Ari opened his mouth again to protest, and Kiron kicked him in the shin again. He shut his mouth with a snap, and Nofret smiled at both of them. “Thank you for being reasonable about this,” she said and excused herself. “I’ll go talk to Heklatis and Lord Ya-tiren about shifting audiences and meetings to after sundown when the time comes.” She laughed a little, and winked at Kiron. “At least I can sleep in my own bed! You can leave me with them when you go to hunt, and get me at sundown, and that should serve very well.”
Bethlan and Khaleph stuck their indigo and green noses over the wall to Avatre’s pen and whined; they were hungry and wanted to go out to hunt. Since it didn’t look as though there was going to be any more excitement, the rest of the wing went off to saddle their dragons to take them out to hunt the last meal of the day.
The rest of the wing—except Ari, who turned on Kiron.
“Why did you kick me?” he demanded, with a face full of wrath.
“I was saving you from doing something stupid,” Kiron retorted. “Didn’t you pay any attention to Nofret’s expression? One word about forbidding her to do anything, and you’d be arguing about it for moons. That’s assuming she even talked to you at all after being told you were forbidding her to try! Ari, she was the Queen-in-waiting! She’s not used to being told she’s forbidden to do something that’s perfectly reasonable.”
She’s not asking to do anything worse than Aket-ten is planning on doing. And you thought that was an excellent idea!
“Reasonable?” Ari yelped. “She wants to spend time with a wild dragon! What’s reasonable about that?”
“Aket-ten is going to do the same thing, and you were all for that. And Nofret not only wants a dragon of her own, I think she needs one,” Kiron replied. “The eggs we’ve got have already been spoken for—and besides, I don’t think that she’s up to the challenge of raising one from the egg; she doesn’t have the time, for one thing. I don’t think her idea of the partnership is the kind of tight bond that the rest of us have with our dragons. I think she’s looking for something of the kind you’d get from a tame cheetah or a lion. She’s a very—” he groped for a word, “—self-contained person. Marit is the more dependent of the twins. Nofret never wanted pet dogs, for instance, but she loves cats. I think that doing the double-rearing, if it can be done, will give us a much more independent-minded dragonet.”
Ari looked off in the direction Nofret had taken. “You kicked me because if I’d said that I forbade her to do this, she’d never have forgiven me, and I would have undone all the courting I’ve done with her.”
Kiron coughed. “I don’t know about never. . . .”
He left the sentence hanging in the air, though, because he did want Ari to think about it, and think about it hard.
Ari looked away from him for a moment, and cursed. “This is why I never wanted to have anything to do with noblewomen!” he said under his breath. “With a paid flower, you know where you are—”
Now Kiron was right out of his depth. All he could do was shrug. Ari looked over at him, and his expression turned wry. “As if you’d know anything more about women than I do.”
“I know they don’t like to be treated as if you have a right to order them about,” Kiron said carefully. “No more than you do!”
Ari sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “At least you kept me from a mistake that was likely to cause trouble. Kashet is probably starving; I’d better get into the air.”
Kiron snorted, and turned his attention back to making Avatre comfortable. She hadn’t had a sand scrub today, and when she saw him getting out the buffing cloths and the oil, she was nearly beside herself with happiness. Making her happy soothed his nerves, and his nerves definitely needed soothing. He was out of his depth. . . .
What am I doing? I’m the son of a farmer, I used to be a serf—
“Can I help?” asked Nofret from the doorway. “If I’m going to have a dragon, I need to learn how to care for them.”
And this is a daughter of the Royal Lines and the nearest thing we have to a queen. And I’m going to be taking her to a wild dragon and somehow making it possible for her to bond with a dragonet. And Ari, who was my master and is her betrothed and is going to be our King, just asked me for advice on how he should treat her. Haras help me, is she going to ask me for the same? And I don’t even know what to say to Aket-ten. This is insane.
He nodded, and she made her way along the walkway to stand beside him. He showed her how to use the sand to buff Avatre’s scales, how to gently scrub away flaking skin, and how to oil the exposed skin afterward. “I hope you don’t think I want a dragon for the—the look of prestige,” Nofret said, after they had worked together for a while. “It’s not just that; it isn’t even most of the reason. I didn’t really see that much of Toreth to understand what having a tame dragon was like. I’ve spent so much time in Ari and Kashet’s company that I couldn’t help but see how he has such an amazing bond with Kashet, and—and I wanted my own dragon, when I saw how close they were. Mind, I do think that to be taken as seriously, and as his equal, I must appear in every way to be his equal—”
Kiron nodded. “From what I know of the Tians, I think you are right. They have no Great Queen—only the Great Royal Wife, which is not at all the same.”
“So I need a dragon.” She carefully buffed a patch of dull scales. “But now that I’ve gotten used to flying, and I’ve seen Ari and Kashet just being together—Kiron, I am just as eaten with dragon envy as any of those boys out there with their eggs in the hatching pen, and if I could spare the time to tend an egg, I would go looking for one myself! Mind, if this works, I hope my dragon has a slightly different personality. Kashet is more like a dog, and I think I would get along better with a dragon like Re-eth-ke, who is more like a cat.”
Kiron had to laugh at that. “Aket-ten said the same thing. My father used to tell my mother that women liked cats better than dogs, because they recognize that they are like cats themselves!”
Nofret laughed herself, making Avatre crane her neck around to look at her. “There’s some truth to that,” she admitted. “I don’t like slavish dependence. Do you think that I’m mad for wanting a dragon, too?”
“I don’t think anyone is mad for wanting a dragon.” They were just about finished with Avatre, and when Kiron stepped back, the scarlet dragon picked her way daintily to the center of her pit, then spread herself out luxuriantly over the top of the hot sand to bask.
“You’re frightening Ari, though,” he continued, picking up the cloths and oil flask. “It will be dangerous. Not as much for you as for Aket-ten, but Coresan won’t be drugged, and her reactions will be sharp. I honestly don’t know what her behavior is going to be like, or even if it will be consistent from day to day.”
Nofret spread her hands wide. “Shouldn’t we be able to learn that by watching her while we approach her?” she asked, reasonably. “I promise, if she looks as if she’s going to be dangerous, I’ll give up the idea. It’s going to take enough time as it is. But I do have my reasons, and a great many of them, and I think they’re all good ones.”
He looked at her soberly, wondering if she really understood what she was letting herself in for. How much the bond with her dragon would affect her.
Then he decided that it didn’t matter whether she understood now. When it happened, she would. And when it happened, well, she wouldn’t regret whatever sacrifices she had to make.
“She’s beautiful,” Nofret said, in tones of awe.
“She’s a bit scrawny still,” Aket-ten countered. “but she’s rounding out again.”
It had taken less time than Kiron had thought to get Coresan—and there was no doubt now, it was Coresan—to allow both Kiron and Aket-ten quite close, and on foot, on the ground. Her hunger, combined with her need to stay with her eggs, and her recognition of the dragon boy who had tended her so well (despite how much he had changed), made her much more cooperative than Kiron had ex
pected. Her behavior was nothing near as erratic as it had been when she had been drugged either. Before too terribly long, Coresan was stretching out her neck and gazing longingly at the bucket of sand and the buffing cloths and oil Kiron had brought with him. By the time they were thinking about bringing Nofret along, she let him give her a sand bath; by the day after that, it was Aket-ten doing the honors, and of course, once Aket-ten could touch the dragon, things became much simpler. At first Coresan reacted to Aket-ten’s power with startlement—and it must have been odd for her, having that contact inside her mind. It took her most of a day to get used to it and calm down. But once she accepted it, and knew that not only could she communicate with Aket-ten, but Aket-ten could “talk” to her in the same way, she seemed to realize this was an excellent state of affairs.
At that point, it was time to introduce Nofret to the dragon.
Avatre was still significantly larger than Re-eth-ke, so Nofret rode behind Kiron. The difference between this ride and the one they had taken to get Marit and Nofret to Sanctuary initially was amazing. Then, Nofret had hidden her face and clutched at Kiron, and once, when she had realized how high they were, she’d shrieked loud enough to startle Avatre. Now she watched everything avidly, her grip on his waist and the back of his saddle just enough to keep her steady and balanced, and when he looked back at her, she was smiling, and her kohl-lined eyes were wide and bright.
According to Aket-ten, Nofret had said that Ari was still trying to persuade her, more or less delicately, to give up on the idea of having a dragon. This was why she hadn’t told him she was coming along today.
The moment they had landed, she had slipped down Avatre’s side to stand facing Coresan, as Kiron untied the butchered goats the Bedu had brought—the first fruits of their raids on the Tian Sacred Herds. Coresan, of course, knew what was coming, and though still standing vigilant guard over her precious eggs, was swaying side to side with eagerness and hunger. She did look immensely better than she had when they had first found her. Her scales were shiny and clean, and although she was lean, she no longer had bones showing. Her golden eyes were bright, and the membranes of her wings supple, smooth, and a healthy copper-orange in color. Kiron privately thought that Avatre was much more beautiful—he liked Avatre’s deep scarlet, and didn’t much care for the lighter, more coppery shade of her mother. But there was no doubt that Coresan was impressive.
Aket-ten had landed before Kiron had, and was about to drag a goat quarter over to the eager and visibly hungry dragon. “Should I take that?” Nofret asked eagerly, as she stepped forward.
Well, that’s a good sign! She’s not afraid at all!
“Not just yet. We want her to get the edge off her hunger first,” he cautioned. “Let Aket-ten introduce you to her; she’ll have to get quite close before she can use her magic.”
Though visibly disappointed, Nofret nodded, and once about half of Aket-ten’s load was inside Coresan, Aket-ten motioned that Nofret should come take the next quarter over.
Kiron and Aket-ten were quite used to hauling large chunks of meat about, but poor Nofret staggered for a moment under the unexpectedly heavy burden. Once again, though, she gamely rose to the challenge, and pulled the haunch to the waiting dragon.
Coresan eyed the newcomer carefully. Nofret didn’t look anything like Aket-ten; she was taller, willow-slim, and even her hair was different—since Lord Ya-tiren and his servants had arrived, she had been able to wear her long hair in the noble style of thousands of plaits ending in beads, so that every time she moved her head, she rattled pleasantly, like a systrum. Nofret made no sudden moves, only looked the dragon squarely in the eyes as she’d been told to, and waited for Coresan to take the meat.
The dragon looked extremely reluctant to take a step nearer the stranger, despite what Aket-ten had “said” to her. Instead, she stretched out her neck as far as it would go, and with the very tips of her jaws, snagged the skin of the haunch in her teeth and dragged it to herself, keeping one eye on Nofret at all times.
Interesting. No snapping, no testing. Coresan hadn’t been whipping her tail around either. She’d become much more predictable and even-tempered since she’d been flying free. Perhaps some of her irritability had been because she had been chafing to be gone, even under the influence of tala.
With every piece of meat Nofret brought, Coresan allowed her to get closer. And when she had finished, and was ready to curl around her eggs for a nap, Coresan actually allowed Nofret to put a hand under her chin for a brief moment.
When Nofret turned back to them, she was practically afire with excitement, and Kiron hid a smile. When he thought about how aloof she had been back in Alta, scarcely noticing the dragonets, and compared how she had been then to what she was like now, it was clear that being around Kashet and Ari had caused a fundamental change in her attitude.
“This is amazing!” she exclaimed in a whisper, as Coresan sighed and slipped into the deep breathing of slumber. “I’ve watched Ari feed Kashet, of course, and even helped myself, but this is a wild dragon! And she’s letting me touch her!”
“You don’t have to whisper around her, in fact, it’s better not to,” Aket-ten said in a conversational tone. “When you try to be quiet, you tell her that something’s sneaking around, and she’ll wake up.”
“Well, she’s not exactly a wild dragon, but she’s as close as we’re going to get,” Kiron acknowledged. “She was born wild, and she remembers being trapped, which is likely to make her even warier of humans than a fully wild dragon. So, are you determined to stay here until we go on the afternoon hunt?”
Nofret nodded firmly. “I brought my sling,” she said. “I might be able to kill some desert-hares or pigeons that I can give her as tidbits, and if not, I can at least practice my aim. I know this is going to be hard—”
“Mostly, it’s going to be boring,” Aket-ten advised. “She’s sleeping a lot, since we’ve been feeding her. That’s just as well, since she doesn’t dare leave the eggs until they hatch.”
Nofret shrugged. “It can’t be any worse than some meetings,” she replied. “It certainly will be more entertaining than standing attendant to the Great Queens. Much though I would have enjoyed doing so, I wasn’t allowed to hurl stones at anything while I was a lady-in-waiting.”
Aket-ten grinned, and Kiron had to chuckle. “Then here’s your waterskin—if you need to refill it, the cistern is over there, inside that building with the latas columns—” He pointed at one of the false fronts carved into the wall of the ravine across from them, and Nofret nodded. “If you see wild dragons, either stay close to Coresan, or go inside a building with doors too small for them to get through.”
“Should I give her a sand bath?” Nofret asked anxiously.
Aket-ten shook her head. “Not yet. She’ll tell you when she’s ready for you to touch her. She doesn’t wallow in caresses like Re-eth-ke does, but she does like being scratched under the jaw, and when she solicits you to do that, she’ll be ready to take a sand buffing from you.”
“We’ll be back in the afternoon,” Kiron said, and tried not to feel too anxious. Nofret was no wilting latas; she had hunted river horse and crocodile, and even lions. She had been living in extremely primitive conditions in Sanctuary long before the rest of them arrived. Still—when Ari found out—
“I think we ought to do some hunting for the city,” he said aloud. “As long as you don’t have anything else to do, Aket-ten.”
She raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t object. And this way they could do flyovers to make sure Nofret was all right——and avoid Ari—
“We could bring Nofret smaller game that way,” Aket-ten agreed. “That’s more how a mate would feed Coresan anyway.”
So that was exactly what they did; they went back to Sanctuary just long enough to leave a message as to their intentions, then flew out again. Hunting in tandem, they managed to bring down several of the smaller gazelles over the course of the morning and afternoon, more than e
nough to not only keep Coresan fed, but to bring back to Sanctuary, where they would certainly be put to good use. Every time they did a flyover, it looked as if Nofret was getting on quite well. She was erring on the side of caution, staying out of what Kiron calculated was Coresan’s threat-perimeter, but staying well within sight. And Coresan must have been eating, because most of the time when they did a flyover, she was asleep with a distinct bulge in her lean middle.
Finally, in the late afternoon, he and Aket-ten made their own hunts and kills, took up what was left over, and brought it along when they came to pick up Nofret. She was in very good spirits, and Coresan had lost some of that wary watchfulness. This was definitely another good sign.
Which was just as well, because as Kiron knew, when they finally returned—they would all have some explaining to do to Ari . . . and that was something he was not at all looking forward to.
Nofret gave Coresan one last feeding and climbed up behind Kiron. As Coresan watched with interest, but no alarm, they headed home.
ELEVEN
ARI was waiting for them. As they banked in at a steep angle necessitated by the stiff breeze over Sanctuary, it was easy to spot the lone figure waiting in Avatre’s pen, and just as easy to recognize it as Ari. He was the only one likely to be wearing a Tian-style kilt rather than an Altan-style tunic who was also likely to be waiting for them.
This was not good. At least, not as far as Kiron was concerned. Glancing over at his partner in this particular escapade as she sideslipped toward Re-eth-ke’s pen, it looked to him as if Aket-ten didn’t think she needed to worry——well, she probably didn’t. Ari wouldn’t blame her, he’d blame Kiron.
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