He didn’t tell her that, though. He had the feeling, looking at her strained, angry face all day, that any little thing might cause her to lose all self-control. Maybe that had already occurred to her. And maybe she was using anger as a bulwark against fear. If so, if he pressed her with more warnings, she might break down into hysterics—certainly there were plenty of other people right in the compound who had lost their heads today; more than one senior Jouster, as a matter of fact. There were several people who had been taken off and plied with palm wine or qat until they felt calm or just too drunk to care. He wouldn’t blame her if she blew up—but right now, they couldn’t afford to be without her.

Because earthshake or no, they had to get at least one wing into the sky. And the only way they could do that was for her to get enough dragons calmed down to form a wing. The troops in the south needed dragons and Jousters to distract the Jousters of Tia; the disaster in the city could be compounded by a disastrous loss of men and territory if no dragons could get to the combat.

The ground continued to shake a little, all that day and into the night. None of the dragonets wanted to fly, and Kiron didn’t blame them. Finally by the following morning, he told the boys to stuff the little ones with as much food as they would eat.

“If they’re full, they’ll sleep, and if they sleep, they’ll get over their fear,” he said reasonably. And when Lord Khumun heard what he had ordered, he ordered the same for every dragon that was not flying the working wing that day.

Kiron even got Avatre stuffed as full as she could hold, and eventually she, too, slept fitfully in the hot sand of her pen.

That left him with time on his hands, and seeing Aket-ten still vibrating between fear and anger and nearly bursting with the need to do something, he finally took her aside.

“Look,” he said, “You can’t go out, but I can. I’ll go out into the city for you, and help. Will that make you feel any better?”

“Just what do you think you can do?” she responded waspishly, then clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that—”