"Mercedes Lackey - Dragon Jousters 3 - Sanctuary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

"Well, if you're thinking that we're better of? here, no matter how hard life is,
than there, well, I agree with you," Aket-ten said. "I'd rather starve and bathe in
sand than stay in Alta one moment longer. Not," she added with a shiver, "that I
think I'd be aware of where I was by now if I had stayed there."

Kiron nodded and grimaced. Aket-ten was clever (if, perhaps, sometimes a little
too inclined to flaunt that cleverness), brave (if a bit rash and headstrong), loyal
(if stubborn), kind (if a little sharp-tongued), and the best sort of friend.

And she was right. If she'd stayedтАФwell, if any of them had stayedтАФthey'd
probably be half dead from injuries and overwork, or entirely dead. Except for
Aket-ten, who would be locked up in the Magi's Tower of Wisdom with the rest
of the Winged Ones, somehow being drained to give the Magi the strength for
their magic.

ButтАФthanks mainly to KalethтАФthey'd escaped. They were safe in Sanctuary,
and if the future was shrouded in uncertainty, it was at least a future that held
freedom. As for Aket-ten, it was Kiron's hope she was inclining toward

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becoming more than just a "friend" of late, though he was not pushing too hard.
Aket-ten could also be very stubborn if pushed, and hated with a great passion
the least hint that she was being pressured into doing anything.

He probably had the Magi to thank for that. Still, his position could be much
worse. He'd once thought that she harbored a secret passion for Toreth, and that
had turned out to be false. The last thing he wanted to do was to give her even
the faintest of impressions that he was putting pressure on her. Aket-ten was not
a desert antelope to be swooped down upon, knocked over, and devoured.
Rather, she was like her own blue-black dragon Re-eth-ke, to be courted with
circumspection, tact, and delicacy, so that when she made up her own mind, it
was with the impression that she had been the one who'd had the idea in the first
place.

She came up beside him to lean on the parapet and look down into the sand pit
where the dragons were just beginning to stir. All the dragons shared a sand
wallow, rather than each having their own as they had back in Alta. There hadn't
been much of a choice in that; the Jousters' Compound had been tended by a
small army of servants, builders, and slaves. There were no slaves here in
Sanctuary, and precious few servants, and none to spare for building something
like the complex of quarters and sand wallows the dragons were used to.
Fortunately, they were all, with the exceptions of Avatre, and Ari's huge gold-
emerald-and-blue dragon Kashet, out of the same batch of eggs. All but Kashet
had romped together as nestlings and fledglings, and had trained together, under
the guidance of Kiron and Avatre, from the beginning of their lives. There was
no serious quarreling, much less the fighting that happened among unrelated
wild-caught Jousting dragons, and though there might be the occasional