'That will do,' the Overseer replied. 'That will certainly do.
Now, explain to the boys and the trainers how you handle the young falcons, and how you think it should apply to the dragonets. Vetch, Fisk, you can go back to your duties.'
Vetch was not sorry to go back, for he was already worried about Avatre again—but mingled with relief was such bitter envy at Baken's good fortune that it tasted like bile in his throat. That wasn't fair to Baken. He didn't know the young man, and Baken was clearly kind to the falcons in his charge, competent, and eager to tame the dragonets in the most humane way possible. But it was so cruel, to see freedom offered to someone so nearly in his own circumstances, and know it would never be offered to him!
But he won't have Avatre, he reminded himself, as he took a quick peek into her pen and assured himself that she was still asleep. He doesn't have her. And I have to make sure he never shall.
OVER the next half moon, as the sea witches sent storms about every four or five days, Avatre grew at a rate that would have been alarming if Vetch hadn't expected it. Dragons flew for the first time at the end of the dry season, for they absolutely required heat, and the nests that lay in the full sunlight during the dry season would be fully exposed to the rains and cold winds of the winter wet. They were by no means able to hunt and kill for themselves; indeed, their mothers and fathers fed them for the next two years, but they had to be mobile by that time. A young dragon had to be up and out of his nest before the rain and wind came, so that he could follow his mother down into the warm volcanic caves for the winter.
Then he would spend the next two years reaching his adult size—or at least, that was how long it took in the pens. In the wild it often took even longer than that, for his growth depended on how well he ate. Here in the compound, of course, a dragonet never lacked for food, so he would achieve his full size in the minimum possible time.
And as a consequence of all that good food, Avatre doubled her weight nearly every day. Vetch oiled and buffed her morning and evening now, not only to keep her from itching too much, but to keep her skin supple and prevent it from tearing as she grew. There was never enough time, yet somehow he managed to squeeze everything in, by running everywhere, doing everything at full speed. Ari had always been easy to clean up after, now he was so seldom in his quarters that there was almost nothing to do. Vetch did his leather work by lantern light, and only needed to turn up on time for the inspection of the weapons, but the Jousters were going out so seldom, and then never seeing combat, that the inspection hardly took any time at all. It wasn't easy, but at least, it wasn't impossible.
There were twenty new dragonets in the compound now, and he was learning an enormous amount by eavesdropping on the trainers. Sometimes he even eavesdropped on the former falcon keeper, Baken, but although what the young man had to say was interesting, it didn't really apply to Avatre, since everything he knew pertained to wild or half-wild beasts, not one being hand-raised like Avatre.
He breathed a little easier with every new dragonet that came into the compound, especially when another of the new ones was also a red—and he felt more at ease with every new doubling of Avatre's weight, for she looked more and more like the other new ones.
Another factor was working in his favor. It was getting impossible for anyone but Haraket to know which new dragonet belonged with which new dragon boy, or in which pen, and Haraket was so busy that unless something actually went wrong, he left the new boys and dragonets to Baken and the trainers.
He was not doing triple duty, after all, which would have been impossible. It was Baken, not Vetch and Fisk, who weeded out the unsuitable boys from the ones that would take proper care of their dragonets. It was Baken who taught them what to do, and was turning into Haraket's right-hand assistant. Suddenly, the soon-to-be-former slave's star was very high indeed, and Vetch's was quite eclipsed. Not that he went back to being the outcast. There were far too many new people thronging the compound now for the freeborn boys to single him out—far, far too many serfs and slaves being made into dragon boys for them to say or do much about his status anymore. But there was no doubt that the admiring glances followed Baken now, and it seemed that every other sentence he overheard these days started with 'Baken says…'
And Vetch couldn't hate him, though it would have been easy to. Baken was genuinely good with beasts; he tried to understand how they thought and why they did the things that they did. Before he'd been assigned to the falcons, he'd handled both dogs and horses, and once had been given a sick lion cub to nurse. He was both firm and gentle with the creatures under his care. He tried to puzzle out what he called their 'language'—what was important to them, what made them what they were, what poses and calls they used to communicate with each other—and he used that 'language' to win their trust and cooperation. If he'd wanted to, Vetch had no doubt whatsoever that he could raise another Kashet and become a Jouster as good as Ari.
