Aerie (14 page)

When his hunger was finally sated, he looked around at the company. The torches around the courtyard itself and the little lamps placed on the rim of the
latas
pool cast a pleasing, warm light. He found himself approving of the girls as he examined them. Despite the giggles, none of them acted silly or too girlishly. All had done something equally sensible; they had cut their hair very short, right at chin level. All appeared to be Tian, with the darker skin tone than Altans had. That was a curious choice—but then again, there were not many Altans here in Mefis, so perhaps Aket-ten had no choice. . . .

None were wearing any jewelry fancier than a faience amulet on a leather thong or a string of faience beads. A glance at their hands told him they were no strangers to hard work. This was all very encouraging.

Finally, one of them got up, waved cheerfully to all of them, and left. At his curious glance, one of the other young women offered, “We have all the babies together in one pen, and we take it in turns to sleep with them through the night. That way everyone gets to sleep in a bed seven out of eight nights.”

He blinked. Why hadn’t
he
thought of that? It was the one complaint his young Jousters had about baby tending. Not everyone was as slavishly devoted to the welfare of a sleeping infant dragon that would not wake and would scarcely even stir all night long as he had been. . . .

Then again, they were with their babies all day long. He’d not had that luxury. He’d only had stolen moments with Avatre among all his other chores, and every moment he had been able to spend with her had been precious to him. So it rightly wouldn’t seem as urgent to any of them to be with their babies at night as long as
someone
was with the babies.

“It’s a good idea,” one of the boys said defensively. They all looked at him as if they expected him to object.

He sighed. When did everyone get the idea that he was a crocodile? “I never said it wasn’t,” he replied wearily. “In fact, I think it is a very good idea. Just because
I
spent my sleeping hours with Avatre when she was a baby, it doesn’t follow that it’s a sensible idea. Well, it was sensible for me, but only because I was afraid she might be discovered if I left her alone. That’s hardly anything any of you will ever need to worry about.”

Several of the girls exchanged speaking glances, and one of them said, with a lopsided grin, “I told you he couldn’t be the soul devourer that Aket-ten said he’d be.”

Oh. So this reputation was Aket-ten’s doing. . . .

“I devour neither souls nor babies,” he said firmly. “A good honey cake, though, stands no chance with me.” And to prove it, he boldly reached for the last and ate it in three bites.

Whatever motive Aket-ten had in darkening his reputation, now he was feeling rather annoyed with her. He then set about firmly countering the image by simply being pleasant. He supposed she must have warned them all that he was going to object to their presence, their mere existence, and probably be aggressive about it.

On the surface, there was very little to object to. The Queen’s Wing had the blessing and patronage of Nofret, and if the Great Queen preferred to have a wing of dragon couriers rather than a temple in her name, no one was going to dare say her nay. Aket-ten had found a way on her own to get baby dragons without depriving any of the men waiting for one—

Come to think of it, he was very curious about that, though, wondering just where and how she had gotten them. —and the Great Queen’s patronage ensured that the wing got support without taking anything from the existing Jousters. Aket-ten had found sensible young women who were not only capable of taking care of their dragons, but were actually better suited to the task than the young men, by virtue of their ability to understand animals and make themselves understood by them.

I must find young men who can do that. . . .
Surely that particular ability was not confined to females.

As to whether or not they would actually work out as couriers, there was no saying. They probably wouldn’t have difficulty with the hard work, but the flying itself—not everyone took to it.

It looked as if she was finding them something they could do, that would actually free the male Jousters to counter the bandit threat. That could only be good for Aerie and the Jouster Wings there.

So really, there was overtly nothing to object to, and he wasn’t about to bring up.

Other than that . . . he was not stupid. It was fairly clear that the duties of training both dragons and girls were going to keep Aket-ten here. Which meant that the chances of his getting her to move back to Aerie were nonexistent. Maybe part of the reason she was angry was because she knew that.

“Where and how did Aket-ten get nine dragons?” he asked into a lull in the conversation, going to great pains to sound interested and approving rather than accusatory.

“She scouted the nests,” said one, who had been very quiet until now, and had sat a little apart from the others. “When eggs were abandoned, she had them brought back here to hatch. That was where my dragon came from. And as for the rest, she continued to watch the nests, and had some of the old dragon-hunters come and take babies that had been abandoned, or the weakest of the nestlings when it was clear that one or more was not getting enough food to thrive.”

Clever, and he hadn’t thought of
that.
He had just taken it for granted that out of a hatch it was likely that there would be failures and let it go at that. This made sense. Especially if he could find young men among his Jouster candidates who shared Aket-ten’s power . . . he could do the same.

He continued to ask the girls questions, not just about their dragons and how they were taking to life as young Jousters, but about their former lives as priestesses. He didn’t have to feign interest; he
was
interested, and he got the impression that his four young couriers were no little annoyed with him for taking all of the girls’ attention.

Well, let them be annoyed. He would be gone tomorrow, and they would have the young women all to themselves again. In fact, it was rather amusing to see which one of them got annoyed over which young lady. And which young lady cast a glance at which young man when he spoke to her. It wasn’t long before he had who was interested in whom fairly well sorted out.

This was going to make for some complicated times, especially as rivalries were definitely a potential. He was just as glad that
he
wasn’t going to be the one to have to deal with them.

Oh, yes. Hurt feelings, jealousy, broken hearts . . . let Aket-ten deal with that particular aspect of having female Jousters.
True, he had not anticipated those problems either, but she was the one that had wanted females in the first place. He made a mental note that if Ari asked for any more couriers, to find a reason why he should not send them.

Not that he wanted his Jousters to do without female company! By no means!

But life was complicated enough with the possibility of quarrels over young women when those young women were not Jousters. The dreadful ramifications of having to sort out female Jousters fighting over males, and vice versa—add to that the sensitivity of the dragons themselves to the emotions of their riders—it made his head spin. He was beginning to understand why the old-style Jousters had been discouraged from anything but the most trivial of affairs and trysts with “flute girls.”

Let it all be on Aket-ten’s head.

Petty revenge, maybe, but she had made him out to be a monster of sorts, and then she had gone tearing off in a temper when he hadn’t said a word against her new Jousters.

But . . . he should have a word with his fellows, before he left. Something. Warn them about letting women get in the way of their duty or—

He’d think of something.

Actually, after a moment of listening and staring at the little flame of a lamp, he realized that he wasn’t thinking of anything. Well, a bath perhaps.

Should he tell them about the dead border guard?

Perhaps—no, not yet. It might be nothing. It still could turn out to be nothing. It might have been the tragic result of a private quarrel. There was simply no way to tell.

He realized after a moment that he had fallen silent while the others kept chattering on. All but one, that one girl that sat apart from the others.

Now that he had food in him, he wasn’t as tired as he had thought. And a bath was beginning to feel like a good idea. He excused himself and walked into the shadows, into the next courtyard, aiming for the rooms he generally used as his own when he overnighted here. There were no torches burning in this court, and only a single lamp in each of the rooms assigned to him, but he really didn’t need much light. As he had hoped, the bath jars were all full, everything he needed in readiness, a clean kilt and loinwrap laid out on the bed. Whatever Aket-ten thought of him, the servants knew their jobs, and were not letting him go unattended.

He felt much more human after a good bath, and not quite ready to go to sleep. But he also didn’t feel much like going back to the group he had just left. He stood in his own doorway for a moment, looking in the direction of the pens, wondering if he ought to go look in on Avatre, when a movement in the deep shadows beside the pool in this court made him start and bite back an exclamation.

And that in turn startled the person in the shadows who jumped and squeaked.

“It’s all right!” he said hastily. “Don’t be alarmed—”

As he said that, it occurred to him how much things had changed since the Magi were gone. A few moons ago, he would have gone into a defensive crouch, perhaps even called for help, certain that whoever was there was a spy set by the Magi, or one of the Magi themselves.

A breathless laugh answered him. “It is I who should be begging your pardon, Lord of the Jousters,” said the quiet young woman who had sat a little apart from the rest, apologetically. She got up and walked toward him, into the faint, warm glow of the lamp behind him. “I often come here when the chatter of the others goes on a little too long,” she added. “They are kind, and quite friendly, but they all come from the same circle, and they—” Now she hesitated. “I know that we are to think of ourselves as one Kingdom now, but I cannot help saying—they are Tian.”

Now that she had said more than a few words, he knew her accent. “And we are Altan,” he agreed. Even after all these many moons of working with the Tian Jousters . . . there was still that sense of “us” and “them.” He suspected it would take years, perhaps even tens of years, for that to leave them.

It was a very good thing that Ari was a patient man.

“And I am the daughter of a farmer, and they were priestesses,” she sighed. “I know that rank does not matter among Jousters, but . . . they speak of things of which I have no knowledge, of rituals and ceremonial things, of powers, and the people who have them. I only know how to bake bread and make beer.”

“And without someone to bake bread and make beer, those who serve the gods would quickly starve,” he pointed out, sitting down on the rim of the pool. “Besides, as you say, rank and origin have no meaning among Jousters. I am a farmer’s son myself. To tend the earth is an honorable profession. Please, sit and talk to me. I had as soon hear someone do other than flirt.”

“It is good to hear the accent of my home, even if I have no home to go to,” she said, then took a seat of her own. “It wasn’t the war, it was a flood. I think I may have been the only one left alive out of my village.”

He sighed. “If it was a flood, it was the war,” he said sadly. “The Magi of our own homeland caused those, sending terrible storms against the Tians to destroy their crops, to terrify the people, to keep the dragons grounded. The only problem was that the water all had to go somewhere, and it flooded Altan lands once it had done with the Tians.

“But—” she protested. “Did the Magi not realize this would happen?”

“The Magi did not care, so long as it served their purposes,” Kiron said wearily. “They aimed to rule both Alta and Tia, even if to do so meant leaving no more than half the people in either land alive. And I beg of you, ask someone else of this. Ask the other ladies; they are priestesses and no doubt know a great deal more than I. I only know that this was a war that could have ended long ago, which the Magi of Alta fostered, and they battened on it as a hyena feeds on corpses. Let us speak of other things. Let us speak of—your dragon.”

Kiron learned quite a bit about this new female Jouster as both spoke until they were tired enough to go to bed. He learned that her name was Peri-en-westet, that her young female dragon was the only one hatched here and that Peri had helped the egg to hatch just as he had helped Avatre. Peri described her gold-and-green beauty to him in such loving detail that he had to smile, hearing in her voice the same adoration he heard in every Jouster that ever raised an infant. She told him that she had named her dragon Sutema, which meant “reed,” because she was so slender and graceful. He very much doubted that any baby dragon could be described as graceful, but he was not going to tell her that,

He also learned something of her history, which proved to him that at least not all Tians were as vile to their serfs as his masters had been. In fact, they seemed to have been even moderately kind. Certainly Peri had not been made to starve as Kiron had, had had decent housing, and had even made some friends.

He also learned something she had probably never told any of the priestesses; that her friends had no idea what she was doing nor that she was going to become a Jouster. They all thought that she had some position at the Dragon Courts—cook or cook’s helper. A servant such as she was would be required to live where she worked. And as the lowly ex-serf, she would seldom be allowed time of her own.

“But why?” he finally asked. “Wouldn’t your friends be proud of you?”