sort. You could say we’re on your side, come to that. As for why these fellows are trussed up—if we hadn’t been patrolling when we were, they’d have ambushed you on this very spot.”
The merchant nodded. “Then you surely have our thanks. But this isn’t the sort of thing that Jousters do —”
“It is now,” Orest interrupted, with pride written in his very posture. “The Great Royals have given us our orders. We serve the people. We’ll watch the borders, and we’ll guard the roads.”
The merchant’s eyes started to light up; it was clear he saw all of the implications of this. “Are you police, or army?” he asked carefully.
Kiron thought that over. And felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Orest had just kicked him.
His startled glance won him a grimace from his friend, and the silently mouthed word “nomarchs.”
So the Jousters, few as they were now, could find themselves spread thin over too much territory, and dependent for the keep and the care of their dragons on people who would think that the three-day-old stinking leavings from the butcher were “good enough” food for something like a dragon.
“The army,” he said quickly, earning a nod and a flash of grin from Orest.
“Ah,” the merchant looked a bit disappointed, but then his eye fell again on the bandits, and he brightened. “Then that makes these men war captives, true?”
Kiron nodded. The merchant grinned toothily. “Well, Captain, in that case, I am authorized to take them off your hands.” He fished inside the neck of his tunic and brought out a medallion on a cord. “I am an authorized dealer in war captives.”
“Tian, I presume?” Kiron asked, peering at the circle of stamped faience. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of it—
But Kelet-mat was Tian, and Kiron waved him over. He glanced at the medallion and grinned. “Looks like our problem of how to transport this scum is solved, Captain,” he said. The faces of the captives fell.
Kiron decided that some scare tactics might be in order.
“Well, it’s a good thing this fellow came along,” he said gruffly, loud enough for the captives to hear. “The Great King gave me field authority. I was going to try and execute them right here.” He paused. “I don’t know, I still might. The dragons are hungry.”
For one moment the merchant looked horrified, but as Kiron gave him a broad wink that the captives couldn’t see, his eyes narrowed and a ghost of a smile appeared.
“That’s a waste of good workers, Captain,” the merchant protested. “You can easily hunt down their camels to feed your dragons—”
“He’s right,” Orest chimed in. “Besides, there’s more meat on a camel.”
“All right, then,” Kiron said, sounding as if he had been persuaded, but was still a bit reluctant. “What’s the procedure here?”
The procedure proved to be fully as bureaucratic as he had suspected it would. Two copies of the list of captives with names and general condition had to be written up on the spot, with Kiron taking one to turn over to whatever Royal Scribe was in charge of such things. From there, he had no idea what would become of list or captives—
But, presumably, the lists would be checked against each other and against the actual captives before they went into the market. Kiron had heard that Ari had made a few changes to that procedure, to make sure that serfs weren’t treated as Kiron—then called Vetch—had been treated. These men had no notion just how much better their lives were going to be than his own had been.
Pity they didn’t deserve it.
FIVE
“A FEMALE Jouster group?” Great Queen Nofret asked, astonished.
Mind she didn’t look like a Great Queen at the moment; she was in the same sort of linen tunic that Aket-ten was wearing, with her hair held only by a simple headband. She wore no jewelry at all, much less a crown, and she groomed and saddled her dragon, the magnificent purple-and-scarlet The-on, as well as a dragon boy.
But this was the one time of the day when she was able to relax and not be Great Queen Nofret, when she could become something she had never actually been before: something
All her life she had been groomed to be on a throne. First, she had been one half of the female pair of Royal twins that would share the thrones of Alta with the male pair of Royals; that was the way of things in Alta, as the Great Kings and Queens of Alta were always two sets of Royal twins. As the only female pair in the bloodline of reasonable age, she and Marit had always been in the Court, schooled and trained as the probable heirs, and very well aware that their choice of mate and life had been taken out of their hands by the gods.
But Nofret and Marit had accepted it; well, it wasn’t as if they had any other course of action before them. And they had liked Kaleth and Toreth quite well—
Now here, Aket-ten wiped down the purple flank of Nofret’s dragon with a feeling of uncertainty. Marit had quite been in love with her destined mate. But Nofret?
Nofret was hard to read and always had been. Much more phlegmatic than her twin, much more practical, Nofret had clearly enjoyed Prince Toreth’s company and had not shown any sign of discontent with her prospective life. But . . . when Toreth was murdered by the Magi of Alta in the next stage of their bid to take over governance of the entire Kingdom, Nofret’s distress had not been . . . as intense as Aket-ten would have thought it would be, had Nofret loved him as anything other than a friend.
Now, coercion into a marriage with a pair of faux-Royal twins the Magi had cobbled up in order to take those thrones—that had gotten an intense reaction.
And still Nofret had been Royal, and not able to escape the ever-increasing restrictions. Until she and Marit had escaped Alta into the desert, and the lost city they called Sanctuary. And there, for a brief moment of escape, she had been something other than Nofret, heir to the throne, Royal twin.
After all, they were all too busy scraping out life in Sanctuary to think about relative trivialities like royal birth.
But with only that brief time, things returned to what was “normal” for Nofret; she was a Royal again, this time selected to marry the only other Royal—if illegitimate Royal—left of the Tian bloodline. And that had been Ari- en-anethet, who had until that moment been perfectly content to live his life as plain Jouster Ari. It was just a good thing for both of them that they were very fond of each other, very fond indeed, and fond quite quickly became loving. But it still meant that Nofret had had only brief moments of being herself, and not a title and responsibilities.
Aket-ten sighed in sympathy; Nofret had gotten a short taste of freedom, and without a doubt she treasured the few moments of freedom she still was able to garner.
No one troubled her when she was with her dragon, even though, aside from exercise, the only flying she ever got to do anymore was when she and Ari made a Royal Appearance on dragonback.
Perhaps that was why she looked askance at Aket-ten, and repeated, “A
“Yet,” Aket-ten replied, and tried not to smirk. “Kiron is testing his idea of sending out every dragon he has to guard the trails soon, if he has not already begun. Every wing in Aerie will be flying guard on a trade road. I suspect that it will not be long before the traders and the merchants who depend on them for goods will be petitioning Your Highnesses to find more Jousters for the same duty.”
“Knee,” Nofret said absently, and her dragon obediently lifted a purple-to-scarlet leg for her to use as a stepping place to mount up to the saddle over her shoulders. Once securely in the saddle, Nofret looked down at Aket-ten. “But why a group of female Jousters? Not that I object,” the Great Queen added quickly, “but what can they do that the Jousters we have cannot?”
Aket-ten opened her mouth to answer hotly, shut it without saying anything, then opened it again.
