Alta

THREE

HE must have hurt himself more than he’d thought—he’d thought his life had hardened him against any and all punishments, but apparently being dragged backward through a swamp, over submerged logs and sharp sedges and who knew what all else, was a little more than even he could handle. Something happened to him after he was hauled into that little boat, because he lost a significant slice of time. One moment, he was curled with his cheek against the reed bundles of the bottom of that boat, and the next—he wasn’t.
Probably he blacked out for a while; at least, that was the only conclusion his pain-fogged mind could come up with, because the next thing he knew, he was being picked up with surprising care by two enormous men, one at his head and the other at his knees, while the girl babbled and fussed at them. And all he could think was that Avatre would surely think he was being attacked.
“Wait!” he gasped, “My dragon will—”
“Here’s the Healer!” interrupted the boy’s voice, just as the two men set Kiron down carefully on a warm, rough surface that felt like stone. And it hurt anyway. His back screamed at him, until he rolled over on his side to get what was obviously lacerated skin off that rough stone.
Kiron blinked his eyes hard to clear them from the tears of pain; as he got them to focus, he saw he was lying on stone, on a little pier, in fact, and the mud-spattered girl and boy had been joined by two enormous men in plain rough-spun tunics, probably the ones who had gotten him out of the boat. Bending over him was a woman with her hair hanging loose; she was dressed in a flowing white linen gown with no jewels at all, and only a soft white belt at the waist. Avatre had already landed at the very end of the stone pier, and was eyeing the proceedings with anxiety. He tried to say something—to warn them that Avatre could be dangerous in this situation—
But then, to his astonishment, the girl walked fearlessly up to the dragon and stretched out her hand.
Avatre started back, eyes wide—then, cautiously, eased her head forward, sniffing suspiciously at the outstretched palm.
And the most astonishing thing of all happened; the moment that Avatre’s nose touched the girl’s hand, the dragon relaxed. Relaxed entirely, in fact, and went from a pose that warned she was ready to fight, to looking as if she was back in her own sand pit with only Kiron beside her.
And she sat, then stretched out at full length on the stone. She kept her eyes fixed on Kiron, but with no signs of concern at all, as if she knew that no one was going to hurt either of them.
“She’ll be all right now, Tef-talla,” the girl said, confidently laying her hand on Avatre’s shoulder and reaching up to scratch under her chin.
Kiron would have experienced a surge of betrayal and jealousy at that moment, except that was the exact moment that the Healer chose to place both hands on his chest, and he was far too busy thinking about how much it hurt—
And then, once again, he wasn’t thinking of anything at all.

When he came to himself a second time, he was lying in a bed. It was not the sort of hard, flat couch that the Tians used; this was more like the fabric frames on low legs that the tala fruit was dried on, but much stronger, of course. And instead of a hard neck rest, there was a soft pillow beneath his head. That, and the sultry breath of a breeze that moved over his face, full of the scent of greenery and water, told him that he was not in Tia, even before his mind caught up with his wakefulness and he remembered why he was lying on a bed.
In fact, this was the sort of bed he had used as a child, when his father Kiron was master of his own farmlands, and those farmlands had been in Alta, not Tia.
There was a linen sheet over him, which was a very good thing, since he quickly discovered that he’d been cleaned up, which was good, but also that he wasn’t wearing anything beneath that sheet, which could have been embarrassing.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true; his chest and presumably his back had been expertly bandaged, so he was “wearing” bandages. But when he opened his eyes, the first thing that he saw was that the girl he had rescued was in the same room with him, and he was glad that they’d given him something to cover his nakedness.
Then his second realization was that he wasn’t in a room, it was a courtyard, open to the sky, which was made necessary by the fact that—his third realization and a great relief—Avatre was also with him. She looked as pleased with herself as could be, and she’d been unharnessed, wiped down, and seemed too contented to be hungry, so someone must have fed her.
And besides the girl and Avatre, there were three men in this courtyard, all standing at his bedside, conversing with one another in low tones.
The first had one hand resting on the girl’s shoulder as she sat beside the head of Kiron’s cot; since the familial resemblance between them was strong, he quickly assumed that this was her father. If so, well—from the gold collar and armbands, the fine linen tunic, the belt of gold plaques, and the gold circlet around his close-cropped hair, he was wealthy at the least.
The second man was robed much like the woman-Healer had been, and there wasn’t much else to note about him, except that he had kind eyes. And the third—
Well, the third wore leather arm-bracers and a wide leather belt over his soft kilt, and carried a leather helmet that was enough like the ones that the Tian Jousters wore to make Kiron think that this must be an Altan Jouster. The first, in fact, that he had ever seen.
“Oh, good!” the girl said, seeing that his eyes were open. “He’s awake! Kiron, son of Kiron?”
“That,” Kiron croaked, finding his throat strangely raw, “would be me, yes.”
The Jouster looked as if he wanted to speak, but the man dressed as a Healer held up a hand. “One at a time, please, and I believe Lord Ya-tiren has precedence?”
The man with his hand on the girl’s shoulder coughed, and looked embarrassed. “I—ah—whatever we learn here, I wish to make it plain that for saving my daughter’s life, this young man has the protection of my house. That’s all.”
The Jouster looked pained. “Lord Ya-tiren, you surely do not think—”
“A strange, bedraggled youngster appears out of nowhere with a dragon that acts like his puppy; he saves my daughter from a river horse, and all that we know of him is that his few possessions appear to be Tian?” Lord Ya-tiren replied pettishly. “And then you appear before he’s even been brought to my house? Well, what is anyone to think? Except that I do not want you people hauling him off to be ‘questioned’ as if he was a spy or a—well, I don’t know what. But he’s surely no older than my son, and I doubt he’s a spy. The last that I heard, the Tians were hardly so desperate that they needed to send boys northward to spy for them!”
Kiron decided that he liked Lord Ya-tiren; the man might not be altogether certain of who and what he was, but was willing to protect him from less delicate ways of finding out than simply asking—
“I am—I was—born Altan, and made a Tian serf and served as a dragon boy among the Jousters of Tia,” Kiron interrupted, taking tiny breaths often, to keep his chest from moving too much. “I suppose you could say I stole Avatre from them, except that without me, she’d never have hatched at all. The rest is a long story.” He eyed the strangers; the Healer looked resigned, Lord Ya-tiren interested, the girl fascinated, and the Jouster skeptical, but willing to be convinced. “If you want to hear it—”
The Healer sighed. “Send for the chairs you wanted, my lord. I can see that my patient will be allowed no rest until this ‘long story’ is told.”
So Kiron told his carefully edited tale, beginning from the time that his father’s land was taken—a little more judicious editing with those facts left them with no real idea how much, or how little, land had belonged to his family. Let them assume whatever they wished to, but if they assumed that the elder Kiron had been the holder of a large estate, well, it would do no harm to his cause. It was a cold fact that a man of wealth and noble blood would look with far more sympathy on someone of his own class than he would on someone far below him, but in a similar plight. Would Ari have been nearly so friendly to him, if Ari had been noble-born rather than common-born? While he would like to think “yes,” experience taught him otherwise.
He spoke bitterly of his father’s death, of the division of his family as a sop to the treaty agreements that meant that Tians could not own land they had taken outright without also “caring” for those to whom it had once belonged. He described his life as a serf under Khefti-the-Fat, and Lord Ya-tiren had the grace to wince more than once. He told of how Jouster Ari had plucked him from under Khefti’s nose—
And then went on at length about Ari and Kashet.
“We know this Jouster, too well,” said the Altan Jouster thoughtfully. “There were rumors that he had done something very different with his dragon—certainly the results he has are remarkable. Most said it was magic.”
“Not magic,” Kiron objected. “Just—wisdom, study, observation and a great deal of thought and care. And he made it clear that any man who was willing to do as he had done, and raise a dragon from the egg, would have the same result. Well, look!”
He pointed at Avatre, lying at her leisure, unbound, and calm as could be. “As he had done, I decided to do,” he continued, and described how he had purloined the egg from the mating of two Jousting dragons, incubated and hatched it, and raised Avatre to First Flight.
And edited again, making it seem that his escape had been planned, making no further mention of Ari, nor of the Bedu, except to claim he had traded with isolated clans, once or twice, for water-rights or food. He had to pause frequently for rest, and to let the muscles of his chest relax again; he suspected there were cracked ribs under those bandages. The sun had just about set by the time he finished, and servants had come bearing torches and lamps to illuminate the entire courtyard.
The Jouster sucked on his lower lip, consideringly. “It is a fantastic tale,” he said, judiciously. “And I would have said, fantasy tale, if this dragon’s own behavior were not just as fantastic.”
“She loves him, Lord Khumun,” the girl said simply, the first time she had spoken since she’d announced that Kiron was awake. “She loves this boy Kiron as if he was her nestmate. When have you ever heard of a dragon who loved her rider?”
And how does she know that? Kiron thought, startled. For the girl had spoken with the authority of someone who really knew what Avatre felt.
“Never. And that alone settles it, I think,” the Jouster said, and stood up. “Very well. My Lord, I leave this boy and his dragon in your care—though the Jousters will see that the dragon’s ration is brought every day—until he is well enough for me to return and enroll him. After that, his disposition will be up to you.”
Lord Ya-tiren bowed his head a little. “Thank you, Lord Khumun,” he replied.
“No tala!” Kiron interrupted, a stab of concern matching that of the pain in his chest lancing through him, as he realized why the Jousters would be providing food for Avatre. They would assume that she needed the calming, taming effects of the tala, and that was the very last thing she needed! “Avatre is to have no tala on her food! Please!”
“No tala.” The Jouster looked from Kiron to Avatre, who was now watching them all calmly, and shook his head. “Very well. I cannot argue with results. No tala. Has she eaten since I arrived?”
The girl giggled. “She told me she was hungry while the Healer was with this boy, and I took care of it, Jouster. I unharnessed her and wiped as much mud and dirt off her as I could manage to reach. She tells me she will want a morning feed, but wishes to sleep now.”
The Jouster shook his head again. “And she speaks to a Nestling-Priestess, as if she were a tame thing. No tala, then. I believe I can leave it all safely in your household, my Lord, and by your leave, I will report this to the House of Jousters and the Great Ones.”
The Lord Ya-tiren nodded, and the man rose, and took himself out of the courtyard.
“And you, Healer?” Lord Ya-tiren asked.
“I am satisfied, my Lord,” the Healer said, with a little smile. “This boy is stouter than I had judged. Call upon me if you wish, but I believe my services will not be needed anymore. If I, too, may go?”
The Lord Ya-Tiren nodded, and the Healer departed as well.
That left the girl and her father, who regarded Kiron benevolently. “Well, my young rescuer,” the lord said. “Do you think you could manage to eat something? Or is that a foolish question?”
Kiron’s stomach growled before he could answer, and the girl chuckled. Her father smiled.
“In that case, I will summon you a servant and a meal, and go about my duties. Aket-ten, I leave him in your hands. Do not overtire him, but I suspect that between you, there are several kilons of unanswered questions, and most of them are things that would not interest me. Goodnight, my children.” And with that, Lord Ya-tiren rose and followed in the wake of the Jouster and the Healer, leaving Kiron alone with the girl, who still sat like a little miniature oracle on her three-legged stool.
She had changed from her short tunic of the swamp into a robe very like those of the priestesses he was familiar with, although there were some differences.
There was no elaborate wig, for instance; she wore her own black hair cut short, like a helmet that framed her face and skimmed the nape of her neck. And the robe was not pleated tightly to her slim body; it hung loosely from her shoulders and was confined with a beaded belt. Around her neck was an enameled and beaded collar that depicted a flame with two wings, like the wings of the Haras-falcon.
“Um,” Kiron said, feeling tongue-tied. Then the one thing he really wanted to know just burst out of him. “How can you know about Avatre?”
“What she’s thinking, you mean?” the girl replied. “I’m a Nestling-Priestess; I have the Gifts. I mean, I will have the Gifts when I get older and more training and if they come to me, but I’ve always had the Gift of Silent Speech with animals. That’s how they knew I was going to be a Winged One when I grew up.”
He blinked. A Winged One? “You mean—you’re going to be a sea witch?” he blurted, then blushed. “I mean, that’s what they call—the Tians—”
She giggled again; she had a charming laugh, and he was relieved that she seemed to be the sort of girl who refused to take herself too seriously. “I know that, silly! I know that’s what the Tians call us! But no, I’m not going to be one of the Magi, people that have real magic. I’m going to be the kind that can see and hear and know things that people without the Gifts can’t. That’s what a Winged One is. The others aren’t really priests and priestesses at all. Magi, we call them. They serve the Great Ones. We serve the gods.”
He digested that for a moment, trying to sort it all in terms of the things that he was familiar with. He’d never heard of anyone who could “speak” with animals, but that might not mean anything. He wasn’t exactly conversant with the ways of priests. “It’s a good thing you can talk to Avatre. I mean, thank you for trying, and getting her calm. She must have been really scared.”
“She was, but she was fine as soon as I told her we were going to take care of you,” the girl said, with complete equanimity, as if she “spoke” to dragons every day. Well, if she “spoke” to animals all the time, perhaps that wasn’t such a stretch! “Then she was all right, but she wouldn’t be parted from you, so that’s why you’re in my courtyard instead of in a proper room. She’s very nice, a little like a hunting cat, and a little like a falcon, and I talk to those all the time. Father likes to hunt, and he relies on me to find out how his cats and birds are feeling.” She looked up at the sky, now dark, and filling with stars. “I hope it doesn’t rain—”
That was the least of his concerns. “During kamiseen? Surely not!”
She laughed. “Oh, of course not. You’re right. So—you’re Kiron, and I’m Aket-ten. And you saved my life! That was terribly brave and clever of you, and I hope you realize that I really am awfully grateful, and so is my father, and we’re terribly in your debt.” She flushed. “You really did, you know, even though I have Silent Speech. I can’t talk to beasts unless I touch them, and I think that the river horse would have bitten me in two before I could have made it calm down, so you really did save me.” She took a deep breath, her flush faded, and she sobered and bit her lip. “Poor Larion-al. I wish you could have saved him, too.”
He gulped, recalling that poor rower, engulfed and being shaken like a dog shook a rag. “So do I. What were you doing out there, anyway?”
Now, for the first time, she frowned. “We were sent to catch a special sort of fish for Magus Kephret. That is, I was sent, and my brother Orest wouldn’t let me go alone. The Nestlings all take training together, you see, so the Winged Ones or the Magi that are teachers can give assignments to whomever they wish. He said that with my Gifts I should be able to know where the fish were, and get them to come to my spear. I tried to tell him that my Gift wasn’t that strong yet, and anyway, I wasn’t sure it could be used for something like that, but he said how could I know if I didn’t try—” Now she paused, and seeing the odd expression on her face, Kiron got a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.
She has a bad feeling about that Magus, and about why he sent her, but she can’t put a finger on what’s wrong.
“Anyway, Father went straight to the Teachers, the Teachers went to the Pedagogues who are in charge of all Nestling and Fledgling training, and they’ve said that there is to be no more sending of Nestlings out on dangerous errands like that again,” she continued, her face clearing. “I mean, it wasn’t as if it was time for my ordeals or anything, I’m not nearly old enough! So, anyway, that was why we were out in the swamp. And I didn’t realize that our boat had gotten between a river horse and her calf until it was too late, and she was charging us.”
He sighed as she gave him a long look. “I’m glad we were there when we were,” he said sincerely, and just then, several servants arrived, burdened with food, and for a time, he and Aket-ten were too busy eating for many more questions.
He was absolutely ravenous, but there was still time between bites to have a look at his surroundings. As a courtyard, this was a singularly austere spot. There was no ornamental pool, such as the Jousters of Tia shared, and hardly any plantings, just a tree in each corner in a big stone box. He was beneath the branches of one of these trees, an orange tree, he thought. Avatre was in the barren middle of the courtyard, surrounded by charcoal braziers, which must have been keeping her warm enough or she would surely be complaining. The walls around the courtyard were white stone, and there was one door in the middle of each of the four walls, making it enough like Avatre’s former pen that she probably felt perfectly secure here.
The meal was delicious; spiced lamb, hot and oozing juice, and chickpea paste with herbs in it, goat cheese pungent and tangy, sharp onions and some green stuff he wasn’t at all familiar with that went well with all of it. It came with a flat round of something that Aket-ten used to scoop up the chickpea paste and wrap around the lamb and vegetables. He followed her example and found it was a sort of chewy bread. There were also dates in honey, and a much better date wine than he’d gotten from that overseer. The head of his bed could be propped up, as she showed him, even though it made him dizzy to sit up at first. It felt quite luxurious to be sitting, eating in bed, with servants to wait on him.
Aket-ten quite sensibly concentrated on eating rather than chattering, which was something of a relief. From what Kiron vaguely recalled of his sisters, they had spent a good half of the time at every meal gabbling like a flock of hens.
She didn’t seem much like a typical girl. On the other hand, he didn’t know a great deal about girls, other than the little that he remembered of his sisters. The fact was, the only females that Kiron had even seen much of once he’d been taken into Ari’s service were the serfs, slaves, and servants in the compound’s kitchen area. And most of those weren’t girls, but women old enough to be his mother. He really didn’t know what to expect from this one; Altan and noble and female. And he certainly didn’t know what to say to her.
Fortunately, he was saved from having to make any attempt at conversation by the arrival of her brother.
“Father says our hero is awake!” called a cheerful voice from the darkened door nearest them, and the young man himself sauntered out into the courtyard a moment later. “And so you are! Did you leave me any dates, little oracle?”
“Yes, if you want them, unless Kiron needs them,” Aket-ten said.
“No, no, they’re too sweet for me,” he replied—the truth, since he wasn’t used to anything as sweet as a honeyed date after all that time in the desert.
“Hmm! Thank you! My brothers always gobble them up like locusts on a wheat field, and I never get my share.” Orest said with a grin, helping himself to a bit of flatbread and a sticky-sweet handful of dates before a servant could offer them. Orest looked like a lanky male version of his sister; they even wore their hair the same length, though he had a tunic like his father’s instead of a gown, and his pectoral collar was of plain gold and turquoise beads without the winged flame.
“Brothers?” Kiron replied, a little surprised. “There are more of you?”
“Five more boys; Aket-ten is the youngest and the only girl. And the only Winged One.” Orest made a face at her. “Well, if she had to be a girl, at least she’s going to be doing something useful with herself and her time. Not one of those stupid creatures that spends all her time giggling with a claque of others like her.”
Aket-ten sniffed disdainfully at him; this was apparently a joke of long standing between them. She tossed her head. “Whereas unless you stop skipping your lessons with your tutors, you aren’t going to be of any use whatsoever!”
“Ought to be glad I skipped today, little oracle!” he retorted gaily, and turned to Kiron with a face full of avid curiosity. “So, just how did you get a dragon? I mean, you weren’t exactly dressed like a noble or even a Tian Jouster, so how did you get a dragon like her? She’s wonderful!”
Avatre muttered sleepily, as if in agreement with that sentiment.
“I stole an egg, and hatched her myself,” he said, and found himself telling the whole story all over again. Not that he minded. There was nothing he would rather talk about than Avatre. This time, since the adults weren’t around, Aket-ten asked several of her own questions, and it was perfectly obvious from them that she hadn’t been in the least exaggerating her ability to communicate with animals. The things she asked proved to Kiron that, if she wasn’t actually speaking in words as such, she was surely getting the general tenor of Avatre’s thoughts.
And that could be very, very useful, he suddenly realized. In further training, he wouldn’t have to teach Avatre what he wanted in tiny little increments. Oh, no—he could have Aket-ten or someone like her actually tell Avatre what he wanted!
“Look,” he said, finally, after another of her questions. “I want to know something. If you can talk to the dragons, why aren’t you Winged Ones helping with the training for the Altan Jousters? It seems as if your dragons are a lot more dangerous than the Tian ones, and if you could—”
“Because we don’t have any tame dragons,” Orest answered for her. “Ours are really, really wild, maybe wilder even than the Tian dragons, because we trap ours fully grown. Truth to tell, they’re more than wild, they’re dangerous, and some of them have been killers when they aren’t drugged with tala. They’re kept muzzled when they aren’t eating.”
He blinked at that. No wonder there were fewer of them than Tian dragons! He digested the ramifications of such a system, slowly. Fewer dragons; harder to manage. Less cooperative than the wildest of the Tian dragons. Which meant the Jouster had to spend more time controlling his mount and less time in fighting.
“The only time they can be handled is when they’re full of tala,” Aket-ten added. “And then, not only is it still very hard for anyone but their Jousters and dragon boys to get near them, their minds are too dull to talk to. I’d have to touch one, anyway, and everyone says that’s too dangerous for me to try. I don’t know anyone with the Gift of Silent Speech that can talk to an animal without being really near to it.”
“Oh, she won’t say it, but young and silly as she is, she’s the one with the strongest Gift of Silent Speech they’ve seen in two generations,” Orest chuckled, poking at his sister with his elbow. “She’s afraid it’ll sound like boasting if she says it. They expect great things from her.”
She wrinkled her nose. “They can expect all they like, but if the Gods don’t put more Gifts in my hands, you’ll probably find me explaining to the horses in the Great Ones’ stables why they need to pull the chariots properly in battle.”
“But if you’re in training to be a priestess, why aren’t you living at a temple?” Kiron asked, as another question occurred to him. What was she doing here? All the girls connected with the temples in Tia were kept carefully behind the temple walls at all times. And nobody would have sent one into a swamp after fish!
“Because I’m a Nestling,” she replied patiently. “Oh, if I were from quite far away, or if my parents were poor, I’d live there. But Nestlings stay with their parents. That’s why we’re called Nestlings, you see? I won’t move into the Temple of the Twins until I become a Fledgling.”
“And I can’t wait. I’ll finally have the courtyard all to myself, and then I can have the servants build a ball court—” Orest began, a teasing look to his eyes that told Kiron that this was another joke of long standing between them.
And it relieved him to know that this was not “Aket-ten’s courtyard,” or at least, not hers solely.
“Don’t you dare even think of it!” she scolded back, her face turning pink. “It’s not just your courtyard, and I won’t be spending all my time at the temple and when I’m at home, I want to be able to enjoy our courtyard without having to worry about being hit with a hard leather ball every time I cross it or listening to you and your friends playing your stupid games of court ball! Why, you might as well move a dragon in—”
Kiron had never actually seen an idea “dawn” on anyone before this moment, but it was clear from their faces, and the look they exchanged, that at that moment they had the exact same idea.
Orest spoke first. “Kiron, what would it take to hatch a dragon egg?
He snorted. “First, you’d have to get one.” But from the look on Orest’s face, he knew that the young Altan lord had just had an epiphany. Orest had seen what Avatre was all about, and no matter what he said, Orest was not going to give up on his new dream of having a dragon just like her.

Before his own exhaustion made him beg them to leave him in peace long enough to sleep, he knew that Orest not only wanted to hatch and train a dragon like Avatre, he was willing, and probably able, to do everything it was going to take in order to make it all happen. And despite all of his sister’s scolding, the moment she realized what Orest meant, she was as eager for him to have a dragon as her brother was.
And he knew why.
Orest was the youngest son of Lord Ya-tiren, and the only one with no clear future ahead of him. The eldest son was the heir, of course, and spent all of his time at Lord Ya-tiren’s side or with his overseer, learning all that he could about managing the estates. His next-oldest brother was well on the way to a sterling career as an architect and builder, working as the right-hand man of one of the most respected architects in Alta City. Although not a Winged One, the third brother was very much a mystic and was already a priest, and the fourth enrolled in training to be an army officer. Only Orest had had no clear idea of where his place was in the world.
Until now, that is.
His one pleasure, and his single talent, was in working with animals of all sorts, though he did not have any discernable Gift. He was as good a falconer as anyone in his father’s service, was trusted by both the Houndmaster and the Horsemaster to do anything he liked with any animal in the kennel or stable, and had been thinking seriously about getting a cheetah to train to hunt as well. Being a Jouster, forcing his will upon a half-drugged, wild dragon, had held no appeal for him at all. But working with a dragon like Avatre—
Looking at him, Kiron remembered only too clearly how he had lusted for a dragon like Kashet.
His last thought on falling into sleep, and his first thought on waking with the dawn, was that if the thing could be done, then he could, and would, help Orest to do it.
The young Altan Lord must have sat up half the night thinking about it, too, for as a servant arrived with the dawn, leading another with a cartload of meat for Avatre and a kilt and loinwrap (at last!) for Kiron, he heard stirring from Orest’s side of the courtyard.
With the servant’s help, and with much wincing, Kiron managed to get up and get properly clothed. The servants did not want to get anywhere near Avatre, and given what he now knew about Altan dragons, he didn’t blame them. But Avatre was on her very best behavior, as if she understood that her continued presence here depended on good manners, and she ate her breakfast carefully, slowly, even daintily, looking up now and again at the nervous servants and trying out different looks and silly little noises until at last she startled a laugh out of them with what looked like a full-on, flirtatious wink. It probably wasn’t anything of the sort, but that was what it looked like, and she repeated it until she got some sort of relaxation from them.
“I think she likes you,” Kiron said, and the servants laughed nervously, as if they were still not quite sure if Avatre “liked” them because she wanted to eat them. Nevertheless, they began to relax a little more around her, and in the end they were no longer afraid when she was done to take the cart away, nor to turn their backs on her. So that was progress, and another step to making certain that Avatre would actually be welcome here for as long as they needed to stay.
But as soon as the servants were gone, Orest came popping out of his door, looking as if he had not slept well at all last night. “Kiron,” he said without preamble, “I want to—”
“I’ll help,” Kiron said instantly. “However I can.”
Orest stopped dead in mid-sentence. Obviously, he had been working up to a speech all last night, which accounted for his current appearance, and to have it cut short was clearly a surprise. His jaw dropped, and he gave Kiron a goggle-eyed look that made Kiron want to laugh. “But you don’t even know what I wanted to ask you!” he exclaimed.
Kiron shrugged—carefully—and smiled. “It’s as plain to me as the sun rising. You want to try hatching out your own dragon and training it. I’ll help, as long as your father agrees. I could see it in your face last night, and everything you said to me just made me more certain; you want an Avatre of your own the same way I wanted a Kashet of my own.”
Orest sighed, looking immensely relieved that he wasn’t going to have to talk Kiron into helping him. “You’re right, of course. For a moment, I was afraid you were a Winged One yourself! Was I that obvious?”
“Like a fountain in the desert,” Kiron laughed. “But what I want to know is, how do you propose to get yourself an egg?”
“I don’t know yet,” Orest admitted. “But I know who to ask.”
“Well, the first person to ask is Lord Ya-tiren,” Kiron admonished him. “I’ve had my fill of sneaking around, trying to hide a baby dragon, and that was when there were other babies around to help disguise that she was there! Besides, you need both your father’s help, and possibly that of the Jousters themselves. No, you ask your father first if he’s willing to let you try this project and become a Jouster. Then I’ll help, if he says yes.”
Orest stuck around then, to help him give Avatre a cursory grooming (the best he could do without proper sand and oil, and he wondered how hard Aket-ten had worked in order to get her as clean as she was), then harness her and help him onto her back. “I’m going to take her for—well, take her out like a dog,” he said to Orest. “I’m fit enough to do that much, and she needs both the exercise and to keep from soiling your courtyard.”
“Then take her to the waste ground just past the fruit trees that way,” Orest said, pointing eastward. “It will be just a hop for her. I have to go to my tutor now, but I’ll be back.”
Avatre had been sorely puzzled by the lack of sand or a proper corner to use; she was glad enough to see the bit of waste ground, for the ashes and cinders that were dumped there were enough like sand for her to be content to use them. It was just a hop, but by the time Kiron returned, Orest was nowhere to be seen.
Somewhat to his shock, later that morning, Lord Ya-tiren himself appeared at the courtyard, just as he returned with Avatre after another short flight so that she would not leave her droppings on the pristine stone of the courtyard.
The Altan lord watched in fascination as Avatre backwinged to a soft and graceful landing, and Kiron slid off her back, wincing, but not without patting her affectionately. She turned and nuzzled his hair as he unharnessed her.
“My guest,” called the Altan lord, a prudent distance from both of them, “My son tells me he wishes to emulate you, and hatch a dragon. Here. He tells me you can help him do so.”
Kiron took a deep breath. “If an intact egg can be brought here, warm, he should be able to,” he admitted. “And I have promised to help. But only if he got your permission first.”
Now Lord Ya-tiren’s expression was a curious mixture of emotions; wistful, as he looked at Avatre, resigned as he looked at Kiron.
He would rather not see Orest becoming a Jouster—Jousting is dangerous, as dangerous as any other fighting. But he can understand why Orest wants to do this, and if he were younger, I bet he would do the same.
“Well,” he said at last, and his words were an uncanny echo of Kiron’s own thoughts. “Though it means sending my youngest son into great danger once he is a Jouster, how can I deny him the chance to try what I would try were I younger?” He sighed “All right,” he continued, after a long pause. “You have it. You have my permission. And may the gods grant you success.”