wanted him to train Jousters, not copy records or write letters.
“I like lessons,” Aket-ten said, coming into the courtyard. Today, it appeared, she was trying to look more grown-up; she had on a slim-fitting yellow dress instead of a boyish tunic. For the first time, he wondered just how old she was. Eleven? Twelve?
“Well, that’s only because you know you wouldn’t be getting any lessons if you weren’t a Nestling,” Orest countered. “So just to keep getting them, you’d say you liked them even if you didn’t.”
“That’s not true! And you know that Father said after the last report from your tutors that it didn’t matter I was a girl, if I hadn’t been a Nestling, he’d have given me the same tutors as you, and I probably would have done better than you because I apply myself, so there!” There was a fight brewing, and Kiron hastened to end it before it began.
“The Lord of the Jousters was here,” he said, interrupting it. “He asked if I could teach others how to hatch and raise a dragonet, and then said that he’d get all of it organized. So I guess there’s your answer, Orest. It isn’t going to be just you, but at least you’re not going to have to try and get an egg all by yourself.”
“They might just let a couple of the fighting dragons mate,” Orest observed, popping a little dainty that he had told Kiron was a stuffed grape-leaf into his mouth. Kiron had tried them himself; they were spicy, but good, full of chopped meat and bread crumbs. “That would be the easiest.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Aket-ten countered. “In fact, it would be stupid and dangerous! The easiest would be to tie out one of the female fighting dragons, and let a male come to her. That’s how they trap the males already, anyway, they just don’t let them mate.”
“And just what do you know about it?” Orest asked heatedly.
“I read,” she shot back. “I’ve been reading about dragons all day, in fact! Which you could have done, if you hadn’t been spending all your time telling your friends what a great Jouster you’re going to be, and how your egg is going to hatch out the biggest dragon there ever was!”
“Oh, you read all about it, did you?” Orest, his ears getting red. “And just who let a Nestling back into the restricted scrolls?”
“The librarian of the Temple of the Twins, of course,” Aket-ten said primly. “The temple has just as many scrolls as the Great Library, and no Nestling is ever restricted from reading any of them. So there.” She folded her arms over her chest and gave him a look of triumph. “I probably know more about dragons than anyone but a Jouster. I could probably be a Jouster if I wanted to.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Orest said, with such a look of smug superiority on his face that his sister flushed. “They don’t let girls be Jousters.”
“I could go in disguise,” she retorted, and looked hurt when both Orest and Kiron laughed at her. “Well, I could!”
“The Jousters train and bathe together when they aren’t fighting,” Orest said. “They wrestle naked and bathe naked. So how are you going to disguise what you don’t have?”
“It’s a stupid rule,” she said, going from triumphant to sullen sulk all in a moment. “I could raise a dragon just as easily as you.”
“No, you couldn’t,” Orest and Kiron said together. They exchanged a look, and Orest nodded.
“Dragonets eat lots and lots of raw meat,” Kiron said. “Piles of it. And hearts and livers and lungs.” Aket-ten was looking a little green at the thought, and he drove it home. “The dragonets need bone in with all of that, so you have to break up the bone so they can swallow it. And you would have to feed the baby this stuff by hand, yourself, or she won’t bond with you. By the time I got done giving Avatre her first feedings, I was bloody up to the elbows, it was in my hair, under my nails—”
“All right!” she interrupted, looking as if she was going to be sick. But her brother hadn’t had his say yet.
“And then, the bigger the dragon gets, the more it eats. And you have to clean up her messes, too, because you don’t want anyone else in the pen until she’s bonded to you! You don’t even like to clean out the cat’s sand pan, so how do you think