The voices grew louder, and the creak of wheels, clank of bells, and steady clop of hooves joined the mule’s racket. Travelers on the trade road, just as he expected, and from the sound of it, part of a caravan.
He stayed where he was, hidden in the tree line until the caravan came into view. Seven wagons pulled by a mix of horses, oxen, and the single mule. The brightly painted wagons and garlands of bells strung on their sides marked the group as free traders. Unbound by the rules and laws set by the Trade Guild, they plied their trades along the offshoot roads of the Golden Serpent without Guild approval or protection. Most of the lower rungs of society and the towns perched at the edges of Krael’s hinterlands bought their goods from the free traders.
The Guild barred them from working the more lucrative Golden Serpent, which wrapped around the borders of the Empire and stretched into the lands of Usepei and Ardin, but it didn’t stop the wily traders from getting their hands on items as cheap and ubiquitous as clay pots or as rare and expensive as purple silk. Some things were obtained through means that didn’t always include the exchange of coins, but no one reported the traders to the garrisons that squatted in the remote regions, and if they did, the garrison commanders turned a blind eye, finding the benefits of trade with such people far outweighed the petty crimes they might commit to provide those benefits.
The crew driving these wagons or walking beside them were a motley lot, a mix of men, women, and a few children. Every adult was heavily armed, and while their scruffy clothing marked them as not the most prosperous group, they looked well-fed and clean enough—something neither he nor theagacincould claim at the moment.
She twitched in his lap, hotter than a bonfire. She needed succor he couldn’t give and was far too valuable to leave behind. And he owed her much. Revealing himself—and her—to the traders was his only choice.
He carefully moved the witch off his lap and onto the grassbefore creaking to his feet. The crossbow and arrows would have to stay with her. Walking out of the trees with it in his arms guaranteed him a quick death. He kept his knife sheathed to show he meant no harm, stiffened his back, and stepped onto the road in front of the lead wagon.
Before the wheels rolled to a halt, he found himself once again in the lethal sights of not one but six crossbows, their nocked arrows pointed at various spots on his body.
“Help us,” he said and waited.
A man garbed in mismatched layers of ragged wool and bits of expensive silk sauntered from behind the lead wagon and approached him, a short spear held casually in one hand. He wore his graying hair clubbed at the nape, and the gimcrack beads draped around his neck sparkled in the sun. His gray gaze, flat as unpolished steel and just as hard, settled on Azarion. “What happened to you?”
The witch had named him a liar and a thief, and in this moment, Azarion hoped he lived up to the first insult by spinning the most convincing of tales, otherwise he’d be shot full of arrows before he could take a single running step. “Thieves set upon my wife and me,” he said. “We were traveling to the Silfer markets to sell our dyes and were attacked. They stole everything, including our horse.” Thank Agna theagacinsported green hands from dyeing the long nettle. That, more than any words from him, should convince them he spoke truthfully.
The caravan leader’s eyes narrowed, his gaze suspicious. This wasn’t a man who let sympathy overwhelm caution. “Why did they let you live?” He peered beyond Azarion’s shoulder into the woods. “And I see no wife.”
Azarion shrugged. “She’s injured. I left her just within the trees there.” He gestured with a tip of his chin to where theagacinlay hidden. “I don’t know why they let us live. They didn’t share their reasons or their purpose. Not all murderers are thieves; not all thieves are murderers.” A quick glance behind the leader at the trader folk nodding their heads and murmuring told him his words had struck a chord.
The man himself remained unconvinced. His flat gaze flickered down. “You still have a blade on you. What manner of thief doesn’t take a weapon?”
“Not a very good one or maybe one who doesn’t think a common knife is worth dying for. I used it to defend us. I have a crossbow as well that fell from one of their saddles. I left it beside my wife.”
“Bring this wife to us. Only the wife.” They waited on the road until Azarion returned, the unconsciousagacinheavy in his tired arms. He hadn’t wanted to leave the bow, but in this scenario, negotiation served him best, not force or threat.
The leader’s hard gaze settled on the witch. “Is your woman sick?”
In an instant, the fragile rapport Azarion had established with the traders vanished. Fear of plague burned away compassion in even the most softhearted person. His own heartbeat trebled as fingers on the crossbows’ triggers tightened. “Injured,” he assured them. “One of the thieves pushed her into the kettle of water she was boiling for our dinner. It spilled on her. She’s been scalded and is fevered from the wounds. Can you help her?” he repeated.
Theagacin’s burn marks looked worse than a scalding, but telling this lot he held a fire witch injured by her own spells might get them both killed as quickly as if he confirmed the traders’ fears of plague.
A young woman emerged from behind the second wagon. Shorter than theagacinwith lighter hair and sweeter features, shehad the same color eyes as the caravan leader, only kinder and faintly melancholic. “Let me help her, Uncle.” She reached the man’s side, stretching up on her toes to speak softly in his ear.
He frowned, said something to the girl, shook his head at her reply, and finally gave a sigh and a roll of his eyes. He turned to Azarion. “You can travel with us as far as Wellspring Holt, but I’ll take that knife you’re carrying as payment for food and care of your wife, along with the crossbow.” He gestured for one of his men to retrieve the bow Azarion had left in the forest.
Azarion didn’t hesitate and turned his hip so another of the traders could remove the blade from his belt. He was now both injured and unarmed. He shifted theagacinin his arms. “It’s a good knife,” he assured his new host.
The other man took the blade, hefting it in his palm to test its balance, turning it this way and that to inspect the edge. “It is. I’ll use it well.” He gestured to his niece and an older woman who joined them during their bargaining. “Put your woman in Asil’s wagon. Halani there can see to her. You’ll have to walk like the rest of us.”
Azarion nodded. He could do that, welcomed it, in fact. Sitting hurt. Lying down was agony, running an exercise in torture. The pain of his cracked ribs might finally subside if all he had to do was walk. “My thanks.”
The girl called Halani motioned for him to follow her. Her uncle and the older woman Azarion assumed was Asil fell into step on either side of him.
Asil offered him a sweet, vapid smile. “What’s your name?” She possessed a young voice, at odds with her aged features.
“Valdan of Pran.” That lie spilled as easily from his lips as all the others before it. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between lies and truth if he kept this up. He didn’t regret it.His real name might be noted and possibly recognized. It was common enough among the Savatar, not so much in the Empire, and the Gladius Prime known as Azarion had achieved great notoriety among the populace who attended the fights in the Pit.
Unlike Asil, the caravan’s leader didn’t smile, and his gaze raked Azarion from head to foot. “You’ve the look of the nomads from the Sky Below about you.”
Azarion almost stumbled at hearing the Savatar words used in describing the Stara Dragana. It had been a long time since anyone he knew called it the Sky Below. Homesickness, buoyed by newfound hope, swamped him. He held theagacina little closer.
“My mother was a Nunari clanswoman, my father a Kraelian soldier.”
Halani, striding ahead of them, spoke over her shoulder. “And your wife? How is she called?”
