. The eye that had been exposed to the bird was gone. I knelt to slit the kid's throat, watching the light dim and die in its remaining eye. I stood, hauling the body up and propping it against a boulder to let it bleed out.

  As I did so, my hand caught on something protruding from its side. I moved to examine it. It was the broken shaft of an arrow. My breath caught.

  “Cillian,” I said. “Look at this.” I tugged on the shaft, and with a bit of effort the arrow came out: a roughly hammered metal head, set onto a whittled wooden shaft.

  “People,” he said. “Along the foothills, I wonder?”

  “What did the maps show?”

  “Many villages, perhaps even towns. But that was before the Eastern Fever, Lena. We have no idea what is left.”

  I nodded. “That arrow's been in the kid a few days at least; there's no fresh blood and the wound has festered.” I had smelled the rot when I pulled the arrow out. “So maybe a hunting party out from a village, or maybe the kid wandered after it was hurt. Or maybe the village is just over the next hill.”

  “Or maybe it's not a village at all,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There have been other exiles, over the years.”

  “I suppose,” I answered slowly. My mind churned at the thought. I didn't want to meet people. I wanted to stay out under the sky, alone except for Cillian.

  “In either case, there's not a lot we can do, except keep going, and pay attention,” Cillian said. “Should we take some meat?”

  “No. It could be tainted, from the poison in the wound. Leave it for the carrion-bird.”

  The enormous bird had settled on a rock a few paces away. Glancing up I saw several more of its kind, and a few ravens, circling. Very little would be left of the kid in a short time. I wondered, as we moved away, what the birds did in winter.

  Every rustle and rolling pebble startled me that afternoon. Cillian too was watchful, but not with the same nervousness as I felt, or he hid it well. We camped that night along a middling stream. We'd stopped bothering with two tents, preferring the extra warmth two bodies in the small space provided, and the conversation before sleep. I slipped out to relieve myself in the middle of the night. The moon rose over the peaks, white and distant in the clear, cold night. I looked up at it, thinking about the passage of time. At home—at Tirvan, I corrected myself, the barley would be turning golden, but it would be another month before the autumn deer cull.

  The next morning, a heavy frost rimed the bushes, and ice edged the quiet edges of the stream. Clouds had blown in overnight, and a cold breeze blew down the valley. I heated water, adding some fruit and leaves from the brambles, and set the left-over meat near the small fire to warm a bit. I had started to crave bread: a diet of meat and fat and fruit, when we could find it, did not satisfy me, after nearly three months.

  Cillian appeared from down the valley. “The rocks are icy,” he said. “Perhaps we should wait until the sun melts the ice this morning.”

  “What sun?” I replied. “Let's go up a bit higher, to keep our feet dry.”

  We packed up the camp, filled the waterskins, and climbed out of the shaded valley onto the ridge above us. A group of goat-deer bounded away, leaping from rock to rock. They stopped not too far away, facing their rumps into the wind, looking over their shoulders at us.

  The wind at our backs had a cold bite. The day did not warm, nor the clouds lift; if anything, they grew heavier as we walked. A pair of ravens played on the gusts, croaking at each other, turning and spinning in the wind.

  Rock squirrels were sparse today. My first two shots missed, the arrows blown off target, but my third provided the night's meal. We need to camp for a few days, I mused. When we had stopped mid-day, I had noted we had little dried meat left. Somewhere with plentiful game and a good supply of wood. I had no idea what we might find to eat out on the plain ahead of us.

  I bent to gut the squirrel. What felt like a rain of pebbles hit me, hard and stinging even through the fabric of my tunic. White pellets the size of plum stones bounced off the rocks, already beginning to pile together. “Come,” Cillian said urgently, his hand on my back. “We need to get out of this.”

  I followed him, the squirrel dangling from one hand, biting my lip against the barrage of hailstones. If anything, they were getting larger, and the sky darker. I covered my head with a hand, risking a sideways glance upward: huge charcoal clouds roiled above us.

  We stumbled down the hillside, looking for rocks or trees or anything that would shelter us. My head ached from the constant tiny blows. A large boulder loomed ahead; Cillian tucked himself against it. I joined him. His arm went around me, pulling me against the rock, but it provided little shelter. Blood dripped from Cillian's cheek, and where I pressed against the rock I could feel bruises or worse. “We can't stay here,” I shouted, my words almost lost to the wind and the noise of the hailstones. He nodded. I pulled my pack off, holding it over my head, and stepped away from the rock, keeping my face down. The force of the wind and the hail nearly had me on my knees. We could die here.

  An arm caught mine. “Come!” a man's voice shouted. He half-dragged me down the slope and into a cave, not much more than a niche in the hillside. Cillian slid in beside us, another man with him. I collapsed, panting, onto the cave floor. The clamour of the hailstones echoed around us.

  Eventually the hail slowed and stopped, to be replaced by heavy, pelting rain, cold when it splashed into the cave, but quieter. The man who had grabbed my arm looked down at me. “Exiles, yes?” he said.

  He spoke my language, but haltingly, as if recalling long unused words. “Yes,” I answered. “From your speech, I assume you are too?”

  “I was,” he said. “I am Fél, once an Empire's soldier. I killed another s
oldier in a brawl, some twenty years ago. I was lucky: the Emperor gave me exile, not death. But in all my years in these mountains, I have never met an exiled woman. What is your tale?”

  “Too long for easy telling,” I said. “I am Lena of Tirvan, but I also was a Guardswoman of the Empire, sworn to the Emperor's service. This is Cillian. We have been, until recently, at war with the North, and then a truce was declared. We broke that truce, and here we are.”

  “A Guardswoman!” Fél said. “Women are soldiers now?”

  “Some,” I said. The other man said something to Fél, in another language. Fél replied, in the same tongue.

  “Ivor, here,” Fél said, indicating the other man, “says it will rain for many hours. He suggests we light a fire and wait it out, a wise idea. Then, he said, glancing at Cillian and myself, “there will be time for a long tale.”

  The drumming of the rain persisted throughout the afternoon, a steady accompaniment to our voices. I spoke, telling Fél my tale, answering his questions about the Empire. “Callan, Emperor!” he said. “I remember him: he was a junior officer when I was a cadet. His father was in our regiment.” He shook his head. “I would never have expected that!” He stopped me often, to relay a summary, I supposed, to Ivor.

  When I reached my assignment as hostage to Linrathe, I paused. “This is where my tale joins Cillian's,” I said. “Perhaps he should take over, for his story is not mine to tell.”

  “There is not much to say,” Cillian said. He had sat quietly by the small fire Ivor had built, listening. “I was born to a girl of Linrathe, but it was known my father was a soldier of the Empire. Eventually, he learned of me, but not until I was a man grown. I chose fealty to the Empire over Linrathe, for reasons that will become clear, and exile was my reward.”

  “Exile, rather than death,” I added. Cillian's guarded tale held a clear message: he did not want it known that his father was the Emperor. “As I said earlier, we broke the truce between the Empire and Linrathe, but only in what I saw—we saw—in our duty to our leaders. The far Northern people—for there is a land north of Linrathe, Fél, Varsland, where the Marai live—had planned an invasion, of both Linrathe and the Empire. We were their captives, and we escaped to warn our people. I killed a man, and because we fled the Marai's captivity, the Teannasach of Linrathe, Donnalch, who was also captive, was murdered by the Marai. Those deaths were our fault, it was ruled. Callan commuted our sentence to exile, and here we are.”