“How does a woman become an agacin?” she asked.
During her stay with his clan, Gilene had settled into the daily rhythm of the camp with only a few moments of awkwardness. That assimilation was partially due to his mother’s subtle, guiding hand, but also to Gilene’s natural inclination to listen more than she spoke and an active curiosity that inspired her to learn.
The agacins were enigmas themselves, though they were held in both awe and admiration by the Savatar. “Agna chooses a handmaiden to bless according to her whim,” he replied. “No one clan is favored, no one family bears a line of agacins. A girl with the blessing doesn’t even know she has it until after her menses start and the fire manifests in some way. One family almost burned to death in their qara when their middle daughter set it alight in her sleep.”
Gilene’s gaze focused on the horizon, though Azarion thought she looked inward instead of outward. “That’s similar to the witches born in Beroe. The magic doesn’t pass from generation to generation in a single family, and it never manifests before the girl has her menses.” She frowned. “But why only Beroe? Why don’t other villages have their own fire witch?”
He didn’t have an answer. There might well be other witches, and like Beroe, those villages kept such knowledge a well-guarded secret. With the destruction of Midrigar by the Kraelian army and the Empire’s most powerful sorcerers, the emperor then had recognized the implicit threat of those born with magic and who were trained in using it. The reward for those sorcerers who did the emperor’s bidding and laid waste to what remained of Midrigar was execution, followed by the wholesale slaughter of every person in the Empire’s boundaries suspected of possessing even the smallest magic. That had been well over a century earlier, and the Empire still didn’t abide magic. If another village like Beroe sheltered a witch like Gilene, they were as vigilant as Beroe in keeping it secret.
“Your magic is different from the Savatar agacins’,” he said. “Not in the way you wield fire but in the aftermath of the summoning. They don’t suffer the wounds you do when they use their magic.”
She sighed and raised her knees to clasp her arms around her legs and rest her cheek on her kneecaps. “That must be nice.”
They sat in silence for several moments after that, watching the horse herd they’d worked earlier appear on the top of a small hillock before racing down its slope to a dip of pastureland.
“Why aren’t you married?” Azarion asked. Her snort of laughter made him raise an eyebrow.
“Who says I’m not?”
He sat up. Her rebuttal made his heart seize for a moment, a reaction that startled him. A darker emotion chased the heels of his surprise—jealousy. He reeled inwardly at the revelation. A cascade of questions rushed to his lips, but he held them back.
What is his name?
What excuse for a man would willingly surrender his wife to the horror of the Rites of Spring, not just once but many times?
Why isn’t he tearing apart all of the Empire to find you?
Do you love him?
At that last thought, he felt the blood drain from his face.
“Azarion?” Gilene reached out to touch his arm, her amusement replaced by faint concern.
He revised his question to be more direct. “Are you married?”
A bleakness chased away all humor in her features. “No. I will die young and disfigured, with no children to comfort me. What man would bind himself to a woman doomed to such a fate as mine? One made barren by her magic?” She spoke the words without a shred of self-pity, only a flat acceptance of a desolate future.
I would. Azarion crushed the thought as quickly as it blossomed in his mind, and sought frantically for some part of her statement that he could reply to without revealing his own turbulent emotions. “Our agacins aren’t barren.” She visibly startled at that declaration, and he continued. “Some are married. The ata-agacin is widowed. I think four or five of them have children. One or two have grandchildren. Why do you think your magic has made you barren?”
“Because I’m no innocent and should have had at least one child by now.”
Azarion didn’t carry the argument further. He’d seen the doubt of her own assumption flare in her eyes when he told her the agacins had children. And the hope. If Gilene were truly barren, then it was something other than her magic that made her so.
Once more, quiet reigned between them, and this time, it was Gilene who ended it with a question that might well have been a punch to his gut. “Why have you never used me? Without my magic to defend myself, I couldn’t stop you.”
Painful memories battered him. He allowed them their abuse, then pushed them away. He might one day be able to face them and not flinch, scatter them into nothing because they no longer meant anything to him, but today was not that day.
Gilene watched him, curious but also patient with his delayed response. While not a slave to the Empire as he had been, she had been its victim. Understood firsthand its cruelties and debasements, had suffered them and walked away bitter but still unbowed. If anyone might understand his reasoning, it was she.
He stared down at one of the patterns stitched in the horse blanket on which he sat. “Because I know what it is to be used. By one. By many. The empress likes an audience when she plays with her toys, and sometimes she likes the audience to participate.” When had his voice become so hoarse? His throat so tight? “The worst injuries I ever suffered—those that almost killed me—weren’t earned in the Pit but in Dalvila’s bedchamber. I might not have been able to help a Flower of Spring escape the fire when I was a gladiator, but I never made them, or any woman, suffer rape. I never have. I never will.”
He didn’t know if his words reassured her or if his revelation regarding his own tortures at the empress’s delicate but merciless hands repulsed her, just as they repulsed him. But he no longer felt so burdened.
Gilene knee-walked from her spot to sit directly in front of him. Compassion, not pity, softened her gaze, and there was a warmth there that hadn’t been present before when she looked at him. Behind those softer emotions, a banked fury glowed. She didn’t touch him, nor did he reach for her, but her nearness filled all of his senses, and he leaned closer.
Her voice was as soft as the look in her eyes, her sentiment as unforgiving as her anger. “If I could, I would turn Kraelag into a scorch mark on the landscape.”
They stared at each other until Azarion offered her a small smile. “I believe you.”
Her gaze slid to a point beyond his shoulder. “Why did you bring me to this barrow?”
Grateful for the change in topic, he gained his feet and helped her stand. The barrow was a simple mound, lacking any decorative steles to describe some dead ataman’s military exploits or brag about his vigor and the many children he had sired. The only ornamentation lay in a carved disk set in the entrance’s stone lintel—a kestrel with outstretched wings.
“My ancestors are buried here, including my father.” He traced the kestrel. “I was born in front of this barrow. My mother insisted on it. She said the shared blood of mother, father, and child would bind me closer to my ancestors. To my grandfathers who ruled before my father. Their spirits would guide me when I assumed the role of ataman.” He stroked the rough stone. “I wanted to show you that not all barrows are hiding places for the hunted or nests for wights. If fortune favors me, I’ll be put in there to lie alongside my father when I die.”