Alta

her from things he “thought” she shouldn’t know. She had been growing fast in the time he had known her, and that had been accelerated by her recent experiences.

“Toreth and I have been talking about this,” he said, slowly, and outlined the whole nauseating scenario. The war, as an excuse to cut lives short—the stolen years from those who had died—

Aket-ten’s eyes got bigger and bigger as he went along, and her face grew paler and paler. When at last he finished, she was as white as a lily.

“That’s worse than necromancy,” she whispered. “But it makes a horrible kind of sense—”

“And if that is what the Healers suspect?” he persisted.

“It would explain a lot.” She blinked, as though her eyes were stinging, and now he knew she was trying not to cry. “This is really horrible, you know. I don’t think you have any idea how horrible this would be to a Winged One.”

“Or a Healer,” he agreed. “No, I don’t.” And really, he didn’t, perhaps because so much of his own life had been stolen from him that—well, stolen years, a stolen childhood, a life spent in bondage—they all seemed equally wretched. Men died in fighting all the time, whether it was in war, or in a fight over a woman. That someone would plan for so many deaths was sickening, but so were poisoned wells, burned fields, and jars of scorpions tipped into granaries.

“I suppose you couldn’t,” she said, swallowing. “It—well, it’s hard to describe. But—to someone like me, it seems like the most horrible and vicious sort of rape.”

He nodded. That made sense. To her it would be much worse than “theft,” he could see that. “There’s even more to it than that; I think there’s something else being stolen by the Magi. I think that they are getting the—the —whatever it is they put into their magic to send the storms against Tia, I think they’re stealing from the Fledglings. I think that is why the Fledglings come back drained and exhausted. I think that is why they wanted you so much—because whatever it is, you have a lot of it.”

Now she looked angry as well as sick. “Heklatis—the Akkadian—hinted as much,” she admitted. “Though he wouldn’t come out and say so. But why don’t they just ask?” That last came out of her in a kind of wail.

“However the war began, we’re loyal Altans, if they’d just ask, we’d do whatever was needed!”

“Probably because they aren’t the sort of people who ask. They’re too used to taking,” he said bitterly. Oh, yes. I know that type. “Anyway, taking is easier. Asking requires that you admit that you need something; taking means you’re the strong one and you can have whatever it is that you want.”

But this was getting him angry, and that was counterproductive at this moment. He forced himself to calm down. “Anyway, now you know. Or at least, you know the best guesses. You might want to see if you can’t get something more out of the Healers; letting them know that you have some idea of what’s going on might loosen their tongues. If the Healers have some proof that this is what’s going on—well, as the next in line to the Twin Thrones, I think Toreth has a right to know.”

“I intend to,” she said grimly. “ ‘It is better to have a scorpion out in the open than under the bed,’ ” she quoted one of the proverbs that he remembered his mother using.

“True,” he agreed. “But it’s better still to have it dead beneath your sandal.”

TEN

“KIRON! Kiron!” The frantic shout from the pen ‘next to his startled Kiron out of a sound sleep, and it was only thanks to his “training” at the hands of Khefti-the-Fat that he came awake all at once. “Kiron!” the shout came again, and this time, amid the startled replies and complaints all around him, he knew where it had come from and who it was that had called him.

And he grinned, in spite of the panicked tone of Menet-ka’s voice. There was only one reason for that level of panic at this particular time, coming from Menet-ka.

The first egg was hatching.

Kiron had actually been expecting this for the past couple of days, and had advised Menet-ka to move a pallet down into the sand next to the egg so that if it began to move, he would know immediately. Not that this would make a great deal of difference to the hatching egg, but it would to Menet-ka, whose hair had begun to stand on end from the shy boy’s new habit of constantly and nervously running his fingers through it. So, like Avatre, these babies would be born amid thunder and rain. He considered that a good omen.

And another good thing—though not an omen—was that Menet-ka had begun to come out of his shell since the hatching was so near, to ask questions of Kiron without whispering or mumbling them.

He pulled on a wrap and kilt, ducked under the curtain of water pouring off his awning, went out into the corridor, and poked his head through the door to Menet-ka’s pen.

“So the youngsters will be born amid lightning, just like Avatre! That is a fine omen!” he said heartily.

Menet-ka just stared at him, as if he hadn’t any idea of what Kiron was talking about.

With a sigh, Kiron ducked through a second curtain of water and waded out into the sand to see Menet-ka hovering over the rocking egg, looking very much as if he was going to start pulling his hair out in handfuls next. It might be the middle of the night, but there was no problem seeing him or the egg; Menet-ka had surrounded the pit with lamps nestled into the sand.

“Besides being a good omen,” he added helpfully, when the other boy looked at him in doubt, “the one big problem with any kind of hatching egg is drying out in the middle of the process. And it certainly isn’t going to dry out in this weather!” He waved a hand at the water cascading down off the awning into the deep channels cut especially to drain it away from the hot sands. The sheeting rain glinted like fabric made from glass in the flickering lamplight. In fact, it looked almost as if he and Menet-ka and the egg were entirely enclosed in a room hedged in by water.

Why is it, I wonder, that babies of all sorts always choose to arrive in the middle of the night, in the middle of the worst weather possible?

This time, he had a hammer—something he had not had when Avatre hatched. He listened carefully to the egg, putting his ear down against the rocking shell, until he found the spot where the tapping was coming from inside.

“Here,” he said, handing the little stone hammer to Menet-ka, and tapping the spot with his index finger. “Use that here. Just tap, don’t hit. Remember what I told you, and how we practiced on ostrich eggs. You want to help him crack the shell; he’s trying to make an air hole.”

“But—!” Menet-ka wailed—but he took the hammer in a hand that shook like reeds in the wind, and he gave the shell a tap. Not too hard, and not too gently. Kiron was proud of him.

The tapping from inside stopped for a moment, then began again, with renewed vigor.

This was the problem with something as big as a dragon egg. In order to protect the dragonet growing inside, it had to be thick and hard. But when the time came for hatching, it was too thick and hard for the baby to break out unassisted. Dragon mothers helped their eggs to hatch, though no one had ever seen exactly how. They didn’t have beaks to hammer at the shell with, nor did they have hands that could hold a rock. But when Ari had spied on the nests of the wild ones, he had heard them working at the outside of the hatching eggs, so he had known that he would have to help Kashet when the time came.

Ari had in turn told the story any number of times to anyone who would listen. Foremost among the listeners had, of course, been his dragon boy—then called “Vetch,” now called by his proper name.

The moment when the egg actually cracked all the way through was marked by a sudden change in the tone of the hammer strike. “Stop!” Kiron said, holding up a hand, but Menet-ka had already stopped, and was watching the “soft” spot breathlessly.

A moment, and then the egg rocked violently, a little triangle of shell popped up, and the end of a snout poked out.

The lamplight was too dim to make out the color, but it was dark, so the dragonet was probably going to be dark, too. “Is he all right? Is he breathing?” Menet-ka asked, on fire with anxiety.

“He’s fine; he’s got his air hole now, he’ll take a rest for a little. Won’t you, my lad?” Kiron crooned. In the lamplight, the tiny nostrils flared and relaxed, flared and relaxed, as the dragonet took in his first lungfuls of air.