As he slid off Avatre’s shoulder, and began unharnessing her, he gave them a detailed account of what had happened. Ari’s eyes glittered with excitement as he asked further questions; all of them were excited, really, once they understood the implications. “—and Aket-ten is going to try to ‘talk’ to Coresan,” he finished, and had to hold a flash of anger when Ari, rather than expressing concern over such a dangerous idea, overflowed with enthusiasm for it.
“That would be ideal!” Ari said, “With Aket-ten there, once we get her close enough she can communicate with them, I’m sure Coresan will let us help with her dragonets. After all, the males help to feed and tend the nest, and we’re the closest thing she has to a mate right now. Her instincts must be telling her she needs the help, and if she was as starved as you say, between the food and what her instincts are telling her, we can probably get Aket-ten as close as she let a dragon boy in no time.”
He could picture that all too easily. What’s more, he remembered Coresan snapping those formidable jaws right over his head, and it was even easier to picture her making that show of aggression into a real attack on Aket-ten. And he very nearly started trouble over such a cavalier attitude, when Ari suddenly got a taste of what the bitter brew of anxiety tasted like.
Because—“I want to help tend these dragons,” said Nofret, stepping forward from behind Menet-ka, her head up and her expression firm with determination. It occurred to Kiron at that moment that she looked very much the Queen.
Ari’s face was a study in dismay. “But—” he began. Nofret cut off his objections with an imperious wave of her hand. “I want a dragon, too, Ari. If we’re to be co-consorts, as the Altan tradition demands, we must be equals in all things. How can we appear before your people or mine in that state of equality if I am riding behind you, like—like a piece of baggage? Besides, it is not fair to Kashet to keep asking him to carry double. I want a dragon of my own.”
By the sun-boat! She’s come a long way from the woman who clutched me like death and didn’t dare look down! He couldn’t help but think this was all to the good. And if she was willing and ready to do the work needed to get a dragon, all the better.
That was not how Ari felt, though, if his expression was any guide. “I absolutely—” he began.
Just in time, Kiron managed to kick Ari surreptitiously in the shin, while simultaneously saying, with innocent enthusiasm, “I think that’s a good plan, Nofret. We already know that Coresan throws intelligent and steady babies. If Aket-ten can get her to accept us, the dragonets will do the same, and if you start tending and feeding the babies alongside their mother, you’ll have the best of both worlds, a dragonet that’s tame, but knows she’s a dragon. It’s going to take time, a lot of work, and concentration, though, I hope you realize that.”
Ari opened his mouth again to protest, and Kiron kicked him in the shin again. He shut his mouth with a snap, and Nofret smiled at both of them. “Thank you for being reasonable about this,” she said and excused herself. “I’ll go talk to Heklatis and Lord Ya-tiren about shifting audiences and meetings to after sundown when the time comes.” She laughed a little, and winked at Kiron. “At least I can sleep in my own bed! You can leave me with them when you go to hunt, and get me at sundown, and that should serve very well.”
Bethlan and Khaleph stuck their indigo and green noses over the wall to Avatre’s pen and whined; they were hungry and wanted to go out to hunt. Since it didn’t look as though there was going to be any more excitement, the rest of the wing went off to saddle their dragons to take them out to hunt the last meal of the day.
The rest of the wing—except Ari, who turned on Kiron.
“Why did you kick me?” he demanded, with a face full of wrath.
“I was saving you from doing something stupid,” Kiron retorted. “Didn’t you pay any attention to Nofret’s expression? One word about forbidding her to do anything, and you’d be arguing about it for moons. That’s assuming she even talked to you at all after being told you were forbidding her to try! Ari, she was the Queen-in-waiting! She’s not used to being told she’s forbidden to do something that’s perfectly reasonable.”
She’s not asking to do anything worse than Aket-ten is planning on doing. And you thought that was an excellent idea!
“Reasonable?” Ari yelped. “She wants to spend time with a wild dragon! What’s reasonable about that?”
“Aket-ten is going to do the same thing, and you were all for that. And Nofret not only wants a dragon of her own, I think she needs one,” Kiron replied. “The eggs we’ve got have already been spoken for—and besides, I don’t think that she’s up to the challenge of raising one from the egg; she doesn’t have the time, for one thing. I don’t think her idea of the partnership is the kind of tight bond that the rest of us have with our dragons. I think she’s looking for something of the kind you’d get from a tame cheetah or a lion. She’s a very—” he groped for a word, “—self-contained person. Marit is the more dependent of the twins. Nofret never wanted pet dogs, for instance, but she loves cats. I think that doing the double-rearing, if it can be done, will give us a much more independent-minded dragonet.”
Ari looked off in the direction Nofret had taken. “You kicked me because if I’d said that I forbade her to do this, she’d never have forgiven me, and I would have undone all the courting I’ve done with her.”
Kiron coughed. “I don’t know about never. . . .”
He left the sentence hanging in the air, though, because he did want Ari to think about it, and think about it hard.
Ari looked away from him for a moment, and cursed. “This is why I never wanted to have anything to do with noblewomen!” he said under his breath. “With a paid flower, you know where you are—”
Now Kiron was right out of his depth. All he could do was shrug. Ari looked over at him, and his expression turned wry. “As if you’d know anything more about women than I do.”
“I know they don’t like to be treated as if you have a right to order them about,” Kiron said carefully. “No more than you do!”
Ari sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “At least you kept me from a mistake that was likely to cause trouble. Kashet is probably starving; I’d better get into the air.”
Kiron snorted, and turned his attention back to making Avatre comfortable. She hadn’t had a sand scrub today, and when she saw him getting out the buffing cloths and the oil, she was nearly beside herself with happiness. Making her happy soothed his nerves, and his nerves definitely needed soothing. He was out of his depth. . . .
What am I doing? I’m the son of a farmer, I used to be a serf—
“Can I help?” asked Nofret from the doorway. “If I’m going to have a dragon, I need to learn how to care for them.”
And this is a daughter of the Royal Lines and the nearest thing we have to a queen. And I’m going to be taking her to a wild dragon and somehow making it possible for her to bond with a dragonet. And Ari, who was my master and is her betrothed and is going to be our King, just asked me for advice on how he should treat her. Haras help me, is she going to ask me for the same? And I don’t even know what to say to Aket-ten. This is insane.
He nodded, and she made her way along the walkway to stand beside him. He showed her how to use the sand to buff Avatre’s scales, how to gently scrub away flaking skin, and how to oil the exposed skin afterward. “I hope you don’t think I want a dragon for the—the look of prestige,” Nofret said, after they had worked together for a while. “It’s not just that; it isn’t even most of the reason. I didn’t really see that much of Toreth to understand what having a tame dragon was like. I’ve spent so much time in Ari and Kashet’s company that I couldn’t help but see how he has such an amazing bond with Kashet, and—and I wanted my own dragon, when I saw how close they were. Mind, I do think that to be taken as seriously, and as his equal, I must appear in every way to be his equal—”