Phoenix Unbound
Page 37

“No,” he said. “Once Agna’s blessing is recognized by the councils, it’s permanent, even if the agacin chooses to marry into another clan or, as with you, leaves the Savatar.” That, and he planned to kill his cousin. Karsas wouldn’t live to work his treachery a second time.
Gilene arched a doubtful eyebrow. “There have been agacins who left?”
“Not in the memory of the people.”
“I thought not.” She huffed a frustrated sigh. “Where will I stay while I’m in your camp? With you?”
“Yes, and it’s anyone’s guess where I’ll lay my head. Likely in my mother’s qara, though she’s subject to Karsas’s will now, and he might not allow it.” There was no reason for his cousin to forbid it except from pettiness, but he was ataman. His clansmen wouldn’t question so small a thing.
“He may try to kill you.” Gilene’s voice lacked any glee at the possibility, and he fancied for a moment that it actually contained a hint of worry.
Azarion smiled. “I’ve no doubt of it. He failed the first time. The Karsas I remember never accepted failure well.”
They went quiet when Masad trotted back to them. “Do you want me to send those foolish boys ahead to cry the news? Or should we ride in and surprise them all?”
The shrewd look his uncle leveled on Azarion told him he already knew the answer. Azarion’s reply was simply for the benefit of other listening ears. He was happy to oblige. “Surprise them,” he said, letting his voice carry on the wind. “I long to see my mother’s and sister’s faces after all this time.” And to keep a shocked Karsas from planning an unfortunate accident.
They picked up their pace after that, traveling at a gallop until Azarion caught sight of colorful flags fluttering atop the peaks of qaras. The round structures squatted on the steppe in loose clusters. Carts stood next to several of them, and horse and sheep herds grazed nearby.
He wanted to stop, just for a moment, to take in the tableau before him. Vengeance against his cousin wasn’t the only dream to sustain him through the long years of slavery. This one did as well—the gathering of Clan Kestrel, encamped on the white-plumed sweep of the Sky Below under the sky above. Blood, pain, degradation. Nothing had broken his will to live or his desire to escape when the promise of returning to this still bloomed behind his closed eyelids at night.
A few clansmen from the camp rode to meet them. Masad called out to those approaching. “Someone find Saruke and Tamura and bring them here. Hurry!”
They were swarmed by Savatar before they even reached the camp’s perimeter. Curious faces peered at Azarion from the ground and from horseback, crowding closer until his and Gilene’s horses were hemmed in by a press of bodies. He made out bits and pieces of conversation flying around them.
“What’s Masad doing with two Kraelians this far into Savatar territory?”
“Agna’s grace, I recognize him!”
“Who’s the woman?”
There were so many people around them, he had a hard time picking out individual faces among the crowd. They all blended into a sea of humanity that parted as two women cleaved through the throng to reach him.
He swung off his horse to stand amid the Savatar and quelled the nearly overwhelming urge to rush forward and scoop up the weathered crone swooping down on him like a crow and the much taller woman with the fierce eyes of a hawk.
Both halted abruptly in front of him, both scowling as if they wanted nothing more than to rip out his guts. The crone had not been so aged when Azarion was sold ten years earlier. A life spent under the hot sun and harsh wind had weathered her, but she’d been straight-backed then, her hair brown and shot with gray instead of the silvery white it was now. Lines of sorrow carved furrows into her face, but her gaze was still sharper than any blade, still capable of slicing a person down to their soul with a single look. Right now that gaze searched his face, searched hard. Her eyes watered, and her chin shook with the stuttering breath she took.
“Azarion?”
A chorus of gasps followed her question, and the younger woman next to her dropped her hand to the pommel of the sheathed sword she carried. She glared at Azarion, disbelief hardening her face.
His chest felt as if one of the horses stood on it. He remained where he was, desperate to embrace his mother and sister, but familiar enough with them to know such a move courted danger. “I’ve missed you, Ani,” he said, using the informal Savat word for “mother.” He glanced at his sister. “You, too, Mura. Do you still chew your hair when you’re nervous?”
Tamura stepped back, as if to ward off any more surprises Azarion might lob at her. Saruke, on the other hand, stumbled forward, arms outstretched, hands trembling as she reached for him. “My son,” she sobbed. “My son.”
This time he didn’t hesitate and gathered her into his arms, lifting her off her feet. She felt light as a bird and just as fragile. Azarion wanted to crush her close and bury his face in her neck as he once did as a young boy long ago, but he dared not, too afraid of breaking every bone in her body with the force of his affection.
Tamura eased a little closer, wary as a wolf circling wounded but dangerous prey. Her eyes, as green as his and as cutting as their mother’s, grew glossy, and she blinked to clear them. “You’re much bigger than I remember,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Azarion grinned at her over Saruke’s head. “You’re still a midge fly, Mura,” he teased, remembering fondly how she tried to pummel his head in every time he called her midge.
The term forced a sob past her lips, and she halted another by compressing her mouth so tightly, her lips virtually disappeared. She blinked several times and reached out to curve her hand over his where it rested against Saruke’s back.
Azarion was halted from pulling her into the same embrace with their mother by another rippling surge of the crowd and a voice he so reviled, he remembered every nuance of its timbre.
“Azarion, we all thought you were dead.”
Azarion gently set Saruke aside so he could face the person he hated even more than the empress. He offered the barest hint of a bow. “Not yet. Ataman.”
Karsas of Clan Kestrel had been his adversary since they were children. Older than Azarion by only a few years, he had coveted the role of clan chieftain since he was old enough to draw a bow. His father, Gastene, had been Iruadis’s younger brother. Unlike his son, Azarion’s uncle had never craved the role of leadership and never challenged his brother for the seat. Karsas resented his father’s lack of ambition, and that resentment had festered over time, fed by jealousy and the certainty that he was the best candidate to take Iruadis’s place as ataman when Iruadis died.
Azarion didn’t hold his cousin’s ambition against him, only his cowardice. That, and his treachery, made him loathe Karsas. Azarion had sworn to himself years earlier that he would live long enough, no matter what it took, to exact revenge on his cousin.
Unlike Saruke, who had aged and turned stooped, and Tamura, who had matured from awkward juvenile to majestic woman, Karsas had changed very little. Tall like Azarion, but leaner, he cut a notable figure, every bit the proud chieftain in his bearing and the richness of his clothing.
If one looked close enough, though—past the rich fabrics and priceless gold—they could see the dissipation around Karsas’s mouth and eyes, the jowly droop of his jaw, and the tiny spiderwebs of broken blood vessels that blotched his cheeks and nose.