Petty revenge, maybe, but she had made him out to be a monster of sorts, and then she had gone tearing off in a temper when he hadn’t said a word against her new Jousters.
But . . . he should have a word with his fellows, before he left. Something. Warn them about letting women get in the way of their duty or—
He’d think of something.
Actually, after a moment of listening and staring at the little flame of a lamp, he realized that he wasn’t thinking of anything. Well, a bath perhaps.
Should he tell them about the dead border guard?
Perhaps—no, not yet. It might be nothing. It still could turn out to be nothing. It might have been the tragic result of a private quarrel. There was simply no way to tell.
He realized after a moment that he had fallen silent while the others kept chattering on. All but one, that one girl that sat apart from the others.
Now that he had food in him, he wasn’t as tired as he had thought. And a bath was beginning to feel like a good idea. He excused himself and walked into the shadows, into the next courtyard, aiming for the rooms he generally used as his own when he overnighted here. There were no torches burning in this court, and only a single lamp in each of the rooms assigned to him, but he really didn’t need much light. As he had hoped, the bath jars were all full, everything he needed in readiness, a clean kilt and loinwrap laid out on the bed. Whatever Aket-ten thought of him, the servants knew their jobs, and were not letting him go unattended.
He felt much more human after a good bath, and not quite ready to go to sleep. But he also didn’t feel much like going back to the group he had just left. He stood in his own doorway for a moment, looking in the direction of the pens, wondering if he ought to go look in on Avatre, when a movement in the deep shadows beside the pool in this court made him start and bite back an exclamation.
And that in turn startled the person in the shadows who jumped and squeaked.
“It’s all right!” he said hastily. “Don’t be alarmed—”
As he said that, it occurred to him how much things had changed since the Magi were gone. A few moons ago, he would have gone into a defensive crouch, perhaps even called for help, certain that whoever was there was a spy set by the Magi, or one of the Magi themselves.
A breathless laugh answered him. “It is I who should be begging your pardon, Lord of the Jousters,” said the quiet young woman who had sat a little apart from the rest, apologetically. She got up and walked toward him, into the faint, warm glow of the lamp behind him. “I often come here when the chatter of the others goes on a little too long,” she added. “They are kind, and quite friendly, but they all come from the same circle, and they—” Now she hesitated. “I know that we are to think of ourselves as one Kingdom now, but I cannot help saying—they are Tian.”
Now that she had said more than a few words, he knew her accent. “And we are Altan,” he agreed. Even after all these many moons of working with the Tian Jousters . . . there was still that sense of “us” and “them.” He suspected it would take years, perhaps even tens of years, for that to leave them.
It was a very good thing that Ari was a patient man.
“And I am the daughter of a farmer, and they were priestesses,” she sighed. “I know that rank does not matter among Jousters, but . . . they speak of things of which I have no knowledge, of rituals and ceremonial things, of powers, and the people who have them. I only know how to bake bread and make beer.”
“And without someone to bake bread and make beer, those who serve the gods would quickly starve,” he pointed out, sitting down on the rim of the pool. “Besides, as you say, rank and origin have no meaning among Jousters. I am a farmer’s son myself. To tend the earth is an honorable profession. Please, sit and talk to me. I had as soon hear someone do other than flirt.”
“It is good to hear the accent of my home, even if I have no home to go to,” she said, then took a seat of her own. “It wasn’t the war, it was a flood. I think I may have been the only one left alive out of my village.”
He sighed. “If it was a flood, it was the war,” he said sadly. “The Magi of our own homeland caused those, sending terrible storms against the Tians to destroy their crops, to terrify the people, to keep the dragons grounded. The only problem was that the water all had to go somewhere, and it flooded Altan lands once it had done with the Tians.
“But—” she protested. “Did the Magi not realize this would happen?”
“The Magi did not care, so long as it served their purposes,” Kiron said wearily. “They aimed to rule both Alta and Tia, even if to do so meant leaving no more than half the people in either land alive. And I beg of you, ask someone else of this. Ask the other ladies; they are priestesses and no doubt know a great deal more than I. I only know that this was a war that could have ended long ago, which the Magi of Alta fostered, and they battened on it as a hyena feeds on corpses. Let us speak of other things. Let us speak of—your dragon.”
Kiron learned quite a bit about this new female Jouster as both spoke until they were tired enough to go to bed. He learned that her name was Peri-en-westet, that her young female dragon was the only one hatched here and that Peri had helped the egg to hatch just as he had helped Avatre. Peri described her gold-and-green beauty to him in such loving detail that he had to smile, hearing in her voice the same adoration he heard in every Jouster that ever raised an infant. She told him that she had named her dragon Sutema, which meant “reed,” because she was so slender and graceful. He very much doubted that any baby dragon could be described as graceful, but he was not going to tell her that,
He also learned something of her history, which proved to him that at least not all Tians were as vile to their serfs as his masters had been. In fact, they seemed to have been even moderately kind. Certainly Peri had not been made to starve as Kiron had, had had decent housing, and had even made some friends.
He also learned something she had probably never told any of the priestesses; that her friends had no idea what she was doing nor that she was going to become a Jouster. They all thought that she had some position at the Dragon Courts—cook or cook’s helper. A servant such as she was would be required to live where she worked. And as the lowly ex-serf, she would seldom be allowed time of her own.
“But why?” he finally asked. “Wouldn’t your friends be proud of you?”
She shook her head. “My friend is always talking about how important it is to know your place and keep to it. She is scornful even of those who send sons to the temples to learn to be scribes or priests. She would think I was being presumptuous.”
He shook his head in disbelief at how anyone could be so rigid in their thinking. “Well, she’ll have to learn someday,” he pointed out. “Once the Queen’s Wing starts flying, there will be no way of hiding who the riders are.”
“I’ll find a way,” she replied; he heard the stubbornness in her voice and had to smile.
“I expect you will,” he said then. “I expect you will always find a way to do something you truly want, Peri.” He stood up and stretched. “And with that, it is time for me to sleep. Avatre and I have a long flight ahead of us tomorrow. I hope that the wind will be at our backs for it.”
“I hope so, too,” she replied softly as he returned to his rooms.
EIGHT
THE body told us nothing, and the ghost had fled. We will have words with you soon.
That was the ominous message from the priests at Sanctuary, a cryptic statement that was waiting for Kiron when he and Avatre landed at Aerie.
Avatre landed in the golden light of early sunset, with the wind at her back, a fortuitous bit of weather that meant she was a great deal less tired than she had been after the flight to Mefis. Haraket was waiting there for them and handed him the note as soon as he slid down from Avatre’s saddle. It took less than a glance to know that all it meant was that the priests did not like the look of this either.