Alta

her.

She held out her hand, fearlessly—but palm down, not up.

With infinite care, the dragon moved forward until the chain was stretched tight—and pushed the tip of his nose beneath her hand.

He closed his eyes and sighed. And waited.

What does that mean to a dragon? he wondered. The nose was the most sensitive part. You couldn’t kill a dragon by slashing at its nose, but—

But—they’re like crocodiles, he realized at that moment. He’d seen the dragonets immobilize each other briefly in play by grabbing the muzzle. You could make it impossible for him to attack you by holding his mouth closed. And if you were a dragon, and you seized your rival by the nose, and you clamped down on it and closed off the nostrils as well—your rival would be dead. You’d smother him.

So that was what it meant to a dragon! Total, complete surrender. . . .

For the moment, anyway. Like all wild things, the hierarchy within a flight of dragons was always changing. One was always challenging another. Mostly staring contests though, and perhaps Aket-ten was right, perhaps they did some shoving about, invisibly, will-to-will as well.

She rubbed the sensitive skin around the dragon’s nostrils. “Give me a brush,” she demanded, without looking away.

“What?” he asked.

“A brush,” she said patiently. “I’m getting into the pool with him to give him a scrub. It’s the equivalent of a sand rubbing. This is what they do—the one who wins grooms the one who lost.”

Kiron looked around and saw that, sure enough, there were several brushes with heavy, stiff bristles hanging on the wall. He got one and brought it to Aket-ten. She held out her hand without looking at him, and he put the brush into it. Only then did she wade into the dragon’s pool, handsome yellow sheath dress and all, hissing a little at the heat as she got in.

Had this been anyone other than Aket-ten, he never would have allowed it. In the same pool, as a dragon on a half-ration of tala, well within his grabbing distance?

But it was Aket-ten, and if there was anyone who knew what she was doing at this moment, it was Aket- ten.

She didn’t give the swamp dragon a full grooming; that would have taken all afternoon. But she did get some of the worst, and apparently itchiest, spots. The dragon moaned and sighed and leaned into her strokes until she patted him on the shoulder and climbed out, her dress streaming—and leaving nothing at all to the imagination.

He flushed; she didn’t seem to notice. Then again, she was being very careful around an unsedated dragon; a little thing like having a dress that was now so transparent you might as well be wearing nothing at all was not going to trouble her.

Whatever she was putting into the dragon’s mind worked. He didn’t even snap at her. When she was out of reach, Kiron wordlessly handed her a towel.

“Now is the point when I ask you what you thought you were accomplishing when you started this, rather than what you were doing,” he said, after a moment, as she dried herself off as best she could. “Since you seem to have worked out how to be the king dragon in a flight. Or queen,” he added, as an afterthought. “I think Ari said the dominant dragon can be male or female.”

She shrugged. “Finding things out. And I have; we need to drop the dose of tala that the swamp dragons get by about a double handful. Mostly though, I found out how we can get swamp dragon eggs without getting the collectors killed. So when your wing has proven itself, we can also raise swamp dragons from the egg for the next lot to fly.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Think about a wing of dragons who are tame like Avatre who not only can fly in the rain, but like it.”

“Huh.” There was no doubt that it would be an incredible advantage. “So, how do we get eggs without someone getting killed?” he asked.

“The same way we’ve been dosing him.” She stared at him now, waiting. And he could have hit himself for not thinking of it himself.

“Ducks and geese, I suppose?” he hazarded. She nodded. “And when whichever dragon is watching the nest is drugged enough, we move in. I assume you’d be watching the dragon’s mind to make sure the nest watcher wasn’t going to wake up.”

“Don’t take more than two of the four eggs, though,” she warned. “That’s reasonable. Only one in four is going to get past its first year anyway, but you’d better give them two chances at it, or you’ll start depleting the population.”

She went off to her quarters then, to change into something drier. He went to find Lord Khumun to report on what she had learned—though he did not tell Lord Khumun that she had gotten into the pool to groom her subject. He left that part out, saying only that she had established herself as that particular dragon’s superior, using her powers. Then he described how swamp dragon nests could be raided for eggs.

The Lord of the Jousters looked at him askance. “That would be useful knowledge if we wanted swamp dragons,” he said reluctantly. “But—swamp dragons?”

“Which can be flown in the storms?” he countered. “My Lord, look at your current riders! Every day during the magic-made rains they have flown out, and every day have brought back one form of victory or another! And consider that tame swamp dragons could probably be persuaded to fly even during the whole season of Rains!” He surprised himself with his passion. Compared with Avatre, the swamp-dragons were so—

—hmm. Maybe they aren’t. He thought about the intent gaze, the feeling of challenge. Aket-ten was right. It was the tala that made them seem so dull. He said as much.

“What is more, my Lord, though the swamp dragons are smaller, a Jouster on a desert dragon is going to have some difficulty in defending against two attackers.” He saw the puzzlement in Lord Khumun’s eyes, and elaborated. “What if we got enough swamp dragons to outnumber them?”

The gleam in Lord Khumun’s eyes told him that he had won.

When they met at dinner, he told the rest of the boys what had happened, and how Aket-ten had discovered the means to get swamp dragon eggs to augment the desert dragon eggs that they could get from mating Jatel and Orthele. And initially they all had the same reaction as Lord Khumun at the suggestion. But Gan said suddenly, “You know, I believe I have seen some old wall texts in a temple somewhere, all about the first dragon Jousters. I do believe that they used swamp dragons, not desert dragons. So Aket-ten is right; they must be just as smart as the desert ones, they’re just smaller.”

“And if the odds are two-to-one in our favor, it won’t matter how small the dragons are,” Toreth put in quietly.

“No,” said Kiron into the silence. “It won’t, will it?”

“So that’s the way the wind blows. . . .” Huras nodded. “Clever little Aket-ten! Do you suppose she figured that out?”

“Yes she did, and all by herself, thank you very much,” said Aket-ten tartly from the doorway. “It will be up to you layabouts to work out how to train yourselves, so we can prove to every doubter in Alta that the tame dragons are superior, and that we can train Jousters to go with the tame dragons.”

She strolled into the kitchen courtyard and took her usual place at their table. “There are some things you’ll just have to do for yourselves,” she continued, with deceptive sweetness. “Now that I’ve done the hard part.”

“The hard part?” Orest said, and Kiron winced to himself, seeing exactly how Aket-ten’s brother had set himself up for a clever retort on her part. And there was nothing he could do about it because—

“Of course,” she replied, with a disarming smile. “I’ve done all the thinking.”

—too late. Kiron sighed and intervened. “She’s just teasing you, Orest.”

But the explosion he had expected didn’t come. Orest just shrugged. “I’m not much good at thinking,” he said with complete candor. “She can do all the thinking for both of us, if she wants. I like the swam-pie idea, though. Be one in their eye if just as they think they have us outnumbered, we show up with a two- to-one advantage and dragons that can fly rings around theirs.”

“That it would,” said Toreth smoothly, as Aket-ten gaped at her brother. “So, Aket-ten, tell us more about