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winner then!” She raised her goblet to his.
    “My winner!” His voice was curiously fierce, and the light in his eyes became more defiant than triumphant.
    “I’ll come with you to the finish,” she suggested, noticing that the sprinters were finally pulling up in the stubble.
    “I can savor this moment just as fully in your company,” he said unexpectedly. “And with no inhibitions,” he added with a grin. “Dag’s there. He’s my herdsman, and this is as much his victory as it is mine. I won’t detract from his moment. Then, too, it would be highly inappropriate for the Gathering Lord Holder to caper about like a fool over a mere sprint win.”
    Moreta found his admission of unlordly glee rather charming. “Surely this isn’t your first winner?”
    “Actually, it is.” He was searching the enclosure and suddenly beckoned peremptorily at a servitor, signaling for more wine. “Breeding for special traits was the project Lord Leef assigned me eight Turns ago.” Alessan went on in a more conversational tone though his voice still carried an edge. “A well-established Pernese tradition is breeding.”
    “Eight Turns ago?” Moreta gave Alessan a long look. “If you’ve been breeding since then, surely this can’t be your
first
winner?”
    “A race, yes. The quality Lord Leef wished me to perpetuate was stamina for long-distance carting, combined with more efficient use of fodder.”
    “More work out of fewer animals for less food?” Moreta didn’t find that hard to believe of the old Lord, but she stared at Alessan with confused respect. “And out of that breeding, you got a sprint racer?”
    “Not intentionally.” Alessan gave her a rueful smile. “That winner is from a strain of rejects from the original project: tough, hardy, good doers even on poor feed, but small bodied and thin boned. They don’t eat much, and everything they consume goes into short spurts of energy—fifty dragon-length sprint distances, to be truthful. Over the ninety-length mark, they’re useless. Give ’em half an hour’s rest and they can repeat that sort of winning performance. And they live long. It was Dag who saw the sprint potential in the scrubs.”
    “But, of course, you couldn’t race the beasts during your father’s lifetime.” Moreta started to chuckle at Alessan’s deception.
    “Hardly.” Alessan grinned.
    “I imagine that your winnings today—an untried beast in its first race—will be substantial.”
    “I should hope so. Considering how long Dag and I have succored that wretched creature for just such an occasion as this.”
    “My sincerest congratulations, Lord Alessan!” Moreta raised her newly filled goblet. “For putting one over on Lord Leef and winning your first race at your first Gather. You’re not only devious, you’re a menace to racing men.”
    “Had I known you were such a race enthusiast, I’d’ve given you odds—”
    “Spectator, not speculator. You’ll race it next at Fort’s Gather?”
    “Considering its capability, I could race in the last sprint today and be sure of its winning, but that would not be courteous.” The gleam in his eye suggested that if he weren’t Lord Holder, he would not have felt any such restraint. “At that, most will assume it a lucky win. Only the one race in it, like as not.” Alessan’s voice imitated the pitch and inflection of the confirmed racer, querulous and skeptical. “So I shall get it to whatever Gathers we can reach. I like winning. It’s a new experience.”
    His candor surprised her. “Are you sure your sire didn’t know what you were about? Lord Leef always struck me as a man who had firm control of everything that occurred in his Hold—in the entire west.”
    Alessan gave her a long hard look, mulling her remark. “D’you know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he
had
found out. We, Dag and I, took such extraordinary precautions. We thought we’d covered every possibility of discovery.” Then Alessan shook