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.
Gilene helped Saruke douse the fire with the water used to boil the turnips. “What about our supplies?”
“Leave them,” Saruke snapped. “If those Saiga catch any of us, it will cost the Kestrels a lot more in ransom to get them back than what a basket of berries or a couple of pots are worth.”
They hurried to join the others and capture their horses. Only half their number had mounted when a high, triumphant cry sang on the wind. The low swale in which the group had foraged was surrounded on three sides by ridges. Neither high nor difficult to scale on horse or on foot, they nonetheless created a blind spot for those in the swale.
A line of horsemen slowly fanned across the top of one ridge, at least thirty, maybe forty—far more than the pitiful few who rode to put themselves between the Saiga raiders and the Kestrel women and children.
Tamura shouted over her shoulder, and Saruke hurriedly translated. “Hurry it up. We can’t fight them all, but those on fast mares can outrun them while she and the others hold some of them off.”
Gilene leapt to follow Tamura’s order, then stopped. She was no warrior, no strategist or leader of soldiers, but even she could see their bid to escape the surrounding Saiga was futile. The six brave men and women trying to protect their clanswomen would die in the effort. She glanced at Saruke, who hesitated as well, her face white with fear. Not for herself but for her daughter whose straight back, fierce expression, and steady hands on the bow showed a warrior eager for a fight.