Alta

danger.

He didn’t tell her that, though. He had the feeling, looking at her strained, angry face all day, that any little thing might cause her to lose all self-control. Maybe that had already occurred to her. And maybe she was using anger as a bulwark against fear. If so, if he pressed her with more warnings, she might break down into hysterics —certainly there were plenty of other people right in the compound who had lost their heads today; more than one senior Jouster, as a matter of fact. There were several people who had been taken off and plied with palm wine or qat until they felt calm or just too drunk to care. He wouldn’t blame her if she blew up—but right now, they couldn’t afford to be without her.

Because earthshake or no, they had to get at least one wing into the sky. And the only way they could do that was for her to get enough dragons calmed down to form a wing. The troops in the south needed dragons and Jousters to distract the Jousters of Tia; the disaster in the city could be compounded by a disastrous loss of men and territory if no dragons could get to the combat.

The ground continued to shake a little, all that day and into the night. None of the dragonets wanted to fly, and Kiron didn’t blame them. Finally by the following morning, he told the boys to stuff the little ones with as much food as they would eat.

“If they’re full, they’ll sleep, and if they sleep, they’ll get over their fear,” he said reasonably. And when Lord Khumun heard what he had ordered, he ordered the same for every dragon that was not flying the working wing that day.

Kiron even got Avatre stuffed as full as she could hold, and eventually she, too, slept fitfully in the hot sand of her pen.

That left him with time on his hands, and seeing Aket-ten still vibrating between fear and anger and nearly bursting with the need to do something, he finally took her aside.

“Look,” he said, “You can’t go out, but I can. I’ll go out into the city for you, and help. Will that make you feel any better?”

“Just what do you think you can do?” she responded waspishly, then clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that—”

He had held back a retort of his own; seeing two tears spill over and run down her cheeks made him glad of that momentary restraint. “I can do something you can’t,” he pointed out gently. “I’m bigger and stronger than you, and I am quite, quite used to hard physical labor. I can help dig people out. And if you stay here and keep an eye on Avatre and the little ones, I can do that without needing to worry about them.”

She bowed her head. “Then, thank you,” she said quietly—and went back to her work of calming the agitated dragons.

The other boys decided that going into the city would be a good idea. Pe-atep wanted to look in on his successor anyway; he was worried about the cats. And Kalen wanted to check on the health of his former charges, the falcons. Huras was dying to find out how his father and neighbors were, and perhaps, if there was heavy damage, help get some of the ovens going again. “People need to eat,” he pointed out. “If they can’t bake their own bread, we can do it for them.” Menet-ka, Orest, Gan, and Oset-re volunteered to stay to mind the dragonets so that the others could go out; Toreth promised to check on all of the families of the nobly born and pass on word to both sides.

After telling Lord Khumun of their intentions, Kiron did go out, dressed in an old kilt, and not to the Second Ring either. Assuming that the military could take care of themselves, and the nobles and wealthy could purchase whatever help they needed, he went across the causeways to the Fifth Ring, where most of the poorer sections of Alta were. There, as he had promised her, he labored for the rest of the day in a gang of other common folk, digging out houses where there might have been injured folk still trapped.

By the end of the day they were only finding bodies, and he reckoned it was time to go home. Not to be crude about it—but it would not matter one day, or two, if a body was recovered. The spirit would be satisfied by the proper prayers and rites whenever it was found.

He trudged back across the causeways, feeling tired enough to lie down in Avatre’s hot sand and bake all night to get the aches out. It had been a hard, hard day. He hadn’t labored this much since he’d worked for Khefti. But every time they’d gotten someone out still alive, still able to go to the hands of the Healers that had swarmed down to the Fifth Ring, it had felt as if he had won a prize.

Because of detours, of causeways and bridges being closed or blocked, he actually had to go to the Second Ring to get down to the Third again. His path took him past the Temple of the Twins just at dusk. He hadn’t planned it that way, but just as he got close enough to see the front portico, he realized that the nightly procession of Fledglings to the Tower of Wisdom had just begun.

He stopped, and stared. What were they thinking? The city lay disorganized and, in places, in ruins! Surely they could put off their regular magics for a few nights!

Then he realized that by gawping at them, he was making himself conspicuous, and put his head down, walking onward, trusting to his coating of dust to make him anonymous.

And as he drew nearer, he also realized that a good half of the people trudging slack-faced at the orders of the Magi in charge were far too old to be Fledglings.

Nor was he the only one to have noted this.

“Hoi!” shouted an old man, face contorted with anger, and so covered in dust from stone and brick it was impossible to see what color his complexion really was. “Where are you a-goin’ with them Winged Ones?”

He planted himself firmly in the path of the Magi, and stood there with his hands on his hips, staring defiantly at them.

The Magus in the lead drew himself up in affront. “Just who—” the man began.

The commoner interrupted him. “They was supposed to warn us!” he shouted, growing more angry by the moment. “They was supposed to tell us so none got hurt! And how come they didn’t, eh? Eh?”

By now, the shouting had attracted a crowd—angry people, most of them, who were surrounding the Magi and their charges, looking daggers at them. No—not at the Winged Ones, who were oblivious to all of this. All the anger was directed straight at the Magi.

“I don’t—” said the Magus in charge haughtily, but what he “didn’t,” Kiron would never know, for he was shouted down again by a different commoner.

“We know why!” the man cried out. “We seen you, comin’ here every night! First ye drag off the young ’uns, and they come back looking like ye sucked ’em up dry and threw back the husk. Then that’s not good enough for ye, and ye start a-takin’ the Winged Ones, them as is supposed to be our protection, and they come back a-lookin’ the same! Ye think we be blind? Ye think we be stupid?”

Since this was probably precisely what the Magi had thought, they exchanged bewildered and alarmed gazes.

“Well, we ain’t!” shouted the first man. “We know what’s what! ’Tis your fault my sister’s boys are dead! ’Tis your fault innkeeper’s girl’s lost a leg! Without your meddlin’ we’d have had our warning’, as is proper! ’Tis your fault, all of it!”

The crowd began to shout, and just as the Magi belatedly realized their danger, the crowd became a mob.

At that point, the Winged Ones seemed to come out of their stupor, and with looks of alarm, scuttled back to their temple. They needn’t have worried; they weren’t the targets of the mob’s anger. The Magi, however, were.

Not just anger either. People at the rear were picking up stones and pieces of wood, and there just happened to be quite a bit of that sort of thing lying around at the moment.

And at that point, Kiron decided that the smart thing would be to leave.

He doubled back on his path and took the long way back to the compound, leaving the shouting behind him as he dropped any pretense of dignity and ran. A mob of a few dozen people wasn’t going to win against the Magi, of course. But he didn’t want to get caught in the middle of it.

And besides, he needed to get back to Toreth, and tell him that their surmise was correct. If anyone could