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.
Karsas’s voice remained unchanged except for another level of chilliness. “There are no agacins beyond the Veil, nor any who aren’t Savatar.”
Masad spoke up. “I saw with my own eyes as she walked through the fire untouched.”
Karsas cut him a glare. “Empire sorcery.”
To emphasize his words and demonstrate his claim on her for the witnesses gathered, Azarion placed his hand on Gilene’s knee. She accepted his possessive touch, though her thigh muscle was so tense, it might have been a slab of rock under her skirts. “She’s blessed by Agna, as am I since she chose me.”
Karsas’s hand dropped to the pommel of his sword. “So you say,” he replied, and there was no mistaking the snide disbelief in his voice. The crowd grumbled, uneasy at his faint mockery of a woman declared a handmaiden of Agna.
Sensing their unrest, his demeanor changed. He donned a cloak of friendly welcome and spread his arms in a gesture meant to encompass them all. “A long-lost son of the Savatar has returned to us. We will celebrate and call council afterward to learn what happened to him during the long years he was gone!” The crowd’s mood swung from disquiet to jubilance, and they cheered. Karsas bared his teeth at Azarion in a sham of a smile. “Until then, I think your mother will be pleased to have you and your . . . woman stay in her qara.” He spun away to return to the encampment, an entourage of grim-faced warriors following him as he cut through the throng.
Gilene bent down from her perch to whisper in his ear. “Obviously not all are happy to see you. And take your hand off my leg.”
He gave a short laugh and moved away from her to pull Saruke close to him again. “Off your horse,” he told Gilene. “We’ll walk from here to my mother’s home. We can eat, rest, and sleep warm by a fire. There will be a celebration tomorrow night and probably a council gathering the day after.”
Her expression brightened and darkened by turns at the mention of food and rest and then celebration. She dismounted and came to stand before the staring Saruke and Tamura. Her low bow was respectful without being obsequious. “It’s an honor to meet the family of Azarion,” she said in formal Kraelian.
Unlike Azarion, the two women didn’t speak the language and glanced at him for translation. He obliged, telling both, “She’s addressed you in Kraelian high tongue as a sign of respect. Speak trader’s tongue, so we can all understand each other.”
Saruke’s face softened into a cautious smile; Tamura’s did not. She watched Gilene with a raptor’s focus as if trying to see the magic inside her that made her one of Agna’s handmaidens.
Saruke took Gilene’s hand. “Come, we’ll walk together while my son is remembered to his friends.” They strolled leisurely toward the encampment, leaving Azarion to face a swarm of well-wishers who embraced him, slapped him on the back, and passed around skins of fermented mare’s milk in an impromptu celebration of his return.
By the time he broke free of old friends and new acquaintances, his head buzzed from countless swigs of the potent milk. Masad showed him the way to one of the seasonal creeks, now swollen with melted snow and spring rain.
“Saruke won’t let you into her qara smelling like you do.” Masad wrinkled his nose and promised to return with a change of clothes. Azarion used the time to dig up a fist-size bulb of soaproot not far from the creek. All around him, other holes were made, signs the women had been here earlier, harvesting the wild root for either roasting to eat or crushed into a poultice for infected wounds or a sickly stomach.
He pulled away the tough fibers from the bulb and peeled back the sticky layers. The water was so cold that it burned his skin, and his teeth chattered hard enough to make his jaw hurt as he washed his body and hair, sending islands of soaproot lather careening down the creek’s fast current. By the time he was finished, he was numb, and he dressed in the clothes Masad brought him with fingers made stiff from the cold.
He followed his uncle toward his mother’s qara in the fading afternoon. Masad led him through the maze of felt-covered shelters whose placement might look chaotic to an outsider but made perfect sense to a Savatar. The ataman’s home occupied the camp’s center space with all others radiating out from its point. Those subchiefs and families of high status raised their qaras closest to the ataman’s, while those of lesser rank pitched closer to the camp’s perimeter.
Azarion was surprised to discover his mother’s tent not too far from Karsas’s, still in a spot that denoted her status as the widow of an ataman but below that of the subchiefs who helped Karsas lead the clan. One day, very soon, she’d take her place in or right beside the ataman’s qara if his plans still found favor under Agna’s gaze.
Masad patted him on the shoulder at the entrance. “Spend time with your mother and sister. Tup your priestess tonight, and tomorrow seek me out. We’ll hunt, and you can tell me all that happened while you lived within the Empire’s borders.”
He left Azarion with a promise to retrieve him before dawn. Azarion stared at the low doorway that, like some of the barrows, forced a person to bow or hunch to enter. Azarion had been raised in a qara but hadn’t seen the inside of one in a decade. So many recollections crashed down on him—the filtered sunlight spilling in a column to the floor from the qara’s crown, bedding and cook pots stacked against lattice-framed walls held up by steam-bent timber ribs and wheels that his people traded silver and livestock for with the Goban clans to the east. The heady scent of cooking food drifted to his nostrils, and the sound of women’s voices talking teased his ears. He bent and swept into the qara.
The sight that greeted him gladdened his heart. Saruke sat on a rug near a fire, stirring something fragrant in a pot he remembered from his childhood—a gift given to her by his father on the birth of the brother who didn’t live past infancy. Tamura sat across from her, against the felt and timber wall, hands busy at building a bow. She stilled at her work to watch him from the shadows.