Tamura paced, pausing once to point at her mother. “I knew it.” This time she used trader’s tongue. “Didn’t I say those piles of sheep shit had something to do with his death? I knew they were lying!” Her nostrils flared, and her pacing threatened to wear a bare spot in the rug under her feet. She stopped again, hands on hips, to glare at Azarion as if he were somehow as responsible for his own abduction. “All three are dead, by the way. Yerga broke his fool neck from a fall out of his saddle. He was always too stupid to learn how to ride properly. Zabandos took a spear to the gut.” Tamura’s humorless smile stretched wide. “Got caught tupping atirbodh’s wife in his ownqara.”
Azarion didn’t know whether to cheer or curse. He had hoped to mete out justice to Karsas’s henchmen as well as to Karsas himself. It seemed fate had done it for him. “And Gosan?”
“Drowned in a spring flood.” Tamura’s waspish smile faded. “Idon’t think anyone mourned him much. We all felt sorry for his wife. She’s a kind sort. Deserved better than him.”
There were more than a few widows and fatherless children in every clan camp. Some women grieved their men, others did not. If Karsas was married, Azarion would soon make his wife a widow and his children fatherless. “When did Karsas becomeataman?”
Saruke answered him. “Right after your father died. He courted the Ataman Council long before that, and as the closest living male relative to your father, they considered him the next in line to succeed.”
It was as he expected, though hearing it made him want to howl his anger. “The Fire Council agreed?”
“Yes. There were none to challenge him and noagacinto naysay the vote of the Ataman Council.”
Azarion turned to Gilene, who listened with a confused expression. “Theagacinshave their own council separate from that of theatamans, and even more powerful. When anatamanis chosen by the other clan chieftains, they still must get approval from the Fire Council. If they don’t, then another must be chosen.”
Her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. “You have a council of women more powerful than that of your men?”
Tamura’s sharp laugh filled theqara. “The Savatar value their womenfolk. Unlike Kraelians.” Her voice lost a little of its edge. “My brother says you are anagacin, even though you aren’t Savatar.”
Gilene nodded. “I can wield fire, yes, and I don’t suffer its burn.”
“Show us,” Tamura challenged. She pointed to the cook fire. “Strengthen the fire here.”
Gilene shook her head, refusing to rise to Tamura’s obvious baiting. Azarion was tempted to end it but sensed this was a play of dominance between these two, one where his interference wasn’t welcomed or helpful.
“I can’t,” she said. “Not now, anyway. I don’t know how it is with youragacins, but my power doesn’t draw from an endless well. I drained it weeks ago. I need time to replenish.”
Tamura snorted and shot Azarion a disdainful glance. “She told you she wasagacin?”
“No. She didn’t even know the word until I told her. I’ve seen her summon and control fire with my own eyes several times.”
Saruke put more water on to boil for tea. “The Fire Council will want her to prove it to them.”
Azarion’s eyes met Gilene’s. Hers were dark, anxious, weary. “She can. That she doesn’t burn should be enough to satisfy them until all her power returns.”
For all that she had aged twenty years in the ten he’d been gone, Saruke rose nimbly to her feet and without aid or complaint. She motioned to Gilene and gestured to a pallet of blankets and furs. “Come. You and Azarion can sleep there tonight. For now you can rest unless you want to attend tonight’s celebration.” Gilene gave an adamant shake of her head, and Saruke smiled. “I didn’t think so. Go on. One of us will wake you if you’re needed.”
Gilene accepted the offer without protest, not even questioning Saruke’s assumption that she and Azarion shared a bed. For all practical purposes, they had done so since their sheltering with Hamod’s traders, always out of necessity and often for warmth. He inwardly cheered her lack of resistance to the notion of sharing this particular pallet with him. She didn’t like him, but she had begun to trust him a tiny bit, at least in this matter.
She slid under the pile of covers, still fully clothed, and turned to face theqarawall. In moments she was asleep, the curve of her shoulders drooping as slumber overtook her.
Saruke returned to her place and gave her full attention toAzarion, slipping back into Savat. “Now you will be truthful with me. What did you suffer at the Empire’s hands?”
He was reluctant to tell her, reluctant to recall those things that left a scar on his soul each time. “Everyone suffers at the Empire’s hands,” he said shortly. He did offer up one fact and left out the worst details. “I was the Gladius Prime.”
Tamura gasped and Saruke’s eyes narrowed. Tamura leaned forward, gaze shrewd. “A useful skill then, if you intend to regain your birthright,” she said in a low voice meant only for him and their mother.
He took the tea Saruke passed him. “I do. It’s the thing that’s kept me alive all this time.”
Tamura slapped her knees. “I want to help. Karsas is a toad. Our clan has been lessened in the eyes of the other clans while he’s beenataman.”
The question lurking at the back of his mind since he first arrived at the clan camp surfaced to his lips. “Why didn’t he make you his wife?”
She bared her teeth. “Because he knew I’d kill him in his sleep.”
Saruke rolled her eyes. “She won’t marry anyone. I have no grandchildren.”
Tamura mimicked her mother’s expression. “We live well enough without a husband underfoot. And I hunt, and herd, and fight as well as any man.”
