Aerie

tended babies. Kiron had complained that he had more would-be Jousters waiting than he had eggs or babies to give them. The Great Queen had observed that Aket-ten would incur resentment for “taking” dragons that “should” have gone to men.

Well, no one would now be able to say she had not done her best to help her “rivals.”

Besides . . . she couldn’t bear the thought of those beautiful little creatures slowly starving to death. . . .

When Nofret had approved the notion of the “Queen’s Jousters,” Aket-ten had hoped that young women would be as eager to volunteer for such a thing as the young men were. There never seemed to be any shortage of young women wishing to be priestesses, for instance, and that was equally demanding work. . . .

Not that she was going to take just anyone, but—

“I don’t understand this,” she said forlornly, as Peri helped her to feed the babies, which she had housed all together in one pen for ease in care. “Why aren’t there more people who want to train as Jousters?”

“More girls, you mean,” Peri said shrewdly. “Well that’s easy enough. How is a girl going to find a good husband if she’s riding around on a dragon?”

Aket-ten stared at her, dumbfounded. “You jest, yes?”

But Peri shook her head. “You have not spent enough time around ordinary people, Aket-ten,” she said frankly. “Ordinary girls anyway. It seems . . . even among us when we were serfs, that was what we talked about. It was what our mothers and grandmothers talked about. It was all anyone ever talked about—”

“Not among the Winged Ones!” Aket-ten protested.

“Then perhaps you are looking in the wrong place,” the girl said shrewdly. “Perhaps if you looked among the priestesses—”

Aket-ten blinked. That simply had not occurred to her. But—

But among the priestesses, her power was considered minor, uninteresting, and . . . to be honest . . . not at all useful. To be able to speak into the mind of an animal? To what purpose? Far more useful and cherished were those who could speak to another priestess at a distance, to see at a distance or the future or the past. To speak with spirits—that was another sought-for power. Most of all, to be a Mouth of the Gods . . .

All these things could serve the people. What would you learn if you spoke into the mind of an animal? Not a great deal that was useful.

Unless, of course, that animal was a dragon.

Aket-ten had been able to calm even the Jousting dragons that had gone to the wild. She could coordinate an entire wing. She could soothe fears and tell what was hurting.

What if every wing had someone like her?

“Peri,” she said breathlessly, “you are a genius.”

“I am a genius covered in bits of meat,” Peri said ruefully, looking at her bloody, sticky hands. “Let us finish feeding these little ones so we can bathe before we become covered in biting flies.”

Aket-ten laughed.

She hurried through her bath, though, a daily luxury she usually lingered over, especially in the hot days like this one. Not that she didn’t take care with it; she certainly did that. After all, when one is going to visit a temple, one does well to look one’s best.

But she also did not want to look as if she was one of those silly women who dressed to impress a man with how important and wealthy she was. Baket-ke-aput, the High Priest of Haras in Mefis, was not the sort to be impressed by what was on the surface of things.

She did pause at the Palace long enough to ask Nofret’s vizier for a note of introduction to the priest, and waited while a servant went to take her request to the overseer. The Palace was pleasantly cool, the effect of the same magic that kept the sands of the dragon pens warm. Heat was removed from the Palace, where it certainly was not wanted, and sent to the pens, where it certainly was, something that at the moment, the dwellers in Sanctuary and Aerie would probably be very glad of. Aket-ten amused herself by examining the murals here, which were many-times-life-sized paintings of one of the Kings of Tia out hunting in the marshes for ducks.

Which was certainly a subject preferable to one of the many Kings of Tia out hunting for Altans in his war chariot . . . .

A note of introduction was going to be necessary to get past all the underpriests and scribes and functionaries of the temple, who were there in no small part to keep the High Priest from being bothered. The High Priest of Haras was not the sort of person one simply walked up to—well, not unless one was the Great King—

“Aket-ten!”

She looked up, startled, to see Ari himself striding toward her, hands outstretched, his bodyguards looking very unhappy to be forced to trot to keep up with him.

“Nofret’s vizier knew that I am to have an audience with Baket-ke-aput shortly, or rather,” Ari grinned, “he is to have an audience with me. I see no reason why your business with him, whatever it is, cannot be broached at the same time.”

Aket-ten felt almost faint with gratitude. She had been anticipating, despite a note, having to spend most of the rest of the day, and possibly tomorrow, being sent from one underling and scribe to another.

This would cut all of that short.

Belatedly she remembered that this was not just Ari. This was the Great King—

And she quickly got to her feet and flung herself down on her face again.

“Oh—” she heard him say in exasperation. “Don’t do that. Or at least, don’t do it when we are private together. It isn’t necessary.”

Slowly she got back up to her feet and smoothed out her linen sheath with both hands. “If that is your will, Great K—”

“Not when we are private together,” Ari said firmly. “And, to you, in private, I am nothing more than Ari. Now come to the Lesser Audience Chamber with me. Baket-ke-aput is a good man. If what you need is simple enough, he may be able to help you this very day.”

Aket-ten had not really had very much to do with Ari back when they were all just the refugee Jousters trying to survive at Sanctuary. She was Altan, he was Tian, he was so much older than the rest of the young wing of Jousters created by Kiron, and at any rate, it had not been long before the plan of making him Great King and Nofret Great Queen had resulted in both of them being so embroiled in plans and strategies and negotiations that she had seldom seen him or Nofret. He had been Kiron’s great friend and mentor, not hers. She hadn’t really thought he had paid all that much attention to her, but—

“So I suspect this is about this plan of yours, the Queen’s Wing?” he asked, glancing at her with a hint of a smile. She started a bit, and his smile broadened. “Nofret and I do talk, you know. I was intrigued. I’m not at all clear why you want to do this, but I am intrigued.”

“I’m not sure it is a very good idea now,” she confessed, subdued. “I am having difficulty finding girls who want to be Jousters.”

“You’re having difficulty finding girls like yourself.” Ari nodded. “Not very surprising, really. People in Tia, not just girls, are accustomed to a rigid structure all about them. People expect to do what their fathers, and their grand-fathers, and their many-times-great grandfathers did. If you are a farmer, your son will be a farmer, and your father was a farmer. You might go into the army, or, if you were very clever and very fortunate, you might go to the priesthood or apprentice as a scribe. But you wouldn’t expect to leave your home village unless you went into the army. I expect it is even more rigid for girls, since girls don’t go to the army or become scribes.”

“No, they don’t.” Aket-ten frowned. “But in Alta . . . you might become a skilled craftswoman . . . or . . . or something.” But she couldn’t really think what else a woman might become. She had never been forced to look at things that way. She had always had such freedom as a Nestling, then a Fledgling—one of the special the chosen, the Winged Ones. And before that, well, as the cherished daughter of a great noble.

“Well, I really don’t know what it’s like in Alta. I do know that I was probably the only scribe ever to become a Jouster. And if I had been forced to learn to handle a wild-caught, tala-drugged dragon rather than a hand-tamed one to do so, you would probably find me sharpening my pens in the marketplace at this very moment.” He laughed at her expression.

“I cannot imagine you ever being content to be a scribe,” she finally said.

“Oh, I did not say I would have been content,” he replied. “But here we are.”

They had passed through a number of large, open rooms, most of which had been sparsely populated by