“She grew up,” Kiron replied shortly, a little dismayed at Gan’s words, and surprised to feel a surge of jealousy. Aket-ten looked—well, wonderful. She had somehow achieved a compromise between the hoyden she had been and that elegant, slightly over-painted “lady” he had first seen in the Temple of All Gods. She looked quite comfortable in her skin, and yet there was no doubt whatsoever that she had, in very fact, grown up. Even Toreth was giving her an interested and intrigued look.

Yes, every one of the boys was eyeing her with varying degrees of speculation and interest except Orest himself. Orest was apparently oblivious to the change. He still looked bored, and clearly wished himself elsewhere.

“I have work to do,” he whispered irritably to Kiron. “You’d think they’d leave me out of this welcoming-party!” He shook his head. “She’s bad enough now as a know-it-all; this is just going to swell her pride like a toad in the rain!”

That his wingmates did not share his impatience didn’t seem to register with him at all.

Aket-ten didn’t look like someone whose pride was going to swell over all the attention. She looked like someone who knew she had a job to do and was determined to do it well. The encounter with the Magi had changed her profoundly, Kiron decided at last. It had dispelled some cherished illusions, and had forced her to look at the world around her with a high degree of skepticism. He felt sorry for her; the confident child he had rescued back in the swamp was gone.

On the other hand, the cautious girl who had taken the child’s place would be a bit easier to live with.

“Do you think you are prepared to attempt a wild-caught dragon?” Lord Khumun asked Aket-ten. “You need not fear them now—I am sure that your brother must have told you that we have been working intensely with them, and that though one must be cautious around them, you need not fear them.”

Where did that come from? I must have been wool-gathering. Kiron shook his head; he had been so busy staring that he had completely lost track of the conversation.

Aket-ten hesitated, then answered carefully. “My Lord, the problem is not that I am afraid of the wild-caught dragons, it is the tala. It makes their thoughts so sluggish that I cannot effectively reach them. So while I can easily tell Avatre what it is that Kiron would like her to do, with a wild-caught dragon, I do not believe that I could get past the tala and its own natural resistance to captivity. I fear that the best I could manage would be to read it, to tell you how it is feeling at that moment.”