She gave him a shaky smile, her teeth flashing whitely in the growing darkness, but said nothing.
By this time, the birds had settled again, and though there was anxious complaining from the trees around the house, there was no more shrieking. Those that could still see in the half light had flown off, the rest had no choice but to settle down. Someone was getting to the horses, too; they were calming.
We have to go, he realized, still numb with the after-shock. This is it. We have to go, and soon.
It wasn’t long before Aunt Re had her servants out of the training ground and back in again, bringing back those fire pots. They placed the pots exactly as they had for the dragons’ arrival, and Kiron was grateful; Aunt Re must have understood it would be impossible to get the dragons up into the air without light now.
He only hoped it would be possible to get them up into the air with light.
With hands that still shook more than a little he saddled and harnessed Avatre while the servants placed and lit the fire pots, lighting up the training ground with a welcome golden glow. Light seemed to make everything safer; this made no sense at all, of course, because an overturned fire pot was more danger than the earthshake, but there was no reasoning with feelings.
The dragons certainly felt that way, though given how little they could see in the dark, their reaction was perfectly understandable. The question was, after that shake, could he possibly induce them to leave this “safe” haven of light?
Well, there was only one way to find out, and this time, Aket-ten would have to lead the way. If she could get Re-eth-ke up, the rest would surely follow.
He whistled the signal to mount; a little raggedly, they all got into their saddles. He looked over to Aket-ten, met her dark, serious gaze, and nodded. It was up to her now. From here on, she would lead the way, and it would all be done by the numbers.
“Re-eth-ke!” she called, her voice sounding a little high and shrill. “Up!”
And as if she could not shake the dust of the treacherous earth from her talons swiftly enough, Re-eth-ke leaped into the deepening blue of the sky.
He didn’t have to do more than lift his reins to signal Avatre, she was up like a shot, and she must have been taking comfort in a routine they had practiced until it was second nature.
Perhaps, like the birds, she felt that safety was in the air, not the ground.
As she labored higher, her sides heaving under his legs and growing warmer with exertion with every wingbeat, he glanced behind, to see that Khaleph was already airborne as well, and Wastet leaping upward with wings outstretched.
Beneath them, in Aunt Re’s compound, there was ordered activity. He could not see much damage, although things like cracked walls would not be visible until daylight. But servants were going here and there, gathering children together for comfort, moving pallets out into open spaces for safety if there were after-shakes, seeing that beasts were secure, tending to the few—remarkably few, he was relieved to see—injured. Outside her estate, however, as the full moon crested the horizon and spread her cold light over the fields, the case was otherwise. People ran here and there with torches, without really seeming to know where they needed to go. He saw collapsed farmhouses, broken walls, cattle, goats, and pigs running loose. There were fires, too, and shouts and weeping came up to them on the night air.
It made him angry that because there was a greater need for them in Alta City, they could not stop to help here. He could only hope that Aunt Re had already considered that, and when her estate was secure, would send her people out to help her neighbors.
Meanwhile, the river beckoned, a long, flat silver ribbon in the moonlight, and their guide to their goal. But it was not the serene river it had been last night; there was a taste of mud and ancient muck in the air. The animals voiced their own outrage; river horses bellowed their anger from among the pools and backwaters, and crocodiles roared and thrashed as they fought with each other or caught—well, he only hoped they were catching some luckless farmer’s terrified stock, and not the farmer’s children, or the farmer himself.
The closer they came to the Outer Canal and the Seventh Ring, the worse the damage, and the greater the chaos, and now it was physically painful to see from the air what he had not been able to see the night of his first experience of earthshake. There were fires everywhere, and not just shouts and weeping, but real screaming coming up from below. He could see places where buildings had canted over and fallen sideways, or where they were sunk up to the roofline, as if the ground had turned to water beneath them.
And that shook him. There had been nothing like that before. . . .
What had they done?
Not us, he reminded himself desperately. We didn’t do this. We didn’t trigger it, we didn’t ask for the riot that made the Magi use the Eye. All we did was take advantage of what the gods showed us the people would do, and the Magi would do, and what would come of it—it wasn’t our fault. And we couldn’t have stopped it.
But his insides were not convinced.
The shake must have been terrible indeed to have reached this far. Up until now, the worst damage had been confined within the first three rings. And what could have made the ground behave in that strange fashion, to swallow up whole buildings?
Ahead of him, the dark, silver-gilt shadow that was Re-eth-ke flew steadily onward. Behind him trailed the rest of the wing, or at least the rest of it up to Orest and Wastet. A new concern; how many of them had made it into the air?
They passed the Sixth Ring; the Fifth. Then, at the Fourth Ring, though there were still fires, was still shouting and crying and chaos, there was, unaccountably, less of it.
And at the Third Ring, there was order again, and he could have shouted with relief. Not surprising; this was where the military were housed and trained. But still, to look down and see people dealing with the aftermath of the earthshake with the same calm as Aunt Re’s people made him feel considerably less guilty.
Then Second Ring, and again, there did not seem to be the same amount of chaos and catastrophe as in the Outer Rings, although there certainly was more than enough—and it suddenly dawned on him why. So much damage had been wrought here already by the shakes before they had left, as well as the ones after, that almost everything that could be knocked down had been, and many people were probably sleeping in the open at night out of hopeless resignation.
For some reason, that realization transmuted his feelings from guilt into anger, and if he could have gotten his hands around the throat of a Magus just then, he’d have throttled any one of them without a second thought.
This was what they had brought the great city-state of Alta to! This state of helpless apathy, this fear that drained even the ability to properly feel fear, this crawling wretchedness not even a slave would envy! You worms! he thought angrily up at Royal Hill. You vermin! You scorpions, that eat your own young! How dare you do this—may the gods help me to bring you down for it—
But ahead of them, among the many buildings that were damaged, or afire, or ominously dark and silent, stood one he knew well. The Temple of the Twins. And though its ornamental pools were cracked and empty, and some of its statues and columns toppled, the building itself stood strong.
And visible only from above, there was a carefully laid-out square of torches on the roof.