Alta

her ill.”

“Thank you, Healer,” Kiron said, but Heklatis was already going through the door curtain, mumbling something under his breath.

When they all got together in Kiron’s room later that night, there was something waiting for him—and Kiron was unsurprised to see that it was an Akkadian statue. This one he happened to know was no goddess, it was a simple artistic piece, but he had no doubt that Heklatis had put the same wards on it as were on his real god images. He decided, if asked, to claim that this was the Akkadian equivalent of We-te-esh, the Goddess of Luck and Love—a rather natural deity for a young man to worship, and doubly so for a Jouster. The fact that it was a fine little figure of an exceptionally lovely, completely unclothed young lady was just incidental. Right?

Aket-ten isn’t going to like it, he thought, placing the image on the little shrine in the corner. He surveyed it, and smiled. Heklatis certainly knew Kiron’s taste very well. Aket-ten is going to have to get over it. There was plenty of Altan art—well, perhaps not plenty, but certainly a reasonable amount, including on the walls of the public places in Lord Ya-tiren’s villa—that depicted dancing girls wearing little more than a string of beads. There was no logical reason for her to take exception to this piece— which meant, of course, in the contrary nature of girls, that she would.

The others noticed the addition—the boys with sly looks and elbows to each others’ ribs, and Aket-ten with a frown, then a disdainful sniff—and he explained what had happened that afternoon with great gusto.

When he got to the part about Heklatis flirting with the Magus, even Aket-ten had to stifle howls of laughter.

“I know I’ve seen this in Heklatis’ rooms,” he said, gesturing to the statue, “And I think I’m probably supposed to say it’s an Akkadian goddess he gave me. If this does what I think it’s going to do, it’ll keep that rotted Magus out of here as well.”

Aket-ten turned a look on the statue that, had it been wood instead of marble, would have set it afire. “I think it should have been that image of Epialon, then,” she said pointedly, her brows furrowing in a frown.

“Now, Aket-ten, you know that you’d never get Heklatis to part with any of his handsome lads,” teased Gan. “This was probably the only image he didn’t want to keep for himself!”

Aket-ten colored, and opened her mouth to say something, when she was interrupted by noises outside the door. It was Avatre, snorting and rearing up out of her sand like a rising cobra. There was someone shadowed against the light from the corridor in the doorway to the pen. For one moment, Kiron felt a jolt of alarm—

“Avatre!” came a hissing whisper out of the dark. “Hush! It’s only me!”

“Marit!” exclaimed Kiron, more quick-witted than the rest in recognizing the voice and realizing that the silhouette was too short to be the Magus. “What are you doing here?”

“Us,” corrected Marit, as Avatre also belatedly recognized her voice and settled back into her wallow with a grumble. And indeed, it was two figures, not one, that emerged, blinking, into the light spilling from the doorway.

At first glance, it was hard to tell which of the girls that pulled back the hoods of their rain capes was Marit. They were, literally, as alike as two barley-grains. Or at least, it seemed that way to Kiron, but evidently Aket-ten had some arcane way, unknown to mere males, of telling them apart, for she looked at the left-hand one of the pair and said sharply, “Nofret! What are you doing here?”

The handsome young woman turned grave, faintly shadowed eyes on Aket-ten and said simply, “Escaping.”

Both of them put down bundles that had been hidden beneath their capes. “We assumed that the worst had already happened to us,” Marit said bitterly. “We were wrong.”

“What worst?” asked Aket-ten. “You haven’t been banished or anything, have you?”

Nofret sighed. “No. But believe me, it is a good thing that Toreth and Kaleth taught us about making many plans, well ahead of time, because we needed them.”

Marit nodded, and the two of them pulled off their rain capes and settled down onto cushions that the other boys offered. Kiron noticed that they were dressed—oddly enough—in simple clothing, more like that one of their servants would have worn. “This afternoon the entire court was summoned by the Great Ones after a long morning Council meeting; the first we knew about it was when the Great Ladies sent us to be bathed and dressed by their servants. By the time we got our wits about us, we were already in a procession, and the next thing we knew, a new royal clan had been made, and we were being betrothed to a pair of Magi we’d never seen before.”

“And if they’re twins,” added Nofret, with a lift of her eyebrow, and a toss of her head, “I am a dragon.”

“What did you do?” asked Gan, looking utterly stunned.

“We went along with it, of course,” Nofret replied. “The vows aren’t valid. These men aren’t in a royal clan, no matter what the Great Ones decree; the laws of the gods say that you can’t create a new royal clan unless an old one dies out. And even if both our betrotheds were dead, which they aren’t, we can’t be wedded to anyone who is not of royal blood without our consent, which we did not give and were not asked for during the ceremony. No matter what words were spoken over us, we are not betrothed in the eyes of the gods, and that is all Marit and I care about.”

Marit nodded. “When Toreth died, we knew it was always possible we would be asked to marry others in the royal clans—well, Nofret anyway. When Kaleth went away, we did think it was possible we both might have to, so we started making plans of what to do.”

Now Nofret smiled fondly on her sister. “I didn’t care—I liked Toreth well enough, he was a good boy, but—” she shrugged. “Marriage to him would have been fine, but marriage to anyone else who was tolerable would also have been fine. But Marit truly loves Kaleth, and I won’t let her be forced away from him. So we began laying all sorts of plans—we even tried to think of ways of faking our own deaths! I must say, though, it never occurred to us that the Great Ones would have done something like this.”

“But we knew if we made a fuss, we would be watched like vials of saffron, but if we acted happy about it— which we did—we’d be allowed to do anything we pleased. So we acted like children given sticks of honey,” said Marit. Her nose wrinkled with scorn. “Everyone must think we’re brainless, or that we’re frantic to get any husband. Or else that we’re so desperate to get back in the succession that we’d willingly marry the sacred baboons. Nofret made sure of that, by babbling about how honored and thankful she was and hanging all over that repulsive reptile they betrothed her to as if he was a god, and when I figured out what she was doing, I just did the same.”

“Oh, yes.” Nofret smiled cynically. “I was full of questions for the Great Ladies afterward. How quickly could we be married, would we have our places back in the order of precedence, how soon could our husbands be confirmed in the succession, when we were wedded would we get to wear the Lesser Crowns, would we have our own set of ladies and attendants suitable to our station—I think I was being so greedy there at the end that even the Great Ladies were beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea after all.”

Marit tilted her head to one side, knowingly. “Serves them right. There were a lot of honors we could have claimed that we didn’t because Toreth and Kaleth couldn’t be bothered with court functions. I started talking about having a Lesser Court of our own. That made them really nervous.”

“And they should be,” said Heklatis, slipping into the room behind them like a ghost. “I wonder if the Great Ones will ever realize that the moment you wed, their days are numbered?”

No one even jumped. They were all so used to Heklatis coming and going silently that they just nodded at him.

“Perhaps the Ladies will,” Nofret replied. “We certainly did our best to put the idea in their heads with our questions. Hello, Heklatis. We’ve run away.”

“So I gathered. And since there is no hue and cry being raised across the First Canal, I assume you found a way to do so without raising suspicion?” Heklatis said easily, taking a place next to Kiron, and looking around at them all. “Hello, Kiron, did you like my little gift? I left one for Aket-ten, too, just now. Hermia, Goddess of the Hearth. I never much cared for that image; a little too placid and bovine for my taste. You can claim she’s At-thera, your cow goddess; the wet-nurse to the god Haras, if I recall. I’m sure our friend will find that to be a suitably appropriate and pious image for a proper young lady to worship.” He sniggered.

Aket-ten scowled, but didn’t immediately reply, since Nofret was already talking. “We’re officially on religious retreat in the Temple of At-thera, as a matter of fact,” Nofret told them. “And it wasn’t even our idea! Our original