Alta

SEVENTEEN

SOMETIMES Kiron had thought there would not be enough time before the rains began; others that the awaited day could not come quickly enough.
Meanwhile, the dragonets—swiftly and daily growing so large that they really needed to be called “dragons” now—continued to grow in more ways than just size.
Take little Re-eth-ke, for instance; she might be small, but she was as quick as a thought, and exquisitely sensitive to emotions. It wasn’t hard to tell how Aket-ten was feeling; all you had to do was look at Re-eth-ke. When Aket-ten was happy, the blue-and-silver dragon would bounce everywhere, and flit through the sky like a bit of thistledown. When she was depressed, Re-eth-ke became a shadow. And when Aket-ten was angry—well, it was best not to get in Re-eth-ke’s way.
Tathulan, the huge and striking female belonging to Huras, was, like Huras, quiet and serious. When she was in the air, she was all business, and very single-minded about everything Huras asked her to do.
And then there was Wastet, Orest’s beetle-blue male. Now, given how much like their riders both Re-eth-ke and Tathulan were, one might think that all dragons were like the ones who had raised them. Wastet could not have been more unlike Orest. Kiron considered Orest to be his first and best friend next to his sister Aket-ten, but he was not blind to Orest’s faults. Orest was still careless and forgetful, and now and then inclined to puff himself up. But Wastet was steady, just a little slower than the rest, and if a dragon could be “modest,” Wastet was every bit of that. Some of Wastet’s steadiness was rubbing off on Orest, and to Kiron’s mind, that was a very good thing. Of all of the dragons, Wastet was the one most likely to be right where he was supposed to be, no matter what was happening.
Se-atmen was fiery and temperamental. She was the one most likely to lose her temper in practice, and it was a good thing that Kalen was so experienced in handling touchy falcons, because he had his hands full with her. Oset-re’s Apetma could also be as fiery in temper as her copper red color.
Pe-atep’s Deoth was still shy—shy on the ground, anyway. He was a little lion in the air. He had been the last to fledge, and it had taken all of the persuasion Aket-ten could muster to get him more than a few feet off the ground. But once he discovered flight, it was hard to stop him; given the chance, he would have flown everywhere.
Gan’s Khaleph was as relaxed as Se-atmen and Apetma were fiery. Nothing ever flustered him; not mistakes, not accidents. He was the first to recover from the earthshake, and with Wastet, was the one who could always be counted upon to do exactly what he was asked.
Then there was Bethlan. First-born of all the clutches, she was another Kashet; clever, strong, agile, and possessed of a wicked sense of humor. Like Kashet, she was a blue, but an indigo-blue shading to purple. Like Kashet, she was gregarious and outgoing. Of all of them, she was the most likely to be in someone else’s pen. Some of her gregariousness was rubbing off on shy Menet-ka, and that was no bad thing.
So waiting for the rains was hardly boring, seeing all these emerging personalities working together. And when the announcement did come, it placed a new burden of worry and responsibility on his shoulders, yet relieved a burden of waiting.
The word had come, not from the Temple of the Twins, but from the Tower of Wisdom. Tomorrow, the rains begin.
Kiron wondered just how ominous other folk in Alta City found it that it had been the Magi, and not the Winged Ones, who had announced the start of the rains this year. And why had it come from the Magi? Oh, certainly, they were the ones who would trigger the rains, but why had they elected to announce the fact? Was it that there were no Winged Ones fit to tell when the rains would start? Or were the Magi trying to supplant the Winged Ones, to take their place in the minds of the people?
If so, they had better start thinking of a way to predict earthshakes, Kiron thought grimly, looking up at the Tower when his dragon boy brought him the word. Because telling someone what you plan to do, and predicting what the elements are going to do, are two very different things. And while people might get annoyed by having their property spoiled by an unpredicted rainstorm, they are flatly terrified of unpredicted earthshakes. And rightly so since a rainstorm is only an annoyance; it is the earthshakes that can kill them.
Nevertheless, he went about taking care of the usual preparations for the start of the rains without any outward show that this announcement had set his heart racing. He and his dragon boy pulled the awning over Avatre’s pen, and over the pen that was currently Kaleth’s home as well. Anything that might be blown away was secured, anything that might be ruined by rain taken away and put in storage or under awnings. All over the compound, the same precautions and preparations for the rains were taking place, just as if this year was like last year, or the year before, or a hundred years ago.
But when Kiron came out of the vacant pen, he saw Aket-ten struggling with the heavy awning of Re-eth-ke’s pen, and he went to help her. She gave him a look of gratitude as he reached up with a rake and poked the place where it had stuck until it was freed, then helped her pull the canvas all the way across and secure it.
“I forgot you’d never done this before,” he said casually, and gave her a look.
Tomorrow we go up, that look said wordlessly. And she must have understood it, because her eyes narrowed, and she nodded.
“We ought to see if Vash and Letoth will fly in the worst of it,” she replied. “They’re the heaviest of the swamp dragons, the best-suited to storm riding, and it would be useful to know if we could put them up no matter what the conditions.”
Why, bless her, she thought of an excuse! He had come up a blank, no matter how hard he had tried. It was a good excuse, too, because she was right. They knew that the swamp dragons would fly in rain, but would they fly in storm?
“They won’t fly for their Jousters,” he said doubtfully, for the benefit of anyone who might be spying on them. “I’m fairly sure of that.”
There might not be anyone there, but there was no point in taking a chance. Heklatis had told them of a kind of magical spying that could be done, that not even his amulets could completely foil, using birds as the Magis’ eyes and ears. Since that time, during the day, under the open sky, they had been careful not to divulge anything that they didn’t want the Magi to know.
And there were a couple of rock doves perched up on the wall of Re-eth-ke’s pen. They’d fluttered up when the awning went by, but came right back down again. Spies? Or just birds who knew there was always some sort of food around the compound?
“They might not fly for their Jousters, but they will for me,” she said confidently. “I may not be good as a Winged Fledgling anymore, but I can still talk to beasts, and I can persuade even the dragons to do almost anything for me.”
“I’d rather you didn’t go up alone,” he said.
She gave him a fearsome glare, but replied, “I could fly Letoth, if you’re willing to try Vash. If you fly close, I’ll be able to speak to both of them and convince Vash to carry you.”
“I’ve flown Vash before,” he replied—an untruth, but the Magi wouldn’t know that. “She’s a lazy pig, but not so bad other than that; if you can get her up in the sky, I can control her. All right, we can try first thing in the morning. But if you aren’t ready to go when I am, you can forget it; I’ll tell Letoth’s boy, and Vash’s, too, you aren’t to go up alone.”
She made a rude face at him, which he ignored. “I’ll be up before you are,” she said, with just a touch of sharpness in her tone. “You just go get us permission to borrow them.”
If anyone was listening, they heard only that we’re going to try flying dragons in the storm. That can’t possibly be of any interest. With that set up, he left her to ready Re-eth-ke’s pen for the rains on her own, and went off to report to Lord Khumun, to get permission for the borrowing from the two senior Jousters—and, as he had threatened, to tell Letoth and Vash’s dragon boys that they were not to allow Aket-ten to take a dragon out in the storm by herself. Aket-ten, for all of her bravado, would not dare to borrow a dragon without permission, for the senior Jousters might well take it into their heads to reward such impertinence with a thrashing. And it would not matter to them whose daughter she was; they had thrashed boys of higher rank than she was. They were technically her father’s equal in rank.
And they also knew that Lord Ya-tiren would punish his daughter himself for taking a dragon without permission. And so did Aket-ten. Indulged she might be, but she was not spoiled. Kiron had the distinct impression that Lord Ya-tiren had raised all of his children with a very clear set of rules, and the knowledge of what happened when you broke those rules.
She knew, of course, that she would get short shrift herself from the senior Jousters if she asked them—which was why she had told him to get the permission. They were still of the mindset that a girl of any rank was best employed in housekeeping and child rearing—or, if she happened to be a Winged One or a priestess or Healer, properly doing her job in the appropriate temple. Girls did not belong in the Jousters’ Compound, except as servants and entertainers. She had pushed the line by being a Healer for the dragons, but although that pushed the line, she had not quite crossed it.
But this business of flying a dragon had them looking at her narrowly. While they were grateful that she had stopped Re-eth-ke’s keening, and they grudgingly accepted that she had to fly the dragonet to keep it healthy and exercised, they were one and all adamant that a girl had no business thinking of herself as a Jouster. And only the carefully fostered illusion that Kiron and Heklatis were “in control of her” kept her from being snubbed, or worse.
So, it was Kiron, wingleader of his own wing, respected trainer and the boy who had worked out ways of making the smaller, lighter dragons able to challenge the larger desert dragons, who approached to ask permission to borrow Vash and Letoth. Kiron, the senior Jousters felt, had earned their respect. He was, if not quite one of them, certainly their equal.
“It would be damned useful to find out if we can get anything to fly in the worst of the muck,” said Vash’s rider thoughtfully, when Kiron approached him. “We might have an emergency where a dragon would be the fastest messenger, or need to fly a hit-and-run attack.”
Letoth’s Jouster said much the same, and added, “If you can get above the clouds, I’d bet you can teach that old sow it’s not so bad up there. You’ll have to go pretty high, though, and the winds will probably be fierce. She won’t mind, not while she’s working, but you might want to wrap up.”
“I’d thought about that,” Kiron replied, grateful beyond words that the Jouster had already outlined exactly what he planned to do. It made him feel better that someone with far more experience was warning him about things he’d thought of. Should anyone ask, in fact, he could say that he’d gotten advice from both senior Jousters. “I had one of the slaves copy the wool leg coverings and shirts that those amber-trading barbarians wear, and I got some sheepskins to wrap up in, too.”
The Jouster shuddered with the look of someone who did not care to find himself wrapped up in wool at all. “Better you than me, boy. Deflea yourself after, the gods only know where those sheepskins have been, or what they’ve collected.”
Kiron laughed, and promised, and went off to Lord Khumun to report what he and Aket-ten were going to do. And Lord Khumun gave him a look that asked, Is this expedition concerning something I don’t want to know about?
Kiron gave a terse little nod, and went on with his explanation of what he and Aket-ten were going to wear to keep from turning blue with cold.
Lord Khumun gave his permission readily enough, and so the path was clear.
He could hardly sleep at all that night. He lay in the darkness, tossing and turning, trying to relax, and trying not to fly the whole plan in his mind, over and over and over—and especially trying not to think of all of the things that could go wrong.
Finally he managed to wear himself out so badly, that he fell asleep in spite of himself. Not that his dreams were any more tranquil, but at least they were dreams.

He woke, as he had last rain season, to the sound of thunder. The scent of rain pervaded everything, and over it, the odd, sharp smell that came when lightning struck nearby. Once again, he rolled out of his cot with the canvas of the awning over the pen glowing with continuous lightning.
This time, however, he pulled on a long-sleeved woolen tunic and a set of one-piece woolen leggings, and tied over them a couple of foot-shaped woolen bags to keep his feet warm. Wool, he had been told, stayed warm even when it was wet; if they managed to get above the storm, it would be freezing cold up there, and by the time they got there, they would be soaked. As it was, it was uncomfortably cold now, and the odd woolen clothing, heavy and clumsy as it made him feel, was rather comfortable.
He picked up a cape made of sheepskin, and padded past Avatre, awkward in the woolen foot bags. In the corridor outside, itself covered with an awning, there was no sign of life. That was odd; he would have expected to find Aket-ten dancing from foot to foot with impatience.
He went to Re-eth-ke’s pen and eased past the dragon to peek into Aket-ten’s sleeping chamber. The long lump under her blanket told him that she was still asleep. Very odd. He didn’t think she was faking it either.
He was dreadfully tempted then to leave her there and try to take up Vash alone—
But I told her it was too dangerous to go up alone under conditions like this, he reminded himself. She’ll never believe my cautions again if I turn around and go up by myself. Besides, without her, Vash probably won’t move.
He eased into the chamber, reached out a cautious hand and shook what he thought was her shoulder. It was hard to tell for certain; it was very dark in here, and apparently Aket-ten was one of those people who slept with the blanket pulled up over her head. There was a faint scent of flowers in the air; he thought it might be from the perfume cones she kept around. She seldom actually wore them on her hair or wigs as most noble ladies did; instead, she left them where the sun would shine on them, or where gentle heat from a brazier would release the perfume into the room.
As it happened, the thing he shook was her shoulder. And a grunt was her only response. He shook her again, harder this time. It was like trying to shake a rock outcropping.
“Mmph!” she complained, without really moving much. “Wha—?” The blanket stirred a little.
“Aket-ten!” he said sharply, speaking loudly to be heard above the thunder, giving her a really hard shake. “Get up! The rains are beginning, and we need to take the dragons up in it!”
“Go ’way—” she mumbled, and pulled the blanket tighter around herself. She didn’t even react to his presence in her room.
He stood there, confused. She had been twice as eager as he to take on this task! What was her problem? He knew she couldn’t be sick. Had she changed her mind about going up? Surely not—
No, there had to be some other reason, and once again, he wondered why no one else seemed to find the terrible lightning storm overhead in the least disturbing.
It is thundering so hard I can scarcely hear myself think, yet everyone but me is sleeping through it, just like last time. I wonder—
It was beginning to look to him that the Magi had spread some sort of spell across the city to keep the sleepers in their beds until the rains were triggered by their magic. Could it be that the reason he was not still asleep was that he had not been born in Alta City? It was the only explanation that he could think of, though it was just as possible that he was unusually resistant to whatever magic they were doing. Some people were harder to drug than others; he supposed that some people were harder to cast spells upon.
It could well be, then, that the Magi were to blame for Aket-ten’s apparent sloth—but such idle speculations were not getting Aket-ten up.
He tried shaking her so hard he rattled the cot, with just about the same result. The harder he shook her, the tighter she curled up. Short of bringing a wall down on her, he didn’t think merely shaking her was going to do any good.
So with a sigh, he finally decided that he would have to resort to the unthinkably rude. Even serfs who had been worked to exhaustion and were more dead than asleep responded to what he was about to do.
He went out, got a pot full of cold water, came back to her chamber, pulled back the covers over her head, and dumped the contents of the pot over her face.
Then he jumped back and a good thing, too, because she came up with a yell, swinging wildly at the darkness around her. She was awake now, all right, angry, and spitting fury. And it was a good thing that she was still tangled up in her blanket, because she probably would have given him a bloody nose for his little trick.
But she was tangled up in her blanket, and the time it took her to struggle free was enough for him to protest and try to explain, with all the sincerity he could muster and from the other side of the chamber, “Aket-ten! I’m sorry! I swear I am sorry, and I will make it up to you! It was the only way I could wake you up, I swear to you, and I tried, I really tried!”
She stood there in the semidarkness, kicking free of the blanket, and he was terribly glad that it was semidarkness that filled the chamber because she wasn’t wearing anything at all beneath that blanket. All that wool suddenly felt very hot, and very prickly, as he flushed. Not that what she usually wore was much less revealing, but still—
She stood panting with anger, but it was anger that was cooling as she listened to him babble out his explanation. Finally, she tossed her wet hair over her shoulder and said, with great suspicion, “You swear on your father’s ghost? You swear that my brother didn’t put you up to this?”
“I swear!” he said immediately. “And there’s something very odd going on. There’s not a single other person awake, and I bet if you were to lie down, you’d be asleep in a moment. What’s more, I bet if we tried to go wake any of the others up, they’d be as hard to stir as you were. It was just like this at the start of the rains last year. I was the only one awake. It was—” he shook his head “—it was disturbing.”
“The Magi,” she said instantly, confirming his suspicion. “There must be something that they don’t want anyone to see about the start of the rains.” He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the frown in her voice. “I’m not sure I want to know what it is, or why.”
He swallowed. He wasn’t either, now that he came to think about it. If the Magi were not at all reticent about people knowing they were interfering with the Winged Ones, what was it they felt they had to hide—and felt it so strongly they had to put the entire city to sleep?
His mouth tasted sour. I can’t do everything, he reminded himself. All I can do is try to follow Toreth’s plan, and hope that once we take the Jousters out of the mix—it will weaken the Magi. Only then can we try to come up with the next plan.
“Whatever it is, it’s nothing we can do anything about,” she said flatly, echoing his own thoughts. “We take the Jousters out of the war and free the Winged Ones. They have more authority than we.”
She moved over to the wall, into the complete darkness, and he heard her fumbling about, then the sounds of someone putting on unfamiliar garments. Then she came back into the dim light from the doorway, pausing only to tie her wool foot bags in place. “If there’s something that the Magi don’t want people to watch, I want to see it. Come on!”
Together, carrying their sheepskin capes, they padded down the corridor to the landing courtyard. And there, just as last year, they watched the spectacular lighting and thunder show that centered on the Tower of Wisdom. Kiron was not altogether certain, but it seemed to him that it was more violent than it had been last year. Then again, the Magi were using the Winged Ones now, and not the Fledglings. He felt sick, wondering just what it was that was happening inside that tower.
Aket-ten frowned with concentration as she watched it, braiding up her hair as she did. “I wish I knew what to look for,” she mumbled, staring fixedly at the point in the sky that was just above the tower, around which all of the storm clouds seemed to be rotating. “Gods take them! What could be so important that they need to keep the whole city asleep? I wish I had thought to ask Heklatis to watch this. Is it too late to try and wake him, do you think?”
“Maybe. If everything happens the way it did last year, the whole storm is going to break soon. How long has that been going on?” he asked.
She shook her head, and tossed the end of her braid over her shoulder. “I don’t know. I mean, everyone always sleeps on the first day of the rains, it’s a holiday even for slaves. There’s not a lot of point in getting up early, the downpour is too heavy, and it’s too dark to do anything until later in the day. I always looked forward to it and never thought about it, not really, and I suppose that’s how everyone else feels. It’s been this way for years, anyway.”
Finally the show ended in that tremendous crack of lightning and peal of thunder that he remembered from the previous year, and the skies opened up. They stood there, staring at the waterfalls of rain pouring from the sky, then finally she shook her head.
“Let’s go get the dust,” she said. “Heklatis said he was fixing rainproof bags for us last night.”
They made their way to Heklatis’ quarters. Aket-ten pulled her cape over her head and made a dash across his courtyard to the first door, which led into a room Heklatis used as a workshop. She came back a moment later with four bulging, heavy-looking bags, made of leather, shiny with beeswax rubbed on the outside.
“Here they are,” she said, putting two of them down at his feet. “And he rigged them that way to release the dust for us, like he promised! He must have found a way to make it work.”
Kiron picked up one of the bags to examine it with interest. Heklatis had pledged that he was going to try to find a way for them to trickle the dust out gradually without having to cut a hole in the bottom of the bag while flying. He couldn’t test it without losing the dust, of course, but it looked as if the clever Akkadian had been as good as his word. There was a sturdy wooden handle attached to a stout leather cord, which in turn was attached to a patch on the bottom of the bag that looked as if it was meant to rip free with a good hard tug. He put the bag down again.
“I hope you brought a knife anyway,” he said. Aket-ten fumbled at the front of her tunic and pulled up a cord, which was attached to a small knife in a leather sheath hung around her neck. Kiron’s was strapped over his woolen leg coverings on his right calf. He nodded.
“The day isn’t getting longer,” he said, and led the way to Vash’s pen.
It took some doing to get the swamp dragon up out of her wallow. It was cold out of the water, and dark, and she didn’t want to leave. He didn’t blame her; if he’d had any choice, he would be in bed at this moment himself. Aket-ten spent a great deal of time nose-to-nose with the dull green dragon before she emerged from the water with a groan, and grumbled her way over to the saddle stand so that he could put her rig on her.
Once Aket-ten judged it was safe to leave the two of them alone, she went back out into the corridor to deal with Letoth herself.
Either Letoth was more cooperative, or Vash was much more stubborn—in either case, by the time Kiron finished harnessing Vash, fastening the bags behind her saddle, and leading her out into the corridor, Aket-ten and Letoth were waiting for them. The rain drumming on the canvas awning and pouring down the sides into the drainage channel was a reminder that they were in for a miserable ride.
Both dragons balked at the entrance to the landing courtyard, and once again, Aket-ten had to stand nose-to-nose with both of them for some time before they heaved huge, hot sighs that that smelled of iron and blood, and allowed themselves to be led out into the rain.
And once in the rain, it was impossible to speak except in a shout.
The dragons snorted their distaste, and tossed their heads unhappily, while Kiron and Aket-ten found themselves wrapped in sodden, heavy cloth. And if the wet wool wasn’t cold, it also wasn’t particularly pleasant; it was heavy, it clung and made it hard to move, and it stank of soggy sheep. They made their way into the center of the court, Aket-ten got both beasts to lie down, and the two of them clambered up into their saddles.
Vash got to her feet first, groaning. Letoth followed suit. It was Aket-ten who gave the signal to fly; Letoth rose first, flying heavily, and Vash followed her a moment later. With the rain pouring down on them, they wallowed into the sky. Kiron and Aket-ten were just baggage at that point; for his part, Kiron couldn’t see anything beyond the curtain of rain, and certainly couldn’t hear. He just hung on and let the dragon pick her course, so long as it was up. Her wings pounded through the sodden air, as she labored upward with all her might. Kiron was just glad that he and Aket-ten were much smaller than the Jousters who usually rode these beasts, or they never would have gotten into the air at all.
It took forever. There was no way to keep track of time, as Vash’s lungs heaved under his legs, and he felt her muscles straining to drive her upward, while his muscles ached from the strain of being in the saddle of a dragon in a steep climb. Occasionally, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a distant roar of thunder, but somehow the dragons were staying out of the area around the tower.
Then came the winds.
It must have been right beneath the clouds, or perhaps just inside them; the rain slackened a little, and then—
Vash bucked sideways as a gust of wind hit her wings and flung her over. She fought for control, Kiron balancing in his saddle to help her, and kept from being tumbled through the air by a small miracle. Then, before they could fully recover, another gust hit them, driving them in a different direction. Now they were inside the cloud, some rain, but mostly inky-black, tempest-driven mist that stung when it hit like a sandstorm, and winds that tossed poor Vash around like a leaf.
Vash spread her wings as the third gust hit her, and with a strangled cry, drove upward with all her might. She surged underneath him, throwing him back in the saddle with powerful wing-beats, and he fought for balance, then flung himself forward over her neck and clinging to avoid overbalancing her. The lightning stink was in his nostrils; it was all he could smell, and he wondered with horrified fascination what would happen if lightning struck the two of them.
He could see in the set of her head and neck, and in the spread of her wings, that she was angry. Angry enough, it seemed, to be determined to fight her way up through this cloud and into the blue sky above. He doubted that she was even thinking of him now. All of her concentration was on up—she knew the sun was up there, and she could, she would, get up there with it!
And then, just when he thought the darkness inside the cloud would never end, just when he wondered if he and Vash had died back there, and this was the limbo of an unhappy ghost, she drove through the top of the cloud and up into the sunlight.
He barely had time to look around before Aket-ten and Letoth came surging up beside them like a leaping fish, trailing wisps of cloud stuff behind them.
Aket-ten recovered first. She shook back her woolen sheepskin cape as Letoth spread her wings and let the strong wind carry her, panting with exertion. With a nudge of his knee and a pull on the reins, Kiron sent Vash after her.
It was a different world. He had been high before, but never this high. Together they soared in a strange world, floored with white fleeces, roofed with the blue sky, and empty but for swift, strong winds. Cold—it was as cold as he had ever remembered being, and he dared not think how high they must be. And it was silent, but for the high, thin whistle of the wind in his ears, and the beating of the dragons’ wings. Surely this was far, far higher than he had ever flown, even on Avatre.
It was wonderful beyond words. He took a deep breath of the clean, clear air, and felt as intoxicated as if he had drunk three jars of palm wine. This was freedom such as he had never tasted before. It was as if he and Aket-ten were the only two humans alive in the world, a world made solely for their pleasure.
Aket-ten cast him a wild glance, full of delight, and despite the gravity of their task, he grinned back at her.
Even the dragons seemed to enjoy this place of white and blue and intense light. They soared and tacked back and forth on the wind, staying just above the cloud tops, as he and Aket-ten whooped and laughed with the sheer pleasure of the flight. The air might be cold, but it was also as dry as that over the desert; in no time their clothing and even their cloaks were no more than damp, and the wool was doing its proper job of keeping them warm. Only his nose, his hands, and his ears were cold, and he solved the last by hunching his head down into the fleece of his cloak.
Finally, with a sigh, Kiron recalled himself to duty. He waved a hand at Aket-ten—not wanting to take more than one hand off the saddle hold—and pointed at the bags. She nodded, and pulled the wooden handle on the one nearest him so he could signal her if it had ripped loose properly.
The patch on the bottom ripped off, exposing an open gash in the thick leather—and a thin, gray dust began to drift out, to be caught up on the wind and whipped away in moments.
Satisfied that Heklatis’ creation was working as it should, Kiron signaled to Aket-ten that all was well, and ripped loose the patch from the first of his bags. She nodded vigorously after a moment—
And then, with the best possible combination of business and pleasure, they sent Vash and Letoth in great swooping curves and shallow climbs followed by long dives, kiting their way all over the sky. He had been afraid, given Heklatis’ warnings, that the dust would be so thick it would be dangerous to breathe, but in fact, the wind was carrying it away so fast that he couldn’t even see it except as a bit of misty gray right under the bag. So that meant they didn’t need to try to avoid it, and they just flew where they wanted to, until the first two bags were empty and flapping loose against the dragons’ sides, causing them no end of annoyance. Vash even bent to bite at it, and since Kiron saw no reason to take it back down again, he simply cut it loose and let it fall away into the clouds. When Aket-ten saw what he had done, she did the same, and then they pulled the patches on their second bags and began the procedure all over again.
By this time their clothing was dry and they were actually warm. Or at least, Kiron was, and he thought by the pink of Aket-ten’s cheeks that she was, too. The release of the second lot of dust was no more difficult than the first, and when they had cut their second bags loose, Kiron felt an extreme reluctance to fight their way back down through the clouds again.
All right, he decided, There’s no reason to be down there until we have to. Why don’t we just fly until the dragons are hungry? We’ll let them decide when they want to go home.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Aket-ten waving at him; she mimed diving down. He pointed at Vash’s head, tried to mime being hungry, and pointed at Vash’s head again. She frowned—then smiled, and nodded.
For the rest of the morning, they circled and rode the winds together, and the only way in Kiron’s mind that it could have been more perfect would have been if they were on the same dragon. As it was, they only way they could share their pleasure was by signs and smiles.
Still, he absorbed every moment, cramming it into his memory along with the precious memories of Avatre’s first flight above the desert into freedom, of her first good hunt, of the long flight above the swamps of Alta. He would hold these memories, storing them to take out and savor, as an antidote to fear and grief and pain to come. There would be bad times; just as surely as there were good times, there would be bad ones, and he would need memories like this when they came. If ever there had been a perfect moment in his life, it was this, and he gave in to the intoxication of pure flight.
But eventually, as he had known it must, it had to end. He felt Vash tugging in one particular direction, and she made a huge turn, then went from soaring to real flying, beating her way against the wind with powerful wing thrusts. For a moment, he was puzzled—but then he realized that he had forgotten a little detail.
Up here in the clouds, he had no idea where he was. But Vash knew. Just as the birds knew where “home” was, even when they could not see it, Vash and Letoth knew where the compound was. They were hungry, and the compound meant “food”—they might have soared leagues away from it, but they were used to flying enormous distances to get to the battlefield or on patrol. The wind was strong, but the kamiseen was stronger, and they flew against it as a matter of routine; it was no match for their powerful muscles.
Letoth, with the lighter burden of Aket-ten, swiftly overtook Vash and then went into the lead. This spurred Vash on to better efforts, and the two of them labored across the sky as Kiron marveled that they clearly knew exactly where they were going despite the fact that there was nothing visible but clouds that looked exactly like all other clouds beneath them.
Then, without any warning at all, ahead of him, Letoth suddenly folded her wings and dove. Surprised into a scream, Aket-ten grabbed the saddle with both hands as her mount vanished into the clouds.
Kiron had only that much warning to grab the saddle himself, as Vash did the same.
His stomach got left somewhere far behind him. It might be a controlled dive, but it felt exactly like plummeting, and his body reacted with terror. A scream ripped out of his own throat, and his hands clenched onto the front of the saddle so hard that they ached.
Trust Vash. She knows what she’s doing. She won’t crash. She was wild-caught as an adult, she must have done this before. Trust Vash!
They were through the clouds and the turbulence inside them in two heartbeats, falling like a pair of stones out and into the rain. And as they fell through the bottom of the clouds, he saw Letoth and Aket-ten beside him, her hair streaming behind her, her sheepskin cape flapping loose, her mouth still open in a scream—
—and then the rain curtains parted for a moment, and he saw a canal—a bridge—the compound! The rain closed in, then parted again beneath another gust of wind, and the compound was rushing at them, fast—too fast—
Then Vash snapped her wings open, slowing their fall. The rain and the wind slowed it further, and she began to backwing, pulling her hindquarters under him, making her body into an enormous secondary “wing” to slow them still further—
And then, with three thunderous wingbeats, they were down, and Letoth beside them, down in the landing courtyard, skidding to a halt on the rain-slick earth. A slip, and a skid, and Vash folded her wings.
And there they were, safe again, with rain pouring down over them, soaked to the skin, and frightened out of their bodies, almost, and yet, at the same time, full of triumph.
And there were four people running toward them, shouting welcome over the drum of the rain—two Jousters, two dragon boys. And Kiron realized in that moment that—bless them!—Vash and Letoth’s riders had figured out from their long absence that when they came back, he and Aket-ten would be in no shape to tend to the dragons themselves.
He managed, somehow, to get his leg over Vash’s saddle, and slid down to splash into the courtyard to land on legs that shook with fatigue. Vash’s rider steadied him, then slapped him on the back.
“Great landing!” the Jouster shouted into his ear over the rain. “Didn’t think the old cow had it in her! How did she fly?”
“Wonderful! Fantastic! It can be done!” he shouted back. “In fact, once we were over the storm, she liked it! She didn’t want to come back until she got hungry!”
“Well, she’ll get her reward for certain!” the Jouster laughed. “You go get dry and warm. Well done, both of you!”
The Jousters and their dragon boys led the two dragons off to their meal and their warm wallows; Aket-ten waited for Vash to get out of the way, then half staggered through the rain to his side. He put a steadying arm around her, and to his joy, she not only did not object, but leaned into him.
“I want heat!” she croaked over the rain, “And I want to be dry again—”
He laughed. “Me, too!” he agreed, and with heads bent against the downpour as the skies opened up again, they plodded back to their wing. Now there was nothing for it but to wait.
Wait, and see how far a plan could take them.