Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “Never? Not even in front of the Governor?”

  “Not even in front of the Empress, were we ever to return to Casil.”

  “If that is what you want,” I said.

  “It is,” he said, his voice as low and fierce as I had ever heard it.

  “Then I promise.”

  “Lena?” I said, when he’d gone. “This is not his doing.”

  She took a deep breath. “I know. But you thought your intervention with Eudekia meant she gave him up, didn’t you? But she hasn’t. She is tying him — and now our daughter — to her. With subtle, silken threads, perhaps, but they are meant to hold tightly, Sorley, make no mistake.”

  “She is within her rights,” I said. “She is your Empress.”

  “You think I need reminding? Did you also know Casilani law gives me no rights over my own daughter? She is Cillian’s, to use as he chooses.”

  “What?”

  “It’s one of the things being argued over. Talyn tells me Livius is being reasonable, given our traditions, and is likely to accept our ways. Unless the child is born within a recognized marriage, and then Casil’s laws will take precedence.”

  “Oh, gods.” I sat down. “Oh, Lena.”

  “Neither of us knew,” she said. “Or I suppose Cillian might have, in an abstract way. But if he did, he didn’t mention it when he was arguing against us marrying, so I suppose I cannot blame him.”

  “Then why are you so angry with him?”

  “Because...” She too sat, twisting her wine cup in her hands. “Because even though he negotiates with Livius about the details of the treaty, I think all those years of following Catilius, of reading the books about Casil and Heræcria, the philosophy and stories and poems — I think he believes my little country should take its place again in the great Eastern Empire, so superior in thought and education. That we need its oversight and guidance, and we will be better off as its province than we were before.”

  I licked dry lips. “How can you possibly think that?”

  “Who does he talk to, other than you and Casyn? Gnaius. Rufin. What do I see him reading?”

  Reading. “You can’t read Casilan, can you?” I asked.

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then — ” I looked around. “Where are Tyrvi and the babies?”

  “Out. She’s been taking Gwenna over to Berge. She says they see just another baby if she takes her, and they are coming to accept her.”

  “Good,” I said. “Lena, listen. I will wager anything you like Cillian talks to Gnaius and Rufin for reasons other than what you think. I brought those books from the Ti’ach. I know what they are about.”

  “Then what is he doing?”

  “I can’t be sure,” I said. Even knowing the rooms were empty, I dropped my voice. “But the books have a common theme. They are about resistance to an unfair government.”

  She stared at me. “Resistance?”

  “Yes. One is a biography of a Heræcrian philosopher who lost his life for speaking out against corruption; one is a history of rebellion against an early Emperor of Casil. I don’t know about the third. When he asked me for them, Lena, he told me to be careful, that they could be considered subversive. He has said nothing to you?”

  Silence, for several heartbeats. “Of course not,” she said. “He wouldn’t, because he is sheltering me, isn’t he? And I accused him of the opposite.” A wave of pain washed over her face. “I am surprised he told you.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “He asked for the books, nothing more. And I read part of one when I was waiting in your rooms one day.”

  “Where he’d left them, knowing I can’t read Casilan,” she said. “Safer there than in his workroom, where Gnaius or Rufin might see them. Oh, Sorley, I have been so wrong.”

  “But not about one thing,” I said slowly. “Eudekia is an intelligent woman, and shrewd. She hasn’t held onto the throne without being an astute judge of character and motive. In the weeks of negotiation, and the late-night talks, perhaps she understood Cillian better than we knew. By making Gwenna the heir, she becomes a hostage, doesn’t she?”

  Lena understood immediately. “If Cillian is guilty of treason — and, gods, Sorley, he would be, wouldn’t he? — then his rights over Gwenna are forfeit. Eudekia would take her, bring her up in Casil as some prince’s bride.” Fear laced her voice.

  “I think that is the implicit threat, yes,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Cillian must give in and accept Casilani rule, so that someday in her old age Gwenna may be a figurehead Principe. Resist, and he loses both his daughter and his life.”

  Chapter 25

  I walked out to meet Tyrvi, returning from Berge. I did this occasionally: sometimes alone, sometimes, as today, with Lena. Both of us needed sky and sea, space away from the confinement of the fort. We didn’t talk much. But when we returned, with Gwenna asleep in my arms, Cillian was sitting in the living area. He looked almost haggard, exhausted.

  Tyrvi took both babies into the nursery. Without a word, Lena went to Cillian, kneeling in front on him, burying her face in his chest. His arms went around her. I moved towards the door.

  “Sorley,” Cillian said. I looked back. He held out one hand. Reluctantly I went to him. He took my hand, raising it to his lips. “Thank you,” he murmured.

  “Don’t thank me,” I said, annoyed. “What did I say to you, not more than a few weeks ago, about excluding us? I didn’t realize just how guilty of that you were. And yes, I understand I’m Linrathe’s toscaire, and that changes things between us. So talk to Lena, since you can’t to me.”

  I turned on my heel and left, stalking down the hall out to the commons. I chose the junior officers’ building tonight, finding an officer from my classes to sign me in as a guest. I listened to the usual talk, about the soldiers under their command and speculation about deployment to the Sterre or the coastal patrols, but it irritated more than it interested me. I went back to my workroom and my ladhar.

  My head hurt a little, from the wine at the junior commons, but I wasn’t ready to sleep. One of the danta I might be asked to play for my scáeli’s exam had a difficult fingering: I would practice that. Lost in the music, I nearly didn’t hear a gentle tap at the door. My lamp guttered as I looked up; hours had passed. Was I disturbing someone?

  Cillian stood there, leaning on his cane, Lena beside him. “May we talk?” he asked.

  “Of course. Come in. I don’t have wine, but there is some next door.”

  “Do you have fuisce?”

  Fuisce? He must be in some pain, I thought. “Yes. Sit down. I’ll fetch it.”

  I handed him the small cup of the distilled spirit, placing the water jug on the table. He added a few drops, swirled it. “Meas,” he said, taking a tiny sip. I poured a little for Lena, as well, and then for myself.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Yes, if you are asking about my back and leg. The usual discomfort, nothing more.” He took another sip. “I have come to ask a favour.”

  “Which is?”

  “Have you noticed that Lena and I remove our insignias of rank, before we allow ourselves to be — ourselves, you might say, not major and lieutenant?” I nodded. I had noticed, but I hadn’t understood the significance. “We have done that since the Eastern Fort. Could we do the same tonight, Sorley? Forget for an hour or two that we are diplomats, the bearers of our countries’ secrets, and just be friends?”

  I hadn’t heard such fatigue in his voice for some time. What could I say? “We can. We are.”

  Lena sat silently with her fuisce. He glanced at her. “Then do you remember me saying that in asking Casil for help, we might be exchanging a known horror for an unknown?” he asked, very quietly.

  On the ship, before we reached the city; the moment I had realized I must speak for Linrathe, decide for Linrathe, in any negotiations for support. “Yes.”

  “I am afraid we have.”

  I recoiled. “Casil is not that bad, sur
ely? Worse than the Marai? How can you say that?”

  “I did not say they are worse than the Marai. Only that they are a horror. We had hoped their idea of a civilized life was much like ours. Sorley, I was not wrong, except in my understanding of what this land — Lena’s land — considers civilized. How could I have thought I could speak for a people I did not understand?”

  I too sipped the fiery fuisce, considering. “You’re saying that their idea of how a society works is closer to Linrathe’s?”

  “Is it not? A more stratified society, with clearer roles for men and women, structured land ownership, a traditional view of marriage and inheritance. Not identical, by any means, but closer. Easier to find commonalities. The only commonality here is with the army; that has been reasonably easy to adjust. But beyond that, almost everything is in conflict. Is that not right, Lena?”

  “It is,” she said. “We might have been a province of the Eastern Empire once before, but we kept almost none of its laws and traditions, except in the army.”

  We drank, not speaking. Cillian shook his head when I offered more fuisce. “What are you thinking?” I asked finally.

  “Nothing now. Nothing...overt. Eudekia, as you surmised, has seen to that. But tell me this, Sorley. If I had died, would you have stayed with Lena?”

  “Yes, of course. You asked me to.” I hesitated. “Just as I promised her I wouldn’t leave you, were she to die.”

  “Did you?” He turned to Lena. “You asked that?”

  “Of course I did,” she said. “I do know what he is to you, Cillian.”

  “You are the sun, Cillian, around which we orbit, Lena and I,” I added bluntly. “You know that.”

  He half-smiled. “If we keep to that analogy, then just now Casil is also a sun, is it not, shining its lights of history and order on us?”

  “Go on.”

  “Had I died, then you and Lena, and Druisius, perhaps, would have found a way to make a life together, adjusting your differences of upbringing and expectations to live together reasonably harmoniously, would you not? Just as you and Druisius make your two musical traditions work together, with some adaptation?”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Then what if Casil ‘dies’?” he said softly. “What if they go away again, as a study of history tells us they — as every empire before them — will? Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too, Catilius wrote. Heræcria failed, and I have learned from Gnaius that before that another great leader ruled an empire that reached far into eastern lands. What happens to our countries then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “How can we know?”

  “We cannot. But we can plan for that day, whether it is fifty years or a hundred or more. My fear is that our countries would fall again into discord and war. But just as the three of us made plans for my death, or Lena’s — and yours, mo charaidh, for I would have asked Druisius if he wished to stay — perhaps our countries should make private plans for the day the East leaves us to our own defences, too.”

  “Private plans?” I said. “Secret? Cillian, isn’t this as seditious as whatever else you might have been thinking?”

  He regarded me gravely. “Is it? Or is it simply good sense?”

  “It’s not good sense if it results in you being tried for treason again.” I looked at Lena, who simply shook her head.

  “There is no chance of that,” Cillian said. “My thoughts are only for those whom I love, and who love me, and I can trust. You and Lena.”

  “Cillian,” I said, bewildered. He half-smiled.

  “Say nothing,” he said. He pushed himself up. I rose automatically to steady him, holding out a protective hand. He took it, pulling me to him, his hands tight on my back. His lips brushed my hair. “Keep my words close.”

  He let me go. I didn’t know what to say. “Good night, my lord Sorley,” he murmured.

  “I will be a moment,” Lena said. “I have something to say to Sorley.” She let him leave before speaking. “Can you do this?” she asked. “Hold this secret?”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes. I see the sense. But he did say ‘countries’, Sorley, and that means Linrathe, and perhaps even Sorham and Varsland some day. And you have an oath to keep.”

  “Shouldn’t Cillian have asked me this, not you?”

  “It was not Linrathe’s toscaire that he told.” She hesitated. “You don’t understand what you are to him, do you? What you have always been, I think.”

  “His friend,” I said.

  She shook her head. “More than that, Sorley. I want a promise. You will not leave him.”

  “Have I not already said that?”

  “That was before this...revelation. But I will say this. If you ever abandon him, Sorley, you will hurt him more than you can understand. And I would never forgive you, regardless of how much I love you.” Tears shone in her eyes.

  “Lena! I won’t. What’s wrong?”

  She blinked the tears away. “So few years ago, Maya told me — the night Casyn came to Tirvan — that she was scared of what the future held. I told her we had to face it, and do what was needed, or it would overwhelm us. I didn’t understand how she felt. I do now.” She smiled. “Just late-night fears, I suppose. Come to us tomorrow, and we’ll open the packages from Eudekia.”

  Chapter 26

  The packages contained not just presents for Cillian from the Empress, but letters. Delighted, apparently, to hear of his recovery, Eudekia had sent him a walking stick of a wood so dark it was effectively black, decorated with an eagle of silver. For Gwenna, she had sent a silver rattle, and a small half-moon pendant of gold. An amulet, Cillian explained, to ward off disease and misfortune.

  I had a letter from Druise. He wrote exactly as he spoke, which amused me a little. It didn’t tell me much, but its last line: I will be back in the autumn, amané, both cheered me and incited a new wave of guilt over Evan, although I doubted Druise was sleeping alone in Casil. I was reading it for the second time when Cillian called my name. I looked up.

  “Come and see,” he said. Lena had been untying the string around a squarish parcel when I had begun to read. The wrappings, I saw now, had protected a hinged silver box. Cillian had just opened it. Inside, jewels in various settings lay on a bed of cloth. Among them were a pair of earrings, gold wire set with matched green stones, about the size of my smallest fingernail. “These were meant for you, käresta, I am sure,” Cillian said, showing them to Lena. “They will enhance the green flecks in your eyes.” She took them from him, holding them in the palm of her hand.

  “Why is she sending jewels?” she asked. “I will have to have my ears pierced. I never bothered, although Maya did, and other girls at Tirvan. But only for formal occasions. I am not teaching cadets wearing these.”

  “That would seem inappropriate,” Cillian said, with a quick grin. It had been clear from the moment I had come in that they were reconciled. From the box he took two rings, set with deep red stones. “Sorley,” he said, “look at these.” The stones were each carved with a figure. “Carnelian,” Cillian told me. “The Empress’s seal was made of this stone, if you recall.”

  I didn’t, but I had no reason to doubt that he was right. “What incredible detail,” I murmured, taking one of the rings. The figure carved into the stone held a stringed instrument.

  “The motif on the other is similar,” Cillian said. “Would they not grace the ladhar you are making, the jewels mounted one on each side?”

  I looked up. “You can’t give me these,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “They were meant for Lena, and Gwenna.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “Not with those motifs. Lena?” She looked up from the earrings. “Should not these be Sorley’s?”

  “Of course,” she said. “What would I do with them? I have no need of jewellery beyond these earrings and Irmgard’s pendant. And Gwenna’s a baby, with no need of jewels at al
l.”

  “And there are smaller stones here, for what she might want in future years,” Cillian pointed out. “The Empress’s note says I may give them to whom I wish. They are yours, mo charaidh.”

  I would have an instrument like no other. But still I hesitated.

  “Please take them,” Cillian said. “Not in exchange, but for the same reasons you gave us the li’ítho.”

  “Then I must accept,” I said, around the constriction in my throat. Those whom I love, he had said last night. “Thank you. I will bring the ladhar to show you when it’s done.”

  I had hoped that with Lena and Cillian reconciled, my own simmering anger at him would subside. And it did, a bit, but not entirely. I found myself unexpectedly worried by his idea of an alliance among our western countries, and not entirely because of the danger inherent in it. Did it not also speak to a willingness to forget a treaty signed, an oath spoken? My mind went back to the first night he had been free of the poppy juice, clear minded and as precise in his thoughts and speech as ever. Asking Callan to acknowledge me was not the betrayal, he had said, and then he had repeated the words of the toscaire’s oath. There was an implication here I couldn’t believe. Not Cillian, for whom promises were sacrosanct. But I couldn’t find the courage to ask.

  Nor did words spoken in the night over fuisce or the gift of the jewels for my ladhar return us to the closeness we had once had. He was always happy to see me, but there was something — a distance, almost a formality — dividing us, as if he could not forget now that I was Linrathe’s toscaire.

  “Come and eat with us,” Lena insisted one day. I’d seen little of Cillian recently: he played xache with Rufin when the Casilani captain was in port now. Livius, too, gave him the occasional game, and the Governor had also brought an extensive library with him, and was free in the loan of books. Between Cillian’s dinners with the senior officers, and his other occupations, I spent little time alone with him. “We’ve barely seen you, and I am returning to active duty next week.”