Alta

But I’m the wing leader and trainer, he reminded himself. They don’t have that. And they’re still tending babies, not flying combat training.

“Have you gone to see the dragonets yet?” he asked.

She laughed. “If I hadn’t, the others of your wing would have had seizures by now,” she said merrily. “Yes, I’ve seen all of them. And I would never, ever say this to their faces, but the poor little things look terribly unfinished compared with Avatre. However, I’ve Spoken to all of them, and I can tell you that they are all amazingly healthy and thriving. My only recommendation is to get them all toys now and get them interested in playing. They may be clumsy, and they may not be able to do more than mouth pretty colored things, but their minds need stimulation as much as their bodies do.” She pursed her lips a moment. “In fact, you had better get Bethulan and Re-eth-katen twice as many toys as the rest, and more interesting ones, because they will get bored the soonest. Perhaps systrums that they can rattle, or soft things that they can carry about and worry like puppies.”

He made a mental note to see to it. “Avatre needs a grooming,” he told her. “And I know she likes your company. Would you like to come along?”

“No, by now, the servants are back with my things,” she told him, and he bit back disappointment. “If I don’t direct them, they’ll put my bedroom where I’ll be hearing chatter and clatter all night long, and my study in the darkest room of the lot. I promise though, I will wait for you at supper.”

His spirits rose again. “I’ll hold you to that promise,” he said, and led Avatre off to the grooming pens feeling very much better.

At supper, however, despite his attempt to sit with Aket-ten in an unobtrusive corner of the enclosure, the others spotted them and settled themselves at the table, completely ignoring some fairly fierce glares on his part.

This eating area could have been the duplicate of the one in the Tian compound; there were the identical wooden tables and benches, the plain stone walls, and nearly the same cooking smells. The only real difference was that besides the movable awnings on lines overhead, the four walls supported permanent awnings as well, held up on posts, so that the area open to the sky was considerably smaller. And beneath the cooking smells, the scent of the compound was much different—with so many swamp dragons here, and with the canal so near, the air was always humid and full of water scent.

No wonder the Tians are envious of us. We have so much water we have to find ways to getting rid of it, but once you move from the Great Mother River, there is nothing worth having in Tia.

He wondered what Aket-ten would think of that observation. If they had been alone, he probably would have asked her opinion. But with the others around—well, they’d probably think he was an idiot.

He sat there, tongue-tied, while Gan kept Aket-ten laughing with his imitations and his cleverness. He couldn’t help but notice her admiring glances at Oset-re’s handsome profile—and neither could Oset-re.

Huras, however, seemed to be on Kiron’s side. He had no more advantage than Kiron did in flirting—his father the baker surely did not move in court circles!

And, in fact, he probably had a bit less of an advantage, for although he was frighteningly intelligent, he was not much inclined to speak unless he was spoken to, and his large frame and stolid expression often made people think he was stupid. While Kiron didn’t think that Aket-ten had made that mistake, Huras also seemed far more interested in what Aket-ten could tell him about Tathulan than about herself.

Since Huras was at the outer end of the table, he got the serving dishes first—and he kept spearing the choicest bits and passing them directly to Kiron with a nod toward Aket-ten and a conspiratorial wink. Kiron was good at taking hints; he passed the bounty on to Aket-ten, and at least got the reward of a nod of thanks and a smile.

And Toreth also seemed, obliquely at least, to be helping Kiron. When Gan was being a little too clever, Toreth deflated him with a barbed bit of wit of his own. And when Oset-re started moving to put that handsome face of his in the best possible light, he asked, innocent as a child, “Are you posing for a statue, Oset-re? I should wait until I had earned my first Gold of Honor if I were you.”

Aket-ten had the grace not to laugh at these stabs at the others’ vanity, but she hid a smile behind the cover of her jar of beer.

“Aket-ten,” asked Orest, suddenly, quite out of nowhere. “What was going on when you left? Did you really lose your other powers?”