by Grace Draven
He turned to see the woman the factor spat at approach them, her expression a mix of sorrow, fury, and gratitude. So this was Hali, whom Asil so obviously loved and held in esteem.
Asil offered the cake she held. “I wanted to get you something nice, but I smashed one of the flowers when I almost fell.” Her eyes welled with disappointed tears.
Hali took the cake before gently enfolding Asil in a close embrace. “I’m a fortunate daughter to have you,” she said softly. The taller of the two, she straightened and rested her chin on Asil’s head before mouthing a “thank you” to both Malachus and the vendor. She leaned back to meet Asil’s eyes. “I don’t care if all the flowers got ruined, Mama. It will still taste wonderful, and you can share with me.”
Fascinated by the interplay between this particular parent and adult child, with their uniquely reversed roles, Malachus motioned to the vendor. “Pack all those the factor ruined and paid for and give them to these two,” he whispered. “If they have more family, they can share with them.”
The other man nodded and set about wrapping up a dozen small cakes and hand pies in towels to send off with Asil and her daughter.
Once more Malachus found it difficult not to stare too long at the woman called Hali, seeing again her image as the lightning had shown it. The sense of his mother-bond hadn’t changed with her proximity, though he again heard the notes of her magic sing to his spirit.
She must have sensed or heard hints of his power as well, for the grateful spark in her eyes took on the glitter of the same wariness he’d seen there yesterday. “My name is Halani, serdah, and I appreciate what you and Telkak here did for my mother,” she said.
Halani, then. The longer formal version of Asil’s more affectionate diminutive. Malachus liked it. A gracious name, it suited her.
Asil, no longer teary-eyed, planted her hands on her hips and gave Malachus an arch look. “And that arsewipe was a liar. I’m not a cuntmonger.”
Halani gasped, her outrage ignited by Asil’s revelation. “He called you that?” She hid her hands in the folds of her skirt, but not before Malachus saw them curl into fists. Her gray eyes no longer possessed that somber softness he found so beguiling, turning instead as hard and flat as unpolished steel.
Malachus offered Asil a short bow. “I believe you, madam. And for what it’s worth, even if that were your profession, I suspect you’d have better taste than to choose his ilk as your customers.”
Halani gave a delicate snort, and the vendor she referred to as Telkak guffawed. Asil offered him a sweet grin.
At first refusing the cloth-wrapped packages Telkak held out to her, Halani readily accepted them when he told her, “Take them. They’re paid for with the factor’s coin. That’ll make them taste even better.”
“Thank you, friend,” she replied. “They will indeed.” She met Malachus’s eyes. “Twice you’ve offered and given us aid, and still I don’t know your name so I may properly thank you, serdah.”
“I’m Malachus, and no thanks necessary, madam. Some people are in desperate need of a comeuppance. I’m happy to oblige.” He wasn’t a hero by any stretch. Force-feeding the Guild factor a helping of his own contempt had been a pleasure.
“I like your name,” Asil declared.
He grinned. “I’m glad you approve, Madam Asil. I like yours, too.”
“Come, Mama.” Halani nudged her away from Telkak’s table and toward the street. “Uncle sent me to find you.” She handed her gift of the flower cake back to Asil. “Hold on to this until we reach camp. It will be just for you and me. Marata can make tea, and we’ll share the rest of the bounty with everyone.” She thanked both men a third time, reminding Asil to do the same.
Malachus bowed in acknowledgment, watching the two women walk away until the growing crowd blocked them from view.
“That was a decent thing you did, serdah,” Telkak said.
Malachus stepped to the side so that other customers could approach the table and place their orders. One of Telkak’s assistants took over, leaving Telkak with a few free moments to chat. He joined Malachus. “A lot of folks will try and take advantage of Asil and those like her. I’m sure you figured out why quick enough. Her kin do a good job of protecting her, especially her daughter, but sometimes the most loving family can’t shield them from arsewipes like that Guild factor.”
Malachus frowned. “I saw him yesterday in the market. He spat at Halani when she passed him on the street. It was unprovoked. Do you know why he’d do it?”
Telkak eyed him curiously. “You’re definitely an outlander if you need to ask such a question. Halani and Asil are part of a free trader band, merchants who refuse to join and abide by the rules of the Empire’s Trade Guild. Until recently, the Guild controlled all trade on the Golden Serpent, the road cutting through all the territories under Kraelian rule, and they used the Kraelian army as their sword to strengthen their grip. It barred all free traders from working the Serpent. It’s lucrative business. Keeping the free traders restricted to the drover paths and less traveled roads to do their trading stops them from rising in wealth and power.”
“And stifles competition for the Guild.”
“Just so.” Telkak thrust his chin in the direction Halani and Asil went. “There’s no love lost between the Guild and the free traders. The factor and the nest of wasps he reports to are probably spinning on their thumbs at no longer having the Serpent under their watch in these parts now that the Goban and Savatar destroyed this garrison and the other three that once held this territory for the Empire.”
Telkak’s explanation solved the mystery of the Guild factor’s reaction to the women and shed light on some of everyday life in these unfamiliar lands. Malachus didn’t ask about Asil’s behavior. Anything from a head injury to emotional trauma to a mishap during her mother’s labor might explain why Asil had the face and body of a woman old enough to bounce grandchildren on her knees but not the maturity of a grandmother. It was none of his business, though he was tempted to ask more about Halani.
Unless it led him to the mother-bond, such curiosity served no purpose. While he didn’t regret coming to Asil’s defense, it had taken away valuable time from his search. He eyed the table with its newest offerings of sweets. His stomach rumbled even louder in anticipation as he reached into his own coin bag for a belsha to purchase a pie.
Telkak stopped him with a shake of his head, chose two pies, and wrapped them himself before presenting them with a flourish. “Already paid for by His Royal Shithead himself,” he said with a grin. “I heard your belly chatting you up while you were choking the life out of him and counted out an extra belsha or two to pay for your breakfast as well. Enjoy.”
Malachus returned the grin, thanked Telkak for the food, and saluted him before leaving the stall.
He ate as he continued scouting the market, using the cloth Telkak had wrapped around the pies to clean his hands and later dunk into a barrel of rainwater. He wiped his face as the sun beat down on him and the crowd filling the market’s streets.
The more sparsely populated outskirts offered a welcome respite from the heat and smells of sweating bodies packed too closely together. Here, on the southern side of the market, the ground didn’t drain as well, and while the breeze cooled the air, it carried with it swarms of biting insects that bred by the millions in standing pools of water. Malachus adopted the same mode of dress as other travelers he’d seen in a bid to reduce the number of bites to his face, turning his kerchief into a face shield.
If the men he hunted wore the same, his task of finding them had just gotten a lot harder. By the same token, they’d have a harder time spotting him.
His search took him close to an encampment defined by numerous wagons parked nose to tail in a large ring. The wagons perched on large axles that raised the structures high enough off the ground that they required steps to reach their interiors. They we
re small homes on large wheels, complete with arched roofs, windows dressed in flower boxes, and ornately decorated doors. Some had the required steps folded down from the thresholds, while others lacked an entry without taking a running leap that guaranteed a painful face-plant if the door was closed. Temporary livestock pens occupied the protected space within the ring, with corrals for the bigger animals, such as the horses and oxen, hugging the outer perimeter.
A half dozen people moved about the camp, occupied with various tasks. The camp’s size suggested that a greater population of people occupied the spot. He guessed the majority worked the market at whatever tables and booths they’d set up. Malachus retraced his steps, picking a path to the camp that was shielded from watchful eyes by the thick barricades of wild rye with its slender stalks and bristled flower heads, which grew taller than a man and hid one with ease.
The draga within him suddenly convulsed, and Malachus’s breath crashed in his lungs as the beacon of his mother-bond went from a steady siren’s song with only a general sense of place to a javelin of shrieking command, and it came directly from this camp. Overwhelmed by its forceful pull, he didn’t hear or sense the danger behind him until too late.
Three rapid-fire thwangs teased his ear for a split second before powerful blows slammed into his body, striking his side, his hip, and just below his collarbone. The impacts hammered a shock wave of agony through him, leaving him with only the ability to gasp. He crashed to his side and rolled. A stuttered moan spilled past his lips, and his hands automatically reached for the arrow shaft sticking out from just below his collarbone, its fletching still shivering from the force of its penetration through skin and muscle.
He wrapped a hand around its length and tugged, nearly blacking out with the effort. Broadhead or bodkin tip, the arrowhead was buried deep. If he yanked it out, he’d likely bleed to death before the power of his magic could heal him. The frailty of his human body was as troublesome as the imprisoned strength of his draga one. Worse, a suspicious tingling spread from the injury points, oozing into his bones, turning them into water. Poisoned. His thoughts dragged as if caught in a river current. Whoever shot him had poisoned the arrowheads.
He concentrated on breathing slowly, hand moving to the arrow shaft extending from his side. Too low to puncture a lung but deep enough to penetrate other vital organs. It proved the most painful, trapping him on his opposite side and positioned in such a way that every twitch made the arrowhead bite even deeper into him.
The archer who shot him knew where to aim and where to hit, their accuracy admirable. The arrow shafts, crafted of animal bone, were far too strong for a man to break with his bare hands. But Malachus wasn’t an ordinary man. He gripped the base of the arrow shaft where it sank into his chest and used his other hand to bend its length. His hands were numb, fingers struggling to obey his mind’s command to curl around the shaft and grip. A low groan escaped his clenched teeth despite his best efforts to hold it in.
Voices, speaking in furtive whispers, drew closer. Malachus let his arms fall, closed his eyes, and relaxed his jaw so that his mouth fell partially open. He slowed his breathing, hoping his clothing and position made it difficult to discern the minute rise and fall of his chest. Part of him prayed whoever approached got close enough for him to take his vengeance, though he wondered if he could even lift his head now. Pain and nausea made it hard for him to stay silent, stay still.
“Is he dead?”
“Looks like it to me.”
Malachus didn’t recognize the voices, but the language he knew. These men were Winosian, like him. He’d tracked them across kingdoms and a sea, the latest “owners” of his mother-bond, who’d either bought or stolen it from the previous thief who’d absconded with it.
“I told you we shoulda never taken the bone from that old seer. And that ball sack Gedamon lied through his teeth. He was supposed to poison this fucker for us. At least enough to slow him down and give us a chance to get out of here.”
“Shut it, Plunk,” the other voice replied. “It don’t matter now. He looks like crow bait to me.”
“Maybe we should check him to make sure.”
Yes, Malachus thought, staring through slitted eyes at the blurry outlines of the two men standing nearby. Come a little closer.
A gravid pause followed Plunk’s suggestion before his companion replied in withering tones. “Feel free to walk over there, shithead, and check him yourself. I’ll stay here and keep an eye out.”
Plunk, obviously the less intelligent of the two, huffed. “Fine, I will, and if I come across his coin stash, the money is mine.”
Malachus adopted a limp facade, becoming deadweight that Plunk shoved around, which forced Malachus to bite his cheek to suppress his shrieks until blood filled his mouth and trickled from one corner. The effect had an unforeseen and fortunate result. It, more than Malachus’s limp body, convinced not only Plunk he was dead, but his companion as well, who now crouched beside him to scavenge his corpse.
It was then that Malachus struck.
The poison had seized his muscles, slowing him down so that every movement felt like swimming through mud, but he was fast enough to take the two men by surprise. He first attacked the one crouched closest to his head and with a bow slung across his back. Malachus jerked the knife the man held out of his hand, turned the blade, and rammed it through the archer’s throat. He’d barely tumbled away with a soft gurgle before Malachus twisted, adrenaline and draga rage pumping through his veins along with the poison, so that for a moment he didn’t feel the pain of the arrow wounds or the poison’s effects. He scissored his legs over Plunk’s shoulders to clamp his neck between his knees and twisted again. A dull snap sounded, and Plunk’s full weight fell on Malachus, narrowly missing crushing the arrow embedded in his side and pinning him to the ground from the waist down.
Contorted in a way that threatened to crack his spine in six places and losing the range of his vision to a fuzzy darkness, Malachus shut his eyes against the battering of sunlight on his lids. The incapacitating numbness had spread so that he no longer felt the pressure of Plunk’s dead body draped across him. Something scuttled across his cheek and over his brow, a spider maybe, or a water beetle deciding whether or not he was dead enough yet to feast on.
A thought drifted through his mind. The mother-bond’s beckoning had come from the camp in front of him, not from his attackers, who’d sneaked up on him. They didn’t have the mother-bond when they shot him. Someone else did. He spat out the blood in his mouth, a sluggish effort that managed to spill most of it down his chin.
Darkness swamped his senses, blotting out the last glows of sunlight filtering past his closed lids, drowning his vaporous musings of gray eyes and lightning, even smothering the mother-bond’s infinite call to him. He was dying, and not in the way he’d feared—immolated or torn asunder by his heritage. Instead, he lay sprawled on wet ground, kept company in death by the murderous, the larcenous, and the treacherous. Had the poison not robbed him of the ability, Malachus would have laughed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The gods were kind to put Azarion and Gilene in our path those months ago.” Hamod raised his cup of mare’s milk in a toast to the pair where they sat together in spots reserved for the ataman and his favored guests. The tent, or qara as the Savatar called it, was crowded with clansmen and free traders. All raised their cups in response to the toast and cheered their chieftain and his consort in loud voices.
Halani hid her wry smile behind her cup. The previous evening Hamod had sung an altogether different tune when she’d delivered Azarion’s message to him. Her uncle’s features had darkened with a thundercloud of temper.
“That lying whoreson.” He practically snarled the words. “I knew I recognized him. That fool’s story of being the son of an Empire woman and Nunari soldier always made me wonder. He was the Gladius Prime!”
Halani had blinked at
him, confused. Everyone in the Empire had heard of the Gladius Prime, though most had never seen him up close.
She finally interrupted his hour-long tirade. “Uncle, he was a valuable slave who’d escaped his masters. Once they realized he was gone, they’d have likely set soldiers, bounty hunters, and dogs on his scent to recapture him. Can you blame Azarion for lying to us about who he was? For the bounty he’d fetch, his own mother would’ve turned him over to his pursuers.” She had no doubt Hamod wouldn’t have thought twice about doing the same.
Hamod’s scowl hadn’t lessened. “It doesn’t matter. When he lied to us and took advantage of our charity, he put all of us—you, Asil, everyone in this caravan—in jeopardy. Can you imagine what his masters might have done to us had they discovered we sheltered their most valuable property?”
He had a point. She knew very little of Azarion’s past. A slave fighter who faced the bloodbath of Kraelag’s infamous Pit—not once but many times—he’d found a way to break his shackles and flee. Halani applauded him for it and still didn’t regret helping him and Gilene. Sometimes one took a stand for mercy, even when it involved risk to oneself. In this, she and her uncle differed vastly in their philosophies.
His resentment over Azarion’s deception blunted a little after they’d arrived in the Savatar encampment, where Azarion, Gilene, and Azarion’s clansmen hailed the free traders as heroes. Hamod had even cracked a pleased smile when Azarion showered their group with a mountain of gifts as thanks for bringing Gilene safely back to him, even if her return had merely been part of a fortuitous decision on Hamod’s part to attend the Goban market and take advantage of the fact that the Golden Serpent was no longer restricted only to the Guild traders.
Reclined against a soft pillow placed on the qara’s carpeted floor, with her drink in hand and the remains of a sumptuous supper in front of her, Halani watched the Savatar repeatedly approach Gilene with small offerings and tokens to be blessed, their bows deep, their faces almost glowing with a reverence reserved for a devotee’s worship. Gilene wore the look of the desperate: part cringe, part uneasy smile, as she graciously offered a few words to each person while gripping Azarion’s knee with a white-knuckled hand.
