Which meant—could they actually face down wild dragons on a regular basis? If they could, then two or three could go out when nests were discovered, and hold off the mother if she turned up before an egg was successfully taken.

“Kiron!” Pe-atep called from the door to his pen. “Any luck?”

“The best!” he replied, “Come on, you’ll all want to hear about what we found today!”

NINE

NINE

THERE were eight fertile eggs in the hatching pen, claimed by six Altan and two Tian dragon boys, one of whom was Baken. At last, the slave who taught all of them the best way of training young dragons to be ridden had won not only his freedom but his own dragon. Kiron was both amused and bemused to see how the acquisition of his very own egg had changed him. He had gone from a young man who was all business about the beasts he was training, to one just as egg-obsessed as anyone else who had ever been granted the chance to hatch out a tame dragon of his own.

Those eggs came from four different clutches; only half of the eggs had proved to be fertile, and all four clutches had been abandoned before the female in question began incubation. To Kiron’s mind, and to Ari’s, this meant that the females must be former Jousting dragons, who were too inexperienced to know what to do, and whose mothering instincts had not yet fully awakened. Which, in turn, meant that their theories were right. At least some of the Tian Jousting dragons had not gone back to the desert and the hills near Mefis when they fought free of the last of the tala. Two Tian boys were with some curious Bedu their own age watching two more dragons to see if they’d abandon their clutches, too. There were six more would-be Jousters waiting besides those two if all of those eggs proved worth incubating.

Quietly, Kiron took Kalen and Pe-atep aside when they knew that at least some of the eggs were going to hatch. He intercepted both of them after their dragons were bedded down for the night, before they went looking for something to eat for themselves. Lord Ya-tiren had issued a standing invitation to the Jousters to come to his kitchen whenever they needed to be fed, and they had jumped at the offer. Anything other than have to eat their own cooking. . . .

But Kiron wanted to talk to these two alone, and had asked Aket-ten to bring food for four to Avatre’s pen. She had been so curious about the odd request that she hadn’t even registered a weak protest.