She rubbed her eyes again; despite his ministrations, they still looked very red and sore. “I think he asked one of his Healer-friends for some advice on what to say. He said that it was woman’s troubles, the kind of thing that got Afre-tatef sent home a few moons ago. They wanted to know why I’d never shown any signs of it before, he got irritated and said, ‘How am I to know? I am only a father, not a Healer or a Winged One!’ Then he told them he had sent me to my aunt on her husband’s estate outside the Seventh Canal for a rest. That maybe I would be back, and maybe I wouldn’t, and it all depended on how the gods dealt with my troubles. Then he tried to ask them why they were so interested in a Winged One when I wasn’t training to be a Magus, and that was when they got very nasty.” She shuddered again. “It wasn’t anything that they said, it was the way that they said it. That Father must be sure to take good care of me, because Fledglings like me were important to the protection of Alta, and the Great Ones took the protection of Alta very seriously, and that I wasn’t just his daughter, I was a resource that he was holding in trust for all of Alta and—well, more things like that.”

“I can imagine,” Kiron said grimly and, in fact, he could. Although he had never been on the receiving end of such treatment, in no small part because anyone who wanted to intimidate him was usually perfectly free to beat him bloody, he had seen that sort of thing at work. “Lovely pots you have. It would be a shame if they were to all be smashed because you didn’t have someone around to keep an eye on them for you.” “The Headman of the village would really like this favor. You wouldn’t want to disappoint him.” “You know that people have gotten into trouble over less.” “Such a problem your son is—all it would take is one more complaint and who knows what would happen to him—” Oh, yes, he knew the silky tone, the innocent stare, the knife hidden beneath the cloth, the threat that was never implied in such a way that it was obvious to anyone except the one who was threatened.

“Anyway, you had warned Father already, and I was already hiding in the servants’ quarters. And as soon as he was sure that they were gone, his friend smuggled me here.” She sniffed. “I’m supposed to be learning how to Heal dragons. Actually, I am. I thought as long as I was here, I might just as well do it.”