Joust

"Yes, sir," Vetch replied, and ventured, "Could someone cut my hair, sir?" He didn't mean to cut it off, of course, but he hoped it might be trimmed up a bit…

Evidently he wasn't even to be allowed that much.

"You're not freeborn, boy," the Overseer rebuked him. "But— here—" He handed Vetch a coarse shell comb and another bit of leather thong, and at least Vetch was able to get the knots out of his hair for the first time in months and months, and braid it.

He handed the comb back to the Overseer, who stowed it away, wishing he could shave his head altogether. But only a free-born boy could shave his head and wear a wig; a serf was branded as such by his own hair, long and uncut. It was the easiest and cheapest way to mark a serf. Shaving took time, the resource of a good, sharp razor, and had to be done every day.

Hair damp, freshly kilted, wearing the glazed hawk-eye talisman, he followed in the wake of the last of the boys, knowing there were other chores that needed doing between now and when the dragons returned. So long as the others didn't notice his presence—

He felt better with the hawk eye around his neck; such talismans kept the night-walking spirits away, and demons, as well as guarding him from the crocodiles of Great Mother River. It wasn't the talisman that he would have chosen—he'd have taken one of Nofret's stars, if he'd had a choice, or better still, the sun-disk of Hakat-Re—but it was good to have it. The talisman wasn't only for luck; it marked him, should he ever need to leave the compound, as a servant of the Jousters. No one would interfere with him while he was wearing it. No one who was not of the Jousters wore the hawk eye; if a talisman of the God Haras was wanted, it would be one of the God Himself.

And yes, he learned as he walked boldly behind the last three boys into yet another chamber, that there were plenty of tasks to be done. For the first time, he found himself taking a place among all of the other dragon boys, who were lined up in front of some racks of equipment.

This was yet another proper room, a large one, smelling of oil and fresh wood, and yet another Overseer, this one a hard-looking man of a kind with Haraket, only leaner. This room was lined with rack upon rack of the lances that all Jousters used.

The Overseer intercepted him as he entered the doorway, stopping him by the simple expedient of stretching his arm out to keep Vetch from passing. "Jouster Ari's boy. Vetch—

Caught off-guard, he bobbed his head nervously. "Yes, sir," he managed.

"This way." He pulled Vetch off to the side, with one hard hand on his shoulder. He stationed Vetch in front of a rack of lances. Vetch could feel the eyes of every boy in the chamber on him, and it was all he could do to keep from cringing. He reminded himself of their scorn, and of his vow to be better than any of them. He would prove that an Altan was better than any two Tians put together!

He fastened his gaze on the rack of weapons, as he was no doubt intended to do. Now, except for that mashed lance of Ari's which had hardly been recognizable as such, this was the first time that Vetch had ever seen these lances up close, and much to his surprise, they appeared to be made, not of wood, but of bundles of reeds or papyrus somehow bound and glued together into a whole. The surface was very shiny, the bindings of linen thread wrapped in intricate patterns and varnished into place with a lacquer that turned everything shiny gold.

"Vetch, this is important; I want you to check each one of these. Because this is your first time here, I've set this up as a learning exercise. I put some damaged ones in this rack to show you what to look for and how to check the lances for breakage and weak spots. Here; this is a good one." He thrust the lance, which was just a little longer than he was tall, into Vetch's hands. It was astonishingly light, and even more astonishingly strong. "First, flex it, like this—" he gestured with his hands to illustrate, and Vetch tried. Another surprise; the thing was springy, much more so than wood. And strong.

"You feel that? That's how a good lance should behave. If it doesn't flex like that, it's gone dead; toss it." He handed Vetch a "dead" lance, which had nothing like the flexion of the first; after trying it, Vetch obediently tossed it onto a pile of other discards.

Behind him, he heard the other boys at work at their own racks; presumably they already knew what they were doing.

Learn quickly, he reminded himself.

The Overseer showed Vetch other defects to look for; broken tips—they weren't so much broken as crushed—weakened spots, which were soft and gave when poked, lances gone out of true. So this was one of the important jobs of the morning, and Vetch could see why it was vital.

He could figure out why the lances would have broken or had gotten weak places by himself; after all, the lances weren't for show, the Jousters used them to fight with. But he couldn't reckon why they'd go dead, or out of true. Well, that wasn't his job. His job was to pull them off the racks when they did. There were a lot of lances, and each one had to be inspected minutely. Furthermore, every boy had to inspect every lance that passed, and the Overseer followed behind them inspecting every one that they all passed, sometimes discarding one for no reason that Vetch could fathom. Perhaps it had something to do with magic. Perhaps it had more to do with caution and experience. A Jouster's life could depend on his lance, and whether or not it held up in combat. It didn't take long, but by having the boys look the weapons over and discard the ones with obvious flaws, it surely must save the Overseer a great deal of time.

When they were all done with the lances for the day, they filed off in a group for another task that required all their hands. He trailed along behind, not too close, not so far that he would lose them at a turning. They ignored him.

This one took them to a huge walled court, filled with coarse linen cloths, loosely woven, stretched over frames that were held above the ground on wooden legs, at about the same height as a sleeping couch. And on the linen cloths, were the very familiar yellow-green, rounded shapes of ripened tala fruit.

This time he didn't have to be told what to do; a farmer's child knew drying racks when he saw them. He went straight to the baskets of tala waiting to be spread out on the racks, and took one to the nearest empty cloth waiting to be filled.

Not hard or difficult work, but it was hot out here, and the sun bore down on him without mercy. Nor was his task over when the last of the fruits were spread out on the linen; then he must go to the other racks to turn the fruits so that they dried evenly. Each thumb-sized fruit had to be turned by hand, of course; a rake would have damaged the coarsely-woven sheets.

That wasn't the end of his involvement with the tala either. Next he was sent with a dozen of the others to pound tala berries that were fully dried into the familiar powder that was mixed with the meat. Each of them stood at a heavy stone mortar the size of a bucket. The mortars stood on the floor in a row, each with a wooden pestle as tall as he was waiting in it, ready to make the tala into the form in which it controlled the dragons.

He was no stranger to grinding things either; when you were a serf, tending the land, you either ground the grain you were allowed to glean after the harvest into flour for yourself, or you did without bread. The scent of the tala filled the air, green and bitter, a little like gall, but without the acrid aftertaste. He pounded the pestle into the stone mortar at his feet in rhythm with the other boys, thinking as he did so that this was not as bad as it might have been. They were allowed to take a break for a drink of cool water from jars along the wall whenever they needed one, which was far more than Khefti had ever allowed, and although the drying chamber was in full sun, the mortars were ranged under shade. No, this was not as bad as it could have been, though the other boys complained loudly that they were ill-used. He simply set himself to produce more of the powder than any of them.

Then, at long last, when even his work-toughened arms were tired, came lunch.

He was more thirsty than hungry, and drank an entire jar of beer before he even touched a bite of food. While he drank it, though, he kept his eyes on the table in front of him, but kept his ears open wide.

"Going to come fishing with us after supper, Hafer?" asked one of the boys whose piping soprano betrayed that he could not be too much older than Vetch.

"Not unless you can promise more sport than last time," Hafer replied. "Joset and Mata are going bird hunting, and said they'd take me along to hold their throwing sticks. They almost always get ducks." He smacked his lips ostentatiously.

But the other boy only laughed. "Ducks! Nasty little mud hens, more like! You can have my share! Grilled fish, now that's more what I like."

For a moment he was surprised, but then he realized that of course fish would be a rarity on the table here, despite the abundance of other luxuries. You couldn't sacrifice a fish to the gods, after all. So what was common fare for practically anyone else with the time to spend on the river was a treat for the dragon boys.

A discussion of the superiority of grilling over coals versus baking in mud ensued, and when another conversation caught his ear, held in the deeper voices of a couple of older boys, he switched his attention to that.

—and I've two copper coins, which ought to be plenty," one said. "You can drink like the Great King himself at Neferetu's beer shop on two coppers."

"Your Jouster won't care if you go into Mefis to spend it?" the speaker sounded envious. "Mine's afraid if I go into the city, I'll decide this is too tame a life. He doesn't mind my hunting and fishing, but—

—but carousing in beer shops is out of bounds, eh? Worse luck for you!" Out of the corner of his eye, Vetch saw one of the older boys slap the shoulder of the other in a gesture of commiseration.

Well, after yesterday, he knew where they got the money to spend. Fortunate creatures. Dragon boys weren't paid anything so far as he could tell; the generous allowances of food, clothing and (presumably) lodging would be more than most apprentices could dream of, and apprentices weren't paid anything either.

But perhaps dragon boys didn't count as apprentices, or more likely, once they got older, perhaps they—the freeborn ones, anyway—were counted among the servants. In which case, they would get a wage. All but Vetch, of course. Serfs worked for nothing.

So perhaps that was another reason why Ari had plucked him from Khefti's grip; the Jouster wouldn't have to part with wages for his dragon boy.

That put a bit of a change in the complexion of things… if true.

Still, Vetch was the only serf here, and it didn't seem as if having a serf as a dragon boy had ever been a common thing among the Jousters. So maybe saving money wasn't the reason, or at least, not the whole of it.

He kept thinking that there were uglier reasons for Ari taking him on, but he kept coming back to the conclusion that it was nothing more than he'd been told. Ari wanted a reliable boy who wouldn't leave, and was prepared to give him the same treatment every other boy got.

And he'd seen Ari's quarters; the man lived frugally, yet he didn't strike Vetch as being a miserly sort. So what, if anything, was he saving money for by having a serf to serve him? No, money probably didn't enter into it.

He finished his meal and hurried back to Kashet's pen; if his timing was right, this was just about the point yesterday when Ari had turned up at Khefti's cistern. So he and Kashet should be returning at any moment.

He was, in fact, not far off. He did a bit of sweeping and tidying around the pen, when he heard the clatter of claws on stone in the corridor, and saw Kashet's head rising above the walls of the pens, looking alertly toward his own. Shortly after that, the dragon, with Ari walking at his shoulder, strode into the pen and positioned himself next to the saddle stand.

And at that, Ari, though clearly weary and nursing a bruised shoulder—and carrying a broken lance—laughed aloud. "Well, Vetch, I think you've passed Kashet's test. He doesn't line up alongside the stand for anyone but me. Not even Haraket gets that sort of cooperation."

Vetch was already ducking under Kashet's chest to undo the bellyband when Ari's words made him blink. How was he supposed to respond to that?

The words were out of his mouth before he thought about them. "I like Kashet, sir. Animals can tell when you like them."

"So they can." Ari tossed the useless lance aside. "Which means I can leave you both in safe keeping." With an affection slap of Kashet's shoulder, the Jouster strode out, without even looking back to see if Vetch was doing everything properly.

Vetch looked after him with mouth agape for a moment.

Never, once, in all of the time that he had served Khefti, had the Fat One ever left him unsupervised after only two times at a task.

But Kashet's snort into Vetch's hair quickly recaptured his attention. The dragon's breath was very hot; hotter, in fact, than the sun on his skin. It was just short of painful; Vetch took that as a rebuke and hurried to divest Kashet of harness and saddle.

Other dragons were coming in now, and with irritated hisses and whines, they paraded past Kashet's pen, their dragon boys keeping them on the shortened chains that would choke them if they tried to get away. Meanwhile Kashet paid no attention to their protests; with the harness off, he dove into his sand wallow, where he rolled and writhed, as if he itched.

Well, if he was putting on a growth spurt, perhaps he did. Maybe his skin felt too tight. Did dragons shed their skins as they grew, or not?

Which reminded him, though Kashet had not been so unmannerly as to do so himself—he needed to get Kashet's food!

He hurried off to the butchers; Kashet would have a good, long nap in the heat of the day, so this might be the time to give him that extra feeding.

Haraket was there, monitoring the amount each boy took in his barrow and the amount of tala he mixed in. "Two barrows for Kashet, sir?" Vetch asked diffidently, as he rolled his own barrow past the tala bin.

"Hrmm. Yes. He'll have a chance to sleep most of it off," Haraket replied, and the briefest of smiles crossed his face. "Just a bare day here, and you're acting and thinking like a seasoned hand! Keep this up, boy, and it'd take the Great King's personal order to pry you away from me and out of Ari's service."

Well, Vetch had no particular objections to that. If he had to serve his enemies… at least this lot of enemies wasn't striping his back until it was raw, and fed and housed and clothed him well.

Kashet was more than ready for his midday meal, and climbed out of his wallow with eagerness when Vetch dumped the barrowful out on the stone verge. Vetch went back for the second load, returning as quickly as he could; the dragon saw the supplement to his repast arriving, and there was no doubt in Vetch's mind that he was ready for it by the way he pounced on the contents of the barrow.

When the last morsel was nothing but a lump in Kashet's throat, the dragon returned to his sands, and quickly buried himself in them, and in mere moments was sound asleep. Vetch absented himself, but only after a moment of his own; the sleeping dragon was an amazing sight, and Vetch drank it in, hardly able to believe that he, he, could command such a creature and be obeyed. Not like Ari, of course, but still…

Enough. He left Kashet. He couldn't afford for anyone to think he was lazing about.

The remainder of the day followed on the same pattern as yesterday had, except that he didn't bother to present himself to the Overseer of the Jousters' quarters this time, he just slipped inside and found Ari's rooms and did his cleaning. The Overseer actually came by while he was in the middle of it and did a kind of double-take that was so funny that Vetch had to turn his head away and turn his sudden laugh into a cough to cover it. Evidently the man wasn't expecting Vetch to be there this early. Or, perhaps, at all.

Well, he was. And what was more, Vetch wasn't going to give him a single excuse to use his lash.

Not then. Not ever.

By supper, it was evident that the other boys had determined the pattern for their treatment of Vetch, at least for now. They pretended he didn't exist.

And some of the other servants followed the boys' lead. This left Vetch sitting with a couple of burly, silent, and rather intimidating laborers, who had evidently been hired for their muscles, not their minds, for they never spoke a single word all through the meal. But at least the friendly serving woman was still there, and though she hadn't time to talk to him, every time she passed, she gave him an encouraging wink.

He had been the first to sit down for dinner, and he was the first to leave as well, once again bearing a little packet of food for a later snack. He went back to Kashet's pen as the last of the light faded from the western sky. The dragon raised his head a little and blinked sleepily at him, but didn't move. Their quarters became quiet as the dragons settled into their nighttime torpor and the boys themselves either settled into their shared rooms, or went out. This afternoon, with a little time to spare, he had determined that the dragon boys had a little court of their own, with a pool in it for swimming, and tiny rooms that they shared, four or six to a room. Not as luxurious as a Jouster's quarters… and to Vetch's mind, not much different from a pallet in the dragon pen. Maybe a little inferior; they had no privacy to speak of.

He walked about the dragon compound until dusk, familiarizing himself with the place. The dragon pens were ranged about the landing courtyard, with long, narrow store-rooms between each pen so that the dragons couldn't reach each other over the walls. There were far more pens than there were dragons, though even the unused ones had sand wallows that were every bit as hot as Kashet's. On the west side were the Jousters' quarters and the kitchens, on the north and south, those of their servants and slaves and the dragon boys, and on the east, the armory, the saddlers, and the butchery where the sacrifices were cut up, treated, and distributed. It was quite easy to figure out once you understood the pattern. Vetch didn't venture into the Jousters' quarters, which were lit with torches and lanterns. Servants entered with food and drink and departed with empty platters, and there was a scent of incense and perfume on the night breeze. There was a great deal of talk and laughter going on in there, and Vetch elected not to try and peek in. He got the distinct impression that he definitely would get into trouble if he did. A freeborn boy might get away with spying on the pleasures of his masters—a serf, never.

At length he returned to Kashet's pen, and unwound his kilt, laying it aside. Vetch settled into his corner on his pallet, but he wasn't sleepy yet. As the gloom of dusk settled over the pen, he looked up at the robe of Nofet, spangled with the gold beads that were the stars.

He tilted his head to the side, listening, and heard a hum of muted voices from the other parts of the compound, occasionally someone laughing loudly—both male and female voices. And music, and a woman's voice, singing. Since it wasn't likely that it was the servants and slaves who were laughing like people at a feast, it was probably visitors. Very particular sorts of visitors. Well, the Jousters were the Tians' great weapon, the reason why they had conquered as much as they had, so it was only reasonable that they should have what they wanted. Including women, dancing girls, singing women and—other women.

Vetch was no stranger to why men wanted women. There were the farm animals he'd lived with, after all. And though Khefti could not have gotten a woman without paying for one, well, there were other men in the neighborhood, and there was a little nearby beer house where certain kinds of women plied a trade other than serving beer and food—and when they got a client, they took him wherever they needed to, including the alley just off the kitchen court where Vetch slept.

So the Jousters apparently got whatever rewards they wished to claim. They were heroes after all; much admired and lionized. In fact, some of those women were probably the ladies of the Great King's court, taking the pleasure here they did not find there.

The Tian Jousters were worth a small army in and of themselves, so Vetch had been told. When they swooped down on an Altan village, carrying fire pots to drop on the granaries and strawstacks, they brought terror to the Altan heartland. When they descended on the chariots of the Altan army, terrifying the horses and sending them back through their own lines, there to wreak sheer havoc as they careened though the packed fighters, they disrupted the most successful of Altan tactics, the chariot charge. But worst of all was the tactic that struck true fear into the heart of every Altan officer: when the dragons plunged out of the sky, seized an officer or commander in their talons, lifted him into the air—and dropped him. Vetch had never seen this himself, of course, but everyone had heard the stories. He couldn't imagine how the Altan leaders were keeping officers in the field, when at any moment they might find themselves being dragged into the air, then plunging to their deaths…

Not that he had ever been within miles of the fighting; even the village where he lived had never seen a dragon except at a remote distance, high in the sky. His father's farm had been only that, a farm, and not some enemy stronghold to warrant the attentions of a dragon.

Just a farm, of no tremendous value, except to those who lived there, whose sweat had watered the fields for generations, who had nurtured the soil since time out of mind.

The sound of footsteps just outside the pen broke into his thoughts; he looked up and saw someone standing in the doorway.

It was Ari.

VETCH, had no source of light here in the pen, but there were, of course, the torches in the corridor outside. It was easy enough to recognize Ari's profile against the flickering illumination pouring in the doorway, light that came spilling in through the open arch of the doorway from the torch placed directly across on the corridor wall.

"Kashet—" the Jouster called softly. There was a sibilant sound as the dragon shifted in his sand wallow, and then the dark wedge of Kashet's head loomed above the Jouster's. Vetch was surprised; he hadn't thought that Kashet could be roused once he settled for the night.

The dragon lowered his head and butted it up against Ari's chest. The Jouster staggered a little, then began rubbing the hide between his eyes. "I raised him," Ari said aloud, making Vetch jump. "That's why he's different; that's why we are different. The rest were all taken from their nests just before they were going to fly, or just after, when they are too clumsy to avoid the netters, but I hatched Kashet myself, just as a mother dragon would."

"How?" Vetch asked.

Ari chuckled. "I got an egg, I buried it in the hot sands of one of the pens, I turned it three times a day. I talked to him every day, too, while I turned him, because I've heard the mothers mutter to their eggs when they turn them, so I supposed that the sound might be important. I was there when he hatched, and fed him myself, and when he made his first flight, we flew together."

Vetch considered that. "Do you think he thinks that you're his mother?" he asked, tentatively.

"Perhaps at first," Ari replied. "But he's an adult now, and I doubt that he does anymore. I suppose you could say that we're friends; I understand him, and he understands me. Oh, not in words, of course, and it isn't as if we hear what the other is thinking, though some people believe that is what we do. We just know one another very well. It's a little like having a falcon, or a hunting pard, or a wild dog that you've raised from infancy. You become accustomed to one another's habits, and able to anticipate what the other is going to do." He paused. "I'm pleased, I'm very pleased, that you are getting along with him, and he with you. He doesn't take to just anyone. Haraket can handle him, but it's clearly a case that he tolerates Haraket, rather than likes him. He actually likes you."

That explained a great deal about why Kashet was so unique among the other dragons, and so tame. Ari had actually hatched Kashet; the great dragon hadn't been "tamed," because he was tame from the beginning. There was no doubt in Vetch's mind that Ari was right about why Kashet behaved so differently from the other dragons; feral kittens taken half grown from a farmyard never would properly tame down to become quiet, even-tempered pets, even though they were the same breed as, and in all ways identical with, the pampered and aristocratic temple cats. But a kitten from a perfectly feral mother, taken before its eyes were open and fed on goat's milk, became as tame as any temple cat. Most wise farmers had at least one such cat in the household, often more.

Vetch's mother had always made it her business to have a pet cat in the household. She'd said it was to keep the house clean of vermin, but Vetch recalled many evenings in the winter when she would sit beside the charcoal brazier in the twilight, cat on her lap, petting it while Vetch's father mended some small item or other…

Resolutely, he turned his mind away from the memory. What good did it do to remember such things? Better to keep his thoughts on the here and now.

Well, this was why Kashet didn't need tola. This was why he was so trustworthy. Yes, he had something of a mind of his own, and probably had a temper as well, but he wasn't fighting his handlers all the time, and he was tame. True, Vetch had spent much longer on the sand bath than the other boys because it was quite clear that Kashet was not going to leave until he was satisfied, but so what? And he would probably need to be played with during times of idleness, and apparently needed to have a human with him at night, but Vetch couldn't see how that could really be counted as "work." To Vetch, knowing now why Kashet was so easy to handle, it seemed ridiculous that Ari was the only Jouster with a truly tame dragon. "Why doesn't everyone do that?" Vetch asked, after a while. "Get eggs, I mean. If it makes that big a difference?"

Ari sighed; it sounded weary. "Because it isn't the tradition, I suppose. Or because it is a great deal less heroic to take an egg than a fighting, hissing nestling that is a few days from flight—or one that is flying and might turn and savage you. Or, most likely, because tending an egg and the nestling that hatches is a great deal of work that must be done by the man who intends to ride the dragon. It can't be done by anyone else, for the dragon bonds with the person who tends him from the egg. I know Kashet would never let Haraket ride him, and I'm not entirely sure he'd ever let anyone other than me in the saddle. And you would have to get an egg freshly-laid and move it in the heat of the day in order to move it without killing the dragonet inside. Why go to all that work when the tala keeps the dragons tame enough to ride?" He made a bit of a scornful noise. "My fellow Jousters, I suspect, would rather think of themselves as dragon masters or dragon tamers than dragon nursemaids."

Vetch held his peace; the Jouster didn't seem to expect an answer. He continued to scratch Kashet, who was making burbling sounds in the bottom of his throat. "I am somewhat out of place among our mighty warriors, I fear," Ari said after another, much longer interval. "I was never a soldier, never ambitious to be a warrior. I was trained as a scribe; it is only by virtue of the fact that I ride Kashet that I am a Jouster. The others—well, they are fighters, always intended to be, and never thought of any other life." He coughed a little. "In fact, I suspect that they actually think as little as possible."

"I guess that's good in a warrior," Vetch said, feeling obscurely troubled. "A warrior is only supposed to obey orders, not think about them."

Ari coughed again. "You could be right. Haraket says that I think too much, and I probably do."

Vetch sensed something that he couldn't quite put into words; he strained after it, but it eluded him. "Maybe Haraket is wrong. It's important to think before you say or do something," he said finally. "That was what my father always said—

Ari's head came up, like a hound scenting something interesting. "Your father, the farmer? That is, since you are a serf, I assume your father was a farmer… Did he own his land, before we came and took it away from him? Or was he already a serf to an Altan master, so that our coming made little difference to him?"

Strange questions, certainly not ones that any Tian had ever asked Vetch before. Dangerous questions to answer, if the anger got the better of him. But the darkness made Vetch feel bold, and the calm and curious sadness in Ari's voice cooled his ever-present anger, and he answered, though only after trying to keep his father's advice in mind. "We—our family—held our land for five hundred years," he said, with painful pride.

"Five hundred years." A sigh in the darkness. "And did your father take arms against us? Or your brother? Or were you tilling the soil in peace, far from any battlefield, and never thought about war until the day someone came and told him that his land was no longer his and made you all servants where you had once been masters?"

Vetch felt his mouth falling open. Never, once, had any Tian ever said anything to indicate that the theft of the family land had been anything other than absolutely justified, the proper desserts for having been on the wrong side in the war. Just who and what was Ari?

He felt impelled to answer. "My father—my father didn't know anything about fighting," he said, his throat growing tight. "We knew there was a war, because so much of our crops went in taxes to feed the King's soldiers, but we never saw any fighting."

No, one long, slow year rolled into the next, and the time was marked by planting, growing, harvest, dry, winter, and flood, the six seasons of the year. No one but the tax collectors ever came to the village, for they were so far out of the way. Their farm was on the very edge of the swamp where the land became untillable unless you filled it in, one basket of earth at a time. And people did that; in fact, that was how Vetch's forefathers had gained their land, they had won it from the swamp an inch at a time. There was fever there, and the insects were a constant plague, but the land itself was generous and offered abundance to those who cared for it.

The cruel memories came flooding back, and he stared at the darkness of the far wall, feeling his stomach and throat tighten as he spoke. "It was planting season. Father wouldn't leave the farm at planting season, so I know he didn't go to fight the Tians. And I never had any brothers, only sisters."

Sisters who were surprisingly tolerant of the small brother who plagued them with tricks, his mother's darling, his father's pride.

Mother, father, sisters, and grandmother; all had lived in relative harmony in the mud-brick house that had been added onto by generations going back decades. Vetch remembered every room of that house, the kitchen at the rear, that was the heart of the house, the little room with his mother's loom, the storerooms, and that luxury of luxuries, separate little sleeping rooms for each of them. He remembered how, in the worst heat, they used to sleep on the roof at night for the sake of the breeze. He remembered how the sun used to pierce the high windows in his bedroom at dawn, and write a bright streak of light across the top of the opposite wall. The room was just big enough for his pallet— raised above the floor by a wood-and-rope frame—and a chest that held his clothing. But it was his, and when he dropped the curtain over the door, he could be quite alone with his dreams. That was when he still had dreams…

Only the freeborn can afford to have dreams.

"I don't think my father ever saw a sword, much less ever held one," he said, his throat tight. "The sharpest thing on the farm was his scythe." He had to stop and swallow. "The war never even came near us; we just heard that the army was retreating, but we weren't near the big road, so we never saw it going. I don't think my father ever even thought about it; he was too busy worrying about the seeds and the seedlings."

His throat grew tighter, his stomach ached, and his eyes burned. Vetch didn't want to think about when it all ended; didn't want to remember the day that the strangers came, with their bronze swords and leather shields, their long spears—how they spoke to his father as if he were a slave. He still didn't know exactly what they had said; his mother had all of them sheltered in the house with her, when his father had ordered them there, she'd scolded as she never scolded until they all went into hiding.

But the memories came anyway, and once again, he was there, back in that kitchen, where the bread was burning on the hearth and his mother was paying no attention to it, though it filled the room with the scent of ruin. He was peeking around the edge of a door, and saw how the strangers demanded that his father kneel to them, like a serf. Saw how he cursed them, and picked up a sickle-It wasn't the anger that came, it was the grief. His throat swelled, and he wanted to howl out his loss like the jackals of the desert. But he didn't dare. He stuffed his hand in his mouth, to stifle his sobs, and even his anger was not proof against the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him.

One moment, and his tall, strong father had been standing, defying the men who—he now knew—had come to steal the land that had been theirs for centuries. In the next instant, he was on the ground, and his mother had burst out of their futile "hiding place"—as if the Tians hadn't known they were there all along!—to fling herself over his body. Vetch saw it before his eyes as if it was playing out all over again; his mother was running toward the twitching body of his father, screaming, and his sisters followed her, adding their wails to hers, while he stood frozen in the doorway for a moment, before following them.

And there was red blood everywhere; it was saturating the front of his father's kilt, pouring into the dust beneath his feet, a single drop on the cheek of his killer, a smear on the blade of the murderous sword.

He didn't remember leaving the house, but he was running, too, not thinking, only screaming at the top of his lungs, screaming at the soldiers. Then, horror on top of horror, the Tian soldiers grabbed her, grabbed him, grabbed his sisters, with the remote indifference of a housewife taking up a chicken for the pot.

Grabbed them, throwing them down beside the road, in the dust, and if any of them tried to rise, they were kicked or clubbed with the butt of a spear until they stayed prostrate. He remembered the taste of dirt and tears, of the blood from his split lip, remembered how his youngest sister wouldn't stop screaming and the soldiers kicked her in the head until they knocked her unconscious.

She was never right after that…

He couldn't get any words past his closed throat, but Ari was just as silent. In a way, he was glad, because if Ari had spoken a single word, he might have flown at him in a rage, and then—

—well, he didn't know what would happen. He certainly wouldn't hurt the Jouster, no more than he had had any chance of hurting the soldier who had killed his father. But in another way, it left him alone in the dark with unbearable memories.

He remembered how, once he was face-down in the dirt, he shook all over; he recalled, viscerally, how he was afraid even to look up, while the sun baked down on his back, and flies buzzed in his father's blood. He remembered that sound, that horrible sound; he was never able to bear the sound of flies after that. He remembered the bruises on his arms where the soldiers had grabbed him, on his ribs where they kicked him, the hundred and one scrapes and cuts where he'd been flung into the ground, the painful bump on his head where one of them had hit him with a spear.

But most of all, he remembered the terrible grief, and the helplessness. Grief that nearly strangled him, and fear, for the bottom had dropped out of the universe and everything he had trusted in was gone.

The soldiers made them lie there in the dirt beside the road as another stranger arrived, this one with a family and a wagonload of furnishings.

Then the soldiers dragged them off their faces, all but Dershela, who lay on her side, her face black and blue. Her, they picked up by her sheath, which tore, leaving one breast exposed, and dropped her behind the rest of them. The soldiers made them all kneel and watch as the strangers invaded their home, and went through the house, pulling out everything they owned.

Had owned.

And before long, it was unrecognizable.

Every article was picked over; the little that the soldiers considered worth taking was pocketed, and the rest destroyed. Every bit of pottery was smashed, every scrap of fabric torn up, every bit of wood splintered and chopped to bits. Every possession was reduced to trash, then tossed onto the dust heap.

But not before his father's body was thrown there first, with less ceremony than if it had been the carcass of a pariah dog, then covered with the trash that had been his possessions and pride. There was no burial ceremony for his father, no offerings, no prayers, no shrine. His ghost would roam the night, unhomed, rootless, unable to find its way to the Summer Country across the Star Bridge.

And then that Tian family took possession of the house that had been home to his father's line, unbroken, for long, long years. As the strange furnishings moved in, the man's wife began berating the servants that they had brought with them—and criticizing the house at the top of her lungs. Her shrill cries filled the air like the calling of a quarrelsome goose as she bullied her servants into emptying the wagon into the house that was rapidly becoming unrecognizable.

Only then was Vetch's family hauled to their collective feet (except for poor Deshara, who was still unconscious) while the officer explained to them what all this meant—that they had been punished for harboring enemies of the Tians, for being enemies of the Tians, for attacking the Tians. That their land was confiscated, and they were graciously being allowed to live, even though their lives were forfeit because the male of the house had attacked an officer of the Tian army.

And that was when they learned what the word "serf" meant.

He could not remember the exact words, only the sense of it, but then again, the sense of it had been beaten into him for so many years that it hardly mattered. That he was bound to the land, and bound to serve the ones who owned it. That he had no rights, except that of being fed and housed. That he was of less import than the kitchen cat, who at least, was of a sacred line going back to the Pashet, the cat goddess.

And last of all, that within the space of a morning, he and his family had been reduced to chattel. They could own nothing, earn nothing, be nothing. They had become possessions, and ones of little value.

Then, after seeing their husband and father murdered for no reason, after lying without food or water in the hot sun for hours, after watching everything they had ever known utterly and wantonly destroyed, they were permitted to rise and start their new lives. They were allowed to make their beds out of whatever they could get from the discards and what they could gather with their own two hands among the weeds and along the riverbank. They were permitted to lodge in what had been the cattleshed, to work their own land without profit or payment.

He choked on his tears now, as he had then, when he had curled into a ball on the malodorous pile of river reeds, and wept himself into exhaustion.

And he remembered how from that day onward, he had eaten what scraps were given to him in bitterness, flavored with tears, seasoned with grief too deep for words.

He didn't want to remember. But he could never forget.

"Five hundred years ago, boy," Ari said softly, breaking the horrible silence, "Five hundred years ago, a people called the Heyksin came to Tia. Did you know that? To us, they are the Cursed People, the Nameless Ones, because of what they did to us. Only scribes, priests, and a few fools who call themselves scholars still know what they called themselves. And they destroyed our army, killed our King and our nobles, and sent their people to take the farms and livelihoods of Tians who had lived in their little mud-brick houses for hundreds of years."

He paused, and breathed into Kashet's nostrils. "So. Does that story sound familiar to you?"

"I— " Vetch couldn't speak.

"Well, perhaps if I continue," Ari replied, as if he had not heard that faltering reply. "Yes, they sent their people to become the owners and masters of homes they themselves had not built, had not tilled. And the Tians who had called those places home now served the newcomers as slaves. When the Tians rebelled, they were beaten and suffered further depredations, when they dared to strike against their overlords, dozens of innocents were slaughtered in retribution. That was what was happening to us, five hundred years ago, when your grandfather's grandfather's grandfather was settling his little farm, winning it from the swamp beside the Great Mother River. Then we Tians learned to ride dragons, to drive chariots, and to make bronze swords and spearheads, and we rose up and drove the Heyksin out. There are those who even say that it was from the Altans that we learned to do these things, though most would deny this, or say that it was the gods themselves who taught us. Oh, we were so proud of ourselves! We were sure that the gods had blessed us, and that we were destined to create a great nation."

"But what happened? If it was Altans who taught— " He stopped; he couldn't go on.

Ari bent his head over Kashet's. "Well, it depends upon who you ask. Some say that your people attacked ours. And that might very well be true—and it may not. I think it more likely that as we pressed northward, the Altans were pressing south, and we met and quarreled over the spoils. And perhaps it was only a matter of your kings hating ours, and ours despising yours. I think—only think, mind, that the Altans probably did attack us when we grew strong enough to threaten them. I believe that they originally hoped to put us, the younger kingdom, in our place. And Vetch, they do continue to attack us, there is no denying that; they do send young warriors into our villages to kill the important men or the Great King's officials there. They set ambushes on the road to murder and rob. And we use this as a reason to muster the army and press northward again, to 'pacify the countryside.' The wrongs are so tangled up now that there is no disentangling them. The problem is, we did—and are doing—to you what the Heyksin did to us. The problem is, because we cannot catch the agents and soldiers, we take out our wrath upon those Altans we can catch."

Once more Vetch had the sense of something very important that was just out of his grasp. But the grief and rage, the terrible emotion that Ari had roused in him—it was too raw, too painful to permit him to think about anything else. Tears cut down his cheeks, hot and bitter, his gut was a mass of knots, and his throat was swollen with grief. But he had learned since that terrible day how to cry without a sound, not even a sniffle, though his eyes burned and ached and his throat closed up completely and his gut was cramped with holding in the sobs he dared not release. Not even in front of this man, who had been absently kind, who spoke as if he might understand.

Ari shook his head, and reached up to pat Kashet's neck. "And none of that matters to you, I suppose," he sighed. "It certainly doesn't matter to the other Jousters. It doesn't seem to matter to anyone but me that Tians are doing to Altans precisely what we claimed were the most heinous of crimes when the Heyksin inflicted them upon us. It doesn't seem to concern anyone that we have become what we most despised. Haraket is right. I think too much."

He patted Kashet again, and the dragon nuzzled him, then pulled away, settling back into the sand. And without another word, Ari turned and left the pen. Vetch was alone in the darkness, with a slumbering dragon, a sorrow too deep and wide to leave room for anything else, and his memories. And an anger that built walls as high as his sorrow was deep.

His throat felt raw, and his gut ached. In a way, it had been easier when he had served Khefti. He'd been too exhausted to be troubled by his memories at night, and his hatred for Khefti had eclipsed all other emotions.

Now—now he lay and watched the moon rise above the pen walls, and when he closed his eyes—

—he watched his father, a quiet, dignified man, face the captain of the soldiers. Kiron Dorian had been a strong, but very lean farmer, bronze skin turned the color of smoothly-tanned leather by the sun; Altans were a trifle paler than Tians, but other than that, there was little difference between the peoples of the two Kingdoms. Like all Altans, he cut his hair short, just above the ears, and he wore the short, unpleated kilt that all Altan farmers sported. In all other ways, he and the soldiers could have been cousins, with the same black hair and dark eyes, the same jutting chins, the same beak-like noses…

There were those who said that the Altans and Tians sprang from the same stock, although both sides would vehemently have denied any such thing. But this had been Vetch's first sight of a Tian and—and he could not tell the difference between these men and the folk of his own village.

Other than the fact that they were a shade or so darker than his father, and the difference in clothing, of course, and the rest of their dress. And the weapons.

Why, why had Kiron reached for his sickle? He had stuck it in his waistband when the captain approached him, but why had he drawn it?

Or had he only reacted instinctively, in anger, to protect his land and his family?

Vetch tried to remember what it was that he had heard the captain say—the soldiers had spoken in broken Altan, with a heavy accent. There had been the insults, of course, and the orders—

But surely Kiron had known he could not prevail against an entire band of soldiers.

Maybe he hadn't cared. Or maybe he had just reacted instinctively, as any man would, when faced with a threat. He had tried to drive out the interlopers, to defend what was his.

And died for it.

Vetch squeezed his eyes shut, and curled himself up to muffle his sobs, and for the first time since his father had died, wept himself to sleep.

The days settled into a pattern of meals, work, and sleep. Within a week, the other dragon boys got used to Vetch's presence, and went from ostentatiously ignoring him to absentmindedly ignoring him, the latter being much easier to bear. At least there was no overt hostility, and the tricks and "pranks" he had dreaded never occurred. He wondered if Haraket or some other Overseer had given them an actual warning about mischief, though that might have been waving a red rag at a bull. After all, the surest way to make a boy do something is to forbid him to do it.

He never asked; he was just grateful to be left in peace. Once in a while, one of them would actually speak directly to him, though it tended to be a command rather than a comment or a pleasantry; Vetch ignored the commands as he had ignored the hostility, for he was not theirs to command.

The attitude that he was, however, rankled, and grew worse, not better, over time. By the time the kamiseen died, it was clear even to Te-Velethat that Vetch was a superior worker, and even the sour Overseer of the Household was willing to give him grudging credit for his work. So being told to fetch and carry by someone too lazy to do his own work—with an air of lofty superiority—made his blood boil. Such incidents gave his hatred fresh fuel to feed upon, fuel which was otherwise—lacking.

Haraket was unfailingly just, the Overseer of the Household scarcely ever set eyes on Ari's quarters anymore, and thus Vetch seldom saw him, and the other servants, slaves, and serfs treated him no differently than any other dragon boy. His fingers no longer itched for clay to make a cursing figure from. In fact, he could go for half a day without being consciously angry.

And as for Ari—well. During the daylight hours, the Jouster was kind, in an austere and distant fashion, courteous and polite. But every so often, the Jouster would come to Kashet's pen late at night, and the most extraordinary exchanges took place…

Vetch learned very little about Ari's childhood; only how he had apprenticed as a scribe. He did learn a great deal about dragons, for Ari had studied them extensively. In their behavior, at least according to Ari, they were most like the great cats of the desert, with a great deal of hawklike behavior, especially when young, thrown in.

"Their eyesight is much better than ours, but not as good as a falcon's," Ari said one night, as Vetch sat a little apart from him, both of them with their feet and ankles in the hot sand of Kashet's wallow to keep off the nighttime chill. Kashet's head was actually in Ari's lap. "I've seen a falcon come down out of the sky from so high up that he wasn't even a speck, to take a bustard crouched in the desert a few feet in front of me that I couldn't see. A dragon's eyesight isn't nearly that keen. But they are hunters, like the falcons, and when they get prey in sight and they're hungry, you haven't a chance of diverting them from it. Not all the tala in the world can overcome their instincts when they're hungry."

Vetch thought back to his first day, and Haraket berating one of the boys for feeding his dragon too lightly. "What'll they do?" he asked. "If it's a Jouster's dragon that's very hungry, I mean?"

"Hunt," Ari said shortly. "Probably not their rider; they haven't had a chance to learn that we can be food. But they'll hunt things they've seen brought to them as food by their mother and father. Once they're old enough to feed themselves, their parents bring them whole animals and don't tear bits off to feed to them. And at the end, just before the youngsters make their first flight, sometimes the parents bring in prey that isn't quite dead, so the dragonets get the experience of seeing their dinner alive and moving, and make a first kill early on. So they'll have seen sheep, goats, rabbits, maybe even fowl. A hungry dragon will ignore his training to hunt, and his rider had better hang on or he'll be thrown. And if that should happen in the middle of a fight or a flight, too bad. I've known of a rider to be killed by Altan archers while his dragon was on the ground, feeding, and he was sitting in the saddle, an easy target."

"And if a dragon ever does learn that humans can be food?" he asked.

"That dragon is destroyed," Ari replied flatly. "That's happened, too, in training—stupid Jousters in training who let themselves get slashed or bitten, and their dragon gets the taste of human blood. You can see it in their eyes; they've made the connection, and no human is safe. We call them 'mar dragons,' and no amount of tala can make them forget. We can't turn them loose because they've lost all fear of men, but we can't keep them, either."

"Would that happen with Kashet?" he wondered aloud.

Ari started to answer him, then paused. "Huh. I don't know. Dragons don't consider each other as prey, and I suppose Kashet thinks that we are dragons. It's not an experiment I'd care to try."

Vetch enjoyed listening to Ari talk. He'd been a little worried at first, when Ari turned up after dark, wondering if Ari had something else in mind besides talking, but no more. And if he enjoyed listening, Ari appeared to enjoy having someone who would listen intelligently.

Whatever the reason, at least he felt less alone.

Vetch was surprised one noontide to find Haraket not overseeing the boys as they collected their meat; he was even more surprised to discover him testing the temperature of Kashet's sand wallow with his hand and forearm. At least, that was what he thought Haraket was doing; he couldn't imagine any other reason why the Overseer would be kneeling at the verge with his arm plunged into the sand.

Vetch did not stop to question him, however, for Kashet was tossing his head impatiently, wanting his meal.

But Haraket was frowning as he got back to his feet, and he strode over to Vetch, still frowning.

"Get the pen completely cleaned when Kashet's away," Haraket ordered. "I mean completely. Tidy everything up. This entire row of sand wallows needs the heating spells renewed on them, and the Ghed priests mustn't be offended by anything that isn't spotless and utterly neatened."

He glanced significantly at Vetch's pallet and his few belongings, and Vetch understood immediately. Tidy everything up meant to hide the reminders that this dragon was tended, not by a free-born dragon boy who lived with the others, but a serf. The Ghed priests were notorious sticklers for tradition, and tireless enforcers of custom.

So he hid everything that belonged to him in the storage room, as well as anything else that happened to be lying about in the pen for good measure. Then he cleaned out wallow and "privy"—or at least raked out the top layer of sand in the wallow—and by the time the priests arrived, there was no sign even that Kashet's pen was in use.

Wild with curiosity by this time, he hid in the storage room with the door curtain held down with a weighted bar across the bottom so that it couldn't get caught by an ill-timed breeze to reveal where he was. He peeked carefully through a tiny gap between the curtain and the doorpost, as he heard the chiming sound of sistrums and the footsteps of many people.

He waited there while they did—whatever it was that they were doing—in the next pen over. It was hot and very close inside the storeroom, which lacked the roofline windows of a room that was going to be used by people. Sweat prickled his scalp, and a drop slid down his back as he waited. Finally Haraket led four priests and four little priestesses in a kind of solemn procession in through the door to the pen, and they arranged themselves around the wallow, a priest to each corner, the four priestesses in a line across the back wall, Haraket near the door.

They were colorful figures; all four of the priests went shaven-headed, without a wig, but where their heads were bare, their bodies were anything but. Rather than the kilt of most men, they wore long robes of finely pleated white linen; not one robe, but three of them. The first reached to the ground, the second to the calf, and the third to the knee. Their sandals were ornamented with turquoise, and like Haraket they wore a striped sash around their waists and another running from left shoulder to right hip. But their sashes were embroidered and beaded in red, yellow, and green, and were twice as wide as Haraket's. The four young priestesses dressed in robes of whitest mist linen with wreaths of blue latas flowers about their heads, and beads of gold and carnelian at the ends of each of the hundreds of braids in their wigs. They appeared to be not much older than Vetch. Their eyes were lined with kohl and shaded with malachite, and they each wore cones of perfume atop their fine wigs.

All four priests raised their hands together, and began to chant in time to the chiming of the sistrums shaken by the priestesses. They looked so identical at that moment that they might have been paintings on a wall done by the same artist.

The spell was an intricate one, not some simple cursing. Vetch listened avidly as they began with a long, protracted invocation to the gods, Ghed in particular.

Then began the real work of the spell, and that was where Vetch lost track of what they were doing completely. It seemed to involve the sand wallow, but also the Great King's palace. Both were described in exquisite detail, and the God Ghed was enjoined to take—something—from the palace, and put that same something here in the wallow. But what that was, Vetch could not make out.

Whatever they were doing took a lot of time, though, a great deal of chanting and effort, and the priests' pleated robes were beginning to wilt a little before they were done.

Inside the stifling storage room, Vetch was feeling a bit wilted himself.

Finally, though, they finished. With a last shake of the sistrums, the priests dropped their arms as one, and filed out the door, as solemnly as they had come. Haraket followed them out, and Vetch heard the chiming and footsteps moving on to the next pen.

Nevertheless, he waited until the chanting on the other side of the walls had started up again before venturing out.

There was no doubt that their magic had worked, and worked well. The sands were hotter than ever, and as Vetch hauled all of the things out of storage that he'd so hastily shoved in. he saw a heat shimmer playing over the top of the wallow. He had to work quickly; he was already a little late to clean Ari's quarters. Fortunately, that hardly mattered; there just wasn't that much work to be done there, and he had gotten it down to an art.

Kashet greeted the change in his wallow with a surprised snort, then gleefully plunged in. Ari raised his eyebrow, and paused for a moment instead of heading straight for his quarters.

"Were the Ghed priests here?" he asked.

Vetch nodded. He was still alive with curiosity. "Haraket said the magic needed renewing."

"1 thought things were getting a little cooler than Kashet prefers," Ari replied, and allowed his eyebrow to drop again. "Good."

"Ah—" Vetch wasn't sure he should be asking the question, but he couldn't bear not to. "What were they doing, anyway? I mean, how do they make things hotter?"

Ari had half-turned away, on his way out the door. Now he turned back and gave Vetch a long, level look. "You were listening, weren't you."

It wasn't a question. Vetch looked at his feet, then at Ari, and swallowed. He was about to be punished. He knew it, he just knew it. "Yes, sir," he admitted.

"Don't tell anyone else. The Ghed priests would have a litter of kittens over the idea that an Altan serf was inside their sacred square." But Ari's normally solemn, brown eyes were full of amusement, and Vetch took heart again. "As to how they did it—if I knew, I'd be a priest-mage, not a Jouster. But I know what they do, because I've copied out the rituals and spells for them before. Have you ever been to the Great King's palace?"

Before Vetch could shake his head—after all, why would he get into a palace!—Ari was going on.

"If you had, the first thing that would strike you is that while everything else is hot enough to bake bread, inside the walls of the palace it's cool enough for the ladies to wear lambswool mantles. And that is because the Ghed priests, with their magic, are taking the heat from there, and putting it in our sand wallows. That's what the spell is for; it's like an irrigation ditch that allows the heat to flow from there to here."

Vetch stared at him. He'd have doubted Ari's sanity, except that there was no reason to disbelieve the Jouster. "But," he said, "what about in winter? You wouldn't want to make it colder." It was the only thing he could think of.

"In winter, they take it from somewhere else. My guess would be forges, bakehouses, places where there is a lot of heat it would be good to get rid of, even in winter. In fact, since the winter rains aren't far off now, they probably did just that this time around, rather than come back a second time to recast the spell." Ari shrugged. "They might even take it from the fire vents and lava cones out there past the desert; I might have copied some of their spells, but magic is something it's best not to know too much about. Now—don't let anyone know you watched the magic, and don't let anyone know I told you how the spell works."

And with that, he was gone, leaving Vetch with quite a bit more to think about.

That night, when Ari appeared to tend to Kashet, not a word was spoken about magic. But now Vetch was curious about other things that were not so dangerous to know.

The weather was about to turn; the nights were more than chill, they were cold, and Kashet was very happy with his sand wallow this evening.

"There are hot sands that the wild dragons use?" he said, making it a question, as Ari rubbed under Kashet's chin.

"Of course there are—though, mind, dragons also use the heat of their own bodies to hatch their eggs. Wild dragons take it turn and turn about, males and females, to brood the eggs. That way they both can eat and drink. At night, when it's coldest, they brood the eggs together."

Vetch considered this. "How do you know that?" he asked, finally.

Ari chuckled. "Because, fool that I was, I went out and watched them. And yes, I could very easily have ended up going down one of those long throats. But I was young and immortal, and I was very, very tired of sitting about and writing, endless copies of things no one cared about. Even when I came here, I was the unconsidered copyist. I wanted to do something different, something that would be read for the next hundred years." He chuckled again. "Actually, although I didn't really want to be a scribe, my uncle wouldn't hear of anything else, and after my father died, he was the head of our household when he made my mother his second wife. He was always quoting the sages to me. 'The metalworker has fingers like crocodile hide, and stinks worse than fish eggs. The fisherman wears little but net, and eats only what he cannot sell. The farmer labors from dawn to dusk, serving only the tax collector, the embalmer is shunned by all, the brick maker is as filthy as a pig, the soldier lives every day never knowing if it will be his last. But the scribe never goes hungry; he can aspire to the halls of the great ones, and his is the only profession wherein he himself is the overseer.' Except that, of course, that last isn't true at all, and most scribes spend their lives, not in the halls of the great ones, but sitting in a marketplace, waiting for anyone who wants a letter written, or bent over a desk in his lap, copying copies of copies of things so tedious they send him to sleep."

Vetch sighed. Whoever had written that hadn't known anything about farmers…

Then again, whoever had written that was, without a doubt, trained as a scribe originally. He started to ask about Ari's parents, but Ari continued before he could say anything.

"When I came here to serve the Jousters, I decided to learn as much as I could about the dragons, and I decided that the best way to do so was to study the wild ones. 1 watched them courting in the sky, and although I never actually caught one laying an egg, I did know within a day when one was laid, because I took to watching particular natural sand wallows. Which wasn't easy!

Dragons only use the wallows that are sheltered to lay their eggs in, usually in caves."

Vetch shivered, thinking that "wasn't easy" was assuredly an understatement. What had Ari done? Had he actually been brave enough to slip into the caves to see if eggs had been laid?

Ari had warmed to his subject; it seemed that whenever the subject was "dragons," Ari could always stir up enthusiasm. "The mother doesn't start brooding until her clutch is laid, so it wasn't particularly hard to sneak into her cave to see if she'd left anything."

Not particularly hard. Vetch managed not to snort. But he did say, judiciously, "I couldn't have done that."

This time Ari laughed aloud, and ruffled Vetch's hair. It was curious; at first, Vetch had been very wary of Ari, knowing, as he did only too well, that some men… well. But Ari had never given him a moment of unease. The physical demonstrations had all been—

—safe. That was the word. Brotherly, perhaps. That was close enough to the word he didn't want to think of—

—fatherly.

Fortunately, Ari was still merrily talking away. "They usually court and lay just at the start of the dry, and the egg hatches when the rains begin. They feed and grow all during the winter and spring, and fledge when the dry comes again. They're still small, far too small to joust with, far too small to carry a rider for long, but as you'll hear Haraket say a thousand times, 'Neither Jouster nor dragon are made in a season.' Kashet, of course, began carrying me from the beginning."

"Is that why he's so strong?" Vetch ventured.

"It could be," Ari agreed, and yawned. "Vetch, if you want to hear more about Kashet—

"Yes!" Vetch interrupted.

Once again, Ari laughed. "Then we'll have more time after the rains start—which they will within a day or so, or at least, that's what the Nuth priests are saying. Then our patrols will be cut to one a day, because the dragons will not want to fly. Until then, Kashet and I need to get in as much flying time as we can, so I am going to sleep. And you should, too."

Ari gently moved Kashet's head from his lap; the dragon grumbled, but shifted so that all of him was in the wallow. Then Ari stood up.

"Thank you for listening to me babble, Vetch. My fellow Jousters are more than tired of hearing me."

He heard the faint echo of loneliness in Ari's voice, and quickly said, "I'm not!"

Ari ruffled his hair again. "I should hope not," he replied with mock sternness. "Dragons in general, and Kashet in particular, are your business, young dragon boy. Get some sleep, now."

Ari went off to his own quarters then, and Vetch took his advice. He went to sleep quickly, dreaming of a sky filled with dragons.

IT was the business of the priests and priestesses of the goddess Nuth—or, more accurately, the Seers among those priests and priestesses—to predict the start of the season of winter rains. This was of vital importance to the Jousters, for once the rains began, their work would be much curtailed. Dragons didn't like the cold and performed sluggishly when the temperature dropped—and although you could get them to fly in the rain, not even tala would keep them in the air for long. So as the end of the dry season neared, the more closely the compound watched the Temple of Nuth for word. Haraket sent messengers daily, asking if a date had been Foreseen. Anxiety mounted, in no small part because the Jousters, and their dragons, were tired. They needed this respite, and needed it badly.

They need not have been concerned. Precisely when the Nuth priests said they would, the rains came.

Three messages arrived from the Avenue of Temples before Haraket could send his daily request; the first gave warning that the rains would certainly begin the next day, the second gave the exact hour (which was the second hour of dawn), and the third, that the first storm would be unusually heavy. Vetch and the rest of the dragon boys had all rehearsed what they were to do, and after the sun set and all the dragons had settled, they had gone down every row of pens and pulled the canvas awnings over every one of the sand wallows. There was no point in allowing even the unused wallows to become pits of hot sand soup, for green muck would grow in it if the water didn't steam away in time, and that would mean digging out all of the mucky sand and replacing it with clean.

When the rains actually began, Vetch was sound asleep. He woke to the sound of distant thunder and within an hour, rain poured out of the sky and drummed down on the awnings; it was still so dark that he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face, and the first rush of water put out the torches in the corridor outside. It was quite a storm, and he was glad to be under cover when it came, although all of the lightning stayed up in the clouds, and the thunder never was more than a rumble overhead. Still, as hard as the water was pouring down out of the sky, the roar as it hit the canvas and the ground was enough to drown out everything but that thunder. He couldn't help but contrast his position now with the same time last year, when he had actually climbed up onto the woodpile in Khefti's back courtyard to shelter under the canvas covering it—for he was not permitted an awning to keep him dry.

These rains would actually do very little for the state of the Great Mother River, for the annual flood that enriched the fields with a thick carpet of rich silt were caused by rain that fell in the lands of the headwaters, much farther south. And the winter rains in Tia were nothing like the ones in Vetch's home in Alta; storms could last for many days without a pause up there, but were gentle things, as much mist as rain.

The floods had less effect in Alta as well. By the time the Great Mother River reached Alta, she had spread out into the flatlands and swamps, and there was more room for the floodwaters to go.

On the first day of the rains, dawn did not truly arrive; the darkness merely lightened, gradually, to gray. The awnings were cleverly made to dump the rain into channels that carried the water away from the sand wallow; very little got into the hot sand, and most of that quickly steamed away. Kashet showed no signs of wanting to move; in point of fact, it looked to Vetch as if nothing short of an earthquake would budge the dragon from his wallow. Not that Vetch blamed him; he wished he could stay warm and dry—but the rains didn't stop the chores from needing to be done, so he would have to get up and join the other boys at their daily tasks.

He wrapped his woolen mantle about his shoulders, and left the shelter of the awnings for the corridor—

—where he promptly got soaked. No awnings there; it would have been a shocking waste of canvas, even for so prosperous a place as the Jousters' compound. The best he could hope for would be that he'd get to spend most of his time inside rooms rather than courtyards. At least the wool of his mantle stayed warm, though wet. The linen kilt went sodden and cold and distinctly unpleasant, it clung to him clammily and only impeded his walking.

He got Kashet's breakfast; the other boys were straggling in, as reluctant to leave their quarters as he was, and for once, they didn't pointedly ignore him. Shared misery was making for a semblance of amity, anyway. Haraket was there as usual, and made sure that each of the boys covered the meat in their barrows with much-stained squares of scrap canvas, hide, or some other covering from a pile of such things beside the tala-bin. Vetch did the same, although his load did not have tala on it; that was the main concern, that the tala not wash off. The dragons would be reacting to the onset of the rains according to their natures; some would be surly, some languid, some edgy, and the surly and edgy ones would need that tala if their boys were to handle them safely in their enforced confinement. He pulled his mantle over his head, squared his shoulders, and trundled his barrow back to the pen through the downpour.

Kashet raised his head lazily from the wallow when he entered the pen, and took his time in eating his meat. Perhaps he already knew that there would be no flying today; he was certainly clever enough to know that when the rains began, work ended. Kashet seemed to savor each bite, rather than bolting his food, but Vetch didn't care that the dragon lingered over his meal; he took the opportunity to bury his chilled feet in the hot sand, and spread his soaking mantle over the top of the wallow out of Kashet's way. The wool began to steam immediately, and the hot sand felt so good on his cold feet that he left the verge and sat himself right down in the sand himself, wrapping his skinny arms around his knees and resting his chin atop them. Long before Kashet finished his meal, Vetch stopped shivering and began to warm up.

Kashet paused when the barrow was just about half emptied, and craned his neck over to look at Vetch curiously as the boy joined the dragon in the sand, but did nothing more than snort, then went back to his food. It occurred to Vetch then that this was an entirely unanticipated benefit of having Kashet as his dragon—some of them were very territorial about their wallows, and it would have been sheer torture to have to stand there shivering, knowing how nice and hot the sand was, and not daring to put so much as a toe into it.

Once fed, Kashet buried himself in his sand again, with his wings tucked in tightly to his body. Vetch cleaned the litter pit without Kashet even stirring. Presumably the other boys were having no more trouble with their beasts than he was with Kashet, since he didn't hear the usual cursing, hissing, and rattling chains from the pens of some of the troublemakers.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He might not care much for any of them, but one thing that the rains were going to do was leave the others plenty of idle moments, and he really would rather that nothing increased their irritation. The rains had always been the worst time for mean tricks from Khefti's apprentices, because the apprentices, too, were cold and wet and miserable, and inclined to try and make anyone inferior to them even more miserable than they were. If the other dragon boys were having an easy time of it, they'd be less likely to have anything to take out on Vetch.

He hated to leave Kashet's pen and the heat radiating up from the sand wallow, but he didn't have much choice in the matter. Perhaps the dragons weren't going to fly, but there were plenty of chores that still had to be done.

But as he reported to his various stations, he learned that he was getting a bit more leisure than he'd thought. There was no need to check over the lances, for instance, and the last few baskets of the ripened tala, the fruits of the end of the season, had to be discarded, for it could not be dried now. Nor could it be pounded to powder in weather like this; so much dampness in the air would rum it. And as for tidying the Jousters' quarters, well, that depended on the Jouster in question. Most of them did not want to be disturbed, which meant that the dragon boys got to sit around idle—though it was an enforced idleness that none of them really enjoyed. Yes, they could go out hunting in the marsh, or fishing—in the cold, soaking rain, which took all the joy out of such pastimes, and turned them into labor. They could go into the city, but even with coins to spend, there was no great joy for them there, for the beer shops were colder than their own quarters, suffered from floors that turned into mud, and were crowded with laborers who got the lion's share of attention from the serving girls and entertainers. Only the nobles and the wealthy got to spend the winter rains in an endless round of feasting and merriment indoors. The rest of the city went about its business in wet, cold misery. No one went out of doors unless he had to, and those who did were not happy about it.

So the leisure hours of the winter rains were spent confined to their courtyard, playing what games they had, huddled around charcoal braziers. So far as Vetch was concerned, charcoal braziers were a poor substitute for the hot sands. Since Kashet didn't object, just after the noon meal, he actually moved his pallet down onto the wallow, for sand in his bedding was a small price to pay for the added warmth.

Ari was one of those who had told his dragon boy not to trouble with tidying up that afternoon, which meant that Vetch would have the entire time free. After feeding Kashet at noon, Vetch stretched himself out on his pallet to soak in the heat. He might not have done as much actual work today as he usually did, but the cold was as punishing as physical labor, and he felt absolutely drained. Not sleepy, just exhausted.

In weather like this, Khefti would have him running about on a hundred tasks, mostly concerned with leaks and mud—mopping up water that came through the roof, going up on the roof to find and stop the leaks, and cleaning up the mud that Khefti, his apprentices, his customers, and his household tracked in everywhere. During the rains, Vetch's life seemed to revolve around mud, cold, and wet, adding wretchedness to the perpetual misery of his empty belly. Khefti would lurch between two moods during the rains. In his first mood, he would be pleased, because, after all, rains in a place made of mud-brick buildings would mean more business for him afterward. Rain would get past the plastering if it wasn't properly kept up, and then Khefti would get his business. Vetch sometimes wondered, if, now and again, Khefti didn't pay his apprentices to go about just before the rains and put a little damage on the homes of those Khefti determined could afford some rebuilding…

But during the rains, only the pottery was working; he couldn't make brick until the rains and the flood stopped. So in his second mood, Khefti would be glum and angry, impatient for the rains to stop so that he could get to making those bricks, angry that four of his six apprentices were idle, counting up the cost in fuel and food with no income from the brickworks coming in. Furthermore, Khefti would be as miserable as everyone else with the cold and wet, and would take it out on the nearest object, which was usually Vetch.

Which was hardly fair, but "fair" wasn't a word that could ever be applied to Khefti.

Vetch had Khefti on his mind a great deal today, which didn't necessarily make him feel safe. There was always the feeling that Khefti hadn't finished with him.

He had just started to get warm, and to think about what he might do to occupy his time, when he heard someone at the entrance to the pen, and looked up.

It was Haraket. He sat up with a start of guilt, wondering if putting his pallet in the wallow was something forbidden, or if he had somehow forgotten a chore that should have been done. The Overseer gestured to him as he scrambled to his feet and up onto the stone verge, and his alarm increased when he saw Ari was with Haraket. Both were wrapped in dripping mantles, as if they had just come a long distance down the uncovered corridors.

"Here, boy—" Haraket thrust another mantle at him, this one adult-sized. "Wrap up in that and come along. You've been called up before the magistrate; he's waiting at the Dragon Hall."

What? Vetch was so shocked by that statement that all he could do was stand stark still and gape at the two of them, the mantle dangling loosely in his hands.

"Better say, we have been called up," Ari corrected. "Vetch is the object of disputation. It seems your former master is not letting go of you without a fight."

Vetch felt his heart plummet right down to the ground, and he went cold all over. Khefti? Oh, gods—

I knew it. I just knew it. This was too good to last—

And Khefti would never, ever, give up anything that he thought was his by right.

"Hah. Neither are we, and the law's on our side," Haraket said, with a certain grim glee. "The magistrate's come here with the fat slug in tow, rather than summoning us to his own Court; the magistrate knows who has the rights here. So come along. And don't look like a gazelle in the jaws of a lion, boy!"

But he couldn't help feeling like a gazelle in the jaws of a lion! His stomach had gone into knots and was hurting, and not all of his shivers were due to the cold as he followed Haraket and Ari.

They led him right out of the corridors he knew, into a part of the compound where he had never been before, right past all of the Jousters' Courts.

And all the while, Vetch was in agony. They didn't know Khefti—they didn't know how grasping-clever he could be! If he was here, it was because he had found a law that would give him possession of Vetch again. Khefti would never attempt anything that he thought would fail. If he'd come for Vetch, it was because he already knew that he would win.

Haraket herded him down a dead-end corridor that terminated in an enormous sandstone building, the largest that Vetch had ever seen, which would have been a pale gold in the sunshine, but was a rich brown with the rain soaking into its face. It was easily four stories tall, and must surely be the tallest structure in the compound. The Haras-falcon of the Jousters, painted in red and blue and green, spread his wings above the bronze door, and two seated statues of the Great King Hamunshet, he who had driven the Heyksin out of Tia, and who had, so Ari said, been a Jouster himself, flanked the doorway. They stared off majestically into space, ignoring the mere mortals who passed between them.

Inside, the building was even more splendid than the outside, with wonderful, brilliantly-colored wall paintings of Jousters on their dragons flying above chariots, being led by the Great King Hamunshet, wearing the blue war crown, and mounted on his own malachite-green dragon, driving against the barbarians that had thought to hold Tia.

These were not paintings designed to make Vetch feel like anything other than the foreigner he was. At least it wasn't pictures of some other Great King leading his armies against the Altans.

An avenue of brightly painted and carved stone pillars, formed to look like bundles of latas flowers, led to the dais at the other end of the building. Immense torches in sconces shaped like tala branches mounted onto the pillars provided plenty of light. On the dais was an old man in an immaculate white pleated-linen robe belted with a plain scarlet sash, and a wig of many shoulder-length plaits each ending in a small golden bead. He wore a pectoral necklace of the truth goddess Mhat in gold enameled in scarlet and blue around his neck. Although his garments were anything but ostentatious, he held a little gold whip against his chest, showing that he was the Great King's representative. This, then, was the magistrate.

Below him was Khefti-the-Fat, who looked a bit less fat than he had when Vetch had last seen him. He also looked a bit more tired, and very haggard. But he was dressed as Khefti always dressed when he was trying to impress someone, in a pleated linen kilt and overrobe of wool (which barely confined his belly), and a collar of faience beads, and his best short horsehair wig. "That's him!" his voice shrilled out as soon as Vetch came into view. "That's the boy! And that's the Jouster who took him!"

"Are you certain?" the magistrate asked mildly, as if he was totally uninterested in the answer. "You will swear to this, by the good goddess Mhat?"

"Absolutely," Khefti replied instantly.

"That's a fascinating observation, since until this moment, this gentleman hasn't heard my voice today, and I was wearing my Jousting helmet at the time I took possession of the boy," Ari said, his tone one of reason tempered by just a touch of scorn. "If this man is so prescient as to be able to see my face within that helmet, then perhaps he should be examined by the Thet priests. Tia could use one whose eyes are not deceived by outward appearances and can see through metal and leather."

Khefti set his jaw, and did not answer. The magistrate's face remained as a mask; Vetch could not tell if he was affected by Khefti's falsehood or not.

"Haraket, Overseer of the Dragon Courts, this man tells me that your Jouster carried off this boy that was in his custody, the serf called Vetch, who is linked to a house and garden in the north." The magistrate's voice was completely without inflection. Nothing whatsoever was to be read in it, and Vetch felt his heart shrinking within him.

"That is entirely true, my lord," Haraket said, not at all dismayed. "It is also true that all serfs are the Great King's, and that a Jouster may requisition anything belonging to the Great King within reason."

"Within reason! But this was not within reason!" Khefti shrilled, his voice awakening unpleasant echoes in the hall. "I have no other serf of that bloodline, nor can I obtain one! The assessor has said that I may no longer hold that house and land as a result, a house and land which I got lawfully, and which I have much improved! I have spent every groat of my savings improving it! Am I to lose the price of it and all of my investment as well? It is not reasonable to take this serf from me!"

The magistrate raised one eyebrow slowly. "It is the Great King's to say what is reasonable and what is not," he said in a cold voice. "And I am his voice in this matter."

Khefti did not take warning from that tone. "Then I call upon you, Magistrate, to judge accordingly!" Khefti demanded. "Every grain of barley, every groat in my possession, I have invested in this house and land to which the serf is bloodbound. I, who am the sole support of my aged and infirm mother! And I depend upon the labor of this serf, feeble-minded as he is, to tend to the work of my home, for I have not the means to hire servants or purchase slaves, with all my spare income bound up in that house. No one else would take him so stupid and clumsy that he is—

Vetch shook inwardly, certain that Khefti would outmaneuver Ari and Haraket. He'd have laughed, if he had not been so full of dread that a black weight hung over his heart. Aged and infirm mother, indeed—aged, yes, Khefti's mother was certainly that, but not infirm, and possessed of property of her own which she would not let Khefti "manage" for her. As for being the obedient son, had he not, in Vetch's hearing, referred to her as "the withered old bat" and prayed to the gods to take her before she drove him mad?

As for the rest of Khefti's lies and half truths, once they would have awakened a fire of rage in his heart. But not now. Now, he had something to lose, and there was room in him for nothing but terror.

"I swear upon my honor, that this serf was being badly neglected, Magistrate," Ari said, with a little bow of deference. "The proof of that lies in the scars upon his back—and the simple fact that in the short time that he has been with us, he has near-doubled his weight. All the serfs are, as you have rightly reminded us, the property of the Great King and as such may not be abused."

"Turn about, boy," the magistrate ordered distantly. Vetch dropped his mantle at his feet, and did so, turning away from Khefti. He dared not meet his former master's eyes, or he would not be able to stop his trembling. "It appears, from the number of scars upon this boy's back, that he has been punished far in excess of what I would deem reasonable. Also, I have no doubt that Jouster Ari is speaking the truth about his starved condition, which is also not reasonable. Have you anything to say about this, Potter Khefti?"

"The boy is a fool, Magistrate!" Khefti protested. "Almost an idiot! He would spoil good food rather than eat it, and the only way to correct him was to beat him! I tell you, no one else would take him when the time came to apportion the serfs to the land! He is as ignorant as a desert rat, and as stupid as a stone! He scarcely understands the simplest of orders!"

That—lying beast! Vetch's indignation almost overcame his fear as Khefti painted him to be utterly worthless, naturally brutish, wantonly foul, unfit to be in the company of anyone civilized. He made up an entire litany of things Vetch had supposedly done: objects broken, items spoiled, the trail of mischief and malicious ruin he supposedly left behind him. He wove his lies cunningly—

And above all, he had the advantage of being Tian, free, and a craftsman.

And as a serf, Vetch could not even speak for himself, in his own defense.

"Why, how very interesting that is—since he has become one of the most competent dragon boys in the Courts in the short time that he has been with us," Haraket exclaimed, when Khefti ran out of vile things to accuse Vetch of. Haraket's voice was even a little higher than usual, as if he was shocked by Khefti's statements.

"Furthermore, my dragon Kashet will not do without him, Magistrate," Ari added. "My dragon has never been so well tended. In fact, thanks to this one, I have been able to take over the full patrol of any ailing or incapacitated Jouster we might have, as well as my own, so well-tended Kashet is."

"Oh?" Vetch turned round about again at Haraket's prodding; the magistrate seemed interested now. "The skill of this dragon boy with his charge has relevance to this case. We must see this."

Ari smiled. "Vetch," he said, with calm confidence, "Please go and bring Kashet back to the Dragon Hall."

Vetch made an awkward little bow and scuttled off. But not before he overheard the magistrate say to Ari, "If that boy can budge a dragon in this weather, he must be the most remarkable dragon boy in the compound."

Vetch ran out into the rain, and wondered as he passed through the doors just how he was expected to get Kashet into the building, but at the moment, that hardly mattered. As long as he could get the dragon here, that was all he needed to do. His problem was going to be getting Kashet out of his hot wallow and into the cold rain. Kashet liked the rain as little as Vetch did, and if Kashet didn't care to budge, there wasn't going to be a great deal that Vetch could do about it.

If he couldn't manage to get Kashet to obey, would the case be lost? Would he have to go back to Khefti? He'd never had to ask Kashet to do something that the dragon really didn't want to do—until now.

His feet slapped on the wet floor of the corridor, splashing through little puddles standing here and there. The rain was not going to quit, and Kashet had made it very plain this morning that the dragon did not like the rain, at all. If Vetch's stomach had hurt before, it felt as if there was a cold rock in it now. His shoulders were so tight that he was afraid to turn his head too quickly, lest his neck lock in place. And when he reached Kashet's pen, the rain was still coming down as hard and as cold as ever, maybe harder, and the dragon had not moved since he'd left.

That was not a good sign. What if Kashet had gone torpid? What if he was so deeply asleep that nothing would wake him?

Sprinting to the front of the wallow where Kashet's head rested, he saw with relief that at least the dragon's eyes were open. So he wasn't asleep, and he wasn't torpid.

"Kashet!" he shouted, hearing his own voice going shrill with nervousness in his ears. "Kashet, up!"

Kashet raised his head and swiveled it down to stare at him, his huge eyes focused and wide. Vetch thought that the dragon looked incredulous, as if he could not believe that Vetch was ordering him out of his wallow. And he showed no signs of intending to obey the order.

"Kashet, up!" he repeated, feeling desperation eat at him. This could go badly so easily! What if he couldn't get the dragon to his feet? What would he do then? He felt his throat tighten and his stomach began knotting even more. "Please, Kashet!" he begged shamelessly, feeling his eyes sting as he tried not to blubber. "Please, Kashet! Stand!" He got an idea—if ever there was a time to see whether the dragon understood more than simple commands, now was the moment to test that hypotheses. "Ari, Kashet!" he cried, "We need to go to Ari! Up!"

Whether Kashet understood him, understood the desperation in his voice, or just elected to be obedient, Vetch couldn't tell. All that mattered was that after a moment that seemed to last a year, the dragon sighed, heaved himself out of the wallow with a groan, ducking his head to avoid the canvas awning, and stepped up onto the stone verge. He gave Vetch a sorrowful, long-suffering look as the first drop of rain hit his nose, and he tucked his wings in close to his body, the first sign, so Ari had said, of an unhappy dragon.

"I know," Vetch said, feeling terribly sorry for his charge. If the air and rain were cold to him, what must Kashet be feeling? "I know, it's horrible. But please, Kashet, we have to go to the Dragon Hall. We have to go to Ari. Kashet, come—

He put one hand on Kashet's shoulder, as always, and stepped forward, not knowing if the dragon was really going to follow, and terrified that he would not.

But after only a slight hesitation, Kashet paced unhappily forward.

They made their way along mostly-deserted corridors; the rain was keeping everyone with any sense in under a roof. Kashet looked longingly back a time or two, and made false starts off toward the familiar destination of the buffing pens, but when Vetch didn't veer in that direction, he heaved another pained sigh and kept going with his wings clamped tightly to his body, head down, rain dripping from his nose and wings, the very picture of one who is imparting the greatest of favors by going along with something he doesn't want to do, and not enjoying it one bit.

Vetch's heart was in his mouth with every step they took. The farther they got from the pen, the more likely it was that Kashet would decide that he had had enough of the cold and the rain, and rebel. It would be perfectly logical for Kashet to decide he'd had enough of this nonsense, and turn back to the pen. Vetch didn't have a chain or a collar on the dragon; he had no way whatsoever of controlling him. In the urgency of the moment, it hadn't even occurred to him to go look for a chain and collar, and now it was too late.

Too late to do anything but hope that the habit of obedience was strong enough to overcome Kashet's distaste for the cold and wet, that the dragon understood he was to go to his beloved Jouster, that Kashet really did feel enough affection for his dragon boy that he would obey in the face of discomfort, or all three.

And he dreaded the moment when they turned down that corridor that ended in the Dragon Hall, for when Kashet saw the dead end, he would be all too likely to turn back. How was he going to stop the dragon? Would Kashet respond to another shouted order, or would he just ignore Vetch and go back to his pen?

Kashet's head came up, though, the moment that they turned into the dead-end corridor where the Dragon Hall stood. Vetch saw at the very same time that the little door he had gone through had simply been inset in a much larger door that would admit a dragon, and that this door now stood open wide, though how anyone could move something that big was a mystery to him. Kas-het's nostrils flared, and he picked up his pace, then craned his neck forward, peering through the rain, and increased it again, until Vetch was running to keep up alongside him—

Of course, by Kashet's standards, it was still nothing but a fast walk.

And as Vetch peered through the curtain of rain, he saw what Kashet had alerted on—Ari, standing just inside the door. Of course! Kashet must have scented Ari before he saw him— Vetch felt a rush of relief that the Jouster had thought of coming out where the dragon could scent and hear him.

Ari retreated back into the building, but Kashet had seen enough. He knew where Ari was, now, and no matter how much he wanted to go back to his wallow, Ari's presence was a more powerful draw than the now-distant sands of his pen.

When Vetch and Kashet entered the shelter of the Dragon Hall, Ari was back at the foot of the dais with Haraket, the magistrate looking on with interest. Kashet paused for a moment in the relative dimness, probably so that his eyes could adjust, then resumed his walk toward his Jouster—but now that he was in more confined surroundings, and out of the rain, he proceeded at a ponderous walk that Vetch easily matched.

As they neared the dais, Khefti was moving, too, backing up, eyes wide, one crablike step at a time, until his back was against a pillar and he could go no further. The magistrate, however, showed no signs of alarm, and appeared to be as easy in the presence of dragons as Haraket.

When they got within speaking distance of the group, Vetch noticed that Ari's lips were moving in an exaggerated fashion, as he mouthed something, as if he was trying to tell Vetch something he didn't want to say aloud. Vetch narrowed his eyes, and tried to make it out.

One word.

Down.

Ah! Of course—he needed to demonstrate that he could command Kashet without chains and other devices. "Kashet, down!" he ordered, and Kashet obeyed, ponderously dropping both fore-and hindquarters down onto the sandstone paving squares. Only then did Ari come forward to take his place on the opposite side of the dragon from Vetch, and Kashet curved his neck around and brought his head down for a well-deserved scratch from his beloved Jouster. His wet scales gleamed in the torchlight like an enormous pile of gemstones, and he shone in this opulent setting as beautifully as any exquisite jewel. If the magistrate was looking for evidence of a well-cared-for dragon, Kashet's appearance was certainly that.

"Well," the magistrate said, his voice taking on a slight tinge of warmth, as his lips curved in the faintest of smiles. "No collar, no chain, brought here all the way through the rain—this is the most remarkable dragon boy in the compound. He definitely serves the Great King far better in this position than any other." He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind about something. "In fact, I cannot see how he could be replaced. The Great King requires his services here."

"No!" Khefti shouted, his face purple with rage, as he lost all control, seeing his property slipping through his fingers. "No! He is mine, mine by right!" And he lunged toward Vetch, who reacted instantly out of long habit by cringing back against Kashet's side.

All of Kashet's languor vanished. He shot to his feet and spread his wings, cupping them over Vetch, then snapped out his neck parallel to the ground as far as it would go. He made one angry bite at the air in warning, and hissed at Khefti with the sound of water hitting white-hot stone.

Khefti yelped with sheer terror, and lurched backward as quickly as he'd lunged forward. Kashet didn't—quite—snap his jaws a second time at the swiftly-retreating brick maker, but it certainly looked as if he wanted to.

"Most interesting," was all the magistrate said, as Ari slapped Kashet's neck to get his attention, and ordered him down again. Khefti remained where he was, warily out of reach.

"Magistrate!" the brick maker called desperately. "It isn't just the land—property into which, I say again, I have invested all that I own, property which was to support me and mine in my honorable age, when I can no longer ply my lawful trade! This boy is— was—all I have to tend my tala field! I cannot tend it and attend to my apprentices at the same time! Where will the tala for the Great King's Jousters come from, if my field withers for lack of tending?"

"There are other fields," Ari said, making his annoyance at Khefti's attempt to play at blackmail very evident. But a shaven-headed, white-kilted scribe who had been standing at the side of the dais, hidden in the shadows until now, came forward at that, and whispered in the magistrate's ear. The old man listened carefully, nodding—then smiled.

Smiled benevolently at Ari and Haraket—then turned the smile on Khefti. But when he did so, the smile was—less benevolent. Vetch might, if he'd been asked to describe it, call it "vindictive." And it came to him in that moment that the magistrate had taken more of a dislike to Khefti than Vetch could have ever thought possible, that he would not, would never, exceed the bounds of justice and the law, but when justice and the law handed him a means to deliver Khefti a blow, he was not above taking joy in the fact that it had done so.

"Of course we cannot allow a tala field to fail," he said, in so smooth a voice that not even the finest cream could have been smoother. "Nor can we deprive you of the investment you made to sustain you in your age. Not when there is a simple solution available to us."

He stepped back a pace, and held up his little whip. "Therefore, in the name of the Great King, I decree that there shall be a transfer of attachment. This serf is no longer bound to the house and land of his bloodline, and Khefti the brick maker now owns these properties outright, to do with as he pleases."

Khefti was not given time to react to this, for the magistrate followed this pronouncement with another.

"And since he has declared he cannot sustain his tala field without the labor of the serf, in the name of the Great King, I bind this same serf boy to the tala field formerly owned by Khefti the brick maker, and take this property into the hands of the Great King's overseers, to be administered by them on behalf of the Great King and his Jousters." The magistrate's smile widened as Khefti's cry of pleasure turned to a gasp of loss and dismay, and Vetch was reminded irresistibly of a crocodile…

A crocodile that has just swallowed a large and particularly tasty meal. "The Great King has simple serfs in plenty to tend this field, and it will be efficient for the tala to come directly into the hands of the Great King rather than through an intermediary."

Efficient? Hah! It means the tala will come to the Great King for nothing, save only the labor of a serf or slave! Vetch was dazzled by the beauty of it all; the scribe had surely told the magistrate that Khefti's tala field was—as simple property—worth less than the house and land stolen from Vetch's family. So Khefti could not even protest that he was being cheated—he now owned that house and garden, rather than merely holding them, a right which could have been revoked at any time. He could sell them at a profit, he could do anything with them that he chose. But the value of the tala that had come and would come in the future from that tiny field would far exceed that of the property now given to him, and Khefti very well knew it. There would be no more duck on Khefti's table, no more palm wine, no more little luxuries. And the Great King would have the yield of one more tala field without the need to pay for it.

"And meanwhile," the magistrate concluded, "this serf, who clearly cannot be spared, will be permanently assigned to the Jouster's Compound in the service of Jouster Ari and his dragon."

Khefti whimpered, and dropped to his knees, as the magistrate moved his whip out from his chest, until his arm was completely outstretched, in the ritual motion that signified that the judgment had been passed and there was no use in protesting it. "So let it be written," he intoned. "So let it be done."

Ari and Haraket bowed as the magistrate turned to the side and strode out of the hall, his scribe in close attendance. Khefti remained where he was, his face a study in tragedy; Ari signaled to Vetch with a sideways nod of his head, and he and Vetch turned and moved out of the hall again, with Kashet pacing happily between them. The dragon seemed to understand that something good had just happened, and that it was due to something he had done. He arched his neck, and his eyes sparkled; he earned his tail high and his wings half-furled over his shoulders.

Vetch was nearly beside himself with joy. No one could possibly have devised a more perfect revenge! Why, this could be the manifestation of Vetch's own curse! Surely Khefti's food would be as thistles in his mouth, and his belly cramp as if it were pierced with thorns on a daily basis! All of his own ploys had been turned as weapons against him! He had lost, lost the income from the tala field that kept him in luxuries, lost the services of Vetch which had cost him nothing (and now would probably have to hire a servant or buy a slave to take care of the things that Vetch used to), lost the tala field itself, and would have to look upon it every single day as the serfs or slaves of the Great King tended it in Vetch's place! And all because of the words out of his very own mouth, because of his own actions! Vetch skipped along beside Kashet, feeling as if it was he, and not the dragon, that had the wings.

"Well, are you satisfied?" Ari asked, when they were several corridors away, amusement in his voice.

"Yes!" was all that Vetch could get out around the happiness that tightened his chest.

"Good." Ari patted Kashet's shoulder. "It's nearly time for Kashet's last feeding. Get him a basket of hearts, will you?"

And with that, he left from the two of them, heading back toward his own quarters in the pouring rain. Kashet hesitated, looking after him for a moment.

"Dinner, Kashet," Vetch reminded the dragon, soothingly. That was all it took. Once again, he had to run to keep up. But it was a run that he was happy to make.

Ari did not come to the pen that night—not that Vetch blamed him, for the rain continued to come down until long after darkness fell, and it would have been a miserable journey. Vetch fell asleep on his pallet in Kashet's wallow, with the dragon an arm's length away, both of them basking in the warmth. But the next day, although the skies did not clear very much, the rain stopped, and Ari arrived in the afternoon.

The Jousters still did not fly, for it was all too possible for them to come to grief in the uncertain winds around the storms, or to be struck by lightning. So Ari arrived after Kashet's second feeding, wrapped in his woolen mantle against the cold, and sat down to bury his feet in the hot sand.

"This is better than any brazier," he said contentedly. "I always spend a lot of time here with Kashet in the rains."

He looked over to the far end of the wallow, where Vetch's pallet still lay, and nodded with approval. "Very smart. My last dragon boy was too afraid of Kashet to move his bed where it was warmer; I could never understand that. If the dignity of a Jouster permitted it, I'd sleep here every night of the winter, and not in my quarters. Every rainy season I find myself regretting that I am a Jouster, and not tending my hatchling anymore." He turned his gaze toward Vetch and smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid I have to ask you to go tidy my rooms while I'm here of an afternoon. Otherwise Te-Velethat will be angry with you for shirking your duties, and the other Jousters will be angry with me for not insisting that you do them."

Vetch read a world of implications in those few words—as he was probably meant to. The others would, of course, have heard all about Khefti and the magistrate. Initially, of course, they would have been outraged that a mere brick maker dared to set himself against a Jouster, and they would have been pleased at Khefti's thorough trouncing. But then, once they'd had a chance to mull it all over, some of them would be sure that this incident would "spoil" Vetch, or that Ari was overindulging him. Bad enough in a free Tian boy—but not to be thought of in a serf. Anyone in the compound who had their doubts about Ari's choice of dragon boy would be watching Vetch as a falcon watched a bird, and they would be just as ready to pounce on any suspicion of poor performance.

Vetch jumped to his feet as suddenly as if he had sat on a wasp. "Of course, sir!" he exclaimed. At this point, after the scene in the Dragon Hall yesterday, if Ari had asked him to fling himself into a crocodile's jaws, he probably would have done it joyfully. Well, perhaps not joyfully, but he wouldn't have hesitated.

He ran off without another word, and as usual, found that there really was not a great deal to do except that his usual chore of sweeping out had turned to one of mopping out—cleaning up the mud that had been tracked everywhere.

Given that he was being watched, he elected to clean the mud out of the courtyard as well, even though that wasn't technically his task. Not that it was a quarter as much work as the same task had been for Khefti-the-Fat… and Vetch grinned the whole time he was doing the job, startling the life out of Te-Velethat, who looked in to see that he was there and doing his job. He was picturing Khefti doing the job for himself, for surely he had not yet managed to hire a servant nor buy a slave.

No, the wages he'll offer will be too small by half, and no one will take them, Vetch thought gleefully. And the price he'll be willing to pay for a slave won't get him anything. He'll have to wait until some dealer comes by with a lot of slaves that nobody else wants, and even then, he'll end up paying twice what he wants to.

The picture of Khefti with a mop was so delicious that he undertook to move every stick of furniture and clean under and behind it, startling Te-Velethat when he came, once again, to check on Vetch's progress. Vetch didn't care what the Overseer thought, so long as he was impressed with Vetch's diligence.

Nothing could spoil his pleasure today, nor for many days to come. Khefti-the-Fat had brought Vetch's curses down on his own head with the words of his own mouth.

Life was very, very good.

AFTER that first afternoon, Ari spent time with Kashet—and indirectly, with Vetch—nearly every afternoon during the rains. The mornings, though, proceeded nearly as they had during the dry; mornings were spent in training flights, if there was no wind and no storm directly overhead. If the rain was going to stop at all, it usually did so during the hours of the morning, and training was vital for the dragons, no matter what season it was. They needed practice even though they weren't fighting, as did all warriors, but more than that, in the rains, when it was impossible for armies to move and difficult for even individual fighters, the dragons needed exercise. In the wild, dragons would be going about their business, hunting, mating, teaching their young the business of being the largest predator in the hills. Dragons in the compound didn't need to do any of those things. Their meals were brought to them, they were prevented from mating; therefore, at all times, but especially in the rains when they were confined to the area around the compound, they had to fly and get plenty of vigorous exercise, or they would get fat, spoiled, and stale.

Now, the dragons themselves were not at all in favor of this. They saw no reason to bestir themselves. Like Kashet, they hated the rain and the cold, and there was a lot of protesting from the pens as they were led out to the landing court in the morning. Kashet protested, too, but it was mostly a token.

"He takes forever to get up in the morning," Vetch noted one morning, near the end of the rainy season. "But once I get him up, he doesn't hiss and moan about flying off the way the others do. The others—you'd think they were going off to be whipped!"

"He enjoys the training," Ari explained. "He likes the training a lot more than the patrolling."

Or the fighting? Vetch wondered. Well, Kashet would truly enjoy himself for some time, then. Spring and the Flood were not far off; already the Haph priests were going down to the measuring stone three times daily, to see if the waters had begun to rise. No less than the season of rains, the season of flood was one in which it was difficult for armies and individuals to move about. And Kashet would surely enjoy the fact that the days would soon be getting longer and warmer, and the rains would stop.

Ari was giving Kashet's eye ridges a good scratch, unaware of Vetch's thoughts. "He likes the kinds of things that we do in training, and he always has."

"He probably likes being able to outfly any other dragon," Vetch observed, as he buckled a chest strap. Ari laughed.

"He probably does," the Jouster agreed. "Now, I wonder what the morning holds for us—" Ari lifted his head and took a deep breath, testing the air like a hound; he was almost as good as a priest for being able to predict weather in the short-term. "No scent of rain; we should be all right and get the full morning to work out in. Are the other boys leaving you alone?"

Vetch was getting used to Ari's sudden changes in subject, though not quite used to Ari's personal interest in him. He ducked his head to avoid looking into the Jouster's eyes. "I'm all right, he said softly. "They don't bother me."

"But they don't make friends with you either."

Vetch shrugged, as if he felt nothing more than indifference, but that was a third thing that he wasn't used to—Ari's uncanny ability to know pretty much what was going on in his life. "It doesn't matter as long as they don't bother me," he said firmly.

"Vetch, look at me," Ari ordered.

Feeling distinctly uncomfortable now, Vetch stopped what he was doing and obeyed the order. Ari had a very sharp, very direct gaze; those dark eyes seemed to look through everything. Ari's mouth thinned; it wasn't quite a frown, but it was clear to Vetch that he was not entirely happy.

When Ari had begun showing this—interest—in him, Vetch had been nervous. But Ari had never displayed anything but concern for his welfare—as if he felt responsible for Vetch in some way. Vetch still didn't understand it, and he still wasn't comfortable with the attention, but that was mostly because he just didn't like telling anyone as much about himself as Ari wanted to know. There was no reason for a Tian to want to know a serf's inner thoughts! Everything he had learned about the masters made him very nervous when they started probing. And even if Ari had never once been less than fair with him, it still made him nervous when it was Ari.

"You have no friends among them, and that disturbs me." Now Ari frowned faintly. "It isn't right; even I had a few friends when I was your age, and not just among the other scribes. You shouldn't be so alone."

"I'm not alone. I have Kashet," Vetch replied, trying to sound as if he was perfectly happy with the situation. "I didn't have any friends when Khefti was my master, and his apprentices, the boys I had to work around, were always trying nasty tricks on me. It's much better here; no one dares do anything to me, especially after what happened to Khefti. Maybe they don't think I'm the proper rank to be allowed to be a dragon boy, but they can't do anything about that as long as Haraket is satisfied. And as long as you are."

And really, he was happy, mostly. Contented, at least. He was getting enough to eat and plenty of sleep in a warm and quiet place, he was clothed well, he wasn't exhausted and cold all the time, and Ari was kind to him.

In fact, Ari was more than kind; he was learning from Ari, learning as Ari spent long hours talking to him about dragons, which was proving to be very important to him. For Vetch had conceived a passion for dragons that surprised even him. He liked them, even the dragons that were not as special as Kashet. Now and again, when their boys weren't around, he would poke his head into a pen and speak soothingly to one that was restless, or look one over to make sure it was getting properly fed. He felt a kind of proprietary interest in all of them. He had learned from Ari about every step in a dragon's development, from egg to full-grown dragon. He had learned a very great deal about Kashet specifically, which only helped him when it came to handling the great beast. And as for Kashet—well, no boy could have had a better creature to care for.

"You're sure?" Ari persisted. "You're certain that you're happy here, even though the boys aren't being friendly with you."

"Serfs," Vetch said, with so much unexpected bitterness that it surprised even him when it came out, "are not supposed to be happy."

"Serfs are not supposed to be treated like chattel," Ari said, with surprising gentleness. "They are involuntary war captives, by no fault of their own. And to me, that means that, within the limit of what I can do, any serfs under my orders are supposed to be happy."

Vetch bit back the things he might have said, because Ari deserved none of them. "I haven't been happier than I am here since my father died," he said instead.

"That is not precisely a recommendation," the Jouster replied dryly.

"Well, then—I'm not likelier to get happier," Vetch said firmly. But in a sudden burst of inspiration, he added, "And all I have to do is think about Khefti on his knees, wailing like a baby over a stolen honey cake, to make me very happy."

As he hoped, Ari laughed, and threw up his hands, acknowledging that Vetch had the right of it. "Well enough. It's no bad thing to have true justice delivered to you by a magistrate with no interest in seeing you get it. If you are content, then I suppose I must keep my own opinions to myself."

Then he left Vetch alone with his thoughts, which was a great relief to Vetch.

Over the past weeks, Ari had somehow managed to coax all of Vetch's life story from him—what there was of it, that is. It hadn't all come out at once; more in bits and pieces, the story of the day that the Tian soldiers came and the death of Kiron coming out last of all.

Perhaps it was easier because when Ari put questions to Vetch, instead of the other way around, it was in the evenings, when Ari came to bask in the heat of the sand wallow before going back to his rooms to sleep. It was always dark, there was usually rain coming down on the canvas awnings, drowning out the sounds from beyond the immediate vicinity of the pen. He would pet Kashet, who was like a great cat in the way he liked being scratched and caressed when he was feeling sleepy. There, in the darkness, Ari was hardly more than a shadow, and halfway across the pen; he never offered to approach Vetch or his sleeping pallet. It was Vetch who would come to sit next to the Jouster, if he chose. It was unreal, as if Vetch was talking to a ghost, or as if he was asleep and talking in a dream.

It was at those moments when Ari would say things that would leave Vetch wondering and thinking long after he had left. Sometimes it was news. Ari preferred to tell Vetch things that were bad news for any Altans before Vetch heard about them in a taunt from one of the other boys. That a tax collector had been murdered in some occupied village, and Altan men and boys had been crippled or even killed outright as the soldiers tried to find out who did it. That another village had been taken, had resisted, and been razed to the ground. That a well had been poisoned, and all of the villagers made to drink the water afterward, to ferret out the one who had done it by seeing who was too afraid to drink…

The Tian response to revolt was to try to make it too expensive for Altans under occupation to be willing to hazard it again. That the ploy wasn't working seemed to have escaped them utterly.

"No one seems to have worked out that your people have nothing left to lose," Ari had said, only last night, "And that is a position you never want to put someone in. When you've nothing left to lose, there's no reason not to try whatever you can to win something back. The Heyksin learned that lesson from us, to their cost. I find it difficult to understand why we have not made the connection for ourselves."

Vetch thought about that all during his chores, and wondered just what he might have tried out of desperation, if he'd still been under Khefti, and was older. Probably just about anything, for nothing short of death could have been worse than the conditions he'd been living under.

Maybe that was why the other boys would have nothing to do with him. Under their taunts, they were afraid. They didn't know what he might do; they didn't realize that there wasn't a chance that he would jeopardize what he had here. He was worse than a wild dragon to them, unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

In a way, that cheered him up a little, and yet, for some reason he could not understand, it also made him—sad.

"I've been doing some reading in the law scrolls," Ari said that night, with the great delicacy he always used when he was going to talk about Vetch's past, "Perhaps a bit dry, but it seemed to me that I ought to make certain what protections the law provides you, given what your former master attempted to try. It seems that there are laws about the Altan farmers—that there are treaties, that we can't just come in and confiscate land unless there's proof that the landowner in question fought against us or harbors and gives protection to enemy fighters."

"Those laws didn't protect my father," Vetch replied bitterly.

"And it doesn't sound as if they are protecting anyone else either."

"Well, you know, if I were someone unscrupulous and I wanted a rich farm in a recently-annexed territory," Ari said, after a long silence. "I believe that I would bribe the Commander of Hundreds to send out some Captain that was a friend of mine to investigate farms and farmers on newly-won lands. And I believe I'd tell that friend that it would be to his advantage if, on one particular farm, there happened to be an incident. After all, if a farmer flies into a rage and attacks the Captain of Ten in full view of his own men, well… at that point the law doesn't protect him, and his lands are clearly going to be legally confiscated."

"I suppose," was all Vetch replied, feeling the all-too-familiar knot in his stomach. Then Kashet gave him a reason to change the subject to a more comfortable one, by making a peculiar, hollow whistle in his throat, a mournful sound that made both of them jump. "Why does he do that?" Vetch asked.

"I think," Ari replied, as an answering whistle came from the next occupied pen, "it's so that they all know where each of the dragons in the flock are, even at night when they're asleep. Ah, Vetch, speaking of knowing where someone is, I won't be coming tomorrow afternoon, but I'd like you to come clean my quarters anyway. I'm going into the Mefis markets to get a few things. It won't be long before the rains stop, the Flood comes and goes, and we have to go back on full duty."

Ari didn't said anything more on the subject of the laws regarding farms in conquered land, but that had left Vetch wide awake and staring at the stars of Nofret's Robe long into the night. It made sense; it made hideous sense. And, in a curious way, it settled his mind, for if this was the true answer, it wouldn't have mattered how hard Kiron tried to keep his temper when the soldiers came. No matter what happened, the whole scene had been scripted beforehand. No matter how reasonable he had tried to be, it was fore-ordained that Vetch's father would be forced into a position where he would have to attack the officer. The provocation would have gone on until the desired result was achieved.

Maybe Kiron had even sacrificed himself for the good of his family, or thought he had. Vetch really didn't know (other than the insults) everything that had been said to his father on that fateful day. Maybe the Captain had threatened awful things to Vetch's mother and sisters. Maybe the insults had just hit Kiron on a raw nerve. Vetch would never know.

But the next afternoon when he returned from cleaning the Jouster's quarters, he found that Ari had brought something back from the market that wasn't for himself or for Kashet, and had left it under the awning where Vetch kept his few belongings.

It was a funerary shrine, a tiny thing no bigger than the box that held a scribe's tools and also served as a desk. With it was a small sebti-figure painted like a prosperous Altan farmer.

It wasn't a Tian shrine either; it was Altan. Such things were not outlawed, after all, for it would be futile to try and prevent even a conquered people from worshiping the gods they'd known all their lives. Futile and stupid, for doing so would guarantee that the worship would go on underground, and probably would result in riots eventually. Besides, the Altan and Tian gods were hardly incompatible; in some cases they differed only in name, and that slightly.

But the Tians believed that a dead man's body must be preserved in order for him to enjoy his life across the Star River, and that grave goods here meant possessions there. For the Altans, even if the body was not preserved, nor given a proper funeral, all could still be well if one of the family or friends saw to it that there was a shrine, a sebti figure properly named, representations of offerings, and the proper prayers. All of which, of course, had been denied to Kiron.

Until now, that is.

Vetch stared at the beautifully made object with his mouth dropping open. Step by step, he ventured to his corner and squatted beside the little shrine. It was basically a box, with a hinged lid, and a series of compartments inside. One held a sarcophagus to put the sebti in, another a set of farming implements in miniature, then came a pair of oxen, an entire herd of goats, a flock of geese, another of chickens, tiny beer jars, minuscule bread loaves, cheeses, bunches of onions, sacks of grain, even a pair of blank-faced nameless shapti-figures to serve as servants. It was perfectly appointed in every way for a farmer's life in the Summer Country; in fact, it must have cost more than a cow in milk or a herd of goats to purchase such fine workmanship. On the top of the shrine when it was closed, there was a niche for the sebti, a bowl for offerings, and best of all, since Vetch didn't know most of the prayers for the dead, the prayers were graven into every surface of the shrine itself.

With hands that shook, Vetch picked up the figurine, and named it; placed it in the niche, and began reciting as much of the proper prayers as he could remember. It wasn't as if he hadn't done all of this before—but the mud figures he made would crumble, or melt in the rains, and worst of all, he simply didn't know the vast majority of the all-important prayers. He couldn't have been older than five or six when his father died; how could he have memorized the prayers?

But it didn't matter now if he recalled them imperfectly or not at all, for the prayers were there, carved into the shrine, perfect and magical, and anything that Vetch did would only reinforce what had already been set in motion once the figure was in its niche, or tucked away in the sarcophagus inside. In his mind's eye, he could see the bridge across the Star River being formed of the magical words, see the Silver Road stretching out from Kiron's feet to the bridge and over it, see his father wake as from a nightmare of wandering, look down and see his way to that paradise in the stars made clear…

And if he wept as he tried to chant, and found the mist mingling with tears that choked his voice, well, there was no one to see him or mock him for his womanish behavior.

Ari said absolutely nothing about the shrine, nor did Haraket; in fact, they paid no more attention to the shrine and to the offerings that Vetch laid fresh in the bowl every morning, than they did to the pallet. But with the shrine and the sebti, even without the proper funeral and tomb, Vetch's father would no longer be a hungry, homeless ghost, wandering the world, unnamed, impotent, alone.

It was impossible to hate Ari after that. Absolutely impossible.

Vetch's hatred of all things Tian began to shrink and chill. Not that it went away, far from it. It was still there, but it was no longer quite so all-encompassing and all-consuming. He no longer began and ended his days in hate; he woke thinking of other things—some special duty, or some possible amusement—and he went to sleep with the prayers for the dead on his lips, instead of curses. And with those prayers, there was generally one for Ari.

Keep him safe, he would plead with the Altan gods. Defeat him, but don't hurt him, don't hurt Kashet. Make them dizzy, make them ill, but don't hurt them.

He included Kashet in his prayers because he knew that if anything were to happen to Kashet, Ari would be shattered. For that matter, so would Vetch himself.

There was no doubt that there was a real bond now between Kashet and his dragon boy, a mutual bond. Kashet would often solicit attention from him, and even became playful around him, engaging in a tug-of-war with a spare leather strap he liked to toy with, or throwing it into the air with a toss of his head for Vetch to catch. These days of relative peace, with more leisure time, meant that he and Kashet spent more time together—and he had more time and opportunity to learn about his charge from Ari. The more he learned about dragons, the more he found himself wanting to learn—and it was certainly a subject that Ari never got tired of talking about.

But the rains couldn't last forever, much as he would have liked them to. Two days after Ari left the shrine for him, the compound was a-buzz with the word that the waters of the Great Mother River were rising at last. The Flood had begun, that would cover all of the arable land—if the gods were kind—with the silt that made Tian land so fertile. The same Floods would proceed downriver toward Alta, isolating it, and making it impossible for any fighting to take place until the waters receded.

"Patrols will begin very soon," Ari said absently, when Vetch gave him the news that morning.

Vetch didn't want to think about that, so he changed the subject.

"Haraket said before the rains that he thought Kashet was putting on a growth spurt, but he's fully grown now," Vetch said, as Ari scratched just under Kashet's chin. "How can it be that he's growing, if he's already adult?"

"They never do actually stop growing," Ari replied. "In fact, I'm pleased to hear that; Kashet's a bit leaner than some of the others, and I've been concerned about that. Is he eating more?"

"A lot more," Vetch said ruefully—since he was the one who had to haul the extra, twice daily. "And I've had to let out his chest straps."

"Good; he's putting on the muscle I think he needs, then." There was clear satisfaction in Ari's voice.

What Ari didn't know about dragons wasn't worth knowing, and Vetch wanted to know it all, too. It wasn't enough for him, as it seemed to be for the other dragon boys, just to feed and groom Kashet. And today, with the resumption of Ari's duties looming ahead, he threw caution to the wind and piled question atop question, for when patrols began, who knew when Ari would be available to answer those questions again?

What did the tala do to the other dragons? What was a starving dragon likely to do? How long did dragons live? If they kept on growing, were there bigger dragons out there than the ones that the Jousters flew?

"Tala acts a little like beer, and a little like poppy, but most like khat. It makes a dragon quiet without putting them to sleep, unless you give them too much. It wears off quickly, though, which is why the boys have to dose each meal with it. A starving dragon will go hunting, and nothing a rider can do will turn him back to his pen. He's likely to throw off his Jouster because if he's that hungry, the tala wears off quickly, and it will occur to him that he can be rid of the rider. And since he'll do that when he's flying and not when he's on the ground—well—" Ari shook his head. "Then he'll escape back to the wild dragons, and eventually be rid of his saddle and harness as well. And yes, there are bigger dragons out there, much bigger. To tell the truth, I suspect most of them are escapees, because a dragon that's been ridden knows about arrows, javelins, spears—and knows that humans are to be avoided. Such a dragon will grow to be old and wise and very large indeed."

Ari answered every question he had, with patience and interest of his own. It was the longest actual conversation that Vetch had ever had with the Jouster, and it seemed as if Ari was actually enjoying it. He only called a halt when his own stomach rumbled, a growl that made both of them laugh.

If he had to be a serf, then this was the best place he could have found himself. Now he just had to keep Ari and Kashet safe, so he could continue to stay here, even if it meant laying siege to the gods with his prayers.

Jousters were called by that name because they were not utterly unopposed in the air—because they did, in fact, joust with other dragon warriors. The Altans had dragon riders just as Tia did—in fact, more than once, Ari had said that it was supposedly the Altans who had taught the trick of capturing and taming dragons to ride to the Tians.

Unfortunately for Alta, the number of Jousters that the Altans could field was much fewer than the Tians, and their training didn't seem as good. That might have had something to do with the dragons themselves; they were desert creatures, and Alta was mostly swamp, river delta, and island. Perhaps it was harder to find them, and harder to keep them under such conditions.

When two Jousters met in the air above a battle, they dueled for supremacy with the same short lances that Vetch spent so much time inspecting for flaws; weapons that were blunt rather than pointed, made to knock the rider from his saddle, or at least to knock him unconscious.

Ari was, presumably, very good at this. That had not changed. What had changed was that now Vetch had gradually stopped praying that he be defeated—in any way. Now he was torn between wanting him to be better than anyone else, and wanting his own people to start winning against the Tians. Jousting was deadly; an unseated Jouster was generally a dead Jouster. Every Jouster that Ari defeated was probably a severe loss to the Altans. But for Ari to be defeated did not bear thinking about.

By the time Ari went back to his patrols, Vetch was trusted to leave the compound itself alone and unsupervised, which meant that if his duties took him there, he could go out to the training ground beyond the walls.

And one bright, warm, humid day, when Vetch had been serving Ari and Kashet for a little more than half a year, Haraket sent him to the training grounds with a message, and Vetch got to see precisely what Jousting really looked like—and how very dangerous it could be, even in practice.

The Floods had peaked. It would be a good year, for the waters covered all of the arable land, but had not ventured where they were not wanted. Although in Khefti's village and many others there was water up to the very doorsteps and people waded ankle- and knee-deep in the streets, the only houses or storehouses that had flooded were ones built by incredibly foolish folk who had not the sense to listen to the priests. The compound and the training ground, of course, were built on land that could not be farmed, and hence, flooded only in years of a disaster. In fact, other than the green-water smell in the air, there was no sign of flooding as Vetch stepped outside the walls.

He'd never been to the practice grounds before during training; he'd always been kept busy at his assigned tasks when the Jousters were practicing. He'd never even seen the empty grounds, actually, and he'd had to ask what gate to leave by to find them. To tell the truth, he had not really wanted to see the Jousters in action; it would only remind him of his divided loyalties and make his stomach hurt.

The practice grounds stood well outside the final wall of the Jousters' compound. The first—and very odd—sight that marked them for what they were was the nets. Fishing nets were strung between strong poles or palm trees, so that they hung parallel to the ground and well above it. He had not expected that; it had honestly never occurred to him that the Jousters would have something in place that would let them practice aerial combat without fatal consequences. He'd somehow assumed that they didn't practice actual fighting while aloft, only flying maneuvers, and the passes that would allow them to get close enough for blows.

Several dragons and riders were on the ground, watching those that were in the air. Vetch scanned those grounded first for Ari and Kashet, and didn't find them. Then he looked up, and saw that they were hovering in place high in the air above the middle of one of these nets, as Ari shouted directions to two more Jousters who were sparring above the net next to his with the blunted lances. To Vetch's surprise, there were a lot of onlookers off to one side, and many of them seemed to be wealthy or of noble birth. They had their servants with them, holding colored sunshades above their heads, fanning them, offering them cooling drinks, whisking insects away. They looked like a garden of pampered flowers.

He hadn't expected that either. The world of the Jousters within the compound was as isolated as that of any Temple—he had never seen anyone who wasn't associated with the Jousters, and although he had overheard plenty from the other boys about the many feasts, entertainments, and gatherings at which there were outsiders, he hadn't attended any himself. He'd heard them, in the distance, some nights, particularly during the rains—music and laughter, sometimes raucous, sometimes drunken and quarrelsome. For whatever reason, Ari kept him away from such things, though other boys were sometimes permitted to attend as auxiliary servants or hangers-on to their Jousters.

Now here were spectators who were clearly of the elite of the Tians of Mefis. They glittered in the sun, all of them sporting armbands and wrist cuffs of gold, and collars of gemstone beads, fine wigs or elaborate headcloths, and linen kilts of the best fabric with sashes and belts richly embroidered. There was even a woman among them, dressed in a tightly-pleated, transparent linen dress with a sheath made of a net of turquoise-colored beads over it, holding the folds of the linen close to her body. She was attended by no less than four servants, one with a sunshade, one with a fan, one to carry a chair for her, and one to supply her with cooling drinks.

These, then, were the people that the boys had spoken of, who gave them money to carry letters to the Jousters, who bet upon the outcome of their combats, who desired their presence at their entertainments, as if the Jousters were themselves some form of entertainer. And something else occurred to Vetch at that moment, as he watched their avid faces. They did not go to war themselves, but they certainly profited from it; they did no fighting, yet when the fighting was over, it was they who had gained— more land, more goods, more money in their coffers.

He found himself suddenly filled with such hatred that he had to look away from them lest by his expression he betray himself. Not that he cared if they knew he hated them, but he might get Ari into endless trouble.

So he looked back up at the dueling Jousters being instructed by Ari. This practice session didn't look very dangerous, for even Vetch could tell that these two weren't very good at the Jousting. Their dragons would not come close enough to permit any real combat, and although they heaved at the guiding reins, the dragons stubbornly fought their riders.

When they did "close in," they got nowhere near enough to actually make an exchange of blows. The dragons made very clumsy passes at each other, one high, the other low, while the Jousters were flailing at the air yards away from one another.

It was partly the fault of the dragons, and partly of the riders, who (he suspected) were afraid of getting close enough to be hit themselves.

Vetch knew all the dragons by sight now, and it wasn't hard to tell which the two Jousters rode, even if he didn't know the names of the men themselves. That was a failing among the dragon boys, to know the dragon and refer to the Jouster as "So-and-so's rider." One of the dragons was Seftu, a handsome, if irritable crimson male, and the other was Coresan, a female of a deeper hue and notoriously whippy tail. Coresan was usually mild-mannered in nature, or at least, she didn't give any more trouble than any other dragon, excepting only that she was known to leave her dragon boy with black-and-blue calves and thighs with that unpredictable tail. But something had her on edge the last week; from what Vetch had been hearing, her dragon boy was half afraid to go in her pen of a morning, and kept her chained as short as he dared. He'd been tempted to go look in on her himself, but his own duties had kept him so busy that he hadn't had the time.

Their Jousters were the newest of the group, barely out of ground training, and certainly it was going to be a very long time before they were the masters of either their weapons or their dragons. Ari was getting very frustrated, and no wonder; the dragons were giving most of their attention to each other and very little of it to their riders now—and were circling each other in a peculiar fashion that reminded Vetch of something…

And just when he realized what it reminded him of, Seftu's rider finally got close enough to deliver a sideswipe with his lance to Coresan's Jouster. The latter was momentarily distracted from the job at hand, since Coresan chose that moment to curvet sideways in the air, toward Seftu.

Close enough to actually land a blow, for the first time since Vetch had started watching. Only this was a blow for which neither the attacker nor the defender were prepared.

The lance connected—hard—

With a terrible crack, it connected with the Jouster's skull; the lance bent in the middle, the sign that it had hit with enough impact to be ruined, all of the fibers pulped.

And that was nothing to what must have happened to the rider's head. Not even the Jousting helmet could have saved him from that blow.

Vetch caught his breath, and his heart stopped.

As if a god had waved his hand to slow time itself, everything froze for a horrible moment.

The Jouster hung in his saddle—hung there, balanced only because he hadn't yet unbalanced. Then his lance dropped from a hand gone limp; the broken lance followed it, falling down… down…

Vetch's mind hadn't caught up with what was happening, but his gut felt that crack, and knew exactly what it meant before his thoughts could form.

Then, in painfully slow motion, Coresan's Jouster bent over the saddle.

Then went over the saddle, in a slow forward somersault.

And continued to roll, tumbling right out of his saddle.

As Vetch's heart clenched, he plunged toward the net below. But he wasn't falling right, there was something horribly wrong. He was limp, limbs sagging, and Vetch felt his stomach lurch as he realized that not only was the man not conscious, but that he was going to miss the net entirely.

The Jouster was Tian; the enemy. Vetch didn't even know his name. Vetch should have been silently cheering the demise of one of the people who was responsible for all the horrible things that had happened to his land and his family.

Should have, perhaps—but couldn't. All he could see was the body dropping straight to his death; all he could hear was the cry from above where the second Jouster still flew, a cry of desperation, thin and filled with utter terror.

Everyone else watching seemed to realize the same thing at the same moment; there were gasps and cries of horror, and the sharp scream of the woman cut across the heat-shimmering air.

Vetch's stomach lurched again. He wanted to look away, but he couldn't. He seemed to be paralyzed as the body hurtled towards the earth, unchecked. In a moment, there would be a spreading stain of red on the pale, baked earth—

—like Kiron's blood—

—and the smell of death—

—when his father lay despised in the yard of his own house—

—and the buzzing of flies coming for the blood—

—as they came to feast on Kiron's—

Then a flash of blue-green swept across the sky, and with it came the sound of dragon wings, a thunder and a wind that shivered across the ground, driving the dust before it—

It all happened so quickly that it was over before Vetch registered what had happened. But the Jouster was no longer tumbling down through the air, nor was he lying in a smashed heap on the ground.

The Jouster was lying across Ari's saddle, draped over Kashet's neck.

Vetch thought his eyes were going to bulge out of his head in startlement. For Ari had—somehow—saved him.

THE unconscious Jouster lay across the front of Ari's saddle, draped over Kashet's neck like a half-filled grain sack. How, how had Ari and Kashet caught him? For that was the only possible explanation, though Vetch could hardly believe his eyes. It seemed nothing short of a miracle. Had the god Haras, the especial god of the Jousters, spread his wings over them both? Had he given Ari some special power that he could do something like this? Had there been an especially gifted priest in the crowd of onlookers, able to work some powerful magic to make this happen?

But he shook off his shock; this wasn't the time for him to think—there was need of him, and now, for Ari and Kashet were coming slowly in to land.

Serve your dragon; serve your Jouster.

Kashet dropped down with a thunder of wings that drove up so much dust that the gawkers had to shield their faces and look away. Ari wasn't being any too careful about where they came down, so long as it wasn't actually on top of anyone. And if the folk who were in the way could scramble out of the way in time, then it wouldn't be on top of them…

There was a mad dash by servants and spectators alike to get out of the way. They scattered like a covey of quail, and Kashet landed heavily in a cloud of dust.

Vetch ran for his master, and the rest of the onlookers surged forward behind him and overtook him, enveloping him, swallowing him up.Ari didn't so much as glance at any of them; his attention was on the servants—Jousters' servants, who must have been out of Vetch's sight behind the crowd of dragons and riders—who had reacted faster than anyone but Vetch. They were already at Kashet's side, and were taking the unconscious Jouster from Kashet's saddle. He slid down limply into their arms, but as far as Vetch could tell, he was still alive and breathing.

The crowd erupted in cheers and surged against the ring of servants, trying to get closer to the dragon and Jouster. They surrounded Kashet and Ari in a circle of enthusiastic—even hysterical—joy, shouting at the tops of their lungs. Kashet, normally the most placid of creatures, reared back, eyes widening with alarm, nostrils dilating in distaste.

Vetch was caught up in the crush, between the servants trying to take the Jouster away, and all of the well-wishers. But somehow Ari saw him, and roared order to let him through, pointing and waving imperiously with one hand.

The order had no effect at first, and Vetch jabbed with his elbows at those he dared to, and tried desperately to push past those he dared not offend. After a moment of confusion in which he tried to no avail to get through the spectators—some of them wealthy, powerful, dangerous—they realized who Ari was shouting for and parted for him. Kohl-rimmed eyes both knowing and haughty stared at him as he shoved past; once his hand brushed against a garment of linen so fine that the rough skin of his hand snagged it. He just barely noticed; he shook free, and shoved his way to Kashet's side.

"Haraket sent me. Haraket says—" Vetch panted, staring up at his Jouster with mingled awe and disbelief, and trying mightily to remember his message. "Haraket says—

"Never mind what Haraket says—this isn't over yet." Ari looked up with a scowl, and Vetch followed his gaze.

The two dragons were whirling together now, in the mating dance that Vetch had instinctively recognized, and Seftu's rider, a tiny dot at this distance, was clinging on for dear life. Another high, thin wail of pure fear drifted down from above. Vetch was not surprised. Not only was the novice Jouster no longer in control of his dragon, he was going to be lucky to stay in the saddle. And he was very, very lucky that his dragon was the male. If he'd been riding the female, and a male dragon found an inconvenient little human in his way—

A single snap, and the inconvenience would be gone.

"Idiots!" Ari snarled. "If they paid ha If as much attention to their dragons as they did to the vintage of the date wine they drank last night, they'd have known this was coming on and ordered extra tola. Vetch!"

Vetch snapped to attention.

"Run and tell Haraket what just happened. Tell him that Kashet and I will bring Coresan in when the mating's over; she'll be tractable then, and there's no point in losing a dragon because her Jouster was an imbecile. Seftu's rider will have to bring his male in by himself, unless Haraket wants to send a couple of others up to herd him in when he's done."

"Yes, sir!" Vetch said, instantly, and started to turn to run.

But Ari held up his hand; he wasn't finished, and Vetch froze. "Tell him that I think her Jouster got the kind of crack to the head that breaks the skull, so Haraket had better send to the Temple of Teth for a trepanning priest at least, to lift the bone, and perhaps one with Healing magic, just in case. You go run ahead now— He raised his voice as Vetch whirled and broke into a mad dash for the compound. His voice rang out behind Vetch, as he commanded the servants over the babbling of the crowd. "You lot! Stretch him on that bench—carefully, now—and carry him on the bench to the compound and Overseer Haraket!"

Vetch couldn't do anything about the injured Jouster—and in any case, now that he wasn't going to have to watch him die horribly, he didn't really care what happened to the man—but he did care about Ari, and what Ari proposed to do. He couldn't imagine trying to come between two mating dragons. It was dangerous enough bringing a bull to a cow, or a stallion to a mare!

But—no, Ari wasn't going to come between them, he proposed to bring Coresan in once the mating was over. It was just as well that he was going to leave Seftu to Seftu's own Jouster, and serve the man right if he had to ride the dragon until Seftu was exhausted, or at least until near nightfall, when Seftu would want his dinner and his own comfortable sand wallow for the night.

So would Ari, when all of this was over. And Haraket had to know exactly what had happened, right now.

So he ran, ran as hard as ever he could, pelting down the training field, through the huge sandstone gates, and into the corridor beyond. His bare feet pounded along the ground in time with his pounding heart as he searched for Haraket.

But he didn't have to search long. Haraket had already seen the dragons in the sky and knew that there was a mating going on, even if he had not seen the accident, nor the aftermath. He had certainly seen that one of the dragons was riderless, and was on the way, expecting the worst.

Vetch literally ran into him, and bounced off Haraket's stomach, landing on his backside in the middle of the corridor.

"Coresan's Jouster is hurt!" he blurted, looking up at the surprised Overseer. "They were trying to mate, I mean the dragons, and he got hit! He got a lance to the back of his head and fell off, but Ari caught him! Ari brought him down, he's at the practice ground, and Ari says to tell you he's going to bring Coresan in— the servants are bringing the Jouster—Ari says get priests—

Haraket had wits like a striking cobra, somehow he made sense of what Vetch was babbling. "Hah. You—" he snapped, pointing a finger to one of the two men with him. "To the Temple of Teth. I want a Healing-Priest and a trepanner. You to ready Jouster Ari's quarters, wine and food, for by the gods, he'll want them when he comes back in. And a massage slave. And a hot bath. Move!"

They moved, all right; they turned and ran off in opposite directions, running just as fast as Vetch had. So did Haraket, leaving Vetch gaping at them from the dust of the corridor.

After a moment he scrambled to his feet, realizing that his initial errand was discharged.

Serve your Jouster. Serve your dragon.

He had to know what they were doing, first.

Will they be all right? Will Seftu or Coresan try to attack them? The thought put a shiver up his back. Surely not. Ari knew dragons as no one else in the compound did. Surely he would never do something that would cause the mating dragons to turn on him and Kashet.

He ran on, his side beginning to ache now, to the landing court where he could see the dragons in the sky clearly, without the interference of walls. They were still wheeling and whirling around each other in a complicated ritual that was the equal of anything a bird could do. They soared and plunged, they twined around each other and broke apart.

Mostly, Seftu chased Coresan, and she evaded him only enough to make it clear she was going to see just what he was made of before she let him mate with her. Then, finally, after a series of three heart-stopping lunges, as Seftu herded the scarlet female higher and higher in the sky, they began an ever-tightening spiral that took them still higher, up into the cloud-studded sky, until they were scarcely larger than ants.

Then—then they lunged for one another with a ferocity indistinguishable from rage.

The lunge ended in a tangle of locked claws and a plunge to earth that must have terrified Seftu's rider out of a dozen years of life. How he stayed in the saddle, Vetch could not even begin to guess.

Caught together, neither willing to let go, paralyzed by the rapture of mating, they spun around a common center, whirling, wings held half outspread at a peculiar angle. They plunged, on and on, down to the unforgiving earth, while Vetch and everyone else in the court held their breath. And just behind them plunged a blue-green streak that was Kashet, paralleling their fall.

At the very last moment, just before the impact, they broke their hold on each other.

Their wings snapped open completely at the same moment, and the vertical plunge suddenly became horizontal as they tumbled from the fall into a ground-brushing flight, and streaked off in opposite directions, parallel to the ground.

Vetch wasn't interested in what happened to Seftu; presumably his Jouster would get him back under control and bring him in without help. He had eyes only for Ari and Kashet, who had followed the entwined dragons down in their deadly plunge, and now deftly herded Coresan away from the eastern hills across the river, above the King's Valley where all the Great Kings had their tombs—where she wanted to go—and towards the compound. And she didn't want to go there; she kept snaking her head back and trying to snap at them. But Ari and Kashet were more clever than she.

They managed to keep their "superior" position in the air, staying above her all the time. Kashet didn't even have to do more than threaten; a dragon's one vulnerability was his wings, and Kashet could slash Coresan's with his claws very easily from where he was. Coresan didn't dare chance it, and was herded where Ari wanted to go as Kashet feinted strikes at her wings.

At that point, a dragon landed in the court; it was Seftu, and his rider looked as if he must have been near to soiling himself with fear. Vetch ignored Seftu and the Jouster; some other dragon boys did run to help the man lead a reluctant Seftu away, but Vetch's charges were still in the sky, and he was not going to leave the court until they were safely down.

Haraket had arrived without him noticing, and stood just behind Vetch. He grunted when he saw Seftu land. "The priests lifted the bone; the fool will be well enough, idiot that he is," Haraket to said to no one in particular, though Vetch knew his words were meant for Ari's ears, via Vetch. "A few weeks, and he'll be healed up, though if he hadn't been seen right away—well, he'd not have had a chance."

Coresan was coming back now, in the direction of the compound. Once she was turned, they started forcing her down. By getting and staying above her, they forced her to fly lower and lower, and slower and slower as well, until she couldn't stay in the air any longer. And at that very moment, they were above the landing court, and her training took over and she came in to ground.

The moment Coresan touched the earth, Haraket was there with two of the strongest slaves in the compound and three leading chains. Vetch started to help them, but Haraket waved him off.

"Keep off, boy! This is not work for you!" he shouted, and then turned his attention back to the angry dragon. He needed to; that tail was whipping back and forth with deadly force until a third slave came up and flung himself bodily on it, pinning it to the earth. She hissed and tossed her head—but she was also tired, and probably hungry, and unlike a wild dragon, did not think of humans as food but as those who brought food. Haraket and one of the other slaves plunged under her snapping jaws and grabbed her harness and hung on it until she stopped tossing her head and lunging. She didn't surrender, then, but she did stop fighting. With Ari and Kashet hovering above to keep her from taking off again, Haraket hooked his chain into the ring on the front of her harness and the two slaves hooked theirs into the foot loops on either side of the saddle. Then, last of all, Haraket whipped a choke collar around her neck, and that was that.

Serve your dragon. Serve your Jouster.

Vetch wanted to watch. But his time was not his own at the moment. As soon as Kashet came in, he and Ari would need taking care of. Vetch sprinted for the gate nearest Kashet's pen.

When Ari and Kashet landed, they'd need—and deserve—careful attention, and he was going to be the one to give it to them.

At the exact moment he began to run, Coresan resigned herself, and with a final hiss, allowed herself to be led away. The third slave freed her tail at Haraket's signal. Together Haraket and his two helpers led the dragon to her pen, while Ari and Kashet rose again, to hover a little higher for a moment while they picked a good landing spot. Then they landed, nearest to the gate that led to Kashet's enclosure.

By that time Vetch's last glimpse of them was as he sprinted through the gate in the wall, going for Kashet's pen himself. Seftu's dragon boy was in the corridor, laden with food and drink; Vetch snatched what he wanted from the provender over the other boy's vehement protests, which he ignored. After all, the novice rider didn't deserve it; wasn't he half responsible for the near disaster? Seftu's Jouster could bloody well wait for his wine. If Vetch were to have a choice, he'd get stale river water, thick with flood-time mud, and be grateful for that much.

When Ari and Kashet stumbled into Kashet's pen, Vetch was there ahead of them, waiting with a skin flask of palm wine for Ari and a bucket of water for Kashet. But Ari waved off the wine and took the bucket of water instead, drinking as he had that day that Vetch had first seen him, and pouring the rest over his head and shoulders. Kashet went straight to his trough, which, as always, was also full of clean water, and drank as deeply as his Jouster; Vetch was unharnessing him as soon as he reached the trough and stopped moving forward. The dragon not only felt as hot as a furnace, he smelted hot, and Ari smelled like his dragon. Both of them looked utterly spent; the kohl around Ari's eyes was smeared, making his eyes look like holes burned in his face, and Kashet's eyes were dull with fatigue.

Ari shook his head like a dog, sending droplets of water flying in the bright sunlight. Vetch cast a glance at him as his own fingers unfastened buckles and pulled away harness; he looked terrible.

Weary and ill, and not at all as triumphant as Vetch thought he should be—

"Etat save me from ever having to do that again," he said, and sat down, right on the edge of the sand pit, head and shoulders sagging.

Vetch was torn between going to him and continuing to get the harness off of Kashet; he compromised by unbuckling the last strap and letting the saddle drop to the side, then going to Ari.

"Sir?" he ventured, not daring to touch the Jouster.

"I'll have that wine now, boy," came the muffled reply.

Vetch put the skin in his hand; he fully expected Ari to drain it, but the Jouster again surprised him, taking only a single mouthful before handing it back.

"That's better." He raised his head. "How is Reaten?"

That was Coresan's Jouster; Vetch recalled it as soon as Ari spoke the name. And he had news, startled out of Seftu's dragon boy. "He has a cracked skull, and it would have been very, very bad if he hadn't been seen to right away, but the priest is certain that he will be all right eventually," Vetch told him. "The trepanning priest is lifting the bone right now; he should be all right once the incision heals."

"Teh and Teth be thanked," Ari sighed, and Vetch had no doubt that the words were more than half prayer. "And Haras, who puts the wind beneath our wings. The gods truly look after the fools of the world." And he shook his head, slowly, and took another mouthful of wine. "That so little permanent harm has come of this is more than either of those two deserve."

Vetch couldn't help himself; he was bursting with curiosity, and with no little awe. "Sir—how did you do that? One moment he was falling, the next, he was across your saddle! It looked like magic!"

"It's all Kashet's doing," Ari replied, but he looked up, then, and behind the weariness, seemed very pleased at Vetch's wide-eyed admiration. "I'll admit we've practiced just that move, in case something like this happened. This was the first time we've caught a man, though—it's always been bags of chaff before this. Have you ever seen a dragon take a goose in flight?"

He waited for Vetch to reply; Vetch shook his head.

"No? Well, it's something they do in the wild, pulling their head and neck back, then snapping it forward while flying, like a heron catching a fish. I've taught Kashet to do that, only to bring his head in under what we're trying to catch rather than snapping at it with his jaws, then to raise his head and fly up a little at the same time. If we've got the balance right, what we're aiming for slides right down his neck onto my saddle where I can steady it." Ari shook his head, and Vetch gaped as he tried to imagine just how much control and coordination—and cooperation on Kas-het's part!—that would take. "Needless to say, no one else can do it. Another of my little eccentricities that the others put up with in the past; none of them ever had the imagination to see that it could be used to rescue a falling rider. I suspect there won't be any more sniping remarks about it after this, though."

Sniping remarks? Never had it even passed Vetch's mind that his own Jouster, so highly thought of by Haraket, might be on the receiving end of any criticism. After all, from what he had overheard, Ari was widely thought of to be the most skilled rider and Jouster in the compound. So why would anyone criticize him?

But it appeared that Ari's unorthodox ways were enough to make him as much of an outsider among the Jousters as Vetch was among the dragon boys.

Vetch snapped his mouth shut, and nodded, and watched as Kashet left his water trough half-emptied, dove into the sand, and rolled wearily in his hot sand wallow. "Reaten won't be flying for weeks," he offered. "So the priest says."

"The Commander of Dragons will have a few choice words with him before he's able to fly," Ari said with grim satisfaction. "And I suspect that he'll consider himself lucky to have that crack over the back of his head; the Commander just might take pity on him because of it."

"What's going to happen to him?" Vetch asked.

"At the least, they'll both be personally reprimanded by the Great King's Commander of Dragons and might be dismissed as Jousters for their carelessness." Ari's lips thinned, and his jaw tightened; Vetch had seldom seen him angry before this, but he was definitely angry now. "As raw as they are, it isn't as if they can't be replaced. They both should have known better, but of the two, Seftu's rider is the most to blame. A male shows the mating urge much more graphically than a female. I would have seen it, if they hadn't only just gotten up into the air. I thought all that jockeying about was Reaten and Horeb trying to impress me with fancy flying, and having no luck at it."

Ari paused, and Vetch wordlessly handed him the wine for another small, moderate mouthful.

"In fact, anyone who had anything to do with Seftu and Coresan should have seen the signs," Ari continued. "There's going to be some sharp words all around before this affair is over, and maybe some dismissals."

Seftu's dragon boy probably knew that; he'd been tending Seftu for the last two years at least, and should know all of the protocol and rules that governed not only the Jousters themselves, but everyone connected with them. Certainly he knew more about it than Vetch did. That was probably why he hadn't done more than protest weakly when Vetch robbed him of his burden; shock, and the fear of being dismissed, had left him so stunned he completely forget Vetch's lowly status.

Or else, being dragon boy to the hero of the hour had suddenly raised Vetch's status.

"Seftu's safe enough; back in his pen," Vetch was able to report. "His rider—Horeb—I don't know where he is, but his dragon boy was on the way to the Jousters' Courts with food and wine." Dangerous to go further than that, or mention any speculations of his own. He was still just a serf, after all. Anything more, well, that could be taken as gossip about his masters, and even Ari, tolerant as the Jouster was, might feel he had to take some sort of action at that point. So he kept himself quiet.

"Well, it wouldn't surprise me if Horeb was at least demoted back to the training classes. Reaten just might find himself sent back to the ranks, too, no matter how much the Commander pities him. In any event, he's going to be bedridden for a while. Which will mean that Coresan won't be ridden for weeks. Just as well. Coresan will be impossible to handle for that long, or at least until she rids herself of her eggs." Ari closed his eyes and held out his hand; Vetch put the wineskin into it, and Ari took another mouthful. This time, he kept the wineskin. "It could be worse. Let's hope the others have learned a lesson about paying attention to their dragons' behavior, anyway." Ari had a fourth, very long pull on the wineskin; Vetch thought there was a grim satisfaction in his expression. But he was more interested in what Ari had said than in what his expression might imply.

"Eggs?" Vetch asked, as a wild thought entered into his mind. Dared he think he might be able to get hold of one—if there were any at all? But if he could—after all he'd been learning from Ari— "She'll lay eggs now? How many? Who's going to mind them?"

"Nobody," Ari sighed, and his shoulders sagged. "I would, if I could, but no man can tend and fly more than one dragon at a time if it's to be done raising the dragons from the egg. What a waste! Of course, they'll probably be sterile—wild dragons mate a dozen times or more for a clutch of two or three and Coresan only mated once today—but you'd think that someone would be interested in trying to duplicate what I did when I was Haraket's helper! But no. This has happened before, although without the accident, and other than the one egg that hatched Kashet, the eggs were just taken away and left on the refuse heap." His gaze turned scornful. "Of course, warriors can't be bothered with playing nursemaid to an egg and a dragonet, and they can't simply assign the task to their dragon boy and expect to come take over from him when the dragon fledges."

"They can't?" Vetch breathed, hearing his own wild thoughts confirmed, hearing that the sudden plan that had burst into his mind might be more than a mad dream.

"No, they can't, not when a dragon's been raised from the egg by a man," Ari replied. "Not even if you drugged him with tola. A dragon raised wild thinks all humans are the same human; a dragon raised from the egg knows better." He turned a fond gaze on Kashet, who was now stretched out flat on the top of the sand, spread out like a rug. It was a very peculiar posture, one that said volumes about how tired and cold Kashet was after that flight. Vetch couldn't imagine how Coresan had had any fight in her at all, after the mating, if Kashet was so exhausted. "The dragon that's raised from the egg is a dragon that won't fly for just anyone, will he, Kashet?"

The dragon raised his head, just a little, and sighed.

Ari laughed. "Like a falcon egg-reared, or a cheetah taken before his eyes are open, a dragon hand-reared is loyal only to the one who nurtures him—a hand-reared dragon is not like a dog, who will hunt with any man who knows his commands."

Kashet rolled over on his back and twisted his long neck around, eying Ari for a moment, then snorted with what sounded like amusement.

At that moment, a number of disparate bits of information came together for Vetch, like broken bits of a wine jar flying back together again and giving him the shape of the thing.

First—Ari had studied to be a scribe, and as a scribe, had been sent here to serve in the compound. A scribe was needed here, certainly, but he must have had a great deal of free time. Many Jousters could read and write on their own, and wouldn't need his services.

Second—Vetch recalled Ari had said that he had "found" a dragon egg—and after all he had learned, Vetch couldn't imagine anyone climbing into a nest after a dragon egg! He already knew, of course, that Ari's education had been cut short before he could be recruited into one of the Temples. He had thought that it was because Ari had hatched Kashet, but what if he had things back-Ward, that Ari had been bound over to work here first, and only after serving as the compound's junior scribe and learning all he could about dragons, had he hatched Kashet?

Third—Vetch had the key fact that he had not known before this, that a Jousting dragon had escaped to mate and lay eggs at least once before today. That changed the shape of his speculations, entirely.

Ari must have served here and become interested in the dragons for their own sake, then perhaps he rose to become one of Haraket's helpers, either in his capacity as scribe or because of his interest in the dragons and their ways; that would account for the unspoken bond between the men.

But more times than not, any boy in training to be a scribe ended up attached to a temple, not attached to the Jousters' Compound. What had led to Ari's needing to leave his studies? Because he wasn't that old, yet he had been flying Kashet for years—so he had to have hatched Kashet while he was in his teens. So he couldn't have truly finished his education as a scribe.

Unless perhaps he had been attending one of the temple schools, when his family fell on hard times and could no longer pay for the schooling. Hadn't he said once that he was the youngest boy, and it was his uncle who was the head of the household? He had—he'd said his uncle, also a scribe, had made Ari's mother his second wife after Ari's father died.

Yes; that must have been it. All the pieces fell neatly into place. Vetch could picture it in his mind's eye. Ari's father sending him to school, dying, leaving his widow and son to be supported by his uncle, who eventually married her. Then, the additional strain of a second wife and children on the family finances forced Ari to become a "common" scribe before his education was complete, and he took a position here in the Jousters' Compound. Ari must have gotten hold of a fertile egg from one of those chance matings, perhaps from the dragon of a Jouster he had served as a scribe, or gotten directly from Haraket as an experiment, or perhaps just because he'd been bold enough to take one before they put it on the midden.

Vetch knew better than to blurt out his conclusion, though. Nor did he blurt out his reaction—that what Ari had done, he, Vetch, could do. "You should rest, Master," was what he said instead. "Your room is ready; Haraket has already seen to that."

"And whatever Haraket sent you to tell me originally is now of minimal importance, compared with the impact all of this will have on affairs in the entire compound," Ari said, and shook his head, crossly. "Evil spirits plague Reaten with boils! I'll have to take his patrols now, doubtless, while he lies abed, being made much of by all his noble friends!"

Then, perhaps, he bethought him of what Vetch had told him, and his irritation eased a little. "Or perhaps not. It's an interesting thing with noble friends; when your star is rising they are all for standing near you and bathing in your reflected glory. But when your star falls, no one can escape from your vicinity fast enough."

Vetch just nodded; agreeing was harmless enough, but he must not say anything that could be construed as criticism of his masters.

Ari patted Vetch on the head. "Get Kashet an extra treat; you know, bullock hearts, if there are any. He more than deserves them. Then go to the kitchen and tell them I want my dinner in my room."

"Haraket's seen to that, sir," Vetch said. "And he said something about a hot bath and a massage slave."

Now Ari smiled, just a little. "Good old Haraket! Well, I'll take him up on all of it; I'm for a cool swim first, in the Atet pool, and perhaps after that I'll feel less like strangling Reaten, then finding Horeb, ripping off his arm, and beating him to death with it." The corners of his mouth turned up a little more. "After all, it would be ill-done of me to deprive both the Commander of Dragons and Haraket of that privilege."

He levered himself up off the edge of the sandpit, and as he stalked off out of the pen, Vetch noticed that he was favoring one leg. He must have injured it somehow—either in the rescue, or when he and Kashet were bringing Coresan to earth. Typical of him not to have mentioned it.

Haraket will have had a massage slave sent, he remembered. And perhaps that will help.

Vetch did as he was told, and while he was getting Kashet's treat, he heard that, not unexpectedly, the request for someone to bring Ari his supper and someone else to see to a massage nearly brought on a fight among the servants over who was to have the honor. Ari's very self-effacement in not lingering to be made a hero of, had had the effect of making him more of a hero than he would have been if he had stayed about to preen rather than bringing Coresan in. Or at least that was true among the servants. What those wealthy spectators had thought of Ari's heroic efforts today—well, Vetch couldn't begin to guess.

But there was another repercussion to all of this. When Vetch went back to the butchers to return the barrow for Kashet's feed and his treat, there was a drama being enacted right in the center of the court.

It was Sobek, Reaten's dragon boy, who was causing all the fuss. With all the other boys around him, he refused, sweating and trembling, to go anywhere near his charge. He described, at the top of his lungs, to an enraptured and credulous audience in the butcher court, how she had snapped at him and—so he claimed—nearly taken his leg off.

"Like a mad thing!" he cried, his voice cracking. "Mark me, she'll eat anyone she gets hold of! She nearly ate me! I swear it!"

"That is because she mistook you for a goat, with all of your silly bleating," Haraket boomed from the door to the courtyard, where he stood, legs braced slightly apart, arms crossed over his chest, a fierce and disapproving frown on his face. Vetch shrank back against the wall, but already his mind was a-whirl with a possible idea. "What is all of this foolishness, Sobek?" Haraket continued. "And disobedience—saying you will not tend to your dragon—

"And I won't!" Sobek cried hysterically, both hands clenched into fists, his face a contorted mask of fear and defiance. "I won't, you hear me! My father is a priest in the Temple of Epis, and he'll have something to say about this!"

"Your father is a cleaner of temple floors, and you may go back to him in disgrace if you say one word further," Haraket thundered dangerously, his eyes flashing and his brow as black as a rainy-season storm. Vetch sucked in a breath; Haraket annoyed was dangerous enough, but Haraket enraged? Was he about to see Sobek beaten? If so, it would be the first time he'd seen anyone beaten, even the slaves, since he came to the compound.

But Sobek had been pushed too far; his fear was no act, and he had gone over the edge from fear into panic. He snatched the eye amulet off his neck, and threw it to the pavement, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. The noise of it shattering could not possibly have been as loud as it seemed. It sent a shiver over all of the dragon boys and servants crowded into the court, and even Vetch was not immune. "Send me back, then!" he screeched, as the shattered pieces glittered on the stone. "Go ahead! Better that, than to be torn apart! I care not, Haraket, I will cut papyrus, I will beg for my bread, rather than go into that killer's pen!"

But if Sobek had been pressed too far on this day, so had Haraket. And Haraket had authority.

"Out!" Haraket roared, "Out of my compound, out of my life!" Step by step he advanced on Sobek, his face red with anger, so outraged by the dragon boy's rebellion that he was about to lose control of himself. "You are dismissed, dragon boy, little boy, little coward! Run back to your father, pathetic scum! Go and cut papyrus for a pittance, for that is the only position you will ever hold to put bread in your mouth!"

His arm shot out, pointing toward the door. The hand trembled, with suppressed rage. "Run away like the frightened child you are, before I lose my mind and beat you black and blue to give you bruises to take back with you! Run! Run!"

Sobek ran; bolted for his life past Haraket, bare feet slapping on the stone, fleeing for the outside world and presumed safety.

Silence fell over the courtyard, a silence broken only by the shuffling feet of the other dragon boys. Hanging in the silence was the certain knowledge that someone would have to take care of Coresan until Haraket found another boy to tend her. And Coresan, at her best, was no Kashet. At her worst, well, she was evidently so unmanageable that Sobek had chosen disgrace over continuing to tend her.

This was the opportunity, all unlooked-for, that Vetch had not dared to hope would be granted to him. He leaped upon it and seized it with both hands. "Overseer?" he said, into the leaden silence. "I will tend Coresan along with Kashet, if someone else will mend harness, pound tala, and clean Jouster Ari's room for me. I will need that sort of help. Feeding, tending, and bathing two dragons will not be easy; it is hard enough at the best of times, but it will be much more difficult, when one of them is Coresan, a dragon newly-mated. But I will do it for her sake. There are no bad dragons here," he added boldly. "Only mishandled ones."

A collective sigh arose out of the huddle of dragon boys. They gazed at him in awe, and was it—in sudden respect? Yes, it was! Vetch kept his eyes on Haraket. Now was not the time to take advantage of that.

Haraket's brow cleared a trifle. "You? Coresan is no Kashet, boy. She has always been a handful for Sobek with that tail of hers, and as you said, she is going to lay eggs, which will make her even more difficult—

"But I have been around females about to whelp all my life," he countered, raising his chin. "My father was a farmer. I believe that I can tame her a little. Perhaps more than a little." He allowed scorn to come into his tone, for the first time ever. But Sobek was now, in Haraket's mind at least, in utter and complete disgrace, just like his Jouster. Dragon boy and Jouster had both failed, and failed as badly as it was possible to fail and not die. Criticism of Sobek would fall on ears ready to hear it.

And it was such a relief to be able to abuse one of those wretched Tian boys without fear of being punished for it! Vetch waxed eloquent in his scorn. "Sobek never treated her properly; half the time he was afraid of her, and he never thought she was anything better than a dumb beast with a vicious streak. He never saw how clever she was, or treated her with any kindness. I'd have snapped at him myself, if I had been her; she's smart enough to bully anyone who gives way to her, but she's also smart enough to change her ways if she's treated right."

Haraket rubbed his shaven head with the palm of one hand, now looking worried. "Sobek was—not entirely in the wrong, boy," he admitted. "Perhaps he neglected his dragon, but that will make her all the more dangerous. Coresan could harm you, if you are not careful."

"Let me feed her, feed her now, Overseer," Vetch pleaded, urgently. The plan was rapidly forming in his mind, a beautiful plan that would give him everything he could possibly want, but he could only carry it out if he became Coresan's keeper, at least until she laid those eggs. "She's hungry now, and she'll be easier to win when she's hungry. Please! Watch and see if I can handle her!"

Haraket took a deep breath, and Vetch felt a surge of triumph, knowing he had won—at least so far. "Very well. You may feed her, but I and my helpers will be standing by to guard you. Ari will never forgive me if I let any harm come to you. We will see—

Vetch did not wait for Haraket to have second thoughts. Haraket left to get help, while he seized a barrow, got it loaded with meat, and was out into the corridor before anyone could blink, his own footfalls making the walls echo as he ran—but not, like Sobek, for the outside world. He had a chance; he had to make the most of it. Unlike Sobek, he had nowhere to go, nothing to lose, and the world to gain if he succeeded…

Haraket and two of the biggest of his slaves, trailing a curious and apprehensive crowd of dragon boys, intercepted him on the way to Coresan's pen. He was wheeling a barrow heaped with tala-treated meat, as much as he could manage, and double the ration that he usually gave Kashet. If Coresan was breeding, she'd be hungrier than usual even given the exertion of the mating flight as her body demanded the wherewithal to make eggs, and if Sobek had been neglecting her because he was afraid of her and impatient to get away, he might not have been feeding her properly for some time—and she'd be hungrier still. The way to a dragon's heart was ever through her stomach. There was no reason, no reason whatsoever, why he should not feed her to bursting. She wouldn't be flying any time soon—she would be making eggs. Why not stuff her, and soothe her with food?

Besides all of that, with a double ration of meat would come a double ration of tala, which, once it got into her, would gentle her even in her aroused state. With all of Ari's instruction, he knew whattala did. If he could get her to allow him to lay nurturing hands on her, with a full belly that he had supplied, and the tranquilizing effect of the drug making her see things in a pleasant light-He would create a mighty contrast to Sobek, and it would be right in the forefront of her mind—

Well, he might truly tame her. She would never be a Kashet, but she might become one of the better dragons.

He heard her hissing before he even reached her pen, and looking up, saw her head up above the walls, watching the corridor, swaying back and forth at the end of her long neck.

She was gorgeous; if she hadn't been so angry, he'd have been able to appreciate her beauty more. Her color was a deep ruby, shading at the extremities and along the vanes of her wings to a turquoise-blue. But her scales looked dull, as if there was a haze of dust over them, and that made him frown.

She ignored him—except for a voracious glare down at his laden barrow. He was not Sobek; she did not expect feeding from him.

But when he appeared in the door of her pen with his barrow heaped with fresh, red meat, she reared up, her hiss of anger turning to a short bark of surprise. Then she went into a lunge that came up far short of where he stood, her chain snapping taut between her collar and the wall.