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  "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.

  Chapter Six

  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 moth
er'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."