Aerie

servant to go looking for him if he was needed. And because if he was going to have to take the Chosen of Seft back to the border, he might need some special arrangements and the best person to arrange those was probably Ari’s own vizier.

As he had partly anticipated, he was expected at the Palace, and arrangements were already in place for him to bypass most of the protocol that others had to thread. He did have to present himself to the Keeper of the Door as any other petitioner, but once his name was known, the man nearly turned himself inside out to get Kiron straight to the rulers. Within moments, he was put into the guidance of one of Nofret’s personal servants and taken straight to Ari and Nofret’s private quarters, just as he had been last night. This time, however, the rooms that had been empty were thronged with people, many of whom looked at him with curiosity, envy, or both as he passed.

It was to a different set of rooms that he was taken this time, in the womens’ wing, and by the opulence, the wall paintings of Queens being greeted as equals by various goddesses, it was Nofret’s own suite of rooms. Which was—and he would have expected this, if he had just thought about it—where he found Aket-ten, alone in one of the rooms set aside for those who were especially favored of the queen. Servants there offered them both drinks and little dainties; he declined, but Aket-ten took a delicate goblet of pomegranate juice absently, staring at him with a rueful expression on her face.

“Aket-ten, I really need to apologize—” he began.

Just as she blurted, “Kiron, I have been a pigheaded goose—”

They looked at each other, and laughed nervously.

“You have, and I have,” he said. “And we were both wrong, and that is of little importance right now. Now . . . did they tell you what is toward?”

“A very little. Enough to frighten me half to death. Could some of the Magi have escaped?” she asked, and she truly did look frightened. “Do you think they really have set themselves up in the east?”

She shuddered. Well, he couldn’t blame her. She, not he, had been the one they had held captive. She, and not he, had been the one that had seen the evils of the Magi in a very personal way; they had, not once, but twice tried to drain her of her power and spirit, and she had felt their dreadful power at first hand.

They had cut her down out of the sky and taken her captive, and the last thing she had seen as they dragged her away had been Re-eth-ke lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. She, not he, had been the one to think she had lost her dragon forever.

To contemplate the idea that some of those same Magi could still be alive must be the stuff of her worst nightmares.

He had to shrug. “There is no telling. That is what the Chosen of Seft hopes to learn, I suppose. But as he rightly said last night, the Magi are not the only ones of their sort in the world. He pointed out that they had to learn their magic from somewhere . . . and that is the border over which the Nameless Ones came.”

She bit her lip. “That is another thing I would rather not think about. The Nameless Ones . . . what if we must face them again?” She rubbed her hands together nervously. “And another thing . . . we thought we knew why Aerie and Sanctuary were deserted. But what if we were wrong? What if it was magic that lured their people away—magic of the Nameless Ones—”

He grimaced; he didn’t want to think about this either.

That is for wiser heads than mine—Ari and Nofret, Kaleth, and the Chosen of Seft. Not one simple wingleader. “How are your Jousters?” he said instead, changing the subject, and grinned. “Have you found the need to set a watch on beds yet?”

She groaned. “I cannot do that, they are adults. Much though I wish I might. And when I move them to Aerie, it will be worse.”

“Why move them at all?” he asked, invoking logic. “There is no real need, is there?”

“I—” she began, and was interrupted by the entrance of the Great Queen, who looked every inch the Great Queen indeed.

Nofret wore the tall ceremonial headdress, rather than the soft, draped cloth with the cobra headband. It was not as heavy as it looked, being made of starched blue cloth, adorned at top and bottom with a ribbon of gold. The headdress, however, was the only thing other than her dress about her that was not heavy. She wore a collar of gold, coral, lapis lazuli, and turquoise beads, and a matching belt that encircled her hips and dangled two ends down to the floor. This, in turn, matched the beading on her sandals. She sported both upper and lower armbands of enameled gold as wide as Kiron’s palm, and carried the same ceremonial crook and flail as Ari did; both of enameled gold, the stringers of the flail being composed of beads that matched the rest of her jewels.

Underneath all this, she wore a gown of closely pleated mist linen. Each such gown took one girl the better part of a day to wash and iron all the pleats back in. The jewels were so heavy that Nofret often changed gowns four and five times a day.

And the first thing she did when she entered the room was to hand over the crook and flail to the appropriate attendant, while her hairdresser came to lift the headdress from her head, revealing that she kept her hair cropped closely. It was the only sane solution. There were so many ceremonial hairstyles for a Great Queen, and all of them were so complicated, that the only way to deal with them was to wear wigs.

Another attendant came to lift the collar over her head with both hands, while a fourth removed the belt. Nofret herself kicked off her sandals and sank onto a couch with a sigh.

“Court would not be nearly so difficult if I didn’t wear enough jewels to sink the royal barge,” she complained, reaching for the fruit juice a fifth attendant brought her. The gown was now in crumpled ruins, rendered distinctly sorry looking by the heat and humidity and the press of the jewels. It hung limply from her shoulders, all the fine pleats vanishing. She sprawled onto the couch and allowed her attendants to fan her. “So, Ari told you the simple version, I trust?”

Aket-ten nodded her head.

“The complicated version is still simple at this point. There is too much we do not know, and the gods are not speaking to Kaleth. Tedious of them. Life would be so much simpler if they revealed everything to us like sensible beings.” She handed the empty goblet to one of the attendants. “Kiron is here to transport whatever priest the Chosen of Seft designates to go back to the town. We want Kiron to do this because he is the most trustworthy of an already trustworthy lot and because of all of his experience. And because the Bedu trust him. That is no small thing.”

“I feel very badly that I can do nothing,” Aket-ten said plaintively. “It seems as if there should be something I can do. . . .”

“Train your couriers,” Nofret replied instantly. “No, do more than train them. Your young women will be carrying messages of a sensitive nature, and it is imperative that they learn discretion. Make them see that they cannot conduct themselves like the little temple gossips they once were.”

Aket-ten rolled her eyes. “Ask for a miracle,” she muttered though Nofret probably couldn’t hear it.

“Seriously, Aket-ten, if they become nexuses of gossip, they will ruin the reputation of female Jousters for all time.” Kiron put in. He had not wanted these women, but now that they existed, he had no intention of permitting them to fail. For all of their faults, he had seen them with their baby dragons, watched them grit their teeth and throw themselves into training. They were Jousters. “Just tell them that.”

“Precisely.” Nofret passed her hand through her cropped tresses. “They are not stupid, Aket-ten, or you would never have chosen them.”

She nodded, chin firming.

“Enough of that,” Nofret continued. “It is of little importance.” She leaned forward and fixed them both with a steady gaze. “Kiron, the Chosen of Seft wants you here. So, Aket-ten, I am promoting both of you. Kiron, you are, as of this moment, confirmed as Lord of the Jousters. Aket-ten, you are his wing-second and speak with his authority. Ari agrees.”

As the two of them started, and then stared at each other in shock, Nofret continued. “Above all else, Ari is a scholar and a scribe, and he has remembered most of the little that is known about the Nameless Ones. And if everything he thinks is true—” She paused.

“Then the Jousters may be the one thing that stands between us and their darkness.”

THIRTEEN