“Make myself scarce?” I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t understand. I don’t have a dragon of my own yet—how could the Mating Flights affect me?”
“Just keep out of the way of the older cadets,” he advised. “They get…agitated during such times. I’m telling you like I told my own lad—steer clear of your older classmates if you can. If you can’t, well, there’s no shame in it—Academy tradition and all that. But still, just do your best.”
I frowned, even more confused than ever.
“I don’t understand,” I said again.
“I know, but you will,” he said cryptically. “All right lad, time to get down.”
And then he practically pushed me off G’lornie’s back.
I backed away, looking around in confusion as the little Brown took off again, his stubby wings working hard to hoist him and his rider into the sky. What had Jorn meant? What was he warning me of?
I didn’t know and there didn’t seem to be any way to find out. In the meantime, I was at the fringes of the biggest crowd I’d ever seen in my life and I had to find my way into it, somehow.
The air was filled with the babble of voices.
“Oh, I’m so proud of you, Freedrick!” a woman at my left elbow was saying as she pressed a kiss to the forehead of a plump, pink-faced boy in a richly embroidered cloak.
“Meat-sticks! Meat-sticks! Get your tasty, piping hot meat-sticks here!” a vendor to my right was bawling. He was waving long wooden skewers with fat sausages impaled on their ends. Rich streaks of orange grease dripped from the sausages and slid down his hairy arm, but he barely seemed to notice as he wove his way through the crown, crying his wares.
The rich, heavy smell of the meat made my stomach growl again, though it was mixed with the various perfumes and colognes from the rich families around me. And over everything hung the deep scent of burning cinnamon, as though a bonfire of the rare spice was raging somewhere near—the scent of dragons.
“May the God and Goddess bless your service in the Academy,” I heard a scribe-priest saying as he pressed his palm to the forehead of a scrawny-looking boy with a shock of red hair and a face full of freckles.
“Amen and amen,” his mother and father said piously, nodding in unison.
My own father had never had much use for the scribe-priests, so I watched the little family with the scrawny son with interest. Though I supposed I couldn’t really call anyone else scrawny. As far as I could see, I was the shortest and smallest new recruit here. Lifting my chin, I tried to look taller as I stepped into the crowd.
Almost everyone I saw was better dressed than I was. But I couldn’t let myself worry about that—I was too busy trying to make the Dragon Glass pendant I wore work for me.
“I’m a boy,” I told it mentally, focusing on the gold-flecked obsidian dragon’s head in the hollow of my throat. “No, a man.”
I was of age, after all—all the new recruits were. The Academy didn’t take anyone who wasn’t an adult—though the boys around me looked awfully young and inexperienced, which was exactly how I felt.
But I was getting away from my purpose.
“I’m Auren Lysandra, son of Arden Lysandra and I’m absolutely masculine through and through,” I told the pendant. “I’m?—”
And then someone laid a hand on my shoulder, startling me, and I jumped and let out an unmistakably girlish scream.
“Whoa—sorry there,” a friendly sounding voice said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
I turned quickly and saw a short, compact boy with mild brown eyes and brown hair staring at me. Even though he was short, he was still half a head taller than I was. He was wearing an inexpensive looking suit that was nonetheless neat and clean, and he had a quizzical smile on his face.
“Oh—you scared me!” I put a hand to my heart and then realized that it was a girlish gesture. I deepened my voice and scowled at him. “I mean, don’t go sneaking up on a fellow like that!”
“Sorry,” he said easily. “You just looked confused, and I thought maybe I could help.”
“How can you help?” I asked rudely, still trying to play my part. “You don’t have on a uniform—you’re as new as I am.”
“Well, in a way,” he agreed easily. “I’m a new recruit, that’s true. But I’ve lived near the Old Drake all my life. My father is a courier.”
“Oh, I see.” I felt abruptly bad for being rude. He seemed to be trying to make me feel at home and I had sneered at him.
“I’m Jorn-o Twaller,” he continued.
“Wait—Jorn-o?” I frowned. Adding “o” to the end of a name meant “son of” as in “son of Jorn.” And the boy had said his father was a courier.
