as if she wished to stay—excused herself, saying she had to supervise the servants setting up her things.
Between them, Toreth and Kiron probably could have kept that particular conversation going all night. But there were, of course, chores to be done, dragonets to be settled into sleep, before they could gather in Aket-ten’s new quarters. Of all of them, Kiron had perhaps the lightest duty; the babies needed a last extra feeding to sustain them in their sleep, and they were growing so fast that they all had to have their sensitive skin rubbed with oily cloths before they went to sleep, or they might scratch too hard and damage themselves. Avatre needed nothing more than a little extra grooming, and to be told what a glorious dragon she was and that Kiron would be back soon. She settled into her sand with a sigh of pure pleasure, and was fast asleep in moments as the moon rose over the walls of the compound.
So he was the first to present himself at the door to Aket-ten’s courtyard. It hardly merited the title; it couldn’t have been more than fifteen paces in length or width, and boasted a tiny, square pool with a few latas, a single fish, and a square stone box in which a small acacia tree grew, scenting the night air with its blossoms. There was only one bench; Aket-ten was setting out pillows even as he arrived, and lighting lamps and torches around the walls. Somehow he felt relieved that she was not bringing them into any of those rooms. He helped her with the latter, allowing her to go back into one of the rooms for more cushions.
There were no mosaics adorning the pool, only the plainest of white tiles; there were no paintings on the walls. It had, after all, been a courtyard shared by a dozen servants, all crammed on pallets into three of the four rooms around it—the fourth room being the bathing room, of course. But Aket-ten seemed completely pleased with her new domain.
“Are you all right here?” he asked doubtfully.
“I feel safer here than at home,” she replied, “And I wouldn’t trust living with the Fledglings now no matter what the senior Winged Ones promised me.” She sighed, and sat down on a cushion at the edge of the pool, trailing her fingers in the water. “I don’t trust them anymore; I can’t. I think they would give me over to the Magi in a heartbeat. I couldn’t stay with the Healers either; I was in the way. They were quite polite about it, but I was an inconvenience at best, and I didn’t have a great deal in common with them. Healers are—very passionate about what they do, and I just didn’t share that passion. Here I’m at least useful.”
“I believe you would find a way to be useful no matter where you were,” said Toreth, coming in on the end of the statement. “I should warn you, though, Lord Khumun will have our heads if we stay too long here, tonight or any other night.”
“I’ll chase you out before you get yourselves into trouble,” she replied, as the rest straggled in. “I have duties of my own, too—ones I might as well tell you now, because it answers my brother’s question.” She looked around at everyone but Kiron. “No, I did not lose my powers—which were Animal Speech, the Silent Speech with a fellow Winged One, and the Far-Seeing Eye. I did not have the Seer’s Eye, which imparts a view of the future; I did seem to have it at first, but it was the Far-Seeing eye, not the ability to look into the future. I disappointed my teachers in that regard. Frankly—given how things have turned out—I think I am just as glad.”
“Why?” Gan asked, choosing a flat cushion of woven reeds for himself.
“Because I think if I had possessed the Seer’s Eye—no matter how far I went, the Magi would have come looking for me.” She shivered. “I am far less of a threat to them without it—”
“A threat?” her brother gaped at her.
“I’ll get to that in a moment.” She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes for a moment. “First, you should all know that one of my agreed-upon duties here is that I will be employing the Far-Seeing Eye privately for the benefit of Lord Khumun and the Jousters, and I will do so around dawn, because the Winged Ones are occupied