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and then our uncle’s, after our mother and father had died. Which is why Hagen had not been considered a burden by our aunt, and so she had kept him, while sending me off to be eaten by a dragon.
    After the First Dragon War, when I had volunteered Hagen as caretaker of the display of Theoradus’s hoard, he had risen to the honor with distinction. Or so I had been told by the Duke of Mordrel, who had been sent to make the initial arrangements. The Duke had been the first to tell me that my brother had begun cultivating the land just to the south of Theoradus’s cave. Despite our family’s previously unsuccessful attempts at farming, Hagen’s peaches flourished, as did his plums and his grapes, and I could only gape when crates of preserves arrived at my shop, accompanied by Hagen’s cheery notes about how many visitors Theoradus’s hoard of shoes had had that season, or how many swains our girl cousins had collected, plus a good deal of bragging about how he had at last found the crops that our family was meant to farm.
    But it didn’t end with simply growing fruit. Hagen was fascinated by where different plants came from and what their uses were. He no longer allowed his plums to be made into preserves or dried, but sold the entire crop to an alchemist who made cough medicine with them. The alchemist had also helped Hagen with several experiments involving crossbreeding grapes and cherries, something I didn’t understand, but freely bragged about.
    And now it seemed that the bragging had been justified. As I watched, Hagen moved from tree to tree, pulling at branches, plucking leaves and studying them. He kicked at the soil, even bent down and raked his fingers through it, and squinted at the little ditches that I could only assume carried water between the trees and around the mounds.
    “These trees will need to be staked, or they’re going to grow crooked,” Hagen told Shardas. “And this soil feels too heavy. Do you mulch?”
    “Er . . .” Shardas scratched at the red dirt with his fore-claws. Then he raised his head and bellowed, “Roginet!”
    I took a step backward. I had been standing rather close, and Shardas’s bellow blew my hair back from my face. “Oof!”
    “Sorry,” Shardas rumbled.
    “What’s Roginet?” Hagen looked eager. “Some sort of fertilizer?”
    “I am not a fertilizer,” said a faintly accented voice. An orange dragon I had never seen before came from behind one of the other mounds and bowed to Shardas. “I am, however, a gardener.” He said this as grandly as if announcing that he was a duke or prince.
    “Roginet is in charge of our orchards and gardens,” Shardas explained. “He has a passion for growing things.”
    “It ’as been some years since I was able to plant on such a large scale, ’owever,” Roginet explained. “And I used to plant only ze cherry trees.”
    “Roulaini,” Luka said out of the corner of his mouth.
    I nodded slightly, having just recognized the accent myself. The Roulaini dragons had also gone into hiding after Milun the First had betrayed Velika, and had only come out into the open when Shardas had called for them to help fight Citatie during the Second Dragon War.
    “This is young Hagen Carlbrun,” Shardas said. “And you have no doubt heard of his sister, Creel, and her betrothed, Prince Luka of Feravel.”
    “Ah, yes!” Roginet bowed to the three of us. “I ’ave seen you both from afar,” he said.
    “Young Hagen was just advising me to stake these trees so that they grow straighter,” Shardas said.
    “Ah, me! I had forgotten ze staking,” Roginet said to Hagen. “Thank you.”
    “You—you’re welcome.” Hagen was still uncomfortable being consulted by dragons, I could tell.
    “And he mentioned mulch ,” Shardas said. He said the last word as if it were completely foreign to him.
    “Ah, ze mulching!” Roginet nodded enthusiastically. “I ’ave been using our own waste, but do you zink it is too