by Grace Draven
The ata-agacin raised that questioning eyebrow once more. “To put your doubt to rest . . .” She gave a wordless gesture at one of the braziers. The coals flared a vivid orange before an arc of flame burst from the brazier’s confines to follow the movements of the ata-agacin’s hand. It hovered in midair before twisting around itself into an interlocking figure like a serpent swallowing its tail. A wave of heat cascaded down Gilene’s body as the flame whipped around her, coiling up her frame but never touching. The priestess gave a final, sharp gesture, and the fire raced across the qara, where it plunged into another brazier, making those coals snap and spark while smaller flames licked the grate in a merry dance. Not even a hint of burnt cloth tainted the air.
“Your turn now, outlander,” the priestess said.
Gilene didn’t know whether to laugh or applaud, the first because she knew her efforts would come to naught. The second because the ata-agacin’s control of flame had been impressive to witness.
She didn’t protest when they fished out candles from the basket and set them around her with instructions to set them alight, either one at a time or all at once. Nothing happened. The candles remained unlit. A cold brazier was brought forth, and under Gilene’s hand, it remained dark and cold. An oil lamp. A handful of fatwood. A square of charcloth. Nothing caught flame in her hands.
“I said from the beginning,” she told the priestesses, “I may be able to summon fire and force it to do my bidding, but not yet. What power I possess, I’ve used up for now.”
The ata-agacin stretched out her arm. “Give me your hand.”
Gilene did so, and a bubble of blue fire burst across their clasped fingers. The priestess’s grip tightened as the flames traveled up both their arms, but Gilene didn’t struggle. She returned the other woman’s stare with one of her own as the flames danced along her shoulder and neck and cascaded down her chest until she and the priestess were engulfed. She felt the fire’s heat, but only its heat, and squinted her eyes against the bright illumination. Soon the brightness faded, as did the heat. The flames died away, leaving both women unscathed.
The ata-agacin let her go and took a step back, her expression puzzled. “You don’t burn, just as we don’t. That is indeed the hand of Agna there.” She returned to her sisters, and they gathered together in a huddle to talk in whispers.
Gilene didn’t move, a small kernel of hope that even without a demonstration of fire summoning, her resistance to burning might be enough proof to get them to declare her one of Agna’s handmaidens. If so, then achieving her goal of returning to Beroe was that much closer.
The agacins finished their discussion and, as one, turned to Gilene. The ata-agacin’s words sent Gilene’s stomach plummeting to her shoes. “We recognize your ability to not burn and believe you when you say your power is depleted for now. However, it isn’t enough to declare you a handmaiden. We need to see you summon and see you control the gift that Agna bestows on her priestesses. When your magic reawakens, have Azarion or the ataman send a message to us. We’ll return and test you again.”
Tears welled on Gilene’s lower lids, and she blinked to force them back. Despite her best intentions not to hope too much for a different outcome, the ata-agacin’s refusal to recognize her was a crushing disappointment. It meant more weeks living among strangers, viewed either as an outlander by the clan members or as a threat by their ataman. All she wanted was to go home. Her resentment for Azarion, dulled a little these past few days, sharpened once more. She wanted no part of his machinations, and she followed the priestesses out of the qara, dry-eyed and grim.
They were met by a crowd of curious clansmen, with both Azarion and Karsas waiting on either side of the qara’s entrance. When the ata-agacin shook her head, the crowd lost interest and slowly dispersed. Karsas lingered, a gloating smile twisting his vulpine features. Gilene turned away and followed a stoic Azarion back to his mother’s tent.
They were met by a dour Tamura and a more sympathetic Saruke, who offered cups of tea as consolation. Their qara was quiet, with only the clink of the teapot against a cup to break the silence as Saruke administered refills.
Azarion’s gaze looked beyond the qara’s lattice frame and felt covering to some invisible horizon, his face forbidding. The unaccountable urge to apologize to him hovered on Gilene’s lips, and she bit them nearly bloody to stop the words. She had nothing to apologize for. This was his failure, not hers. Saruke had told her earlier that upon Iruadis’s death, the agacins had voted unanimously to make Karsas ataman. Until that vote was challenged by another agacin, it trumped Azarion’s right to reclaim the chieftainship through ritual combat.
Gilene’s spirits fell even more, and she suspected she wore the same disappointed scowl as Tamura across from her.
Azarion set aside his cup and rose to rummage through a set of trays that acted as Saruke’s pantry. He returned to their circle around the brazier with a flask. “This calls for something stronger than tea.” He thumbed the top off the flask and took a swallow before passing the flask on to Gilene. “Not unexpected,” he said. “But still not a good day.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed and swallowed a mouthful of the drink as sour as her mood.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Azarion led two horses toward the outskirts of the camp as the women and children dismantled the qaras and packed the felt coverings and frames into waiting wagons. Clan Kestrel prepared for its summer move east and deeper into the Sky Below where pastures untouched by sheep waited to be grazed. All the Savatar clans did the same, staking their claims to ancestral grazing lands and reviving the annual summer trade markets with the Goban people at the base of the Gamir Mountains.
He spotted his sister not far from the camp, astride a gray mare, talking to other riders. They had argued good-naturedly earlier in the day over who would help the drovers move the sheep herds and who would capture the wild mares and foals to replenish the camp’s milk supply before they decamped.
They had resorted to a child’s game of slap-knuckle to decide who got first choice of tasks, and Azarion won. Tamura had grumbled over her loss but set out to meet up with other riders and join the drovers bringing in the sheep. Azarion whistled sharply as he walked the pair of horses past their little group and gave Tamura a cheerful wave. She responded with a rude hand gesture and stuck her tongue out at him before tapping her heels into her mount’s sides to gallop away with her companions.
The ataman’s qara would be the last one dismantled and the first to go up when they arrived at the new camp spot. Karsas had announced the plan to move three days prior, and since then the camp had been a frenzy of activity and noise as wagons were lined up and qaras broken down into stacks of lattice, poles, and folded felt. Karsas had watched it all in indolent splendor from his seat on a rug in front of his qara’s door.
As if conjured by Azarion’s thoughts, the ataman suddenly stepped out from the shadow of a still-standing qara and blocked Azarion’s path. He wore a tunic in need of washing, and his eyes held the glassy sheen of inebriation. The strong fumes of fermentation drifting off his breath made Azarion turn his face away and cough.
What Karsas’s gaze lacked in sober clarity, it more than made up for in malice. “Did you really think that little trick you pulled with the Fire Council would actually work?”
Azarion didn’t try to pretend he didn’t understand his cousin’s question. This confrontation had been a fortnight in the making, ever since Gilene had failed to garner status of agacin from the Fire Council. Ever since Azarion had first passed through the Veil and returned to the Sky Below and the clan of his birth.
“Gilene walked through the Fire Veil and didn’t burn. She may have failed the test, but Agna has noted and blessed her.”
Karsas snorted. “Sorcerous trick from some renegade wizard taught to a Kraelian whore in exchange for her favors. Agna doesn’t bless those who don’t worship her.”
Azarion’s hand settled on his knife handle where it rose from its sheath. Gilene wasn’t a whore, and even if she were, she possessed more character and bravery in her little finger than this piece of filth did in his entire body.
He kept his expression neutral, recognizing Karsas’s insult for what it was: a calculated move meant to give maximum offense and incite the predictable response.
“As ataman, you speak for the clan, but you are still only ataman, or do you believe yourself more now and speak for the goddess as well?”
Karsas blanched at the question, couched in the vague accusation of blasphemy. He glanced skyward for a moment as if expecting a lightning bolt to crackle out of the blue and strike him. His lips drew back in a snarl. “You should have stayed dead. You no longer belong in the clan. Your place should be forfeit. The Sky Below is not your home, nor is it your concubine’s, even if she can set the steppe ablaze with her power. The Fire Council will never name her as an agacin, and the chieftainship will remain mine. You gave it up ten years ago.”
He spoke in a low voice so that only Azarion could hear him. They faced each other in the shadow of the qara, backed by its frame on one side and that of the two horses Azarion led through the camp on the other.
Azarion’s quiet tones matched Karsas’s, though he seethed inside with the urge to gut the man right there and pay the consequences for the impulse. “I gave away nothing. You had three men ambush me on a hunt, beat me until I was unconscious, and sell me to the Empire. You took the coward’s path, Cousin, by not killing me yourself.” His lip curled in a sneer. “You shame your sire; you shame your ancestors, and one day, everyone will know it.”
Karsas lunged for him, and Azarion met him halfway. They slammed together. Azarion pressed his blade’s edge against Karsas’s throat. A sharp sting in his side warned him that his cousin wielded a blade of his own and threatened to slide it between his ribs.
The two men gripped each other in a lethal embrace as the camp’s occupants eddied and flowed nearby, unaware of the confrontation between their current ataman and the man from whom he had stolen the title.
“Finally,” Azarion said, nearly nose to nose with his cousin. “You grow a spine and would fight me.” He didn’t flinch when the tip of Karsas’s knife pierced his tunic and flesh, sending a trickle of wet heat sliding down his side. His own blade pressed a little harder as well, leaving a shallow cut on Karsas’s throat that welled with blood.
Karsas jerked his head back and shoved Azarion away. “No one will believe you, and the men who sold you are dead.”
Azarion shrugged. If Gilene’s power returned and she passed the Fire Council’s tests in her second try, they didn’t have to believe his accusations. He would challenge Karsas to ritual combat, and his cousin would have no choice but to accept. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that. Reward for their misplaced loyalty. At least in that, you were thorough and saved me the trouble of killing them myself.”
Red-faced, Karsas glared at him before wiping the cut on his neck with his sleeve. A scarlet smear joined the numerous other stains on the garment. “The clan is mine,” he snapped before whirling away and disappearing around the qara from where he’d first appeared. Azarion stood there a moment longer, knife held at the ready in case one of Karsas’s lackeys suddenly made an appearance and challenged him. When none did, he checked the wound Karsas had left and pressed his tunic to it until the trickling of blood stopped, then gathered up the reins of his patient mares and led them toward his original goal, the patch of ground where his mother’s qara had stood.
He found her, Gilene, and two more women loading rugs, blankets, braziers, and cooking pots into one of two wagons parked nearby. The other wagon was already full with the dismantled qara.
Saruke saw him first and waved him nearer. “Where are you off to?”
He felt Gilene’s gaze on him, though she didn’t greet him. “To capture some of the wild mares for milking. There’s a herd not far from here with a lot of foals. Bornon and his sister are to meet me there.”
His mother nodded and passed Gilene a rolled rug to place in the wagon. “Why do you have two horses?”
“One for Gilene if you can spare her, and if she wishes to go.”
Gilene slowly pivoted away from the wagon to face him. The delighted smile blossoming on her face before she hid it behind a bland look surprised him and sent a pleasant warmth coursing under his skin. That smile hinted at a woman fashioned of more than strong will and sharp edges, and he resolved in that moment to coax another one out of her in the near future.
Saruke’s eyes slid from him to Gilene and back before she bent to gather a basket of onions and carry them to the wagon. “Good. She can help with the milking.” She indicated the other two women with a lift of her chin. “I have enough help here.”
“But . . .” Gilene stood by the wagon, obviously wavering.
Azarion held up one pair of reins. “It’s up to you. I’ve picked a mare with a comfortable gait and good disposition, and milking a wild mare is much like milking a tame one.” If you didn’t mind a few more kicks and bites.
Despite the interested spark in her eyes, she hesitated, until Saruke gave her a light push toward Azarion. “Go. I’ve seen how you work hard to learn our ways. This is part of who we are. Learn that too.”
With that, Gilene reached for the reins Azarion offered to her. “Thank you,” she said and swung into the saddle on the horse he’d chosen for her.
They rode out of the camp toward the open swaths of steppe where the grasses hadn’t been flattened by qaras or grazed down by livestock. The wind blew the scent of budding wildflowers on warm currents, and Azarion admired Gilene’s profile as she rode beside him, face lifted to the sunlight, strands of hair escaped from her braids fluttering across her cheeks.
They found the herd at the base of a low-sloping hill. Four other Savatar waited for him and Gilene, raising their hands in greeting as they gathered together. They’d already set up a milking line with supplies of rope, pails, and halters stacked in a nearby cart.
Bornon clutched two slender birch poles, each twice the height of a man, with a loop of rope secured at the end. He handed one to Azarion and offered a quick bow to Gilene. “Does the agacin know how to catch the mares and foals?” he asked in Savat.
Azarion repeated the question for her in trader’s tongue.
“I haven’t the first notion of how to do it,” she said, casting an uneasy eye at the herd that watched them from afar. “I thought I was here to help with the milking.”
Azarion grinned. “You are, but if you want to give the other a try, just tell me. I, or Bornon, or his sister Juna there, will show you what to do.”
Gilene glanced at the long poles the riders carried couched under their arms and said, “I’ll watch first, then we’ll see.”
He left her with a Savatar woman named Lemey, who had come to help with the milking once the mares were captured and tied to the line. The sun beat hot on his head as they drove the herd closer to the milking station and harnessed the foals, who whinnied for their dams while Gilene and Lemey tied them to the line.
The real work began with the mares themselves. Fast and skittish, they dodged the poles and loops before being cornered by the equally fleet-footed driver mares. More than once Azarion was nearly yanked from the saddle by a frantic mare fighting the loop.
By midday, they had the mares tied to the milking line. Soaked in sweat and streaked with dirt, Azarion joined Gilene where she crouched under a mare with a milk pail. The strike of a hoof against the pail made her leap back with a curse. Milk sloshed onto the ground as she set the container down to shake one hand before clutching it with the other.
Azarion skirted the annoyed mare and another well-aimed kick. “Did she get you?”
Gilene glared at the horse before holding up a hand to show red fingers and the ar
c of a shallow scratch across her knuckles. “This is a lot harder than milking a cow.”
Nearby, Lemey laughed. “They barely tolerate their foals stealing a sip, much less us.”
Azarion motioned to Gilene. “Let me see.”
She offered him her hand, hissing when his thumb glided over the scratch. Such a fine-boned hand, despite its calluses and scratches. He’d seen her hands hold fire, felt their weight on his injured back and their grip on his arm. Capable and strong, much like the woman herself.
“Nothing broken,” he said. “But you’ll have to be faster with the milking, or you’ll end up with a broken finger or two before we’re done. Come, I’ll show you a few tricks for keeping clear of a hoof.”
He was as good as his word, and Gilene filled the rest of her pails without mishap. When they were done, the milk was poured into tall, narrow-mouthed jugs and loaded onto the cart along with the pole lassos. After that, they set the mares and foals free.
Gilene pulled the harness off a foal that nibbled curiously at her tunic cuff. “What happens to them now?”
Azarion freed a mare and leapt out of the way as she kicked at him before bolting off, her foal’s gangly form stretched out beside her as it raced to keep up. “We’ll leave them be. These herds are numerous on the steppes. We’ll come across another one at the new pastures and do the same thing again. Until then, we’ll rely on the sheep for the unfermented milk and curds.”
Once all the horses were freed and the cart was packed, everyone rinsed away the grime of their tasks and compared the bruises they’d earned. Azarion declined the invitation to join the others in their afternoon meal. He’d brought Gilene out here for a reason.
“I want to show you a place you might be interested in, and we can eat there. I’ve brought food.” He gestured to the satchel tied to a ring on the saddle of the mare Gilene had ridden.