Alta

TWELVE

KIRON stood before the single most important man in the compound, and asked for the moon, the sun, and the stars.
“I want to teach the boys how to fly a dragon now,” said Kiron to Lord Khumun. “I think that putting an inexperienced rider on a fledgling dragon is going to get someone hurt or killed, and there are people who have the ears of the Great Ones who would be pleased if that happened.”
He did not come out and say that the Magi would be just as glad if the Jousters began having a bout of trouble, but they both knew who he was talking about. For once, the Magi were not getting the credit for victory. Their storms might be keeping the Tian Jousters on the ground, but it was the Altan Jousters, not some storms too far away to be seen, that were being lauded as the force that was turning the tide in this war.
So Kiron had intercepted Lord Khumun just after his daily inspection of the dragon pens, for Lord Khumun did not leave the running of the compound up to his Overseer—or rather, Lord Khumun was the Overseer, in the sense that he personally inspected everything, every day, and knew the names of every inhabitant of the compound right down to the dragon boys.
The Lord of the Jousters regarded him steadily, arms crossed over his chest. “All right. I can see where that might be true enough. And it is true that the failure of one of us reflects badly on all of us. What did you have in mind, bearing in mind that all of the dragons we have are out fighting or flying patrols every day?”
Kiron cleared his throat, and began his carefully prepared argument, reminding himself that the worst that could happen would be that Lord Khumun would say “no.” “Simply flying—taking off, doing simple maneuvers over the compound, and landing—isn’t going to task a dragon at all, especially not if it’s only enough to get their muscles warmed up. I want my boys to start taking the beasts up and warming them up before their assigned rider takes them out, and that is how they will learn to fly before their own dragonets fledge. To start with, I want to use only the two desert dragons that laid our eggs. They’re both Tian dragons, so they were caught in Tia as fledglings rather than adults and they’re tamer. And frankly, they’re lazier. A lazy dragon is what I want for a new rider.”
Lord Khumun nodded thoughtfully, and pursed his lips. “And I can also see where having your boys warm up a lazy dragon might actually be to our advantage. I’ve noticed that those two lose some of their lethargy once they’ve been moving for a while. Go on.”
Yes indeed, Lord Khumun knew everything having to do with the Jousters and their beasts. There could be no equivalent to “Vetch and Avatre” here; had anyone hidden an egg or a growing dragonet in an empty pen, Lord Khumun would have known within the day. Not that Kiron could fault Haraket, the Overseer of the Tian Compound—the Altan Compound was less than half the size of the Tian equivalent. It wasn’t that Haraket was careless; no, it was that Lord Khumun was an absolute fanatic about all things having to do with his Jousters.
On the other hand, there would be no equivalent to the dreadful accident that allowed Avatre to be hatched either.
“I’ll go up on Avatre at the same time, keeping the height advantage above them, so that if the dragon tries any tricks, we can herd them down again. Two dragons doing two runs each day means that my boys will each get a practice ride every other day.” Now he made a face. “I’d put them up on Avatre, too, but there’d be no one up there with them as a safeguard.”
“That assumes she could be gotten into the air with you still on the ground,” Lord Khumun pointed out. “I think it unlikely that at this stage she would accept another rider. Perhaps when she is older, but not now.”
He’s talking as if he is in favor of this already. Actually, I suppose if he wasn’t he would have said no from the beginning. And he’s not going to ask me to put the others on Avatre to teach them either. Thanks be to the gods! Kiron relaxed a little at passing one hurdle—and the truth was, though he could think of other excuses why he didn’t want his friends to train on Avatre’s back, the real reason was that he didn’t want to share her. The mere thought of someone else in her saddle made him acutely unhappy. “With the training I’ve been giving them on the mock dragon, I think they’ll be comfortable in the air pretty quickly.” He waited to see what Lord Khumun would have to say about this, for Lord Khumun had been remarkably silent on the subject of Kiron’s unorthodox training methods. But what was he to do? Traditionally, the Jousters of Alta had been presented with fully-grown, trained, tala-drugged dragons, and taught to fly on them from the beginning. The dragonets were nowhere near big enough to ride.
The mock dragon had been an idea of his own. He had racked his brain for weeks to come up with a way to simulate flying, and finally, watching a new awning being put up over a pen gave him the idea. Some training was done by putting a saddle at one end of a lever with a weight at the other, but that only gave the rider up-and-down motion. And it wasn’t very far off the ground.
The training of the Tian dragons, with the dragons tethered within their pens, would be part of the training, but it wouldn’t bring the boys along nearly as fast as Kiron wanted—and what was more, both rider and dragonet would be beginners. As he had said, putting two beginning flyers into the air at once was trouble waiting to happen.
Look what had happened to him, and he had some experience at flying by then!
Then, somehow, watching that awning being re-strung, combined with the tethered fledgling, cascaded in his mind into the mock dragon.
A tightly packed bundle of reeds the size of a dragon’s chest had been put in the center of a courtyard. Ropes had been strung through enormous eye bolts driven into the stone in each corner of the yard at the top of the wall. The ropes were then brought to the center of the yard and tied to the bundle. A dragon saddle was put on it, one of the boys strapped himself into the saddle, and then eight muscular slaves pulled on the ropes to heave the whole contraption into the air until it was suspended above the court, and the boy with it. A thick pile of loose straw with straw-filled mattresses atop that was positioned beneath the bundle.
And then the games began.
The object of the boy in the saddle was to remain in the saddle and relatively in control of the situation, which translated as keeping his balance no matter what happened. The object of the slaves was to unseat him. At first, this had been limited to imitating the sorts of movements that a dragon would make while flying—the swooping up and down of wing-beat flying, pitches to the right or left. Once those were mastered, though, all bets were off, and the slaves were given leave to make the mock dragon do anything they could manage, whether or not a real dragon would be capable of the motion. And although Kiron had done his best to make sure the mock dragon wouldn’t actually flip upside down, the slaves had managed to find a way to make it do what it wasn’t supposed to.
The boys came off at first, of course, restraining straps or no restraining straps. They had plenty of bruises to show for it. And they got sick at first. Not anymore.
As a consequence, he was reasonably certain that the two desert dragons would not be able to do anything to rid themselves of their brand-new riders.
“I think that’s a reasonable idea,” said Lord Khumun. “It doesn’t tax the dragons, you’ve got safeguards in mind. And then what will you follow this with, once your wing is comfortable with the two desert dragons?”
“I want them to all take the same sort of warm-up flights on the swamp dragons, so that all of them go up, twice a day, every day.” This wasn’t as dangerous as it might have been before the swamp dragons had been retrained. And there was a big advantage that the swamp dragons had over the desert dragons in this case; they were smaller, so they were less inclined to try violent maneuvers to rid themselves of an unwanted rider.
Once again, Lord Khumun nodded. “I like that. If anything, the swamp dragons need warming up more than the desert dragons do, especially in the morning.
Do you think that once your riders have mastered the swamp dragons, their own will be near fledging?”
“I don’t know, my Lord,” Kiron said honestly. “But if they are not, I propose sending one or two out with a senior Jouster on border-patrol flights, once a day. Not fighting, but simply patrolling. If you choose to replace injured or exhausted Jousters in this way—well, just because the rider is injured or exhausted, that doesn’t mean the dragon is, and there is no reason to let the dragon laze about his pen and get out of condition.”
“I see your point, and although I would like to consult with the senior Jousters on that idea, even this last phase of your plan has its merits,” Lord Khumun acknowledged. “Very well. You can put the first stage of your plan into action, and the second as well. We will then see if we actually need to proceed to the third stage when the time comes.”
Kiron bowed deeply out of overwhelming gratitude. “Thank you, my Lord. I do not believe you will be less than happy with the results.”
When he rose again, Lord Khumun was smiling. “I can see why you made a poor serf,” he said softly. “It was the same reason why you make an excellent leader. Go on with you. I’m sure your wing is waiting to hear the results of your request to me.”
Kiron bowed again, and—well, he didn’t run, but he wanted to. He satisfied dignity with a very brisk walk to the area the senior Jousters had begun to call “the Nursery.” Not that anyone really minded the name—the place was full of baby dragons, after all, and though the senior Jousters might have looked on Kiron’s wing with a certain level of patronization, it was paternal patronization. And all they had to do was to look at Avatre and the things she could do to know what the future held for the rest of the babies in the Nursery.
The others all knew what he was going to ask, of course. They’d all been talking about the idea for the last several days. They were too wise to wait for him anywhere near Lord Khumun’s quarters, but they pounced on him as a group the moment he entered the corridor nearest the Nursery.
Before they could start chattering at him, he held up his hands in the victory sign, and the corridor echoed with their cheers. He had to smile at that. Oh, they were so eager to get into the sky, even the ones who’d been sick on the mock dragon. How easily they forgot!
“Oh, don’t start cheering until after you’ve had a taste of what those two beasts I’m going to start you on can think up in the way of torment for a new flyer!” he warned them, laughing. “Don’t forget for a moment that these are mean old cows who would much rather be in their sand wallows being treated like princesses than have to work for their meat. It’s going to be especially bad for the first two to ride them, in the morning. They hate getting up, and they’ll take it out on you!”
“But you and Avatre will be there to teach them better manners,” said Gan gaily. “There’s nothing to worry about, is there, lads?”
Kiron sighed. Enough enthusiasm to build a palace and not a brick of common sense among them. Well, they would see soon enough for themselves that he hadn’t been joking. The first few days were going to be—interesting.
No wonder Haraket was bald. He must have torn his own hair out long before I ever came to the compound.
He had to wonder, though. Were all young riders such overconfident idiots?

Sut-ke-re, rider of Jatel, laughed when he asked that question aloud. “Ah, Kiron,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Are not most young men in general overconfident idiots? I think that is the essence of a young man.”
“Well—” he said, and flushed when he thought of what he had done to win Avatre for himself. It had been insane. He should never have been able to pull it off. At least he hadn’t been overconfident—he’d been terrified every moment of every day that he would be caught—but he’d been a fool to even try it in the first place. “I suppose so. If not overconfident, then—at least, we are all foolhardy. And as for idiots—well, I suppose we are that, too.”
“I think it is in the nature of young men,” Sut-ke-re said, pulling off his short wig and rubbing his shaved head as he squinted up at the sun. “Young men are willing to take risks that older men would not even think of trying. Young men believe they are immortal, I do think. I know that they are impatient with tradition. If they were not, they would never attempt the half of what they do, and no new thing would ever be tried.”
“Such as growing dragons from the egg?” Kiron hazarded.
“Such as growing dragons from the egg,” Sut-ke-re confirmed. “Now, here is my dilemma. On the one hand, I would rather that your wing did traditional training. On the other hand, there are no dragons to spare for traditional training, and even if there were, there are young men two or three years older than your boys are, who have had other sorts of military training, who are waiting for a dragon. There are always more trained warriors wanting to be Jousters than there are dragons. And I agree with you that putting two fledgling flyers into the air at the same time is foolhardy. So I agreed, and so did Ke-shuth.”
“Jouster,” said Kiron, trying to put as much gratitude as he could muster into his voice, “Thank you.”
Sut-ke-re shrugged. “I can see no reason to object to your borrowing Jatel before I am ready to ride out, for she is a lazy cow and could surely stand to be ridden far more in a day than I ride her. And Keshuth will be pleased to have his slug Orthele warmed up and more inclined to move when he comes to take her out as well.”
So, he had gotten past the second hurdle with not so much as a single objection! “Thank you, Jouster Sut-ke-re,” Kiron said again, with relief as well as gratitude. He bowed slightly, and turned to go give the boys the good news.
“Just you keep them out of trouble!” Sut-ke-re called after him, though there was amusement in his voice. “If ever I turn up and there’s a sprained foot or a strained wing, a broken strap or an exhausted dragon, there will be a reckoning!”
This made for a change in the babies’ routine. The dragonets were no longer clamoring for food constantly; they were content with several large meals every day now, which made it possible for the boys to get away long enough to train in between feedings. But for the two on the morning flights of the new stage of training, the dragonets had to be fed by someone else, otherwise the two boys in question would not have time to fly before the wings went up.
That “someone” was Aket-ten.
She had, in fact, volunteered for the duty, and Kiron had been concerned that she would not be up to it. Feeding the babies was still a messy, bloody job, and he would not have blamed her for taking one look and deciding it was not for her.
In fact, she took to it without a flinch or a word of complaint, and by the time Toreth and Huras were ready for their first real flights, she had fed every one of the babies, under the supervision of its “mother,” at least twice.
As for the babies, once they got over the surprise of seeing someone different from their “mother” with food in hand, they accepted her without question or pause. In fact, they began to obey her nearly as well as they obeyed their “mothers,” which meant that she could take a turn at the baby minding when they played together.
“If I’m going to be Speaking with them, and possibly helping them when they’re sick or hurt, I’d better be prepared to feed them, now, hadn’t I?” she replied, when Kiron had suggested that she might find it unpleasant. “If I have to help hand feed a very sick or injured dragon, it’s not going to be much different from what I’m doing now except in terms of scale.” Since she was exactly right, there hadn’t been anything he could do except to thank her and turn her over to the boys to be shown what to do.
By this point, the dragonets were bonded strongly enough with their riders that having someone else feed them once every couple of days wasn’t going to make a difference. And Aket-ten was right; better to have them associate her with a very pleasant experience now, so that when she had to help them under unpleasant conditions, they would trust her.
On the first morning of the new training, Kiron had the dragon boys bring Jatel and Orthele to the landing courtyard after they had been saddled. There was no other way to get both boys up into the air under supervision at the same time. Both dragons were heartily displeased with this change in routine, and hissed and whined at each other when they were led into the courtyard. But Kiron had strong slaves standing by to help the dragon boys if needed, and though the two dragons grumbled, they didn’t actually do anything, thus being true to their essentially lazy natures.
Kiron and Avatre took off as soon as Toreth and Huras were in their saddles. Avatre watched the two dragons below her with great interest as he put her into a little circle above the court. As soon as he thought their position was good, he waved to the dragon boys below; they unhitched the chains, and the two riders gave their dragons the signal to fly.
And nothing happened.
Now this was not entirely unexpected. Their regular riders knew what to do, but both of the desert dragons had probably assessed these inexperienced boys within moments as being riders that they could afford to ignore, and they were not going to move unless they were forced. It was hard to force a dragon to do something it didn’t want to do—and they held grudges when you did.
So Kiron did the forcing.
He had considered stinging them with clay pellets from his sling and had thought better of the idea. He didn’t want these dragons to associate his boys with being “bitten” by a clay pellet. So instead, he had laid another plan to get the dragons to fly.
He gave a second signal—and on the other side of the wall, one of the local pigeon keepers flung open his portable coop, and several dozen rock doves burst into the air with a whirring explosion of wings.
As Kiron very well knew, when one winged thing suddenly explodes into the sky, virtually every other winged thing nearby will do the same. The instinct to flee the unexpected is a powerful one, and in general, winged creatures are uniquely vulnerable when grounded, so when the eyes and ears took in the signal Fly!, it was likely that they would do so without hesitation.
The dragons were no exception.
Even Avatre started at the explosion of wings; Jatel and Orthele leaped for the sky, their muscles and wings moving before their heads had a chance to interfere. Toreth and Huras hung on for dear life as the dragons climbed, each surging wingbeat throwing them back, then forward, in their saddles.
Avatre got a little more height; Aket-ten had done her best to convey what the dragon’s duties were going to be this morning, and apparently Avatre had understood. As Toreth and Huras gradually, and successfully, exerted more and more control over their mounts, Avatre kept watchful vigil just above them. Whenever either of the two looked as if she was going to take command of the situation to do what she wanted, Avatre followed Kiron’s directions and made a feint at her. Avatre might not be fully grown yet, but she had the superior position, and the other two hated physical confrontation with another dragon. Historically, they closed for combat with great reluctance, and never tried to lay into an enemy dragon with tooth or claw the way the swamp dragons sometimes did.
Finally they were answering the simple commands that the boys gave them with a minimum of objection, and Kiron got a little more height to let the boys put the two dragons through their paces. Up here, with the sun beating down on them, it was hot already, though the first hints that the kamiseen would start soon were definitely in the wind. All three dragons were soon moving easily and freely, and the little grunts and hisses of complaint from below stopped coming. Kiron was enjoying himself completely, and so was Avatre, when he looked down to the landing courtyard and saw someone waving a bit of white linen in the signal that the proper riders were ready to go out.
There was a moment of confusion for the two adult dragons, who were not used to landing so soon after taking off; Avatre had to come down very near to them in order to persuade them to land. And they hissed a bit in complaint when they saw their proper riders and realized that the first flight had been nothing more then a warm-up.
But though they hissed, they took to the sky again with no sign of reluctance, and joined up with the rest of the wing. Only when he was sure that they were not going to give their riders any trouble—and thus a reason to object to this training scheme—did Kiron turn toward the boys of his own wing.
Huras looked a little pale. Toreth, however, was gazing after the departed dragons with a look of longing.
“It will be too long until the day after tomorrow,” said Toreth.
Huras snorted. “For you, maybe,” was all he said.
Kiron recalled his own first experience with real flight, and sympathized. But he didn’t offer that sympathy to Huras, who would only learn that one got used to flying by actually getting used to it. And he wanted to be a Jouster—Jousters didn’t ride their dragons on the ground.
By the end of the fourth day, Jatel and Orthele were resigned to the new schedule, and if they were not happy about it, they had at least stopped being so uncooperative. There had been two instances of trying to dump their riders, neither of which had been anything like as violent as some of the convulsions the mock dragon could produce. There were three attempts to refuse to take off, all three of which had been overcome by a release of pigeons. And once, Jatel had tried to snap at Huras, who had shocked her by punching her on the nose. He hadn’t hurt her, but he certainly got her attention, and her respect, for after that, she was as good with him as she was with her regular rider.
As for Aket-ten—
Kiron soon learned that she had a scheme of her own in mind to help them all.

The air was hot, humid, and far too still. Virtually everyone was taking a rest from the heat. Kiron, however, could not find Aket-ten anywhere. She was not in her quarters, not with the wing’s dragonets, and she had not left word with her servants that she was leaving the compound. She never left the compound without telling them where she was going, for she still did not trust the Magi, and feared that if any of them even suspected she still had her powers, they would try to carry her off.
She was probably right to fear that. Though Kiron no longer spied on the Magi when they came to take the Fledglings in the evening, he had heard from Kaleth that the young Fledglings were not looking good. Whatever the Magi were taking from them was beginning to run out. If they thought Aket-ten—fresh, rested, and full of energy—was still able to be drained, they would be on her like a falcon on a dove.
Finally, after questioning every person whose path he crossed, he found someone who had seen her, and the direction surprised him.
What can she possibly want in the swamp dragon pens? he wondered, as he crossed over into the section where the pens held water instead of sand. He followed the directions he had been given until he found her—at the pen of the same swamp dragon that had been placed on half-rations of tala.
She was sitting well out of reach of the chained dragon, staring at him. He was immersed in his hot water with only his head and neck sticking out of the water, his chain slack enough that it was lying on the bottom of the pool, staring back at her.
The place smelled like a bath; odd, he would have thought there might be an unpleasant tang to it. Evidently the swamp dragons were as clean and fastidious as their larger cousins. This dragon was a very dark reddish brown, his patterning laid out in a slightly paler and more golden brown. He looked like a weather-aged statue, he lay so still, his golden-brown eyes staring intently at Aket-ten. There was a tension in the air, however, that told him that their relaxed poses were entirely a deception.
“They are smarter than we thought they were,” she said quietly, without looking around at Kiron. “Mind, they aren’t as intelligent as an ape, and I am not certain I would even put them at the same level as a truly smart dog, but this fellow is definitely as smart as any of the desert dragons. Whoever decided that they were not as bright because they weren’t as big or as pretty made a fundamental error.”
“Huh.” He squatted down where he was, resting on his heels, and stared at the dragon himself. He wondered what she was getting from the beast’s thoughts. This was as close as she was ever going to get to a wild dragon’s mind.
“Partly it’s the tala,” she continued absently, rubbing the palms of her hands up and down her bare upper arms in a completely unconscious gesture. “I think they’re a little more sensitive to it than the desert dragons.”
“Well, it’s a desert plant,” he reminded her. “And if we don’t find the wild tala and harvest it, there are a lot of animals that eat it. Desert dragons are probably used to getting some of it in their prey, so they’ve gotten used to the effect of it.”
“That could be,” she agreed. She and the dragon continued to match unblinking stares. “You know, falcons hate this. Being stared at, I mean. It’s a challenge; that’s one way they challenge each other. Cats, too. In cats, the first one that looks away loses, and is going to get attacked. He sees my staring at him as something else. Some kind of contact. I wonder if they have a very primitive kind of Speaking? Something that requires eye contact?” She never once dropped her gaze. “It doesn’t seem to bother him at all that I can put thoughts into his head—and what’s more, he knows that they’re mine and not his own.” She tilted her head to the side. “I thought I might have been sensing something like that from the dragonets, too.”
“Haven’t you ever felt that from any of the other adult dragons?” he asked curiously.
She shrugged. “If they do have some form of Speaking, the tala blocks it. I can’t look away right now, by the way. If I do, I’ll be saying he’s the stronger of the two of us.”
“I’d gotten that idea,” said Kiron. “Did you have something in mind by coming here?”
“I did.” She continued to stare; was the dragon beginning to look a little uneasy beneath that unrelenting gaze? “I wanted to see if these swamp fellows were just as smart as their desert cousins. I wanted to have a look into the head of one that wasn’t completely foggy with tala. I never intended to get into a staring contest, but I don’t dare back down now. It’s either predator or prey, and I must prove which one I am, for he only respects the former.”
At just that moment, the dragon gave up, dropping his eyes and his head in a gesture of submission.
Aket-ten stood up, slowly and carefully, her eyes still never leaving the dragon’s. She moved toward the pool.
As Kiron held his breath and got ready to pull her to safety, the dragon slid his way through the water toward her.
She held out her hand, fearlessly—but palm down, not up.
With infinite care, the dragon moved forward until the chain was stretched tight—and pushed the tip of his nose beneath her hand.
He closed his eyes and sighed. And waited.
What does that mean to a dragon? he wondered. The nose was the most sensitive part. You couldn’t kill a dragon by slashing at its nose, but—
But—they’re like crocodiles, he realized at that moment. He’d seen the dragonets immobilize each other briefly in play by grabbing the muzzle. You could make it impossible for him to attack you by holding his mouth closed. And if you were a dragon, and you seized your rival by the nose, and you clamped down on it and closed off the nostrils as well—your rival would be dead. You’d smother him.
So that was what it meant to a dragon! Total, complete surrender. . . .
For the moment, anyway. Like all wild things, the hierarchy within a flight of dragons was always changing. One was always challenging another. Mostly staring contests though, and perhaps Aket-ten was right, perhaps they did some shoving about, invisibly, will-to-will as well.
She rubbed the sensitive skin around the dragon’s nostrils. “Give me a brush,” she demanded, without looking away.
“What?” he asked.
“A brush,” she said patiently. “I’m getting into the pool with him to give him a scrub. It’s the equivalent of a sand rubbing. This is what they do—the one who wins grooms the one who lost.”
Kiron looked around and saw that, sure enough, there were several brushes with heavy, stiff bristles hanging on the wall. He got one and brought it to Aket-ten. She held out her hand without looking at him, and he put the brush into it. Only then did she wade into the dragon’s pool, handsome yellow sheath dress and all, hissing a little at the heat as she got in.
Had this been anyone other than Aket-ten, he never would have allowed it. In the same pool, as a dragon on a half-ration of tala, well within his grabbing distance?
But it was Aket-ten, and if there was anyone who knew what she was doing at this moment, it was Aket-ten.
She didn’t give the swamp dragon a full grooming; that would have taken all afternoon. But she did get some of the worst, and apparently itchiest, spots. The dragon moaned and sighed and leaned into her strokes until she patted him on the shoulder and climbed out, her dress streaming—and leaving nothing at all to the imagination.
He flushed; she didn’t seem to notice. Then again, she was being very careful around an unsedated dragon; a little thing like having a dress that was now so transparent you might as well be wearing nothing at all was not going to trouble her.
Whatever she was putting into the dragon’s mind worked. He didn’t even snap at her. When she was out of reach, Kiron wordlessly handed her a towel.
“Now is the point when I ask you what you thought you were accomplishing when you started this, rather than what you were doing,” he said, after a moment, as she dried herself off as best she could. “Since you seem to have worked out how to be the king dragon in a flight. Or queen,” he added, as an afterthought. “I think Ari said the dominant dragon can be male or female.”
She shrugged. “Finding things out. And I have; we need to drop the dose of tala that the swamp dragons get by about a double handful. Mostly though, I found out how we can get swamp dragon eggs without getting the collectors killed. So when your wing has proven itself, we can also raise swamp dragons from the egg for the next lot to fly.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Think about a wing of dragons who are tame like Avatre who not only can fly in the rain, but like it.”
“Huh.” There was no doubt that it would be an incredible advantage. “So, how do we get eggs without someone getting killed?” he asked.
“The same way we’ve been dosing him.” She stared at him now, waiting. And he could have hit himself for not thinking of it himself.
“Ducks and geese, I suppose?” he hazarded. She nodded. “And when whichever dragon is watching the nest is drugged enough, we move in. I assume you’d be watching the dragon’s mind to make sure the nest watcher wasn’t going to wake up.”
“Don’t take more than two of the four eggs, though,” she warned. “That’s reasonable. Only one in four is going to get past its first year anyway, but you’d better give them two chances at it, or you’ll start depleting the population.”
She went off to her quarters then, to change into something drier. He went to find Lord Khumun to report on what she had learned—though he did not tell Lord Khumun that she had gotten into the pool to groom her subject. He left that part out, saying only that she had established herself as that particular dragon’s superior, using her powers. Then he described how swamp dragon nests could be raided for eggs.
The Lord of the Jousters looked at him askance. “That would be useful knowledge if we wanted swamp dragons,” he said reluctantly. “But—swamp dragons?”
“Which can be flown in the storms?” he countered. “My Lord, look at your current riders! Every day during the magic-made rains they have flown out, and every day have brought back one form of victory or another! And consider that tame swamp dragons could probably be persuaded to fly even during the whole season of Rains!” He surprised himself with his passion. Compared with Avatre, the swamp-dragons were so—
—hmm. Maybe they aren’t. He thought about the intent gaze, the feeling of challenge. Aket-ten was right. It was the tala that made them seem so dull. He said as much.
“What is more, my Lord, though the swamp dragons are smaller, a Jouster on a desert dragon is going to have some difficulty in defending against two attackers.” He saw the puzzlement in Lord Khumun’s eyes, and elaborated. “What if we got enough swamp dragons to outnumber them?”
The gleam in Lord Khumun’s eyes told him that he had won.
When they met at dinner, he told the rest of the boys what had happened, and how Aket-ten had discovered the means to get swamp dragon eggs to augment the desert dragon eggs that they could get from mating Jatel and Orthele. And initially they all had the same reaction as Lord Khumun at the suggestion. But Gan said suddenly, “You know, I believe I have seen some old wall texts in a temple somewhere, all about the first dragon Jousters. I do believe that they used swamp dragons, not desert dragons. So Aket-ten is right; they must be just as smart as the desert ones, they’re just smaller.”
“And if the odds are two-to-one in our favor, it won’t matter how small the dragons are,” Toreth put in quietly.
“No,” said Kiron into the silence. “It won’t, will it?”
“So that’s the way the wind blows. . . .” Huras nodded. “Clever little Aket-ten! Do you suppose she figured that out?”
“Yes she did, and all by herself, thank you very much,” said Aket-ten tartly from the doorway. “It will be up to you layabouts to work out how to train yourselves, so we can prove to every doubter in Alta that the tame dragons are superior, and that we can train Jousters to go with the tame dragons.”
She strolled into the kitchen courtyard and took her usual place at their table. “There are some things you’ll just have to do for yourselves,” she continued, with deceptive sweetness. “Now that I’ve done the hard part.”
“The hard part?” Orest said, and Kiron winced to himself, seeing exactly how Aket-ten’s brother had set himself up for a clever retort on her part. And there was nothing he could do about it because—
“Of course,” she replied, with a disarming smile. “I’ve done all the thinking.”
—too late. Kiron sighed and intervened. “She’s just teasing you, Orest.”
But the explosion he had expected didn’t come. Orest just shrugged. “I’m not much good at thinking,” he said with complete candor. “She can do all the thinking for both of us, if she wants. I like the swam-pie idea, though. Be one in their eye if just as they think they have us outnumbered, we show up with a two-to-one advantage and dragons that can fly rings around theirs.”
“That it would,” said Toreth smoothly, as Aket-ten gaped at her brother. “So, Aket-ten, tell us more about how you approached this dragon today—”
By the gods, he thought, listening to the boys question her closely. Aket-ten isn’t the only one growing up. So is her brother.
Indeed; they were all growing up. And none too soon. Because by the end of the Dry season, if his own calculations were correct, they were all going to face the enemy in the field for the first time. And the advantage, numerically at least, was still with the enemy.
If they weren’t grown up by then, it would be too late.

The dragonets were being fitted for their first saddles and harnesses, using Avatre’s outgrown harness as a model. And for once, there were servants here in the dragonet pens who didn’t have to be persuaded that the babies were tame.
The old harness maker and his assistant swarmed all over Wastet like a pair of cleaner birds on a river horse. Wastet regarded them with bright curiosity, while Orest stood by.
“And your colors are blue and scarlet, young lord?” asked the assistant, taking notes on a potsherd. “May I ask why you have colors at all?”
“To differentiate us, not only from our fellow Altan Jousters, but more importantly, from the Tian ones,” Kiron replied for Orest. “We don’t want someone from our own side seeing a desert dragon and thinking it’s ridden by a Tian.”
“And we want to be able to keep track of the others in our wing,” Orest added. “So we can do things that we’ve practiced together.”
“But why different colors for each of you?” the assistant persisted. “I should think you could make out who is who by the colors of your dragons. No one is going to mistake this beetle-colored beauty for any of the others.”
“First of all, we didn’t know they would all hatch out different colors,” Kiron replied. “Second, from a distance they can still be confused—take Avatre, she’s scarlet and gold, which is awfully close to Pe-atep’s Deoth, who’s red and sand colored. Or Kalen’s Se-atmen, brown and gold, who could be taken for Oset-re’s copper-red Apetma. And third, we’re only the first wing of tame desert dragons. There are two female desert dragons that can provide us with more eggs every two years. Eventually there are going to be Jousters with the same color dragons; we need ways to tell them apart in the air, and we might as well start now and get our eyes used to looking for the combination of dragon colors and rider and harness colors.”
“Ah,” the assistant said, contented now. “You see, I like to know why one is asked to do something unusual—”
“And thus, you are too damned curious and prying, you young whelp,” the old man growled. “If you worked as well as you jabbered, we’d have the harnesses done by now.”
“Yes, master,” the assistant said, sounding not at all subservient. He turned back to Kiron. “And you are wanting streamers that can be easily torn away in the same colors as well?”
Kiron nodded. “We’ll be using them in training, to teach the dragons to get in close for harassment, but I don’t want something that is going interfere with flying—”
The assistant dismissed that with a shrug. “Colored grass, loosely woven,” he replied. “Fastened to the back of the saddle. Easily done.”
“As easily as I am going to beat you if we don’t get these dragons measured!” scolded the old man. “Get on with you!”
The two of them moved on to Apetma’s pen. Orest and Kiron exchanged grins.
“What were those extra straps you ordered for?” Orest asked when they had gone. “He didn’t ask about those.”
“Probably because they seem perfectly logical to someone who has never been a Jouster,” Kiron replied, sobering. “I don’t want any accidents. Avatre and I still haven’t mastered the ‘falling-man’ catch. Maybe the senior Jousters will think this is effete, but I want all of you belted down into your saddles when we begin training.”
Orest nodded slowly. “I’ve no objection,” he replied, slowly. “Now that I’ve been up on dragons—it’s a long way down to the ground. I wouldn’t like to fall—”
“Oh, I’m not worried about falling. The Tian Jousters used to say that it isn’t the fall that kills you,” Kiron replied with a straight face.
“Oh? So what is it?” Once again, Orest walked straight into the joke.
“It’s the hitting the ground that kills you,” Kiron replied, and ran out of Wastet’s pen with a brush following him.
He particularly wanted to catch up with the harness makers before they left Oset-re’s Apetma. By now, he half suspected that the boys had forgotten that their dragons were to be harnessed up in the riders’ colors—but Kiron remembered Oset-re’s fuss about having colors that didn’t clash with a dragon’s colors. He’d gotten black and white; was that sufficiently neutral for him to be content? The last thing he wanted was for Oset-re to be unhappy about a little thing like the colors of his harness when it was so easy to fix—
But he found Oset-re perfectly at ease as the harness makers nattered on about what color should be where to avoid soiling the white parts.
“Are you still all right with black and white?” he asked Oset-re cautiously. “It’s not to late to change—”
“Oh, Apetma is going to look amazing,” Oset-re said breezily, holding her head and gazing into her coppery eyes. “Aren’t you, my love? There won’t be another dragon out there as striking as you—” And as he crooned to her, she butted his head gently with her copper-red nose and crooned back at him. And at that moment, Kiron realized that it would not have mattered to the formerly vain Oset-re if Apetma had been dun and his colors green and gray, he would still have been sure she was the most beautiful of the lot. He was just as besotted with Apetma as any of them, and nothing was half as important anymore as his dragon.
Kiron left the pen feeling, although he was not sure why, as if he had just won a war.