Mercedes Lackey - Alta

“If you think it might be valuable, perhaps I can offer you some advice on the older dragons as well,” he said, after a moment of hesitation. “Now, I do not know if this will make a difference with your current beasts, but any new ones that you trap—well, there was a trainer among the Tian Jousters, newly arrived, who had impressive success in treating newly caught dragons as if they were falcons.”

“Falcons!” exclaimed Khumun-thetus. “That had never occurred to us! He kept them hooded, then?”

“Day and night, and fed them through the hood until they accepted the presence of men. Then he harnessed them, and flew them on a rope in one of the landing courtyards, giving them food rewards, until they accepted the harness, the weight, and the commands without complaint.” He took a deep breath, then regretted it, as his chest muscles complained. “My Lord, there were a great many new dragons being trained in this way when we escaped. Almost all of the pens were full. Mind, the Tians trap only newly fledged dragons, not the adults, which they deem too dangerous—but the pens were almost all full. The Tian King has ordered that the numbers of Jousters be increased dramatically.”

Khumun-thetus frowned. “That is ill hearing. In two or three years, then, we could see double the number of Tian Jousters?”

“Or more,” Kiron replied. “But if you have men who train hawks and hounds and great cats—all of which this trainer had done—especially those who train hawks trapped as adults—you may have some success with adult-caught dragons.”

“I must see what is to be done.” Khumun-thetus’ expression had darkened. “In the meantime, if I get you eggs, hatching pens, and boys, can you show them what to do?”

“Yes, my Lord, I can,” Kiron replied confidently, knowing that none of this would happen any time soon.

“And in the meanwhile—” Khumun-thetus eyed him critically. “My Lord Ya-tiren, you extended the invitation for this boy to take lessons with your son’s tutors. Until he is needed by the Jousters, and perhaps afterward, I should like to take advantage of that invitation. Well-born he may be, and a dragon rider already, but through no fault of his own he has been educated not at all, and if he is to take a place of authority over well-born boys, he must be able to match them.”

“Surely,” said Lord Ya-tiren, as Kiron forced an impassive expression on his face. Lessons? What sort of lessons? What on earth did the Lord of the Jousters think he needed to know?

He had not been here two days, and already someone else was taking charge of his life.

Whether he liked it or not.

“Oh, it won’t be so bad,” said Orest, when he appeared with servants at sundown, bearing Kiron’s dinner. “You’ll have to learn to read, of course, but Father’s stopped my mathematica lessons now that I’m going to be a Jouster, so I expect the tutor will be let go. The rest of it is mostly listening to philosophers lecture. And answering questions afterward. And asking questions yourself. Actually, it’s better to jump right in and start asking questions; philosophers are only too happy to hear themselves talking. If you can get them going again, you usually escape having to give any answers yourself altogether.”

Well, that didn’t sound so bad. I wouldn’t mind being able to read, he thought to himself, with a wistful longing. If I could read, I could properly recite the prayers for the dead. His father had one shrine, now, but—well, it would not be bad to have another, here. As long as he didn’t end up like the boys who learned to be priests or scribes, bent over a lap-desk all day, copying texts onto potsherds until he went mad. But no, that was stupid; they wanted him to train Jousters, not copy records or write letters.

“I like lessons,” Aket-ten said, coming into the courtyard. Today, it appeared, she was trying to look more grown-up; she had on a slim-fitting yellow dress instead of a boyish tunic. For the first time, he wondered just how old she was. Eleven? Twelve?

“Well, that’s only because you know you wouldn’t be getting any lessons if you weren’t a Nestling,” Orest countered. “So just to keep getting them, you’d say you liked them even if you didn’t.”

“That’s not true! And you know that Father said after the last report from your tutors that it didn’t matter I was a girl, if I hadn’t been a Nestling, he’d have given me the same tutors as you, and I probably would have done better than you because I apply myself, so there!” There was a fight brewing, and Kiron hastened to end it before it began.

“The Lord of the Jousters was here,” he said, interrupting it. “He asked if I could teach others how to hatch and raise a dragonet, and then said that he’d get all of it organized. So I guess there’s your answer, Orest. It isn’t going to be just you, but at least you’re not going to have to try and get an egg all by yourself.”

“They might just let a couple of the fighting dragons mate,” Orest observed, popping a little dainty that he had told Kiron was a stuffed grape-leaf into his mouth. Kiron had tried them himself; they were spicy, but good, full of chopped meat and bread crumbs. “That would be the easiest.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Aket-ten countered. “In fact, it would be stupid and dangerous! The easiest would be to tie out one of the female fighting dragons, and let a male come to her. That’s how they trap the males already, anyway, they just don’t let them mate.”

“And just what do you know about it?” Orest asked heatedly.

“I read, ” she shot back. “I’ve been reading about dragons all day, in fact! Which you could have done, if you hadn’t been spending all your time telling your friends what a great Jouster you’re going to be, and how your egg is going to hatch out the biggest dragon there ever was!”

“Oh, you read all about it, did you?” Orest, his ears getting red. “And just who let a Nestling back into the restricted scrolls?”

“The librarian of the Temple of the Twins, of course,” Aket-ten said primly. “The temple has just as many scrolls as the Great Library, and no Nestling is ever restricted from reading any of them. So there.” She folded her arms over her chest and gave him a look of triumph. “I probably know more about dragons than anyone but a Jouster. I could probably be a Jouster if I wanted to.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Orest said, with such a look of smug superiority on his face that his sister flushed. “They don’t let girls be Jousters.”

“I could go in disguise,” she retorted, and looked hurt when both Orest and Kiron laughed at her. “Well, I could!”

“The Jousters train and bathe together when they aren’t fighting,” Orest said. “They wrestle naked and bathe naked. So how are you going to disguise what you don’t have?”

“It’s a stupid rule,” she said, going from triumphant to sullen sulk all in a moment. “I could raise a dragon just as easily as you.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Orest and Kiron said together. They exchanged a look, and Orest nodded.

“Dragonets eat lots and lots of raw meat,” Kiron said. “Piles of it. And hearts and livers and lungs. ” Aket-ten was looking a little green at the thought, and he drove it home. “The dragonets need bone in with all of that, so you have to break up the bone so they can swallow it. And you would have to feed the baby this stuff by hand, yourself, or she won’t bond with you. By the time I got done giving Avatre her first feedings, I was bloody up to the elbows, it was in my hair, under my nails—”

“All right!” she interrupted, looking as if she was going to be sick. But her brother hadn’t had his say yet.