She was waiting with the plain fare that all of them subsisted on these days; flatbread, vegetables, herbs, and whatever the Jousters scavenged from their dragons’ kills. Kiron had decided a long time ago that meat was meat, and it was better to wrestle with a bit of tough wild ass in freedom than the sweetest cut of young calf with one eye out for the Magi. Since he didn’t hear any complaints from the others—except, perhaps, the sort of complaining one always heard in situations like this one—he thought it reasonable to suppose the rest felt about the same.

“I suppose you have a reason for this little party,” Kalen said, blunt as ever. “And from the look on her face, you didn’t tell Aket-ten what it is.”

The interesting thing about Kalen was that although he was small, thin, and almost as dark as a Tian, he was nothing like the falcons he had once tended. He was more like one of the small brown owls, always watching, silent and still—and when he moved, moving so quietly you were unaware that he had until he was gone.

“We have eight fertile eggs, and more coming, I expect,” Kiron replied. “That’s eight new Jousters. They’ll have to be trained—we’ll have to train them, once they get into the air. And then?”

“I don’t think we should have a wing any larger than eight,” Kalen said, after a moment of struggle with his strip of meat. “Eight’s more than enough to muck up coordination. More would be impossible to keep track of.”

“Exactly my thought,” Kiron agreed. “And now we get to the reason why I had you all choose colors in the first place. Eventually, each of you will have a wing, and each of your fliers will wear one of your colors, so we can tell who the wingleader is because he has two.”

“Oho!” Pe-atep said, raising his eyebrows. “Now it makes sense!”

“You two are the two steadiest, and you’ve come from lives where you were used to being in charge of something other than servants,” Kiron continued, as Aket-ten nodded sagely. “I want you to take the first two new wings as wingleaders. But if you don’t feel equal to it, I want to know now, please, so I can take my third or fourth choice.”

“Oh,” Pe-atep said, with a glance at Kalen, modulating his deep voice into a more conversational tone. “I think we can manage. These dragon boys aren’t really boys at all. They’ve been training young wild dragons with that Baken fellow. And they’re the faithful, the ones that stuck after the tala wore off and the dragons escaped. The Altans are our own dragon boys from home, so they should be all right, too.” He smiled, then frowned. “The only question is, how are we going to feed all those growing dragonets?”