“In Alta, traders sometimes carry pigeons with them to send messages home,” Aket-ten explained with growing, if weary, satisfaction. “It is a one-way journey, of course, which is why a dragon courier is so much better. But—if I wanted to slip amulets bearing spells into a city, I would buy some pigeons from a cheat, and I would tie the amulets to their legs, and then turn them loose. Or I would buy doves from a dove seller in the temple court, and instead of taking it inside to sacrifice, tie the amulet to its leg and turn it loose.”
“By all the gods . . .” The Chosen stood stark still, but then his face darkened. “And how are we to get our hands on one of these birds? You cannot sense which one it is, I cannot see to aim a sling or a bow! We cannot net every bird in the town!”
Aket-ten laughed, and both Kiron and the Chosen stared at her as if they thought she had gone mad. “You cried out ‘there it is again’ as I startled the flock that was feeding in the kitchen court. They will already have settled again and are surely the ones that eat here every day. We have more bread, do we not?” she countered, with memories of birds lurching around her mother’s courtyard after feasting on fermented berries flashing through her mind. “And we have palm wine? Trust me. We will have one of those birds before the sun sets.”
Every scrap of their bread was soon soaking up the wine as Rakaten-te made certain that the flock that held his amulet did not venture off somewhere else, by the simple expedient of sitting in the courtyard and distributing a miserly few grains of barley at intervals. The continued promise of food held the flock on the roof until the bread was ready. Then Kiron and Aket-ten carried it out in platters, and the three of them retired to the shade of the kitchen to wait.
It did not take long. The pigeons quickly swarmed the pans of bread, gobbling it as fast as they could, and before very long, the entire flock was lurching around the courtyard completely unable to fly. It would have been funny at any time, but in their exhausted state, Kiron and Aket-ten found it hilarious. Aket-ten laughed herself weak in the knees, watching the poor birds stagger, flap, and fall over. Rakaten-te was in the sanctuary, which was just as well in a way, since he would never be able to appreciate the sight.
Even funnier, in a macabre way, was what they did next.
Kiron had gotten a pair of bird nets used for taking up pigeons from the cote, and he and Aket-ten slowly made their way around the courtyard, scooping up birds, examining them for anything fastened to them, then tossing them over the wall to avoid netting them up a second time. After a while, Aket-ten began hearing snarling and spitting, then barking. Curious, she tossed the bird she had rejected over the wall, and found a box to stand on so she could see what was going on.
She was just in time to see an uneasy standoff between one of the dog packs, and a loose conglomeration of cats end in a swirl of angry barking and flashing claws, as one of the cats darted in, snatched the poor bird, then whisked itself over the rooftops with the pigeon in its mouth as about a third of the cats arrowed off in hot pursuit. There was some more snarling and spitting, then the fight resolved itself, and about two dozen pairs of hopeful eyes turned back to the top of the wall where Aket-ten was looking over. She began laughing helplessly, and Kiron climbed up beside her to see what was going on.
“Oh, dear—” Kiron shoved his hand up to his mouth to smother his own reaction. “I should be appalled—”
Aket-ten giggled. “I know. But it’s funny—”
“It’s hardly fair,” Kiron pointed out. “I know the dogs and cats are hungry, but it still seems unfair—”
“So maybe we should stop tossing them over the wall—”
Kiron looked around, and shrugged helplessly. “Where do we toss them, then? If we throw them on the roof—”
“Maybe the cats will get them, but at least the dogs won’t,” she said, still giggling, and then broke up into gales of laughter, until her sides ached and tears came, as something else occurred to her. “Bounty from the temple court! They must think that the god Anbas and the goddess Pashet have come here to reward their creatures!”
But as it happened, the poor pigeons got a reprieve, and were permitted to recover from their inebriation without further decimation of their numbers, since the very next bird that Kiron took up proved to have a tiny scroll of leather so thin it was translucent bound to its left leg. Kiron tried not to touch the thing. It was magic, and it was not something he wanted to take a chance on. For all he knew, this was the same amulet that had sent him and Aket-ten off to wander. Would the spell work now that they knew about it? There was no telling, but he wasn’t going to risk it.
Bearing the bird, scroll and all, they hurried into the Sanctuary.
The Chosen “examined” the bird without touching it. “Kill the bird,” he said shortly. “Get the scroll off the bird without cutting the binding or letting it unroll. Then put the scroll in one of those empty unguent jars we found and seal the jar.”
Kiron and Aket-ten exchanged a glance, and Kiron took the bird from her while she hurried off after a jar. When she returned, the bird was gone, and Kiron was just cutting the foot off the birdless leg, carefully not touching the scroll, leaving only the bit of skin and bone with the amulet attached. Wordlessly, she held out the jar; he dropped it in, and she gave the jar to the Chosen.
With heavy weariness, Rakaten-te made some gestures and muttered something and a bit of that odd darkness billowed up out of the ground at his feet and wrapped itself around the jar, vanishing as it did so.
“Have we enough provisions for the journey?” he asked, raising his head slowly as if it ached. “Now, I mean. This very moment.”
Kiron shrugged, then seemed to remember that the Chosen couldn’t see the gesture, and coughed. “We’ve got no bread, but other than that—”
“Then call your dragons, gather no more than what we need, and let us be gone from here,” Rakaten-te said grimly. “I do not believe this city will be safe for us to be in for much longer.”
Rather than flying back to Mefis, the Chosen of Seft insisted that they go to Sanctuary. Kiron could not have been happier; though Aket-ten fretted about leaving her wing for so long. Sanctuary was closer by far, and after the ordeal of the scorpions, Kiron wanted nothing more than to be able to get a sound night’s sleep in a place that had so many priests and priest-mages in it that surely not even the strongest magician could slip an attack inside. Or even if they could, there were hordes of acolytes and servants to deal with it.
They pushed the dragons to the limit, taking straight off as soon as there was light, pausing to hunt the moment they saw something large enough to be prey rather than hunting first before going on, and stopping to make camp and hunt again well before sunset. Each night the Chosen settled for wordless communion with other priests long into the night. He slept little, ate little, and spoke no more than a few words at a time.
They reached Sanctuary as the last of the light left the sky on the third day. The dragons were ravenous, and it was with profound relief that Kiron saw the servants waiting below as he and Aket-ten spiraled down to the pens. Rakaten-te slid off the saddle as soon as he could unbuckle the strap holding him; two acolytes led him away without a word, with his hand on the shoulder of one of them.
Kiron did not give the Chosen another thought, for more servants arrived with meat for the dragons, who fell on it avidly, snatching the chunks out of the barrows and wolfing them down so fast that one chunk was still visible traveling down as a lump in their necks while they were gulping down a second. For the first time in Kiron’s memory, there was some jostling and snapping between Re-eth-ke and Avatre over the food. It took Aket-ten to get them to settle again, but Kiron took this as a warning of trouble if dragons were ever allowed to go hungry. Even tame dragons had their limits.