Phoenix Unbound

by Grace Draven

  That evening, in the Savatar war camp, Azarion stood outside his qara and peeled off his blood-caked armor, letting each piece drop to the ground. He swiped a hand across his face, succeeding only in smearing more blood on his skin. He was drenched in sweat, the splatter of entrails, and horse shit. The Savatar had won the day, and while he was pleased with the outcome, he didn’t dare call it a victory. They had to get through tomorrow and a sunrise that would surely reveal the arrival of reinforcements from outland Kraelian garrisons.

  The light of a nearby torch revealed the approach of a visitor. A tall shadow solidified into his sister. Like Azarion, she was filthy and bloody, with dark shadows painting the skin under her eyes. Still, she gave him a triumphant grin and raised a flask in offering.

  Azarion sat in the dirt and invited her to join him with a wave of his hand. She settled next to him and passed the flask. Her braids had come unraveled, and her dark hair spilled over her shoulders to drag through the dust in a tangled mass. “It was a good day,” she said.

  He took a swallow of mare’s milk before passing the flask back to her. “It was a bloody day, and we aren’t any closer to breaching the main gates.”

  She shrugged. “But we’re still here, still ready to fight tomorrow, and a lot of Kraelian dead are fertilizing those fields right now.” Her side-glance was puzzled. “Besides, didn’t you say in council we didn’t need to actually breach the city? Just keep the garrisons focused on it long enough for our eastern forces to capture the Gamir section of the Golden Serpent and destroy those garrisons?”

  That had been his plan, the one he repeated numerous times, first to Erakes and the other atamans, then to the Kestrel clan, and finally to the Goban. Sacking the city wasn’t the primary goal, though Gilene’s idea of capturing the granaries and holding them ransom to avoid a long siege worked in their favor.

  Gilene. Azarion sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger in an attempt to lessen the pressure of a headache blossoming behind his eyes. A day didn’t go by that he didn’t think of her, a night that he didn’t ache to have her next to him while he slept. His worry for her gnawed incessantly at him. Were the autumn and winter not taken up by planning for this battle, he might well have succumbed to the overwhelming temptation to ride for Beroe and fetch her back.

  It would have been easier to let her go and let her be were she returning to a peaceful life, instead of a wretched one.

  “What troubles you, Brother?” Tamura regarded him steadily, her green eyes, so like his own, bright in the torchlight.

  He stared in the city’s direction, its walls and towers hidden by trees and shadow. “The equinox is upon us tomorrow. The Empire always celebrates it with the Rites of Spring.”

  A strong hand gripped his forearm, and he glanced down to see Tamura’s slender fingers, with their broken, dirty fingernails, clutching his vambrace. Sympathy softened her hard features. “Do you think the agacin is in Kraelag?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I sent two scouts to find out. I’d hoped to hear from one or both tonight.”

  As if fate heard him and chose to humor his concern, a man entered the pool of light and bowed to Azarion. “Azarion Ataman, I have news.”

  Azarion stood, his exhaustion forgotten as his stomach somersaulted in anticipation of the scout’s words. Tamura stood with him, a comforting hand on his back. “Tell me.”

  “The Rites of Spring will be observed tomorrow. Those women who were tithed as sacrifices will burn at midday.”

  Tamura’s flattened hand seized into a fist, gathering Azarion’s tunic tight in her grip as he lunged forward, ready to bolt through the camp and over the bloody fields, straight into enemy territory so that he might scale the walls or beat down the gates with his fists and retrieve the woman who had captured his soul and held it willing hostage.

  “Her trial is not yours, Brother,” Tamura hissed in his ear. “She will survive it. You won’t if you run into the arms of Kraelians waiting to hack your head from your shoulders!”

  The scout edged away from the pair, wary of Azarion’s reaction to his news and Tamura’s snarling warnings.

  Azarion shook her off and exhaled a shaky breath through flared nostrils. Gilene would survive the fires tomorrow, but what about after, with the city under siege and no doubt closed to any who would enter or leave it now except the armies? His gut churned at the thought of what she might be enduring now, in a cell with a gladiator still raging from a day’s fighting in the arena, blood still hot and his lust high.

  He closed his eyes, hands fisted at his sides so tight, his knuckles turned white. Tamura’s words—“She chose this, Azarion. She knew what awaited her”—did nothing to ease the fury boiling inside him. Gilene was so close, but she might as well have been trapped on the moon for all that stood between them.

  Azarion sent the scout away with a short thanks. He didn’t return to his seat next to the meager fire he’d started earlier, choosing instead to pace, his weariness burned to ash.

  Tamura reclaimed her spot and watched her brother while she drank. “Hold your anger, nurse it, fan it until you can taste it on your tongue and smell it in your nose, but don’t waste it on some fool rescue attempt that’ll see your head on a gate spike for the Kraelians to jeer at when the sun rises.”

  He halted to glare at her. “Would you follow this advice if it were Arita in Gilene’s place?”

  She gave a humorless chuckle. “You ask that as if I’d have a choice in the matter. I wouldn’t, and neither do you.”

  Azarion growled and resumed his pacing. His sibling was annoyingly correct. Dawn and battle couldn’t come soon enough. He would hack his way through every Kraelian soldier and breach the gates alone if necessary to get Gilene out of Kraelag alive.

  He spent the remainder of the evening with the other atamans and commanders, going over last-minute plans for the following day. The stars mocked him from on high, reminders of a better night when the fire witch of Beroe whispered his name in a loving voice and welcomed him into her arms and body.

  At dawn he’d fight; at noon she’d burn. If the gods were merciful, neither would die.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The catacombs below the city hadn’t changed in the year since Gilene had last walked across their floors. Still squalid and fetid, they welcomed her and the newest crop of Flowers of Spring into their labyrinth to await the immolation most of the capital had turned out to watch.

  Rumors ran rife throughout the city, filtering down even to these depths, of savage steppe nomads who threatened Kraelag and fought the Kraelian army on the wide expanse of untilled farmland that stretched north of the capital’s main gate. Still no one seemed concerned. No one fled the city or hid in their houses. Even the emperor and empress remained in residence and planned to attend the Rites. All believed the powerful Kraelian force would annihilate, or at least drive away, the horse clans, and such a clash would not interfere with the popular Rites of Spring.

  Here, under the city, no hint of the warfare taking place beyond Kraelag’s walls reached them—if one didn’t count the rumors. The Flowers, isolated in the large, damp holding cell, awaiting their deaths, caught threads and whispers of the events outside.

  Gilene tried not to listen too closely or dwell too long on the idea that Azarion rode among the ranks attacking the Kraelian armies. She still believed he lived, and he had fulfilled his second promise to her: spare Beroe as the Savatar rode into the heart of the Empire. The village still stood, though others weren’t so fortunate.

  There were differences as well, good and bad. Unlike the previous spring, this one was much colder, and the women huddled together in small groups for warmth and comfort. More of them crowded the holding cell, but none had been subjected to the attention of the gladiators the night before. The catacombs were uncommonly silent and empty, no vulgar shouts or comments from impr
isoned fighters taunting the guards or each other, no threats from the guards themselves. The few assigned to the women were restrained, as if the events outside the city walls occupied their thoughts most.

  Gilene crouched alone in one corner, her hands tucked under her arms to keep them warm. She took note of each woman in the cell. They varied more in age this year, from old to just beyond childhood, and it was the last that made her stomach lurch. The guilt that always sat heavy in the back of her mind regarding her role in these Rites threatened to overwhelm her. Her reasoning told her they were condemned to die, that the only help she could offer was the mercy of instant death instead of the horrific torture the Empire planned for them for the entertainment of the arena crowd.

  Azarion’s words, that Beroe’s deception might have increased the popularity of the Rites, still made her bleed inside, and her soul, weighed down by what she must do, told her reasoning to kindly shut up.

  Most of the women didn’t pay her any mind, warned away by her grim demeanor or too focused on their own misery and fear to worry about anyone else’s. Gilene wanted it that way. She still regretted the brief conversation she’d had with the prostitute Pell the previous year. Distance meant the deaths didn’t cut as deep. Her interaction with Pell still haunted her these many months later.

  One woman, however, didn’t do as the others did. A small creature no older than Gilene and as delicate as a bird, with large eyes, a full mouth, and a strong jawline, stared at Gilene. That scrutiny never wavered even when Gilene scowled at her.

  She leaned her head back against the damp wall and closed her eyes, listening to the quiet conversations around her.

  “I was supposed to be married next month.”

  “Do you think the horse clans will break through the gates?”

  “If they do, it won’t be to save us.”

  “Will the gods hear our prayers?”

  Gilene’s eyes snapped open for a moment, and she stared at the cell bars. No, she thought. They are deaf and blind, and without mercy. She didn’t share the thought. Hopelessness already reigned supreme here. She closed her eyes again and listened.

  “I miss my family.”

  “So do I.”

  Gilene didn’t miss hers, at least not the one in Beroe. They’d waved her off with the same presumption from previous years. This was her place; this was her purpose. A few of the villagers had even looked happy to see her go, as if the months on the Stara Dragana hadn’t been spent as a captive but as an escapee. To these villagers, such dereliction of duty deserved punishment, and a return to Kraelag as a Flower of Spring was hers.

  She had refused her brothers’ offer to wait for her after the Rites were over. She didn’t want their help any longer and would find her own way out of the city, injured or not. Their lack of argument or insistence they wait had frozen her heart against them a little more.

  “You gather spirits around you like bees to a flower,” a voice said close to her.

  Gilene abandoned her grim recollections and opened her eyes to find the bird woman crouched next to her. “What are you talking about?”

  The other woman gestured at the space they occupied. “This cell is crowded with the dead.”

  Considering that every woman in here, except Gilene, would burn in the Pit in a few hours, Bird Woman was right. She waited to hear what else her odd companion might say.

  “They began arriving the moment you entered. One or two and then a stream of them. All women. Except my father, of course.” She cocked her head to the side. “Can you not feel them?”

  Gilene straightened away from the wall. She felt nothing but the cold and the itchy coating of dirt encrusting her skin. A sudden thought occurred to her, and she glowered at her unwanted visitor. “You’re a shade speaker, aren’t you?” At the other woman’s nod, she scooted away as if a sudden foul odor had wafted up between them. “Go away.”

  Gilene believed in ghosts. After a night spent in cursed Midrigar, she’d have to be willfully blind not to. What she didn’t believe in were shade speakers.

  They were charlatans of the worst sort who made their living off the grief of those who’d lost a loved one by offering to communicate with the dead. She doubted any of them had ever seen a shade, much less spoken to one. If they did, they’d outrun a frightened deer as they fled. Even the Empire didn’t recognize them as true sorcerers and left them alone.

  She startled when the bird woman suddenly grasped her arm in a grip whose strength belied her small size. “Listen to me,” she hissed, before casting a quick look over her shoulder to see if anyone else heard her. “One of those women has a message for you.”

  Gilene yanked her arm away and scooted back on her haunches. Her fingers tingled at the perceived threat, her magic coursing hot through her veins. Restored to its full strength over the winter, it flowed under her skin, a vast pool of power she conserved for just this day. “Go away,” she all but snarled.

  The bird woman remained undeterred. “I speak for the dead, not the living. Whether you choose to believe or not is no concern of mine. I’ve done what they asked.” She stood and brushed off her skirts. “Pell wishes to tell you, be brave. All is forgiven.”

  Her words might have been arrows shot from a Savatar bow at close range. Gilene gasped and surged to her feet. “What did you say?”

  Bird Woman backed away, her farseeing eyes the color of dull steel. “I’ve delivered my message,” she said, voice soft once more. “Treat it as you will.” She picked a path back to the spot she’d occupied earlier, and this time she cast her gaze on the tiny window high above them where the sun streamed through.

  Her knees shaking, Gilene resumed her seat before she fell. She wouldn’t weep, though she breathed in pained staccato pants. She didn’t want to believe the shade speaker, but her mention of Pell convinced her of the truth of her words.

  Were the ghosts around her those of the women who had burned in her fires? She had never asked for forgiveness for her part in their deaths. She didn’t feel she deserved it. However fate chose to judge her after she died, it would weigh her intentions against her actions and decide her punishment. She expected no less and hoped for no more.

  A woman’s wails suddenly filled the cell, yanking Gilene out of her melancholy. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

  A chorus of shushing noises and more strident commands to be quiet fell on deaf ears as the woman worked herself into a frenzy. Gilene marched toward the screamer, prepared to shake her into silence. She didn’t get the chance.

  A catacomb guard sprinted down the hall, keys jangling on his hip. He slammed into the bars at a run, rotted teeth bared in a snarl. “Shut your racket, ye stupid cunts!” He grasped the key ring attached to his belt and pulled a key from it to unlock the cell door.

  Gilene shoved the two women closest to her toward the back wall at the last second, narrowly avoiding the biting kiss of the whip as the guard flung the door open, whip arm already arcing toward them. The whip’s serpentine leather split the air with a warning crack. The screaming stopped.

  “Unless you’re sucking my cock, you keep your mouths shut,” he commanded. “If I hear so much as a cough out of any of you, I’ll drag you out, fuck you in the hallway, then strip the skin off your back with this here toy. Understand?”

  No one answered him. Satisfied, he coiled the whip and retreated from the cell, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  Gilene watched him leave, keeping her tingling hands hidden in her skirt. Hatred boiled inside her. Her fire burned the wrong people. That guard and those like him deserved to stand in the Pit and beg for mercy.

  The silence continued once he’d gone, his threat vile enough to keep the most terrified Flower of Spring mute, until the shade speaker spoke. “Before I die, I’d like very much to see that weasel hanged by his whip.”

  E
nthusiastic ayes accompanied a few gasps and bursts of swiftly muffled laughter. The murderous humor served to break the tension if not the gloomy fear filling the cell. Gilene eyed Bird Woman with newfound respect.

  She made to return to her spot in the corner, when a commotion broke out at the far end of the corridor where the guard had gone. He returned, ahead of a crowd of silhouettes that seemed to jostle and tumble around each other as two more guards on either side of them pushed and shoved them toward the cell where the Flowers waited.

  The guard opened the gate and, to Gilene’s horror, herded at least a score of frightened prisoners into the already crowded cell.

  The new additions ranged in age from baby to grandmother. Mothers clutched nursing infants to their breasts while adolescent girls cradled siblings on their hips. All were female, all terrified, and, if they were brought here, all condemned.

  Some sobbed while others stared around them in mute, wide-eyed terror. Sick to her soul at the sight, Gilene approached one woman who didn’t cry or look to be on the verge of fainting. She clutched the hand of a small girl who clung to her skirts and sucked her thumb.

  “You can’t be part of the tithe,” she told the newcomer, hoping she was right. Certain she wasn’t.

  The woman hugged the child close. “We weren’t. Not at first. Then soldiers came and brought us here.”

  Gilene frowned. Soldiers, not slavers. So much was different this year from the last. Still grim and horrible but also changed, and she very much feared the arrival of the attacking Savatar had brought about that change. “What did they tell you?”

  The woman took a shuddering breath. “The armies needed the favor of the gods, and such favor demanded more Flowers for the Rites.”

  Magic, scorching, eager to burst forth, tumbled through Gilene’s blood. Was there no quenching the Empire’s thirst for killing?