by Grace Draven
Assured now that any danger from this patrol was past, Azarion gathered up and belted on his sword, and retrieved his knives. Gilene removed her shawls from the horses’ eyes, shook them out, and wrapped herself in their layers. She stood next to her mare, features tense. “What now?”
He gestured for her to mount. “Stay next to me and hold your tongue. You’ll learn much by listening. I’ll make sure Masad speaks in trader’s tongue so you can understand.”
“They aren’t planning to kill us then?” Her voice was steadier now.
“We won’t be dying yet.” He tipped his chin to the tirbodh. “That’s Masad. He’s my mother’s brother, the man who trained me up as a Savatar warrior. My clan’s encampment isn’t far. He’ll lead us there.”
Her hands clenched the reins, tightening so that her horse backed up a step in response to the inadvertent signal. “Then this ordeal is just beginning.”
Part of him—the part eager to see his remaining family again, eager to confront an old enemy face-to-face—wanted to refute her statement, but he didn’t. Were she not an agacin, she’d be shunned by the Savatar as an outlander, a Kraelian outlander at that. Even her status as one of Agna’s handmaidens didn’t guarantee friendly overtures and instant acceptance.
He leapt into the saddle and guided his horse to walk beside his uncle’s. Masad ordered his men to ride ahead of them. After learning the news of his father’s death, Azarion dreaded Masad’s answer to his question. “Are my mother and Tamura still alive?”
Masad chortled. “Your mother and sister are well and thriving. Saruke rules the clan from her favorite rug.” His features turned dour with a touch of sorrow. “Your father would have been overjoyed to see you again.” His mouth curved down. “Karsas is the ataman of Clan Kestrel since Iruadis died.” He eyed Azarion. “You’re not surprised.”
Azarion’s casual shrug belied the fury cascading through his veins. “I would have been had you named another.” His cousin had plotted long ago to assume the role of Clan Kestrel’s chieftain, even if it meant stealing it from the rightful heir.
Masad’s attention shifted to Gilene. He spoke in the trader’s tongue. “You can truly wield fire?”
She nodded and kept her reply succinct. “Yes.”
He eyed her a little longer before turning to Azarion. “The Fire Council will want her to prove it. Seeing her walk through the Veil will give truth to your story, but they’ll want more. The Ataman Council will want to speak with you as well.”
Azarion had waited ten long years for such an opportunity. “I want to speak with them.” His cousin Karsas sat wrongly as head of Clan Kestrel, and Azarion wanted justice. Killing your relatives through ritual combat was accepted by the Savatar. Selling them into slavery was not. Karsas had taken the coward’s way in getting rid of his rival.
Masad edged closer to him, his voice barely above a murmur. “Even with an agacin by your side, you’ll still have to face Karsas in ritual combat for the chieftainship.”
He truly hoped so. The chance to challenge his cousin to a fight had been a dark dream that had kept Azarion alive for so long as a gladiator.
With the four other archers ahead of them but still close enough to hear everything spoken in a normal voice, Azarion didn’t badger Masad for details regarding Karsas and his leadership. And while Masad had been his teacher from childhood and was, in many ways, a second father, he was fiercely loyal to the clan. Karsas was ataman of his clan; therefore, Masad was loyal to Karsas. Azarion didn’t want to put the man into an untenable position of divided loyalties. He would make a stronger ally if not forced to choose between his chieftain and his newly resurrected nephew.
He steered their conversation toward less dangerous subjects. “Tell me what has happened since I’ve been gone these many years.”
They rode at a leisurely pace for several hours as Masad recounted the ten years Azarion was enslaved within the Empire’s borders—the ever-shifting status of the Savatar clans, births and deaths, marriages and raids, the seasonal migration from the Novgarin foothills to the sweeping pasturelands of the east and back again.
All these things Azarion remembered, unchanging, as predictable as the sun’s rise and the wind’s ceaseless breath over the grasses. Yet Masad’s narrative hinted at less welcome changes. There were others besides him who’d embrace the chance to fill Azarion’s ears, namely his mother, Saruke.
Masad left Azarion and Gilene behind and joined the archers ahead of them. The Sky Below stretched before them in a flat swath of swaying grasses and the rolling shadows of scudding clouds.
“You’ve been gone a long time,” Gilene said. “Your family will be overjoyed to see you.”
He hoped so. An image of his mother rose up in his mind’s eye, her features creased by her gap-toothed smile. Tamura was a vaguer memory. Pretty, fierce, and one of the clan’s finest archers. According to Masad, she hadn’t married, and Azarion was grateful that Karsas hadn’t taken her to wife. Such a familial connection wouldn’t stop him from killing the man, but he’d regret hurting his sister if her husband meant more to her than just an elevation in status.
“Karsas is the cousin who sold you?” Gilene kept her voice low.
“He is.”
A thoughtful expression settled over her face. “But if you’re here, alive and recognized by many as the ataman’s son, why do you need me to claim your place as ataman? It belongs to you by birth, does it not?”
He wished it were that simple. “I’ve been gone too long. There’s a point where claim by merit overrules claim by birthright. I’ve nothing in the way of experience and rule to justify my challenge to retake the ataman’s seat without something beyond my bloodlines. No council decisions, no enriching the clan through trade or raids. I haven’t married another clan’s daughter to strengthen ties or the line of families. You are the only link to the chieftainship that means something now. As my woman, you’re a direct blessing from Agna, a sign of her approval of me.”
Her mouth pinched. “I’m not your woman.”
“For your sake, pretend you are. It puts you under my protection. Say I have no claim to you, and I’ll have to fight off those who would take you for themselves. You might never see Beroe again.” That threat had become the weapon he employed to force her cooperation, and he was growing heartily sick of using it. He’d much rather coax than threaten her to stay.
“Why would you let me go if they won’t?”
They’d argue this until he delivered her to her doorstep. “Because, as I said before, you saved my life. I’m in your debt, and I’ve made you a promise.”
The disdain faded from her expression; the distrust did not. “Do all Savatar keep their promises?”
“This one does.”
“Won’t you lose your place as ataman if I leave?”
He glanced at the men riding ahead of them. Gilene’s question was a dangerous one, spoken from the stance that he would inevitably reclaim his birthright from his cousin.
“No,” he said. “Once Agna’s blessing is recognized by the councils, it’s permanent, even if the agacin chooses to marry into another clan or, as with you, leaves the Savatar.” That, and he planned to kill his cousin. Karsas wouldn’t live to work his treachery a second time.
Gilene arched a doubtful eyebrow. “There have been agacins who left?”
“Not in the memory of the people.”
“I thought not.” She huffed a frustrated sigh. “Where will I stay while I’m in your camp? With you?”
“Yes, and it’s anyone’s guess where I’ll lay my head. Likely in my mother’s qara, though she’s subject to Karsas’s will now, and he might not allow it.” There was no reason for his cousin to forbid it except from pettiness, but he was ataman. His clansmen wouldn’t question so small a thing.
“He may try to kill you.” Gilene’s voice lacked any glee at the possibility, and he f
ancied for a moment that it actually contained a hint of worry.
Azarion smiled. “I’ve no doubt of it. He failed the first time. The Karsas I remember never accepted failure well.”
They went quiet when Masad trotted back to them. “Do you want me to send those foolish boys ahead to cry the news? Or should we ride in and surprise them all?”
The shrewd look his uncle leveled on Azarion told him he already knew the answer. Azarion’s reply was simply for the benefit of other listening ears. He was happy to oblige. “Surprise them,” he said, letting his voice carry on the wind. “I long to see my mother’s and sister’s faces after all this time.” And to keep a shocked Karsas from planning an unfortunate accident.
They picked up their pace after that, traveling at a gallop until Azarion caught sight of colorful flags fluttering atop the peaks of qaras. The round structures squatted on the steppe in loose clusters. Carts stood next to several of them, and horse and sheep herds grazed nearby.
He wanted to stop, just for a moment, to take in the tableau before him. Vengeance against his cousin wasn’t the only dream to sustain him through the long years of slavery. This one did as well—the gathering of Clan Kestrel, encamped on the white-plumed sweep of the Sky Below under the sky above. Blood, pain, degradation. Nothing had broken his will to live or his desire to escape when the promise of returning to this still bloomed behind his closed eyelids at night.
A few clansmen from the camp rode to meet them. Masad called out to those approaching. “Someone find Saruke and Tamura and bring them here. Hurry!”
They were swarmed by Savatar before they even reached the camp’s perimeter. Curious faces peered at Azarion from the ground and from horseback, crowding closer until his and Gilene’s horses were hemmed in by a press of bodies. He made out bits and pieces of conversation flying around them.
“What’s Masad doing with two Kraelians this far into Savatar territory?”
“Agna’s grace, I recognize him!”
“Who’s the woman?”
There were so many people around them, he had a hard time picking out individual faces among the crowd. They all blended into a sea of humanity that parted as two women cleaved through the throng to reach him.
He swung off his horse to stand amid the Savatar and quelled the nearly overwhelming urge to rush forward and scoop up the weathered crone swooping down on him like a crow and the much taller woman with the fierce eyes of a hawk.
Both halted abruptly in front of him, both scowling as if they wanted nothing more than to rip out his guts. The crone had not been so aged when Azarion was sold ten years earlier. A life spent under the hot sun and harsh wind had weathered her, but she’d been straight-backed then, her hair brown and shot with gray instead of the silvery white it was now. Lines of sorrow carved furrows into her face, but her gaze was still sharper than any blade, still capable of slicing a person down to their soul with a single look. Right now that gaze searched his face, searched hard. Her eyes watered, and her chin shook with the stuttering breath she took.
“Azarion?”
A chorus of gasps followed her question, and the younger woman next to her dropped her hand to the pommel of the sheathed sword she carried. She glared at Azarion, disbelief hardening her face.
His chest felt as if one of the horses stood on it. He remained where he was, desperate to embrace his mother and sister, but familiar enough with them to know such a move courted danger. “I’ve missed you, Ani,” he said, using the informal Savat word for “mother.” He glanced at his sister. “You, too, Mura. Do you still chew your hair when you’re nervous?”
Tamura stepped back, as if to ward off any more surprises Azarion might lob at her. Saruke, on the other hand, stumbled forward, arms outstretched, hands trembling as she reached for him. “My son,” she sobbed. “My son.”
This time he didn’t hesitate and gathered her into his arms, lifting her off her feet. She felt light as a bird and just as fragile. Azarion wanted to crush her close and bury his face in her neck as he once did as a young boy long ago, but he dared not, too afraid of breaking every bone in her body with the force of his affection.
Tamura eased a little closer, wary as a wolf circling wounded but dangerous prey. Her eyes, as green as his and as cutting as their mother’s, grew glossy, and she blinked to clear them. “You’re much bigger than I remember,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Azarion grinned at her over Saruke’s head. “You’re still a midge fly, Mura,” he teased, remembering fondly how she tried to pummel his head in every time he called her midge.
The term forced a sob past her lips, and she halted another by compressing her mouth so tightly, her lips virtually disappeared. She blinked several times and reached out to curve her hand over his where it rested against Saruke’s back.
Azarion was halted from pulling her into the same embrace with their mother by another rippling surge of the crowd and a voice he so reviled, he remembered every nuance of its timbre.
“Azarion, we all thought you were dead.”
Azarion gently set Saruke aside so he could face the person he hated even more than the empress. He offered the barest hint of a bow. “Not yet. Ataman.”
Karsas of Clan Kestrel had been his adversary since they were children. Older than Azarion by only a few years, he had coveted the role of clan chieftain since he was old enough to draw a bow. His father, Gastene, had been Iruadis’s younger brother. Unlike his son, Azarion’s uncle had never craved the role of leadership and never challenged his brother for the seat. Karsas resented his father’s lack of ambition, and that resentment had festered over time, fed by jealousy and the certainty that he was the best candidate to take Iruadis’s place as ataman when Iruadis died.
Azarion didn’t hold his cousin’s ambition against him, only his cowardice. That, and his treachery, made him loathe Karsas. Azarion had sworn to himself years earlier that he would live long enough, no matter what it took, to exact revenge on his cousin.
Unlike Saruke, who had aged and turned stooped, and Tamura, who had matured from awkward juvenile to majestic woman, Karsas had changed very little. Tall like Azarion, but leaner, he cut a notable figure, every bit the proud chieftain in his bearing and the richness of his clothing.
If one looked close enough, though—past the rich fabrics and priceless gold—they could see the dissipation around Karsas’s mouth and eyes, the jowly droop of his jaw, and the tiny spiderwebs of broken blood vessels that blotched his cheeks and nose.
The two men stared at each other. Azarion hid his contempt behind a carefully neutral facade. Karsas wore a similar expression, one that didn’t quite conceal the shock and wariness flitting through his eyes as he gazed at his nemesis.
The crowd quieted as the staring match lasted beyond a natural pause and into something awkward. And dangerous. Hands dropped to knives sheathed at the waist and swords sheathed at the hip. Karsas broke the rising tension when his regard shifted to Gilene, who sat frozen on her horse.
Karsas arched an eyebrow, his faint smile more a sneer. “Who is this?”
Azarion glanced at Gilene, who returned Karsas’s stare with a steady one of her own. “My woman, Gilene.” He paused, savoring the anticipation of the moment and what his next statement would mean to his cousin. “She’s an agacin.”
More surprised gasps from the crowd rose, and they exclaimed among themselves over the idea of a Kraelian agacin. Who had ever heard of such a thing? Their net tightened even more as they edged closer for a better look at this handmaiden not born and raised behind the Veil.
Had Azarion blinked or looked away for a moment, he would have missed Karsas’s reaction to the revelation, but the signs were there, slight and subtle to the casual observer, obvious to Azarion. His cousin flinched, and there at his left eye a tic started in his eyelid, the fold of skin twitching in a haphazard pattern as he stared at Gilene.
Karsas’s voice remained unchanged except for another level of chilliness. “There are no agacins beyond the Veil, nor any who aren’t Savatar.”
Masad spoke up. “I saw with my own eyes as she walked through the fire untouched.”
Karsas cut him a glare. “Empire sorcery.”
To emphasize his words and demonstrate his claim on her for the witnesses gathered, Azarion placed his hand on Gilene’s knee. She accepted his possessive touch, though her thigh muscle was so tense, it might have been a slab of rock under her skirts. “She’s blessed by Agna, as am I since she chose me.”
Karsas’s hand dropped to the pommel of his sword. “So you say,” he replied, and there was no mistaking the snide disbelief in his voice. The crowd grumbled, uneasy at his faint mockery of a woman declared a handmaiden of Agna.
Sensing their unrest, his demeanor changed. He donned a cloak of friendly welcome and spread his arms in a gesture meant to encompass them all. “A long-lost son of the Savatar has returned to us. We will celebrate and call council afterward to learn what happened to him during the long years he was gone!” The crowd’s mood swung from disquiet to jubilance, and they cheered. Karsas bared his teeth at Azarion in a sham of a smile. “Until then, I think your mother will be pleased to have you and your . . . woman stay in her qara.” He spun away to return to the encampment, an entourage of grim-faced warriors following him as he cut through the throng.
Gilene bent down from her perch to whisper in his ear. “Obviously not all are happy to see you. And take your hand off my leg.”
He gave a short laugh and moved away from her to pull Saruke close to him again. “Off your horse,” he told Gilene. “We’ll walk from here to my mother’s home. We can eat, rest, and sleep warm by a fire. There will be a celebration tomorrow night and probably a council gathering the day after.”
Her expression brightened and darkened by turns at the mention of food and rest and then celebration. She dismounted and came to stand before the staring Saruke and Tamura. Her low bow was respectful without being obsequious. “It’s an honor to meet the family of Azarion,” she said in formal Kraelian.