But when he woke, it was with a rush, and he woke all at once, out of a dream of flying Winged Ones off the roof of the temple, burning with a desire to get more of them away before the Magi understood what was happening.
He didn’t sit up with a yell, though he might as well have. He startled the servant who was sitting beside him. But the boy recovered quickly.
“It is not yet time, master,” he said, before Kiron could say anything. “You have time to see to your dragon, to bathe and eat. There was another small shake after dawn. Did you feel it?”
He shook his head, but his attention was caught by a single word. Bathe! At the sound of that word, Kiron itched all over; not that there wasn’t water enough to bathe at Sanctuary, but it seemed wrong to use so precious a thing for bathing. They all did, of course, but it seemed wrong. Now, the hot spring at Coresan’s nest was another matter entirely—but he hadn’t had a bath there since two days before this journey.
But this was Alta, where water was abundant, so after he saw Avatre fed, he allowed the servant to take him off to the baths, both hot and cold. And once re-clothed in a common tunic of the sort Aunt Re gave her upper servants, which was enough like what the Jousters wore these days that it made no difference, he helped himself from the food left out for all of them and made a hasty meal. Aket-ten was the last of the riders to wake, and he didn’t blame her for sleeping so long; she had been doing two jobs at once—guiding her own dragon, and keeping track of all of the rest of them.
She woke just as quickly as he had when she finally did break through her slumbers, and was just as impatient to be gone as the rest of them. She surely imparted that impatience to the dragons, all ten of them, for the moment she came awake, they began to fidget and look skyward. And at that moment, Kiron would have given all that he had or ever hoped to have for one flight—just one!—with all the wings that Alta had once had. With that many dragons, they could have left now, to arrive just after sunset, and it wouldn’t matter who saw them. The Magi couldn’t use the Eye at night, and they would have been able to pull out every last person all at once.
But dragons had no mystical ability to go back or forward in time, so the wing he had was all he was going to get. And as soon as Aket-ten had rejoined them, hair plastered flat to her skull from her bath, he called a meeting.
“Last night was the easy one,” he told them, and at Orest’s indignant stare, shook his head. “Yes, I know, from just the point of view of uncertainty about whether we’d get the dragons up at all, it was the hard one. But in terms of getting people out, it was the easy one.” He tilted his head to the side, then lifted his head and looked each of them in the eyes. “Think about it; we had it all our own way last night. The Magi were busy making sure of their own safety, and didn’t give a toss about anyone else. We got out the children, the old, and the sick, all of them lightweight, all of them tractable.”
“Or unconscious,” Gan said soberly, raking his fingers through his hair to help it dry. “You have a good point, though; easy to fly, and they didn’t make a fuss, or scream, or anything.”
“Tonight, we get the able-bodied and the heaviest, but there’s more to it than that,” he replied. “The people we will take out tonight are the senior Winged Ones, ruling priests, important priestesses. They’re used to giving orders and having them obeyed.”
“What possible orders could they give?” Pe-atep asked, incredulously. “ ‘Fly faster’? As if we could?”
Oset-re made a face and shook his head. “They’re Great Lords and Ladies in their own right. Who knows what they’ll demand when we are airborne?”
Kiron silently applauded Oset-re for seeing at once where the danger was. He was very aware of Aunt Re standing off to one side, listening, but not commenting. “We are very young men, all looking rather like servants—and one young woman with what is, by their standards, a minor power, who should by all rights rank just about Fledgling status. They won’t think when they see us. If they aren’t too sick and tired to do anything but hang on, there is no telling what they might try to order us to do.”
“Fly lower!” squeaked Gan in an imperious-old-lady voice, swatting at Pe-atep. Aunt Re hid a smile behind her hand.
He nodded. Now he had to remind them of what they were and that they had to disobey. “Or higher. Certainly faster or slower. And while you might be able to fob them off by telling them the dragons can’t do that, there’s other things they might want you to do. Stop, because I must get this or that treasure or sacred object. Land there to tell my mother I’m safe—” he shrugged. “There’s no telling. But they might well become real nuisances, some of them, when they’re in the air. They’ve been powerless a long time. They’ll want to command something, if only us.”
“Trouble.” Orest shook his head. “You don’t think they’ll go so far as to fight us, do you?”
For that, he had to look to Aket-ten and Orest.
Aket-ten shook her head. “I think they’ll still be torn between the excitement of escape and the fear of being captured. But they might start to shout, and—voices coming from the sky might not be a good idea.”
“Try telling them no matter what they want, it’s Lord Khumun’s orders,” Orest offered. “Most of them know they can half-bully Father, but nobody’s ever gotten around Lord Khumun, not even a Winged One.”
Well, if it came to that, Lord Khumun was going to end up with an earful when they finally all got to Sanctuary.
Lord Khumun can take care of himself, he decided.
“I just want you to keep those things in mind,” he went on. “First, heavier passengers. Second, passengers who want to make demands. And three—” he paused. “We don’t know what the Magi have done in our absence, nor what they might do after darkness falls. Maybe they’ll still be too concerned with their own safety and comfort after so big a shake that they won’t keep a magical eye on the temple. But I don’t think we can count on that. Do you?”
One by one, the others shook their heads. Overhead, vultures circled on the thermals their dragons would be using, if only they could, dared, fly by day. At least darkness would hide them in part. Until they came in to pick up the first escapees. Until they came into the light.
“So tonight we run the risk of being seen.” He chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t think there’s anything we can really do about that—not being overlooked by magic, anyway.”
“Uh—” Aket-ten flushed, and held up a fistful of leather thongs. “I think these might help.”
He peered at them, frowning. There were little faience medallions hanging from them. They looked familiar.
“Pashet’s teeth!” exclaimed Oset-re with delight. “Heklatis’ amulets!” He jumped to his feet, pulled Aket-ten up, whirled her around like a child, and kissed her on the top of the head before letting her drop back down again, flushed and laughing.
“Here,” she said, passing them out. “I collected them after we came to Sanctuary; you lot kept losing them or leaving them lying around, and there’s no point in discarding something magic, even if you don’t need it at the time. I thought they might be useful again. Heklatis knows I have them and I told him I was taking them along. He said it was a good thing, otherwise he’d have had to make a new batch and send them along, and I saved him the work.”
Kiron accepted the amulet with a rueful shrug; once in the safety of Sanctuary, he’d been one of the worst at forgetting to keep track of his amulet. Heklatis had made them to interfere with the Magi’s scrying, or seeing-at-a-distance, back when they were all in the Jousters’ Compound together. But although the protection had been priceless while they were scheming to destroy the tala and escape right under the Magi’s noses, they had seemed of little utility out in the middle of the trackless desert, where the distance and Kaleth’s god-assisted protections kept them from being overlooked by means of magic.
But Aket-ten never forgot anything, it seemed.
“All right, then,” he said, pulling the thong over
his head. “We can keep them from seeing us with magic, but we can’t stop someone from spotting us just by looking up. So we have to assume they will have eyes in the city, especially eyes keeping watch on the temple, and those eyes will report whatever they see. Even if it’s dragons where no dragons should be.”
Oset-re snorted, and behind him, her neck arched so that her head was right above his, coppery Apetma snorted so exactly like him that, serious as the situation was, it startled a laugh out of all of them.
“Especially dragons where no dragons should be, you mean,” Oset-re said. “No, you’re right. Those miserable crocodiles wouldn’t spare a man to help a single person on the Outer Rings, but once they’re certain of being comfortable and safe, they’ll put spies back on the temple.” He thrust out his jaw belligerently. “All the more reason to get out as many tonight as we can. We know what to do now.”
“Which is, above all else, to not let your dragons fly past their strength.” Kiron glared at him. “You can’t afford to go to ground between here and the temple. But—it did come to me that if a dragon were to stop at round three or four, but regain enough strength to join the final round—I think it would be important enough to let him, or her, do so. But you must judge your dragon’s strength to the last wingbeat. Failure on the return leg—” He shook his head. “—landing in the dark, or in the river, with the crocodiles and the river horses so excited and upset by the earthshake—”
Most of them had seen men hurt or killed in a river horse hunt. All had seen the injuries men got from the seemingly soft and passive beasts. And a crocodile, or worse yet, a swarm of them—they’d take a man and a dragon to pieces in moments. Swamp dragons could hold their own against both river horse and crocodile, but these were desert dragons, and utterly unsuited to such foes.
“No, we can’t afford that,” Kalen agreed. “And I’ve got a horrible truth for you. There are a lot more Winged Ones than there are Jousters. We cannot go into this certain that we will get them all out; we must try, but we might not be able to. If someone has to be left behind, it had better not be a Jouster.”
Aket-ten made a little cry of protest, but Ari nodded, and so did Kiron. “An ugly truth, too, and that is what, as your wingleader, I am ordering you to do, if it comes to that,” he said, making his voice as hard as he could manage. “There are ten of us, and already we have saved six times that number of Winged Ones. I can’t replace one of you. I can probably replace a Winged One. Agreed?”
Aket-ten’s face crumpled and she looked utterly miserable, but glancing at Ari gave her no reprieve, so reluctantly, she nodded.
“With luck, it won’t come up,” he said, injecting a little cheer into his tone. “Haras give us strength and luck, we’ll succeed despite their ill will. Can anybody think of anything else?”
No one could, so at that point, it was just a matter of waiting.
Just! If there was anything harder than waiting, he certainly didn’t know what it was.
The first passenger was an imperious old woman, with a voice so exactly like Gan’s imitation that he had to catch himself to keep from laughing aloud. “Fly faster!” she demanded in his ear—at least she was making an effort to keep her commands quiet.
“Dragon’s flying as fast as she can, Great Lady,” he replied, taking a moment to remind himself who these people were, and how much respect they were due. And he heard the fear under the arrogance; perhaps the arrogance was born of fear. He wanted that respect in his voice before he answered her. “None of them are used to carrying double.”
The old woman mulled that over for a bit, then poked him in the ribs with a bony finger. “Then land beside Te-aten-ka’s apothecary shop on Fourth Ring. I need—”
“I’m sorry, Great Lady, but no landing until we get to Re-keron’s estate in the country,” he interrupted. “Lord Khumun’s orders. Even if I knew where the place was, which I don’t, and even if it’s still standing when we got there, which it probably isn’t. What Lady Re-keron doesn’t have you’ll have to do without until you can find a way to get it.”
She bristled, forgetting her fear in the shock of being thwarted by a mere boy. He could feel her back behind him, bristling up with indignation like a hedgehog. “Now see here, young man, I will not—”
“Great Lady, I’m afraid you must,” he interrupted again. “What you don’t have, you will have to do without, and anyone you wished to speak with to assure them of your safety will have to go unwarned. Avatre is not like a chariot; if you seize the reins, you will only confuse and upset her, and if you upset her, she may well decide you are too much trouble to carry.”
Astonished silence followed that revelation, “But—” she began again, this time with more uncertainty in her voice.
“Great Lady, can you swim?” Kiron interrupted again. “Because if Avatre decides to rid herself of you, there is very little I can do about it, but at least we will be above the Great Mother River’s daughter most of the way.”
Behind him, he sensed that the old woman was opening and closing her mouth silently, like a fish pulled up on the bank. Well, she could do whatever she wanted, as far as he was concerned, as long as she made no noise.
Her shock kept her silent the rest of the way; when he handed her down to her waiting attendants, she looked up as if she was about to say something, but didn’t get a chance to before they rushed her away.
The next trip, the man they put up behind him was silent and looked exhausted. He said not a word until they landed, and then it was only a whispered “thank you,” as he dismounted.
The third trip, however, and the passenger being a tall, cadaverous looking man with haunted eyes, the ones who helped him strap himself to Kiron looked faintly familiar. Enough so that he glanced back in puzzlement as Avatre took off.
“Think you know them, do you?” the Winged One said in his ear. “You probably do. They were two of your little friend Aket-ten’s teachers.”
But they weren’t wearing the medallions of the Winged Ones, his mind protested.
He didn’t say it aloud, but he had forgotten, for a moment, that with these people, he didn’t have to say something aloud to be heard. “They aren’t Winged anymore,” the bitter man said, in a tone of venomous anger.
Not Winged? But—that wasn’t possible, surely, you were either Winged or not—
“They fought the Magi. The Magi didn’t like that, so they kept the ones who fought instead of letting them come back to the temple to rest, and used them until they burned them out. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t die of it.” Not only hatred but fear, and the kind of anger that gripped Kiron like the talons of a vulture. “Then, the Magi brought them back as a lesson to the rest of us. They’re no more god-touched now than you are.”
“At least they’re alive,” Kiron offered, feeling it was a weak solace, but still—they were alive when all those acolytes in Tia weren’t. They might not be Winged anymore but thousands of people weren’t Winged—
“I wouldn’t call it living,” the bitter man said, acid etching every word. “A man can live without a hand, a foot, even an eye, but what happens when you take part of what he is? He’s better off dead! I’d say that, and they’d say the same!”
Kiron had no good response for that. There was no good response for that. All he could do was to guide Avatre through the night, and wonder what, if anything, the angry man thought he could do about it.
“I’m sorry” seemed a bit inadequate, but it was all he had.
The man didn’t say anything more until they reached the estate and landed. Then, once he was down on the ground, he gave Kiron a searching gaze.
“You’re a good lad,” he said. “Just do what you came to do as best you can, and don’t take more on yourself than you can be responsible for.”
And with that he staggered away, limping heavily and leaning on the arm of an attendant, and if there had been time, Kiron would have hurried after him to demand a meaning for such cryptic remarks.
/> But there wasn’t, and he didn’t, and Avatre was already off the ground as he wrenched his gaze back to the direction of Alta City.
When he picked up the seventh passenger of the night, there were people bringing heavy coils of rope up to the top of the building.
And as he took off with the man—he and Ari were getting the men, of course, since their dragons were the oldest and biggest—the Winged One kept looking back. Kiron followed his gaze and saw that the rope had been tied off to some ornamental stone-work, and someone was just slipping over the edge to climb down.
“That’s a relief,” his passenger said, turning back to face forward. “I’m glad to see someone talked sense into them.”
“Talked sense into who?” Kiron asked.
“Some of the servants—young ones, who actually have the strength to go down a rope like a monkey.” The man sighed. “With two thirds of us gone, there’s no need for all of the servants, and there’s no telling what They’re up to, spying on us, I’ve no doubt. If they discover that some of us are gone, they’ll try and break the siege, and we’ve been telling the servants that there’s no odds one way or another on whether you’ll be able to get them out before the Magi and their guards turn up. Someone must have talked them around to going out over the wall.”
“It’s what I’d do,” Kiron agreed, “If I wasn’t needed.”
“They aren’t, and if the Magi guess what’s happening, they’re likely to get—” the man paused choosing his words carefully, “—vindictive.”
Vindictive.
Kiron didn’t like the sound of that. “Would they turn the Eye on the temple?” he asked, feeling his stomach sink with dread.
But the answer he got reassured him. “They can’t. Once they use it, they have to recharge it for days before it’s fit to be used again. But it would be better for no one to be here when the temple is broken into.”
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