Aerie (27 page)

The Chosen got to his feet. “Very well. Lead the way. I shall follow.”

Kiron gave a soft whistle, and Avatre got to her feet. He led the way into the corridor; usually, they took off straight from the pen, but he and Avatre had taken off from the landing courtyard often enough that she followed him with no sign of confusion.

He couldn’t help but contrast this mentally with the “old days,” of the dragon boys having to lead their charges with chains. Mostly they had been so drugged with
tala
that they didn’t resist, but sometimes—sometimes it had taken two or even four strong handlers, with the danger that the dragon might stop resisting and start clawing or biting.

Aket-ten was waiting for him, already mounted on Re-eth-ke, when he arrived. In fact, there was quite a little audience to see them off, even though only he, Aket-ten, the Chosen, and Huras knew where they were going and why.

Letis was there, of course, and to his relief the presence of the Chosen of Seft was enough to keep her from asking questions he couldn’t answer, or making any kind of a nuisance of herself. Huras had brought the Queen’s Wing, under the guise of having them watch an expert flat take off. He and Kiron exchanged nods, while Aket-ten gave him detailed instructions that she had probably already given him twice over.

Kiron went straight to his mother and hugged her tightly, then kissed the top of her head. “I will see you soon, Mother, as soon as the Chosen releases me,” he told her. She had begun hinting that he should allow her and Iris to move here—but Jousters had never had family here before, and at the moment he was reluctant to break that tradition. Instead, with the help of the Dragon Court overseer, he had settled her and his poor, damaged sister in their own little house, and arranged for them to get provisions and anything else they needed from the Dragon Court. There was that tradition, thank the gods; though Jousters seldom married, there was an arrangement for the care of dependent parents or siblings within reason; small houses in a little area near the court, mostly now as empty as the court itself. For now that would do, until he came up with another solution.

“When will that be?” she asked, her voice anxious.

“Only the Chosen knows, Mother,” he was able to answer. She spared a nervous glance for the man who had already been helped into the second saddle behind Kiron’s. Kiron gave her another kiss, then turned and trotted for Avatre, not even waiting for the dragon to extend her leg to scramble into the saddle ahead of the Chosen.

“Ready?” Aket-ten asked, and didn’t wait for his answer, sending Re-eth-ke into the sky.

And Kiron was only too pleased to follow.

 

“Wings!” shouted Peri, raising her arms, and Sutema flapped her wings madly, raising a huge dust cloud that made her very glad she had decided to do this in the landing courtyard rather than the pen. The little green-and-gold dragon clung for her life to not one, but two perches, one for the hind feet and one for the front, made of palm-tree trunks on legs that were weighed down with bags of sand and gravel. It had taken some persuasion to get her to climb up there, and more to get her to understand what Peri wanted, but now this was one of her favorite games. It made Peri wonder if there was something about the strengthening wings that gave the little dragons a strong urge to flap. The others, all younger than Sutema, were starting to do the same thing, and Huras had ordered three more sets of the perches after seeing Sutema exercising on them.

Despite the dust, Peri was enjoying herself. The wind from Sutema’s wings was a fine thing on a hot day, and the way Sutema’s eyes flashed suggested that she was having a lovely time.

The other dragons were being exercised, each by his or her own Jouster, as Peri had been exercising Sutema a few days ago, by running them about in games of “chase.” Huras had a very interesting way of dealing with the tendency of the other girls to delegate such things to someone else—usually Peri. Aket-ten had confronted them on it, which had simply made most of them shrug and privately roll their eyes and mostly ignore them. Huras had caught them at it, telling Peri that they were going bathing and “would she play with the babies” then starting to walk off in a giggling, gossiping group without waiting for her answer.

But Huras had blocked the door with his considerable bulk and looked at them all reproachfully.

“If it was only once,” he said, as they stilled, “I would have no issue with this if Peri does not. But the servants tell me that you do this every single day. Is this fair? Does Peri somehow
not
want to bathe in the heat of the day because she is not a priestess like all of you are? Is this how you want others to think of you, as the pampered priestesses who foist all of the work on Peri? Because they do.”

It had been an interesting moment. Some had looked crestfallen, some shamefaced, some astonished, as if it had not even occurred to them that they were doing this. Peri had felt rather gratified, because on the whole, she
liked
all of them, and she wished that they were not doing this to her. They made her feel like—

“You are treating Peri as a servant, not as a fellow Jouster, nor a friend, which—if she is not—I am sure she would like to be,” Huras continued, in an echo of her own thoughts. “She is senior to all of you in this wing, yet she does not demand that you defer to her.”

Left unspoken, but certainly not unfelt, was the rest of that sentence.
Do not require or expect that she should defer to you.

The entire encounter had been very gratifying for Peri. It remained to be seen whether the others would truly take it to heart, but she suspected that Huras would be continuing to keep an eye on them.

As for Sutema—

This was
much
more vigorous an exercise than being chased by Peri around a pen, or even the landing courtyard. It did not take long before Sutema was open-mouthed, panting, and exhausted. It was time to take her back to the pen, and there would be time afterward, once Sutema was napping, for Peri to have a swim herself.

And she wanted one; she was hot, sweaty and dusty, and the shaded pool in the center of the courtyard she shared with the others was appearing more inviting by the moment.

Only Sit-aken-te was there, and the lanky young woman waved languidly at Peri from where she was immersed up to her neck in cool water. Her body was invisible under the water-lily pads that covered the surface of the pool. For once, careless of the extra work for the servants, Peri stripped off her tunic and dropped it to the pavement, then sank into the cool water herself.

“A pity Lord Kiron is gone,” Sit-aken-te said lazily.

“How so?” Peri asked, with a faint feeling of guilt. Had the others noticed all the time she had spent with Kiron? Did they guess at the game she was playing? It was a delicate balancing act. Because Letis, along with the other demands she was making on her son, had wanted to present him with his wife-to-be as a
fait accompli
, and press him to wed her.

Peri was absolutely certain in her own mind that this would do her no good at all. She managed to persuade Letis to concentrate on what was, in Letis’ mind, the more important issue anyway: getting the family home back.

It had been a long and tiring “discussion”—it was an argument, but that was not what Letis called it. Patiently, Peri had pointed out that Jousters seldom married, to which Letis replied that Kiron wouldn’t
be
a Jouster once he had the farm back. That was when Peri had nodded and said, “So the important thing is for him to concentrate on that, then, and not get diverted.”

She hated being so duplicitous, but she knew that having Letis present her
now
would only mean that Kiron would lump
her
in with all of the other pressures his mother was putting on him, and that would spell the end to any thoughts of love.

No young man really cares to have his mother pick out his wife, after all. Perhaps the noble-born and wealthy were used to that sort of thing, but they could afford concubines and mistresses and more than one wife. A young farmer needed to be sure that the wife he was getting was one
he
wanted. And though Kiron was no longer a farmer, and probably never would be one again, he
thought
like one of the young men in her village.

Meanwhile Peri had continued her quiet campaign. But if the other women had noticed . . .

“How so?” the other woman laughed. “He is easy on the eyes, that one. And much more amusing than our sober trainer or our quarrelsome wingleader.”

So they hadn’t noticed. She smiled with relief. “Now that is a true thing.”

Her campaign was going well. Kiron sought out her company when he had time. He called her “restful.” She spoke always of things he cared about—dragons, mostly, telling him of Sutema’s antics, asking his advice. A man liked having a restful wife. Peace in the house; that was what they liked. A man liked to be deferred to.

It would be a strange sort of life. She could not imagine giving up Sutema, so they would be Jousters together, of course. What would that be like?

Hmm. Probably much like life now. Well, that was hardly a bad thing. Life now was very good, and she really could not see a way to improve on it.

“Hesh-ret is flapping his wings hard now,” Sit-aken-te said into the hot silence. “I was glad when he tired, because he had long since worn me out. I think I will persuade him to use those perches tomorrow.”

“You should use some other command than ‘fly’ when you want him to exercise his wings,” Peri warned. “You’ll want to use the word ‘fly’ later when he is really flying. I use ‘wings.’ But it really doesn’t matter what word you use as long as the dragon understands what you mean.”

Sit-aken-te laughed quietly. “Now that is a very true thing. Are you cool now? We could go study one of those scrolls Huras brought with him.”

Peri flushed. “I cannot read,” she said reluctantly.

Surely Sit-aken-te would stare at her in uncomprehending astonishment.

“I did not think you could, which is why I said we should study it together,” the young woman replied. “You are sensible and practical, and we can, I think, do a commendable job of sifting grain from chaff together. Unless you had rather go to placate that friend of yours.”

“Placate?” It hadn’t occurred before to Peri that this was what she was doing with Letis. But it was, of course. That was exactly what she was doing.

The lily pads moved a little as Sit-aken-te shrugged. “One doesn’t choose one’s friends’ friends. But I would not spend nearly the time with her that you do, if it were me. She does not approve of us, nor of your being one of us, and will not accept that you wish to be here. I would have reached the limit of my patience long ago. But then, she is not my friend. She may have many worthwhile qualities that I cannot see.” The other woman chuckled a little. “And I must admit, her voice grates on me. I never could bear people whose words say one thing, while their spirit says another.”

Peri blinked. “I must be missing something,” she said carefully. “Whatever do you mean?” Was this a priestess attribute again?

“Hmm. It is a matter of paying a little less attention to what she
says
and more to the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes, the way she moves,” Sit-aken-te explained. “She says that she is proud of her son, and yet I can tell that she is angry that he has risen to so high a place. She defers to us, and yet I can tell that she despises us because we are nobly born. Her words are soft and mild, yet her heart is full of bitterness and anger. I can understand why she would be so, of course, and in her place I should probably be just as bitter and angry. But this does not make her a comfortable person to be around. And if she would simply admit to you and to herself that this is how she feels, perhaps she could rid herself of some of it.”

“She lost much,” Peri replied, feeling as if she had to defend Letis now.

“So have others, on both sides,” Sit-aken-te pointed out with justification. “But—there, you see, it is not my place to judge. I merely say I do not find her a pleasant person, and I would spend less time in her company than you do. If you would rather—”

The other woman rose from the water, and reached for a cloth to dry herself, though it was so hot that the faint breeze dried her before she even picked the oblong of linen up.

“No, no, if you will be so kind as to read the scroll to me, I had much rather do that while the little ones nap,” Peri said hastily, also standing. “You do me a great favor.”

“Well, and I do owe you for far too much time you spent watching over
my
dragon,” the young woman replied, with a smile over her shoulder, as she shook back her hair and wrapped the linen around herself.

Peri did the same, feeling touched and a little surprised at the same time.

“Huras is right; we have been . . . hmm . . . taking advantage of your good nature,” Sit-aken-te said. “It is time to change that.”

 

Them-noh-thet, the Priest of Haras who had gone with Kiron the first time, had spent hours setting up elaborate ritual equipment to work his magic.

Rakaten-te, the Chosen of Seft, set up nothing but himself.

Kiron had more than expected the Chosen to ask him to find some other venue than the Temple of Haras and had resigned himself to moving all of the provisions that they had found to a new location.

Instead, Rakaten-te had dismounted—a bit stiffly, which was hardly a surprise, given his age—and followed Kiron into the temple by the simple expedient of keeping one hand on Kiron’s shoulder. He had stood in the middle of the sanctuary floor for some time, with his head cocked a little to one side as if he was listening to something.

“Properly cleansed and purged,” he had said at long last, with an approving nod. “I shall have to tender Them-noh-thet a compliment when we return.”