About the time when he made out that the thing that Re-eth-ke had spotted was a group of four beasts and two men, she tucked her hindquarters under and fanned her wings more, slowing the dive even further; a moment later, Avatre did the same. When he made out that the riders were muffled in Bedu robes and veils, and the beasts were camels, they were moving no faster than they usually were when they made landings, and they were spiraling down in a series of shallow, lazy circles, while the men and beasts watched, the men calmly, the camels nervously. The honks and groans of their complaints drifted up to him, and one of the men laughed at something the other said.

Then the wings of both dragons snapped open to the fullest, simultaneously, and they began backwinging furiously. They touched down within a heartbeat of each other.

Kiron’s passenger might have been still too terrified to move; that was not the case with the other passenger. She had unbuckled her restraining strap and was sliding down Re-eth-ke’s back unassisted while the dust they had kicked up was still settling.

One of the men jumped out of his saddle, and began trotting toward them. She hardly seemed to touch the ground as she ran to meet him, cape flying behind her. He caught her up in a tight embrace and held her, while Kiron muttered to the young woman behind him, “You can look up now, Nofret. We’re down, Kaleth’s here, and something a little easier to ride is with him.”

“I’m not a coward. . . .” came the trembling reply.

“You’d be a fool if that ride hadn’t terrified you,” Kiron replied. “And you didn’t have anything to take your mind off the end of it. Here, I’ll help you.” He helped her to detach her icy-cold, fear-rigid fingers from his belt, while the second man took something off the back of one of the camels and beckoned to Aket-ten.

By the time he got Nofret down off the back of Avatre, Aket-ten was dragging a woven palm-leaf cloth full of dead goat over to Re-eth-ke, who had her neck stretched out toward it, nostrils flared. The man was dragging a second such burden right behind her; while Re-eth-ke started hungrily on the first installment of her meal, Aket-ten took the second from him. Kiron caught up with the man at the camels, and they brought both halves of Avatre’s meat to her. Kaleth had thought of everything. But then, he should have figured on that. Even before the Wings descended on him, Kaleth tried to think of everything.

Marit and Kaleth were still locked in their embrace, to no one’s surprise. Nofret was sitting on their baggage, which she had managed to get down off Avatre’s back, her head in her hands, now the very image of patient waiting.