Alta

plan was to be such a plague that the Great Ladies would send us to father’s country estate, but this was even better.”

Marit chuckled. “After we began asking all those questions, the Great Ladies suddenly recalled that when a new royal clan marries into the succession, the brides must spend a moon in religious retreat and instruction in a temple of their choice before the wedding. Of course, we have never heard of anything of the sort, but we agreed to it with some pouting, and chose the Goddess At-thera because they haven’t got one single priestess of noble blood there. And it’s brilliant, it couldn’t fit any better with our plans; we were supposed to leave all our attendants behind, be escorted by Royal Guards to whom one lady looks like every other lady, and live as the priestesses do.”

“So they won’t know that the Nofret and Marit that left the palace in their rain capes and with their escort are not us,” said Nofret. “All that they will see is a pair of twins.”

“Right, I’ve got that part,” said Kiron. “But where did you find substitutes?”

She sighed heavily. “Do you have any idea how often someone thinks that a clever gift for twins is a pair of twin body slaves? We just looked through our handmaidens until we found the ones we thought stood the best chance of carrying off the deception. We explained the situation to them, and divided our jewels with them—which, after two sets of betrothal gifts in addition to what we already owned, is more than we could carry anyway. They’ll be under guard, of course, which will give us at least a few days and possibly a week or two before they escape and run away.”

Well, that explained the plain linen shifts and horse-hair wigs. Marit wrung out the hem of her shift, and added, “Of course, they won’t be in any danger of being caught, because the Great Ones and the Magi will be looking for Nofret and Marit, not a pair of escaped slaves.”

“And ‘Marit and Nofret’ ordered the two ‘slaves’ here as a gift for Aket-ten, so they won’t even be missing from our entourage at the palace.” Nofret smiled in triumph, and Kiron didn’t blame her; the plan was very, very clever.

Except, perhaps for one small detail. “What if they betray you?” he asked.

Marit made a sour face. “That’s the first thing we made sure of. They’re Tian, and they’re slaves. We explained to them—in great detail—just how they would be questioned if they betrayed us. Because no one would ever believe that they didn’t know every detail of our plans, now, would they? And Tian slaves—well, I reminded them that it would never even occur to anyone to reward them for betraying us. I pointed out that they would be the first to be suspected, reminded them of what the Magi did to Toreth, to the Winged Ones, and to everyone who was in the way when they opened the Eye. I told them what I knew about how the inquisitors question slaves, which is rather more than I actually want to know, to tell you the truth, and pointed out that there are a lot more options open to someone torturing a female.”

Heklatis looked at her with awestruck fascination. “You horrible young woman!” he said, admiration in his voice.

“Not horrible,” Nofret corrected. “Brutally honest, and realistic. I didn’t enjoy telling them, and I wasn’t trying to intimidate them. We gave them the truth, and then a chance to escape with wealth. We picked the cleverest, because they have the best chance of escaping quickly, and we picked the temple they have the best chance of escaping from. On the whole, I think we should be commended. They certainly didn’t seem displeased with the bargain.”

“They didn’t have a choice, though,” said Kiron doubtfully.

“They didn’t have a choice about being made slaves either,” Nofret retorted. “They were lucky past all reason. They could have been bought by a brothel, and weren’t—they could have been bought by almost anyone to serve as pleasure slaves, and escaped that fate, too. Instead, they were bought and given to us, and then got a chance to take back their freedom, all for the price of silence, a little play-acting, and some cleverness in escaping. In their position, I would be weeping with gratitude in front of the statue of At-thera tonight, and planning to offer prayers of thanks-giving for the rest of my life once I got away.”

She has a point, Kiron conceded.

“So now I assume you want us to get you—where?” asked Gan.

“To Kaleth,” said Marit immediately. “He’s managed to get three messages smuggled to me since he left. The last one said, ‘The hawk rises above the storm; the desert finds its own.’ ”

Kiron, Heklatis, and Aket-ten exchanged looks. It was Heklatis who spoke, slowly, as if he was thinking aloud.

“The boy has the Seer’s Eye,” he said. “And he’s with the Mouths, who presumably have something of the same and can teach him how to call visions instead of waiting to be struck by them. We all know how he feels about you, Marit—” she colored, and Nofret bit her lip, and looked pensive, “—and it is reasonable to assume he has been trying to watch you from a distance. So it is also reasonable that if we can get you to the edge of the desert, he will know, or possibly already knows, where you will be.”

Aket-ten shrugged when Marit looked to her for confirmation of this speculation. “I can’t think of any other interpretation. The question is how can we get you there quickly, and with as little to track you by as possible?”

“Amulets will take care of the latter,” said Heklatis, sucking on his lower lip. “But—”

“We fly you out,” Kiron said suddenly. “That’s what the first part of the message means! Or we fly you as far as Avatre and Re-eth-ke can take you in half a day. Thank the gods this happened during the rains! Aket-ten and I have already gone up above the clouds, and the winds can take us a long way without the dragons tiring, Re-eth-ke can carry double, since two girls are light, Avatre is big enough to carry double and baggage—”

“Ha!” said Heklatis, slapping his thigh and startling them all. “Hoist on their own tackle! I can borrow those winds that the Magi are using, or one of them, anyway, to take you straight west in the morning, and straight east in the afternoon! As fast as that air is moving, it will take you all the way to the desert and back with no one the wiser!”

Aket-ten grinned for the first time. “No one is going to miss us for that long, are they?”

Kiron shook his head. “No, they won’t. And even if someone were to come out to watch us, they won’t stay for long, because there’s nothing to see once the dragons are in the air. Look, here’s what we’ll do—”

Marit and Nofret slept in Aket-ten’s room, secure in the knowledge that with Heklatis’ guardian goddess there, the Magi would not be able to spy on the chamber. In the morning, everyone behaved absolutely normally. The Magus did not even glare at them more than usual; Kiron suspected that this might be because he was not aware that two of Heklatis’ “blessed” statues had come to roost elsewhere. It had occurred to him before he went to sleep that night that the Magus could not seem to sense other magic unless he actively ran into it, either by trying to use his own magic, or by physically crossing it. So, since he would not try to go into a dragon pen anymore, they were safe from discovery for a while. Of the lot of them, if he was searching for pockets of discontent or conspiracies among Toreth and Kaleth’s friends, he would be looking at the nobly born boys who had been the twin princes’ childhood friends, not Kiron or Aket-ten. Kiron, after all, had no real power and no influential friends except Lord Ya-tiren, who was well known for his retiring nature. And Aket-ten had been playing the part of a frightened mouse.

They went out to practice, as usual. And, as often happened, a couple of dragon boys, muffled in rain capes and carrying heavy bundles, went out to the practice field, ostensibly to assist. But there wasn’t anyone in the compound who noticed their departure—as Heklatis was supposed to make very sure—and there wasn’t anyone at the practice field to see their arrival—as Kiron and the rest made very sure.

They all landed for equipment checks, and the dragon boys moved in among them. There certainly wasn’t anyone to see that when the dragons took off again, Aket-ten had a second rider strapped in behind her, while Kiron had another and both bundles.

Avatre lumbered heavily into the air, taking a good long while to get up to speed with her triple burden. She didn’t complain, though, and Kiron didn’t feel any faltering in her wingbeats, so he assumed that she was all right with the extra weight. When he gave her the signal to go up farther than she was used to in this weather, though, he sensed her hesitation. He gave it to her again, with a little more force.

She thought about his command for a moment, but before she could make up her mind, Re-eth-ke shot past