“These dragons aren’t old enough to breed yet,” objected the one he was talking to, chasing away a fly with a whisk, though not the pretty, bleachedhorsehair-and-gilded thing he would have had back in Tia, but an improvised switch made of frayed palm fiber. “I don’t think any of them except Kashet is. What would you hatch?” Still, he looked interested. And this was very new, this interest in dragons in general, as well as partiality to particular ones.

“Wild eggs,” said a third decisively—this one bearing the hawk pectoral of a Haras priest. “It’ll be nesting time soon, and if you get an egg before the mother starts incubating them, you can move it safely. Steal them the way my mother stole wild goose eggs, and bring them here to hatch. Sling it between two camels or something, so you don’t addle it while moving it.”

Ari was passing by at that moment with his bedding, and laughed. His dark eyes crinkled at the corners with amusement. “You’ve never seen a nesting she-dragon, have you? Even if she isn’t incubating, she’s guarding, and it’d be worth your—”

Then he stopped, and Haraket, who was carrying another load just behind him, nearly ran into him. He had a most peculiar look on his face, and Kiron tossed what he was carrying into his shelter hastily and went to join the discussion.

“What are you thinking?” he demanded of Ari, before Haraket could ask what was wrong. “I know that look! You’ve thought of something!”

“That we’ve got forty or fifty inexperienced she-dragons out there right now,” said Ari, staring off into the hard blue sky as if he could conjure a dragon out of it. “That instinct will tell them how to mate, but not what to do afterward. Remember how you got Avatre’s egg so easily away from her mother? I don’t know that the she-dragons out there will be much different. So I’m thinking that we’ll have dragons laying eggs in the wrong places, or in more than one nest, or just laying them and going off without knowing they have to incubate or guard. And some of those eggs will be laid near enough to Sanctuary to retrieve them. I can’t see a reason to let good, fertile eggs go to waste.”

“And we have eight or ten dragon boys right now who would give their privates for a dragon of their own,” said Haraket, nodding. “Tell ’em they’ve got to go retrieve an egg a couple days away from here? That’s nothing! They’ll bring it back on their own backs if they have to!”

“I’d go back to Mefis for a dragon egg,” said Baken, coming into the conversation, his voice raw with longing. “I’d do it barefoot and in a loincloth.”