“Do you think she’s starting to trust us already?” Aket-ten asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” He sighed. “We need to get back.”

“Yes, we do.” But she sounded reluctant. Nevertheless, she mounted Re-eth-ke and looked to him for direction. He gave it, sending Avatre up with powerful wingbeats, rather than letting her take her preferred path of diving down into the ravine and then trading speed for height at the last minute. He guided her away from Coresan’s valley at an angle. Re-eth-ke followed; Coresan did not even raise her head to watch them, which made him think that Aket-ten might be right, she might have already decided they weren’t going to hurt her or interfere with her or her eggs.

They caught good thermals all the way back, which speeded up their return journey considerably. Most of the wing was waiting for them at the pens; for a moment he was afraid, as Avatre spiraled in to land, that something had gone wrong. But as they got nearer the ground, their expressions, of varying degrees of mischief, made him think otherwise. No, they were there to tease him—or tease both of them.

Not if I give them something to distract them first.

“Ari!” he called, as soon as Avatre folded her wings.

“Coresan is nesting in the New City, and she recognized me!”

All right, maybe saying that it was Coresan and that she recognized him was an exaggeration, but it got their attention, even though no one but Ari could know who, or what, Coresan was.

As he slid off Avatre’s shoulder, and began unharnessing her, he gave them a detailed account of what had happened. Ari’s eyes glittered with excitement as he asked further questions; all of them were excited, really, once they understood the implications. “—and Aket-ten is going to try to ‘talk’ to Coresan,” he finished, and had to hold a flash of anger when Ari, rather than expressing concern over such a dangerous idea, overflowed with enthusiasm for it.

“That would be ideal!” Ari said, “With Aket-ten there, once we get her close enough she can communicate with them, I’m sure Coresan will let us help with her dragonets. After all, the males help to feed and tend the nest, and we’re the closest thing she has to a mate right now. Her instincts must be telling her she needs the help, and if she was as starved as you say, between the food and what her instincts are telling her, we can probably get Aket-ten as close as she let a dragon boy in no time.”

He could picture that all too easily. What’s more, he remembered Coresan snapping those formidable jaws right over his head, and it was even easier to picture her making that show of aggression into a real attack on Aket-ten. And he very nearly started trouble over such a cavalier attitude, when Ari suddenly got a taste of what the bitter brew of anxiety tasted like.