Alta

SIX

KIRON remained as still as a hungry crocodile lying in wait, as Lord Khumun-thetus surveyed the group of youngsters before him in the antechamber to the Jousters’ Compound. He did not yet want to draw attention to himself. Soon enough, these boys, some of whom were actually older than he, would discover that he, Kiron-son-of-unknown-Kiron, was to be, in essence, their trainer, their Overseer, and ultimately, the one who would pass judgment on their ability to raise a dragonet. Or not. That was going to cause some resentment, he feared, but it couldn’t be helped. In all of Alta City there was only one person who knew how to raise a dragon from the egg, and that person was not going to entrust a precious dragonet to careless hands.
It was a mixed lot, drawn from every possible class. There were several boys who had been animal handlers—Kiron had high hopes for the one who had been tending to lions and cheetahs, and the one who had been taking care of some high-ranking noble’s hawks. There were, of course, quite a few nobly born youngsters, of whom one was Orest.
And there was a prince.
Or at least, Toreth-aket was a prince as Kiron understood the term. Toreth and his brother had been frequent visitors to Orest, for Toreth had been Orest’s friend long before Ya-tiren’s son had the lodestone of a dragon in his courtyard. Kiron had been astonished when he learned just who and what Orest’s friend was.
Here in Alta, succession to rule was not in a direct line, nor was it even matrilineal as it was in Tia, where the man who married the firstborn daughter of the Great King was the man who succeeded to the throne. There were several royal families or clans here, and the thrones went to the two sets of married twins in the Royal Houses who were oldest when the thrones became vacant.
Toreth-aket and his brother Kaleth-aket were currently the oldest set of male twins within the Royal Houses, and they had been betrothed in their cradles to the oldest pair of female twins (who were actually three years older than they were). When one of the current set of Great Ones died or became incapacitated, it would mean that the rest of the group would have to step down. When that happened, Toreth and Kaleth, if not already married, would be wedded and crowned all on the same day, and take over the ruling of Alta.
Now, it might seem that Toreth would have been forbidden to take his place among the Jousters on that account alone, but if Kiron understood things correctly, the Altans had very specific requirements for their princes. One of the male twins was always to be a scribe or a priest, while the other was always to take some sort of military training. Becoming a Jouster counted, evidently.
If Kiron had not known that the two were twins, he would never have guessed it. He would have known that they were brothers, of course, for there was that much familial resemblance there, but otherwise they were nothing alike. Both had eyes of the same deep brown, and thin, angular faces, and both wore their own hair and wore it long, past their shoulders, braided with hundreds of tiny braids.
For anyone other than scion of a royal family or a merchant of dazzling wealth, this little quirk would have been impossible. Such a labor-intensive hairstyle required several body servants and was a sign that the wearer was of higher status than even someone who could afford the finest of wigs. The wig always remained perfect; one’s own hair needed unbraiding and rebraiding all the time.
So both had the “royal” hairstyle. But there the resemblance ended. Toreth was strong, tall, supremely athletic, and able to make lightning judgments. Kaleth was shorter than his twin, did not give a toss for games but was a brilliant scholar, who already read and spoke five languages fluently, and would ponder every question for hours before making a decision. Both were good-natured and hard-working, and generous to a fault. If Kiron had been asked to choose the people he would most trust, next to Aket-ten and Orest, it would have been Toreth and Kaleth.
Nevertheless, Toreth might face failure here for the first time in his life, for he would have to impress Lord Khumun of his sincerity. Might—though truth to tell, Kiron didn’t think it likely that Toreth would fail.
“You are here today,” said Lord Khumun, “because all of you want to be Jousters. I suspect that eventually all of you will become Jousters, but this is a group who will become a very particular set of Jousters—you will be beginning your training years earlier than any other Altan ever has, and you will be raising your own dragons, literally from the egg.”
There were nods all around, and some sighs. Of course, all the boys here knew this; it was why they had petitioned, begged, pleaded—some of them—to be allowed to join this group. But other than Orest and the two animal handlers, Kiron didn’t think any of them had any notion how much work was going to be involved.
“This means,” Lord Khumun continued, “that you will be doing things that no Jouster of Alta has ever had to do before. And I do not,” he went on, raising an eyebrow at one particularly enthusiastic-looking lad, “mean what you think I mean. No. What I mean, just to begin with, is that you who win the way to a dragon egg, will, at least in the first year, be doing all of the work that a dragon boy normally would perform and doing it by yourselves. This means feeding, tending, cleaning out the pen, exercising, grooming, training. All of it. While a dragon boy or other servant will be assigned to you to bring the dragonet’s food to you and tend to your quarters, you will be doing all of the work in the pen. There will be no exceptions, unless you are so ill or injured that you cannot move from your bed.”
From the look of shock on one or two faces, Kiron knew that this revelation had come as a complete, and entirely unpleasant, surprise.
“I have it on the authority of the second of only two men ever to accomplish this feat that this sort of thing is an absolute requirement to achieve the goal we want, which is a tame and bonded dragon,” Lord Khumun went on, “And from my own studies of animals, I am in complete agreement with him. So, if there are any of you for whom this requirement is too distasteful to contemplate, please, feel free to take your leave of us.” He paused, and looked straight at those who had been looking the most shocked or unhappy. “You will not be considered a failure in any sense. We will need true volunteers for this, young men who will find it no burden, will even find some pleasure in taking care of their charge’s every need. Dragons are immensely sensitive creatures and they will know and react to unhappiness on the part of their riders—especially since this group will be handled completely without the use of tala. So if you have misgivings, please take yourself from the group. There will continue to be wild dragons trapped, and we will continue to train and recruit Jousters of the old sort for some time. And this will not be the first wing formed from tame dragons, so if you decide you want to try, say, next year, there will be another wing recruited. Just because you elect not to join this wing means only that you will have to wait until you are older before you can volunteer to train with the traditional Jousters, and if you change your minds, there will be other chances with tame dragons in the future.”
There was a shuffling of feet, and then, almost as if they had read one another’s minds and found reinforcement in numbers, a group of five separated from the main group. Lord Khumun gave them a perfectly friendly little nod, and heartened by this, they filed out of the room.
“Now, as for the rest of you, for those of you who do not know this young man, this is Jouster Kiron, rider of Avatre, who will be supervising you, guiding you, and training you.” Now Lord Khumun gestured to Kiron, who came forward from where he had been standing off to one side. He was wearing the Altan Jouster’s “uniform” now: the soft, wrapped kilt that covered a hardened leather, groin-protecting loin cup such as the ones that bull dancers wore; the leather harness with hardened-leather shoulder and bicep armor; the wide stiff leather belt; the hardened shin guards. His hair had been cut at chin-length, and he carried his helmet, hoping that he did not look as young as he felt.
“Kiron, rider of Avatre, only the second bonded and tame dragon in all the world, will now describe to you exactly what your duties will be—in detail—for the next year or so. And once again, any of you who believe this to be beneath their dignity, please, remove yourselves.” Lord Khumun looked them over and heaved a theatrical sigh. “I have undertaken to supply an egg to every boy who remains and passes through the initial training. Frankly, I would be just as pleased to see your ranks thinned a little further.”
There was a weak chuckle at that, as Kiron took a deep breath, reminded himself that he, at this moment, as he stood, was the equal to any of the boys here in rank. Yes, even the prince. I am a Jouster, even if I have never ridden to combat. I have a dragon who answers only to me. And without me, there will be no tame dragons to Joust for Alta. He was a unique and valuable weapon in the Altan arsenal. There were several pairs of princes. There was only one Kiron, one Avatre.
“First,” he said, “you’re going to start by becoming dragon boys yourselves, serving dragons we already have. You will take the place of the dragon boys in this compound until such time as you understand the serving of a dragon completely.”
A couple of the boys gulped. He didn’t blame them. Three of the dragons that had been here had been actual killers; they could only be handled with their jaws muzzled, which had made feeding them—exciting. These three had been handled only by men, two of them, at all times.
“There are no more killer dragons in the compound,” he announced. “Lord Khumun and I have had some success with retraining the dragons that are currently here using falconry techniques.” Was he sweating? He hoped not. He wanted to look confident. He had to get their respect now, or he could have trouble with them later. “It has taken us most of a moon, but even the killers are now on reasonably good behavior, for wild-caught dragons.”
And that had been an ordeal! But the results had been striking. Or at least, it was now possible for the dragons to be handled and groomed without the risk of a dragon boy losing life or limbs.
“But although they are no longer killers, you must remember at all times that they are still dangerous.” He swallowed, and was very glad that his voice had broken during the moon he and Lord Khumun had been doing the retraining. Having his voice crack and squeak would have done nothing to add to his air of authority. “We will be handling them with choking chains, and you will never actually be alone with your charge; the current dragon boy will always be with you to help get you out of difficulty. But make no mistake about it, you will be doing the work. And once your egg hatches, you will still be doing most of the work. We have decided that the first several moons with the dragonet are absolutely crucial, and if your dragonet sees someone else, or worse, is fed by someone else, we don’t know if she or he will bond properly to you. So you are going to have to be comfortable with doing a great deal of manual labor.” He tried to look apologetic, but he had the feeling he wasn’t succeeding. When he thought about what he’d had to go through—feeding and tending three dragons at once, one of them secretly—he couldn’t feel at all sorry for them. “So, until the eggs get here, this is how your days will go—”
He’d practiced this speech in front of Aket-ten so many times that he didn’t have to think about it anymore. He just told them, clearly and precisely, how much work they would be doing. And although they would not be tending to the Jouster as well as the dragon, nor would they be required to do all the work of repairing harness and weapons and drying tala and the rest, they would be continuing whatever studies their fathers deemed necessary. He had to hide his grin when he saw Orest’s face fall at that news—nor was Orest the only one to look disappointed.
“There will be tutors coming here, to avoid the waste of time it would take for you to come to them. Most of us will share tutors and lectures.”
But not me. I get Master Arit to myself. Lord Ya-tiren said so. He was getting a tutor all to himself to accelerate his reading ability; Lord Khumun had decided that until he knew how to read well, he would be getting the extra tutoring. Master Arit was pleased with his progress. He could read simple things now. He had a new shrine to his father’s spirit, and he could read the prayers for the dead inscribed on its side. Master Arit was certain that with the full attention of a very good tutor—and his own determination—he would pass for a boy as well educated as Orest within a year.
“Your day will begin when you rise about dawn. This is when your dragon will rise. It will take your dragon some little time to come out of the torpor of sleep, and you will take this time to ready his morning meal.”
He continued describing what their days would be like; when he was done, four more boys decided that this project was not to their taste. That left them with eight, of which the prince, looking more eager than ever, was still one. Kiron was surprised, a little, and yet, considering what he had heard about Toreth, perhaps he shouldn’t have been. He had never, ever heard anyone say that either of the princes was afraid of a little hard work.
“You’re sure, now,” Lord Khumun said earnestly, looking each and every one of them in the eyes. “You’re absolutely sure that you can undertake this, and that in fact, you want to?”
Each of them nodded soberly but with a glow of anticipation. Even Orest.
“All right.” He looked over at Kiron. “Four eggs in a clutch, you say?”
“That’s what I was told, and that was what I observed, my Lord,” he replied firmly. “Mature females always lay four eggs.”
“Then we’ll stake out our two female desert dragons and hope for the best,” the Lord of the Jousters decided. “We’ll wait to see if we need to go after swamp dragon eggs only after we find out what is going to happen with the desert dragons.”
Kiron nodded; that would be his choice, too. The swamp dragons had proved to be a bit more reptilian in nature than the desert dragons, and a bit more difficult to handle, although it had been the wild-caught male desert dragons that had proven to be the killers.
Maybe because they once ate a man. That was always problematic; once a wild dragon tasted human blood, it always knew that eating a human was an option.
The two desert dragon females that had been taken from Tian Jousters were lazy—half the reason they’d been caught was that they very much preferred to be fed rather than to hunt. Being lazy was an advantage now on a number of counts. In the past, they had proved that they were unlikely to fight their chains when staked out as “bait.” This meant, when they were taken off the heavier dose of tala, so that they would come into season properly, it would still be possible to handle them. They would probably not try to fight off their would-be mates, and in fact, might well be quite responsive. And when they finally began laying their eggs, they were less likely to be aggressive about defending the newly laid eggs than a more active dragon.
The last advantage was that Kiron knew exactly what to expect and how to incubate a desert dragon egg. Swamp dragons—that was going to be a matter of experimentation, as far as he was concerned. If they could get eight fertile desert dragon eggs—
Eight boys, eight eggs. Nine was a good size for a wing. They could learn and drill together, learn to fight as a group.
“If the gods are kind, both dragons will mate, and all the eggs will be fertile,” he replied.
“I will be making sacrifices today, and every day until hatching,” Lord Khumun said firmly, and cast a now-steely eye over his new volunteers. “And so should you all.”

And so they did. But not before Kiron put them through their first day with utter disregard for their comfort.
They drew lots for which boy was assigned to which dragon, that way no one could claim that Kiron had shown any favoritism in his assignments. As it happened, Orest and Toreth got the two easiest to handle, saving only the two captured females, which had already gone to the edge of the desert to await their suitors. One was a huge swamp dragon that Kiron suspected was actually a cross-breed, terribly lazy; the other was a small male desert dragon that, provided you didn’t move too quickly and made certain he had his full ration of tala, was no worse than any of the fledgling-caught desert dragons. The rest, however, were typical Altan Jousting dragons, which was to say, by Tian standards, difficult.
Kiron introduced the boys to their charges slowly, one each day, while the remaining boys watched during the entire day. He kept Orest and Toreth for last, so that when they actually got their dragons, they had seen (and helped with) virtually every problem that the draconic mind could come up with saving only illness and injury. They were both prepared for the worst, probably expecting that Kiron had saved the worst for last, so as a result, they were completely on their guard and unlikely to let their guard down for the moon or so it would take before the eggs were laid. Of all things, Kiron did not want them to trust their dragons at all. It had been his experience that injuries happened when dragon boys took the tameness of their charges for granted, and became just a little careless in their presence. Perhaps they pressed their charges in a way that they would never have considered with a wilder dragon. Perhaps they turned their backs one too many times. Or perhaps they made a slip they would have been too wary to do in the presence of a more dangerous beast. It did always seem to be the ones that everyone considered the best behaved who inflicted the worst injuries.
He was far from idle himself; besides keeping track of every one of the boys of his new wing, he was training Avatre, twice a day, every day. He knew at this point that there was no choice in the matter; if he was going to train the others, he had to work out how to train them himself.
He counted himself lucky that Avatre was, if anything, more sweet-tempered than Kashet. She put up with indignities from his clumsy experiments that would have left him kicking his legs as he went down the throat of a less-patient dragon.
And she was growing apace; he’d already had to have new harness and saddle made for her, and it looked as if she was going to need another set of kit before two moons had passed. Ah well, the old rig certainly wasn’t going to go to waste; the leatherworkers were using it as the pattern for eight more harnesses, and the benefit was, if the dragon fit the first harness, they’d know it was big enough to fly with a rider.
It occurred to him when he’d let out her cinches as far as he could, that he was growing, too . . . a growth spurt that had begun when he had joined the dragon boys and was still going. Lack of food had kept him stunted; plentiful food had set him growing like a weed. He doubted that he would ever be very tall, but—
And my voice just broke. Girls were beginning to look a bit more interesting to him as well.
And he wondered, in the dark of the night, just how old he really was. Older than even he had thought, he suspected, or his voice wouldn’t have broken already.
Could I be fifteen Floods old now? Fourteen, anyway? He had lost track of the Floods once he’d been made into a serf; no one ever celebrated his birthday, for what was there to celebrate in another year in captivity? One day had been like another, varying only in degrees of misery. Maybe he was fifteen Floods old now. That would make him as old as most of the others.
That would do no harm; the others would accept him as trainer and leader more readily if he was older than he’d thought.
He grew to know the boys during this time, and somewhat to his surprise, there was not a single one that he was not happy to have as a friend, and that realization, made one day as he was helping Toreth harness his charge, nearly stunned him. He, who had never had a real friend before, now had eight—nine, counting Aket-ten—
It was at that moment that he also realized that for the first time in his life, he was happy. And the revelation left him stunned for the rest of the evening.
As for Orest, his first friend had truly found his passion. He had flung himself into the work with his dragon to the point where Kiron sometimes had to order him to rest. When he wasn’t tending his dragon—which was so immaculately groomed that his scales gleamed like gems—he was reading about them, asking advice of the other dragon boys, and even (when he dared) querying the Jousters about combat. His father, from being resigned, was now as proud of his youngest son as he was of his eldest.
Where Orest was vocal and single-minded in his passion, Toreth was a little more divided. Then again, he had to be; as the likeliest heirs to the thrones, he and his brother perforce spent a lot of time in learning governance. And, though this was not what Kiron would have expected, mastering the tasks of dragon care came as easily to the prince as breathing. Perhaps it was his calmness, which seemed to have as much of a tranquilizing effect on his charge as the tala did. After the first day, Toreth had come to the pens with the royal hairstyle gone; he had opted for a cut like Aket-ten’s, just at chin length. He said nothing about it, and nothing was ever said to him, but Kiron knew that he was serious after that day.
The remaining six were a mixed bag indeed, but none of them was in any danger of failing this final test before they were given custody of a precious egg.
Two had turned out to be as competent as Kiron had expected. Ka-lenteth, the falconer, had the most fractious of the beasts, and as a result, took longer than the others to accustom it to his hand. It even tried his immense store of patience a time or two, and he was the only one to be injured. Not badly, but his dragon had learned the use of his tail to intimidate, and Kiron finally had to get the young falconer fitted with actual boots before the moon was over. Kalen (as he liked to be called) was the smallest of the boys, thin and wiry, and seldom spoke. When he did, it was in a low, soft voice. Kiron only heard him shout the once, when he got the first lash of a tail across his shins.
Pe-atep, the cat keeper, was Kalen’s match in patience, but was his exact opposite physically. He was taller and broader than the prince, with an equally broad, flat face and a booming voice when he raised it in conversation. He had no trouble with his fractious charge, actually staring it down during their first confrontation—something he said also worked on lions. He and Kalen were often found experimenting with minute changes in the dragons’ diets to see if there was any corresponding change in their behavior. Not varying the tala ration, of course, but changing the kinds of meat and the mix of meat to organs, adding things like hide and hair.
Huras was a friend of Pe-atep, though not an animal keeper. The son of a baker, he was the lowest-born of the lot. And was second to no one in his intelligence. He tore through the scrolls on dragons, Jousting, and dragon keeping twice as fast as anyone else, and anything he read stayed in his memory forever. Otherwise, he was average-looking in appearance; he probably would have run to fat if he hadn’t been working so hard.
Then there was Gan. Ganek-at-kel-te-ronet would have been the highest ranking member of their group, if the prince had not been one of them. Gan was tall, lanky, and had a languid air about him that gave the impression that he didn’t care a great deal for anything except, perhaps, food and gossip. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. He was the oldest, no longer a boy, but a young man—and his airs concealed a passion as fervent as Orest’s. Kiron had the feeling that, like Orest, he had been looking for something for his entire life without knowing what it was. And now he had found it.
Equally deceptive was Oset-re, the peacock of the group, and a friend of Orest’s. He was, to put it bluntly, the most beautiful human being that Kiron had ever seen, of either sex. No matter what the time of day or the task he was engaged in, he was always impeccably, flawlessly groomed and clothed. Whenever he ventured outside the compound, women flirted with him covertly or openly, and like Ari, there were even women who pursued him shamelessly. And he wore his peacock persona like the mask it was. Beneath the seeming vanity was a hard purpose, honed to razor sharpness. He had seen what Kiron had with Avatre on an early visit, and he was determined to have something like that bond for himself. But not at “all” costs; he would have it with honor or not at all. Even if it meant ruining his finest kilts to achieve it.
He had already made one great sacrifice: the day after Toreth cut his hair, so did Oset-re.
Last was shy Menet-ka, who never spoke above a whisper or unless he was first spoken to, who hung at the back of any group, and who seldom made eye contact. He was so successful at self-effacement that most people who knew him would have had a hard time describing him, and if there were three other people in a room, would forget he was there. He had never yet demonstrated why he was here, for it must have taken an extraordinary act of will for him to put himself forward, but part of it might have been that he had been one of Oset-re’s best friends from childhood. And the other was, without a doubt, that he, too, had seen the bond that Kiron shared with Avatre, and wanted something like that for himself with all his heart.
This was his wing; as different as it was possible for individuals to be, yet as they shared food and work, they began to forge a friendship among themselves that defied both stereotype and description.

As the eight sat together over supper, nearly a full moon into their “trial” period, Kiron approached their table carrying a jar. They all looked up immediately at the sound of his now familiar step, even Menet-ka. He put the jar down in the middle of the table.
“That doesn’t look like beer or wine to me,” said Gan lazily. “So what is it doing on our table, estimable wing leader?”
“You are each going to draw two of the pebbles from that jar to determine what your colors are going to be,” Kiron explained. “We’re going to need a way to tell each other apart in the air; the regular Jousters don’t do this, but they also don’t fight as a group because they daren’t get their dragons too close to one another. We are going to be very different; but we’ll have to know who is who in order to play to everyone’s individual strengths. So you’ll all wear your colors on your armor and harness, and we’ll probably fly streamers or something.”
“And your colors?” asked Orest.
“I pulled rank on you and chose black and scarlet,” he admitted, with a grin. “Because they go well with Avatre’s colors. You’ll get whatever you get—though, if you really hate the combination you choose, you can swap among yourselves.”
“I suspect I’ll be forced to,” moaned Oset-re. “I would rather die than be seen in colors that clashed with my dragon.”
The rest snickered, and Kiron laughed out loud. “In that case, draw first,” he suggested. “That way you’ll have the best odds for the best choices.”
He didn’t have to ask Oset-re twice; the handsome lad stood up and plunged his hand into the jar up to the elbow. And when he opened his closed fist, he heaved an exaggerated sigh of relief as the painted pebbles in his hand were revealed.
“Black and white!” he said, sitting down. “What a relief! Black and white go with everything; I can’t even imagine a swamp dragon that those colors would clash with. Well, I won’t have to kill myself after all.”
Orest was next to take the plunge into the jar, and emerged with blue and scarlet. “Well, you’ll certainly be able to see me,” was his only comment.
Toreth came up with yellow and white; Gan got green and brown. Pe-atep’s pick was black and yellow, and his friend Kalen ended up as yellow and brown. Huras got blue and black, and Menet-ka, who predictably chose last, did not seem unhappy with his green and white.
“So, why are we taking colors right now?” asked Gan. “Why not wait to see what color dragons hatch out?”
Kiron grinned; he couldn’t help it. He had some very good news for them. “Partly because of the training games I’m going to be giving you,” he said, “but mostly because Lord Khumun told me today that both females have mated with three different males, which ought to pretty much guarantee that all four eggs each lays will be fertile.”
Heads at the other tables turned as all eight of the wing broke into a cheer—even Menet-ka. “When are they coming back?” Orest asked excitedly.
“Their Jousters are flying the ladies back tomorrow,” Kiron told them, now allowing his grin to show. “They’ll be sequestered in their pens and stuffed full of as much as they’ll eat to nourish the eggs to come. Three males were also trapped, so there will be three new Jousters training with them, which will allow us to try falcon training right from the start instead of having a dragon that needs to unlearn a lot of bad habits. You’ll be observing that, by the way; no point in missing the opportunity. So, the reason you’ve gotten your colors now is because you’re going to draw lots for who gets the eggs in what order.”
He took the pebbles from each boy, and put them back in the jar. This was going to be a complicated system, but it guaranteed random chance. “Everyone take a pebble. If you don’t get one of your colors, put it back but don’t take a new one until the next round.”
Only Menet-ka got one of his colors the first time; on the second round, Gan and Orest got one of theirs, and on the third, Menet-ka made the first combination. So Menet-ka, who always hung back, was going to get the first egg. It seemed to Kiron there was a certain justice in that.
The jar went around enough times for everyone to be impatient before it was over. Orest’s egg came in the middle, and it was Pe-atep who would get the last of the eggs. Although everyone except Menet-ka moaned about the wait, no one really seemed unhappy. And Kiron was very proud of them all when Menet-ka offered to trade his place with any of the rest of them and no one took him up on the offer.
“You’re as ready as any of us, and more ready than I am,” said Orest stoutly, even though Kiron knew he was afire to have that egg in his possession.
“So, let’s go look at the pens, and get your colors up outside them,” Kiron urged; eager to put their imprint on what would be the centers of their worlds for the next several moons, they filed after him, going out into the torch-lit, open-topped corridors to a newly built section of pens.
Here were ten of the sand-pit pens (one would stay empty for now), all along the same corridor, five on either side. Avatre’s was the first, and already had a block of four squares of red and black inside a lozenge-outline painted on the wall outside it. A servant with brushes and paints waited for them at the entrance to Avatre’s pen.
They got pens in the order in which they would get their eggs; this meant that a hatching dragon would only have noise on one wall, keeping disturbances as minimal as possible. Kiron was not sure what Lord Khumun had done, but despite initial objections, the Magi had agreed to create spells that moved the heat from some of the hot springs that created water too hot and too sulfurous to use into the sands of the pens. While the adult dragons could cope with the shifting levels of heat in sand pits warmed by ovens or other means, hatching eggs needed a constant temperature. Kiron hoped he had gotten that temperature absolutely right, but the only way to tell would be if the eggs all hatched.
From the beginning, these pens had been set up with living quarters as part of them; there would be no makeshift pallets for the boys of Kiron’s wing. Eventually, of course, the dragons would be old enough to be able to sleep alone, as Kashet did, but until then, they would need their boys—their “mothers”—with them. Especially at night.
When Lord Khumun wanted something done, apparently it got done; here were thick-walled pens, (with walls, not of mud brick, but of stone) with roofed living quarters, running water (every two pens shared a room for bathing where, presumably, the boys would also get water for their dragons), heated sands, and a better canvas roof arrangement for the rainy season than the Tian Jousters had. And it had all been constructed within a moon or so.
The boys were impressed, and well they should be, for this was nothing short of amazing. The only time Kiron had heard of construction going up faster was when a Royal Tomb was being built.
“After the eggs are hatched, we will begin constructing more pens for the next lot of volunteers,” Lord Khumun had said to Kiron, “But I do not want to chance anything that might disturb the eggs.”
“Well,” Kiron said to his new wing. “Will this do?”
“I should like to move in now, if I might,” said Toreth. He looked around at the others, who nodded agreement.
“I don’t have any objections,” Kiron told them, though secretly, he was pleased. The boys were all living at their homes now; he wanted them at the compound as soon as he could get them here. The sooner they settled into their new way of life, the better, but they could hardly have gone in with the existing dragon boys. For one thing, there wasn’t really room, and for another, there was bound to be tension there before long. The dragon boys were freeborn, as in Tia, but they were mostly from extremely poor families, and there was not a single one of the new wing that wasn’t at least from the caste of craftsmen. And as for Toreth—
Well, while Kiron doubted that the prince himself would have any objections to being put in with boys from the lowest levels of society, anyone with so much as a single drop of noble blood in his veins would probably have a fit the moment word got out that a prince was being housed with the peasantry. And the screams of outrage would be heard on the top of the Great Tower of the Royal Palace.
“You could move in at any point, including tonight,” Kiron told them all.
Toreth grinned. “Then I am sending a runner for my things. Mother has an entire herd of female relatives visiting her, and the gabble and cackle is like to drive me mad.”
“And I believe I shall do likewise,” Gan drawled. “It’s going to take me a quarter moon to get these quarters comfortable anyway, and I might as well start now.”
That started the stampede, and before long, as Kiron joined Avatre in their quarters, he could hear the coming and going of numerous servants, bringing the boys’ belongings from their homes. He even overheard Toreth generously sending his servants after the belongings of Huras, Kalen, and Pe-atep, who obviously had no servants of their own.
And shortly after that, he heard much coming and going from Gan’s quarters, and heard that familiar, lazy drawl cheerfully distributing “extra” comforts “that there just is no room for, hang it!” among his wingmates. Soon, there were trades going on, as what had been personal belongings (or “supplies” pressed upon sons by anxious mothers) were distributed, through the alchemy of friendship, across the entire group.
“Listen to them! They’re acting as a unit,” he told Avatre, wonderingly. “They haven’t even got dragons yet, and already they’re a real wing!”
She nodded quite as if she understood, and dug herself a little further down into the warm sands. As far as she was concerned, life was perfect, for the hot sand was a great deal more comfortable for her than the stone of the courtyard she had been using.
And as the excited chatter and the other sounds of eight boys settling into new quarters died away, Kiron settled down himself for the night. It was an auspicious beginning, a good foundation to build on.
And with that cheerful thought in his mind, he allowed himself to drift into sleep.