His reason was as maddening as his threats. “The evil I know versus the one I don’t?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
The caravan leader met them at the edge of camp. The camp itself was alive and loud with people setting up for the evening, preparing supper, and admonishing the half dozen shrieking children who tumbled through the chaos, chasing the caravan dogs or each other. Hamod spoke to Gilene this time, though his gaze was no less penetrating than before. “My niece has taken good care of you, mistress?”
Gilene spotted Halani among the crowd, talking to a stout man cutting onions on a makeshift table under one of the oaks. “She has. You’re fortunate to have her. She’s a gifted healer. I thank you both for helping us.”
Hamod gave a quick nod. “Your husband traded a good knife. It was a fair bargain.” He tipped a quick nod to Azarion. “Our cook will make good use of the game you trapped today. We’ll eat well tonight.”
Gilene watched him leave before turning back to Azarion. “You’re hunting for them?”
Azarion’s gaze remained on Hamod’s retreating back even as he answered. “I learned how to lay a trap when I was a child. It’s a useful skill on the Stara Dragana and an appreciated one when taking shelter with others.”
Gilene initially thought her captor was only good at fighting in the Pit. It was easy to forget that, like her, there was more to him than the life forced upon him by the whims of the Empire. The notion didn’t endear him to her, but it did make her wonder what he had been like before his enslavement.
People noticed them standing at the camp’s perimeter and quickly drew them into its circle. With Halani’s and Asil’s help, Gilene learned the names of everyone in the caravan, lamenting to herself she’d only remember half at best by the next morning. The temperature dropped as afternoon waned, and a woman brought her a shawl while another offered a pair of slippers to wear until hers dried. She protested Halani’s insistence that she sit on a blanket set not far from one of the fires, only relenting when the woman handed her two half-woven baskets.
“Can you weave a basket?”
Gilene clutched the baskets as if they were bags of gold coins. “In my sleep if need be.” It wasn’t a boast. Like Azarion and his game trapping, she’d learned the art of basket weaving while barely free of her mother’s lead strings. Her nimble fingers worked the strands of blackberry vines stripped of their thorns, and she sniffed appreciatively at the fragrant steam rising out of two cauldrons suspending over a fire nearby. Behind her, Asil sat and combed out the few tangles Gilene had gotten from her hair washing, before braiding the strands into a neat, simple plait.
Firelight illuminated the camp in flickering patches that chased shadows across the tree trunks. Gilene sat, facing away from the road toward the forest’s interior. The ever-flitting light exposed for brief moments the hulking shape of something tucked farther back into the trees. She turned a little to address Asil over her shoulder. “Do you know what that is behind those trees?” She pointed in the direction of the unmoving silhouette.
Asil’s fingers smoothed out her braid. “Hamod says it’s a grave. I don’t remember it from last year when we traveled this way. He and Halani have gone to take a look.”
Gilene hadn’t seen either of them leave, though when her gaze found Azarion, she noticed he stared into the wood’s gloomin the burial mound’s direction, his brow knitted into a faint frown.
Graves were meant to be left alone, not explored. After the terror of Midrigar, she planned to avoid any and all as much as possible.
She returned her attention to the basket, listening with half an ear as Asil rambled on about everything from who in the caravan had lost a tooth to what they all ate a week earlier. Still, Gilene couldn’t help but cast glances toward the mound and a few more at Azarion, whose scrutiny was not so obvious now but no less intense.
When Hamod and Halani returned to the camp, Hamod wore a pleased expression and Halani a dour one. What had they discovered at the burial site of some local village leader?
Such questions were risky ones, and Gilene kept her curiosity to herself, noting that Azarion made no comment to Hamod either. She worked the baskets, finishing one and almost the other by the time the stout cook Marata called them all to supper.
They ate in a communal circle instead of separate family gatherings, enjoying bowls of stew made of the rabbit Azarion had snared and the wild onions and parsnips foraged by some of the caravan women and their children. Everyone drank cups of thick ale from a barrel perched on a platform at the back of one of the wagons or from water carried in buckets from the nearby stream.
Gilene sat beside Azarion, trying her best to act as if his nearness and casual touches on her knee and shoulder were a natural thing between them. She didn’t talk to him, listening instead to the easy banter he exchanged with the other men and the occasional laughter that spilled from his lips at someone else’s ribald joke.
Across the fire, Halani sat with Asil and stirred the contents ofher bowl with little enthusiasm. Her features only lightened when, after supper, someone called for a story.
“Tell us a story, Halani!” one man yelled from his perch on the steps of his wagon.
Another joined him. “Yes! Tell the tale of how Kansi Yuv slew the last draga and gave it to the emperor!”
Halani, who was putting away the recently washed bowls in a chest by one of the wagons, straightened with a groan. “I’ve told that story a hundred times! Wouldn’t you rather hear about the sea maidens of Latchep? Or how Soriya caught lightning in her basket and gave it to men to turn into fire?”
A chorus of “No!” sounded through the camp, followed by a single voice that yelled, “The draga! We want the draga!” It was taken up by the others, who made it a chant until Halani plopped down on a fallen log that had been dragged near the fire as seating.
“Very well,” she said. She smoothed her skirts over her knees and leaned forward. Azarion’s huff of smothered laughter teased Gilene’s ear as the crowd mimicked Halani’s actions. “Golnar was the last great draga that besieged the lands of the Empire, stealing cattle and treasure alike. He burned villages with the fires that spewed from his nostrils, and his wings were so large that, in flight, they blotted out the sun.”
The audience caught their breaths when Halani paused. Gilene did the same, despite knowing the tale.
“Many had tried to kill Golnar,” Halani continued. “But the draga was old and wise and far too clever. If he didn’t kill them, he used his sorcery to escape, back to his hidden cave with its treasures greater than all the wealth of the world.” She raised her arms and spread them wide to encompass an imaginary world before her.
“But one man understood that for all a draga’s many strengths, it had one weakness: a lust for treasure. The great hero Kansi Yuv asked the emperor to have a statue made. That of a beautiful woman cast in gold.”
Several in the crowd chimed in then. “The Sun Maiden.”
