I don’t believe I will try that sort of rescue again, he thought. Or at least, not quite in that way.

Orest sighed. “I was hoping you might be able to start lessons tomorrow,” he said mournfully. “I was supposed to have read some wretched scroll today, and I didn’t, and if you were getting your first reading lesson, my tutor Arit-on-senes might forget I was supposed to have read it. Or maybe I’d get a chance to read it while you were getting the lesson.”

“That’s what you get for spending all day next to the round pool telling your friends what a great Jouster you’re going to be,” Aket-ten said smugly.

“Look!” Orest burst out, “Just how do you know what I did all day?”

“I have ways,” Aket-ten replied, looking superior. “And don’t try to deny it, because I know, and I even know who you were talking to, and when.”

Orest crossed his arms over his chest. “All right, then,” he said belligerently. “Prove it.”

“Right after your reading lesson you met with Leto. After Leto, but before luncheon, you talked with Kaafet and Pe-katis. Then your mathematica tutor caught you and dragged you off to lessons, and he must have passed you directly to your philosophy tutor because you didn’t get back to the pool until after that, but then—”

“Stop!” Orest cried, and threw up his hands. “You really have use the Far-Watcher Gift yet, and I know you didn’t bribe anyone who does—”

“Because I wouldn’t!” Aket-ten said, scandalized. “That is a sacred Gift, and not to be used for things like sneaking a look at a bad brother!”

“So who told you?” he demanded, ignoring her outrage.

“No one. I have ways,” was all she said, looking smug again.

But Kiron had an idea that the library that she had said she used all day probably stood right near this pool that Orest seemed to favor as a meeting place. Altan buildings were not all like the Tian ones with few windows, but with slits parallel to and up near the ceiling to allow cooler air inside—but he would bet that some of them were. Such slits were very good, under some conditions, for conducting sound inside a quiet room from the outside. A quiet room such as—inside a library, for instance.

But this time he was not going to help Orest out. He liked Orest a great deal, but he already had the impression that Orest was a bit of a shirker when it came to doing his work. If he thought that his sister had some special means of knowing where he went and who he talked to, and even what he said and did, he might get into the habit of being a little more diligent. Kiron did not intend to nursemaid Orest through the hatching and raising of his dragon, and he especially did not intend to “help” him by doing the tasks he had “forgotten” because he wanted to go socialize with his friends.