He wandered back to the pens through the quiet streets of Sanctuary, keeping an eye out for the scorpions that liked to come out at night. Not that there were many of them anymore. The dragons thought scorpions were extremely tasty, small as they were, and they never lost an opportunity to snatch one up, like greedy children licking up a bit of honey from a scale insect or the end of a blossom. Scorpions evidently knew this, and had mostly deserted the city.
As he was passing Re-eth-ke’s pen, he heard a soft whistle from the doorway, and stopped. “Are you particularly sleepy?” Aket-ten called from the darkness.
“Not yet,” he answered truthfully. “Why?”
“Because one of the Bedu said there’s something remarkable going to happen tonight, and for the next couple more nights, and I thought you might want to come with me and see if they’re right.” He couldn’t see her face, but there was a smile in her voice. “They tell me it’s a good thing that there’s no moon, because we’ll be able to see it much better.”
His curiosity now piqued, Kiron nodded. “Why not?” he replied.
“Excellent. Come on, then.” She emerged from the shadows with something heavy draped over her arm and took his hand. “You can see better than I do in the dark anyway. We need to get up on a roof. Preferably one where someone isn’t already sleeping, and one not near where anyone is going to be burning oil lamps or torches.”
Fortunately he knew a roof that fit that very description. “I know just the place,” he replied, and led her through the maze of pens, feeling his way as he went. It wasn’t that he could actually see better in the dark than the rest of them; it was more that he was able to sense where walls were without actually running into them. No one ever gave a serf or a slave a lantern to see by; he’d just learned to do without them as a boy, and the sense had stuck with him.
Beyond the pens, in the labyrinth behind the temple that the Jousters had been intending to take over, and now no longer needed to since the Thet priests of Tia had solved the problem of keeping the dragons warm in winter, there were several half-ruined and empty buildings in the process of being renovated. None of them were done yet, since the construction of dragon pens had taken precedence. Like all the buildings in Sanctuary, they had flat roofs that had external stairs leading up to them—and probably, like the buildings in Tia, those had been meant for the people who lived in those buildings to use as sleeping places in good weather. Right now, though, they weren’t being used at all—perhaps because they were at the very edge of the city, and people were understandably nervous about sleeping in a part of the city where jackals were known to prowl at night. Where jackals went, sometimes, so did lions, and the prospect of waking up to a lion’s hot breath in your face was one that did not appeal. Kiron didn’t really think that lions would dare an area where dragons were, but you never knew. Pe-atep, who knew better than any of them what cats thought, said the same, but added that old, hungry, desperate lions might dare to go anywhere that they thought there was easy prey, and nothing was easier than a sleeping human. So until there were so many people here that a really effective wall could be built and a full night guard could be posted, it was probably better to err on the side of caution.
That was more than enough to keep people inside at night to sleep, with the doors closed and the shutters barred.
So as he led Aket-ten up the narrow stair, it was with the certainty that the rooftop would be just as unoccupied as she had wanted.
“Oh, this is perfect!” she said with enthusiasm when they reached the top. “Here—”
She took that draped something off her arm—in the darkness it was hard to tell just what she was doing—but he heard the sound of heavy cloth being shaken out, and a moment later she was tugging his arm downward as she sat down on the roof. He put out his hand as he went to sit beside her, and felt the rug she had spread out on the stone. “Lie down on your back,” she said, “and look up at the Seven Dancers.”
The Dancers were a cluster of seven stars well known by that name to both Tians and Altans. He did as she asked, and no sooner had he begun to relax and wonder just what this marvelous thing was he was supposed to be looking for, when—
—a brilliant streak of light flashed from the third Dancer to the tip of the star formation called the Dragon’s Tail.
“A falling star!” he exclaimed, with surprise and delight, and as more streaks appeared against the blackness, pointed upward. “Look—another—and there—and there—”
“The Bedu say that tonight the Goddess of Night weeps for her dead lover,” Aket-ten replied. “The Mouth told Heklatis and the Thet priest about it, and I overheard them talking about it. They didn’t seem to mind my listening. Heklatis says his people say it’s the sparks from their smith god’s forge as he’s making arrowheads for the Huntress Goddess, and the Thet priest says it’s the lost ghosts who’ve had someone to make them a shrine rushing across the Rainbow Bridge to the Summer Country, but that usually you can’t see this in Tia because it’s the middle of the season of rains. Which is why we Altans never see it either, I suppose. There are other star-falls over the course of the year, but nothing like this one.”
Kiron blinked, and tried to remember if he had ever seen such a thing—but as a serf, he’d always been so tired he fell asleep as soon as he was prone, and as a dragon boy he had paid more attention to first Kashet, then Avatre, than to the goings-on in the sky. There was no set season for lost spirits to go to the Summer Country so far as Altans were concerned. When your family built your shrine, you just went.
He certainly didn’t remember ever seeing anything like this. There were so many bright streaks across the sky that it seemed as if all the stars should have vanished by now. But they were still there, so maybe it was the tears of a goddess—or the sparks from a heavenly forge—or something else that no one had even thought of yet. They were all coming out of the area of the Dancers, so maybe it was star petals that the Dancers were throwing.
Whatever it was causing this—it was beautiful. And as he lay on his back, he felt Aket-ten’s hand close over his, and hold it.
“I think you did a good thing for Nofret by helping her, and letting her go out to Coresan,” Aket-ten said softly. “She needs to prove herself to Ari. She told me that she thinks he’s seen too many spoiled noblewomen with nothing but idle time on their hands; that he thinks she was a lot more pampered than she was. She wants to prove to him that she can do things, that she can be his full partner in just about everything.”
“She doesn’t intend to fight, I hope,” Kiron replied, staring up at the falling stars with a sinking heart. “If it comes to that, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I know that being on a dragon evens things out a lot, but—”
“If she has to, she’ll fight, just like everyone else here. If Ari fights, I know she intends to be there. And it’s because she can’t bear the thought of something happening to him, and her not being right there to do whatever she can if it does. It’s horrible, being left behind, not knowing what’s happening. It’s worse than going out to fight in the first place. When you care about someone, it’s unbearable.” A pause. “I feel the same way about you.”
His heart stopped sinking, and with a jolt, seemed to leap into his throat. “Uh—you do?” he managed, sounding stupid even in his own ears.