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 taverns 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 thechallenge 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 anagacin, 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.
