Then again, all of Coresan’s attention was on this, her first baby (or at least, the first one she knew of) and she had no time for anything else.
Nofret was at the edge with the last of the meat bundles when Coresan finally finished stuffing the youngster and looked up. Kiron held his breath again, but Coresan only blinked benevolently at her benefactor, and got slowly to her feet, stretching as she did so, then paced over to Nofret in a leisurely manner. Nofret stood her ground.
Kiron held his breath. Aket-ten looked entirely relaxed, but Coresan’s reputation back in Mefis had been that she was unpredictable.
“Unpredictable” was not what they needed right now.
Coresan looked back over her shoulder at her sleeping baby, then dropped her head, picked up a shoulder of beef, and took it back to the little one, where she proceeded to feed herself.
Only then did Nofret turn and go back to Avatre, climb into the saddle, and wait for Kiron’s whistled signal to tell Avatre to return.
It was only when Nofret got up onto the cliff with them that Kiron saw she was sweating and trembling, and any rebuke he had been planning on giving her about taking chances died on his tongue.
She slid out of Avatre’s saddle and her knees buckled; Kiron and Aket-ten both caught her and helped her to sit on the ground.
“I didn’t know she was going to do those things until she started toward me, and then it was too late,” Nofret said, shivering with reaction. “Coming to meet me was bad enough, but then stalking right over and taking the meat practically from under my hand—I thought I was going to die right then and there! And once she started moving, I knew I didn’t dare back away, or I might become prey—”
“I’m glad you remembered that,” Kiron said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. “You did very well! And you were right to meet her eyes.”
“You did
wonderfully!
” Aket-ten exclaimed. “And we won’t tell Ari any details. You’ve done it, Nofret—she’s accepted you as a feeder, if not a nest tender. Yet.”
“Yet?” Kiron responded instantly, with astonishment. “You think Coresan is actually going to accept Nofret as a nest tender?”
“She’s already thinking about it,” said Aket-ten, with a nod toward the feeding dragon. “Or—well, not
thinking
about it, it’s just that she’s been on the nest herself for a long time without a break, and she’s starting to feel impatient. She wants to fly, she wants to stretch her wings, she wants to hunt for herself and the babies, and all of that is lying under the nest tending and getting stronger every time she looks at Nofret. So when the
go
feelings are stronger than the
stay
feelings, if Nofret is there, I think Coresan will just leave, as if Nofret was another female dragon or her mate.”
“Would that mean—” Nofret’s color was coming back. “—would I be able to get right in with the babies?”
“She just
might
push you in with them,” Kiron said thoughtfully. “It’s what she’d do with another dragon, Ari says. Younger siblings with no nest of their own, or older daughters are often used to tend the nests for mothers whose mates are inexperienced and don’t know to help tend the nest. It depends on how much like another dragon she thinks you are.”
“One step at a time!” Aket-ten interrupted. “It’s enough that Coresan is letting her bring the meat right up to the edge of the nest! And—oh, look!”
She pointed down at the nest, where another egg, this one slightly larger than the first, had begun the violent rocking that had signaled the beginning of real hatching for the first egg. Coresan abandoned her meal and, with a nudge to make sure her first offspring was properly positioned, went to aid the second.
“We’re going hunting,” Kiron told Aket-ten. “Unless you want to—”
“Oh, no, I’d much rather watch!” Aket-ten said, with undisguised enjoyment. “If Coresan finishes what Nofret brought her, I’ll fly her down with the next load myself.”
Satisfied that his partner had things well in hand, Kiron leaped into Avatre’s saddle, and gave her the signal to fly. Avatre was only too happy to oblige. He had the feeling she found all this baby tending and baby watching to be utterly boring and pointless.
“It’s all right, girl; this will be over before too long,” he called to her as they angled out over the desert in search of prey. “Then things—”
He stopped himself before he could finish that with
“—can go back to normal again” because it wasn’t likely that they ever would. Or could. And he wasn’t going to make a promise he would only have to break, especially not to Avatre, whether or not she understood it.
“—things will let us move Nofret and her new dragonet back to Sanctuary,” he said instead. Because at least that was a promise he had some likelihood of keeping.
THIRTEEN
THIS
is driving me mad, you know,” Ari said, in a completely conversational tone, as he and Kiron stared down into Coresan’s ravine. Coresan was dozing on one side of the nest, Nofret was sitting on the other side, and the dragonets were tumbling all over each other in between them, in a clumsy, awkward tangle of wings and limbs. They looked like a moving pile of jewelry.
Kiron was getting very, very tired of hearing Ari fret over Nofret’s safety. Nofret herself wasn’t putting up with it, which was probably why Ari was fretting at Kiron instead of his Royal Wife. After a fortnight of this, Kiron was at the end of his patience, too. And, truth to tell, Kiron was rather jealous; there had been so much public pressure for the two of them to become an official couple that even if they had been indifferent to each other, they’d have probably been officially married by now.
As opposed to his own situation. He and Aket-ten were both considered too young for any serious commitments, and even if they had been older, well—they still had duties and responsibilities that didn’t leave a lot of room for anything
but
those duties and responsibilities.
There wasn’t any special public ceremony to make a couple man and wife, not even for two people who were functioning as rulers, even if they didn’t have thrones or crowns. But there was no doubt that Ari’s courtship of Nofret had succeeded, seeing as they were sharing a sleeping chamber . . . even if Kiron hadn’t already known they had privately gone before both Kaleth and the High Priest of Thet to make their union official.
And Kiron was jealous. But also apprehensive. It was one thing to want Aket-ten so badly his loins ached—but it was quite another to pair off like Ari and Nofret had. There were consequences to that, above and beyond the obvious, consequences he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to deal with. For instance, Lord Ya-tiren might decide that her husband ought to be trying to curb some of Aket-ten’s more outrageous escapades, and not her father. In fact, Lord Ya-tiren might even insist on some similar condition before he would bestow his approval on the match.
Kiron was quite certain such a thing was entirely beyond
his
abilities. Aket-ten was going to do exactly as she always had, and no one was going to be able to stop her once she made up her mind about it.
He was also not so secure in his position as wingleader that he thought he dared to tip the balance among them by turning an unofficial and private relationship into a public one. Aket-ten was part of the wing, after all, and if they were husband and wife, the others might reasonably expect there was favoritism going on.
And there were other consequences, too; and lots of them. Those were nothing more than the tip of what might be a very, very large rock under the sand dune. Consequences like—as Aket-ten had said herself—babies. Whatever mysterious means there were that women in Alta and Tia used to regulate such a thing, they evidently weren’t available here in Sanctuary yet, if the rash of big bellies among Lord Ya-tiren’s household and the Tian priestesses was anything to go by.
Still—on the other hand—there was a wing full of handsome young men that Aket-ten flew with every day. True, Lord Ya-tiren had given his consent, but all of them were better matches for her than a former serf who had never been anything more than a simple farmer ’s son. Granted, the nobles weren’t lords of anything right now, but they had the blood and—
And he could make
himself
crazy with thoughts like that in a very short time.
So between one thing and another, he was coming to the end of his patience with Ari’s fretting.
“Nofret says she’s fine. Aket-ten says Coresan has accepted her as another dragon,” he snapped. “There is never a time when someone with a dragon isn’t in the air around here to make sure nothing can get at her or Coresan—not that I think anything
could
show up here that Coresan couldn’t or wouldn’t handle on her own. Enough, Ari, she knows what she’s doing, we know what we’re doing, so give us all a little credit for caution and good sense, will you?”
Ari looked taken aback by Kiron’s tone. “I just—worry,” he said.
“Well, it’s stupid to worry for no reason.” Kiron set his chin. “If you have to worry, worry about something we’ve got reasons to worry about. There’s plenty of
those.
”
Ari said nothing, but he had the grace to look chastised. And he did stop fretting, at least for the rest of that afternoon, which proceeded as it always did. They hunted, going out in turn, while Aket-ten went back to Sanctuary and brought back sacrificed animals—sheep, today; it was Hamun’s turn to be sacrificed to, and in the interest of encouraging harmony, the priests of both Alta and Tia presided over and attended the sacrifices for both sets of gods.
In the interest of harmony. . . .
Kaleth had some ideas on that score.
“If both sets of priests preside now, well, it won’t be long before they’re agreeing on a fixed set of rites, and the two sets of gods merge into one.”
It certainly seemed to be working.
If only other problems could be solved so easily.
As the sun-disk neared the horizon, Ari collected Nofret—Kashet was still the biggest, strongest dragon in the wing, and it was much easier for him to carry double. Maybe snapping at Ari had done some good; at least outwardly he didn’t act as anxious when he got Nofret, and she seemed more relaxed as they all headed back home, flying high to get the advantage of the cooler air.
Odd, though, how quickly he, at least, had gotten used to the desert. The heat just didn’t seem to bother him as much anymore.
He had no idea how prophetic those words about “worrying over things we have reason to worry about” would be.
Because as they arrived back at Sanctuary and started dropping down toward the buildings, they could see that the place was like an overturned beehive, with people milling about and forming little knots of tense conversation. One of Lord Khumun’s men was waiting for them as they approached their pens, standing on top of the dividing wall, waving frantically at them.
That’s not good. . . .
“Council chamber,” was all he shouted up at them, eyes shielded against the wind of the dragon’s wingbeats as it kicked up sand. “It’s an emergency!”
“You go!” Aket-ten called over to him and Ari and Nofret. “Land there, and send the dragons back! I’ll take care of them and rejoin you when I’m done!”
Kiron didn’t have to be told twice; he signaled to Avatre to abort her landing; with a grunt of effort, she rowed for height, and after a moment of confusion and hesitation as he resolved the conflict between habit and Ari’s new direction, Kashet followed her.
They landed in the street outside the council chamber—the building now serving only the dual purpose of being the place for meetings and Kaleth and Marit’s home, rather than as a full temple as well. Ari and Nofret were out of the saddle and on the ground as soon as the dragons furled their wings, and running through the doorway before Kiron had even thrown his leg over Avatre’s back. He slid down her shoulder, then turned and slapped Avatre on the foreleg, and called “Home!” and she shoved off from the ground without hesitation. He felt a momentary burst of pride at that; it had taken a long time to train her to follow an order without him on her back, but it was more than worth the effort at times like this one. Kashet, however, looked momentarily confused.
Kiron whistled and got the big male’s attention. “Kashet,” he said firmly, and making the “up” gesture with both hands. “Fly! Pen!” Kashet didn’t know the word “home”—which to Avatre meant two things; both Sanctuary itself, and any pen in which she had spent more than a couple of nights. But he did know “pen,” and “fly” as separate concepts—he just didn’t know what “fly” meant if Ari wasn’t on his back.
Kiron had done a lot more training to make Avatre autonomous from the beginning than Ari had ever done with Kashet. He’d had to; on their trek to Alta, he’d needed to be able to direct Avatre in hunting from some other place than in her saddle, because sometimes he needed to drive the game into Avatre’s waiting talons. Kashet, on the other hand, had never had to meet that challenge. The dragon looked at him with his head to one side, as if he was hearing some strange sound he didn’t recognize at all.
“Pen,” Kiron repeated, putting as much emphasis as he could on the simple word. Kashet knew what it meant, and he’d just seen Avatre fly off in that direction—surely he could reason out that he was meant to go there, too. . . .