were, however, relatively minor, coming as they did in the night, without the added energy that the heat of the day generated farther south. The Altan Jousters were hardly affected at all, except for needing to draw the awnings over the sand pits. Not so the Tians; Altan patrols found the storms raging over Tian territory vicious enough that they had to turn back at the border.
And not so the poor Fledglings. They were still being taken, but now it was under cover of darkness, rather than just after dawn. Kiron tried not to think about their plight too much. There wasn’t anything he could do for them—though Toreth had told him in confidence that Kaleth was going to try to find out, if not what was being done to them, at least how they were faring. But he couldn’t help thinking about them, even tonight when he was enjoying the company of the others, when the storms rolled overhead, moving for the south.
“Kiron,” said Gan, recapturing his attention, “when do you think the dragonets will fledge?”
He shoved his concerns to the back of his mind. “I think, given how fast the babies are growing, that you’ll be riding them when the kamiseen starts,” Kiron told them all. “They seem to be growing faster than Avatre did. I think it’s the amount of food they’re putting away.”
“They’re certainly doing that,” Huras said ruefully; his little one was eating half again as much as the others, and growing proportionately faster.
“Now, brother, you had better be glad of that,” Pe-atep said jovially, slapping him on the back. “You are no lightweight! It is a good thing that your little lady is going to be the biggest of the lot!”
“I may well be a lightweight before this is over and she is fully grown,” groaned Huras. “It seems all I do is run back and forth with her food!”
“Well,” Menet-ka said in his quiet voice, “according to Kiron, they’ll be doing more sleeping and be less demanding now. Since they’re bigger, they’ll be able to hold more food and can go longer between meals, I suppose.” He looked at Kiron, who nodded. “So we’ll have some freer time to read and plan what’s coming next?”
“More to the point, I think we need to begin Jousting training on the ground,” Kiron told them. “That was why I asked you to come here tonight. If the dragonets are up to flying by the time of the kamiseen, then once they get their skills, we must be ready to train them. You, Huras—there is something in particular I want you and Tathulan to train in—or to be more precise, there is a particular task I want you to train for.”
They way he said that got all of their attention. “Oh?” said Huras.
“You’re thinking of your mentor, Jouster Ari, and his Kashet, aren’t you,” said Toreth shrewdly. “You know we’re going to have to face him and I have the feeling that you don’t want him hurt.”
Kiron nodded. “Ari is honorable, and he has a conscience, and I know for a fact he has never harmed anyone who was not fighting him,” he replied. “And he is my friend. In fact—he is more than my friend.” He looked around the little group. “It is time that I told the true tale of my escape from Tia.”
As all of them hung upon his words, he softly related how Avatre had unexpectedly fledged, and how he had been pursued by Tian Jousters—how they managed to outdistance all but Ari—and how, seeing Ari, he had tried to fall to his death rather than be captured and see Avatre taken from him. It had been long enough now that all of them were as besotted with their dragonets as he was; he could see it in their faces that they understood when he told them that he would rather have died than lose her, and rather die than see her torn from him and given over into the care of someone who saw her only as another weapon of war.
He told them how Ari and Kashet caught and saved him—and then how Ari became the co-conspirator in his escape, even to giving his own Gold of Honor to the Bedu to pay for their help.
When he was done, he saw a change in their faces. Until today, even Jouster Ari had been just another faceless Tian enemy. Now, though they did not know Ari as he did, they did know that