Tamura reclaimed her spot and watched her brother while she drank. “Hold your anger, nurse it, fan it until you can taste it on your tongue and smell it in your nose, but don’t waste it on some fool rescue attempt that’ll see your head on a gate spike for the Kraelians to jeer at when the sun rises.”
He halted to glare at her. “Would you follow this advice if it were Arita in Gilene’s place?”
She gave a humorless chuckle. “You ask that as if I’d have a choice in the matter. I wouldn’t, and neither do you.”
Azarion growled and resumed his pacing. His sibling was annoyingly correct. Dawn and battle couldn’t come soon enough. He would hack his way through every Kraelian soldier and breach the gates alone if necessary to get Gilene out of Kraelag alive.
He spent the remainder of the evening with the other atamans and commanders, going over last-minute plans for the following day. The stars mocked him from on high, reminders of a better night when the fire witch of Beroe whispered his name in a loving voice and welcomed him into her arms and body.
At dawn he’d fight; at noon she’d burn. If the gods were merciful, neither would die.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The catacombs below the city hadn’t changed in the year since Gilene had last walked across their floors. Still squalid and fetid, they welcomed her and the newest crop of Flowers of Spring into their labyrinth to await the immolation most of the capital had turned out to watch.
Rumors ran rife throughout the city, filtering down even to these depths, of savage steppe nomads who threatened Kraelag and fought the Kraelian army on the wide expanse of untilled farmland that stretched north of the capital’s main gate. Still no one seemed concerned. No one fled the city or hid in their houses. Even the emperor and empress remained in residence and planned to attend the Rites. All believed the powerful Kraelian force would annihilate, or at least drive away, the horse clans, and such a clash would not interfere with the popular Rites of Spring.
Here, under the city, no hint of the warfare taking place beyond Kraelag’s walls reached them—if one didn’t count the rumors. The Flowers, isolated in the large, damp holding cell, awaiting their deaths, caught threads and whispers of the events outside.
Gilene tried not to listen too closely or dwell too long on the idea that Azarion rode among the ranks attacking the Kraelian armies. She still believed he lived, and he had fulfilled his second promise to her: spare Beroe as the Savatar rode into the heart of the Empire. The village still stood, though others weren’t so fortunate.
There were differences as well, good and bad. Unlike the previous spring, this one was much colder, and the women huddled together in small groups for warmth and comfort. More of them crowded the holding cell, but none had been subjected to the attention of the gladiators the night before. The catacombs were uncommonly silent and empty, no vulgar shouts or comments from imprisoned fighters taunting the guards or each other, no threats from the guards themselves. The few assigned to the women were restrained, as if the events outside the city walls occupied their thoughts most.
Gilene crouched alone in one corner, her hands tucked under her arms to keep them warm. She took note of each woman in the cell. They varied more in age this year, from old to just beyond childhood, and it was the last that made her stomach lurch. The guilt that always sat heavy in the back of her mind regarding her role in these Rites threatened to overwhelm her. Her reasoning told her they were condemned to die, that the only help she could offer was the mercy of instant death instead of the horrific torture the Empire planned for them for the entertainment of the arena crowd.
Azarion’s words, that Beroe’s deception might have increased the popularity of the Rites, still made her bleed inside, and her soul, weighed down by what she must do, told her reasoning to kindly shut up.
Most of the women didn’t pay her any mind, warned away by her grim demeanor or too focused on their own misery and fear to worry about anyone else’s. Gilene wanted it that way. She still regretted the brief conversation she’d had with the prostitute Pell the previous year. Distance meant the deaths didn’t cut as deep. Her interaction with Pell still haunted her these many months later.
One woman, however, didn’t do as the others did. A small creature no older than Gilene and as delicate as a bird, with large eyes, a full mouth, and a strong jawline, stared at Gilene. That scrutiny never wavered even when Gilene scowled at her.
She leaned her head back against the damp wall and closed her eyes, listening to the quiet conversations around her.
“I was supposed to be married next month.”
“Do you think the horse clans will break through the gates?”
“If they do, it won’t be to save us.”
“Will the gods hear our prayers?”
Gilene’s eyes snapped open for a moment, and she stared at the cell bars. No, she thought. They are deaf and blind, and without mercy. She didn’t share the thought. Hopelessness already reigned supreme here. She closed her eyes again and listened.
“I miss my family.”
“So do I.”
Gilene didn’t miss hers, at least not the one in Beroe. They’d waved her off with the same presumption from previous years. This was her place; this was her purpose. A few of the villagers had even looked happy to see her go, as if the months on the Stara Dragana hadn’t been spent as a captive but as an escapee. To these villagers, such dereliction of duty deserved punishment, and a return to Kraelag as a Flower of Spring was hers.
She had refused her brothers’ offer to wait for her after the Rites were over. She didn’t want their help any longer and would find her own way out of the city, injured or not. Their lack of argument or insistence they wait had frozen her heart against them a little more.
“You gather spirits around you like bees to a flower,” a voice said close to her.
Gilene abandoned her grim recollections and opened her eyes to find the bird woman crouched next to her. “What are you talking about?”
The other woman gestured at the space they occupied. “This cell is crowded with the dead.”
Considering that every woman in here, except Gilene, would burn in the Pit in a few hours, Bird Woman was right. She waited to hear what else her odd companion might say.
“They began arriving the moment you entered. One or two and then a stream of them. All women. Except my father, of course.” She cocked her head to the side. “Can you not feel them?”
Gilene straightened away from the wall. She felt nothing but the cold and the itchy coating of dirt encrusting her skin. A sudden thought occurred to her, and she glowered at her unwanted visitor. “You’re a shade speaker, aren’t you?” At the other woman’s nod, she scooted away as if a sudden foul odor had wafted up between them. “Go away.”
Gilene believed in ghosts. After a night spent in cursed Midrigar, she’d have to be willfully blind not to. What she didn’t believe in were shade speakers.
They were charlatans of the worst sort who made their living off the grief of those who’d lost a loved one by offering to communicate with the dead. She doubted any of them had ever seen a shade, much less spoken to one. If they did, they’d outrun a frightened deer as they fled. Even the Empire didn’t recognize them as true sorcerers and left them alone.
She startled when the bird woman suddenly grasped her arm in a grip whose strength belied her small size. “Listen to me,” she hissed, before casting a quick look over her shoulder to see if anyone else heard her. “One of those women has a message for you.”