He looked at her soberly, wondering if she really understood what she was letting herself in for. How much the bond with her dragon would affect her.
Then he decided that it didn’t matter whether she understood now. When it happened, she
would.
And when it happened, well, she wouldn’t regret whatever sacrifices she had to make.
“She’s
beautiful,
” Nofret said, in tones of awe.
“She’s a bit scrawny still,” Aket-ten countered. “but she’s rounding out again.”
It had taken less time than Kiron had thought to get Coresan—and there was no doubt now, it
was
Coresan—to allow both Kiron and Aket-ten quite close, and on foot, on the ground. Her hunger, combined with her need to stay with her eggs, and her recognition of the dragon boy who had tended her so well (despite how much he had changed), made her much more cooperative than Kiron had expected. Her behavior was nothing near as erratic as it had been when she had been drugged either. Before too terribly long, Coresan was stretching out her neck and gazing longingly at the bucket of sand and the buffing cloths and oil Kiron had brought with him. By the time they were thinking about bringing Nofret along, she let him give her a sand bath; by the day after that, it was Aket-ten doing the honors, and of course, once Aket-ten could
touch
the dragon, things became much simpler. At first Coresan reacted to Aket-ten’s power with startlement—and it must have been odd for her, having that contact inside her mind. It took her most of a day to get used to it and calm down. But once she accepted it, and knew that not only could she communicate with Aket-ten, but Aket-ten could “talk” to her in the same way, she seemed to realize this was an excellent state of affairs.
At that point, it was time to introduce Nofret to the dragon.
Avatre was still significantly larger than Re-eth-ke, so Nofret rode behind Kiron. The difference between this ride and the one they had taken to get Marit and Nofret to Sanctuary initially was amazing. Then, Nofret had hidden her face and clutched at Kiron, and once, when she had realized how high they were, she’d shrieked loud enough to startle Avatre. Now she watched everything avidly, her grip on his waist and the back of his saddle just enough to keep her steady and balanced, and when he looked back at her, she was smiling, and her kohl-lined eyes were wide and bright.
According to Aket-ten, Nofret had said that Ari was still trying to persuade her, more or less delicately, to give up on the idea of having a dragon. This was why she hadn’t told him she was coming along today.
The moment they had landed, she had slipped down Avatre’s side to stand facing Coresan, as Kiron untied the butchered goats the Bedu had brought—the first fruits of their raids on the Tian Sacred Herds. Coresan, of course, knew what was coming, and though still standing vigilant guard over her precious eggs, was swaying side to side with eagerness and hunger. She did look immensely better than she had when they had first found her. Her scales were shiny and clean, and although she was lean, she no longer had bones showing. Her golden eyes were bright, and the membranes of her wings supple, smooth, and a healthy copper-orange in color. Kiron privately thought that Avatre was much more beautiful—he liked Avatre’s deep scarlet, and didn’t much care for the lighter, more coppery shade of her mother. But there was no doubt that Coresan was impressive.
Aket-ten had landed before Kiron had, and was about to drag a goat quarter over to the eager and visibly hungry dragon. “Should I take that?” Nofret asked eagerly, as she stepped forward.
Well, that’s a good sign! She’s not afraid at all!
“Not just yet. We want her to get the edge off her hunger first,” he cautioned. “Let Aket-ten introduce you to her; she’ll have to get quite close before she can use her magic.”
Though visibly disappointed, Nofret nodded, and once about half of Aket-ten’s load was inside Coresan, Aket-ten motioned that Nofret should come take the next quarter over.
Kiron and Aket-ten were quite used to hauling large chunks of meat about, but poor Nofret staggered for a moment under the unexpectedly heavy burden. Once again, though, she gamely rose to the challenge, and pulled the haunch to the waiting dragon.
Coresan eyed the newcomer carefully. Nofret didn’t look anything like Aket-ten; she was taller, willow-slim, and even her hair was different—since Lord Ya-tiren and his servants had arrived, she had been able to wear her long hair in the noble style of thousands of plaits ending in beads, so that every time she moved her head, she rattled pleasantly, like a systrum. Nofret made no sudden moves, only looked the dragon squarely in the eyes as she’d been told to, and waited for Coresan to take the meat.
The dragon looked extremely reluctant to take a step nearer the stranger, despite what Aket-ten had “said” to her. Instead, she stretched out her neck as far as it would go, and with the very tips of her jaws, snagged the skin of the haunch in her teeth and dragged it to herself, keeping one eye on Nofret at all times.
Interesting. No snapping, no testing.
Coresan hadn’t been whipping her tail around either. She’d become much more predictable and even-tempered since she’d been flying free. Perhaps some of her irritability had been because she had been chafing to be gone, even under the influence of
tala.
With every piece of meat Nofret brought, Coresan allowed her to get closer. And when she had finished, and was ready to curl around her eggs for a nap, Coresan actually allowed Nofret to put a hand under her chin for a brief moment.
When Nofret turned back to them, she was practically afire with excitement, and Kiron hid a smile. When he thought about how aloof she had been back in Alta, scarcely noticing the dragonets, and compared how she had been then to what she was like now, it was clear that being around Kashet and Ari had caused a fundamental change in her attitude.
“This is amazing!” she exclaimed in a whisper, as Coresan sighed and slipped into the deep breathing of slumber. “I’ve watched Ari feed Kashet, of course, and even helped myself, but this is a
wild
dragon! And she’s letting me touch her!”
“You don’t have to whisper around her, in fact, it’s better not to,” Aket-ten said in a conversational tone. “When you try to be quiet, you tell her that something’s sneaking around, and she’ll wake up.”
“Well, she’s not exactly a wild dragon, but she’s as close as we’re going to get,” Kiron acknowledged. “She was born wild, and she remembers being trapped, which is likely to make her even warier of humans than a fully wild dragon. So, are you determined to stay here until we go on the afternoon hunt?”
Nofret nodded firmly. “I brought my sling,” she said. “I might be able to kill some desert-hares or pigeons that I can give her as tidbits, and if not, I can at least practice my aim. I know this is going to be hard—”
“Mostly, it’s going to be boring,” Aket-ten advised. “She’s sleeping a lot, since we’ve been feeding her. That’s just as well, since she doesn’t dare leave the eggs until they hatch.”
Nofret shrugged. “It can’t be any worse than some meetings,” she replied. “It
certainly
will be more entertaining than standing attendant to the Great Queens. Much though I would have enjoyed doing so, I wasn’t allowed to hurl stones at anything while I was a lady-in-waiting.”
Aket-ten grinned, and Kiron had to chuckle. “Then here’s your waterskin—if you need to refill it, the cistern is over there, inside that building with the
latas
columns—” He pointed at one of the false fronts carved into the wall of the ravine across from them, and Nofret nodded. “If you see wild dragons, either stay close to Coresan, or go inside a building with doors too small for them to get through.”
“Should I give her a sand bath?” Nofret asked anxiously.
Aket-ten shook her head. “Not yet. She’ll tell you when she’s ready for you to touch her. She doesn’t wallow in caresses like Re-eth-ke does, but she does like being scratched under the jaw, and when she solicits you to do that, she’ll be ready to take a sand buffing from you.”
“We’ll be back in the afternoon,” Kiron said, and tried not to feel too anxious. Nofret was no wilting
latas;
she had hunted river horse and crocodile, and even lions. She had been living in extremely primitive conditions in Sanctuary long before the rest of them arrived. Still—when Ari found out—
“I think we ought to do some hunting for the city,” he said aloud. “As long as you don’t have anything else to do, Aket-ten.”
She raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t object. And this way they could do flyovers to make sure Nofret was all right—
—and avoid Ari—
“We could bring Nofret smaller game that way,” Aket-ten agreed. “That’s more how a mate would feed Coresan anyway.”
So that was exactly what they did; they went back to Sanctuary just long enough to leave a message as to their intentions, then flew out again. Hunting in tandem, they managed to bring down several of the smaller gazelles over the course of the morning and afternoon, more than enough to not only keep Coresan fed, but to bring back to Sanctuary, where they would certainly be put to good use. Every time they did a flyover, it looked as if Nofret was getting on quite well. She was erring on the side of caution, staying out of what Kiron calculated was Coresan’s threat-perimeter, but staying well within sight. And Coresan must have been eating, because most of the time when they did a flyover, she was asleep with a distinct bulge in her lean middle.
Finally, in the late afternoon, he and Aket-ten made their own hunts and kills, took up what was left over, and brought it along when they came to pick up Nofret. She was in very good spirits, and Coresan had lost some of that wary watchfulness. This was definitely another good sign.
Which was just as well, because as Kiron knew, when they finally returned—they would all have some explaining to do to Ari . . . and that was something he was not at all looking forward to.
Nofret gave Coresan one last feeding and climbed up behind Kiron. As Coresan watched with interest, but no alarm, they headed home.
ELEVEN
ARI
was waiting for them. As they banked in at a steep angle necessitated by the stiff breeze over Sanctuary, it was easy to spot the lone figure waiting in Avatre’s pen, and just as easy to recognize it as Ari. He was the only one likely to be wearing a Tian-style kilt rather than an Altan-style tunic who was also likely to be waiting for them.
This was not good. At least, not as far as Kiron was concerned. Glancing over at his partner in this particular escapade as she sideslipped toward Re-eth-ke’s pen, it looked to him as if Aket-ten didn’t think she needed to worry——well,
she
probably didn’t. Ari wouldn’t blame
her,
he’d blame Kiron.
Fortunately, Ari was the only one waiting in the pen. It would have been painful to be verbally flayed in the presence of the rest of the wing, even if he didn’t deserve it. After all, Ari had, in theory, agreed to this. And it wasn’t as if Nofret wasn’t her own woman, and perfectly capable of making up her own mind about what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it. But Ari would still blame
him.
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.”