Phoenix Unbound

by Grace Draven

  A troop of Kraelian soldiers marched toward the square from one of the offshoot streets. Azarion hunched to make himself smaller and bowed his head. The beard he let grow over the past week obscured half his face, but he was a tall man, taller than most, and men of great height were always noticed by others.

  “You said your goodbyes yesterday,” he muttered, and yanked her into a doorway. The troop marched ever closer. Azarion crammed himself and Gilene into the shallow space, positioning them in such a way that his back was mostly to the street while Gilene faced it. He cupped her face between his hands, glimpsed the shocked expression that widened her eyes and made her lips part, and kissed her.

  As kisses went, this was a shambles of one—nothing more than the pressing of lips back against teeth. Azarion trapped Gilene in the unyielding cage of his arms and watched the soldiers from the corner of one slitted eye. Except for a few amused snorts, they ignored the passionately entwined pair in the doorway and continued their way through the square toward the main gate.

  The moment they were out of sight, Azarion broke the kiss and dodged the slap Gilene attempted to deliver.

  “I don’t care that there are Kraelian troops prowling the streets. Never do that again,” she said, the words almost garbled by the snarling fury in her voice. Had he still carried his knife, no doubt she would have tried to use it against him.

  He kept a wary eye on her hands. “Woman, your value to me doesn’t sit behind your lips or between your legs.” Her fury lessened a fraction at his words. “We need to get out of Wellspring Holt with two horses and a day’s worth of supplies. Horses without army brands on their hindquarters. There’s bound to be a nearby stable with the like for the taking.”

  Gilene’s gaze lit with another fire, one of calculation. “Take one horse and go your way. Whether or not the Empire gets you back is of no concern to me. You’ll reach the Stara Dragana a lot faster if you go alone.”

  He shook his head, amusement blending with his exasperation. “You’re valuable enough to make it worth the effort and the delay, Agacin.”

  “If you’re caught because you’re too slow, all your plans with me at their center will be for nothing.”

  “We won’t get caught.”

  Her upper lip lifted the tiniest fraction in a faint sneer. “I won’t. I’m not the one running from the Empire.”

  With the threat of killing the caravan folk no longer an issue once they had parted ways, she was back to fighting him and doing so even harder now that her burns were healed and she felt better. Azarion scowled. “You think so? You, more than many, know of the Empire’s mercies. Do you really think they’ll believe their Gladius Prime decided to take a woman on a whim during his escape? They’ll think you helped me. I will tell them you helped me.”

  She paled at his words, the rebellion that flared in her eyes burning out. Her shoulders slumped, and she leaned back against the sliver of wall where it edged the closed door behind her back. “Let me go.”

  “Not yet.”

  With the most fragile of truces between them, they left the shelter of the doorway to merge once more with the milling crowd. Azarion kept a grip on Gilene’s arm, though she offered no resistance to his touch this time. Her head was bowed, shoulders slumped. Hamod’s caravan was nowhere to be seen, but it wasn’t the traders Azarion searched for as he and Gilene navigated their way through a sea of people.

  Every town the size of Wellspring Holt had a public stable yard—a place where visitors to the town could leave their horses for a few hours or a night while they visited or shopped or did business. The stable offered a variety of services at escalating prices, from a spot at a hitching post to a full grooming by a team of stableboys.

  He spotted a group of a half dozen mounted men—scholars and monks instead of soldiers—and followed them as they rode through the town at a casual pace. Gilene remained silent, even when Azarion picked up their pace to keep up. He paused when the stable yard came into view around the corner of a bustling tavern.

  Horses crowded the space, tied to hitches or placed in stalls, depending on their owners’ means. Grooms wove in and out of the lines of their equine charges, some hauling water, others hay or feed, and still others carrying saddles and tack or grooming tools.

  From his vantage point, Azarion had a clear view of several of the animals, many of them lacking the brand that marked them as army ponies. There were a number to choose from, but his gaze settled on two that looked sturdy and quick.

  He pulled the silent Gilene along with him, circling the perimeter of the yard in a meandering path, pretending to find the contents of some of the vendor stalls nearby interesting enough to stop and take a look. Always his eyes shifted back to the yard, noting the entrance in one corner, the two exits at opposite ends, and the door by which the grooms came and went to the stable and where the three guards who were paid to watch that no one made off with the horseflesh had set up their sentry.

  Stealing two horses in broad daylight guaranteed a hanging from the gallows or a spearhead through the belly. Doing so at night was no less dangerous but had a marginally better chance of success. He’d wait until then, and in the meantime scout the various stalls in the quieter part of the town, far away from the brothel alleys where the Kraelian troops were most likely to quarter and while away an afternoon. He didn’t have the skills of a pickpocket, but he was quick enough to snatch bits of food from hawkers busy with other customers.

  The bustling crowds worked in his favor, both to hide him in their midst and to provide cover while he pilfered pieces of fruit, a small sack of oats enough for a road breakfast, and a wedge of cheese wrapped in cloth. He slipped the fruit into a small satchel he stole from the back of a cheesemonger’s stall and tucked the oats and cheese wedge into the pockets of Gilene’s apron. Her disapproval hung about her like a storm cloud, though she didn’t resist when he filled her pockets with the items.

  They were tracking back toward the stable yard when a warning shout went up next to them. A wagon, overloaded and overbalanced with crates full of grain sacks, tipped to one side with an agonized creak, falling toward the street. People screamed, and the throng as a whole surged backward as those nearest the wagon tried to flee and avoid being crushed. Some lost their balance and fell underfoot to be trampled by others. In the pushing, shoving mayhem, Azarion lost his grip on Gilene.

  The crowd instantly swallowed her up, obscuring her in the flail of arms and elbows and the choking haze of grain dust as the sacks from the fallen wagon burst open. Even knowing she wouldn’t answer and likely couldn’t hear above the noise, Azarion still roared her name.

  “Gilene!”

  He battered his way through the mob, tossing anyone in his path aside like chaff in his bid to reach the spot where he last saw her. She was a tall woman but slight. If she didn’t keep her feet and stay upright, she was dead. He searched for the dark crown of her hair, ubiquitous among so many others with hair as dark as hers.

  A flicker of motion caught his eye, and he spotted her as she broke free of the crowd to pause at its edge and look right, then left. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him staring at her. Her eyes widened before she lifted her skirts to her knees and dashed toward the town’s interior, fleet as a hunted deer and just as desperate.

  The years spent fighting in the Pit served him well. Brute force freed him from the prison of too many people packed together in one place, their frenzied scrabbling for grain turning them into a multi-armed entity with clutching fingers. Unlike Gilene, he didn’t stop once he got free but hurtled after her down the street. She was nowhere in sight. That didn’t slow him.

  His newly healed ribs twinged a warning at him with every breath, but still he ran, dodging the flow of more townsfolk who streamed toward the mob, curious as to what aroused it.

  He checked under parked carts, sought out shadowed doorways, even barreled through two t
averns and dodged vegetables thrown by an outraged scullery wench as he tore through the tavern’s kitchen and out the back door.

  A beggar, crouched at a street corner, urinated on himself in terror when Azarion stopped and loomed over him. “Have you seen a woman . . .” He described Gilene, emphasizing her height as well as the fading bruise on her cheek. Those, more than the nondescript clothes she wore or her facial features, would be things people remembered about her. At least he didn’t have the challenge of her illusion. Like her fire, that magic had yet to return. While Azarion could see through her conjuring, others couldn’t.

  The beggar pointed with a shaking finger down the length of an alley garlanded in clotheslines hung with laundry, and Azarion sprinted down the dim close, dodging wet garments and blankets that flapped and showered water droplets onto the street. He spotted movement ahead—the whip motion of a clothesline pulled or dragged as someone passed under its hangings—and picked up his pace. The snap of a skirt rounding a corner sent him running down a wider street. A dead end and, at its farthest reach, his quarry.

  Her back was to him for the moment, and she was surrounded on three sides by the leaning heights of mud-brick buildings. She whirled to run back the way she came, skidding to a halt when she saw him.

  Azarion slowed to a walk. “It’s done, Gilene. No more running.”

  Her hands opened, and she raised her arms, palms facing him. Her eyes closed as she turned her attention inward.

  Azarion paused, poised on the balls of his feet to flee if she managed to call up any of her drained magic and summon fire. He had no doubt that, if she succeeded, she would do her best to roast him like a butchered pig.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks in silvery rivulets as she concentrated to no avail. Nothing so much as a candle flame lit her fingers, and she soon gave up, her arms dropping to her sides. She retreated from him until her back hit the wall that trapped her in the alley. She refused to look at him when he stood in front of her. “You have no right to take me,” she said in a flat voice.

  “No, I don’t,” he replied. “But I need you.”

  “My village needs me, and they’re more important than you are.”

  Right or wrong, he had no intention of arguing with her any longer. This wasn’t a good place to be, for either of them. Azarion swooped in, lifted her rigid body in his arms, and jogged away from the entrapping alley. He had no comfort to offer, only the repeated assurance—which she didn’t believe—that he’d return her to her people whole and hearty when he no longer needed her.

  She murmured something against his chest. He leaned in closer. “What did you say?”

  Her voice was quiet, warbling, but no less vitriolic for its softness. “I curse you. May you suffer, and strive, and never succeed.”

  A faint shiver danced along his arms. As curses went, this one lacked the drama of torture and epic death. But what it lacked in extravagance, it more than made up for in longevity and thoroughness.

  His sigh ghosted the top of her head. “Best hope that doesn’t take, Agacin, or I’ll never be able to send you home.”

  They said no more to each other until Azarion found an alcove created by the intersection of two garden walls not far from the stable yard and a good distance from the teeming market. A fountain burbled nearby, and he drank its water from cupped hands. Gilene did the same, her throat working hard as she sipped down several handfuls of water.

  She followed him to the shaded alcove and sat, too tired to fight him. For now. She tilted her head back until it touched the wall, and closed her eyes. Her hands, still wet from the fountain, rested easy in her lap. No hint of the bleak, frightened woman remained. In that quiet moment, Azarion could almost convince himself she was his companion for the day, enjoying the weather and his company.

  It was a good dream, albeit a fleeting one. He had just chased her through half of Wellspring Holt and, had her magic worked, would have been burned to a cinder for his trouble. He didn’t have much hope that the truce between them now might last long enough to at least get out of the town.

  His gaze skimmed her, noting the graceful length of her neck, the way her collarbones created a straight ridge under her skin, curving at their ends to highlight the hollow of her throat. He’d seen her naked at her bath, goosefleshed from the cold, her long legs bent so close to her torso, she could have pressed her cheek to her knee.

  He hadn’t leered at her. It was true he’d seen and embraced many women, some prostitutes, but mostly Kraelian noblewomen who lusted for a gladiator fresh from the Pit and covered in blood. Gilene didn’t stand out among them, except for her height and the many scars she bore from her magic. Were she something other than an agacin, he might have overlooked her. Those scars puzzled him mightily, though it was obvious to him she expected revulsion instead of puzzlement.

  Now, with the sunlight bathing her upturned features and her closed eyelids hiding the hatred in her expression every time she looked at him, she was almost pretty. Driven by a strange combination of bitterness and devotion, she was as intent on returning to Beroe as he was to the Sky Below. It was unfortunate their goals conflicted and the places they most desired to reach lay in opposite directions.

  She shifted a leg to get in a more comfortable position, and Azarion heard a soft plopping sound before the wedge of cheese he’d stolen earlier fell out of her pocket. Surprised and delighted that, despite the chase, she still carried it and hopefully the small stash of oats, he rescued the cheese from the dirt and tucked it back into place. He’d eaten well, as had Gilene, before they bade Hamod and his folk farewell. Eating again would have to wait until nightfall, when they were horsed and on the road far from Wellspring Holt.

  “We’ll eat tonight on horseback,” he said. “The stable yard is housing two horses that will serve our purpose and put a few leagues between us and the town before anyone knows they’re gone.”

  Gilene turned her head a fraction, her gaze merciless in its judgment. “You lie. You steal. Have you no guilt over the things you’ve taken? Someone’s horse. Someone’s goods. Someone’s daughter or sister?”

  She was relentless in her bid to shame him. He sloughed it off. Survival had no use for shame. “Ten years ago my cousin stole my birthright and my freedom by selling me to the Empire. Trust me, I understand the pain of having something valuable taken from you by someone else.”

  Curiosity brightened her gaze. She sat up straighter and faced him more fully. “You survived the Pit for ten years. You must be very good at slaughter.”

  “Very good.” It wasn’t a boast. He’d spilled enough blood in the arena to float a ship.

  A line appeared between her eyebrows as a thought occurred to her. “Why is it I’ve only seen you the past three years during the choosing of the women?”

  Her question was a fair one, and he had nothing to hide in that matter. “I had no interest in taking part until then.” And sometimes not even the opportunity. The empress had favored him for a long time, delighting in degrading him, whether by means of combat, rape, or false hope. So while there had been nothing he could do to help the Flowers of Spring or change the fate that awaited them, he sympathized with their plight. The Empire spared no one, man or woman.

  Gilene’s question brought him back to the present. “What changed your mind?”

  “You did.” He allowed himself a small smile when her eyebrows rose. “I saw you the first time when the guards were taking me to Herself. At first I thought your illusion a trick of the light or maybe a leftover from a blow to the head when I fought a bout in the Pit. I thought nothing of it, but I remembered and made sure I watched the Flowers arrive the next year. Tricks of the light aren’t that predictable. Nor are the visions caused by head wounds. Hanimus gave me a boon the second and third year, allowing me to watch the immolation. I couldn’t believe it at first—an agacin wielding fire right under the Empire’s nose, and they
, all blind to your deception.”

  Her mouth curved down. “You began to plan.”

  He nodded. “And here we are.” He had told her he still needed her to regain power in his clan but never explained the why or how of it. If she asked, he’d tell her, though she’d balk at his explanation. No one liked being used.

  The streets around them were quiet. A few people traveled these more isolated avenues, though none seemed to notice the couple sheltering in the tucked-away alcove. Still, Azarion kept an eye on their surroundings, watching for Kraelian soldiers or any passerby with an overdeveloped curiosity and underdeveloped sense of survival.

  Gilene continued with her questions. “Why do your people worship fire witches?”

  “They aren’t worshipped, but they are esteemed. Agacins are the spirit of Agna made flesh. She’s the goddess we worship, the holiest of all the gods worshipped by the Savatar.”

  “I don’t know this Agna, and I don’t worship her.”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You’re one of her handmaidens. She’s chosen to bless you with the gift of fire.”

  She gave a derisive snort. “Is that what you call it? A blessing? She can keep her blessings.”

  Azarion tensed. Gilene’s irreverent ingratitude bordered on blasphemy. He hoped Agna wasn’t listening to one of her priestesses decry her gift.

  The biting tone of her replies emphasized the resentment she carried for her role as a Flower of Spring. He’d learned quickly enough during their brief negotiations that she loathed the role she played every year. Who wouldn’t? Yet still she did it, and even now had done her best to escape him so she might return to Beroe and do it all over again in a year’s time. “Why do you shoulder this burden for Beroe?”

  Her gaze took on a farseeing aspect, as if she no longer saw him but instead some memory. “Because I have to. It became my duty once the witch before me became too crippled to attend the Rites. Sometimes you do the thing you hate so others don’t have to, whether it’s from love, guilt, or blackmail.” She paused to level a condemning stare on him. “No other woman in Beroe is safe from fire. It would be wrong and cowardly of me to let them burn when I can go in their place and survive. It doesn’t mean I have to like it just because I’m willing to accept it.”