Aerie

And that was the last thing he knew until dawn brought a chorus of birdcalls and the stirring of all things in the Dragon Courts to wake him.

TWELVE

IT had all started like a perfectly unremarkable day. Sutema woke, ate, begged for caresses, and slept again. Peri then got her bath and fresh clothing, as always, reveling in the scent of the clean linen and marveling anew that she had the luxury of clean clothing every single day. Then she went in search of food for herself before the day’s lessons, both for Jousters and little dragons, began. There had been some fuss over the last few days about comings and goings from the Palace, but really, though those who had been priestesses might find such things worth chattering endlessly about, for Peri, it was not anything that would make any difference in her life, so she ignored it.

And that was where “ordinary” ended. Peri stopped in surprise at the doorway to the courtyard where all of the Jousters and Jousters in training ate, and stared, hardly able to believe her eyes. It was Lord Kiron. What was he doing here? No one had said anything about him appearing. It wasn’t as if he was a courier, to come and go unannounced.

He looked very tired, and he was plainly wearing a borrowed kilt, as it was a little too long on him and extended down over his knees. He must have arrived last night.

Perhaps all that business that the other girls had been so excited about had brought him; with so many comings and goings between all of the temples and the Palace, perhaps this was something that would make a difference to the Jousters.

Then something else occurred to her, that last night, it was rumored, the Chosen of Seft himself had made a visit to the Palace.

The Chosen of Seft! The Altan equivalent was Sheften, and in one of the rare cases of total accord between the Two Kingdoms, in both the Altan and Tian pantheons, the god had betrayed and murdered his brother, and tried to force his brother’s goddess-wife into marriage. Seft was the lord of dark doings, of rumors and shadows and hidden knowledge. His Chosen almost never left the Temple of Seft.

For indeed, Seft was worshipped, as was Sheften, and openly; both gods had temples, but that was largely on the basis of the idea that it was better to coax the god into leaving you alone than it was to leave him alone and take the chance that he would turn his attention on you.

Among the ordinary people, the serfs and the slaves, the tales of what went on in those temples ranged from the prurient to the profane. In general, anyone wishing to propitiate the god into indifference simply delivered his or her sacrifice at the door, to be collected by the silent and faintly menacing acolytes, then hurried off. Seft’s Temple was not a place where you wanted to linger—oh, no.

And yet—it was said among the Jouster-priestesses that, other than being a place where shadows instead of light ruled, and the most sacred sanctuary was all in darkness, the temple of Seft was, if anything, more ascetic, more spare, than any other in Mefis. That there were mysteries there too deep for common folk even to begin to understand. That Seft’s priests never offered their aid with dark magics and cursing, even when one came to them precisely for that purpose, and that no matter what occurred there, it had a profoundly important purpose.

Frankly, Peri didn’t believe them. First of all, they were all priests together, and priests protected each other, even when there was something bad going on. She remembered a scandal from her own home village and one of the temples there, and not that of Seft either, but of Ghed, who was a jolly god, and one of the few for whom there really were no darker or more violent aspects. People reasonably assumed that any house of Ghed was a safe one for children. The priest had been taking advantage of the little girls, inviting them to come and decorate the altar with flowers, then filling them full of palm wine, and when they were too dizzy to think, filling them with something else entirely. And what had happened to him when he was found out? Nothing. Other than that he was whisked away and another priest put in his place. He suffered no punishment at all so far as Peri knew. The other priests of other gods would not say nor hear a word against him, in turn saying only that “The matter is dealt with.”

Ah, no. Priests stuck together, and she would trust nothing from former priestesses without confirmation. Nor from priests either, but from common ordinary people who had seen things with their own eyes.

But there was no reason to doubt that the Chosen of Seft had made a long visit to the Palace last night, and that was a curious thing indeed. The very servants were talking about it as they brought the meat for the baby dragons this morning, and she had heard murmurs of astonishment coming from over the kitchen wall before she had left last night.

Reclusive did not even begin to describe the Chosen of Seft. He had not emerged from his temple even when the Royal Family itself was in the thrall of the Magi. So why should he come out for the sake of one who was (to be totally honest) a bastard offshoot of the Royal Bloodline? Was it only because Ari was all that was left of that line?

That was what had the lady Jousters all a-twitter last night. Temple talk, palace talk, again, and once again, nothing she could really share. She’d listened to it without speaking while she ate, then took her leave. She had gone back to Sutema and then, since this was a rare night when she was not watching over all the babies, she paid a visit to Letis, with the intention of extracting every bit of information about her missing son Kiron as ever she could. The more she knew about the boy, the more likely it was she could match him with the man. Or not. But that, after all, was the point.

Letis, for her part, was never reticent about talking about her long-missing son. She filled Peri’s ears with tales of the boy, which included the sorts of things that Peri was really hoping to hear, since they were stories that it was unlikely some other boy would match. These were the sorts of things that most mothers liked to tell about their children, unique and often funny. One such was an incident where he and his eldest sister had gotten into a quarrel, and she, furious and helpless because her mother had supported Kiron despite his being in the wrong, had waited until he got too near to her, then dusted his hair with the flour she had just finished grinding. And that, in turn, had made him so incoherently angry that Letis had feared he would take the pestle and beat his sister with it, and had separated them both for the rest of the day.

Letis found that incident utterly hilarious; she thought it funny that the eldest girl, the one she seemed to think not much of, would be so angry at being put “in her place.” And she saw nothing wrong with supporting her adored son even when he was wrong, because he was the only boy. Peri for her part could only reflect that it was, in a way, a very good thing that Kiron had been separated from the family at so young an age, or he would have been spoiled beyond all correcting as a child, and that alone probably would have led to an early death among slaves and serfs. But perhaps Kiron’s father had taken a firm hand with his son and kept the boy from becoming too full of himself.

She had not had the slightest notion when she came back late from her visit, and fell onto her pallet, that her quest for ways of identifying Letis’ son would be put to the test so soon. She stared at the apparition with blank astonishment that would have been embarrassing and obvious if Lord Kiron had glanced in her direction.

Lord Kiron, however, was not alone. Two of the other female Jousters in training were sitting at the same table as he was, and two of the four couriers as well, and presiding over all of them was Lady Aket-ten. All five of them were throwing questions at him without regard for the fact that the poor fellow was trying to eat.

She took a deep breath, and walked in with as normal a demeanor as she could manage, both excited, and apprehensive. What if he found her questions impertinent? What if he thought she was rude and intrusive? What if he turned out not to be Letis’ lost son? She felt her throat tighten and her hands grow damp with nerves. The others, however, paid not the least attention to her. They were all too busy quizzing the poor young man on why he was here and why he had spent so much time at the Palace last night.

That was a piece of information she hadn’t had until that moment. So he had come in last night! Probably he had arrived about sundown, after she had gone off to visit Letis. When she had returned, she had gone straight to her bed, so of course no one would have told her anything. She held her peace and simply watched and listened.

He ate slowly and deliberately, and did not allow them to rush him, nor make him try and talk through a mouth full of food. It shortly became painfully clear that he was not going to tell them why he was here, except that he was on “the Great King’s business.”

“And what of the Great Queen?” Aket-ten asked testily, brows furrowing as if she considered the omission some sort of slight.

“Hers, too,” came the laconic reply. “They are one in this matter, as in most other things. Surpassingly in concord, are our rulers. Others could do well to follow their example.”