Oh, Kiron could certainly understand it. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. And there was no real reason why she shouldn’t go, no pressing duties with training her wing, because she had returned from Aerie with two victories. Huras, the patient, had agreed to be the trainer for her new Wing—and word from Haraket that he was, grudgingly, giving living room to the Queen’s Wing in Aerie once they were trained and on duty. Aket-ten was thrilled, though she would have been less than thrilled had she heard what Huras had to say privately about it.
“Haraket’s still predicting doom,” the big man had said with a rueful smile, and an apologetic shrug. “He says that the girls will only serve to make the men act like idiots. But, he says, ‘Better to have them acting like idiots under my nose, than having them finding excuses to fly off to Mefis every time I’m not looking. ’ He also thought it might discourage them, or even make them quit, if they left the luxurious life they have here and had to put up with what our life is like.”
Haraket definitely had a vindictive streak in him. And no, although Peri was used to hard living, none of the priestesses had ever done without very much. When they discovered the state of the food, the fact that they were unlikely to get twice-daily baths or relax in bathing pools, and that everything was in short supply, it would not make them happy. They would not like Aerie, or at least, they would not like it as it was now.
Well, none of that was going to happen until the little dragons were old enough to fly the enormous distance from Mefis to Aerie. And that would not be any time soon. They weren’t even flying yet, much less flying with weight or for any distance at all. Who knew what would happen between then and now?
But having Huras in charge of training the Queen’s Wing freed Aket-ten for this journey, which pleased the Chosen. Kiron was still not entirely certain how he felt about her coming with them. On the one hand, it would be very good to have Aket-ten to himself for a while. On the other hand, it meant that she was going into a potentially very dangerous situation. On the one hand, she was capable and competent. On the other hand, this was magic, and unknown magic to boot.
“So,” the Chosen prompted, breaking into his thoughts. “What is it that makes you relieved right now? I would have thought, with all we are hazarding, you would have been entirely uneasy.”
Kiron sighed, and gave a last tug to his saddle harness. “It is nothing, really.”
The Chosen gave him a skeptical look.
He felt oddly like someone who has been caught in a lie. “Why do you want to know? It is only something personal . . . .”
“In magic, all things reflect one another and are reflected in one another,” the Chosen said calmly. “I would not ask if I did not feel the need to know.”
Kiron considered that. He really didn’t want to discuss his feelings . . . but if this was going to affect the magic, he didn’t have a choice. “It is truly nothing. Only that . . . my mother—”
“Ah. I heard something of that. Long lost to each other, discovered by accident in the Dragon Court. Like a market storyteller’s tale.” The Chosen’s lips quirked a little. “I take it this was not the storyteller’s ending.”
Kiron sighed. “No . . . she wants me to . . .” He shook his head. The Chosen tilted his to the side.
“She wants you to be something you are not. She wishes to have again the small boy that was separated from her, who is always at her side, like a faithful hound, has no inconvenient duties that take him away from her, and who always obeys the least little wish his mother might have.”
That was close enough. Too close for comfortable hearing, actually. He shut out the far-too-clear recollection of unceasing demands that he drop everything and get the family’s farm back, that he give up being a Jouster and go back to his “real work” of being a farmer. Assertions that he would do this if he really loved his mother. Prim lectures on “knowing your place,” and dark hints that all the people he called “friend” were merely using him and that once he had done what they wanted, he would find himself out of the Jousters and without a dragon. Three days of this, nonstop, every waking minute he had been with her. It had begun with subtle hints. It was far, far past subtle now. “Something like that . . .” He gave a last tug to the harness; good, it was as solid as the hand of man could make it. “It will be easier on you, sir, if we take off from the landing courtyard.”
The Chosen got to his feet. “Very well. Lead the way. I shall follow.”
Kiron gave a soft whistle, and Avatre got to her feet. He led the way into the corridor; usually, they took off straight from the pen, but he and Avatre had taken off from the landing courtyard often enough that she followed him with no sign of confusion.
He couldn’t help but contrast this mentally with the “old days,” of the dragon boys having to lead their charges with chains. Mostly they had been so drugged with tala that they didn’t resist, but sometimes—sometimes it had taken two or even four strong handlers, with the danger that the dragon might stop resisting and start clawing or biting.
Aket-ten was waiting for him, already mounted on Re-eth-ke, when he arrived. In fact, there was quite a little audience to see them off, even though only he, Aket-ten, the Chosen, and Huras knew where they were going and why.
Letis was there, of course, and to his relief the presence of the Chosen of Seft was enough to keep her from asking questions he couldn’t answer, or making any kind of a nuisance of herself. Huras had brought the Queen’s Wing, under the guise of having them watch an expert flat take off. He and Kiron exchanged nods, while Aket-ten gave him detailed instructions that she had probably already given him twice over.
Kiron went straight to his mother and hugged her tightly, then kissed the top of her head. “I will see you soon, Mother, as soon as the Chosen releases me,” he told her. She had begun hinting that he should allow her and Iris to move here—but Jousters had never had family here before, and at the moment he was reluctant to break that tradition. Instead, with the help of the Dragon Court overseer, he had settled her and his poor, damaged sister in their own little house, and arranged for them to get provisions and anything else they needed from the Dragon Court. There was that tradition, thank the gods; though Jousters seldom married, there was an arrangement for the care of dependent parents or siblings within reason; small houses in a little area near the court, mostly now as empty as the court itself. For now that would do, until he came up with another solution.
“When will that be?” she asked, her voice anxious.
“Only the Chosen knows, Mother,” he was able to answer. She spared a nervous glance for the man who had already been helped into the second saddle behind Kiron’s. Kiron gave her another kiss, then turned and trotted for Avatre, not even waiting for the dragon to extend her leg to scramble into the saddle ahead of the Chosen.
“Ready?” Aket-ten asked, and didn’t wait for his answer, sending Re-eth-ke into the sky.
And Kiron was only too pleased to follow.
“Wings!” shouted Peri, raising her arms, and Sutema flapped her wings madly, raising a huge dust cloud that made her very glad she had decided to do this in the landing courtyard rather than the pen. The little green-and-gold dragon clung for her life to not one, but two perches, one for the hind feet and one for the front, made of palm-tree trunks on legs that were weighed down with bags of sand and gravel. It had taken some persuasion to get her to climb up there, and more to get her to understand what Peri wanted, but now this was one of her favorite games. It made Peri wonder if there was something about the strengthening wings that gave the little dragons a strong urge to flap. The others, all younger than Sutema, were starting to do the same thing, and Huras had ordered three more sets of the perches after seeing Sutema exercising on them.