The man who entered the room was tall and vigorous—certainly well past middle-age, but vigorous and strong for all of that. He did not abase himself—and why should he; the High Priest of any god was the equal of the Great King, and in fact, the Great King was also a High Priest as his wife would be a High Priestess. But the two greeted each other as friends, and Ari immediately ordered a stool for him.
Baket-ke-aput glanced at her curiously a time or two, but the matters of which they spoke were hardly secret. It seemed that Ari had a plan—
“—build or rebuild temples, with places for the gods of both Tia and Alta, was what I thought,” he was saying. “Two moons of every year for six years, or one year in full to belong to the King to work on these temples. Men from both Tia and Alta would be working side-by-side, sharing the same rations, living in the same barracks, putting up with the same overseers. By the end of two months . . . well, they would go home knowing that the man from the other land is no monster. You cannot share bread and beer with someone for two months and still think of him as unholy.”
Baket-ke-aput pursed his lips. “That fits in neatly with what I had come to ask you for,” the old man replied with a nod. “Some way to enlarge our temples so that the corresponding god of Alta can be set side-by-side with his Tian counterpart. But enlarging the temples would take costly labor, and costlier stone. By your scheme, however . . .”
“You like it, then?” Ari asked eagerly, leaning forward on his throne.
“I think it is a stroke of genius. Let the Great King supply the labor, the temples themselves will supply the raw materials. And now—” the High Priest nodded his head at Aket-ten. “Perhaps you can tell me why this charming young person has been standing here all this time. It is surely not because she is merely a restful place to gaze upon.”
Aket-ten blushed, as Ari gestured her forward. “Jouster Aket-ten, this is the High Priest of Haras whom you asked to see, Lord Baket-ke-aput. Let me make you known to each other.”
“Jouster Aket-ten?” Baket-ke-aput’s brows rose. “Interesting. And what can the Great Queen’s courier wish of me?”
Hurriedly, Aket-ten explained her difficulty in finding young women to join what she, in imitation of Ari, called the “Queen’s Wing.” Baket-ke-aput listened to her with interest until she ran out of things to say.
“And how do you suppose that I may help you in this endeavor?” he said, with a half smile. “I know nothing about dragons, and not a great deal about young women. That is the sign of my wisdom, by the way, Aket-ten. In my age, I have come to understand how little I know of women.”
She flushed. “Well,” she said hesitantly. “I thought . . . I thought maybe . . .” she fumbled, “If there were other girls with my . . . ah . . . the Gift of understanding the minds of animals is not a very useful one . . . and even if they didn’t have that, I thought maybe . . . priestesses would . . .”
Baket-ke-aput laughed gently. “Yes, it is true, the young women who become priestess are very often much more strong-minded and -willed than their sisters. So yes, Aket-ten, I will have the word spread, not only among the young Priestesses of Haras, but of other gods as well. This is serving the gods no less than offering incense and sacrifice and—” He smiled. “The kind of young lady who finds the notion of flinging herself into the sky on the back of a fearsome dragon to be fun is probably not suited to a life of prayer and contemplation!”
SIX
WITHIN two days, there was a rider from the merchant caravan that Kiron had saved, arriving in Aerie with a request for another overflight, and with him, two more traders who had come there themselves. Success in that first trial had caught the attention of King and Queen and merchants alike, more than he had guessed, as it turned out.
Success piled onto success, with every patrol that the wings made that ended in saving a merchant caravan or a traveler. Sometimes the successes were small ones, setting right a traveler who had lost the road, or dropping a waterskin to someone who had run out. Sometimes they were large, like that first rescue.
The Jousters responded to it as well, with growing cheer and a sense that they were, once again, worth something. Perhaps more so now than when they had been fighters. Then they had been taking lives. Now they were saving them.
And as the Tian and Altan Jousters worked more and more closely together, a grudging respect, and then in some cases, real friendship began to grow.
And so it went, with more and more traders arriving all the time, asking for the same. Send out more dragons, more riders. We need them. We need the help. The merchants and traders were making sure that people knew what the Jousters were doing. It was hard to tell what those who had been complaining about how costly it was to keep dragons were saying now, without being in Mefis or one of the other cities where the complaints had been the loudest—but the merchants who came to ask for escort for their caravans specifically did not turn up empty-handed. Some brought small flocks with them. Some brought more of the goods that were so difficult to bring across the desert, most notably camels laden down with disassembled furniture. Over the next moon or so, Aerie rapidly became a much more livable place.
Then the craftspeople started arriving.
Considering how difficult it had been to get them there initially, Kiron was shocked when the first stonecutters arrived. What was happening all became clear very quickly, though, when a single spice grower turned up with a caravan of carefully nurtured young trees and bags of seed. Aerie was that rare place in the desert, a spot where delicate plants could be protected from kamiseen, where there were no floods and storms, and yet where there was abundant water. Aerie was positioned well to be added to several trade routes, and it had the protection of the Jousters. It could not be a better place to raise incense trees and spices.
He had met with all of them. To all of them he had given the same answer. “We will do our best with the numbers we have.”
But most surprising of all had been the representative from the Bedu, also known as the Blue People, the nomads of the desert.
He was busy, but not so busy that he did not miss Aket-ten. She did not come nearly enough, and he wished he could take the time to go wherever she was but—where was she? She could be anywhere—Mefis, Sanctuary, any of the towns up and down Great Mother River. She was being used as a courier more and more often now, and while he was pleased for her, perhaps it was a good thing that he was so busy, because it was lonely without her.
The request from the Bedu, however, had some urgency. In many, many ways he and his owed them their very lives. This was a chance to pay some of that back.
He sent out all the wings today, including all but four of the youngsters that the Great King had asked specifically to be sent for courier duty. Four young hotheads that had trouble controlling their dragons . . . making boring, routine courier flights should soon steady them down. And perhaps—perhaps this would release Aket-ten to come here to Aerie. Oh, she would probably have to give them some training, but when she was done—surely she would come here.
He sighed, feeling impatience as he waited to go off with his wing until those four were ready to go. He really couldn’t understand why she was so stubborn about this. It wasn’t as if he didn’t want her here after all. . . .
“You know the way,” he reminded them, getting his mind back on the task at hand. They gazed solemnly back at him, so identical they could have been brothers; their height was nearly the same, all of them were of the same stocky build. All Tians, which meant they were darker-skinned than the Altans. All four were former dragon boys. It occurred to him that they might actually like their new assignments; they were going home, after all. They would get the use of the Dragon Courts, the quarters of the former Jousters; there would be no more need to hunt. By the standards of Aerie, those quarters were very luxurious. He found himself en-vying them. “You four must stay together. If one of your dragons decides to hunt, you all hunt. You must arrive together; this is part of wing discipline.”