Phoenix Unbound

by Grace Draven

  They were an odd pair, the Savatar Pit gladiator and the Beroe fire witch.

  Pair. The word sent a sharp pain through her chest.

  They weren’t a pair and never would be. His place was here, the new ataman of Clan Kestrel. Hers was to the west in a village full of secrets, cowards, and her vulnerable family.

  “It’s good to dream, though,” she said aloud, her hands threading the same path through Azarion’s hair that his mother’s had taken.

  “What did you say?” Saruke knelt beside her, a steaming cup in her hand.

  Gilene blushed. “Nothing important.” A tendril of steam uncoiled from the cup to tease her nose with the bitter scent of willow bark.

  Saruke set the cup down. “Too hot for him to drink now. We’ll let him sleep. The healer will return later and give the yarrow root a chance to work and his body a chance to rest.” Her hand passed over his back, just above the compresses. “He wears the marks of the Empire carved into his skin.”

  The Empire carved into the soul as well as the flesh. Gilene held her tongue, sensitive to the sorrow in Saruke’s tone. Azarion was luckier than most.

  Kraelian slaves tended to lead short, miserable lives, and Pit gladiators’ were even shorter and more miserable than most. That Azarion had not only survived the Pit for ten years but also gained fame in its savage arena was a remarkable achievement by anyone’s measure. That he also escaped its cage to return home and reclaim his inheritance was a testament to his personal triumph over the forces that had sought to break him.

  “He’s fierce, Saruke,” she said, hoping to reassure the older woman. “Clever and strong. Those scars are nothing to such a man. He’s risen above them.”

  A thoughtful expression passed through Saruke’s eyes. “You’ve grown to admire him.”

  Gilene looked away, unable to meet Saruke’s gaze. Her emotions were in turmoil. Her feelings were stronger than admiration, and they made her want to weep.

  While Azarion rested and allowed the yarrow root to work its power on the wound, Gilene stood guard at the qara’s entrance, turning away well-wishers and a steady parade of disgruntled subchiefs already lined up to jockey for positions of influence with the new ataman.

  Tamura had returned from her foray through camp with a sack of mutton bones for Saruke to boil. She and Gilene helped Azarion sit long enough to drink the now cold tea Saruke had brewed earlier.

  His face was still pale except for the pink flags of color on his cheekbones, and his eyes were glassy as he watched Gilene over the rim of his cup.

  “You have fever now,” she said. “I’m sorry you’re in pain.”

  He shrugged, and his fingers went white around the cup. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

  The succinct reply made her sigh. She took his empty cup and brought back a refill for him when Vua returned, carrying a bag bulging with all manner of things.

  She set the bag down and fished out the contents: more cloths, a carved box that held three needles and several lengths of catgut, prayer stones carved with mysterious runes that Gilene could only guess were blessings and beseechings, and a full flask of equally mysterious liquid.

  Tamura frowned at the sight of it all. “Does he really need stitching?”

  Vua sniffed. “Last I checked, Tamura, you were the warrior and I the healer.” Satisfied with Tamura’s thin-lipped silence after her chastisement, Vua faced Azarion. “Have you been stitched before?”

  “Twice,” he said, and Gilene wondered at his calm. She eyed the needles, remembering her brother’s agonized shrieks.

  “Then you know what to expect. I need you to kneel and keep your back as straight as possible so I can sew the wound proper and have the flesh knit right.”

  Azarion did as instructed and knelt, his spine straight, shoulders back, while Saruke set the bloodied compresses aside and settled behind him next to Vua. He took the short stick the healer handed him without comment before grasping one of Gilene’s hands. “Don’t fret, Agacin,” he said. “Distract me instead.”

  Gilene cursed inwardly at the mistake of revealing her inner turmoil to him. He didn’t need to see her worry right now. She stood and faced him, close enough that he was eye level to her sternum and he could lean his forehead against her if he chose. She gulped when he placed the stick crosswise between his teeth and gave Vua a nod to begin.

  His fingers curled into Gilene’s tunic as Vua and Saruke set to the slow and painful task of cleaning the wound. A low hum vibrated up from Azarion’s throat when the healer made the first puncture and drew the needle and catgut through flesh. His teeth clenched on the stick. He crushed Gilene’s tunic in both hands but made no other noise despite the obvious agony of the healer’s touch.

  Gilene framed his head in her palms, his sweat-soaked hair slippery between her fingers. Azarion pressed his forehead into her midriff, the stick in his mouth a rigid edge against her skin.

  Except for the twitch of his wounded shoulder every time the needle punctured skin, he held still. Gilene massaged his scalp and spoke to him in trader’s tongue, trivial things of little consequence to him but ones she hoped might provide the distraction he needed from Vua’s painful work.

  “My brother Nylan is married to the most foolish woman in all of the Empire, but she is kind, with a great heart, and loves Nylan more than anything, and that’s saying something because he can be an ass sometimes. They have six children, all but one of them girls. I think Nylan saw his first gray hair after the third baby.”

  Azarion’s hands clenched ever tighter in her clothing. Gilene stared at Vua’s busy, bloody hands, willing her to work faster and end this suffering.

  “My other brother, Luvis, remains unmarried, much to my mother’s despair. He’s promised her he’ll seek a wife once our sister, Ilada, is safely married to a man who meets with Luvis’s approval.” She continued carding her fingers through Azarion’s hair. “As particular as he and Ilada are about potential bridegrooms, I think he’s found a way to avoid the marital trap without raising our mother’s ire.”

  A lurch against her, and Gilene looked down at the top of Azarion’s head. Had that been a chuckle she felt from him or simply a pained cry muffled by her tunic?

  The coppery scent of blood filled the qara’s still air. Gilene exhaled a slow sigh of relief when Vua tied off the last suture and cut the excess catgut with a small knife.

  Her relief was short-lived when Saruke passed Vua a cloth saturated with a clear liquid poured from the flask Vua had brought. The astringent smell was the only warning before Vua pressed the soaked towel on the newly closed wound.

  Azarion heaved forward with a tortured groan, hard enough to make Gilene stumble. She bent her knees and set her feet to hold steady. She could feel his heartbeat all the way into his scalp, a hard, fast thumping that matched his staccato breathing.

  “It’s almost over, Azarion,” she crooned. Please let it be over, she prayed silently to any being that might listen and show mercy.

  Saruke and Vua worked together to dry his back and shoulder before smearing a poultice of honey and herbs over the stitches. They swaddled his left side from shoulder to ribs, wrapping strips of woven cloth around his waist and under his arm before tying them in a knot at the top of his shoulder near his neck.

  By then, his posture was no longer so straight, and he wilted into Gilene, his weight threatening to knock her over.

  Tamura, who had guarded the qara’s threshold through the ordeal and glared murder at Vua the entire time, abandoned her post to help them lay Azarion on his stomach.

  “Use a sop to get the tea and broth down him while he’s on his belly,” the healer instructed. She packed her supplies, accepted a payment of silver from Saruke, and bowed to Azarion. “It is right that the son of Iruadis leads Clan Kestrel. May Agna bless you, Ataman.”

  Once she was gone, Azarion called to Tamura, who
crouched beside him. “Be my eyes and ears while I mend,” he said. “Stay with Arita in the ataman’s qara until I’m on my feet. She and her children can then come here.”

  She nodded. “What about Karsas’s burial? The clan will expect one of us there.”

  “Attend in my name if I’m unable to go.”

  Gilene watched the interaction between brother and sister with a touch of envy. They were close, even after a decade of separation between them. Azarion trusted Tamura implicitly, and her belief in him was strong enough to be called faith by most. It was a reciprocal devotion Gilene wished she shared with one of her siblings.

  Saruke left the qara not long after Tamura in search of more willow bark. “Keep watch,” she told Gilene. “And give him the remainder of the tea when he’s feeling a little better and won’t retch it up. I’ll return after I visit some of the women to trade supplies. I need to see a few of the subchiefs as well and assure them the new ataman isn’t dead.”

  Alone with Azarion, Gilene used the time to shed her clothes and indulge in a quick sponge bath by the brazier. The rustle of cloth made her turn. She discovered Azarion had shifted and now faced her, his head pillowed on his arms, his green eyes bright as emeralds. The fever flush that graced his cheekbones had spread, and his skin was rosy from scalp to neck.

  “You’re very beautiful, Agacin,” he said in a voice slurred with weariness.

  She cocked an eyebrow and casually slipped her tunic back over her head. “The fever is affecting your eyes, I think, Ataman.” She stepped into her trousers and slipped her feet into a pair of felt booties.

  He didn’t reply. By the time she padded to him with another cup of tea, he was asleep. She sat beside him, content to admire him stretched out on his pallet, the furs and blankets bunched at his waist, his back a white wasteland of thick bandages dotted with spots of blood.

  The only sounds in the qara were the crackling of the coals in the brazier and Azarion’s even breathing. Gilene was nodding off herself, caught in vague dreams of galloping across the Sky Below on a stolen horse with Azarion and a grotesquely headless Karsas in pursuit, when soft murmurings brought her fully awake.

  Like her, Azarion walked in his dreams. He shivered with fever, and when Gilene felt his cheeks and forehead, he burned hot to her touch. She rose to soak a cloth in cool water so she could bathe his face. He jerked at the cold touch but didn’t wake.

  Gilene combed the tangled locks of hair away from his features. “You must wake up, Azarion. You need to drink.”

  His only response was a few more incoherent mutters before he said clearly, “Time to take you home, Agacin. In fact, it’s past time.”

  His words made her stomach knot and her heart miss a beat or two. Gilene tried convincing herself it was excitement that sent her emotions tumbling off a cliff’s edge. Why then did she feel like crying?

  Azarion still hadn’t opened his eyes, and he lapsed once more into unintelligible mumbling. Gilene stroked his head and face as she stared at the qara’s opposite wall, as if its felt expanse held all the answers to her questions and would reveal them if she just stared long enough, if she just blinked back the annoying tears that blurred her vision.

  “I promised you, Gilene. I keep my promises.” Another perfectly articulate statement amid the delirious mumbles.

  “Shh,” she said, gliding her fingers along the ridge of his cheekbone. “All in good time, Ataman, and then we bid each other farewell.”

  She said no more, fearful that, if she did, she’d choke on the words and the tears they inspired.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Sky Below stretched toward the horizon under a veil of golden sunshine. Summer still held sway over the steppes, and the plume grass swayed in a whispering swath as far as the eye could see.

  Azarion guided his horse through the grasses. Tall and lush, they brushed the horse’s belly and caressed Azarion’s shins. Gilene rode beside him, occasionally swatting at the midges stirred up by the horses’ passage through the grass.

  They traveled west with an entourage of clansmen to Clan Eagle’s encampment, where the leaders of more clans were gathered. Azarion’s first act as ataman was to call for a gathering of the two councils and subchiefs of all the clans, asking that they meet in the largest clan’s camp.

  Clan Eagle was the largest clan, its wealth the greatest in the confederation, and its ataman once Azarion’s father’s best friend. Calling a confederation gathering in the Eagle camp was a great honor and allowed Erakes Ataman to bask in the temporary role of kingly host. Azarion hoped to benefit from that vanity and gain the ataman’s support of the plan that had first made Gilene’s jaw drop in disbelief and would likely do the same to every ataman, agacin, and subchief who attended the gathering.

  He was eager to reach their destination and dreaded their arrival at the same time. It marked the end of his time with Gilene. He wished he had left her in the Clan Kestrel camp, far to the east and deep in the Sky Below’s interior, but a promise made was to be kept. She had been patient but also unyielding in her insistence she return to Beroe as soon as possible.

  His mare snorted and jerked her head to the side in a bid to avoid a quail startled into flight from the shelter of the plume grasses. The motion pulled hard on Azarion’s healing shoulder, and he bit back a curse at the arrow of hot pain that shot down his arm to his fingers.

  “If that didn’t open your wound a little, I’ll be surprised,” Gilene said.

  Azarion shrugged away the discomfort. “No harm done.”

  At least he hoped not. Vua would strangle him with a length of catgut if he managed to undo her work, and his mother would help her. Nor did he relish a repeat of the feel of a needle sliding through his flesh.

  Eleven days had gone by since Azarion’s fight with Karsas and his reclamation of Clan Kestrel’s chieftainship. In that time he’d drunk enough willow bark tea and bone broth to float a fleet of merchant ships. The bitter taste of the willow bark still lingered on his tongue.

  During his convalescence, he’d given up his place in his mother’s qara to abide in the ataman’s much larger one. It was a generous space, far too large for just him, Gilene, and Saruke.

  As his concubine, Gilene was expected to join him, and she did so without protest. Saruke had arrived soon after, her cart filled with her belongings she’d taken from the smaller qara. That dwelling now sheltered Tamura; Karsas’s widow, Arita; and Arita’s two children.

  He’d never forget the joy in his sister’s face when Arita stepped across the threshold, her son and daughter in tow. The two women embraced, holding on to each other as if nothing else in the world existed around them.

  Only when Azarion cleared his throat did they part. He nodded to Arita. “This is your home now for as long as you and Tamura wish it. I’ve gifted half of Karsas’s herd to your family to appease them.”

  “Dower gift?” she asked, worry clouding her expression. It wasn’t uncommon for a chieftain’s widow to be claimed by her husband’s closest male relative after the man’s death, especially if she was still young. It raised his status among the clan, and the pretty Arita was not only a coveted prize but also a valuable asset for her clan and family. They would demand no less than half of Karsas’s horses in exchange for relinquishing her to Clan Kestrel a second time.

  “Not dower price,” he said. “Adoption. You’re Clan Kestrel now, as are your children, regardless of whether you remarry a Kestrel man.” He doubted that would happen anytime soon.

  Tears filled Arita’s eyes. She sniffed them away. “I thank you, Azarion Ataman,” she said and glanced at the grinning Tamura. “For everything.”

  While Saruke approved of Azarion’s decision to invite Arita into their family, she chose not to stay with her daughter and Arita. Instead, she followed him and Gilene to the ataman’s tent on the pretense of taking care of him while he convalesced, and n
o amount of reassurances that he didn’t need the help changed her mind.

  “It’s a selfish thing,” she admitted on the third day in their new abode. “I’m used to more peace and quiet. I’d forgotten just how noisy small children could be.” She winked at Azarion. “Better Tamura deal with it than me.”

  The qara still held some remnants of Karsas’s presence, a kind of vulgar opulence that reminded Azarion of the empress Dalvila’s bedchamber but on a much more modest scale. He didn’t welcome the comparison and asked Saruke to cleanse the qara of any dark will or malice still lingering there.

  He would have been fine staying in his mother’s qara with Gilene and sending Tamura to live with Arita in the more spacious tent, but the ataman’s qara served two purposes. It was a family home but also the gathering place for the ataman and subchiefs to hold council and administer the affairs of the clan. Its size could accommodate a large group of people and served to impress visiting clan atamans.

  “How much farther until we reach Clan Eagle’s encampment?”

  Gilene’s question pulled him out of his reverie. She twitched one of her braids over her shoulder, its long length thumping softly against her back. He liked how the sun wove gold light through her dark plait. She wore the garb he’d given her. It was Tamura who had revealed him as the giver.

  “What a stupid thing to keep secret,” she had said, and flatly told Gilene, “What you’re wearing is a gift from Azarion. You should thank him.” With that, she gave an exasperated snort and strode away.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Gilene had glided a hand down one of her sleeves, her brow creased in a puzzled furrow.

  “Because we were still adversaries then. You would have chosen to wear your rags over anything I might give you. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She had laughed. “You’re not wrong.”

  At the moment, she wore the yellow sash of an agacin wrapped around her narrow waist. It complemented her tunic.

  “How much farther?” she repeated.