“We need more room,” Gan said decisively, shaking his head to get the hair out of his eyes. “Separate fires. They won’t be as frightened if they can’t hear other dragons flying so closely above them. That was why Khaleph wouldn’t rise; he heard the others and dug his talons in and wouldn’t move, and I know he was afraid of a collision. So more fires.”

“Or torches,” said Oset-re. “Four torches ought to give plenty of light.”

Good answer! “We’ll do it,” Kiron said instantly. “Absolutely. If it will make them feel more confident, we’ll do anything we have to.”

“Yes,” Huras said slowly. “I think we will. I think we can do this.” He looked around at all of them, that Altan baker’s son who had never been more than two streets away from his home before he’d become a Jouster and a rider of one of the first full clutch of dragons to be raised from the egg in Alta. “I thought you were mad, you and Kaleth together—but after tonight—yes. We can do this.”

“Yes, we can,” Ari replied, not quite slamming his empty jar on the table. “Yes, by the gods, we can. We have to; there’s no question. And we will.”

FOURTEEN

FOURTEEN

TEN dragons rose into the hot, late-afternoon sky, heading into the west, and climbing steeply for as much height as they could get. The higher they were, the less likely it would be that someone on the ground could see riders on the dragons. If anyone—other than the Bedu—saw them, Kiron wanted the watcher to think they were wild. Every bit of this scheme was fraught with peril, and every moment of it contained some potential for mischance. If it went off unthinkably well, no one would know how the Winged Ones escaped. If it all fell to pieces, either the dragons would refuse to fly, or be unable to rescue everyone, or the Winged Ones would refuse to take to the skies, or someone would find out in advance how they were to get out, and where their refuge was, and seize them as they landed.

Realistically speaking, Kiron expected their outcome to fall somewhere in between. There wasn’t much more that they could do that they hadn’t already done to keep everything a secret.

Aket-ten’s Aunt Re had already spread the word that she had taken patients with the pox into her care, and to bolster that tale, several artfully made-up “patients”—in reality, more covert escapees from the city—had been brought by donkey cart to her estate.