And this, evidently was only the beginning.
When he’d seen dragons passing overhead, it had never occurred to him how high they were. Now he knew—oh, how he knew!—and the knowledge was enough to scare him witless.
The dragon continued to rise, surging upwards and upwards, so high that Vetch squeezed his eyes closed again, for he could not bear the sight of villagers reduced to the size of ants, and the mud-brick houses of the nameless hamlet on the outskirts of Mefis to the size of the pebbles that the ants swarmed around. This was bad enough, would have been bad enough had the flight been as smooth as those his spirit took in dreams.
But no. With every wing-beat, the dragon lurched skywards, then dropped back a little, convincing Vetch’s stomach that they were all about to plummet to the ground. If he’d had anything in his stomach, he would have lost it within the first few moments. As it was, his gorge rose, and there was a musty, sour taste in the back of his throat to accompany the nausea. Vetch kept his eyes squeezed shut.
Finally, they stopped lurching and bounding and Vetch cracked his right eye open a trifle to see that the dragon was gliding out in level flight. This was only relatively level; it still rose and fell again with each wing-beat, except when it was gliding. When the dragon glided, his stomach was a hard, cold knot of agony, certain that they were about to fall out of the sky. When it beat its wings, his stomach turned over again.
In the first moments of the flight, he vowed that if he ever set foot upon the ground again, he would never leave it...and once they reached the height that the Jouster wanted, he vowed that if he lived through this experience, he would dig a hole in the ground and live in it for the rest of his life. Eyes shut, or eyes open? Both states left him in a state of panic.
When his mind unfroze enough for him to notice anything but fear, the first thing that struck him was the extraordinary heat of the dragon’s body, hot as the hottest sand at midday during the dry season, hotter than the furnace-wind of the kamiseen, heat that came up through the pad he clung to. Which was just as well, as he was shivering in a cold sweat. The other was the feeling of the Jouster’s hard, strong hand in the small of his back, once again holding to the belt of his loincloth. Never once did that grip weaken; Khefti-the-Fat might have been strong beneath the blubber, but this man was ten times stronger. And after a few moments of “level flight,” Vetch began to believe that at least the Jouster wasn’t going to let him fall.
Not that he was enjoying the experience. Given his face-down position, he couldn’t open his eyes without staring down—a very, very long way down—at the ground that was now so horribly far beneath them. And he couldn’t close his eyes without being horribly aware of every little lurch and lean of the dragon that carried him. His heart was pounding so hard with fear that he thought it might burst through his chest; the wind of the dragon’s wing-beats drowned out every other sound, and now the pain of those two stripes burned all across the stretched skin of his back, adding to the ache of his fingers, arms, and legs as he clung to the pad.
Of the two options, he finally decided that not looking was the lesser of the two evils. So he squeezed his eyes tight anyway, and prayed; there wasn’t much else he could do. He prayed to Altan and Tian gods both, though the prayers were anything but articulate, and certainly not even close to the proper forms, consisting of all the gods’ names jumbled up together with get me down!
But the gods were with him, it seemed; the flight wasn’t a long one. Just about the time when Vetch’s muscles were starting to cramp and hurt from the strain of holding on, he felt the dragon dropping, and this time, the falling sensation didn’t end in an upward lurch. He cracked open one eye, to see the ground rushing up at them, and squeezed both of them as tightly shut again as he could. If anything, seeing that they were hurtling back towards the ground was worse than seeing it so far below them. His heart seemed to stop as the fall went on, and on, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Now the great wings thundered all around him, fiercely beating the air, and Vetch redoubled his grip on the pad. He braced for the impact of hitting the ground—
But it never came—
Only sudden stillness, and the snap of wings folding, like canvas or leather snapping in a high wind.
And no movement, no movement at all.
Was it over?
Vetch’s eyes flew open involuntarily.
Face-down on the pad as he was, the first thing he saw was the dragon’s shoulder, the folded wing, and then, the ground, a proper distance away, with a beetle crawling across it that was a real beetle, not an ox reduced to the size of a beetle by distance.
The ground! Never had he been so happy to see a stretch of earth!
The Jouster’s hand loosened on Vetch’s belt, and without being prompted, Vetch let go of the pad and slid down the dragon’s hot, smooth shoulder to the earth. His feet hit the ground together, his legs buckled under him and he landed on his rump, but he scrambled to his feet quickly, his eyes never leaving his new master, much though he wanted to just lie on the ground and embrace it. The Jouster tossed his leg over the saddle and the dragon’s neck, and jumped lightly down, giving his dragon a hearty slap on the shoulder. The dragon snorted, and tossed his head a little.
“Now what’ve you brought back, Ari?” asked a gruff voice from behind Vetch’s back. “This can’t be a prisoner of your arm, and I doubt it’s a spy, either.”
Vetch didn’t turn, though he started a little, and pain arced across his back, marking the path of those stripes; the Jouster had claimed him, the Jouster was his master, and a serf never turned his back on his master (except to be whipped), a lesson that Khefti had driven home with a heavy hand. However, the voice sounded mildly irritated, and the underlying tone conveyed that it was someone in authority.
The Jouster pulled his helmet off, revealing a handsome, if melancholy face, square-jawed, with a great beak of a nose and high cheekbones, brown of eye, and black of hair, as all Tians. He spoke to whoever was behind Vetch; at least Vetch now knew his master’s name. Ari. “This is my new dragon-boy, Haraket. Serf. I claimed him from his master already, so you’ll have to send to the Palace to handle the accounting; the boy can probably tell you who the fat blob was. Seems a likely child; he was working like a little ant, when I saw him, filling a cistern with a bucket too big for him. He wasn’t afraid of Kashet, anyway, and that’s a head-start, so far as I’m concerned.”
“Not some street-trash?” the voice replied dubiously. “He’s got fresh stripes—”
“I’m not blind, Haraket, I was there when he got them, for ‘letting’ me take his bucket and quench my thirst,” Ari replied, putting the helmet down, then turning to unbuckle the throat-strap of the saddle. He sounded a trifle irritated, then unexpectedly, the Jouster laughed. “No, he’s a serf, not a thief, not a gutter-brat. Now the fat slug that was beating him is going to have to find another in his bloodline if the lazy lout wants to hold the land the boy was tied to.”
Vetch blinked, to hear his own speculation borne out. So that was, indeed, why Khefti had taken him!
Somehow, that only made him feel angrier.
The Jouster’s voice took on an interesting tone, very faintly—malicious?—as he continued unbuckling the dragon’s saddle-straps. “You know, if whoever sold the land divided up it up too much, the other landholders might not have spare serfs in his line to give up to anyone else. He might lose that land when the assessor comes to see about it.”
With a fierce surge of longing, Vetch wished he could be there when the assessor came. He wanted, oh how he wanted, to see Khefti squirm, prevaricate, and sweat! He had sunk all of his savings into that house—or at least, he’d told Vetch that often enough. So if he lost it only because he did not have Vetch anymore, what a supreme bit of revenge that would be!
“But a serf—why not a free boy?” the voice complained. “There must be dozens of free boys you could have from their parents for the asking!”
“Because I’m tired of replacing free boys when they get haughty airs and decide they ought to be something better than ‘just’ a dragon-boy!” Ari snapped, and unbuckled the last strap. He pulled the saddle and the pad that Vetch had clung to off the dragon’s back. He turned with it in his hands, and looped all of the straps around it into a compact bundle with a swift and practiced motion.
He dropped the whole thing in Vetch’s arms; Vetch had been expecting this from the moment he’d heard what he was to become. A serf, after all, was for the bearing of burdens. He caught it as it dropped, though one of the strap-ends hit the ground and his stripes burned again. He was used to working, and working hard, with more whip-cuts on his back than two. The saddle was heavy, at least for him, and he staggered for a moment beneath its weight. It had an additional scent besides that of leather—a hot, metallic scent, with an overtone of spice. The scent of the dragon?
“There, boy—” the Jouster said, in a tone of dismissal, as he bent to pick up his helmet and tuck it under his arm. “You go with Haraket; he’ll teach you your business. You’ll be living here, now.”
Jouster Ari stalked off without a backward look, and Vetch turned, the saddle in his arms, to face the person he had not yet seen.
Haraket. Who must be an Overseer.
The man wore a simple white linen kilt, augmented by one striped, multicolored sash around his waist and a second that ran from his right shoulder, across a chest as muscular as any warrior, to the opposite hip. His square head was shaven, though he did not wear a wig, his skin as browned and weathered as that of any farmer, and he wore a hawk-eye amulet of glazed pottery around his neck. He gazed down on Vetch with resignation from beneath a pair of heavy, black eyebrows. But at least he didn’t look angry. And he wasn’t wearing a whip at his waist, either.
“Come on, you,” he said, with a sigh. “Since I’m to teach you your business, the best time to start is now.” Vetch ducked his head obediently, silently telling himself not to look sullen, and followed as the man strode off across the beaten earth of the courtyard. But he stopped dead at the sound of something large and heavy following him.
He turned. The dragon stared down at him, cocking its head quizzically; it had been right on his heels.
“Come on, serf-boy!” the man snarled, when he turned to discover that Vetch was not behind him anymore. “Kashet will come along without being led, much less leashed or chained. He follows me and Ari like a dog, and in time, he’ll follow you. Kashet isn’t like other dragons, and that’s something you’d better keep in mind from this moment on. Ari doesn’t need tala to control him. You’re damned lucky to be Ari’s boy; Kashet is a neferek to handle compared with the others.”
He turned abruptly and strode off again, and Vetch hurried to catch up with him, the dragon following along like a hound. For the moment, the ever-present anger that burned in his belly had retreated before his feeling of complete dislocation and bewilderment.
The dragon had landed in a huge courtyard with enormously high limestone walls around it, “paved” with pale beige earth pounded hard and as flat as a smooth mud-brick. There were four entrances or gates to this courtyard, square arches each surmounted by a sculpted and painted symbol of a god, each one right in the middle of each wall. All were tall enough to allow a dragon to pass through them, and broad enough for three. The man marched straight through the one nearest them, which had a hawk-eye painted in blue, red and black carved into the top; Vetch followed, and the dragon followed him.
The colors were bright enough to dazzle the eye; there was nothing like these painted walls in Khefti’s village. The painted images leapt out at Vetch, and dazzled him. Even Khefti’s apprentices never worked with such wonderful colors!
On the other side of the wall were—more limestone-faced walls, equally dazzling in their whiteness. They formed a sort of alley or corridor stretching in either direction; the area was also open to the sky. These walls were not as tall as the ones around the courtyard, and dragon heads peeked over the tops at intervals, peering at them with some unreadable emotion. They weren’t all the green-and-gold of Kashet; there were blue ones in all shades from dark to light, red ones, a purple color, and a pale gold-and-silver. Already Vetch could tell there was a profound difference between these dragons and Kashet. Ari’s dragon had some friendly interest in his eyes when he looked at Vetch—these dragons had the eyes of a feral cat, wary and wild.
He expected noise out of them, based on the way the oxen and donkeys of his father’s farm behaved when a stranger came into their yard; to his surprise, there was very little. The dragons hissed and snorted, but there was no bellowing, no growling.
Perhaps they didn’t make any louder sound; perhaps they couldn’t.
They came to an intersection, and the bald man turned the corner to lead him down another corridor, then another—and just as Vetch thought he was totally lost, turned a final corner that brought them inside another courtyard. He stumbled forwards on momentum and blundered into a huge pit that formed the center of the courtyard, a pit was knee-deep in soft, hot sand. He floundered in the stuff, helplessly, and the man reached out a long arm and hauled him back onto the hard verge. Again, the whip-cuts on his back reminded him they were there.
“Stay on the walkway around the edge, boy,” the man said, but not unkindly. “That sand will burn you, else, until you’re used to it. You’ll need to toughen your skin to it.”
He’d already found that out; the sand radiated heat upwards, as hot as the sun overhead, hotter than the kamiseen. His legs stung a little, though he wouldn’t have called it a burn, exactly. His feet were too calloused to feel much, even heat, from so brief an encounter
“Put the saddle over there,” Haraket continued, pointing to a wooden rack mounted on the wall nearest Vetch. “Untangle the straps and drape them over the rack to dry—dragons don’t sweat, but Jousters do. Kashet doesn’t need to be chained the way the others do, so you leave him free—”
The dragon, ignoring both of them, plunged past them into the center of the room to wallow into the hot sand. Vetch heaved the saddle up onto the rack as he’d been told to do. Under Haraket’s watchful eye, he arranged the saddle-straps over the bars of the rack. untangling them as he did so. Something told him that the straps shouldn’t touch the ground, so he took care that they did not do so. The kamiseen did not venture down here, for a wonder, though he could hear it whining above the walls. Not that it was cooler here; not with those hot sands contributing to the fire of the sun overhead.
When he turned to face his instructor, he thought that the man was not displeased. He looked up into Haraket’s face, and waited for more instruction. It was not long in coming.
“The first thing you need to get into your mind is this: Kashet and his Jouster will be your sole concern from morning to night,” Haraket told him, crossing his muscular arms over his chest, and looking down at him, examining, weighing, assessing. “A dragon-boy not only tends to his dragon, he tends to the Jouster that rides him. No one can give you orders but your Jouster and me, unless Ari or I tell you otherwise.”
Vetch bobbed his head. “Yes, Overseer,” he replied.
Haraket grunted. “Here is the next thing; your Jouster can probably find plenty of other servants if he needs them, but you are the only one who is to tend to his dragon. If you have to choose between tending the dragon or the Jouster, there is no choice for you: tend the dragon.”
Vetch blinked, but again nodded obediently.
“Now, the first thing you must do, this very moment, is to feed Kashet so that he knows you. Only a dragon-boy, or at need, the Overseer or the Jouster will feed a dragon. They are too valuable to let anyone else meddle with them—” Haraket hesitated, then added “—and other than Kashet, a dragon sharp-set with hunger might—savage—anyone he didn’t know who came to feed him. They’re wild beasts, very large and very powerful. Don’t ever forget that, not for a moment.”
Other than Kashet.... Well, that was some comfort. But the thought still made Vetch gulp nervously. And the way that Haraket had hesitated over his choice of words made him wonder if the man had substituted “savage” for “devour.” Not a comfortable thought at all. What had he fallen into?
“But you’ll never need worry about Kashet.” That was said with a certainty that quelled a little of Vetch’s unease. “Now, come with me. The only way to learn how to feed him is to do so.”
Haraket turned and went out the doorway, and Vetch followed. Shortly the man was leading him at a trot down the corridors; Vetch was hard-put to keep up with the Overseer’s long legs. But those words worried him. Only the Jouster or the Overseer or the dragon-boy feed a dragon. So now, he was probably going to be in competition with another boy—who, from the sound of it, would be freeborn—to take care of Ari and his dragon. That could spell nothing but trouble.
“Sir?” he panted, literally the first question he had asked of anyone since the Jouster arrived at the cistern. He had to cough to clear his dry throat, for he still had gotten nothing to drink. “Sir, who is Kashet’s dragon-boy?”
The Overseer looked down at him, his lips tightening; Vetch flinched. He couldn’t imagine how a simple question had made the Overseer so annoyed. “Imbecile,” Haraket muttered, and answered more loudly, “You are Kashet’s boy. Haven’t you been listening to me?”
He almost dared to hope. Was it possible? Did this mean that Kashet’s care was going to depend entirely on him? And if so—
—surely not. Surely, there was someone else, a rival, who would be very angry when he saw that Vetch was a serf. And it could be worse than that, much worse, given what the Jouster had said about “boys getting airs.” Perhaps he had selected Vetch in order to humiliate this other boy—who would, of course, take out his humiliation on Vetch whenever the masters’ backs were turned. When Khefti beat his apprentices, the apprentices pulled evil tricks on Vetch, it followed as surely as the sun rose. And that was without Vetch being a rival!
“Sir—I meant—who is Kashet’s other dragon-boy?” In his heart was the dread he would have to face a rival who would share his duties, and without a doubt, attempt to make sure that everything that went right reflected to his credit, and all the blame for whatever went wrong landed on Vetch. Some of that must have shown in his expression, as the Overseer’s face cleared, and he grunted.
“There is no other dragon-boy for Kashet. Jouster Ari and I have been caring for him of late.” He grunted again, this time with a distinct tone of disdain. “Jouster Ari’s previous boy elected to accept a position in the King’s army without notice, and left us cursed shorthanded.”
Now all that business about serfs and free boys made sense....
Soldiers had higher status than mere servants...and certainly fewer menial duties. So that’s what he meant by “getting airs....” It would make sense that the Jouster would now prefer to find a boy who had no choice, who could not go elsewhere, except, perhaps, back to Khefti. Which of course, was no choice at all.
“Here—down this way is where the servants from all of the Temples bring the sacrifices,” Haraket said, making another abrupt turn. This was an alley that looked like a street in the village in a way, though the walls were much taller than any village structures, and the unbroken stretches of wall argued for something the size of a major Temple! But the walls along this stretch had doorways and clerestory windows, so it seemed that here the walls were part of huge buildings.
Haraket stopped in front of a real, closed door rather than an open archway or simple gap in the walls. He opened it, and with his hand on Vetch’s shoulders, shoved him through.
On the other side—
Vetch almost broke and ran at the vision of carnage that met his eyes.
The air was full of the metallic scent of blood, so thick he could practically taste it, and everywhere he looked there were dead animals...hundreds of dead animals. Working here were butchers, a dozen of them, naked to the waist, smeared in drying blood, dismembering the corpses and throwing the pieces into bins or barrows beside them.
He was no stranger to the slaughter of farm-stock but never on a scale like this, and never anything bigger than a goat. There were carcasses of enormous cattle, goats, sheep, stacked up as casually as mud-bricks, being hacked up by the butchers into hand-sized and head-sized chunks, and the sight made him feel sick and dizzy.
And for a moment, all he could think of was the last sight of his father, covered with his own blood—and the anger surged, but the fear and sickness that followed buried it, and he had to clutch the wall and put his burning back up against it to keep from fainting.
But curiously, as the shock wore off, he saw there was no blood, or very little. “This is all fresh from the Temple sacrifices,” Haraket was saying, quite as if he had not noticed Vetch’s reaction, as the nearest of the butchers tossed chunks of meat, bone-in, skin-on, into a barrow parked next to his chopping-block. “It’s a a nice piece of economy when you think about it. Every day, hundreds of animals are sacrificed to the gods or cut up for divination ceremonies, but there’s no use for the bodies when the blood and spirit have drained away.”
As Haraket spoke, Vetch began to get control of himself again. It was only meat. No animals were being killed here. It was only meat.
Of course, the Tians believed that the gods required only the blood and the mana of the creatures sacrificed on the altars. There were so many gods, and so many people who needed their favor—he had never actually been to the Avenue of Temples in Mefis, but he had heard tales, heard that there were a hundred gods or more, and almost as many Temples, and all of them got sacrifices daily. Not just the bread and beer and honey, the flowers, and the occasional fowl of the little Temple of Hamun, Siris and Iris in the village, but live beasts, and entire herds of them.
“There aren’t enough priests in the world to consume all that flesh,” Haraket continued, “Even if they were as fat as houses. So it comes to us, who can certainly use it. That’s why they built the Jouster’s compound on the Temple-road. So—ah, he’s filled that barrow, now you take it.”
The barrow was heavy and hard to push, but Vetch was accustomed to be ordered to do things that were difficult. Haraket watched critically as he grabbed the handles and started shoving, then took the lead. Vetch kept the barrow rolling, following Haraket back to Kashet’s pen at a much slower pace than they had taken to get to the butchers’ place. Haraket kept his strides short, although he did not bother to look at Vetch more than once or twice.
Already, though, things were profoundly different than they had been under Khefti. The Overseer was not chiding him nor punishing him for taking too long with the barrow. Not once had he been cuffed for stupidity, or had his ears boxed for asking a question. Once again, Vetch dared to hope.
Kashet was watching for them; Vetch saw the now-familiar head peering over the walls long before they got to the opening of the pen. Kashet didn’t wait for him to bring the food all the way into the pen, either; no sooner had Vetch gotten to the part of the corridor immediately outside the entrance than the dragon snaked his neck out of the doorway and snatched a chunk of meat from the barrow in his powerful jaws, startling Vetch so that he jumped and squeaked involuntarily.
But Haraket gave him a long and measuring look, and after a pause while his heart pounded, Vetch continued pushing the barrow forward, telling himself that if Kashet had wanted to eat him, he’d have gone down that long throat while he was still struggling with the saddle.
Kashet plucked chunks from the barrow three more times before Vetch parked it where Haraket pointed. He ate neatly, if voraciously; snatching up a chunk of meat, tossing back his head, and swallowing it whole. Vetch could even see it traveling down his long neck by the bulge it caused.
But he never so much as gave Vetch a threatening or speculative look. Haraket stood at the side of the sand-pit with his arms crossed casually over his massive chest, completely relaxed. Vetch tried to copy his example, though his heart raced in his chest.
But Kashet was not in the least interested in Vetch, only what was in the barrow. And in fact, the dragon began to remind Vetch of a falcon, a little, in the neat single-mindedness with which he filled his belly.
“He’s an easy charge, so long as you do well by him,” Haraket said, speaking quietly. “The only time he’s even offered a snap at someone was when the idiot boy forgot his evening feed and he didn’t get a meal until morning. By the God Haras, I’d have snapped too! And the fool blubbed at me after, and thought I’d feel sorry for him!” Haraket snorted. “I pitched that one out on his ear myself.”
Vetch vowed never to be so much as a moment late with one of Kashet’s meals.
Haraket frowned, though not at Vetch. “That was Kashet’s first boy; two dragon-boys we’ve lost now, and Kashet’s the easiest beast in the compound! He takes a bit more time in tending perhaps, but by the gods, it isn’t the kind of time you waste with one who’s hell-bent on not going where you want him too!” The Overseer sighed. “Maybe it’s Ari. He doesn’t pet and praise his boys, take them along to feasts, the way some of the others do. And there’s no profit to be made out of him....” Haraket turned, ever-so-slightly, and looked out of the corner of his eye at Vetch.
Vetch kept his mouth shut. Haraket was telling him this for a reason, and if he didn’t yet know what the reason was, soon or late he’d find out about it.
Besides, that angry little voice inside him reminded him, It isn’t as if you have a choice. It’s here, or Khefti.
When the barrow was empty, Kashet heaved an enormous sigh, and returned to the hot sand. This time he dug himself a depression in the middle of it, and stretched his entire length within it. Within moments, he was, to Vetch’s astonishment, deeply asleep.
“He’ll sleep like that until it’s time to go out again this afternoon,” Haraket said, with a little noise that sounded like a fond chuckle. “You couldn’t wake him now if you tried. Ari was back early from his patrol—so we’ve just enough time to get you kitted up and clean and fed before I show you the afternoon jobs.” He paused, and raised an eyebrow. “And I believe we should do something about those stripes of yours, too.”
Vetch almost gaped at him in shock. Never, ever, had one of his masters offered to do anything about the marks of a beating!
With that, they left Kashet wallowing in the sand, sleeping off his meal in the noontime sun that beat straight down on him, met by the heat radiating up from the sand. Haraket hustled Vetch off again, again to a room, and not an open-air courtyard, though it was not nearly as huge as the butchery. This was a very fine room indeed, with plain, honey-colored limestone walls, narrow openings near the ceiling to bring in air and light while excluding the full cruelty of the sun and the kamiseen. It even had a stone floor. The only buildings that Vetch had ever seen that were made of stone like this were Temples, and he found himself trying not to gape. Along one side of this room were ranged full terra-cotta jars of water as tall as Vetch was, with wooden or horn ladles hung on their sides. There were also neatly-folded piles of fabric on shelves above the jars, what looked like smaller pottery jars of unguents and possibly soap. And to clinch that this room was for bathing, there was a drain in the center of the floor.
Haraket shoved him inside as he stood hesitantly on the threshold. “Strip,” he ordered Vetch, abruptly. “I hope you know how to wash....”
He sounded dubious, which woke some smoldering resentment, but Vetch didn’t have to be told what to do twice. The last proper bath he’d had was—
He cut off the unwanted memory—of washing off blood. His father’s blood....
It was enough that he would have a proper bath now.
He pulled off the rope belt and the rags, and hesitated with them in one hand. Surely he should wash them?
“Feh, boy, you don’t think that’s worth saving, do you?” Haraket barked with distaste. “Throw it there, and get on with it!”
He pointed to a rubbish pile, and not at all loathe to rid himself of the rags, Vetch tossed them aside. He headed straight for the water jars and ladled dipper-fulls of water over himself, scrubbing himself down with a handful of lye-soap and a loofah-sponge. And he scrubbed every inch of himself as well, fingernails, toenails, even his back, though the soap got in the cuts and stung until he had to bite his lip, trying to get stains off his legs, wishing he had a razor so he could shave his skull bare as his father had used to do for him....
He scrubbed himself twice over, rinsing himself with more water from the jars, and was about to start on a third round when Haraket grunted. “That’ll do, boy. Any more, and you’ll have the skin off. I want you clean, not raw.” Haraket tossed him a folded piece of cloth to dry himself with, then another bundle of fabric when he’d done with that; he caught it, and unfolded it to find, not just a loincloth, but a proper linen kilt, such as he had not worn in—
—in too long. Not since the moment he had been made a serf.
But he still remembered how to wrap a simple kilt, or his hands did, anyway. Then, skin tingling and arrayed in that real linen kilt of his own, he turned obediently to the Overseer for the expected inspection.
Haraket surveyed him, and nodded with satisfaction. “Not so bad,” he said, with reluctant approval. “You clean up better than I’d have guessed. By the way, dragon-boys don’t wear sandals; you’d lose them in the sand-wallows. From the look of your feet, they’re tough enough. Now, turn your back to me.”
Vetch did so, as Haraket got one of the jars of unguent from a shelf, and applied it generously to the whip-marks. And the pain—vanished, replaced entirely by a cool tingling. Vetch couldn’t believe it, and as Haraket put the jar back on the shelf, he turned, wondering if he should thank the Overseer.
But Haraket forestalled him with a question. “Hungry?”
Vetch tried, tried so hard, not to look too eager, but—
—well, he was only a little boy, after all, and not too practiced in disguising his expression except by the simple expedient of staring at his feet. Haraket, for the first time that day, actually smiled.
“Now it is me who is the fool. Of course you are. You look like a sack of gnawed bones. Come along.”
Haraket strode out of the bathing-chamber and Vetch scrambled after him, beginning to feel very dazed by this marked change in his fortunes. This morning, he had been filthy, starving, and about to be beaten. Now he was clean, well-clothed, and so far, he hadn’t encountered anyone who was likely to have as heavy a hand with the stick as Khefti.
“What’s your name, boy?” the Overseer asked gruffly. “I can’t keep calling you ‘boy,’ or I’ll have half the compound answering when I shout at you.”
“Vetch, Sir,” Vetch replied, taking two steps for every one of Haraket’s.
“And who was your master, Vetch? Ari’s going to want that assessor out on him by tomorrow, I expect, so I had better get that sorted by this afternoon.” Haraket gave Vetch another of those sidelong looks. “That’s what I’m for; seeing the tallies are all correct, all the chickens put to roost.”
“Khefti-the-Fat, Sir. He’s a potter and brick-maker with six apprentices, and he has a tala field outside his house in the village of Mu-asen—” for a moment, Vetch worried that this wouldn’t be enough to identify his former master, but Haraket interrupted him.
“That’s enough, Vetch. There can’t be more than one fat potter with a tala field within a hop of Mefis. The King’s assessor will find him.”
And then, as Haraket turned to open yet another door and he followed, he discovered that he had been led straight into paradise.
Or if not quite paradise, it was as near as Vetch had ever been to it.
“Paradise” was a kitchen courtyard of lime-washed mud-brick walls, shaded from the pitiless sun by bleached canvas awnings strung between the courtyard walls, additionally supported by ropes crossing underneath them, tethered to the other walls. It was full of simple wooden benches and tables set with reed baskets heaped with bread, pottery jars of beer with the sides beaded with condensation, wooden platters of cheese, baked latas roots, and sweet onions. And little bowls of the juice and fat of roast duck, goose, and chicken, such as he had not tasted since the moment he became a serf. The aroma of all that food made him feel faint and dizzy again.
He stared at it, not daring to go near, hoping beyond hope that he would be allowed the remains whenever Haraket and the other masters were finished eating.
And then his stomach growled, and hurt so much it brought tears to his eyes for a moment. And the anger returned, anger at these arrogant Tians for making him stand in the presence of plenty that he wasn’t to touch—
“Well, what are you waiting for, boy?” Haraket said impatiently. “Sit down! Eat! You do me no good by fainting from hunger!”
And he shoved Vetch forward with a hand between his shoulders, making it very clear that this was not some cruel joke. Vetch stumbled towards the table and took a seat on the end of the nearest bench, hardly daring to believe what he’d heard.
He looked up at Haraket again, just to be sure. The Overseer made an abrupt gesture with one hand; Vetch took that as assent.
He managed, somehow, to react like a civilized and mannerly farm boy and not cram his mouth full with both his hands. It took all of the restraint he had learned at Khefti’s hands, though, for the aromas filled his nose, and the nearest platter of loaves filled his sight, and his mouth was watering so much he had to keep swallowing or he’d drool like a hungry dog. He took one of the little loaves though his hands shook, tore it neatly in half. Helped himself to a single piece of cheese, to latas and onion, and a small jar of beer. He laid all of this on the wooden table in front of him, and only then began eating; the taste of fresh bread nearly made him weep with pleasure. It was still warm from the oven, the crust crisp and not stale, the insides tender and not dry, and it was three times the size of his ration under Khefti. Then he dipped the other half of the bread in the rich fat, and took a bite, and did weep, for the taste exploded on his tongue, and with it came all the memories of what home on a feast day had been like....
He glanced back at Haraket, but the man was gone. Which meant—his mind reeled with the thought—which meant that he was expected to eat his fill, and no one would stop him!
But the memory of a day during the rains when he’d found a discarded basket of water-soaked loaves in the market warned him against gorging. That day had been a disaster; he’d eaten himself sick, and had spent a horrible night, stifling his groans as his belly ached. He’d gotten punished twice, in fact, once with a bellyache, and the next day when his exhaustion made him sluggish and he’d soon collected a set of stripes from Khefti. He would eat slowly, and yes, eat his fill (or as near as he was allowed) but he would not stuff himself, or he would be very sick, and his new masters would surely be angry at him. So far, no one had been ready to add to his stripes. He would not let his greed give them an opportunity.
When he’d finished the first round of bread, he started on the cheese and onions, and about that point, the other dragon-boys started coming in.
A group of four came in together, chattering away. Like him, all were clothed in simple linen kilts and barefoot. Like Haraket, all wore a hawk-eye talisman at their throats. They were older, taller and stronger than Vetch was, though; and well-fed, and moving with the kind of casual freedom that no serf or slave ever displayed. And unlike him, if their hair wasn’t cut short, their heads were shaved altogether. That was the mark of an Altan serf; long, unbarbered hair, like some wild barbarian tribesman from the desert, like one of the Bedu, the nomads who had no king, only tribal rulers.
He made himself as small as he could on the bench.
They stopped dead at the sight of him, and eyed him with curiosity. “Who’s that?” one asked of the largest of the four.
“Kashet’s boy,” said the other, with a knowing glance. “I heard Jouster Ari brought in a serf over his saddle-bow that he’d decided to make into his new dragon-boy.”
“Huh,” the first replied, and looked down his long nose at Vetch, his black eyes narrowing with superior arrogance. “Mind your manners, Kashet’s boy,” he said loftily to Vetch. “We’re all free here but you, so remember your place.”
Vetch ducked his head. “Yes, sir,” he murmured, and that seemed to satisfy the other, for he crowded onto the bench near his friend and paid no more heed to Vetch.
Vetch felt his anger churn inside him again. They were just like Khefti’s apprentices, worthless lot that they were! They thought that the worst of them was superior enough that Vetch should offer his head to their feet! None of them, likely, had ever been landowners! Had he not been born free, as free as any of them, and son to a family who had owned their land for generations?
But he had not lived the last few seasons without learning that when a freeman and a serf had conflicts, it was always the serf who lost.
So he kept his eyes fastened on his food, kept his anger in check, and hastened to make himself even smaller. He watched the others when he went for more food, always snatching his hand back empty if it looked as if one of the free boys was interested in the platter or basket that he was reaching for.
But even so, for the first time in a very, very long time, he was able to eat as much as he wanted. In fact, he had not really eaten like this very often back when his father was alive, for even a farmer did not have the means to produce a seemingly never-ending stream of food and drink at a meal. Only a great village feast would bring forth this sort of abundance. Kitchen-girls—slaves, he thought by their neck-rings, though they were the sleekest and best-looking such slaves he had ever seen—kept coming out of the kitchen with more food, more beer; no matter how much the boys ate, there was always more. One of the older girls seemed to have taken a liking to him; she made certain that there were platters within his reach, and replaced the empty jar at his hand with a full one. He thanked her shyly, and she winked at him and hurried back into the kitchen.
Haraket came for him about the time that he had decided he couldn’t safely eat another morsel. That was long before the other boys finished—but then, he’d had a head start on them, and they were lingering over their food.
The boys hushed their chatter when Haraket appeared in the doorway, and watched as Vetch scrambled to his feet in response to the beckoning hand. The chatter began again as soon as Vetch cleared the doorframe, following Haraket, and his ears burned with embarrassment and resentment, imagining what they were saying about him. Making fun of his looks, his intelligence, his imagined habits. Comparing him to the brutes of the desert, the beasts of the fields.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself, though in truth, it did. They were no better born than he! Tians were by no means morally or mentally superior to Altans! The Altans were the older race, and were dwelling in civilized surroundings when the Tians were grubbing latas roots with pointed sticks!
But “Don’t pay any attention to those idle lizards,” Haraket said dismissively. “There are three creatures here you have to please; Jouster Ari, myself, and Kashet. No one else matters.”
Easy for him to say, Vetch thought, recalling all the nasty tricks that used to be played on him by Khefti’s apprentices and the freeborn boys of the village. He was surely in for more of the same from this lot.
But Haraket might have had the mind-reading power of a Clear-Sighted Priestess, for he seemed to pluck that thought right out of Vetch’s skull. “Freeborn, serf, or slave, a dragon-boy is a dragon-boy, and if they try any tricks with you, you come to me,” Haraket said, with some little force. “Remember what I said; your duty is your Jouster and Kashet, first to last. Anything, anything, that interferes with you doing that duty is an offense against your Jouster and his dragon, and believe me, boy, we take that very seriously. Beating is the least of what I’ll deal out to a troublemaker.”
“What?” he blurted, so taken aback that he spoke the word aloud. And winced involuntarily, expecting a buffet for his insubordination.
But Haraket didn’t cuff him. “You please me, your Jouster, and your dragon,” he repeated once again. “And that is all you need to concern yourself with. But don’t antagonize the brats,” Haraket added. “Have the proper attitude. They are freeborn, and you’re not.”
“Yes, sir,” he murmured. That was more like what he’d expected to hear....
“But if you’re keeping your proper place, and they interfere with you, I’ll give them something to weep about,” Haraket said, and it sounded to Vetch as if a tinge of grim satisfaction colored the words. “They’ll be cherishing stripes for a week, if they harm you. But enough of that; you’d best be sure you’re pleasing me and Ari and Kashet,” Haraket continued. “And believe me, there’s a lot to do to please us.”
Of that, at least, he had no doubt.