And none of them mattered. She had wanted this badly enough that she had found a way to make it happen and arguments for and against it were useless. The thing had happened; there were lady Jousters. Now they must deal with the complications and consequences.
But she was still staring fixedly in her mind at her arguments.
The more she talked, the quieter he became; the quieter he became, the more she talked, until finally she had repeated every one of her arguments at least three times. It almost seemed as if she needed to fill the silence, as if the very silence was an argument against her.
It made no sense, of course. No sense at all. He found himself getting angry with her for being angry that he had not argued against her. It was stupid.
But so was his anger, and anyway he was too tired to sustain it.
At last she seemed to realize that the complaint had gone on more than long enough. She finally stopped, hands on hips. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but he could see her silhouette. She was still angry, angry over nothing, essentially.
“Well?” she said belligerently, daring him to raise one of his counterarguments.
Not a chance he would do that.
Oh, no.
It might be time to try to placate her. Strange, that all the practice he’d been getting in handling his Jousters seemed to be giving him some ability to deal with her. . . .
At least, he hoped it was.
The soft breeze that always soughed through the Dragon Courts brushed against his skin, and he took advantage of the darkness and clamped and unclamped his jaw to ease some of the tension.
“You seem to have everything well in hand,” he said, in as neutral a tone as possible. He really could not agree with her wholeheartedly. Not even halfheartedly. He saw far too many ways in which her brilliant plan was going to make everything worse, not better. She didn’t want to hear anything of that nature; she would see his counters, not as things to be taken into account and to find answers for, but as reasons why she had been wrong. And if he agreed falsely with her, he had the feeling she would know he was being false. So the best he could manage was neutrality.
Evidently that wasn’t good enough.
“Fine,” she said waspishly, then turned on her heel and left, stalking off into the lit walkway between the pens, anger evident in every movement.
He sighed. Well, there it was. She’d had her argument. She had, in a sense, won it. But she hadn’t won it in the way she had wanted to, and now she was angrier still. He had the sinking feeling that no matter what he said or did now, unless he came to her on his knees, saying that she had been absolutely right, that he had been absolutely wrong, and that he begged her forgiveness, nothing he said or did was going to ease her anger.
And he didn’t even know why she was so angry with him, not really.
All he could think of was, I am glad I am not depending on her for a dinner, or I would be eating Avatre’s scraps.
Which was about the most sensible thing that could be said at this point.
He petted Avatre a little while longer to calm his nerves. The cooling breeze off the desert was very soothing, and the sounds of the baby dragons somewhere nearby made him smile. However she had gotten these little ones, it was a fair bet that they would have died had she not fetched them out of the desert, so that was good. In fact, he found himself curious about that, then curious about these new lady Jousters. No matter what, Aket-ten would not have taken featherheaded lack-wits for her Jousters, nor would she have risked precious babies with girls who would not care for them as deeply as she did. He waited while the night sounds of a Dragon Court soothed him, let the breeze cool his own frustration, let the smooth feel of Avatre’s slick-scaled head under his hands bring him back to an even temper, then took himself to the old Jousters’ quarters, curious to see what the changes were.
Strange to be back here, where the place was so familiar and yet so unfamiliar. The pens, the passageways between them, were all roofless, but the walls were tall and thick enough that no dragon could reach over them to savage another. It gave the same impression, actually, as the city of tombs. The pens all had canvas covers that could be pulled over them to protect the hot sands of the dragon wallows from becoming hot sand soup during the season of rains. And each section, where the corridors intersected, was denoted by enormous paintings of gods and sacred animals that seemed to stir a little with life in the flickering light from the torches that had been placed in sconces at intervals along the walls.
The silence was what struck him. Except for the section where his Avatre, Aket-ten’s Re-eth-ke, Ari’s Kashet, Nofret’s The-on, the four courier dragons and the babies were, the place was echoingly empty. As he moved toward the Jousters’ Courts, the rooms arranged around simple but attractive courtyards that had once held all the Jousters of Tia, he wondered what it would be like to hear the Dragon Courts full again.
It was somewhat unnerving to hear the chatter and giggle of feminine voices coming from the Jousters’ Courts. The first court, lit only by one torch, and by the dim light of a lamp shining in five of the eight sets of rooms was the one where his usual quarters were. By the presence of the lamps, that was where the four couriers from Aerie had been housed. He had intended to ask his fellows where he might get some food, but instead, he followed his ears to the spill of light marking the door to the second court when he realized that there were a few male voices among the females.
He smiled as he did so. He should have known, of course. These were young men for whom there were, as yet, very few young women in Aerie. The closest place to find female companions was Sanctuary, which was a good half-day’s flight away. They would have gravitated to Aket-ten’s girls like bees to flowers.
He stepped into the doorway and paused, letting his eyes adjust to the light. He found his four couriers and eight young ladies, all of them in the standard linen tunics his own Jousters wore at this time of year. They were sitting to one side of the ornamental latas pool, with dishes and cups and beer jars scattered among them. Their chatter fell silent as they saw him in the doorway, and his four couriers jumped to their feet and saluted him.
As the young women looked uncertain, as if they were not sure if they should do the same, he waved at his couriers to sit back down. “Jousters, be easy,” he said. “I am not here to inspect you. There was some important news that I needed to deliver in person, and now I am merely a weary and hungry fellow like yourselves.”
The young ladies relaxed as his Jousters sat down. He walked over to them and took a place on the pavement of the court among them.
“I trust you left something for me?” he said, with a smile. The young ladies giggled or tossed their heads, and began to pass plates and an unopened jar of beer to him. It looked exactly like the meals he used to get when he was a dragon boy here, tending to Kashet and Ari. Strips of cooked meat, flatbreads, onions, greens, thick, soured milk to use as a sauce, beer and honey cakes. It smelled wonderful, and his mouth watered as they passed the plates to him.
He made a tolerable meal, although the meat was cold. Still, it wasn’t dried, which was a distinct improvement over what he got at Aerie. Fresh bread was always very welcome, and as for the honey cakes . . . he quite forgot Aket-ten’s tantrum in his enjoyment of them.