resolved to put more effort into learning to read.
Finally, with stomach full and the strong palm wine the lord favored at his table making Kiron a bit drowsy, he returned to the courtyard where Avatre was to discover that someone had cleverly set up a box of sand where she could deposit her leavings.
And before he could clean it out, a servant appeared.
Are they hovering just out of sight? he wondered, startled, Or are they able to know what I’m thinking? Either way, it made him uneasy; Orest might take such things for granted, but he wasn’t used to having people appear out of nowhere to take a task out of his hands before he started it.
“It is by the direction of the Order of Magi, my Lord, that the dragon’s—droppings—be taken to them, as the Jousting dragons’ are,” said the servant, with great politeness, relieving him of the shovel he had picked up. “That is my assignment, and your dragon seems not to mind.”
“Oh, she’s safe enough,” Kiron said blankly. “But I thought that—well, she looks dangerous, and your Jousting dragons are dangerous, so I thought—”
“That we would be afraid?” the servant replied, and smiled. “No, my Lord. The Lady Aket-ten told us that we need not fear the little dragon. This is all the assurance we need.”
“Well—ah—thank you, then,” Kiron replied, and once the servant and his burden were gone, after giving Avatre a great deal of attention and scratching, he went to lie down on his cot in the shade.
His dreams were full of hieroglyphs and hieratic script at first, but then the sign for “wah,” which was a pair of wings, swept under him and carried him off, and the wings turned into Avatre.
And then his dreams were full of flying.
The afternoon was given over, as Orest had said, to listening to philosophers and historians teach. Except that Avatre needed some flying exercise (though not nearly as much as a fully grown Jousting dragon did).
And since Orest was going to have to learn this anyway, Kiron decided to help his friend out by recruiting him to learn how to put the harness on a dragon, using Avatre, who would by far be the easiest he would ever handle until his own dragon got used to the weight and feel of it. The philosophers and historians would still be there when Avatre had been exercised.
“Later I’ll let you fly her, too, if she’ll take you,” he said, “But not until I’m healed, and she’s stronger, and not until I’m sure, really sure, that she’ll always obey me if I’m on the ground.”
Orest looked disappointed, but he didn’t voice it, which Kiron thought was very much to his credit.
Avatre was practically quivering with excitement, and the need to get into the sky. Kiron had to use a stool to get onto her back; his ribs hurt him too much when he tried to climb up the usual way, even with her lying down.
Finally he gave her the signal she was longing for, and she leaped up like an arrow from a fully pulled bow. And she jarred him so that he sucked in his breath in a hiss to keep from yelping and startling her. This wasn’t going to be easy. . . .
And, in fact, until she reached the height that pleased her and found a thermal to soar with, it was damnably painful.
But once she spread her wings to the warm, rising air and stopped jouncing him, and he was able to look down—he found himself thinking that the view was worth some pain.
The hot wind of the kamiseen held them aloft; up here it tasted of the arid desert, a little. Avatre stretched her wings and her neck and he could swear that he saw her smiling. From here he could see the innermost two canals of the seven that ringed Alta City, and a good part of the third. And from here, it was quite clear how the city had grown. The first canal must have been dug around a relatively high spot in the delta marshlands, and everything that was dug up had been deposited in the center, building up what eventually became the hill upon which the Great Ones’ Palace and all the important temples stood, as well as the minor palaces of all of the most important nobles of Alta. Probably everyone in Alta City had once lived there, but eventually, as the city grew, and those of rank and wealth