by Grace Draven
One eyebrow rose in a speculative expression. “It isn’t a barrow, is it?”
He laughed. “It is, though I will swear on anything you wish, there’s no wight waiting inside. And we can stay outside if you want.”
She worried her lower lip against her teeth for a moment before deciding. “Take me to this barrow.”
They said goodbye to the other drovers and headed toward a flat stretch of steppe where a single mound rested amid a field of purple and pink wildflowers.
Once they had their mounts unsaddled and left to graze nearby, Azarion laid out the horse blankets for seating not far from the mound’s perimeter and the low entrance that faced east. Gilene dug into the satchel he handed her, setting down barley cakes, dried curds, and flasks of tea and barley water.
She sat cross-legged on one of the blankets and passed Azarion a cake when he reclined beside her, his legs stretched out so that his feet disappeared in the thick carpet of early-summer grass. He closed his eyes and nibbled at the cake while savoring the silence, the sunlight, and the company of the woman beside him.
“You’re a good rider,” she said. “More so than I realized until today.”
He cracked open one eyelid to gaze at her. “I used to be better and was unmatched by any who fought in the Pit, but we were rarely on horseback during those fights. I’m still remembering the feel of a horse.”
She pointed to a spot at his side. “What happened there? Hoof nick you?”
Azarion glanced down and saw that the small amount of blood inflicted by Karsas’s knife had seeped through his tunic’s heavy layers and left a stain. “Nothing so noble as a horse’s hoof. Karsas and I had a . . . talk this morning. It went well enough.” Gilene’s worried look made him smile.
“Good conversations don’t usually end in bloodstains.”
“We’re both still alive. It was friendly.”
She flicked a crumb of barley cake at him. “I didn’t think he was capable of ‘friendly.’ Your sister hates him.”
Azarion stiffened. “Has he threatened you?” His cousin was lazy, double-dealing, and murderous. He wasn’t stupid. To threaten a woman who might well be an agacin bordered on madness. Ataman or not, his entire clan would turn on him if he dared such a thing.
Gilene shook her head. “No, just looked at me as if he wished me dead or thought me a pile of sheep dung. But then I’ve seen him look at many people that way, including his wife.”
He had no intention of sharing with Gilene the details of his conversation with Karsas. It served no purpose. He still wanted to rip out his cousin’s guts, but again suppressed the anger, letting it cool and feed his desire for vengeance.
Gilene handed him a flask of the tea. “May I ask you something?” He nodded. “If Karsas were a good ataman, if the clan thrived under his leadership, would you still challenge him?”
Her question made him pause. It was something he never had to consider. Karsas as ataman put Clan Kestrel in danger. Once a stronger, bigger clan when Iruadis ruled it, it was diminished now. Azarion didn’t need to hear the mutterings and discontent of his fellow clansmen over Karsas’s governance to see how much the clan had fallen in wealth, status, and influence. It was obvious to him since the first day he returned. But while those things justified his reasons for wanting to oust Karsas as ataman, they weren’t the only ones that drove Azarion toward his goals. “What good is there in a man who is a coward and sells his relative into slavery?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t say he was a good man. A person can lead well and still be awful.”
That was true. Brutal men had raised up powerful kingdoms in the past. A brutal woman co-ruled one now. “I don’t know,” he said. “I want back what was stolen from me, and Karsas makes it easy for me to justify my challenge. If he were as you say, a good leader with the clan’s welfare his first concern, I might give it up. It would be a hard choice to make.” He gave her a wry smile. “You ask difficult questions.”
She smiled back, and Azarion forgot to breathe. “You give good answers.” She paused, then continued her interrogation. “If you become ataman . . .” At his scowl, she amended her statement. “When you become ataman, what will you do for your clan? What will raise their status in the confederation?”
It was unfortunate no one on the Ataman Council had subjected Karsas to such questions years earlier, or if they had, he’d done a fine job of deceiving them into believing he would be a good leader for the clan.
This time Azarion had a ready answer for her, though one he knew would shock her. “I plan to take the entire Savatar nation to war against the Empire.”
Gilene dropped the flask she held, only to snatch it up before all the tea spilled onto the blanket. The smile was gone, replaced by disappointed dismay. “You would drag your people into a war they can’t win?”
That made him bristle. “The Savatar have grown too dependent on the Veil to protect them,” he said. “They think only the Nunari are their enemy because they’re the Empire’s vassals closest to the Veil. We can actually see them through the flames when they test the Veil for weaknesses. The clans have forgotten about the east and its vulnerability.
“The Empire is invading there, not with a charge but with a slow creep. They’re building more and more garrisons along the Golden Serpent, clawing their way into Goban territory one road, one garrison at a time. If they get through the Gamir Mountains and put a garrison there, there will be no stopping them. The Goban will fall first and then the Savatar. The Empire won’t have to breach the Veil or even go near it to conquer us.”
Her consternation faded as he spoke, replaced by an arrested expression that told him she considered his explanation. “The Empire is vast,” she said. “There aren’t enough of you to defeat her armies. How could you possibly succeed in such a plan? How could you convince the clans it would work?”
Azarion hadn’t been idle while he waited for Gilene’s magic to strengthen. Karsas had barred him from attending his council meetings with the clan’s subchiefs, a petty move that earned him more than a few speculative looks and side-glances. It didn’t stop Azarion from gathering information about the status of the clan, of the confederation, of the Savatar nation, and the worries of their Goban neighbors to the east. A plan had formed in his mind, ambitious, risky, and dangerous, and the only way he could begin implementing it was to take back the chieftainship.
“You’re right. It isn’t possible to attack all of the Empire, but we can stab it in the heart, and its heart is Kraelag.”
“Attack the capital?” Gilene tapped her chin, contemplating. “The Savatar would have a distance to travel to reach her gates, and every general would call up his units to defend her.”
Azarion smirked. “I’m counting on it.”
She was quiet after that, her mind working through all he had said, though she kept her thoughts to herself. He stretched out on his side to face her and propped his head on one hand. “My turn for questions. Why did you look surprised when I asked if you wanted to come with me to this drive?”
Over the past weeks, he’d caught her several times watching him with a thoughtful expression, as if she tried to puzzle him out. That same look settled on her features now.
“Because I think it’s the first time since I met you that you haven’t ordered me, threatened me, or bargained with me to do something.”
Azarion’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut at Gilene’s silent amusement. He tried to recall all of their interactions since they met, and scowled when he realized she didn’t exaggerate. He’d never considered himself a tyrannical person. It was hard to be so when you were a slave who served many masters, but maybe he’d adopted their habits during his servitude even as he despised them for their ways.
His relationship with Gilene had been contentious from the start, not unexpected considering their circumstances. Still, they were no l
onger on the run from Kraelian trackers, Nunari clansmen, or Midrigarian demons. There was no reason to command instead of ask.
“You’re right,” he said. “I will ask more often.”
A spark of something flickered in her eyes before disappearing. “I’m glad.” She gave him another of those engaging smiles.
Her fingers danced restlessly across the pattern woven into the horse blanket on which she sat, and her forehead creased as she glanced at him and then away, only to do it again.
“Go ahead,” he coaxed her. “Ask another one. I can see you want to.”
“Why haven’t you told anyone you can see through illusions?”
“I don’t see any reason to do so. Maybe I was born with some slim thread of my mother’s magic that’s somehow knotted.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Even if someone knew why I could see through illusions, it doesn’t change the fact that I can. Saruke’s magics are small. Warding circles, charms for health and protection against evil spirits. They’re useful, as you saw with that thing in Midrigar, but she and other shamans like her don’t wield the powers the agacins do, and the agacins don’t wield illusion. I doubt they’d have any more idea than I do as to why I possess this talent. For all I know, half the clan might be able to see through your spells. They just aren’t aware of it yet.” He watched the wind seduce a lock of her hair into a dance. “And as you well know, sometimes a thing kept secret has power.”
She acknowledged that with a quick tilt of her chin. She had given up much to help him, even when that help had been extorted at first. It was small repayment to let her keep this one secret of her magic until she chose to reveal it.
“How does a woman become an agacin?” she asked.
During her stay with his clan, Gilene had settled into the daily rhythm of the camp with only a few moments of awkwardness. That assimilation was partially due to his mother’s subtle, guiding hand, but also to Gilene’s natural inclination to listen more than she spoke and an active curiosity that inspired her to learn.
The agacins were enigmas themselves, though they were held in both awe and admiration by the Savatar. “Agna chooses a handmaiden to bless according to her whim,” he replied. “No one clan is favored, no one family bears a line of agacins. A girl with the blessing doesn’t even know she has it until after her menses start and the fire manifests in some way. One family almost burned to death in their qara when their middle daughter set it alight in her sleep.”
Gilene’s gaze focused on the horizon, though Azarion thought she looked inward instead of outward. “That’s similar to the witches born in Beroe. The magic doesn’t pass from generation to generation in a single family, and it never manifests before the girl has her menses.” She frowned. “But why only Beroe? Why don’t other villages have their own fire witch?”
He didn’t have an answer. There might well be other witches, and like Beroe, those villages kept such knowledge a well-guarded secret. With the destruction of Midrigar by the Kraelian army and the Empire’s most powerful sorcerers, the emperor then had recognized the implicit threat of those born with magic and who were trained in using it. The reward for those sorcerers who did the emperor’s bidding and laid waste to what remained of Midrigar was execution, followed by the wholesale slaughter of every person in the Empire’s boundaries suspected of possessing even the smallest magic. That had been well over a century earlier, and the Empire still didn’t abide magic. If another village like Beroe sheltered a witch like Gilene, they were as vigilant as Beroe in keeping it secret.
“Your magic is different from the Savatar agacins’,” he said. “Not in the way you wield fire but in the aftermath of the summoning. They don’t suffer the wounds you do when they use their magic.”
She sighed and raised her knees to clasp her arms around her legs and rest her cheek on her kneecaps. “That must be nice.”
They sat in silence for several moments after that, watching the horse herd they’d worked earlier appear on the top of a small hillock before racing down its slope to a dip of pastureland.
“Why aren’t you married?” Azarion asked. Her snort of laughter made him raise an eyebrow.
“Who says I’m not?”
He sat up. Her rebuttal made his heart seize for a moment, a reaction that startled him. A darker emotion chased the heels of his surprise—jealousy. He reeled inwardly at the revelation. A cascade of questions rushed to his lips, but he held them back.
What is his name?
What excuse for a man would willingly surrender his wife to the horror of the Rites of Spring, not just once but many times?
Why isn’t he tearing apart all of the Empire to find you?
Do you love him?
At that last thought, he felt the blood drain from his face.
“Azarion?” Gilene reached out to touch his arm, her amusement replaced by faint concern.
He revised his question to be more direct. “Are you married?”
A bleakness chased away all humor in her features. “No. I will die young and disfigured, with no children to comfort me. What man would bind himself to a woman doomed to such a fate as mine? One made barren by her magic?” She spoke the words without a shred of self-pity, only a flat acceptance of a desolate future.
I would. Azarion crushed the thought as quickly as it blossomed in his mind, and sought frantically for some part of her statement that he could reply to without revealing his own turbulent emotions. “Our agacins aren’t barren.” She visibly startled at that declaration, and he continued. “Some are married. The ata-agacin is widowed. I think four or five of them have children. One or two have grandchildren. Why do you think your magic has made you barren?”
“Because I’m no innocent and should have had at least one child by now.”
Azarion didn’t carry the argument further. He’d seen the doubt of her own assumption flare in her eyes when he told her the agacins had children. And the hope. If Gilene were truly barren, then it was something other than her magic that made her so.
Once more, quiet reigned between them, and this time, it was Gilene who ended it with a question that might well have been a punch to his gut. “Why have you never used me? Without my magic to defend myself, I couldn’t stop you.”
Painful memories battered him. He allowed them their abuse, then pushed them away. He might one day be able to face them and not flinch, scatter them into nothing because they no longer meant anything to him, but today was not that day.
Gilene watched him, curious but also patient with his delayed response. While not a slave to the Empire as he had been, she had been its victim. Understood firsthand its cruelties and debasements, had suffered them and walked away bitter but still unbowed. If anyone might understand his reasoning, it was she.
He stared down at one of the patterns stitched in the horse blanket on which he sat. “Because I know what it is to be used. By one. By many. The empress likes an audience when she plays with her toys, and sometimes she likes the audience to participate.” When had his voice become so hoarse? His throat so tight? “The worst injuries I ever suffered—those that almost killed me—weren’t earned in the Pit but in Dalvila’s bedchamber. I might not have been able to help a Flower of Spring escape the fire when I was a gladiator, but I never made them, or any woman, suffer rape. I never have. I never will.”
He didn’t know if his words reassured her or if his revelation regarding his own tortures at the empress’s delicate but merciless hands repulsed her, just as they repulsed him. But he no longer felt so burdened.
Gilene knee-walked from her spot to sit directly in front of him. Compassion, not pity, softened her gaze, and there was a warmth there that hadn’t been present before when she looked at him. Behind those softer emotions, a banked fury glowed. She didn’t touch him, nor did he reach for her, but her nearness filled all of his senses, and he leaned closer.
Her voice was
as soft as the look in her eyes, her sentiment as unforgiving as her anger. “If I could, I would turn Kraelag into a scorch mark on the landscape.”
They stared at each other until Azarion offered her a small smile. “I believe you.”
Her gaze slid to a point beyond his shoulder. “Why did you bring me to this barrow?”
Grateful for the change in topic, he gained his feet and helped her stand. The barrow was a simple mound, lacking any decorative steles to describe some dead ataman’s military exploits or brag about his vigor and the many children he had sired. The only ornamentation lay in a carved disk set in the entrance’s stone lintel—a kestrel with outstretched wings.
“My ancestors are buried here, including my father.” He traced the kestrel. “I was born in front of this barrow. My mother insisted on it. She said the shared blood of mother, father, and child would bind me closer to my ancestors. To my grandfathers who ruled before my father. Their spirits would guide me when I assumed the role of ataman.” He stroked the rough stone. “I wanted to show you that not all barrows are hiding places for the hunted or nests for wights. If fortune favors me, I’ll be put in there to lie alongside my father when I die.”
They walked half the barrow’s perimeter before climbing to its peak. The elevation afforded them an even better view of this part of the steppe. Below them, their horses meandered through the grass, idly grazing side by side. Gilene shielded her eyes with one hand and made a slow pivot to survey her surroundings. “It’s a good spot for a spirit to look out onto the living world.”
It was indeed, and Azarion prayed his own spirit might enjoy the view as well when it came time to join his ancestors in the burial mound.
They hiked down the barrow’s slope and completed their walk around its base, stopping when they came upon a withered bundle of herbs and flowers tied with a strip of yellow cloth embroidered in an intricate design of beads and horsehair thread. Gilene bent for a closer look but didn’t pick up the flowers. “What is this?”