“They didn’t have a choice about being made slaves either,” Nofret retorted. “They were lucky past all reason. They could have been bought by a brothel, and weren’t—they could have been bought by almost anyone to serve as pleasure slaves, and escaped that fate, too. Instead, they were bought and given to us, and then got a chance to take back their freedom, all for the price of silence, a little play-acting, and some cleverness in escaping. In their position, I would be weeping with gratitude in front of the statue of At-thera tonight, and planning to offer prayers of thanks-giving for the rest of my life once I got away.”
She has a point, Kiron conceded.
“So now I assume you want us to get you—where?” asked Gan.
“To Kaleth,” said Marit immediately. “He’s managed to get three messages smuggled to me since he left. The last one said, ‘The hawk rises above the storm; the desert finds its own.’ ”
Kiron, Heklatis, and Aket-ten exchanged looks. It was Heklatis who spoke, slowly, as if he was thinking aloud.
“The boy has the Seer’s Eye,” he said. “And he’s with the Mouths, who presumably have something of the same and can teach him how to call visions instead of waiting to be struck by them. We all know how he feels about you, Marit—” she colored, and Nofret bit her lip, and looked pensive, “—and it is reasonable to assume he has been trying to watch you from a distance. So it is also reasonable that if we can get you to the edge of the desert, he will know, or possibly already knows, where you will be.”
Aket-ten shrugged when Marit looked to her for confirmation of this speculation. “I can’t think of any other interpretation. The question is how can we get you there quickly, and with as little to track you by as possible?”
“Amulets will take care of the latter,” said Heklatis, sucking on his lower lip. “But—”
“We fly you out,” Kiron said suddenly. “That’s what the first part of the message means! Or we fly you as far as Avatre and Re-eth-ke can take you in half a day. Thank the gods this happened during the rains! Aket-ten and I have already gone up above the clouds, and the winds can take us a long way without the dragons tiring, Re-eth-ke can carry double, since two girls are light, Avatre is big enough to carry double and baggage—”
“Ha!” said Heklatis, slapping his thigh and startling them all. “Hoist on their own tackle! I can borrow those winds that the Magi are using, or one of them, anyway, to take you straight west in the morning, and straight east in the afternoon! As fast as that air is moving, it will take you all the way to the desert and back with no one the wiser!”
Aket-ten grinned for the first time. “No one is going to miss us for that long, are they?”
Kiron shook his head. “No, they won’t. And even if someone were to come out to watch us, they won’t stay for long, because there’s nothing to see once the dragons are in the air. Look, here’s what we’ll do—”
Marit and Nofret slept in Aket-ten’s room, secure in the knowledge that with Heklatis’ guardian goddess there, the Magi would not be able to spy on the chamber. In the morning, everyone behaved absolutely normally. The Magus did not even glare at them more than usual; Kiron suspected that this might be because he was not aware that two of Heklatis’ “blessed” statues had come to roost elsewhere. It had occurred to him before he went to sleep that night that the Magus could not seem to sense other magic unless he actively ran into it, either by trying to use his own magic, or by physically crossing it. So, since he would not try to go into a dragon pen anymore, they were safe from discovery for a while. Of the lot of them, if he was searching for pockets of discontent or conspiracies among Toreth and Kaleth’s friends, he would be looking at the nobly born boys who had been the twin princes’ childhood friends, not Kiron or Aket-ten. Kiron, after all, had no real power and no influential friends except Lord Ya-tiren, who was well known for his retiring nature. And Aket-ten had been playing the part of a frightened mouse.
They went out to practice, as usual. And, as often happened, a couple of dragon boys,