By the time the day was over, it was quite clear that there was no love lost between the Magus and his new charges. Kiron was not the only Jouster to meet the appearances of the Magus with outward—but bare—civility. Mut-ke-re poked his long nose into everything, from the kitchen to the sand-bath pen, and asked abrupt questions wherever he went. The dragons didn’t like him, and greeted his appearance with hisses and whines. Even the best-tempered of them made no bones about their dislike of him. He repaid their displays with no visible expression whatsoever.

The Jousters ignored him, except when he addressed one of them directly, and they gave him as little opportunity to do that as possible. They kept out of his way until time to fly, then quickly took their dragons to the landing courtyard, knowing he would not venture out into the rain, then mounted as fast as they could, and got their dragons into the air. The dragons didn’t even care to linger.

That left him only Kiron’s wing to inspect.

He surprised Kiron by appearing soundlessly in the door to Avatre’s pen, appearing out of the gloom while Kiron was harnessing her. The first Kiron knew he was there was when he cleared his throat ostentatiously. Kiron might have jumped, but Avatre covered it by swinging her head toward the doorway, eyes wide.

“Well,” the Magus said, in an arrogant tone of voice, “So this is the famous Tian Jouster boy and his dragon.”

There were many replies that Kiron could have made to that, and most of them would have been rude. He bit his tongue as Avatre stuck out her neck and hissed at him, and confined himself to simply saying, “I am still in training, and I was not aware that I was famous, my Lord.”

The Magus grunted. Kiron remained silent, continuing his work, moving slowly and carefully to keep from fumbling anything out of nervousness. Avatre showed her teeth.

“Isn’t she big enough to fly to combat?” the Magus said, with growing irritation when his continuing silence could not prod anything more out of Kiron.

“She is not fully trained, my Lord, and neither am I,” he replied, deciding that it was more than worth the irritation it would cause the Magus to hear the same answers repeated and rephrased, over and over. “And we are both much younger than even the traditionally trained Jousters and their dragons. Size is no indication of age or skill, my Lord, nor of readiness, much less of trained competence.”

This time the reply was a snort. “So what is it that you claim? That you are inept?”