But it had been a mistake to meddle with the army—Lucho Marro’s first mistake, maybe. A mistake to think he could send the son of Torien Risto to a place like Souvin and see no repercussion for it. There was too much of the army still beyond his grasp, too many men of the command who’d see the blatant offense of this thing and raise a clamor against it, when the truth got out. A grave mistake to try to use the army against the Risti. Lucho Marro would find he’d closed his fingers round empty air.
He’d finished the letter, and had given it to a messenger to be taken down to the post-station in the city, by the time a servant brought him the summons to the morning meal. The meal was served in the garden room, adjoining the kitchens, and the rest of the family were already present when he went in: Chæla and Challe, Tore and Juile. Chæla was pale, sickly-looking, her eyes still rimmed with tears, her lips pressed in a thin, tight line.
Tore was in a better mood.
“My brother’s left for his new command, I hear,” he said.
“Before dawn,” said Torien, shortly, as he took his seat.
“He realized you wouldn’t buy him some new post?”
“That isn’t what he wanted of me.”
“Better he goes, anyway,” said Tore. “That’s the only honorable way to deal with this thing.”
“Maybe,” said Torien. “We’ll see. I’ve written to Vione to find out the truth of it.”
“What more is there to find out? The Cesino drew a blade on Marro. That would be a serious offense even were it a Vareno who’d done it—and a man of the nobility, an officer. This was a commoner, an enlisted man—and Cesino, to finish it off.”
“Tyren must have had compelling reason to risk defending him, then,” said Torien.
“Compelling reason to spit in Luchian Marro’s face for the sake of a Cesino foot-soldier?”
“Occasionally there are other reasons to act than for the thought of political advancement,” said Torien.
Tore shook his head. “Now’s the time to be strengthening our ties with the Marri, not looking for ways to provoke them further.” He paused, to give his next words more weight. “You’d see that, maybe, if you’d think more about your duties as governor and less about pursuing this tired, pointless thing against the Marri for your own mad reasons.”
There was a long, tense silence over the table, broken only by the sound of Chæla crying softly. She’d turned her face away, cupping it in one hand, as if she thought no one would see the tears that way, or see her shoulders shaking. Juile and Challe sat frozen, their eyes down, Challe with food forgotten in her mouth.
Torien spoke quietly. The anger had risen at once in his throat, of course, the old black anger burning fiercely inside him, but it had died away again quickly as it had come. There was deep, heartsick pain spreading through him instead—the sudden realization Tore didn’t understand the weight he carried, couldn’t understand it. He’d carried it alone twenty years; the Marri had seen to that. He couldn’t expect Tore to share it with him now.
“When you are governor of Cesin,” he said, “you may make your own decisions about the things that constitute your duties in that office. You may forget your duty to me then, if you wish—but only then, do you understand?”
“When I’m governor,” said Tore. There was a harshness in his face and in the short laugh he gave. “If the Risti still hold that office—if you haven’t succeeded in ruining us.”
III
It was the southwest road that led from Chælor to Rien and eventually—though it was probably little more than a mud track by then—to Souvin. For the most part the road cut across wet green farmland, rising fields of wheat and barley, and there were villages occasionally, earthen thatch-roofed huts and low, dark flag-stone cottages clustered close along the road. Very little Vareno influence here, the heartland of Cesin, lying between the fort at the crossroads and the bigger city of Rien. He’d forgotten how much he loved this country. Rough and wild compared to Varen—raw black earth and pine wood instead of marble and brick. But there was a deep peacefulness here, an unhurriedness he’d missed in Choiro, a sense of age, of long memory. You felt the years had weathered this place, gnarled and knotted it, and the petty things that mattered so much to the younger places of the world didn’t matter here at all.
They stopped from time to time—mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon—to rest and water the horses and to let them graze along the roadside. He tried, the first few times, to make some conversation with the Cesino slave, speaking in the native tongue, a little ashamed of the shortness with which he’d spoken to him yesterday. But the Cesino never answered him a word and after those first few tries Tyren didn’t press him. In truth he was ashamed the slave was here at all. He was sharply aware of his own hypocrisy. He’d commanded Cesino soldiers in his time at Vione and they’d been good men. He’d respected them, had earned their respect. He’d been punished now for standing up for one of them to that bastard Luchian Marro. Hypocritical to treat this Cesino as though none of that mattered, as though it didn’t make a difference to him. Easy, of course, to dismiss it as the hypocrisy of the world in general, because this was what the Empire thought of Cesini when you got down to the bare truth of the thing: unlettered savages who’d still be living in their skin huts or mountain caves, fighting amongst themselves like dogs over table scraps, if the Empire hadn’t come in force, if there were not the Empire to keep order now. No matter some of them wore the harness of the Imperial military, gave their blood in its service. They were inconsequential, like animals. Slave or free made no real difference. In the end, in the Empire’s mind, a Cesino life was nothing.
But it was more than the hypocrisy of the world in general, because there was Cesino blood in his own veins—Varro blood, the blood of the old Cesino kings.
It was Cesino tradition to say the Varro line was ended, because Tarien Varro, the last king of independent Cesin, had died in battle against the Empire, and had left no heir. He’d return to take his throne when the time came, would come back from the dead to free Cesin from the Imperial yoke. Until then the line was ended. That was their tradition. Comforting, maybe, for them to think of it like that. Dignifying to think of it like that. But that was only tradition, and as with most traditions the truth behind it was less glorious. There’d been a brother—the Traitor, the Cesini called him. He’d turned against Tarien to fight alongside the forces of the Empire, and had been rewarded handsomely for that service, given the hereditary governorship of Cesin by the emperor’s own order. He’d taken a Vareno name afterward, and a Vareno wife, and he’d built the great house at Vessy in Vareno fashion. But his was Varro blood, Cesino blood, as much as Tarien’s had been.
That was long enough ago now that most people probably didn’t give it much serious thought—most Vareni, at least. He’d never given much thought to it himself, growing up. He’d had Cesino slaves all his life and had felt no guilt for it. Tempting to try to justify it, of course: Torien Risto had always seen to it his slaves were treated fairly, had once dismissed a man of prominent family from his guard for beating a stable-boy. It wasn’t drudgery to be a slave in the Risto household. But however he might have justified it once, he couldn’t do so now. It was different now. The thing that had happened in Choiro had changed all of that. Against his will, maybe, but it had changed all of that for him. He wished the Cesino were not here, now, to constantly remind him.
* * *
Rain came softly and quietly before sundown and he knew they wouldn’t make it much further that night. There was a farm house, a low black-earth cottage under a roof of straw thatch, set back a short distance from the road, down in a hollow before a stand of black Cesino pine. Beside the house was a rough stable made of the same black earth. He reined in the colt, considering the options in his mind. He decided against trying to sleep out. These Cesino rains were long and soaking. The family might be willing to put them up in the stable; that would at least be better than a night in the mud. He took the colt o
ff the road and pressed him down towards the house. The Cesino slave followed along automatically on Risun.
He dismounted in the yard and held the colt’s reins in his left hand while he rapped on the thick oak door with his right. After a little interval a girl of fourteen or fifteen years pulled the door open. She had long, loose-falling hair, a wheat color unusual among the Cesini, and she was tall for her age, gangling and elbowy as though the rest of her hadn’t yet caught up. For a long moment they just looked at each other, the girl leaning on the door as if she’d fall back into the room otherwise, her eyes wide, her mouth open. A woman’s voice floated through the doorway suddenly, chiding the rain would come in, and the girl’s mother came over to open the door wider and move the girl out of the way. She froze when she saw Tyren. He saw her face go white.
“We were on the Rien road,” he said to her. “I wondered if you’d some room to spare us for the night. We can sleep in the stable if need be.”
Her eyes went past him, out into the yard, and she took in the Cesino slave sitting there silently on Risun, and then she looked over to the stable, and when Tyren turned to follow her gaze he saw there was a man coming up from the stable with a boy of ten or eleven behind him. The man was short and thick-set, kindly-looking though his face was grave now. His dark hair and beard were streaked with gray. He and the woman looked at each other wordlessly a moment and then the man said, in a level voice, “You’re welcome to spend the night, lord, and you needn’t spend it in the stable. Let me put up your horses for you.”
The Cesino slave dismounted then, and Tyren gave the man the colt’s reins and took down his bags from the saddle. The Cesino slave and the farmer took the horses off to the stable. The woman was still holding the door open, standing aside now so Tyren could go in past her.
“I was just preparing the meal, lord,” she said, very quietly. She was gripping the door so tightly her knuckles showed white. She looked to the boy, who was still standing out in the yard. “Geryn—take the bags for him.”
Tyren gave his bags to the boy and ducked in after him through the doorway. Inside he took off his gloves, unpinned his cape, unbuckled his sword-belt and his cuirass, looking round as he did it. The main room was long, low, smoky, lamp-lit, divided at the far end by a leather curtain hung on rings from one of the rafters. The floor was hard-packed black earth. In the center of the room there was a heavy wooden trestle table with long benches on either side and rough-hewn stools at the ends. A broad fire pit was dug before the northern wall, a flag-stone hearth round it, a lug pole built over it so cook-pots could be hung over the flames. Bundles of dried herbs hung so low from the rafters Tyren had to sidestep them as he followed the boy across the room. The boy put down Tyren’s bags against the far wall. Tyren laid his cape over them and set down the cuirass next to them and propped his sword upright beside the cuirass. The woman stood at the hearth now, ladling stew from her cook-pot into clay bowls, and the girl was setting the bowls round the table, moving slowly and carefully. There was tension hanging heavy as the smoke on the air. Tyren stood with his back against the far wall and said nothing and the boy stood a little way away from him, his arms crossed tight across his ribs, with such a look of hostility on his face that Tyren was amused a little, though he didn’t show it. He wasn’t going to pretend ignorance. He knew well enough the kinds of things his own people had done to earn that hostility.
He felt there was a palpable lessening of the tension when the man returned, coming in from the rain with the slave behind him. The man took off his own cloak and hung it on a wooden peg by the door and went over to the hearth to dry himself, holding out his hands over the flames. He said something low and quick to the woman in Cesino. The woman made no reply but she nodded, shortly. She finished with the stew and gave the girl an earthen jug of some drink to set on the table. Then she stood stock-still next to the hearth, her hands clenched at her sides.
The man said, “You can sit here, lord.”
They were waiting for him to sit first. He sat down on the stool at the end of the table, where the man had indicated, his back to the hearth. The man sat down on the bench directly to his left. The woman went round to sit at the other end of the table and the boy and the girl sat on the bench across from the farmer, taking their places silently. The farmer looked up expectantly to the Cesino slave. He alone was still standing and for once his gray eyes fell directly on Tyren, wordlessly questioning. Tyren nodded, his mouth tightening. He hadn’t meant to cause the Cesino any embarrassment. The Cesino sat down on the bench beside the farmer and didn’t look at him again.
He saw the man and the woman look at each other over the board as if words were passing silently between them. The woman shook her head once, tightly. Her shoulders were set very straight and stiff, her back rigid. Her lips were parted just a little but she didn’t speak. The man made no move for a long moment. Then he bowed his head and cleared his throat and began to speak a prayer.
The words were Cesino but Tyren recognized the prayer at once. It was a prayer for the restoring of Tarien Varro’s throne. His heart went cold. A common enough prayer among Cesini, of course. But it was still treason to speak as if the Varro line were ended, no less so for being commonplace. There was Varro blood in the veins of the Risti. Treason and sedition against the Empire to deny it.
Beside the farmer, the slave had frozen. Tyren saw his fingers curl up and clench into a white-knuckled fist. Tyren looked to his face, quickly. His eyes were down but his jaw was tight and Tyren could see anger in the way he sat—tensely, not moving a muscle.
Finally the prayer was finished. The woman looked briefly across to Tyren, as if looking to see what he might do, but he said nothing, made no move, and he saw the set of her shoulders ease a little. Maybe she thought he hadn’t recognized the words. He’d recognized them, knew what they meant. He was torn inside. Surely it was mere tradition to them. They spoke the words by rote, not really even thinking about them, because it had been tradition two hundred years now, since the war, since Tarien Varro’s death. Thoughtlessness, nothing more. Foolish thoughtlessness, maybe, but nothing more than that, in the end.
But if it were something more? If it were open defiance and he said nothing, did nothing? Let it go unheeded this time and next time it would be more than words. That was how rebellion started.
No, he thought. The fool hadn’t known it was a Risto sitting at his board, that was it. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d known. Thick-headed Vareno brutishness to think anything had been meant by it.
There was silence a while after the prayer, except for the occasional dull clink of a bowl against the table. Then the man spoke, unexpectedly, and the woman gave a start when he did.
“You come from Chælor, lord?” the man said to Tyren.
The Cesino slave had turned his head towards Tyren without raising his eyes—listening, waiting. He’d taken his bowl tightly in his hands but he made no move to bring it to his mouth.
“I’ve just come from Choiro,” Tyren said.
“You’re going to Rien?”
“Further. Souvin.”
“In the mountains?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve the look of the mountain people,” the man said to the Cesino slave.
The Cesino put down the bowl and looked up, then. He didn’t look at the farmer right away. He looked at Tyren.
“I was born in Souvin,” he said.
He spoke so smoothly and evenly it took Tyren a moment to realize he’d spoken at all. When he did realize it he stared at him, too taken aback to say anything or to care he must look a fool. But the Cesino had looked over to the farmer now and of course the farmer wouldn’t know it was anything unusual.
“This rain will slow you down, going into the mountains,” the farmer said to Tyren.
He stored his surprise carefully away and brought his thoughts back round.
“Maybe it’ll let up,” he said. “It’s been a while since I was in Cesin last. I�
�d forgotten about the rain.”
They ate in silence again. The woman stood after a while and came round to refill their cups with ale from the jug. Her hands trembled as she poured for Tyren. The man said, “It’s a fine horse you have, lord. The black.”
“My thanks,” Tyren said.
He could tell the man was speaking to ease the tension, to keep the woman steady; she was close to tears and perhaps in silence she might build up to breaking. He hated himself for coming here, suddenly. Should have spent the night out and never minded the rain.
When the meal was finished the woman and the girl cleared the table quickly and silently, scraping out the bowls and washing them and setting them up on the shelf built into the north-facing wall. Then the girl took the boy down to the other end of the long room and drew the leather curtain shut. The woman took out some woolen blankets from a wooden chest against the wall and laid the blankets down on the floor by the hearth. The man said, “You can sleep here at the hearth, lord. I apologize we’ve nothing better.”
His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) Page 3