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.
The two men stared at each other. Azarion hid his contempt behind a carefully neutral facade. Karsas wore a similar expression, one that didn’t quite conceal the shock and wariness flitting through his eyes as he gazed at his nemesis.
The crowd quieted as the staring match lasted beyond a natural pause and into something awkward. And dangerous. Hands dropped to knives sheathed at the waist and swords sheathed at the hip. Karsas broke the rising tension when his regard shifted to Gilene, who sat frozen on her horse.
Karsas arched an eyebrow, his faint smile more a sneer. “Who is this?”
Azarion glanced at Gilene, who returned Karsas’s stare with a steady one of her own. “My woman, Gilene.” He paused, savoring the anticipation of the moment and what his next statement would mean to his cousin. “She’s an agacin.”
More surprised gasps from the crowd rose, and they exclaimed among themselves over the idea of a Kraelian agacin. Who had ever heard of such a thing? Their net tightened even more as they edged closer for a better look at this handmaiden not born and raised behind the Veil.
Had Azarion blinked or looked away for a moment, he would have missed Karsas’s reaction to the revelation, but the signs were there, slight and subtle to the casual observer, obvious to Azarion. His cousin flinched, and there at his left eye a tic started in his eyelid, the fold of skin twitching in a haphazard pattern as he stared at Gilene.