Gilene expected darkness thick enough to weave inside the grave and was stunned to discover a high-ceilinged chamber illuminated in gradually brightening shades of gray. The source of anemic light came from a hole near the top of the roof’s vault, just big enough to allow a man in. Grave robbers had visited this tomb many times, breaking in from the top and from the door.
The clop of the horses’ hooves echoed softly in the barrow as they walked toward the chamber’s center. Gilene paused, and the mare paused with her as she peered into the shadows that clung to the curved walls and edged the packed earth steps that laddered toward the roof, stopping not far from its narrowest point and supported at regular intervals by a framework of more birch logs.
The lower step levels were a ruinous mess of broken clay pots, rotted blankets, and bits of riding tack. Among the detritus she saw bones of humans and animals. Some of the skeletons remained intact, half buried in yellow and red ocher. Beside them, a horse skull kept watch from large, empty eye sockets. Nearby, more skeletons were not so fortunate. In their search for valuables, looters had destroyed whatever careful placement relatives had arranged for their dead. Human skulls lay among the rib cages of sheep and the jawbones of dogs.
Gilene shivered and leaned against her mare. She wondered what the long-dead Gisrin might think of such desecration to his family’s gravesite. She hoped wherever his spirit resided now, it had given up such worldly cares long ago. The barrow was a macabre place to shelter, but it lacked the suffocating malevolence that shrouded Midrigar. Here, the shadows were just shadows.
Azarion led his horse to one side of the barrow, kicking aside bones and pottery shards. “Bring your mare to stand with mine. They’ll stay put, and they can graze outside tonight before we leave.”
As they had few supplies, it didn’t take long to settle in. Gilene carefully cleared away debris from the spot they’d chosen to sleep, whispering words of apology to any lingering ghost as she placed bones back on the lower step.
Azarion used the horse’s thick blankets as pallets and set them side by side. He sighed at Gilene’s dismayed expression. “I’ve had plenty of opportunity to lift your skirts, Agacin. You even raised them for me back in my cell.” Her face heated at that reminder. “If I wanted to tup you, I would have done it by now. All I desire right now is rest and warmth. I know you do too. Sleeping together is the best way to do it.”
The memory of Azarion’s body heat curved along her back certainly swayed her. Despite her best effort not to fall asleep and to keep some distance between them as they shared a pallet in the traders’ camp, she awakened in the mornings huddled under borrowed blankets and tucked against Azarion’s chest and midriff, his arm heavy on her waist. He was a light sleeper and sensed the moment she woke, rolling away to slide out from under the covers and make his way to the communal fire one of the traders had started. She had been slower to follow, content for a short time to soak up the pleasant warmth and pretend she was indeed a wife and not a captive.
Their circumstances now were far more reduced, with only the horse blankets for bedding and her shawls to ward off the chill. The barrow’s earthen walls kept out some of the cold and all of the wind, but a draft still sneaked into the entrance or whistled down from the hole in the roof. Azarion’s assurances of his disinterest in her were both a comfort and, in an odd way, an insult.
Gilene chose not to think too long on the last and crawled across the makeshift pallet to lie on her side with her back to him. Her stomach growled. She was hungry but also tired, and willed away the gnawing at her belly.
Azarion curled around her, tucking her into the cove of his body. Gilene stifled the soft groan that danced across her lips at the feel of all that lovely heat, and kept her body stiff. Already her eyelids felt as if they were weighted with stones. The whuffles and snorts from the horses nearby soothed her like a lullaby, and her limbs loosened, sinking farther into the thick horse blanket.
Azarion’s low voice revived her a little. “The sun will heat the barrow soon enough. I don’t dare light a fire. Anyone will be able to see the smoke rise from the top for leagues.”
She wrapped the edges of her shawls around her hands and tucked them under her chin. “Do you think the Empire would track you this far?”
He shrugged against her. “It depends on whether or not they think I’m worth the amount of bounty they’ve put on my head. The Empire might not send its soldiers after me this far into the steppe, but the Nunari won’t hesitate to capture outlanders and sell them as slaves. It was to them my cousin sold me, and Uzatsii is where I was put on the auction block.”
Her drowsiness evaporated. She rolled to face him. “If they catch us, they’ll sell us both.” The realization made her shudder. Her lot in life was a grim one, her fate determined the moment her magic manifested, but she had never suffered the degradation of slavery or the humiliation of the auction block.
His long lashes shadowed his eyes. “Or they’ll keep you if one of their warriors takes a liking to you.”
That made her shake even more, and Azarion’s arm pressed a little harder on her waist as if to soothe her. She pictured the Stara Dragana outside the barrow, with its swaths of flat land carpeted in plumed grasses, and sparse clumps of stunted trees dotting the landscape as it purled out to the distant mountains in the east. “So much open space.” She all but breathed the words. “And no place to hide.”
“There are barrow towns like this one along the way, laid out in a line like a road. For the most part, people avoid the places of the dead, considering them sacred. We’ll keep doing as we are now. Travel at night and shelter in a barrow during the day until we reach Savatar territory.”
Her gaze went beyond the curve of his shoulder to the laddered walls with their many skeletons and grave goods. Bones upon bones, like chaff on a threshing floor. “Never did I imagine I’d rely so much on the dead for my safety.” She rolled back to her original position, wondering at the vagaries of fate that had put her here in a grave next to a man both brutal and gentle, desperate yet unbroken.
His lack of reply to her comment meant he’d no rebuttal to offer or had fallen asleep. Gilene didn’t turn to check, choosing instead to cover her head with her scarves and warm her ears. Azarion loomed large behind her, hot as a hearth fire. The thought of a merry flame made her miss her magic. It would return in time. It always did, this thing she called a curse and Azarion named a blessing.
She slept and dreamed, not of the Empire but of her sister standing beside her as they boiled long nettle in copper vats to extract the green dye Beroe sold to the Trade Guild for their merchants to barter with on the Golden Serpent or to ship out of Manoret. Ilada said something Gilene couldn’t hear and laughed, waving her verdant-stained hands to emphasize her remark. Kraelian slavers suddenly appeared behind her to whisk her away in shackles. Gilene cried and clutched her sister’s skirts, pulling and pulling but to no avail. She called out Ilada’s name, and the girl turned, eyes wide but features calm.
“It’s my fate to burn, Gilene,” she said, and walked away with the slavers into a blinding, bloody sunset.
Gilene twitched awake with a strangled gasp. She blinked, bewildered by the blurry sight of horses and circular steps and bones. So many bones. Something lay heavy across her hip, and she glanced down to find a sun-browned hand flat against her abdomen. She tried to jerk away but was trapped by the pressure of that hand.