But he couldn’t tell Orosio that. He said what he could: “You know my views, Captain. You also know that no one of rank higher than mine pays the least attention to them. Let me have that flask again. If I drink enough, maybe I won’t care.”

He hadn’t even raised it to his lips, though, when someone else knocked on the door. He opened it and discovered a crystallomancer shivering there. The mage said, “Sir, I just got word from the front. Unkerlanter artificers are trying to throw a bridge over the Skamandros River. If they do . . .”

“There’ll be big trouble,” Sabrino finished for him. The crystallomancer nodded. Sabrino asked, “Aren’t there any dragons closer and less worn than this poor, miserable wing? We just came in from another mission, you know.”

“Of course, sir,” the crystallomancer said. “But no, sir, there aren’t. You know how thin we’re stretched these days.”

“Don’t I just?” Sabrino turned back to Orosio. “Do you think we can get them into the air again, Captain?”

“I suppose so, sir,” the squadron commander answered. “Powers above help us if the Unkerlanters hit us with fresh beasts while we’re in the air, though--or even the Yaninans.”

“Or even the Yaninans,” Sabrino echoed with a sour smile. Tsavellas’ small kingdom lay between Algarve and Unkerlant. He’d taken Yanina into the Derlavaian War as Algarve’s ally--not that Yaninan soldiers had covered themselves with glory on the austral continent or in Unkerlant. And, when Unkerlanter soldiers poured into Yanina, Tsavellas had switched sides with revoltingly good timing. With another sour smile, Sabrino went on, “As we said, we have to do what we can. Let’s go do it.”

His dragon-handler squawked in dismay when he reappeared. His dragon screamed in brainless fury--the only kind it had--when he took his place once more at the base of its long, scaly neck. More handlers brought a couple of eggs to fasten under its belly. It didn’t claw at them, though Sabrino couldn’t figure out why.