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  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 ruin 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 cl
eaning 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 an
d 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.”