“No,” Kiron said simply. “Come back with us, be yourself, and make a home with us. Do you not think we like you for yourself, and wish your company? Aket-ten tends to Re-eth-ke. She saved Re-eth-ke’s life by comforting her, she trains Re-eth-ke now, and I would not let you take the dragon from her now, even if you wanted her. We don’t want a replacement for Toreth, we want Kaleth, our friend, who needs someone to share his grief with, just as we do. Come and be yourself, with us, who are your friends.”

He didn’t know where those words had come from, but they must have been the right ones, for something within Kaleth visibly broke. His face crumpled, and he began to weep, as if for the last sixty days he had kept his own grief pent behind a dam.

Gan took one side of him, and Orest the other, and they helped him along. Kiron hurried his steps and went on ahead, to make certain that all of Toreth’s things had been taken from the empty pen, and it was bare of everything but the essentials. Kaleth had seldom come here; mostly they had met in Kiron’s pen. There would be no memories in that place for him, and likely he would never know that it had been Toreth’s unless someone told him.

The pen was empty, the sand clean and smooth, the room held only the cot and some linen. Even Toreth’s colors had been painted over on the door outside the room. Re-eth-ke had new colors now, scarlet and white, chosen by Aket-ten.

Kiron found an unoccupied slave and sent him in search of the things that Kaleth would need for his comfort.

Then he went in search of Heklatis, and told him what was toward.

“I don’t know what his parents think they’re doing,” he said bleakly, “But something tells me that if we don’t get him away from them, he’ll—do something drastic.”

The Healer nodded.

“Good. This is the best place for him. I will make a potion so he can sleep when he is wept out; I suspect he has done as little of that as of sleeping.”

Kiron sent a message to Lord Ya-tiren; three slaves returned laden with cushions and lamps, scrolls and papyrus and all the things a scribe needed, including a comfortable chair, a clever little table. In short, all the things needed to make the little chamber into a place of welcome and refuge for a scholar.

It was an unexpected and amazingly kind and thoughtful act that brought tears to Kiron’s eyes again. He could not help but contrast this with Kaleth’s own parents and their actions.