Empire’s Heir
(Empire’s Legacy, Book VI)
By Marian L Thorpe
Some games are played for mortal
stakes.
Gwenna, heir to Ésparias, is summoned
by the Empress of Casil to compete for the hand of her son. Offered power and
influence far beyond what her own small land can give her, Gwenna’s strategy
seems clear – except she loves someone else.
Nineteen years earlier, the Empress
outplayed Cillian in diplomacy and intrigue. Alone, his only living daughter
has little chance to counter the Empress's experience and skill. Aging and torn
by grief and worry, Cillian insists on accompanying Gwenna to Casil.
Risking a charge of treason, faced
with a choice he does not want to make, Cillian must convince Gwenna her future
is more important than his – while Gwenna plans her moves to keep her father
safe. Both are playing a dangerous game. Which one will concede – or sacrifice?
EXCERPT
© 2021 Marian L Thorpe
In this passage, Cillian, one of the two narrators of Empire’s Heir, and his wife Lena are preparing for the journey to Casil, the capital city of the Eastern Empire. Their oldest daughter, Gwenna, has been summoned as a possible bride for the young prince.
“Cillian?” Lena stood in the open door of my library, sweaty and dishevelled. She had, I surmised, been out on the training field with Druisius. “Sorley said you were here. Can I come in?”
“You don’t need to ask, käresta.” She knew I was alone.
She took the chair across from me, glancing at the books lining one wall. “If you buy any more, you’ll need more shelves.”
I had already asked Roel to build them while we were away. I told her so. She smiled, a little distantly. “Will I even see you in Casil?” she asked. “Between Eudekia and the libraries?”
“I will be one of many minor princes escorting daughters.” I put down my pen to stretch my cramped fingers. “The Empress will not have time for me.” Not much time, I hoped silently. That she would request my presence at least once was certain. The last nineteen years would only have honed her considerable diplomatic skills. I doubted I could best—or even equal her—now.
“The less time she has for you, the more you have for the libraries.” Lena sounded resigned, but not upset. “I’ll have to be Gwenna’s chaperone most of the time.”
“We must both play roles we dislike,” I said. “For a few weeks.”
“I know.” She glanced down at the paper in front of me. “What are you writing?”
“A letter to Iorlath, asking her to send Colm’s belongings home. And a warning that he will likely not come back to her Ti’ach. I believe he will choose to remain at Wall’s End when we return.”
She nodded. “Probably. He’ll learn a different sort of medicine there.” She sounded detached, almost uninterested. Unmoored, I thought: no longer a mother of a small child, her other children grown, without even the routines of the Ti’ach to anchor her. Nor would she—or any of us—have either familiarity or definition to cushion our days for some long time, until we knew whether Gwenna would marry Alekos. I too felt this dislocation, this sense of a foundation shifting.
“I came,” Lena said, “to ask to borrow books for the voyage.”
“What would you like?”
“Which of Cotta’s do you have?”
“The Commentaries. They were Perras’s.”
“I remember us talking about them as we crossed the Durrains.” Twenty years past, around our evening campfires. Discussions of the Casilani general’s writings on history and tactics, so I could maintain distance between me and the young soldier who had been my partner in exile. What would you do, and why? I had asked her, a teacher’s question.
It hadn’t worked. Debating tactics, whether in long-past wars or in xache, which we had played with pebbles and a grid inked onto kidskin, had only made me more appreciative of Lena’s quick intelligence and surprising insight. But it was not until cold forced us to share a tent and our conversation had turned to more personal things did I allow her to lessen the distance. We’d talked about memories, and our favourite foods, and then she’d asked me the name of my first love.
‘I have never been in love,’ I’d answered. I had thought it true. Later, when she had taught me what love was, I understood I had not been honest. A fiction I maintained, at least by omission, although we—all three of us—knew the truth.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Travelling,” I said. “Leaving a life behind.”
“Would you? If you could now?”
I glanced around my library, toward the hidden bed behind the screen, the rows of books, the cat watching us with half-closed eyes from the windowsill. Then I looked at the woman who was both my greatest love and my greatest blessing. “Travel, yes. Leave this behind forever? Not by choice.”
“When does a refuge become a prison?” Lena murmured. She stood. “Where are the Commentaries?” I directed her to them. “Talyn told me to read them,” she added, as she turned to go.
Empire’s Heir is avaliable to purchase on Amazon.
This book is also avaliable with #KindleUnlimited
Marian L Thorpe
Essays, poetry, short stories, peer-reviewed scientific papers, curriculum documents, technical guides, grant applications, press releases – if it has words, it’s likely Marian L Thorpe has written it, somewhere along the line. But nothing has given her more satisfaction than her novels. Combining her love of landscape and history, set in a world reminiscent of Europe after the decline of Rome, her books arise from a lifetime of reading and walking and wondering ‘what if?’ Pre-pandemic, Marian divided her time between Canada and the UK, and hopes she may again, but until then, she resides in a small, very bookish, city in Canada, with her husband Brian and Pye-Cat.
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