Alta

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.