“And what have we but time?” the prince retorted, spreading his hands wide. “We have one solution—the tame dragons. One of them is better than four Jousters on tala-drugged beasts. We are not desperate for a solution, I merely want you to see if you can devise more than one. No archer goes into battle with a single bow string.”

Aket-ten nodded briskly. “That is only reasonable,” she said. “Now, as for my Akkadian, it may be several days before I can speak with him, and more before I can persuade him to speak with you. He is reluctant to admit his training.”

“And what have I but time?” the prince repeated. “If you can persuade him, well and good. If not, perhaps on the day when my brother and I sit on the Twin Thrones, he will be willing to come forward. Until then, anything he might tell us is nothing we can put into immediate use.”

“There is that,” Kiron agreed, and stifled a yawn. “Dawn comes early—”

“Earlier every morning until Midsummer,” Aket-ten agreed cheerfully. “So, I fear, my guests, you must consider yourselves to be invited to leave!”

“And we will take the invitation in the spirit with which it was given,” said the prince, standing up and giving her a slavish bow that made her laugh. He offered a hand to Kiron, who took it to pull himself to his feet. “Until tomorrow, Aket-ten! I look forward to our match!”

“Until tomorrow,” she replied, her voice a little muffled as she bent to blow out a lamp.

“Well fought,” Toreth repeated, slapping Kiron on the back as they left.

But he said it in a tone that left Kiron wondering. Was he talking about their game of Hounds and Jackals or some other contest altogether?

Kiron had thought that beautiful Tathulan, Huras’ enormous female dragonet, would probably lose some of her relative size as the others caught up with her. But as the days passed, that didn’t happen. She continued to grow at the same rate as all the others—which meant she was still half again as large as the nearest in size.

“She’ll be fledging long before Bethlan,” Kiron observed, watching as she tossed her current favorite plaything, a bag loosely stuffed with straw, into the air with a flip of her head. It was a singularly beautiful head; dark blue along the neck ridge and in a blaze down her forehead, fading to a glorious purple, which in turn faded to scarlet on the underside of her jaw and on her muzzle.

“You think?” Huras asked doubtfully. “She doesn’t act any differently from the others. She’s just bigger. I thought that you told us that the biggest and the strongest were the firstborn.”