Aerie

Peri winced. Aket-ten did not seem to notice the veiled allusion to her own behavior. It would be a lot better if Aket-ten didn’t pick at him in front of the others. That can’t be good for discipline. “And what is this matter?” she persisted. “We are the Great Queen’s Wing! Should we not be told?”

“There is nothing to tell,” Kiron replied, and took a bite of bread and honey. “I have not leave to discuss any of it.”

Let it rest, Aket-ten, Peri thought, wishing that her wingleader was as good at reading human thought as she was at reading animal.

“How long will you stay?” Aket-ten then said, taking a different approach.

“I do not know.” Another bite of bread and honey; Kiron chewed and swallowed meditatively.

Aket-ten bristled, as if he had somehow insulted her with the simple answer. “I am the Overseer of the Dragon Courts now,” she responded, drumming her fingers on the table with impatience. “I am responsible for provisioning everyone here. There is another dragon, another Jouster to feed, to care for. How am I to plan for both of you if I do not know how long you are to stay? What if my allotted provisions run short?”

“As I am on the Great King’s business, you may apply to the Great King’s vizier,” Kiron replied, and this time under all his seriousness Peri was sure she saw a twinkle of amusement in his eye. He was getting a certain amount of pleasure from thwarting her, even tormenting her with his secretiveness. “I am sure he will leap to assist you in any way possible.”

She heard laughter in his voice, then. So he was teasing Aket-ten! She wondered if Aket-ten realized this.

“You were at the Palace for simply ages,” said Min-kalet, she of the slender ankle and slightly nasal voice: the former, which she displayed whenever she could, and the latter, which she seemed unaware of. She leaned over the table, ignoring her own breakfast in her eagerness. “Lord Kiron, were you with the Great King and Queen? Was there a feast? What did you do there?”

“The Great King and Queen were my friends before they ascended the thrones of the Two Lands,” Kiron replied looking as if he was choosing his words with great care. “It is rather surprising, really, that I have not been there before. They had need of me, so they summoned me here; it was a thing of duty, not of pleasure, though it is always a pleasure to see them. There was no feast, but we had roast goose.”

“Glazed with honey and stuffed with dates?” exclaimed slender West-keri, who had an unbridled passion for food of all sorts. “Or basted with butter and stuffed with bread and raisins? Or stuffed with a duck that was stuffed with a chicken that was stuffed with a quail that was stuffed with an egg?”

It was a daily wonder to Peri that West-keri remained so thin. She and her young dragon were a good match; both always seemed to be hungry.

“Just plain roast goose,” Kiron smiled. “Though that was more than good enough. At Aerie, we do not get such things; we are too far from any water for goose or duck, too far into the desert for much that is fresh of anything.” He raised an eyebrow at the girl. “I do not think you would like it there. It is more like living in a camp in the desert than living in a city. One day, perhaps, it will be a place like any other city, but that is for the future.” Then he shrugged. “At any rate, this was nothing more than sharing an evening meal. It was not a feast, as I told you.”

“It should have been.” One of the couriers chimed in, and Peri smothered a smile when she saw the hero- worshipping look on his face. “They should have summoned you to reward you. You should have been given the Gold of Favor and the Gold of Honor, Lord Kiron.”

Kiron laughed aloud. “To what purpose? When I was his dragon boy, Ari had a chest full of the gold, and never even looked at it. I am no courtier to wear that nonsense about; there are no festivals, no feasts at Aerie, we are working far too hard for such things. Serving well is enough of an honor.”

Aket-ten rolled her eyes, when Kiron was looking the other way. Then he glanced back and caught her at it and his eyes glinted. “I am going to get no satisfaction from you, am I?” she demanded.

“You said yourself, you serve the Great Queen and answer only to her,” Kiron replied, a little smile playing over his lips, but sounding as innocent as a child. “Go and ask her yourself.”

The exasperated look that Aket-ten gave him made Peri hide another smile. Peri’s only real rival here was doing herself no service with her attitude. Not that Aket-ten seemed to care.

Finally, she found an opening in the conversation to ask about Kiron’s childhood, a moment when he reminded them all that he was from a very simple background and was more at home in the rough surroundings of Aerie than the Palace—“Unlike you, Aket-ten.” That was when Peri metaphorically pounced. He seemed very grateful for the change in subject, and as a consequence readily answered questions that under other circumstances would have been considered impertinent, not to mention prying.

And the more she asked . . . the more points of identity she had. He had the right number of siblings and the right ages. And although Letis-hanet was a very common name for an Altan woman—it meant “flower of the goddess”—still, there was that point of identity as well. Unfortunately all he remembered of his sisters were the pet names he had for them, which didn’t match what Letis had called them. But other than that, she soon had almost all the evidence she needed. Until she pulled out the final jackal for her game board . . .

“Surely your sisters cannot always have been inclined to spoil you at every opportunity!” she laughed. “Surely there must have been times when you were at each others’ throats! I have never in all my life heard of siblings who did not fight, especially eldest with youngest!”

He smiled a little. “Well,” he began, slowly. “There was one time—”

And as he recited the story, with much laughter all around, she knew that she had what she needed and wanted. It was the same incident. Him winning the argument only because his mother said he should. His sister going red in the face with anger. The handful of flour thrown into his hair. Him going red in the face with anger as the “insult” sent him into a senseless fury. His mother finally intervening, separating them for the rest of the day, only to bring them back together again at sunset and force them to apologize to each other.

“Oh, now I can admit that I was completely in the wrong,” he laughed. “And I know now that the reason I became so angry was precisely because I was in the wrong and would never have admitted it then. But I was an arrogant little toad then, and as sure that I was the ruler of all about me as any Great King.”

“Aren’t all boys?” she teased.

“And all girls are the Princesses of the Household, and just as arrogant in their way!” he challenged her. “There was many a time when my sister won an argument only because my grandmother supported her with no more reason but that she was a girl and must therefore know all things!” He chuckled. “That was the great rivalry in that house; my father ’s mother supporting the girls because my mother supported and spoiled me. And yet, let a neighbor so much as deign to hint that any of us were less than perfect, and lo! The ranks were closed, the armies assembled, and they faced the enemy as one!”

Peri laughed, able to see it all so clearly, for exactly the same situation was true in most of the village families she had grown up around.

By then, bored with it all, the rest had drifted away, even Aket-ten, who looked rather determined to, in fact, go to the Great Queen and demand to be told what this “business” was all about.

Well that was her outlook. Peri was only interested now in one thing. This was Letis’ son; this was the young man that her friend was determined she wed. And she liked him—oh, how very much she liked him, indeed!

And he was smiling at her as he had not smiled at any of the others.

Her heart lifted, and an unexpected thrill went through her.

She felt her breath catch, she flushed—and she quickly turned the conversation back to his past. Because now she wanted to hear it. All of it.

Because it was his, and no other’s, and she wanted to know everything, everything that had made him what he was.

When the little female Altan Jouster in training took herself off to her duties, Kiron rose and stretched and immediately forgot all about her. Her simple questions, her conversation, had been a much-needed distraction, but now he needed to return to the Palace. Not to hare off after Aket-ten—though he was going to have to apologize to her at some point for teasing her in front of her wing—but because it would be better if no one had to send a