“They hated it,” Orest called, spotting him as he came in. “They were terrified. If it hadn’t been for Aket-ten, we’d never have gotten them up.”
“But they did it anyway,” Kiron pointed out. “And four of them actually took off again in the dark and landed a second time. I wish we could try this blindfolded and increase our training time, but we also need them to learn to use what little they can see. Ari, I am amazed Kaleth went up for you on the second try.”
“Not half as amazed as I am,” Ari replied, gulping down half his jar at a single go. “I think I was almost as frightened as he was. I thought he was going to fly right into you, and so did he.”
“We need more room,” Gan said decisively, shaking his head to get the hair out of his eyes. “Separate fires. They won’t be as frightened if they can’t hear other dragons flying so closely above them. That was why Khaleph wouldn’t rise; he heard the others and dug his talons in and wouldn’t move, and I know he was afraid of a collision. So more fires.”
“Or torches,” said Oset-re. “Four torches ought to give plenty of light.”
Good answer! “We’ll do it,” Kiron said instantly. “Absolutely. If it will make them feel more confident, we’ll do anything we have to.”
“Yes,” Huras said slowly. “I think we will. I think we can do this.” He looked around at all of them, that Altan baker’s son who had never been more than two streets away from his home before he’d become a Jouster and a rider of one of the first full clutch of dragons to be raised from the egg in Alta. “I thought you were mad, you and Kaleth together—but after tonight—yes. We can do this.”
“Yes, we can,” Ari replied, not quite slamming his empty jar on the table. “Yes, by the gods, we can. We have to; there’s no question. And we will.”
FOURTEEN
TEN dragons rose into the hot, late-afternoon sky, heading into the west, and climbing steeply for as much height as they could get. The higher they were, the less likely it would be that someone on the ground could see riders on the dragons. If anyone—other than the Bedu—saw them, Kiron wanted the watcher to think they were wild. Every bit of this scheme was fraught with peril, and every moment of it contained some potential for mischance. If it went off unthinkably well, no one would know how the Winged Ones escaped. If it all fell to pieces, either the dragons would refuse to fly, or be unable to rescue everyone, or the Winged Ones would refuse to take to the skies, or someone would find out in advance how they were to get out, and where their refuge was, and seize them as they landed.
Realistically speaking, Kiron expected their outcome to fall somewhere in between. There wasn’t much more that they could do that they hadn’t already done to keep everything a secret.
Aket-ten’s Aunt Re had already spread the word that she had taken patients with the pox into her care, and to bolster that tale, several artfully made-up “patients”—in reality, more covert escapees from the city—had been brought by donkey cart to her estate.
Interestingly, no one was as yet making any attempt to stop people from leaving the city, so long as they were perfectly ordinary sorts. These were not perfectly ordinary sorts; they were lesser nobles, and had already been turned back once, probably because they had tried to leave with everything portable they owned piled up on carts behind them. This time they had smuggled their portable goods out ahead, and themselves out as Re-keron’s patients, rather than trying to leave with all their goods and gear at once. And probably someone would steal some of those possessions on the way, but that was the price they would have to pay to get any of it out. They should count themselves lucky, or so Kiron thought, to get out with more than their skins and the clothing they stood up in.
There was no way of telling if the Magi would have allowed them to leave had they simply walked out on their own two feet without taking all their belongings—or if the Magi didn’t care about the goods, but had no intention of allowing any of the city’s elite to leave. Forewarned by his children and Kaleth, Lord Ya-tiren had taken the precaution of moving people and goods in small quantities over a period of two fortnights, then had made a great show of taking the household, as he often did, to his riverside estate. He had encountered no opposition, but when it was discovered that he was not to be found, perhaps the Magi had decided that there would be no more such defections.
The nobles who had been turned back had quickly found one of Lord Khumun’s covert agents, who had seen them as the ideal candidates for the initial move of the greater plan of rescue. He had suggested the disguise as pox victims; they had no idea that they were just one more item in a much larger plan.
They had arrived at Re-keron’s home several days ago and were already gone, but Re-keron was keeping up the fiction that she was still tending them. As predicted, no one had ventured anywhere near the boundary of the estate as marked by the plague marker stones. It was by no means the first time Re-keron had taken in such people. She had a reputation for being able to make amazing cures, and an equal reputation for eccentricity that made people go to her only as a last resort.
There were some things not even the Magi could compel a man to face, and the pox was one of them. No one had bothered to follow the donkey carts, and no one was going to go past the plague marker stones until Re-keron herself took them away.
Re-keron’s son trained horses to pull chariots. He had a huge, bare-earth training ground hemmed in on all four sides by a wall for that purpose. That was where the dragons would be landing, just after dark. There were supposed to be fire pots all around the perimeter, and to every third one, some salts of copper had been added to make the flames green and blue. It should be easy to spot, even in the darkness, from the air. Aket-ten had flown there and back several times to get the timing right so that they would arrive after darkness fell.
It was a good plan. Kiron only hoped that it would work exactly as they had mapped it out. There were a great many things that were out of their hands. They couldn’t predict exactly when the earthshake would strike, for instance, nor how much damage it would do. They couldn’t know how visible they would be when they landed on the roof of the temple.
And no one knew if the earthshake would be felt as far as Re-keron’s estate or if the dragons would be so frightened by it that they would refuse to make the first flight out that night. Aket-ten had tried to explain it to them, but this was something that was going to happen in some nebulous “future,” and dragons were not very good at understanding things like “the future.”
At least Avatre was no longer afraid to fly after darkness fell. She didn’t like it, and he didn’t blame her, but she wasn’t afraid, and she was willing to trust him to keep her safe. In fact, of all the dragons, the only one still showing some fear of flying by night was Kashet—once again, perhaps, because he was the oldest and the least used to changing his ways. But for Ari, he would do anything, and he was certainly proving that now. They were flying right outside of what Kashet considered to be “safe” territory, known lands, and they were doing it at sunset. Soon enough, it would be dark.
It had been Nofret’s turn to fret tonight. Ari could not be spared from this mission. Kashet and Kashet alone was big enough to take some of the heaviest of the Winged Ones. Nofret had not made a scene, but she had been white-lipped and wide-eyed, and her farewell embrace was as fervent as even Ari could have wished.
“I cannot come this time,” she had said, as they drew apart, “but the next time, I will have my dragon, and I will never leave your side!”