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temple up a notch or two in the ever-changing pecking order, at least for a while. Probably if he had come at a time when there was no overabundance of meat, he might have been less welcome.
    And these men were truly only interested in what lay within the borders of this Nome; they were remarkably incurious about either Alta City or even their neighboring Nomes. All this worked to his advantage; all he needed to do was to be a courteous and agreeable guest.
    Yet surely, before he left, he was going to be expected to make an offering to the god—and unlike a real Jouster, he didn’t have a lot to his name.
    He cast his mind over his poor possessions, trying to decide if there was anything among them that was worth offering. And then it struck him.
    “I have with me the captured amulets of enemy Jousters,” he said to the Chief Priest with great diffidence as the feast drew to a close. “If the God would deign to accept them as a worthy sacrifice and a sign of His power over the gods of the enemy—”
    “Deign?” the Chief Priest said, throwing up pudgy little hands in delight (he was a small, round man who was clearly fonder of the pleasures of the table than he was of political machinations). “Good young Lord Kiron, it would be an honor to offer them for you! Let me send for your baggage, so that we can make the sacrifice before the midnight hour!”
    It was with no small sense of irony that Kiron watched the Priest lay out the line of faience amulets upon the Ram God’s altar with a reverence more suited to objects of gold than simple glazed clay. All of those amulets, sent to be Kiron’s own grave offerings by the terrified dragon boys to prevent his haunting them. . . .
    Still, most of them were Haras-hawk amulets, sign of the Jousters of Tia, and as such, were powerful symbols of an Altan victory over a Tian, if not valuable in themselves.
    And, presumably, they were something no other temple within the Nome of the Hare could boast of having.
    They wanted to send him to the guest quarters, but he was adamant about having a couch placed in the same chamber as Avatre. He had not slept a night away from her side since she was hatched, and he did not intend to start now.
    He was escorted to his couch by yet another acolyte, who apologized so many times for the simplicity of the quarters that Kiron was weary of reassuring him and glad when he took himself out. And if the quarters were bare, well, that was his choice, wasn’t it?
    And besides, when the lamp was blown out, all quarters were the same. As long as they held Avatre, he could not have cared if he slept on rock or in the Great King’s palace.
     
    It had been a little difficult to judge accurately, but if the Ram God’s priests were to be believed in their guesses of how far it was to Alta City, he and Avatre would be there by nightfall at the very latest, and mid-afternoon at the earliest.
    He did not have much of a plan, but then, perhaps he would not need one. His “plan,” such as it was, consisted of finding the Altan Jousters’ Compound, landing there, and telling his story. Or at least, an edited version of the story.
    This version featured him purposefully (rather than accidentally) making his escape flight and working his way in short stages around the edge of the desert, instead of involving the Bedu. In the first place, he did not want any rumor of the Veiled Ones’ involvement to get back to Tia, and in the second place, he did not want any rumor of Ari’s involvement to get back either. Everything would be true up to the point of Avatre’s First Flight; everything would be true after the point at which he crossed the border into Alta. In fact, the stories about the happenings in between would be partly true. He could tell a great many truths about learning to hunt with Avatre, the things he had taught her, about sandstorms they had been forced to fly above, about finding tiny wilderness water sources not even the Bedu had known were