Alta

So, he wants to know if I really do know what I’m talking about, and if I can give him something he can use now. I can’t blame him. With the Tians building up the numbers of their Jousters, and the Altans already fewer, he needs help.

“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.”