Phoenix Unbound
Page 17

The man himself remained unconvinced. His flat gaze flickered down. “You still have a blade on you. What manner of thief doesn’t take a weapon?”
“Not a very good one or maybe one who doesn’t think a common knife is worth dying for. I used it to defend us. I have a crossbow as well that fell from one of their saddles. I left it beside my wife.”
“Bring this wife to us. Only the wife.” They waited on the road until Azarion returned, the unconscious agacin heavy in his tired arms. He hadn’t wanted to leave the bow, but in this scenario, negotiation served him best, not force or threat.
The leader’s hard gaze settled on the witch. “Is your woman sick?”
In an instant, the fragile rapport Azarion had established with the traders vanished. Fear of plague burned away compassion in even the most softhearted person. His own heartbeat trebled as fingers on the crossbows’ triggers tightened. “Injured,” he assured them. “One of the thieves pushed her into the kettle of water she was boiling for our dinner. It spilled on her. She’s been scalded and is fevered from the wounds. Can you help her?” he repeated.
The agacin’s burn marks looked worse than a scalding, but telling this lot he held a fire witch injured by her own spells might get them both killed as quickly as if he confirmed the traders’ fears of plague.
A young woman emerged from behind the second wagon. Shorter than the agacin with lighter hair and sweeter features, she had the same color eyes as the caravan leader, only kinder and faintly melancholic. “Let me help her, Uncle.” She reached the man’s side, stretching up on her toes to speak softly in his ear.
He frowned, said something to the girl, shook his head at her reply, and finally gave a sigh and a roll of his eyes. He turned to Azarion. “You can travel with us as far as Wellspring Holt, but I’ll take that knife you’re carrying as payment for food and care of your wife, along with the crossbow.” He gestured for one of his men to retrieve the bow Azarion had left in the forest.
Azarion didn’t hesitate and turned his hip so another of the traders could remove the blade from his belt. He was now both injured and unarmed. He shifted the agacin in his arms. “It’s a good knife,” he assured his new host.
The other man took the blade, hefting it in his palm to test its balance, turning it this way and that to inspect the edge. “It is. I’ll use it well.” He gestured to his niece and an older woman who joined them during their bargaining. “Put your woman in Asil’s wagon. Halani there can see to her. You’ll have to walk like the rest of us.”
Azarion nodded. He could do that, welcomed it, in fact. Sitting hurt. Lying down was agony, running an exercise in torture. The pain of his cracked ribs might finally subside if all he had to do was walk. “My thanks.”
The girl called Halani motioned for him to follow her. Her uncle and the older woman Azarion assumed was Asil fell into step on either side of him.
Asil offered him a sweet, vapid smile. “What’s your name?” She possessed a young voice, at odds with her aged features.
“Valdan of Pran.” That lie spilled as easily from his lips as all the others before it. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between lies and truth if he kept this up. He didn’t regret it. His real name might be noted and possibly recognized. It was common enough among the Savatar, not so much in the Empire, and the Gladius Prime known as Azarion had achieved great notoriety among the populace who attended the fights in the Pit.
Unlike Asil, the caravan’s leader didn’t smile, and his gaze raked Azarion from head to foot. “You’ve the look of the nomads from the Sky Below about you.”
Azarion almost stumbled at hearing the Savatar words used in describing the Stara Dragana. It had been a long time since anyone he knew called it the Sky Below. Homesickness, buoyed by newfound hope, swamped him. He held the agacin a little closer.
“My mother was a Nunari clanswoman, my father a Kraelian soldier.”
Halani, striding ahead of them, spoke over her shoulder. “And your wife? How is she called?”
Azarion glanced down at the witch’s flushed features, recalling once more the man standing by the cart in Kraelag, shouting a name as Azarion galloped toward her. She had snarled at Azarion when he used it, refusing to claim it as hers.
“Gilene,” he said. “Her name is Gilene.” And for the first time since he’d broken free of his bondage to the Empire, he was certain he spoke the truth.
CHAPTER FIVE
Gilene’s first thought when she regained consciousness was that someone had spoon-fed her a bowl of sand while she slept. The gritty burn in her throat hurt each time she swallowed, and her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth. She tried to lick her bottom lip only to stop at the dry scrape of chapped skin. She cracked open an eyelid to a blurry view of shapes and colors. One shape, made of shades in red and yellow and black, moved toward her. “Thirsty,” she croaked.
A gentle hand gripped the back of her neck and lifted her enough to sip from a cup held to her mouth. “Sip,” said a soft, female voice. “Slowly or you’ll be sick.”
Gilene did as instructed, controlling the urge to gulp as cool water filled her mouth and slid down her throat in a soothing tumble. She mumbled a protest when her nurse took the cup away, and reached for it with a trembling hand. “More.”
A hand stroked her hair. Once more the soothing voice spoke. “In a moment. Let your stomach get used to having something in it. Rest for now.”
She was lowered back to a soft pillow, a covering that smelled of bay leaves instead of stale sweat tucked around her shoulders. Her vision remained blurry despite her best effort to blink it clear. Another shape joined the first one.
“She has pretty hair,” a younger voice said.
“She does, Mama. Now leave her be. She’s injured and needs rest.” A cool palm curled over Gilene’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Shh. Sleep. When you wake again, your man will be here with you.”
Gilene frowned, confused. Man? What man? The spell sickness turned her mind into a mud puddle. She had no man. None wanted a fire witch made barren by her magic and fated to “die” every year, doomed to both physical and emotional ruin by the time her unfortunate successor assumed her role as Beroe’s savior. She fell asleep to the soft croon of a woman singing and the ache of resentment in her belly.
She awakened again—hours or minutes or days later, she couldn’t tell—to the glow of an oil lamp and the curve of a painted night sky above her.
Her gaze traveled across an enclosed horizon, pausing at points to note neatly stacked chests and barrels set against slat walls washed in shades of teal and amber. The sound of voices penetrated their barriers. Men and women talking and singing, children laughing, all accompanied by the bleat and bray of livestock. The bed on which she lay rocked beneath her in a rough cradle’s sway. Where in the gods’ names was she?
“You’re awake.”
The familiar sound of the deep voice sent a cascade of memories tumbling past her mind’s eye: the floor of the Pit consumed in fire; the spirits of the sacrificed women departing; the painful lurch toward her brothers, who waited with their cart for her; and most of all the gladiator who extorted her cooperation and repaid her help by abducting her.
Gilene’s gaze snapped to the large figure folded into a cross-legged position near her knees. Azarion. She would remember his name until the day she died and not with affection. His green eyes caught the ambient light of the lamp, and the somber expression he wore highlighted the high curve of his cheekbones. A beard shadowed his jaw. She tried to sit up, but the blankets tucked around her felt heavier than iron, her muscles weaker than a crone’s on her deathbed.