Carson sighed. “It’s not going to be easy. But I’ve been thinking about it for some days now. Left to themselves, the dragons are just not trying that hard to learn. Right now we can get enough fish in our traps to keep them from starving. And we’ve had a few windfalls, such as Heeby being willing to drive game for them. But we can’t count on things like that. The fish run could dwindle or end any day. And the more we hunt locally and Heeby hunts close to our camp, the less game there will be. These are big predators with large appetites. They need to expand their hunting territory and they need to be able to feed themselves. Otherwise, this area will simply turn into a second Cassarick for them. We didn’t come all this way to allow that to happen.”

Sedric listened in chilled dismay. Now that Carson laid it out so clearly, he wondered how he could not have seen it for himself. Because I’ve been like the dragons, he thought. I thought it would just go on as it had before, with the keepers finding meat for them all, no matter what.

His stomach growled again and Carson laughed, sounding almost like himself. “Go eat something. The smoked fish should be done enough. And take something to Relpda.”

“Are you going to take something to Spit?”

Carson shook his head, not in denial, but at himself. “Yes. Eventually. But not until I’ve shown him that he can’t push me around. He has a different temperament from Relpda. That little silver has a streak of mean and resentment that your copper doesn’t have. It’s not just toward the other dragons. It’s for all the keepers, too. It’s for anyone who is whole and functioning when he isn’t.”

“I thought she could only carry one rider at a time.” Thymara was still uncertain about this whole venture.

Rapskal looked down at her from Heeby’s shoulders. “She has been growing. Bigger and stronger. And her wings keep growing most of all. She says she can do this. Come on up.” He bent at the waist and leaned down to stretch his hand out toward her. He was grinning at her in a way that was obviously a challenge. She couldn’t back down now. She reached up to grip his wrist as he seized hers. There was nothing else to hold on to. All of Heeby was gleaming and overlapping crimson scales, smoother than polished stone. She scrabbled up the dragon’s shoulder, worried that she was offending her with such an ungainly climb onto her back. Once she was behind Rapskal, sitting spraddle-legged behind him on the dragon’s wide back, she asked, “What do I hold on to?”