They were met by a crowd of curious clansmen, with both Azarion and Karsas waiting on either side of the qara’s entrance. When the ata-agacin shook her head, the crowd lost interest and slowly dispersed. Karsas lingered, a gloating smile twisting his vulpine features. Gilene turned away and followed a stoic Azarion back to his mother’s tent.
They were met by a dour Tamura and a more sympathetic Saruke, who offered cups of tea as consolation. Their qara was quiet, with only the clink of the teapot against a cup to break the silence as Saruke administered refills.
Azarion’s gaze looked beyond the qara’s lattice frame and felt covering to some invisible horizon, his face forbidding. The unaccountable urge to apologize to him hovered on Gilene’s lips, and she bit them nearly bloody to stop the words. She had nothing to apologize for. This was his failure, not hers. Saruke had told her earlier that upon Iruadis’s death, the agacins had voted unanimously to make Karsas ataman. Until that vote was challenged by another agacin, it trumped Azarion’s right to reclaim the chieftainship through ritual combat.
Gilene’s spirits fell even more, and she suspected she wore the same disappointed scowl as Tamura across from her.
Azarion set aside his cup and rose to rummage through a set of trays that acted as Saruke’s pantry. He returned to their circle around the brazier with a flask. “This calls for something stronger than tea.” He thumbed the top off the flask and took a swallow before passing the flask on to Gilene. “Not unexpected,” he said. “But still not a good day.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed and swallowed a mouthful of the drink as sour as her mood.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Azarion led two horses toward the outskirts of the camp as the women and children dismantled the qaras and packed the felt coverings and frames into waiting wagons. Clan Kestrel prepared for its summer move east and deeper into the Sky Below where pastures untouched by sheep waited to be grazed. All the Savatar clans did the same, staking their claims to ancestral grazing lands and reviving the annual summer trade markets with the Goban people at the base of the Gamir Mountains.
He spotted his sister not far from the camp, astride a gray mare, talking to other riders. They had argued good-naturedly earlier in the day over who would help the drovers move the sheep herds and who would capture the wild mares and foals to replenish the camp’s milk supply before they decamped.
They had resorted to a child’s game of slap-knuckle to decide who got first choice of tasks, and Azarion won. Tamura had grumbled over her loss but set out to meet up with other riders and join the drovers bringing in the sheep. Azarion whistled sharply as he walked the pair of horses past their little group and gave Tamura a cheerful wave. She responded with a rude hand gesture and stuck her tongue out at him before tapping her heels into her mount’s sides to gallop away with her companions.
The ataman’s qara would be the last one dismantled and the first to go up when they arrived at the new camp spot. Karsas had announced the plan to move three days prior, and since then the camp had been a frenzy of activity and noise as wagons were lined up and qaras broken down into stacks of lattice, poles, and folded felt. Karsas had watched it all in indolent splendor from his seat on a rug in front of his qara’s door.
As if conjured by Azarion’s thoughts, the ataman suddenly stepped out from the shadow of a still-standing qara and blocked Azarion’s path. He wore a tunic in need of washing, and his eyes held the glassy sheen of inebriation. The strong fumes of fermentation drifting off his breath made Azarion turn his face away and cough.
What Karsas’s gaze lacked in sober clarity, it more than made up for in malice. “Did you really think that little trick you pulled with the Fire Council would actually work?”
Azarion didn’t try to pretend he didn’t understand his cousin’s question. This confrontation had been a fortnight in the making, ever since Gilene had failed to garner status of agacin from the Fire Council. Ever since Azarion had first passed through the Veil and returned to the Sky Below and the clan of his birth.
“Gilene walked through the Fire Veil and didn’t burn. She may have failed the test, but Agna has noted and blessed her.”
Karsas snorted. “Sorcerous trick from some renegade wizard taught to a Kraelian whore in exchange for her favors. Agna doesn’t bless those who don’t worship her.”
Azarion’s hand settled on his knife handle where it rose from its sheath. Gilene wasn’t a whore, and even if she were, she possessed more character and bravery in her little finger than this piece of filth did in his entire body.
He kept his expression neutral, recognizing Karsas’s insult for what it was: a calculated move meant to give maximum offense and incite the predictable response.
“As ataman, you speak for the clan, but you are still only ataman, or do you believe yourself more now and speak for the goddess as well?”
Karsas blanched at the question, couched in the vague accusation of blasphemy. He glanced skyward for a moment as if expecting a lightning bolt to crackle out of the blue and strike him. His lips drew back in a snarl. “You should have stayed dead. You no longer belong in the clan. Your place should be forfeit. The Sky Below is not your home, nor is it your concubine’s, even if she can set the steppe ablaze with her power. The Fire Council will never name her as an agacin, and the chieftainship will remain mine. You gave it up ten years ago.”
He spoke in a low voice so that only Azarion could hear him. They faced each other in the shadow of the qara, backed by its frame on one side and that of the two horses Azarion led through the camp on the other.
Azarion’s quiet tones matched Karsas’s, though he seethed inside with the urge to gut the man right there and pay the consequences for the impulse. “I gave away nothing. You had three men ambush me on a hunt, beat me until I was unconscious, and sell me to the Empire. You took the coward’s path, Cousin, by not killing me yourself.” His lip curled in a sneer. “You shame your sire; you shame your ancestors, and one day, everyone will know it.”
Karsas lunged for him, and Azarion met him halfway. They slammed together. Azarion pressed his blade’s edge against Karsas’s throat. A sharp sting in his side warned him that his cousin wielded a blade of his own and threatened to slide it between his ribs.
The two men gripped each other in a lethal embrace as the camp’s occupants eddied and flowed nearby, unaware of the confrontation between their current ataman and the man from whom he had stolen the title.
“Finally,” Azarion said, nearly nose to nose with his cousin. “You grow a spine and would fight me.” He didn’t flinch when the tip of Karsas’s knife pierced his tunic and flesh, sending a trickle of wet heat sliding down his side. His own blade pressed a little harder as well, leaving a shallow cut on Karsas’s throat that welled with blood.