Well, no one would now be able to say she had not done her best to help her “rivals.”
Besides . . . she couldn’t bear the thought of those beautiful little creatures slowly starving to death. . . .
When Nofret had approved the notion of the “Queen’s Jousters,” Aket-ten had hoped that young women would be as eager to volunteer for such a thing as the young men were. There never seemed to be any shortage of young women wishing to be priestesses, for instance, and that was equally demanding work. . . .
Not that she was going to take just anyone, but—
“I don’t understand this,” she said forlornly, as Peri helped her to feed the babies, which she had housed all together in one pen for ease in care. “Why aren’t there more people who want to train as Jousters?”
“More girls, you mean,” Peri said shrewdly. “Well that’s easy enough. How is a girl going to find a good husband if she’s riding around on a dragon?”
Aket-ten stared at her, dumbfounded. “You jest, yes?”
But Peri shook her head. “You have not spent enough time around ordinary people, Aket-ten,” she said frankly. “Ordinary girls anyway. It seems . . . even among us when we were serfs, that was what we talked about. It was what our mothers and grandmothers talked about. It was all anyone ever talked about—”
“Not among the Winged Ones!” Aket-ten protested.
“Then perhaps you are looking in the wrong place,” the girl said shrewdly. “Perhaps if you looked among the priestesses—”
Aket-ten blinked. That simply had not occurred to her. But—
But among the priestesses, her power was considered minor, uninteresting, and . . . to be honest . . . not at all useful. To be able to speak into the mind of an animal? To what purpose? Far more useful and cherished were those who could speak to another priestess at a distance, to see at a distance or the future or the past. To speak with spirits—that was another sought-for power. Most of all, to be a Mouth of the Gods . . .
All these things could serve the people. What would you learn if you spoke into the mind of an animal? Not a great deal that was useful.
Unless, of course, that animal was a dragon.
Aket-ten had been able to calm even the Jousting dragons that had gone to the wild. She could coordinate an entire wing. She could soothe fears and tell what was hurting.
What if every wing had someone like her?
“Peri,” she said breathlessly, “you are a genius.”
“I am a genius covered in bits of meat,” Peri said ruefully, looking at her bloody, sticky hands. “Let us finish feeding these little ones so we can bathe before we become covered in biting flies.”
Aket-ten laughed.
She hurried through her bath, though, a daily luxury she usually lingered over, especially in the hot days like this one. Not that she didn’t take care with it; she certainly did that. After all, when one is going to visit a temple, one does well to look one’s best.
But she also did not want to look as if she was one of those silly women who dressed to impress a man with how important and wealthy she was. Baket-ke-aput, the High Priest of Haras in Mefis, was not the sort to be impressed by what was on the surface of things.
She did pause at the Palace long enough to ask Nofret’s vizier for a note of introduction to the priest, and waited while a servant went to take her request to the overseer. The Palace was pleasantly cool, the effect of the same magic that kept the sands of the dragon pens warm. Heat was removed from the Palace, where it certainly was not wanted, and sent to the pens, where it certainly was, something that at the moment, the dwellers in Sanctuary and Aerie would probably be very glad of. Aket-ten amused herself by examining the murals here, which were many-times-life-sized paintings of one of the Kings of Tia out hunting in the marshes for ducks.
Which was certainly a subject preferable to one of the many Kings of Tia out hunting for Altans in his war chariot . . . .
A note of introduction was going to be necessary to get past all the underpriests and scribes and functionaries of the temple, who were there in no small part to keep the High Priest from being bothered. The High Priest of Haras was not the sort of person one simply walked up to—well, not unless one was the Great King—
“Aket-ten!”
She looked up, startled, to see Ari himself striding toward her, hands outstretched, his bodyguards looking very unhappy to be forced to trot to keep up with him.
“Nofret’s vizier knew that I am to have an audience with Baket-ke-aput shortly, or rather,” Ari grinned, “he is to have an audience with me. I see no reason why your business with him, whatever it is, cannot be broached at the same time.”
Aket-ten felt almost faint with gratitude. She had been anticipating, despite a note, having to spend most of the rest of the day, and possibly tomorrow, being sent from one underling and scribe to another.
This would cut all of that short.
Belatedly she remembered that this was not just Ari. This was the Great King—
And she quickly got to her feet and flung herself down on her face again.
“Oh—” she heard him say in exasperation. “Don’t do that. Or at least, don’t do it when we are private together. It isn’t necessary.”
Slowly she got back up to her feet and smoothed out her linen sheath with both hands. “If that is your will, Great K—”
“Not when we are private together,” Ari said firmly. “And, to you, in private, I am nothing more than Ari. Now come to the Lesser Audience Chamber with me. Baket-ke-aput is a good man. If what you need is simple enough, he may be able to help you this very day.”
Aket-ten had not really had very much to do with Ari back when they were all just the refugee Jousters trying to survive at Sanctuary. She was Altan, he was Tian, he was
so
much older than the rest of the young wing of Jousters created by Kiron, and at any rate, it had not been long before the plan of making him Great King and Nofret Great Queen had resulted in both of them being so embroiled in plans and strategies and negotiations that she had seldom seen him
or
Nofret. He had been Kiron’s great friend and mentor, not hers. She hadn’t really thought he had paid all that much attention to her, but—
“So I suspect this is about this plan of yours, the Queen’s Wing?” he asked, glancing at her with a hint of a smile. She started a bit, and his smile broadened. “Nofret and I
do
talk, you know. I was intrigued. I’m not at all clear why you want to do this, but I am intrigued.”
“I’m not sure it is a very good idea now,” she confessed, subdued. “I am having difficulty finding girls who want to be Jousters.”
“You’re having difficulty finding girls like yourself.” Ari nodded. “Not very surprising, really. People in Tia, not just girls, are accustomed to a rigid structure all about them. People expect to do what their fathers, and their grand-fathers, and their many-times-great grandfathers did. If you are a farmer, your son will be a farmer, and your father was a farmer. You
might
go into the army, or, if you were very clever and very fortunate, you might go to the priesthood or apprentice as a scribe. But you wouldn’t expect to leave your home village unless you went into the army. I expect it is even more rigid for girls, since girls don’t go to the army or become scribes.”
“No, they don’t.” Aket-ten frowned. “But in Alta . . . you might become a skilled craftswoman . . . or . . . or something.” But she couldn’t really think
what
else a woman might become. She had never been forced to look at things that way. She had always had such freedom as a Nestling, then a Fledgling—one of the special the chosen, the Winged Ones. And before that, well, as the cherished daughter of a great noble.
“Well, I really don’t know what it’s like in Alta. I do know that I was probably the only scribe ever to become a Jouster. And if I had been forced to learn to handle a wild-caught,
tala
-drugged dragon rather than a hand-tamed one to do so, you would probably find me sharpening my pens in the marketplace at this very moment.” He laughed at her expression.
“I cannot imagine you ever being content to be a scribe,” she finally said.
“Oh, I did not say I would have been
content,
” he replied. “But here we are.”
They had passed through a number of large, open rooms, most of which had been sparsely populated by people doing things at desks. Light came from ventilation slits up near the ceiling. Now they entered another large room, but this one was empty of everything but a very low dais with two thrones on it, and some stools against the wall.
“Go stand there, if you please,” Ari said, gesturing to the left side of the dais. Aket-ten quickly obeyed. As a former Winged One and the daughter of a noble, she was accustomed to standing about for long periods of time doing nothing.
She adopted the relaxed posture she had learned was best for such situations, while Ari mounted the dais, put on the Lesser Crown that was waiting on the seat of one of the two thrones, and took an equally relaxed pose.
As if that had been some sort of summons, a tall, thin, ascetic man with a faintly harried expression came out of the next room, went to his knees and bowed, then rose again. “Great King, the High Priest Baket-ke-aput craves audience with you.”
Ari looked very much as if he wanted to say, “I know that; he made an appointment.” Instead he inclined his head gracefully and answered, “Then let the High Priest Baket-ke-aput approach.”
The man who entered the room was tall and vigorous—certainly well past middle-age, but vigorous and strong for all of that. He did not abase himself—and why should he; the High Priest of any god was the equal of the Great King, and in fact, the Great King was also a High Priest as his wife would be a High Priestess. But the two greeted each other as friends, and Ari immediately ordered a stool for him.
Baket-ke-aput glanced at her curiously a time or two, but the matters of which they spoke were hardly secret. It seemed that Ari had a plan—
“—build or rebuild temples, with places for the gods of both Tia
and
Alta, was what I thought,” he was saying. “Two moons of every year for six years, or one year in full to belong to the King to work on these temples. Men from both Tia and Alta would be working side-by-side, sharing the same rations, living in the same barracks, putting up with the same overseers. By the end of two months . . . well, they would go home knowing that the man from the other land is no monster. You cannot share bread and beer with someone for two months and still think of him as unholy.”
Baket-ke-aput pursed his lips. “That fits in neatly with what I had come to ask you for,” the old man replied with a nod. “Some way to enlarge our temples so that the corresponding god of Alta can be set side-by-side with his Tian counterpart. But enlarging the temples would take costly labor, and costlier stone. By your scheme, however . . .”
“You like it, then?” Ari asked eagerly, leaning forward on his throne.
“I think it is a stroke of genius. Let the Great King supply the labor, the temples themselves will supply the raw materials. And now—” the High Priest nodded his head at Aket-ten. “Perhaps you can tell me why this charming young person has been standing here all this time. It is surely not because she is merely a restful place to gaze upon.”
Aket-ten blushed, as Ari gestured her forward. “Jouster Aket-ten, this is the High Priest of Haras whom you asked to see, Lord Baket-ke-aput. Let me make you known to each other.”
“Jouster Aket-ten?” Baket-ke-aput’s brows rose. “Interesting. And what can the Great Queen’s courier wish of me?”
Hurriedly, Aket-ten explained her difficulty in finding young women to join what she, in imitation of Ari, called the “Queen’s Wing.” Baket-ke-aput listened to her with interest until she ran out of things to say.
“And how do you suppose that I may help you in this endeavor?” he said, with a half smile. “I know nothing about dragons, and not a great deal about young women. That is the sign of my wisdom, by the way, Aket-ten. In my age, I have come to understand how little I know of women.”
She flushed. “Well,” she said hesitantly. “I thought . . . I thought maybe . . .” she fumbled, “If there were other girls with my . . . ah . . . the Gift of understanding the minds of animals is not a very useful one . . . and even if they didn’t have that, I thought maybe . . . priestesses would . . .”
Baket-ke-aput laughed gently. “Yes, it is true, the young women who become priestess are very often much more strong-minded and -willed than their sisters. So yes, Aket-ten, I will have the word spread, not only among the young Priestesses of Haras, but of other gods as well. This is serving the gods no less than offering incense and sacrifice and—” He smiled. “The kind of young lady who finds the notion of flinging herself into the sky on the back of a fearsome dragon to be fun is probably
not
suited to a life of prayer and contemplation!”
SIX
WITHIN
two days, there was a rider from the merchant caravan that Kiron had saved, arriving in Aerie with a request for another overflight, and with him, two more traders who had come there themselves. Success in that first trial had caught the attention of King and Queen and merchants alike, more than he had guessed, as it turned out.
Success piled onto success, with every patrol that the wings made that ended in saving a merchant caravan or a traveler. Sometimes the successes were small ones, setting right a traveler who had lost the road, or dropping a waterskin to someone who had run out. Sometimes they were large, like that first rescue.
The Jousters responded to it as well, with growing cheer and a sense that they were, once again, worth something. Perhaps more so now than when they had been fighters. Then they had been taking lives. Now they were saving them.
And as the Tian and Altan Jousters worked more and more closely together, a grudging respect, and then in some cases, real friendship began to grow.