The Healer sighed. “Send for the chairs you wanted, my lord. I can see that my patient will be allowed no rest until this ‘long story’ is told.”

So Kiron told his carefully edited tale, beginning from the time that his father’s land was taken—a little more judicious editing with those facts left them with no real idea how much, or how little, land had belonged to his family. Let them assume whatever they wished to, but if they assumed that the elder Kiron had been the holder of a large estate, well, it would do no harm to his cause. It was a cold fact that a man of wealth and noble blood would look with far more sympathy on someone of his own class than he would on someone far below him, but in a similar plight. Would Ari have been nearly so friendly to him, if Ari had been noble-born rather than common-born? While he would like to think “yes,” experience taught him otherwise.

He spoke bitterly of his father’s death, of the division of his family as a sop to the treaty agreements that meant that Tians could not own land they had taken outright without also “caring” for those to whom it had once belonged. He described his life as a serf under Khefti-the-Fat, and Lord Ya-tiren had the grace to wince more than once. He told of how Jouster Ari had plucked him from under Khefti’s nose—

And then went on at length about Ari and Kashet.

“We know this Jouster, too well,” said the Altan Jouster thoughtfully. “There were rumors that he had done something very different with his dragon—certainly the results he has are remarkable. Most said it was magic.”

“Not magic,” Kiron objected. “Just—wisdom, study, observation and a great deal of thought and care. And he made it clear that any man who was willing to do as he had done, and raise a dragon from the egg, would have the same result. Well, look!”

He pointed at Avatre, lying at her leisure, unbound, and calm as could be. “As he had done, I decided to do,” he continued, and described how he had purloined the egg from the mating of two Jousting dragons, incubated and hatched it, and raised Avatre to First Flight.

And edited again, making it seem that his escape had been planned, making no further mention of Ari, nor of the Bedu, except to claim he had traded with isolated clans, once or twice, for water-rights or food. He had to pause frequently for rest, and to let the muscles of his chest relax again; he suspected there were cracked ribs under those bandages. The sun had just about set by the time he finished, and servants had come bearing torches and lamps to illuminate the entire courtyard.

The Jouster sucked on his lower lip, consideringly. “It is a fantastic tale,” he said, judiciously. “And I would have said, fantasy tale, if this dragon’s own behavior were not just as fantastic.”