“Oya!” Saruke snapped and waved the stick in a threatening sweep that sent the nimble youths bounding out of the way like startled hares. “Make yourselves useful and pick me some wild onion. I’ll add it to the pot.” They bolted away, part eager to help, part fearful of raising her ire.
She winked at Gilene and lowered her stick before taking the offered cake. “This is good,” she proclaimed after a few bites. “They won’t complain, especially after hours with their backs bent over those berries.”
Gilene wasn’t so sure. Even though Saruke had made and rolled out the dough into individual cakes the night before, Gilene had been the one to fry most of them. The Savatar women would note it and no doubt criticize her efforts. As a possible agacin, she was treated in the most civil manner, given food to eat, a comfortable bed to sleep on, and shelter from the elements. But civility didn’t translate to friendliness, and so far only Saruke had warmed enough to her to carry on a conversation that consisted of more than grunts, a few monosyllabic replies, and suspicious scrutiny. She might be an agacin according to those witnesses who’d seen her walk through the Veil, but she was not Savatar.
Saruke finished her cake and eyed the tin sheet holding the rest of the bounty. “Another handful will do it,” she said. “Then we’ll call the others back. A pack of them that size should be able to gather every berry out there in no time. We’ll eat and head home.” Her faded eyes swept the landscape. “We’ve wandered far today and are very close to Clan Saiga territory.”
Gilene followed her gaze, seeing only the cluster of berry gatherers and the endless plume grass that grew as far as the eye could see. “How can you tell?”
Her companion audibly sniffed. “The smoke from their camp. They’re down from the mountains earlier this year. There will be skirmishes over the best pasturelands.”
In the time she’d been with the Savatar, Gilene had learned many things about the people of the Stara Dragana—mainly their love for fighting. “I thought the Savatar were united.”
Saruke scooped curds into small cups and set them out near the tin of cakes. “In their hatred for the Empire, yes, but they still squabble among themselves. One clan against another for grazing and water rights. They marry each other’s daughters and sons off to quiet the fighting, but it doesn’t last long. The moment someone from Clan Marmot kills and eats a sheep belonging to someone from Clan Wolf, they start up again. Blood feuds, ritual combat. I sometimes wish the agacins would quench the Veil. Our warriors are restless pent up behind it. If they can’t fight the Empire, they fight each other.”
If Azarion’s mother knew what Gilene did about Azarion’s plan regarding the Empire, she might not wish for such a thing. Then again, Saruke might volunteer to ride alongside him in battle. The Empire had enslaved her son. She certainly had the motivation to heed a call to war against it.
“Karsas does nothing but drink and tup,” Saruke muttered. “Useless leader, useless warrior. It’s probably better the Veil stays up.”
Her comment spurred Gilene to pursue a topic that had made her wonder since her meeting with the agacins. “Karsas betrayed Azarion, took the chieftainship from him through treachery instead of combat, yet Azarion says nothing of this to either council. Why? Wouldn’t doing so make his claim stronger? Leadership of Clan Kestrel is his birthright. His reason for bringing me is to reclaim the chieftainship. Why not tell them what happened?”
They were out of earshot from the harvesters, but she took no chances, keeping her voice low. Karsas’s wife, Arita, and their children were among those who picked, and while she observed that the marriage seemed more for political convenience than mutual affection, Gilene understood that loyalty was often commanded by more than emotion. She herself was loyal to Azarion. He was her way back home to Beroe. If she heard anything that might jeopardize his welfare, she’d tell him. That Arita would do the same for Karsas seemed probable. A memory of her time with Azarion in front of his family’s barrow, when he became something other than her adversary, teased her mind.
Saruke finished filling cups and turned her hand to pouring the milk tea. “Because he can’t prove Karsas planned his capture and enslavement, and those who could bear witness to it because they were part of it are dead. Azarion is patient. He’ll know the best time to make his accusations and take his revenge.”
“I’d think it more justice than vengeance.”
Was that a gleam of approval in Saruke’s eyes? “Can it not be both?” she said and passed a cup of the milk tea to Gilene. “You defend him as fiercely as if you were his woman, though you are not.”
Sharing the same qara day in and day out had made it difficult for Gilene and Azarion to maintain the lie that she was his concubine. Saruke was an observant woman, and it hadn’t taken her long to understand their bond was built on something else. With a warning to keep what he said between them, he told her and Tamura the truth. Gilene sat next to him, listening and nodding as he explained their first meeting, his extortion of her help, her role as a Flower of Spring, and their escape from the Empire. He left out the part about Gilene’s trickery with illusion and his own ability to discern it.
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.