Empire’s Reckoning: Book I of Empire’s Reprise
How many secrets does your family have?
For 13 years, Sorley has taught music alongside the man he loves, war and betrayal nearly forgotten. But behind their calm and ordered life, there are hidden truths. When a young girl’s question demands an answer, does he break the most important oath he has ever sworn by lying – or tell the truth, risking the destruction of both his family and a fragile political alliance?
Empire’s Reckoning asks if love – of country, of an individual, of family – can be enough to leave behind the expectations of history and culture, and to chart a way to peace.
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Extract
Just prior to this scene, the new Governor has arrived from the East. My narrator, Sorley, and several others have met with him for the first time. Here, Sorley and Cillian are discussing their impressions of the man, and his ‘request’ that the country’s heir be sent east for education. Druisius, who is mentioned near the end of the scene, is a soldier originally from the East, and Sorley’s lover.
“My workroom,” Cillian said briefly to me in the corridor. We didn’t speak until we’d reached the room and the door was closed. “Your impressions?”
“A man used to power, and to being obeyed,” I said.
“Close to Eudekia, and not a friend of Decanius, I would say.” He leaned on his cane. “The Empress gave in to Quintus on the Procurator, but has prevailed in her choice of Governor. If Decanius anticipated this, it more fully explains his attempt to consolidate power and wealth before this man’s arrival.”
He sat, stretching his bad leg out in front of him. Without asking I moved the footstool into place. “What do you think of this request to send Faolyn to Casil?” I asked.
“Order,” he said, “not request. I am unsurprised: Gnaius told me once it was common practice, to bring the heirs of provinces to the palace to be brought up there.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Educated, he said, in the manners and ways of Casil, although I think indoctrinated might be better word.”
“What will Talyn say?” I sat down.
“Very little, most likely,” he said. “In the normal course of things in this land, Sorley, he would have joined the cadets at seven.”
At seven I had been learning to control my pony, irritated by a four-year-old brother who wanted to do everything I did. To be sent away from family and familiar things, to a city so far away that even the language was new — I couldn’t imagine it. I’d been homesick at eighteen.
“Can Talyn go with him?”
Cillian laughed drily. “I believe the boy would be mortified, Sorley. His mother? His father would be acceptable, and perhaps should be sent, if he is alive. But tell me of the officers in your language classes: who is proficient, not just in language, but in the other qualities he or she will need to navigate the politics of the palace?”
“Wouldn’t the major who has just returned be a better choice? He knows the city and the palace, and the people.”
“Perhaps too well,” Cillian said thoughtfully. “Has he made his own alliances? I will certainly propose him to the Princip. But I would like someone there whom we trust, who will provide us with information that is not also shared with the Governor.”
One of my students was a friend of Lena’s. I gave Cillian his name.
“Possibly,” Cillian said. “I have another thought, and not one you will like, mo charaidh. Who among us swore loyalty not just to the Princip, but to his heirs, and has sources of information within the palace that no one else will have?”
Druisius. I bit back my first instinctive ‘no’. Druise was a soldier of the Western Empire — Ésparias — before anything else. “How long will Faolyn be expected to stay in Casil?”
“For several years, I should think. But I was not thinking to send Druisius for so long, Sorley. A few months, to allow him to re-establish friendships, or perhaps even connections with his family. Someone who would write to a soldier in a far province, but unimportant enough that those letters would not be considered of interest to anyone else.”
I spread my hands. “He is yours to command, Cillian.”
“But you do not like the idea.”
“Would you?”
“Were it Lena being deployed away from me for some months? No.” He studied me. “Do you care that much for him, Sorley?”
Author Bio –
Not content with two careers as a research scientist and an educator, Marian L Thorpe decided to go back to what she’d always wanted to do and be a writer. Author of the medieval trilogy Empire’s Legacy and the companion novella Oraiáphon, described as ‘historical fiction of another world’, Marian also has published short stories and poetry. Her life-long interest in Roman and post-Roman European history informs her novels, while her avocations of landscape archaeology and birding provide background to her settings. Empire’s Reckoning is the first of a planned trilogy, Empire’s Reprise.
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