He looked to Haraket who had delivered the information, unspoken questions in his eyes as they both unsaddled Avatre, then fed her with the meat Haraket had brought. The older man rubbed his shaved head, and shrugged. “Do not ask me what it means,” he said. “Other than the obvious. They can’t tell what happened, they don’t like it either, and I think you can expect a summons to Sanctuary within the next few days.”
Well, that drove all thoughts of Aket-ten and his irritation with her out of his mind entirely. The flight had been long, and he’d had plenty of time to brood over her unreasonable behavior during the course of it. What had happened to the good-tempered, sensible girl he’d known in Alta and Sanctuary? Had she become jealous that he was the leader of the Jousters now? If that was her problem, he would have been happy to let her have this so-called “honor.” It was one he could well do without.
Well, that was what he told himself in frustration, but there were layers and layers of truth there. Part of the truth was that none of the Jousters, not even his original wing, would have accepted her as Lord of the Jousters, when they only grudgingly accepted him. Part of it was that he thought he just might be doing a reasonable job with this—although he dreaded to think what it could be like when and if there were more Jousters than just the few they had. And part of it was that he did like it that people were no longer treating him as a nonentity, nor as a boy who couldn’t possibly cope with the responsibility.
The idea that she begrudged him this made him angry.
He’d managed to stew himself up into such a state of irritation that when he’d found a kill for Avatre on the way back, she attacked it with the savagery of a dragon that was starving. In helping her make the kill, he’d managed to work off most of his anger, and got rid of the rest in butchering the remains for Avatre to eat at her second pause on the way back.
Now, though, it was clear he was going to have other concerns.
“I wish they would be less cryptic,” he groaned.
“They’re priests. I think it is an unwritten law that they must be cryptic at all times,” Haraket replied with a half grin. “Let me help you get your girl fed and bedded down,” he added, with a glance at the setting sun. “Then we’ll get you fed. I envy you those meals in Mefis—”
And that reminded him of Aket-ten and her half-thought-out scheme, and he groaned again. “Oh,” he said bitterly. “You would not envy me if you knew what I found when I got there.”
He unburdened himself freely to Haraket who, he reckoned, would be the best person to advise him on whatever troubles love affairs might bring his Jousters.
“In the name of Re-Haket!” Haraket swore, when he heard what Aket-ten had been up to. “Now I know why I never took a wife. Women! If it is not one thing, it is another with them. They are more trouble than a cage full of apes, and not nearly as entertaining.”
He looked so disgusted that Kiron smothered an involuntary laugh, and he glared at Kiron “It is not amusing,” he growled. “You have not yet needed to separate two men gone so wool-headed over a stupid wench that they went at each other with knives. And that was a mere flute girl, some doe-eyed bit that would have found herself a richer patron within the moon. These—this Queen’s Wing—” he made of the name a curse, “—will be full of creatures that cannot be turned out when the sun disk rises. Bah!”
“The Queen’s Wing is in the old Jousters’ Courts in Mefis,” he pointed out mildly. “And we are here.”
“And we will stay here,” Haraket snorted. “I will not complain again about the lack of bathing rooms, or the food, or the heat, if these things all keep those confounded women out of Aerie!”
He found himself wishing that Aket-ten could be here to hear all this herself. It would do her a world of good. He had no doubt that Haraket had a hundred tales of the horror that conflict over a woman could bring into the lives of the Jousters, and he found himself nursing a feeling of grim satisfaction that Aket-ten had failed to investigate this side of her plan.
The cat woke him before dawn. It had been sleeping on his stomach when he went to sleep himself, but it must have left for a while because suddenly he woke all at once as his shoulder was hit from behind. He snapped out of dreams, flailing for a moment, before the sound of clawed feet scampering off made him curse and sit up.
And just as well, too. Mere moments after the cat had made him a landing platform, some youngster he didn’t recognize came stumbling up the stairs, oil lamp in hand, to wake him. Warm light splashed across the stone wall before him, while behind him, his shadow danced, elongated and distorted. “Jouster Kiron!” the boy called, peering into the darkness toward Kiron’s sleeping place. “Jouster Kiron! There is a Priest of Haras here to see you! The Blue People brought him!”
That was more than enough to bring him fully awake. “I am coming!” he called, fumbling for his clothing. “Go back and tell him I will be with him in a moment.”
“He is at the Temple of Haras,” the boy said, and now Kiron thought he recognized the youngster as one of the acolytes of that god. “I will tell him you are on the way.” He turned and fumbled his way down the stairs, taking the light with him and leaving Kiron kneeling on his bed, putting on his loinwrap by touch.
It was by no means the first time that Kiron had dressed or left his home in the dark, and for once the cat did not try to trip him on his way out. Feeling his way to the stairs and down them, he kept one hand on the wall as a guide as he passed through Avatre’s pen. Avatre hadn’t even been disturbed by the intruder; she was still soundly asleep in her warm sands and did not stir as he passed by.
As he stepped out into the canyon that was the “street” here in Aerie, he glanced about at the other dwellings carved into the cliff faces. None showed any light, and a cold wind off the desert made him shiver. Hard to believe in just half a day it would be so hot that anyone sensible would be inside, where the rock walls kept the heat at bay. Evidently what the priest had to say was for his ears alone, at least for now.
Overhead, there was not yet a hint of dawn light, the stars all burned down, brilliant beads of electrum, from where they ornamented the Robe of the goddess Nofet, for whom Great Queen Nofret-te-en had been named. The moon was down already, leaving only Nofet’s Robe to give light.
But farther down the avenue, where the several “buildings” stood that had been taken as temples by those priests who had elected to leave the comforts of Mefis and what was left of Alta to establish a home for the gods, there was the warmth of lamp and torchlight reflecting off the carved rock. The temples tended to be illuminated all night long anyway. The work of the temples began early and ended late. For all that Kiron sometimes lamented the hard work of being a Jouster, the work of a priest was harder still.
He trod softly down the sand of the canyon floor, wondering yet again who it could have been that had carved this city out of living stone. The place was still something of a mystery, though they all knew now why it had been abandoned. In digging it out, they had decided that the wreckage had been wrought, not by the hand of time, but by one or several earthshakes very close together. They had found the places where several springs had been buried.
The water sources had been closed up so thoroughly that they must have been completely inaccessible right after the shakes. Although water was now available, it looked as if it had only lately been working its way to the surface.