Sanctuary

of the other members of his wing.

She could not manage a smile, but she gave a solemn nod. He sketched a salute, and sprinted for Avatre. She was only too happy to be in the air, even if that air was full of dust and thick with the smoke of many fires.

He began working his way along the canal, for that was where there were likely to be boats. His appearance was marked by shouts and cries for help, some of which made him want to break down and weep with frustration over how little he could actually do. But he hardened himself, and limited himself to sending people to where he had seen undamaged boats, despite pleas for other aid. “There are only two of us Jousters right now; we have to find and warn others. Make for the river,” he told them, over and over again. “The sea is not to be trusted in a shake! Get as far away as you can, until you can no longer feel the shaking.”

“The Magi?” he was asked, by virtually every party he encountered. “What has happened to the Magi?”

“They are dead,” he always responded, because even if it wasn’t entirely true, no Magus would be safe in these lands for generations to come. “As are the Great Kings and Queens, and most who dwelled on Central Island. The gods have deserted them, even the evil gods that they once served. Alta is dying and there is no saving her. Ocean and marsh alike are taking her back with each new shake; it is the gods’ own will, and you cannot fight the gods. Now fly! Fly, lest you die with her!”

And at that point, since most of them owned no more than what they stood up in or had saved from the wreckage of their homes, they did not argue with him, they picked up their belongings, aided the wounded, and made for the boats.

Strangely enough—at least, until he thought about it—was that no one begged him to carry them away. That was what he had most dreaded, especially if it came from someone who was injured.

But they didn’t. In fact, they kept a cautious distance from him when he landed. And then, after a few frantic reactions to sudden moves from Avatre he realized that they were used, not to tame dragons, but the wild-caught ones.

The wild-caught ones were still dangerous to anyone not a Jouster or a dragon boy. Someone visibly injured might well be considered a possible menu item . . . and the injured were well aware of that and made a great effort to appear perfectly fine. It might have been funny, if it hadn’t been so tragic.

The only times when he did stop and pick someone up were when he found children wandering alone, or— more tragically—infants with dead parents. Then he stopped, caught them up, and carried them to the next group with children or infants. He never gave the impromptu guardians a chance to object either. “We are all Altans,” he would say bluntly. “We will care for our own. Tend to this little one.”

No one refused. Maybe they were afraid to. In any event, when he checked back with groups with which he had left children, they were caring for the foundlings as well as their own. In a couple of cases, he found a woman in the party cradling the child possessively, and he wondered, had he united a bereft mother with a replacement for the child she had lost?

Ari was the first to return. Kiron spotted him coming in from the south, and went to meet him. By then, Aket-ten was in the air, had presumably dealt with the people at the harbor, and was working the interior of the First Ring, guiding people through the maze of broken buildings and toppled statues to the one causeway still intact—a floating footbridge made of raft sections lashed together, a replacement for a causeway that had collapsed in an earlier shake.

He didn’t even need to say anything, he just pointed at Re-eth-ke hovering in the middle distance, and Ari practically went limp with relief. He straightened immediately, though. “We saw Re-eth-ke rise from the Healers’ Court!” he called. “I thought I was having a vision at first. But Seft’s own chaos was breaking loose, so we landed and each took a sick or wounded Healer out.”

“It’s getting w—” Kiron began, when another shake interrupted him.

By now, there wasn’t much left of the Central Island, and with this shake, buildings were beginning to sink on First Ring as well. Ari took in the damage with widened eyes.

“By Hamun’s horns!” he exclaimed. “What is happening here?”

“We’re evacuating the city, sending them south, getting as many into boats as we can,” Kiron called. “The rest—we’re finding safe paths to that causeway and guiding them from the air, and I don’t know why things are sinking. Maybe it’s a different sort of shake than we’ve ever had before. I want you to intercept the others and tell them that’s what they’re to do. Then you go to the others, the ones with the Tian army, Great King. The Magi here are dead or running, the Queens and most of the nobles, if they were on Central Island, are dead, too. You are Great King and commander of the Armies of Alta, which are about to close in on the Tian forces. The greater need for you is there, not here.”

He’d thought about that, as well, in the time since he and Aket-ten had begun this evacuation. There was no doubt of it in his mind; under the heading of “greatest good,” Ari could help to save a few thousand, of which most could save themselves so long as they knew where a clear path was, or he could take his place as the ruler of Alta, and save—perhaps—hundreds of thousands.

And, Ari being Ari and very far from stupid, saw that for himself right away. So he just saluted, with no sense of irony or mocking at all, and turned Kashet’s head south without another word.

Oset-re was the next back, and he took immediately to working directly across First Ring from where Aket- ten was. By the time Huras arrived, they had most of First Ring cleared, or at least, as much as it was going to be cleared without help to extricate people who were trapped past bare hands getting them out. Those who hadn’t already gotten across the causeway at least knew where the clear path to it was. Aket-ten had gotten the brilliant notion of having the survivors splash paint, or mud, or use anything else that would make a mark on the way, to show where the safe route was. That sped up the evacuation of those behind the first out immeasurably.

The Second Ring had begun to evacuate itself, warned by the collapse of Central Island and the First Ring, and by those escaping across the causeway. Boats were already fleeing, and people streaming across the two floating-raft causeways linking the Second Ring to the Third.

And on the Third Ring—now there was help. The Third Ring was home to the army. There were fewer buildings as such; fewer places for people to get trapped in wreckage. But even more important, the soldiers of Alta were used to helping in the wake of shakes, and now they, under the direction of their officers, were organizing the evacuation as refugees poured over the causeways.

It was to these officers that Kiron now gave a different piece of news.

“The False Kings are dead,” he said grimly, “and their foolish or deluded Queens with them. But Alta has a Great Queen and a King; Queen Nofret-te-en, once betrothed of Toreth-aket. She was wedded by the Mouth of the Gods, Kaleth-aket, to Ari-en-anethet, rider of the dragon Kashet; he who was chosen to be Great King by birth, marriage to the Lady Nofret, and the will of the gods. And,” he would add with a significant lift of an eyebrow, “He is no friend of the Magi.”

Of course, this was news to them, but it was clearly welcome news. It put heart in them, gave impetus to their effort.

But the one thing they asked that he couldn’t answer was, “How far are we to evacuate?”

To which he could only answer “Judge by what you would do yourself. How far would you? ”

Because he wanted to say that the Third Ring was far enough . . . but as another shake hit, and he got up into the air, he saw that half of First Ring was gone, the same sand-and-water geysers were spouting on Second, and buildings there were sinking.

“The shakes are getting worse,” said one grizzled Captain of Hundreds grimly, when it was over. “It’s not natural. You get a big shake, then you get your smaller after-shakes. You don’t get shakes that are bigger with each one that hits! It’s all the fault of those cursed Magi!”

Kiron nodded. By now, his half of the wing was back; Aket-ten, Kiron himself, Huras, Oset-re and Pe-atep had divided Third Ring into quarters. Aket-ten, Huras, Oset-re and Pe-atep were working the sections, while Kiron made contact with the officers. Some of those officers had, to his immense relief, sent rescue parties back to Second Ring to try and dig out the trapped.

Though, truth be told, there were fewer of those than he would have thought. The shakes that Altans had been living with since the Magi began using the Eye had knocked down most dubious structures a year or more ago, and living with so many shakes had taught most Altans how to survive them.

But now that the officers and fighters had shaken off their brief paralysis of being without orders or a leader