Home > Dragon Unleashed (Fallen Empire #2)(4)

Dragon Unleashed (Fallen Empire #2)(4)
Author: Grace Draven

Torn between curiosity over the drama playing out between Gilene and her husband and wanting to harangue her uncle more, Halani paused amid the crowd. She pressed her palms together, striving to recapture a remnant of the magic hanging over the bone like an invisible mist.

A ghost of ancient earth swirled between her fingers, a memory of pain and regret, of desperation, and of hope. But most of all a silent but plaintive call to be found and united. With what? With whom?

The sudden, more physical tug on her elbow brought her out of her ruminations. Her mother stood next to her, weathered features creased by a wide grin. She pointed to Valdan as he approached the table Gilene stood behind. “Look, Hali! Valdan isn’t dead,” she said in her high, childish voice. “Come with me. I want to tell him hello!”

A cluster of Savatar lined up behind him like a human redoubt. They were an intimidating group of men and women dressed in light armor and carrying a myriad of weapons. None looked as if they’d welcome a gleeful Asil skipping through their ranks to offer greetings. Nevertheless, Halani rarely refused her mother’s wishes and followed her back toward their stall.

A flicker of movement close to the table caught her attention, and she spotted a pack of cutpurses as young as six, but no older than twelve, easing closer to the pile of goods stacked toward the back of the stall as well as the unguarded items on the table itself. “Bollocks!” she snapped. With Gilene and Valdan seeing only each other and the Savatar watching only them, the stall was easy pickings for small, fast thieves. They’d be cleaned out in moments.

Asil’s eyes widened. “What?

Halani pointed in the cutpurses’ direction as she raced toward them. Asil shot past her, far fleeter and more nimble than her aged appearance suggested. She reached the table just as one of the older, bigger juveniles snatched a tooled leather pouch from the table’s corner and bolted into the thick of the crowd.

He didn’t get far. One of the Savatar women abruptly straightened her arm from her side, clotheslining the runner. He struck the unexpected barrier so hard, he ricocheted off her vambraced forearm, feet flying out from under him before he landed on his back. The bag he held tumbled through the air and was snagged by Asil. The thief’s compatriots scattered in all directions. Halani suspected they’d managed to make off with a fan and one of the hideous hats Dennefel loved to make and Hamod insisted they try to sell. It could have been much worse. Winded but not incapacitated, the downed thief sprang to his feet and fled, kicking up his heels even higher when the Savatar woman lunged toward him as if to give chase.

Halani reached her mother’s side in time to overhear her praise the woman.

Asil’s cheeks were red, and her eyes danced, as if preventing an impromptu raid on their stall had been great fun. “You’re very strong,” she said, admiration in her voice.

The Savatar inclined her head and returned a similar compliment in heavily accented Common tongue. “And you’re very fast.”

Halani skirted around the Savatar barricade to straighten the table and move some of the items most in danger of being snatched to a more inaccessible spot.

“Oh, Halani, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Gilene no longer stared into her husband’s face as if seeing a vision. She tried to help Halani move the trade items to a safer spot. Halani shooed her away.

“Stop fretting.” She nodded toward Valdan. “I think you have a good excuse for the distraction. Besides, I left you here to man the stall alone. Cutpurses always look for lone sellers in the markets.”

“I’m to blame,” Valdan said behind her. “I’ll pay for the loss of anything taken, Halani.”

She offered him a smile. “We’re very glad to see you alive and well. Gilene isn’t one to wear her feelings for all to see, but I know she pined for you and worried.”

Even at second glance, his appearance still startled her. He had introduced himself to their caravan more than a year ago as a dye merchant attacked by raiders who had nearly killed him, injured his wife Gilene, and stolen their supplies and horse. When Hamod told Valdan he had the look of a steppe-man about him, Valdan said he was the child of a Kraelian woman and an Empire soldier of Nunari blood. At the time, his stories and explanations seemed believable, and neither he nor Gilene had given Hamod reason to think otherwise during their stay with the caravan.

Looking at him now, thinner, haggard but still handsome, and garbed in the raiment of high rank among an entourage of Savatar who showed him obvious deference and Gilene surprising reverence, Halani was certain this man was no simple dye merchant.

Asil jumped between them before he could reply. “Valdan, you’re not dead!” she crowed, so obviously delighted by the fact that Valdan and the rest of his companions laughed.

He reached for one of her hands, giving it a squeeze. “No, Asil. I’m not dead, and as before, I owe you and your daughter a life debt.” His gaze traveled to Gilene, standing behind Asil, the look in his eyes so scorching, Halani sighed inwardly. No man had ever stared at her in such a way—as if everything and anything of value to him resided within her. His next words to Asil only confirmed her thoughts. “You’ve given back to me that which I treasure above all else in the world.”

The Savatar woman who’d thwarted the cutpurse spoke, this time in a language Halani didn’t understand, though she recognized a few Nunari words in the rapid speech and was sure she again heard the word “Azarion.”

He replied in kind, heavy green gaze still on Gilene. He switched to Common tongue then. “You’ll come with me? With us? We’ve taken the grounds just west of the garrison ruins for our camp.”

Gilene nodded, expression radiant. She turned to Halani. “Do you mind? I can stay until the market closes. I don’t wish to abandon you.”

Halani laughed. “First, you don’t need my permission. I’m not your keeper. Second, if I were you and my exceptionally handsome husband, who I feared might be dead but who turned up alive and well, asked me to go with him to his camp, all you’d get from me is a wave and an assurance that you might, might see me the next morning.”

“I knew there was a reason why I liked you the moment I met you, trader woman.” Valdan touched his forehead in a gesture of respect. “Is your uncle here?” Halani nodded. “Tell him he and all his kin are invited to sup with us tomorrow just after sunset. I have gifts to offer and an explanation to give. Look for the round black tents with flags at their peaks. That will be our encampment.”

The invitation extended, he wasted no time in scooping Gilene into his arms and hugging her close before walking away from the stall. The Savatar reformed their redoubt into a pathway, each one bowing as he passed, some murmuring the words “ataman” and “agacin,” while others reached out tentative hands to touch Gilene as if they were supplicants in the presence of something sacred.

Valdan halted and turned when Halani called to him. “Your name isn’t Valdan, is it?”

Asil’s confused “It isn’t?” tail-ended her question. It had been Gilene who’d put the question in her mind. Gilene, whom Halani overheard also calling Valdan “Azarion,” and she doubted the word meant “husband” in Savatar.

His answering smirk confirmed her suspicion even before he replied. “Tell Hamod he’s a guest of Azarion Ataman of Clan Kestrel.” He turned away with Gilene, who gave a short wave before they both disappeared ahead of the line of Savatar who fell in behind them.

Halani didn’t have the luxury of watching them leave. Doing so would put her right back in the unfortunate position of fending off a new pack of cutpurses. She left the task to Asil, who stared at the retreating Savatars, a puzzled frown knitting her brow.

“So his name is Valdan Azarion or Azarion Valdan?”

Her daughter shrugged. “I don’t know, Mama. It sounds like we’ll know more tomorrow. Here, come help me redo the table. The gods only know how many customers we lost with all the commotion that just happened here. We’ll never hear the end of it from Uncle.”

The two women spent the remainder of the afternoon putting the table and stall to rights and hawking their goods. Halani patiently answered Asil’s repeated questions regarding Gilene and Azarion.

Talen, another of the free trader women from Hamod’s caravan, appeared at the stall just as the masses were beginning to thin and business had slowed to a trickle. Her puzzled gaze swept over the pair. “Where’s Gilene?”

Halani blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes and arched her back to relieve the ache there. “Now, that’s a story to tell.” She removed her apron and passed it to Talen. “Can you man the stall with Mama until the market closes? I need to find Uncle and deliver a message, and I promised to drop off a bottle of that perfume made in Askartown to a rug merchant two lanes over.”

Talen tied the apron to her waist, disgust pinching her features. “They know that stuff is nothing but mule piss boiled with rose petals, right?”

“I told them. Twice. The merchant’s wife doesn’t care. He said she’d bathe in the stuff if she could afford enough of it.”

“I swear, people will buy anything if you pour it in a fancy bottle and give it a fancy name.”

“And I thank the gods for them,” Halani replied. “We eat another day.” She hugged Asil, who kissed her cheek in return. “Help Talen, Mama, and don’t wander off. I’ll see you back at camp.” She tucked the bottle of rose-scented mule urine into a small velvet bag she looped onto her wrist and set out for the rug merchant’s stall and then to find Hamod.

She dreaded what other mischief he’d gotten up to since she left him with the strange claw. Her worry didn’t stem from a fear he’d been gulled into buying something worthless or counterfeit. That ivory was authentic, whatever it was. Possessed of a power with all the markers of earth magic, it both fascinated and troubled Halani.

Navigating the numerous lanes created by the hundreds of stalls and tables presented less of a challenge once the crowds had thinned as the day wore down. Halani delivered the perfume to the delighted rug merchant’s wife and paused at a fruit seller’s stand to buy a bag of stone fruit, as richly purple as the cloth that covered the sorcerous ivory. She intended it for the caravan’s cook, Marata, who would work his own magic and turn the plums into a delectable tart or pudding.

   
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