Alta

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!