Phoenix Unbound
Page 50

Tamura, who had treated Gilene with barely disguised disdain until then, stared at her with new eyes. “You’re brave, and you saved my brother. My family is in your debt, Agacin.” It was the first time she had addressed Gilene by that term. She still remained distant and suspicious, but the edge of hostility was gone.
Thereafter, Gilene slept alone in her own sleeping space not far from Azarion. At first, the change pleased her. Not once, in all the times they shared a bed, had he taken liberties with her, though she often woke to find him slumbering closer, an arm draped across her waist.
Likewise, morning sometimes saw her nestled against him, her head on his chest, his steady heartbeat a soothing lullaby in her ear. The first night in her new bed was a lonely one, though she’d never admit it to anyone, much less herself, that she missed his presence beside her under the covers, especially after his revelation about the empress’s particular cruelties.
She understood his actions better now, that relentless push to reach his homeland and regain his place among his people, though it was at the cost of her own freedom. She didn’t agree with it, and it didn’t change her own determination to return to Beroe, but she no longer saw him as the enemy. Gilene had reached out that night and cradled him close, her soul aching over what he had endured at the Empire’s hands. He lay heavy and peaceful in her arms, simply a man burdened by dark memory and lost time. The two of them were bound by a common past of subjugation and a resolve to overcome the damage it wrought.
Her thoughts turned to him more often during the day than she liked, but she couldn’t chase them all away. More than once she’d caught herself mooning over his deft, patient handling of the horses in his mother’s herds and how he tilted his head a little to the right before he laughed, even the way his long fingers curled around his teacup, or how the morning sun gilded his cheekbones when he sat outside to clip his beard short.
The suspiciously hopeful note in Saruke’s voice made her back stiffen. “The sooner he’s made ataman, the sooner I can go home.” She glared into her teacup as if it refused to reveal some necessary secret.
Saruke sighed. “He can’t claim the chieftainship until you prove to the Fire Council that you are truly agacin.” The hopeful note had turned to one of frustration.
“Was it not enough that I didn’t burn to ash when they set me alight?”
The weeks that followed the Fire Council’s decision not to declare her an agacin saw Gilene too busy to dwell on her prolonged stay on the steppes. She practiced her fire summoning, to no avail, and helped Saruke with her chores, which most often started before dawn and didn’t end until right at sunset. Some of the household tasks were much like those she handled in Beroe; others were far different. She was on horseback as much as she was on foot and helped take care of the horse herds. She learned the basics of shepherding, complaining to Saruke at times that while the goats were entertaining, the sheep were dumber than rocks.
Saruke admonished her lightly with one of her bits of wisdom. “Better to have a dumb sheep that gives up warm wool than a smart rock that offers nothing to cold bones.”
When they weren’t shepherding, felting, weaving, cooking, or laundering, they were foraging—sometimes far beyond the encampment, like now, where wild strawberries, garlic, and onions sprang up among the plume grass.
Gilene fished the last barley cake out of the hot fat and dropped it on the tin with the others to cool. She and Saruke moved the kettle of oil away from the fire, replacing it with one filled with water. She stoked the fire with an iron rod, stirring the coals so they snapped and popped. The flames guttered a little, and a shiver of power danced down Gilene’s fingers. Tongues of fire suddenly surged upward to embrace the pot before settling down.
Saruke leapt back, eyes wide. Gilene wrestled to contain her crow of joy. Her power was returning! More a trickle than a rushing river, but still there. Were she alone, she’d close her eyes, turn inward, and hunt for the fiery red thread she could always see in her mind’s eye, one that wound through her in both flesh and spirit. Most often she resented its presence. Now, though . . . now she welcomed it.
She stirred the coals again, adopting a bored expression and ignoring Saruke’s questioning look.
“Was that your magic?” she asked.
Gilene shook her head. “I think I just hit the right bundle of coals.”
Doubt warred with excitement in Saruke’s eyes. “Are you certain? Because if you can summon fire now, then we need to send a message to the agacins, and Azarion can challenge Karsas.”
The last part of her statement made Gilene’s heart stutter a little. Blood tanistry. The attainment of leadership through murder or war was no longer common in the Empire, but the steppe clans still practiced it. Karsas had avoided using it against Azarion and taken the coward’s way, depending on others to rid him of the ataman’s son and clear the path for his own rise to the role of clan chieftain.
She took the chunks of wild turnips Saruke handed her and dumped them into the pot of boiling water. “Aren’t you frightened he might lose in such a combat?”
Saruke’s shoulders hunched as she tossed a handful of salt from a goatskin into the pot. “I just got him back after ten years. What do you think?”
They spoke no more of Azarion’s plans as the foragers trickled back, their baskets loaded with wild berries. Women and children sported stained fingers and lips from eating the fruit as they picked. Gilene and Saruke passed out the barley cakes, bowls of curd, and cups of the still-warm milk tea. Another woman took over the task of boiling the turnips, and Gilene helped herself to the cache of berries.
They all flocked together in a rough circle, passing around the prepared food and drink. Lively chatter swirled around Gilene, who could understand only bits and pieces of the many conversations and relied on Saruke’s translations to get an idea of what was said. In this, the Savatar—at least the women—were much like the women of Beroe in those topics that concerned them: difficult or kindly spouses, recalcitrant children, marriages and birth, death and war, the health of the livestock, the effects of the weather.
She would miss this once Azarion realized his ambitions and she left the Sky Below. These were not her people, not her ways, not even her language, yet here she could shed the burden of her duty as a Flower of Spring and simply be Gilene. An outlander, yes, and one whose blessing from Agna was still under a cloud of doubt, but no one here pitied her or lay the burden of their survival on her shoulders. Here, on the windy steppes, under a vault of blue sky, she could forget who she was and what waited for her to the west.
Conversation slowed to a trickle, then halted altogether at the rumble of fast hoofbeats. All six scouts who had accompanied their group to keep watch while they foraged bore down on them at full gallop, their horses’ necks stretched long as they trampled a path through the grasses. The expressions on the scouts’ faces as they rode closer made everyone stand.
Tamura reached them first, slowing her horse only enough to canter a circle around them.
“On your horses,” she shouted. “Hurry! Clan Saiga raiders headed this way.”
Had they been winged, the throng of women and children would have resembled a startled flock of birds taking flight. No one lingered to ask questions or demand details. Mothers gathered the youngest children while the older children retrieved the horses ground-tied nearby in a grazing herd.