Alta

sunlight as if they were gilded. And Kiron suddenly understood in that moment that no matter how big Mefis had been, Alta City was ten, a hundred times larger.

“Come along,” the tutor said, a little impatiently, but not without a look of understanding. Kiron followed down the stairs of the villa to the avenue, feeling dwarfed and altogether insignificant in the throng of humanity swirling around him. The thick walls of the villa had kept out the noises of the traffic, and the hum of hundreds and thousands of voices, but now it all surrounded him, and he for just a moment he found it a little hard to breathe.

But it appeared that this segment of the ring was a little city unto itself, for once they got past the next-door villa, there were markets, with shops and craftsmen. So everything that might be needed was here, within reach. And from the way people were acting, they were anything but strangers to one another.

All right, then, he told himself. This is just like a lot of villages all running into one another. It’s not just a giant hive. And some people recognized either the tutor or Orest as they passed, and smiled, or nodded a greeting.

Still, there were a lot of people. It looked as if, where the population of Tia was strung out along the Great Mother River, the population of Alta was mostly concentrated here. He was going to have to think about that, and what it might mean.

Meanwhile, they continued their brisk walk down the avenue, with the occasional cart or chariot passing by, and plenty of people being taken here and there in covered or even enclosed litters. There were a hundred scents in the air, and few of them were unpleasant; the ever-present scent of water, of course, and various cooking odors, and hot stone, and fires, and the scents of flowers that Kiron couldn’t identify. Most people seemed to be wearing perfume as well. There were differences from Tia, but truth to tell, Kiron would have said that there were more similarities than differences. The accent and some of the words differed, of course, enough that he had to think to understand people, though Altan was the tongue of his childhood, and he was falling back into the accent far faster than he would have thought.

They passed a cook shop, with a beer shop beside it; there were a couple of men arguing heatedly over something, while several bystanders listened as if their debate was some sort of entertainment. The tutor turned into what appeared to be another temple building, and they followed.

It turned out to be something quite different. There was a sort of entrance hall that they passed straight through; on the other side of that hall was an enormous courtyard, open to the sky, with a pool in the middle of it. Except for the pool, it looked like one of the Jousters’ landing courtyards, but this one was covered in turf, and there were young men engaged in all manner of sports spread out all over it, and more were swimming back and forth through the water.

Orest looked positively eager as the tutor summoned a white-kilted servant and requested the presence of At-alon. The servant hurried off, and came back with a middle-aged man who was as thoroughly Altan as the tutor was not; black-haired and dark-eyed, with a jutting chin, stocky and incredibly muscular.

“Ya-tiren’s boys, eh?” he said, and looked them up and down. “Thank you, Master Arit. I expect they’ll be able to find their way here from now on, when you’re done with them for the day.”

“I expect they will,” the tutor said dryly. “I’ll leave them here with you, then. Lord Ya-tiren expects them back in time for the noon meal.”

With that, the tutor left them; Kiron shifted his weight from foot to foot, wondering what was to come next.

“You,” the trainer said, pointing at Kiron, “are going to go do very light work until those ribs heal. I’ll have you myself. But you,” he continued, looking at Orest, “need all-around conditioning. See those boys over there?” he pointed to a group of boys of mixed ages, stretching and bending nearby, at the direction of another white-kilted man. “You go join them. They’ll be your work group until I say differently, or the Lord of the Jousters has orders. Hop!”

Orest hopped, without a single word of question or complaint, running off to join the group. He stopped only long enough to explain his presence to the man in charge, then took his place among the other boys. At-alon beckoned, and Kiron followed; they went around the outside of the huge courtyard until At-alon entered one of the doorways into it.

“Now don’t be alarmed; I’m not the sort that’s looking for a pretty boy,” the trainer said gruffly. “But I have to find out just where you’re hurt, and how, which means that I’ll be feeling you all over and pulling on you a bit to see what’s wrong. Hold your arms up, stand still, and if you feel pain—that’s pain, not general aches—say so.”

So Kiron was felt and poked and prodded, and it was soon ascertained that the pain was in his shoulders (still) and the rib cage at his back and left side.

“Good enough,” said At-alon. “Dislocated shoulders that are healing, and cracked ribs that are setting. Healers did a good job on your cuts, from the look of it. You’ve got fine muscle, boy, you’re going to need it, and we don’t want you to lose it while you heal up. So, since there’s nothing wrong with your legs, let’s see you do running rounds of the court until I say stop. Begin at a walk, and when you feel warmed up, increase speed to a run.”

Kiron obeyed, although it felt very, very strange to be running without having a place to be running to, and a duty at the end of the run. Still, in theory at least, he understood what At-alon was doing; since he wasn’t undergoing the strenuous work of a dragon-boy anymore, he knew that he’d better be getting some form of exercise or he’d lose all of the muscle he’d put on. So he ran.

He wasn’t the only runner; there were several boys and men doing the same thing. Some were faster than he, some slower; after a while, he began to feel a sort of pleasure in the exercise. The soft turf kept his ribs from jarring too much, and though he couldn’t run as freely or as fast as he used to because of the pain, it was still good to stretch the muscles of his legs. He could even feel them loosening as he ran.

Finally, the instructor beckoned to him to come into the center area where he was waiting. And then he did some strange arm movements with bags of sand in his hands; he supposed that they must be strengthening exercises, though for someone used to flinging big chunks of meat about and wheeling heavy barrows, they seemed a bit—feeble. After those, he did some bending and stretching, though not too much of those, because it put pressure on his rib cage. Then—carefully—some different things with bags of sand in his hands, only this time, when it began to hurt, he was to stop.

Orest was doing pretty much the same sort of things, only not as long, and not as hard, and he was getting tired much faster than Kiron was. It gave Kiron a feeling of wry satisfaction; at least here he was better than Orest at something. Or he would be until Orest toughened up.

Finally, they were sent to the baths, where they were bathed by yet more servants, massaged with oil with a crisp scent to it, and in Kiron’s case, rebandaged. Their tunics were taken away and brought back freshly cleaned. Then they were sent home, and it was time for the noon meal and a much-needed rest, for Altans, like Tians, took a rest, or even a nap, after the noon meal at the heat of the day. And today, Kiron was very happy to have that privilege that he never enjoyed as a dragon boy except during the rainy season.

They took their noon meal with the rest of the household; Lord Ya-tiren and those of his older sons who were still living at home. Orest came in for a great deal of teasing but some serious congratulation that he had been— tentatively at least—accepted as this new sort of Jouster in training. Kiron kept very quiet, and simply observed, though he caught Lord Ya-tiren watching him with approval now and again. Evidently Orest’s father felt that he, Kiron, was a good influence! Aket-ten was also much in evidence, reporting with triumph that the Lord of the Jousters had promised to lend copies of every scroll of Jousting training and dragon lore that the Jousters possessed. Kiron sighed. This was a little like hearing that the cooks were preparing a feast of every favorite food one had, at a time when toothache kept one from eating any of it!

He resolved to put more effort into learning to read.

Finally, with stomach full and the strong palm wine the lord favored at his table making Kiron a bit drowsy, he returned to the courtyard where Avatre was to discover that someone had cleverly set up a box of sand where she could deposit her leavings.

And before he could clean it out, a servant appeared.

Are they hovering just out of sight? he wondered, startled, Or are they able to know what I’m thinking? Either way, it made him uneasy; Orest might take such things for granted, but he wasn’t used to having people appear out of nowhere to take a task out of his hands before he started it.