Alta

and greeted his appearance with hisses and whines. Even the best-tempered of them made no bones about their dislike of him. He repaid their displays with no visible expression whatsoever.

The Jousters ignored him, except when he addressed one of them directly, and they gave him as little opportunity to do that as possible. They kept out of his way until time to fly, then quickly took their dragons to the landing courtyard, knowing he would not venture out into the rain, then mounted as fast as they could, and got their dragons into the air. The dragons didn’t even care to linger.

That left him only Kiron’s wing to inspect.

He surprised Kiron by appearing soundlessly in the door to Avatre’s pen, appearing out of the gloom while Kiron was harnessing her. The first Kiron knew he was there was when he cleared his throat ostentatiously. Kiron might have jumped, but Avatre covered it by swinging her head toward the doorway, eyes wide.

“Well,” the Magus said, in an arrogant tone of voice, “So this is the famous Tian Jouster boy and his dragon.”

There were many replies that Kiron could have made to that, and most of them would have been rude. He bit his tongue as Avatre stuck out her neck and hissed at him, and confined himself to simply saying, “I am still in training, and I was not aware that I was famous, my Lord.”

The Magus grunted. Kiron remained silent, continuing his work, moving slowly and carefully to keep from fumbling anything out of nervousness. Avatre showed her teeth.

“Isn’t she big enough to fly to combat?” the Magus said, with growing irritation when his continuing silence could not prod anything more out of Kiron.

“She is not fully trained, my Lord, and neither am I,” he replied, deciding that it was more than worth the irritation it would cause the Magus to hear the same answers repeated and rephrased, over and over. “And we are both much younger than even the traditionally trained Jousters and their dragons. Size is no indication of age or skill, my Lord, nor of readiness, much less of trained competence.”

This time the reply was a snort. “So what is it that you claim? That you are inept?”

“That I am untrained in traditional Jousting, my Lord,” Kiron said, keeping his tone even. “Avatre is a desert dragon, my Lord, and they grow to be much larger than those you are used to seeing. She is no older than three years; the youngest of your fighting dragons is three times that age. And I have been training for little more than one year; the least training that your Jousters receive before they take to the battlefield is two years.” He couldn’t help it; his voice took on an edge of anger, though he did his best to control it. “Are you suggesting, my Lord, that I should attempt things that are beyond my skill and hers? That we should risk, not only ourselves, but the lives of those who would wrongly depend on us, thinking we are skilled and practiced Jousters? That we should engage in the monumental hubris of believing we are ready for things we have no business trying, merely because we are—if indeed we are—famous? That, my Lord, would not only be foolhardy, it would border on—treason, wouldn’t you say? To knowingly go into a battle, aware that we cannot do what is asked of us when there are others depending on us to do what we cannot? Are you suggesting that this would be a good idea?”

There, he had flung the challenge back in the Magus’ face. And now he looked up, to see a most peculiar expression there. Surprise—and perhaps a touch of fear?

So, even the Magi are not immune to accusations of treason. It was something unexpected, and something he decided to think about—later. And they’re not used to having their weapons used against them. That was something else to think about. It suggested a number of ways of dealing with this man.

“Your pardon, my Lord, but you are standing in our path, and I should not like Avatre to strike at you,” he said, with poisonous politeness. “I would do my best to prevent it, of course, but that may not be entirely possible, when it is clear that she has taken an intense dislike to you. And if we are to take up our duty, every moment of training, even in these conditions, which she, as a desert dragon, is particularly unsuited to, is precious.”

Avatre punctuated his words with a hiss and snap in the Magus’ direction. The man actually stepped back a pace.

“In fact, my Lord,” Kiron pointed out, unable to resist being able to do so, “these dragons are performing far and away above what their Tian relatives can do. The other desert dragons that we have, the ones that are not tame, are remaining in the pens and cannot be persuaded into the sky by any means during the rains. Nor can the Tian dragons. But our dragons will work for us, even under conditions that they hate. No one sane could ask more than that.”

The Magus stepped back another two paces, as Kiron led Avatre forward one. A third backward step took him into the corridor, as he clearly searched for something to say, and just as clearly came from his search with no good results.

“I suggest that you get on with it, then,” he snarled at last, and—fled.

He fled the entire section where the boys lived, in fact, for as Kiron led Avatre out of her pen, he saw the tail of the man’s robe vanishing around the corner into the main corridor.

“Let’s get out of here!” he called harshly, as human and draconic noses poked around the doorframes. “We have training to do.”

A ragged chorus of assent met his command, and as he led Avatre toward the landing courtyard with the rain drumming down on canvas above him, he heard the slap of leather soles on the stone behind him, and the clatter of dragon claws.

He led the procession with his head held high and without a backward glance. He felt the Magus’ glare on the back of his neck from the shelter of one of the other doorways as they passed. Avatre felt it, too, and hissed again, but made no move otherwise as he put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

Let him look and glare. All he would see was Kiron, doing his duty despite conditions that would excuse anyone else from fulfilling them. And Kiron’s wing, following their leader and their trainer, obedient, and ready to serve Alta as soon as they were able.

Yes, let him look. He would find no treason here. What they wanted was not treason to Alta. If anything, it would be the saving of their land. And he kept his head high as they went out in the pouring rain, secure in the sure knowledge of that, if of nothing else.

NINETEEN

THE Magus was wont to appear out of nowhere, drop an acidic remark or an impertinent question, and wait to see how badly he had shaken his prey. He was quite successful at it most of the time. He had Aket-ten so rattled that she fled whenever he was near, and he had even the senior Jousters frowning and growling into their beer.

However, Kiron felt that he had gotten the upper hand on their first—and thus far, only—exchange. Perhaps that was why there had not been a second one. He did not succeed in rattling Heklatis at all, not even when the inevitable confrontation over the magic guarding his quarters came, early in the afternoon of his second day as their overseer.

Kiron was privileged to be there for that incident, and to his mind, it was the one bright moment since the Magus had descended on them.

He was actually seeing Heklatis for a legitimate complaint; a badly bruised forearm. The dragonets were not big enough to do a “falling-man” catch, so he had decided to try a different tactic—he reasoned that if they could at least slow a fall, he might get there in time to save whoever had been knocked from the saddle. So the new maneuver they were trying to perfect was of coming in under the falling “body,” holding it for a moment, then letting it slip only to have another dragonet come in from below for a second catch. It was a clever idea in theory; in practice, it only made the falling victim’s path less predictable, and had ended up in a lot of bruises.

Fortunately, even the experienced Jousters, who had shunned such things before, had taken to wearing saddle straps around their waists now, and extra-heavy girths on their saddles. Between the violent flying that their dragons were doing to evade projectiles from below, and their own exhaustion, no one wanted to take the chance of being knocked off a dragon in mid-flight.

“Well, that’s a bone bruise,” said Heklatis, finally, after a long and careful examination. “It is going to take a while to heal. The best I can offer you is a poultice of wormwood for the outside, and suggest a heavier hand than usual on the beer jars for the in—”

“Healer!” came a furious shout from the courtyard outside, making them both