Alta (30 page)

Between them, Toreth and Kiron probably could have kept that particular conversation going all night. But there were, of course, chores to be done, dragonets to be settled into sleep, before they could gather in Aket-ten’s new quarters. Of all of them, Kiron had perhaps the lightest duty; the babies needed a last extra feeding to sustain them in their sleep, and they were growing so fast that they all had to have their sensitive skin rubbed with oily cloths before they went to sleep, or they might scratch too hard and damage themselves. Avatre needed nothing more than a little extra grooming, and to be told what a glorious dragon she was and that Kiron would be back soon. She settled into her sand with a sigh of pure pleasure, and was fast asleep in moments as the moon rose over the walls of the compound.

So he was the first to present himself at the door to Aket-ten’s courtyard. It hardly merited the title; it couldn’t have been more than fifteen paces in length or width, and boasted a tiny, square pool with a few
latas,
a single fish, and a square stone box in which a small acacia tree grew, scenting the night air with its blossoms. There was only one bench; Aket-ten was setting out pillows even as he arrived, and lighting lamps and torches around the walls. Somehow he felt relieved that she was not bringing them into any of those rooms. He helped her with the latter, allowing her to go back into one of the rooms for more cushions.

There were no mosaics adorning the pool, only the plainest of white tiles; there were no paintings on the walls. It had, after all, been a courtyard shared by a dozen servants, all crammed on pallets into three of the four rooms around it—the fourth room being the bathing room, of course. But Aket-ten seemed completely pleased with her new domain.

“Are you all right here?” he asked doubtfully.

“I feel safer here than at home,” she replied, “And I wouldn’t trust living with the Fledglings now no matter what the senior Winged Ones promised me.” She sighed, and sat down on a cushion at the edge of the pool, trailing her fingers in the water. “I don’t trust them anymore; I can’t. I think they would give me over to the Magi in a heartbeat. I couldn’t stay with the Healers either; I was in the way. They were quite polite about it, but I was an inconvenience at best, and I didn’t have a great deal in common with them. Healers are—very
passionate
about what they do, and I just didn’t share that passion. Here I’m at least useful.”

“I believe you would find a way to be useful no matter where you were,” said Toreth, coming in on the end of the statement. “I should warn you, though, Lord Khumun will have our heads if we stay too long here, tonight or any other night.”

“I’ll chase you out before you get yourselves into trouble,” she replied, as the rest straggled in. “I have duties of my own, too—ones I might as well tell you now, because it answers my brother’s question.” She looked around at everyone but Kiron. “No, I did
not
lose my powers—which were Animal Speech, the Silent Speech with a fellow Winged One, and the Far-Seeing Eye. I did not have the Seer’s Eye, which imparts a view of the future; I did
seem
to have it at first, but it was the Far-Seeing eye, not the ability to look into the future. I disappointed my teachers in that regard. Frankly—given how things have turned out—I think I am just as glad.”

“Why?” Gan asked, choosing a flat cushion of woven reeds for himself.

“Because I think if I had possessed the Seer’s Eye—no matter how far I went, the Magi would have come looking for me.” She shivered. “I am far less of a threat to them without it—”

“A threat?” her brother gaped at her.

“I’ll get to that in a moment.” She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes for a moment. “First, you should all know that one of my agreed-upon duties here is that I will be employing the Far-Seeing Eye privately for the benefit of Lord Khumun and the Jousters, and I will do so around dawn, because the Winged Ones are occupied with the Dawn Rites then. Which is why I will be getting up just as early as all of you. They do not know that I never lost my powers. I do not wish them to know this, for they would tell the Magi. Lord Khumun knows because Kiron and my father trust him, and he has no love at all for the Magi.”

Gan rubbed the bridge of his nose; he had completely lost his usual air of languid boredom. “So Lord Khumun knows the truth about you. Who else, besides your father and Kiron?”

“The Healers at the Temple of All Gods, which is where I was hiding, rather than going to my aunt,” she said immediately, as Orest continued to gape at her. “You know about the Magi and why I fled, then?”

Toreth nodded. “I think half of us do. My brother is trying to find out exactly what they’re doing with the Fledglings—” he began. She held up her hand.

“Wait a moment, and let me explain to the rest.” Briefly she outlined what had happened to her, and what the Magi had been doing with the rest of the Fledglings. Kiron volunteered what he had witnessed—the Fledglings being taken away looking like sleepwalkers, and returning looking utterly exhausted. “But as for finding out what is going on inside the Tower of Wisdom, don’t bother—I can tell you. The Magi are stealing some form of power from us—from the Fledglings—to fuel the spell that sends the storms down on Tia.” She smiled grimly at their nods; by this time none of them was surprised, and she didn’t look as if she had expected any of them to be so. “Here is what you don’t yet know; when the last chance of sending rain is over, they do not intend to stop.”

Toreth’s head came up, like a hound on a scent. “For the purpose of—?” he asked delicately.

“That, I cannot tell you. But I learned this, not from watching with my power, because I will not dare that, but from the memories that an Akkadian Healer coaxed out of my mind.” She grimaced. “The Magi believe that the Fledglings are made blind and deaf to what goes on around them as they are being drained of their strength. They are
not.
But there is a spell of forgetfulness placed upon them before they are allowed to leave. The Akkadian knew it of old, and knew the counter. I remember everything that happened that single time I was taken, and everything that was said and done. This is how I know that, had I the Seer’s Eye, the Magi would have pursued me to the ends of the earth. They cannot permit someone with the Seer’s Eye in any strength to mature into his power. He might reveal the future to the Great Ones—and if he did, the Great Ones and their advisers would soon know that the Magi intend to be the ones to rule in Alta, making those who sit upon the Twin Thrones little more than figureheads.”

“I should like to speak with that Akkadian one day soon,” said Toreth as if to himself.

Aket-ten said nothing for a moment. Then she looked up. “Kiron told me that you have—a path you wish to travel, when the gods call the Great Ones?”

“But not before their time,” Toreth said swiftly.

“Yes. I believe it is time that the Magi began to practice their craft with—supervision. And with a great many conditions that they must follow. And I believe that it is time to end this foolish war, which eats blood and lives, and gives nothing in return.”

“Then I am with you,” Aket-ten said simply. “Though I fear that there is little I can offer you.”

“You can offer your testimony when the time comes,” Toreth replied, grimly. “Other things, too, maybe. Perhaps you can persuade this Akkadian friend of yours to share some of his time with me. I should like to learn how it is that the Magi do their work, and what constraints can be placed upon their excesses.”

“Perhaps you could hire more Akkadians?” Gan suggested brightly, making them all laugh.

As if that had somehow released unspoken tension, talk drifted into lighter topics. Having discovered that yes, Aket-ten was as fascinated and enthralled by the dragons as they all were—if, perhaps, not quite as obsessed—the little gathering turned into something very like an ordinary evening. Aket-ten sent a servant for food and jars of beer, brought out the Hounds and Jackals box, and responded to flirtations with clever retorts.

For a while, Kiron was afraid that she did so only because she wished to keep the way clear for Toreth, but when she delivered a set-down to the prince as well, he relaxed.

For his part, he did not even want to attempt a flirtation, and kept a sharp watch on his words. If Gan and Oset-re, who were so clever at such things, were left nursing their egos, what hope had he of getting anything other than the same response?

Aket-ten might look like an “ordinary” well-born girl, but it was clear to Kiron that she was not in the least interested in the sorts of things that the other boys believed “ordinary” girls concerned themselves with. Not that he was terribly familiar with that sort of thing; he was far more familiar with the way that the older Jousters jibed with the girls who served them their beer. But what passed for a witty innuendo with a slave or a serving girl was probably going to earn him a slap.

He wanted some of her attention all for himself. So he challenged her to a game of Hounds and Jackals, and had the satisfaction of not only holding his own against her, but of presenting her with something that she did find pleasurable.

Eventually, the others drifted off to their respective pens until only he and Toreth were left. Orest had been the first to go, wearing a puzzled, even bewildered look, as if his sister had suddenly turned into a stranger before his very eyes. Toreth was watching the game with every evidence of interest, and Kiron was determined to fight it out to the last piece. Finally, with only one Hound left, she took out both of his remaining Jackals.

“Well fought!” Toreth exclaimed, as Kiron congratulated her. “My Lady, I should like to request a match tomorrow night.”

“You can have your match, provided you always call me Aket-ten, and nothing more,” she replied, flushed with victory, and putting up the pieces. “I have taken a dislike to being called ‘my Lady.’ ”

“Gladly. And seeing you play—both of you—I note that you both use unconventional strategy.” He looked keenly from Kiron to Aket-ten and back again. “Now, the one thing that the Magi can do—at a cost that none of us wish to continue paying—is to negate the superiority of the Tian Jousters, if only temporarily.”

Kiron nodded, though he wondered fleetingly if the prince
ever
thought of anything other than the war. Or—
wars
. For there was no doubt in his mind that he considered himself to be at war now with the Magi.

Aket-ten tilted her head to the side, and regarded him thoughtfully.

“This is true,” she admitted. “But there is no other option, short of fielding equal or superior numbers ourselves. Is there?”

“That, Aket-ten and Kiron, is what I would like you to think on,” he told them. “Because you, both of you, may see something that Kaleth and I have not.”

Kiron blinked. “I suppose that is possible,” he replied, but dubiously. “Perhaps. In time—”

“And what have we
but
time?” the prince retorted, spreading his hands wide. “We have one solution—the tame dragons. One of them is better than four Jousters on
tala
-drugged beasts. We are not desperate for a solution, I merely want you to see if you can devise more than one. No archer goes into battle with a single bow string.”

Aket-ten nodded briskly. “That is only reasonable,” she said. “Now, as for my Akkadian, it may be several days before I can speak with him, and more before I can persuade him to speak with you. He is reluctant to admit his training.”

“And what have I but time?” the prince repeated. “If you can persuade him, well and good. If not, perhaps on the day when my brother and I sit on the Twin Thrones, he will be willing to come forward. Until then, anything he might tell us is nothing we can put into immediate use.”

“There is that,” Kiron agreed, and stifled a yawn. “Dawn comes early—”

“Earlier every morning until Midsummer,” Aket-ten agreed cheerfully. “So, I fear, my guests, you must consider yourselves to be invited to leave!”

“And we will take the invitation in the spirit with which it was given,” said the prince, standing up and giving her a slavish bow that made her laugh. He offered a hand to Kiron, who took it to pull himself to his feet. “Until tomorrow, Aket-ten! I look forward to our match!”

“Until tomorrow,” she replied, her voice a little muffled as she bent to blow out a lamp.

“Well fought,” Toreth repeated, slapping Kiron on the back as they left.

But he said it in a tone that left Kiron wondering. Was he talking about their game of Hounds and Jackals or some other contest altogether?

 

Kiron had thought that beautiful Tathulan, Huras’ enormous female dragonet, would probably lose some of her relative size as the others caught up with her. But as the days passed, that didn’t happen. She continued to grow at the same rate as all the others—which meant she was still half again as large as the nearest in size.

“She’ll be fledging long before Bethlan,” Kiron observed, watching as she tossed her current favorite plaything, a bag loosely stuffed with straw, into the air with a flip of her head. It was a singularly beautiful head; dark blue along the neck ridge and in a blaze down her forehead, fading to a glorious purple, which in turn faded to scarlet on the underside of her jaw and on her muzzle.

“You think?” Huras asked doubtfully. “She doesn’t act any differently from the others. She’s just bigger. I thought that you told us that the biggest and the strongest were the firstborn.”

“That’s what Ari told me, but now I wonder. He couldn’t see the wild ones’ nests all that well when he spied on them, and the only dragon he really ever had any experience with was Kashet.” Kiron rubbed the side of his face with the back of his hand. “When it comes right down to it, at this point, we all have eight times the experience with dragonets that he did.”

“Well, in that case, I think she’ll fledge right in order,” Huras said firmly. “I think it’s more to do with when they’re ready, not how big they are.”