Sanctuary

by Mercedes Lackey

  As Avatre lined herself up on her target, Aket-ten and Re-eth-ke touched down inside her own pen, and Avatre backwinged, preparing to drop down onto the sand. Kiron braced himself for the assault.

  And it came as soon as Avatre furled her wings. “Kiron!” Ari called, his chin set. “I—”

  “You’ll take up your grievance with me, not Kiron, Royal Husband,” Nofret said, swinging her leg over and sliding down Avatre’s back. She staggered a little as she landed, then made her way around the walkway to confront her betrothed, arms crossed over her chest in a way that should have warned Ari that no matter what he thought, he was going to lose this particular argument. “I am the one who organized this expedition to be introduced to Coresan. Not Kiron. I have the right to command him. There was no danger, as Aket-ten introduced me, and Coresan accepted me within the time of her first morning feeding.”

  Ari’s mouth opened and closed, without anything coming out. Kiron decided that he would just pretend nothing was happening, and untie the hide full of leftovers that Coresan hadn’t eaten. Nofret continued to stare at Ari with her arms crossed, her chin held high, her black eyes narrowed. She looked uncommonly like one of the statues of the Great Tian Kings, lacking only the crook and flail in her hands to finish the appearance. Ari could hardly have missed the resemblance.

  For his part, Kiron was wondering which was going to be extended this time—the crook—or the flail.

  After a moment she softened. So, it would be the crook. “Ari, I must do this. I don’t know why, but something within me says that I need to share the parenting with Coresan, that the work has to be done by me, personally. Perhaps it is nothing more than my need to prove that I am as worthy of a dragon as any of you who raised your own from the egg; I don’t know. I only know that it is important, and that I can’t take an egg from someone who already has one, or has one promised to him. So don’t place any blame on Kiron. If he and Aket-ten had not agreed to help me, I would have found another way to go out there. And they kept very careful track of me the entire time.”

  Kiron thought about verifying that, then thought better of it. This was shaping up to be a lovers’ quarrel, or at least, almost a lovers’ quarrel, and he knew better than to put himself in the middle of something like that.

  Neither side would welcome his interference, and both might turn on him. He’d seen that before.

  So he shouldered his burden of green hide and meat and walked around the walkway on the other side of the pen, trying to look as if he wasn’t even aware the two of them were there. Either the ploy worked, or else they elected to ignore him the same way he was ignoring them, because neither of them looked at him as he edged sideways through the entrance. Avatre, of course, could not care less who was in her pen as long as she was left alone to flop down onto the hot sand and bask before the sun went down. She was full, quite happy, and all was right with her world. If two humans, neither of whom was her rider, wished to make mouth sounds at each other, so long as they got out of the way when she rolled over, they could do so wherever they wished.

  Kiron breathed a sigh of relief as he got out of sight. He might not be out of danger yet, but at least Ari was going to have to deal with Nofret first before the older man came down on Kiron.

  He never did learn what Nofret said to Ari, nor what Ari said to Nofret. Whatever it was, when Ari caught up with him, later—much later—that evening, it wasn’t to give Kiron a dressing-down.

  Kiron was looking forward to joining the wing in Lord Ya-tiren’s kitchen, which was where he and the others were all taking their evening meals these days. After delivering his load to Gan, whose green dragon Khaleph had not had a particularly successful hunt, he had gone checking on all of the new boys with their new eggs, making sure they had been turning the eggs properly, and listening at each one for signs that all was right within. Satisfied that everything was going along exactly as it should, he joined the rest for the evening meal with Lord Ya-tiren’s household. Normally, he and the rest ate with the servants rather than the family; it seemed enough of an imposition to have Lord Ya-tiren’s servants preparing their food without also inflicting themselves on the family as well. Besides, Kiron had the feeling that falconer Kalen, cat keeper Pe-atep, and baker’s son Huras, all common-born, would feel very uncomfortable at the table of a nobleman—and never mind that they were all, from highest to lowest, actually eating the same diet. He had set the standard by insisting on eating at the kitchen, and the others had simply followed his lead—even Orest and Aket-ten, even though it was their father’s kitchen they were eating in. “It’s all politics with Father,” Orest explained after the first few evenings. “It’s generally him and Ari, Nofret and Marit, and Lord Khumun and Kaleth, and sometimes the priests from Tia, all politicking and planning. Look, I just want them to tell me what they want me to do, and I’ll do it. Just don’t make me sit there until my head aches, listening to them!”

  Kiron didn’t blame him, and Aket-ten must have felt the same, since she joined all of them as well almost every night. It was a particularly jovial evening; even with the possibility of Ari’s wrath descending on him, Kiron enjoyed it. The extra hunting that he and Aket-ten had done had made it possible for the household to have meat this evening, and it had been very pleasant to enjoy the sort of meal he’d gotten used to in the Jousters’ Compounds of both Tia and Alta.

  And when Ari joined them after the torches were lit, which was at the point that they were just about finished with their meal, though he looked worried and a little unsettled, he didn’t immediately seize Kiron and haul him away. Instead, he sat down with them, got a jar of beer and a bit of honeyed bread from the cook, and glumly started eating, only to stop after the first few mouthfuls.

  “Nofret will be going out to stay with Coresan and her eggs—and later her dragonets—from now on until she bonds with one herself,” he said abruptly. “Since that’s in Kiron’s territory, I expect him to keep an eye on her, but I’d like the rest of you to try to do the same in turn. I know it will be difficult, but it’s the season of the rains, so it should be a bit cooler here in the desert, and I hope not so hard to stay out all day.”

  Orest blinked. “Ah—” he began. “You’re going to keep watch also, aren’t you?”

  “I . . . I will,” Ari said, with exaggerated care. “But I don’t want to give her the impression that I am being—over-protective.”

  Kiron braced himself, expecting one of them—probably Orest, who had all the tact of a charging river horse—to say something disastrous. But instead, Gan gave Ari an understanding look, poked Orest in the ribs with an elbow just as Orest was opening his mouth, and said smoothly, “Nofret’s determined to have a dragon; that’s not a bad idea. Among our people, the two Queens rule as equals with the Kings, or at least, they have until this last sorry lot. I could have thought of easier ways to get her one, but women and cats will do as they please, Ari, and men and hounds just have to endure it. Why don’t you and I go join Heklatis as soon as we’ve finished eating? He may have some ideas to help keep her safe out there.”

  Orest gave him an indignant look, opened his mouth again, and on his other side, Oset-re stepped hard on his foot, smiling as he did so.

  Ari looked up at that with faint frown—then smiled. “You know, that might not be a bad idea.”

  Kiron heaved a sigh of relief that he hoped he managed to hide. Let Gan—who had had so many affairs with girls that they were practically stumbling over each other on their way to and from his bed—and Heklatis, who although he was not minded to women, still had a very great deal of sexual experience, romantic and otherwise—sort Ari out. He was still trying to figure out how to tell if Aket-ten thought of him as a friend, a kind of surrogate brother, or something else entirely. She was never less than friendly, but—well, serfs weren’t encouraged to think of girls, even if he’d been old enough to be interested while he lived in Tia. And afterward—well, in Alta, he’d been frantically busy, and anyway, Aket-ten hadn
’t spent any great amount of time with him until the Magi took an interest in her. And at that point, he was concentrating on how to keep her safe, rather than how he felt about her, or she about him.

  He hoped she had begun to look upon him as a great deal more than a friend and surrogate brother, but she was not exactly forthcoming about how she felt, and while she was very good at reading animals’ minds, she was curiously blind to the reactions of people around her.

  Or at least, she didn’t act as if she knew what he was thinking.

  Yes, he reminded himself, as he got up from the table and headed back to Avatre’s pen in the darkness. But I don’t know what I’m thinking, so I shouldn’t expect her to, now, should I?

  All he knew for certain was that he would rather be in Aket-ten’s company than out of it. That when he was around her, his skin felt as if it had a life of his own. And that he would often lie at night under the stars, looking up at them, and feeling ridiculously happy to know she was probably gazing at the same stars.

  But he had no idea if she felt the same, if she would react poorly if she knew how he felt, or, perhaps most importantly, how her father would react. He was only a farmer’s son; she was a noble’s daughter. And while the present circumstances had made them more equal, they were not actually equal, and it was impossible, for him at least, to forget that.

  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 do
n’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.

  “Of course I do! It would be horrible to watch you fly off and not know if you were coming back!” She sounded indignant. “I care more about you than—than anyone. Even Orest. Even my father. There isn’t anyone I would rather be with, for the rest of my life.” She squeezed his hand. “I don’t know if it’s right, making promises before we know if we’re all going to get through this without being killed, but I told my father he might as well not bother making any betrothals for me, because if I couldn’t marry you, I wouldn’t marry anyone.”

  “Aket-ten!” he exclaimed, with trepidation, delight, and a touch of horror. “You didn’t! When?”

  “When he first got here, of course.” She laughed into the darkness. “I told him that night we all had our welcome dinner together. I didn’t want to take the chance that he’d get all worried about what was going to happen and decide that he wanted to see me safely married. And he said he wouldn’t dare make any betrothals after such a declaration, because I’d probably tell Re-eth-ke to eat him if he tried.”

  “I—” he tried to think of something gallant to say, but his heart was racing with elation, and he could only manage a single fumbling sentence. “I’d fight even your father to be with you—except that I’d be afraid that would break your heart, seeing the two of us fighting. I’d throw myself off a cliff rather than break your heart.”