'And break me.' Now Ari's voice went as stone-hard as Haraket's. 'Suppose I were to put myself forward. Then I must guard my tongue waking and sleeping, lest someone who wishes to be more favored takes some word of mine and twists it, and whispers it in the Great King's ear! I could not choose my own friends, my own pastimes, nothing, for fear that someone who does not love to see me raised on high may find a weapon to bring me down! I would be more of a prisoner than a serf, who at least may command his own thoughts. I think not; that sort of life is not for me. Now, if such honors would grant me the freedom to study dragons, rather than use them as weapons, then, they would be of value to me. As it is, they are worth less than sand in the dry season.'
And with that, he nudged Kashet, who was already impatient to be gone, and they thundered into the sky. Haraket sheltered his eyes with his hand, and peered after him, shaking his head. Vetch didn't know what to think, but he stowed the words away in his memory to ponder later.
Coresan laid a total of three more eggs, one every three days, which were duly taken away from her before she had a chance to go broody. She didn't seem to miss them at all, any more than she'd missed the one that Vetch had taken. Vetch didn't know what had been done with those eggs, and tried not to think about them. After all, he had more than enough on his hands at the moment, tending to her, Kashet, and his own precious egg which—if he wasn't mistaken—was showing every sign of being fertile. When all the eggs had been laid, Coresan began to show signs of restlessness.
Dutifully, Vetch reported that to Haraket as well. The Overseer pulled on his lower lip and thought for a moment. 'Reaten is going to be sent down, back to the ranks of the unflighted, until he learns better dragon husbandry,' he said, in an absentminded tone that made Vetch assume he was thinking out loud. 'But there's a likely lad coming up who might do well with Coresan, if she'll take him…'
Haraket's voice trailed away, and Vetch wondered what he meant. Could a Jouster be taken from his dragon?
Maybe not Ari, for Vetch was certain Kashet would never, ever fly for anyone else… but would it make any difference to Coresan who flew her?
Probably not. And that was confirmed a moment later, when Haraket nodded briskly. 'I'll do it,' he said aloud, with satisfaction in his voice. 'I'll switch their dragons. Hah! If he can get into trouble with that beast, I'll eat his saddle raw, without salt!'
That very evening, as Vetch was about to take away a half-barrowload of meat that Coresan suddenly didn't want—for all on her own, now that she had delivered herself of her clutch, she was cutting back on her food— Haraket appeared at the door to Coresan's pen with a strange young man in tow. This one could not have been out of his teens, but there was a no-nonsense look about him that made him seem very confident. And when he looked Coresan up and down, he was not at all afraid of her.
'And this is Coresan. Stand your ground with her,' Haraket was saying. 'Remember what I told you.'
The young man nodded, and approached the dragon, who was peering down at him with great interest. But she didn't snap; her snappishness all seemed to have been due to her wanting to mate, and being about to go to nest. Now she was back to her old self, agreeable, but with mischief and rebellion in her. Her tail twitched, Vetch noticed, as if she was contemplating a sly and seemingly absentminded thwack across the newcomer's shins with it.
'Coresan!' the man shouted, before she had made up her mind about it. 'Down!'
Vetch gritted his teeth on his own resentment as the young man reaped the benefits of Vetch's work with Coresan; perhaps she hadn't been flying, but he was the one who calculated that her bad humor was due in part to hunger, he was the one who'd been working with her basic commands, if only to make his own job easier, and he had been teaching her that both obedience and disobedience had consequences. She had been obeying only when she felt like it; now, after all his drilling, she did so automatically.
She knelt, and the newcomer gestured imperiously at Vetch. He wanted her saddle, of course; Vetch throttled his impulse to follow Coresan's unruly example before all that drilling and become selectively deaf and blind. Instead, he brought up the saddle and harness.
At least this fellow was competent enough to do his own saddling. Feeling very much as if he was the expert here, and the Jouster the interloper, Vetch watched the harnessing with a critical eye, and could find nothing to complain about.
But he felt better when, as the young man finished, he gave Coresan a rewarding slap on the shoulder. At least he didn't look on the dragon as a sort of flying chariot, insensate and insensible.
'Up, Coresan,' the Jouster ordered, and then looked back over his shoulder at Haraket as she obeyed without complaint.
The Overseer nodded, and the new Jouster put one foot on Coresan's foreleg, and vaulted lightly into her saddle. He signaled to Vetch, who released the chain from around her neck, the chain that had kept her earthbound until this moment.
Coresan's training held, though she had not been ridden in nearly a moon; she stayed on the ground rather than going for the sky, although a few weeks ago, she'd have been up like a shot arrow once the chain was off. Instead, she was rock-steady until the new man gave her the nudge to send her up. She responded to his signal eagerly, throwing herself into the air, as Vetch and Haraket shielded their eyes from the storm of sand and wind driven up by the fierce beats of her wings.
