Sanctuary

murdered by the Magi, and his dragon had nearly thrown herself (and every other dragon in the compound) into suicidal hysterics with grief.

Until first Ari, the Tian Jouster, then Kiron, and then the eight other Altan boys had raised dragons themselves, from the egg, it had been unthinkable that a dragon should actually have a bond of affection with its Jouster. Dragons were, at best, controllable, and only when drugged with the dust made from a dried desert berry called tala. No one had ever thought that a bonded dragon, if it lost its Jouster, would choose to give its loyalty to another.

But that was exactly what had happened when Toreth died, and his midnight-blue-and-shaded-silver dragon Re-eth-katen had nearly died of her grief and loss. When Aket-ten “spoke” to Re-eth-katen and comforted her, that dragon had bonded again to the Fledgling Priestess, and had become her dragon, renamed Re-eth-ke, thus making Aket-ten the first ever female in the Jousters’ Compound as anything other than servant or couch companion. Just as well, since it had only been possible for her to hide from the increasingly imperious demands of the Magi in that one place in all of Alta. The dragons did not like the Magi, and not all the tala in the world could stop them from making that dislike evident.

The feeling of animosity was mutual, and the Magi had made it their business to remove the Jousters— heroes of the war—by steady attrition.

“Well, if you’re thinking that we’re better off here, no matter how hard life is, than there, well, I agree with you,” Aket-ten said. “I’d rather starve and bathe in sand than stay in Alta one moment longer. Not,” she added with a shiver, “that I think I’d be aware of where I was by now if I had stayed there.”

Kiron nodded and grimaced. Aket-ten was clever (if, perhaps, sometimes a little too inclined to flaunt that cleverness), brave (if a bit rash and headstrong), loyal (if stubborn), kind (if a little sharp-tongued), and the best sort of friend.

And she was right. If she’d stayed—well, if any of them had stayed—they’d probably be half dead from injuries and overwork, or entirely dead. Except for Aket-ten, who would be locked up in the Magi’s Tower of Wisdom with the rest of the Winged Ones, somehow being drained to give the Magi the strength for their magic.

But—thanks mainly to Kaleth—they’d escaped. They were safe in Sanctuary, and if the future was shrouded in uncertainty, it was at least a future that held freedom. As for Aket-ten, it was Kiron’s hope she was inclining toward becoming more than just a “friend” of late, though he was not pushing too hard.

Aket-ten could also be very stubborn if pushed, and hated with a great passion the least hint that she was being pressured into doing anything.

He probably had the Magi to thank for that. Still, his position could be much worse. He’d once thought that she harbored a secret passion for Toreth, and that had turned out to be false. The last thing he wanted to do was to give her even the faintest of impressions that he was putting pressure on her. Aket-ten was not a desert antelope to be swooped down upon, knocked over, and devoured. Rather, she was like her own blue-black dragon Re-eth-ke, to be courted with circumspection, tact, and delicacy, so that when she made up her own mind, it was with the impression that she had been the one who’d had the idea in the first place.

She came up beside him to lean on the parapet and look down into the sand pit where the dragons were just beginning to stir. All the dragons shared a sand wallow, rather than each having their own as they had back in Alta. There hadn’t been much of a choice in that; the Jousters’ Compound had been tended by a small army of servants, builders, and slaves. There were no slaves here in Sanctuary, and precious few servants, and none to spare for building something like the complex of quarters and sand wallows the dragons were used to. Fortunately, they were all, with the exceptions of Avatre, and Ari’s huge gold-emerald-and-blue dragon Kashet, out of the same batch of eggs. All but Kashet had romped together as nestlings and fledglings, and had trained together, under the guidance of Kiron and Avatre, from the beginning of their lives. There was no serious quarreling, much less the fighting that happened among unrelated wild-caught Jousting dragons, and though there might be the occasional squabble, it was soon sorted out without much worse than a swat or a nip or two. For her part, although the lovely scarlet Avatre reacted to being forced to share her sand with the “infants” with a pained disdain that was sometimes quite funny to see, she never bullied them.

As for Kashet, who might have been expected to react poorly to the herd of youngsters, the eldest of the dragons actually took to the half-grown dragonets with great tolerance and even some show of occasional pleasure.

“I wouldn’t even try to get inside your thoughts,” Aket-ten teased. “I’d find myself listening to echoes.”

“Hah,” was all he replied. “You only think that because you’ve spent so much time around your brother, all boys have heads as empty as last-year’s latas pod.”

“Last year’s latas pod isn’t empty!” her brother Orest exclaimed, coming up the stairs to flank Kiron on his right. “It is full of the seeds of wisdom, I will have you know! Ah, they’re starting to stir.”

He leaned over and made kissing noises at his own beetle-blue dragon, who rewarded his attention by slowly raising his bright blue head from the sand wallow and turning to gaze at Orest with sleep-glazed ruby-colored eyes.

Orest’s face was full of such infatuation that Kiron smiled. Not that he was under any illusions that he didn’t look like that around Avatre. It was quite clear to anyone with eyes that Orest and Aket-ten were brother and sister; in fact, at first glance, they might look like brother and brother. Both were slim, with broad cheekbones but delicate chins, making their faces the same almond shape, and both had the same merry eyes.

“Come on, little prince, it is time to greet the sun with sharp eyes and a clear head,” Orest cooed down at his dragon, coaxingly. “You need to wake up, precious jewel. We need to be in the air quickly this morning.” He turned to his sister. “You did remember to tell them all about the sandstorm, didn’t you?”

“Last night before they went to sleep,” she promised, with a hint of reproach. “You don’t think I’d have forgotten that! They know. I was careful not to confuse them either. When I told them, I took care to show them images of what they know—a black storm, wicked wind, and evil air currents. That was enough. He’s just sleepy from the heat of the sand; he’ll remember it for himself in a moment and he’ll be more impatient than you to get hunting.”

Without waiting to hear what her brother had to say, she turned and skipped down the staircase on the inside wall of the pit, to trot along the ledge surrounding the neck-deep sand until she came to where her own dragon was just now waking.

“Don’t tease her, you know how she feels about her responsibilities,” Kiron told his friend. “Look, see! Your little prince has just remembered that if he doesn’t get up in the sky soon, he might not eat today.”

And indeed, the young male had raised his head to look to his rider with sense and a bit of urgency in his gaze. The dragon snorted at Orest with impatience, and began to pull himself up out of his wallow, golden sand cascading from a blue back, without another word of coaxing from the young Jouster.

A familiar whine from just beyond Orest’s dragon caught Kiron’s attention, especially when it was paired with an equally familiar snort. He followed Aket-ten down into the pit, to make his way in the opposite direction from the one she’d taken.

Kashet and Avatre had taken to sleeping near to each other; not precisely curled up together, but they did seem to appreciate one another’s company. Perhaps Avatre remembered Kashet from her earliest days in the Tian Jousters’ Compound, when Kashet had been in the next pen over, before she and Kiron (then called Vetch) had escaped and fled northward to Alta with Ari’s help. Certainly Kashet remembered her.

He remembered Kiron, too, and with quite evident affection. The huge dragon snorted again when Kiron came near, and craned his emerald-and-blue neck over Avatre to blow his hot breath into Kiron’s hair.

Whereupon Avatre bristled with jealousy and shoved his head aside, claiming her rider for herself. Kiron had to laugh as she tried to puff herself up and interpose herself between him and her rival for his affections. Kashet could bowl her over without even taking thought for it, even now. She had a hot temper to match her fiery colors when she was irritated.

Fortunately, Kashet was a good-natured soul, and—well, it was possible that there was some instinctive behavior involved, too. Most male animals would put up with things from females that they would never tolerate in