Aerie

and shook her head.

“Not this moment. Go see to Avatre.” But she wasn’t about to let him off that easily. “Once you’re bathed, I’ll have one of the servants bring food to your room in the Dragon Courts. We can talk then.”

So he had a little respite anyway. He nodded, stifled a sigh, and tried to look something other than apprehensive. Then something struck him about what she had just said. And something that had been nagging him about the Dragon Courts occurred to him as well.

She had said she was going to have a servant bring food to his room. Now he usually stayed in one of the old Jousters’ quarters in the Dragon Court on the rare occasions when he turned up here, but . . .

But there had never been servants here. Why should there be? There was no one here. And he didn’t think that four self-sufficient young men here could justify installing servants again.

Could it?

Or was there something more going on?

Or was he just tired and overreacting to something that had no meaning?

He talked to her about little nothings as they walked together back to the dragon pens. How progress had just speeded up apace since the merchants had taken to being grateful . . . how he was even going to have a kitchen in his own dwelling before long . . . how some enterprising soul was planning to create some bathing and swimming pools . . . all of this to try and make her see just how much more livable Aerie was becoming, to tempt her back.

For her part, she responded with a neutral interest that would have been frustrating if he hadn’t been too tired to be frustrated by anything. Flying was hard work; not as hard as it was for the dragon, of course, but there were constant adjustments of weight, shifting balance, and accounting for wind resistance going on to make things easier for the dragon. A Jouster didn’t just sit there like a sack of sand. At least, a good Jouster didn’t just sit there like a sack of sand.

It was dark in the pens, but Hem-serit was waiting for him. “We gave her a quick sand scrub, fed her as much as she would eat, and she flopped down and went straight to sleep,” the courier said, anxious to assure Kiron that everything possible had been done to make Avatre happy.

“I’ll just check on her,” he replied, easing into the pen.

Had Avatre been hungry, anxious, or even just a little restless, her head would have been up the moment she heard his voice and footstep. Instead, all he heard was her steady, deep breathing. She was sleeping like a stone.

He dropped down into the hot sand and stroked her head anyway. She didn’t awaken. She had been well- tended and now she slept the sleep of the exhausted.

But then he raised his head, because he distinctly heard the mutterings and meepings of—baby dragons?

Aket-ten heard them, too, and suddenly her demeanor changed—he sensed it in the shift of her posture. Guilt?

Was this what her odd behavior had been all about?

“Why are there baby dragons here?” he asked, treading carefully. If she felt guilty about something, she would be angry, too. Whatever she was up to—

Then it struck him, what she must have done. It was the only reason he could think of that she might be feeling guilty. And why she had not so much as brought a single couriered message in too long. And why Ari would have asked for four Jousters to serve as couriers. Oh, blessed gods. She’s started her own—

“I have permission and the patronage of Great Queen Nofret,” Aket-ten said, head raised, her voice taking on an edge. She was already starting an argument that he had no intention of getting involved in; whatever was done was done, and there was no point in fighting over it.

“I never said—”

Well, he might not want an argument, but she clearly was determined to have one with or without his participation. “I got my own babies.” Now there was defiance in her voice, and challenge.

“I never said—”

Apparently, it did not matter what he did or did not say. She had the argument in her mouth, and she was going to get it all out. All that was required was his mere presence, it seemed. “And all but one of the new lady Jousters are priestesses with the gift of communing with animals!”

He gave up. She had marshaled her forces and was going to charge the battlefield. If there was no opposing force there, her chariots were going to run down warriors of air.

She went on at great length about how she was not depriving anyone of anything, not even a scrap of meat. How her little priestess-riders were so completely in communion with their charges and devoted to them that it made his young Jousters look as if they were neglecting their dragons. How Queen Nofret thought this was an excellent idea and that eventually all the Jousters flying courier duty could be replaced with the “Queen’s Wing.” These were, of course, all good points. They would do nothing to silence the mouths of those who would not approve of female Jousters; they would do nothing to still the anger of those who had been waiting to become Jousters and would see any dragon gotten by the women as one that “should” have gone to them. There might be some who would be quieted when the women began flying courier duty, but there would still be plenty who would say that the dragons were a costlier alternative to runners and chariot drivers doing the same duty. And there were probably other things she had not even considered and he had not thought of.

And none of them mattered. She had wanted this badly enough that she had found a way to make it happen and arguments for and against it were useless. The thing had happened; there were lady Jousters. Now they must deal with the complications and consequences.

But she was still staring fixedly in her mind at her arguments.

The more she talked, the quieter he became; the quieter he became, the more she talked, until finally she had repeated every one of her arguments at least three times. It almost seemed as if she needed to fill the silence, as if the very silence was an argument against her.

It made no sense, of course. No sense at all. He found himself getting angry with her for being angry that he had not argued against her. It was stupid.

But so was his anger, and anyway he was too tired to sustain it.

At last she seemed to realize that the complaint had gone on more than long enough. She finally stopped, hands on hips. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but he could see her silhouette. She was still angry, angry over nothing, essentially.

“Well?” she said belligerently, daring him to raise one of his counterarguments.

Not a chance he would do that.

Oh, no.

It might be time to try to placate her. Strange, that all the practice he’d been getting in handling his Jousters seemed to be giving him some ability to deal with her. . . .

At least, he hoped it was.

The soft breeze that always soughed through the Dragon Courts brushed against his skin, and he took advantage of the darkness and clamped and unclamped his jaw to ease some of the tension.

“You seem to have everything well in hand,” he said, in as neutral a tone as possible. He really could not agree with her wholeheartedly. Not even halfheartedly. He saw far too many ways in which her brilliant plan was going to make everything worse, not better. She didn’t want to hear anything of that nature; she would see his counters, not as things to be taken into account and to find answers for, but as reasons why she had been wrong. And if he agreed falsely with her, he had the feeling she would know he was being false. So the best he could manage was neutrality.

Evidently that wasn’t good enough.

“Fine,” she said waspishly, then turned on her heel and left, stalking off into the lit walkway between the pens, anger evident in every movement.

He sighed. Well, there it was. She’d had her argument. She had, in a sense, won it. But she hadn’t won it in the way she had wanted to, and now she was angrier still. He had the sinking feeling that no matter what he said or did now, unless he came to her on his knees, saying that she had been absolutely right, that he had been